Current affairs — 2 November 2026

Prelims pointers

• Kolar district's Avarekai area fell by 70%, from nearly 1,000 hectares to about 300 hectares.
• Farmers generally sow Avarekai in August, and two to three rain spells after sowing are considered essential for good growth.
• As of November 1, fresh Avarekai retailed at ₹80-₹88 per kg in Bengaluru, while Idakida Bele cost ₹300-₹350 per kg.
• UAS-B developed improved Hebbal Avare varieties HA 3, HA 4 and HA 5; HA 3 and HA 4 date to the 1980s.
• The improved varieties are photo-insensitive and can be harvested within 60 to 75 days, but adequate soil moisture remains necessary.

Prelims pointers

• The UN General Assembly has passed a resolution seeking an end to the United States’ economic embargo on Cuba nearly every year since 1992.
• The October 30 resolution received 130 votes in favour, 25 abstentions and 17 votes against in the 193-member General Assembly.
• Support exceeded 180 countries during the preceding decade but fell to 165 votes in 2025 and to 130 in the latest vote.
• Germany and Italy switched to abstaining for the first time in many years, while diplomats from Ukraine and Poland cited Cuba’s ties with Russia.
• India supported the resolution, opposed the embargo and called for dialogue and diplomacy; it remained with the bulk of Group of 77 and non-aligned states.

Prelims pointers

• NavIC had been short of at least one functional satellite for six months and was unable to provide standalone positioning services over the Indian subcontinent.
• The three second-generation NVS satellites each have at least one indigenously made atomic clock, unlike the imported clocks on first-generation IRNSS satellites.
• GSLV-F18 was only ISRO’s second successful launch of 2026 after two PSLV launch failures constrained the preceding 18 months.
• A 2025 Space Applications Centre request for proposals allowed nearly two years from contract start to delivery of the first two flight models.
• The editorial calls for around ₹17,000 crore for the Department of Space in 2027-28, against ₹13,705.6 crore in 2026-27, with emphasis on launch vehicles, replacement satellites and recruitment.

Prelims pointers

• The ILO defines decent work as employment offering equitable income, workplace rights, social security and dignity; the principle is integrated into SDG 8.
• The Decent Work Index used PLFS rounds from 2017-18 and 2023-24 and combined employment status, employment opportunity and social security.
• India’s overall Decent Work Index rose from 0.247 in 2017-18 to 0.302 in 2023-24, although the article describes the resulting level as low.
• Manufacturing’s index increased from 0.324 to 0.411, while transport’s increased from 0.285 to 0.35 over the study period.
• The ILO–IHD India Employment Report 2024 is cited as finding that nearly 90% of India’s workforce remains informally employed, with the share rising since 2019.

Prelims pointers

• Researchers surveyed a 1,500-km stretch of the Rub’ al Khali desert in Saudi Arabia.
• The survey found evidence of 55 extinct lakes across the investigated desert stretch.
• Researchers found no stone tools or signs of human life at the extinct-lake locations.
• An earlier explanation held that human populations spread across Green Arabia wherever lakes formed.
• The team concluded that early human migration required access to both water and stones suitable for toolmaking.

Prelims pointers

• The Small and Large Magellanic Clouds are among the closest galaxies and are being swallowed by the Milky Way.
• A larger galaxy’s tidal forces can rip apart a smaller galaxy and leave stellar streams and clusters.
• Accreted stars can differ in motion from the rest of the galaxy and stand out through chemical composition.
• Galactic archaeologists combine stellar age, chemistry and motion to study a galaxy’s assembly history.
• New missions are helping trace the Milky Way’s history back almost 12 billion years.

Prelims pointers

• More than 8,000 police personnel were deployed in Karachi to protect teams during the anti-polio campaign.
• The campaign ran from November 2 to 8 and included 31 districts of Balochistan under heightened security.
• A newly confirmed polio case was reported from Khyber district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
• Karachi’s 2025 campaigns recorded about 41,000 instances in which parents or guardians refused vaccination.
• Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio remains endemic, according to the World Health Organization.

Prelims pointers

• OpenAI and Anthropic each said that one of their AI models had disproved the exponential time hypothesis.
• ETH is described as saying that some problems require a computer to try nearly every possible answer.
• Russell Impagliazzo and Ramamohan Paturi proposed the hypothesis around 25 years before the report.
• Ryan Williams had publicly doubted ETH before the two companies announced their claimed results.
• Impagliazzo, Paturi and Williams are helping organise an independent review of the company claims.

Prelims pointers

• U.S. midterm elections occur halfway through a President’s four-year term, without the President being directly up for election.
• All 435 House of Representatives seats are contested because House members serve two-year terms.
• Senators serve staggered six-year terms; 35 of the 100 Senate seats were on the ballot in 2026.
• The 2026 Senate contests comprised 33 regular elections and two special elections, in Florida and Ohio.
• U.S. voting, ballot printing and counting are decentralised across local authorities and state governments.

Prelims pointers

• UCLA researchers developed a method that identifies video deepfakes using the light in the footage.
• Nature Communications research cited in the article found that humans spot deepfakes only 50% of the time.
• The system identified manipulated videos with 99.86% accuracy in laboratory tests.
• The system identified real videos with 95.72% accuracy in the reported laboratory tests.
• The light-based method processed 15 videos at a time during the reported tests.

Prelims pointers

• A bank or finance company funds the purchase and charges interest under the arrangement described in the explainer.
• The retailer may recover the interest by quoting a higher price or withholding a discount available to cash buyers.
• The example uses a ₹60,000 phone paid for through six equal instalments of ₹10,000 each.
• In the example, a cash buyer pays ₹57,000 while the buyer using the EMI plan pays ₹60,000.
• The explainer identifies the ₹3,000 difference between the two prices as the interest cost.

Prelims pointers

• Justice Srinivasan Muralidhar chairs a UN-appointed Independent International Commission of Inquiry.
• The commission’s mandate identified in the source concerns the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
• Justice Muralidhar described Israeli policy as maximising occupation while minimising the Palestinian population.
• He said the commission’s recent report demonstrated an intent to prevent Palestinians from existing as a group.
• He also said the commission was gathering and preserving evidence of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Prelims pointers

• The Finance Minister described capital expenditure as an important component of the government's growth strategy.
• She said public capital investment remained important until the private sector expanded capacity or investment.
• The Minister linked confidence in continued capex to multiplier effects observed over the previous four to five years.
• She said spending must be responsible and identified fiscal prudence as the government's top priority.
• She cited robust GST collections, well-performing banks and continuing activity despite global uncertainty.

Prelims pointers

• Iran said it could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days if the United States accepted its conditions.
• The Strait of Hormuz normally carries an amount equal to one-fifth of global oil consumption.
• Iran has blockaded Hormuz since the war began in February, and the closure has sent energy prices higher.
• Iran’s September proposal offered a seven-day reopening plan tied to ending the war, sanctions relief and other demands.
• Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey held recent talks with Iran, while U.S. Vice President JD Vance sent Tehran a letter.

Prelims pointers

• The amended applicability rule covers internet service providers with more than ten thousand subscribers at the end of the preceding financial year.
• Complaint Centre support must be available all day, every day, while human assistance must be available for at least sixteen hours daily.
• The period for filing an appeal after disposal of a complaint has been reduced from thirty days to fifteen days.
• An Appellate Authority must include regular management employees with at least five years of experience and decide within fifteen days.
• Providers must run a five-point online feedback survey after complaint or appeal closure and publish the results quarterly.

Prelims pointers

• The summit at Bharat Mandapam coincided with the Ninth Assembly of the International Solar Alliance and included delegates from the Fourth Conference on Green Hydrogen.
• India was reported to have reached nearly 300 GW toward its 500 GW non-fossil capacity target for 2030 and to have crossed 50% non-fossil installed capacity.
• PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana was launched in February 2024 with a goal of rooftop solar for one crore homes; over 65 lakh households had joined.
• The KUSUM scheme was reported to have provided solar irrigation to more than 30 lakh farmers, saving each solar-pump beneficiary nearly ₹1 lakh annually.
• Solar-module manufacturing capacity was reported to have grown from about 2 GW a decade earlier to over 200 GW, with nearly 40 GW of solar-cell capacity.

Prelims pointers

• The Ministry of Defence signed contracts worth Rs 53,866.50 crore for eight Next Generation Corvettes.
• Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers will build five corvettes, while Goa Shipyard will build three.
• The ships will be indigenously designed by the Indian Navy and constructed by competitively selected Defence Public Sector Undertakings.
• Planned missions include anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare, coastal defence, littoral combat, presence and surveillance.
• The project is expected to create about 72 lakh shipyard person-days and 460 lakh ancillary-industry and MSME person-days over ten years.

Prelims pointers

• The conference theme is “Maize Revolution for Food, Feed, Fodder, Fuel and Sustainability in the Changing World,” abbreviated as M4FS.
• M.L. Jat said India’s maize production had reached about 55 million tonnes and proposed increasing it to 75 million tonnes over the next decade.
• The proposed productivity goal is a further 1.5-fold increase through technology, improved crop management and efficient resource use.
• D.K. Yadav reported the development of 329 maize hybrids during the preceding five years and called for strengthening AICRP on Maize.
• The conference is being held in Hyderabad from November 2 to 4, 2026 and brings together national and international experts.

Prelims pointers

• The Union Home Minister directed that FRROs be established in all State capitals by 2027.
• The e-FRRO platform offers 35 online services, including registration, visa extension and visa conversion.
• Jaipur, Chandigarh and Guwahati received FRROs in 2025; Aizawl and Amravati received them in 2026.
• Kohima, Agartala and Bhubaneswar were recently notified as three additional FRRO locations.
• The Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 consolidated four earlier laws on immigration and foreigners.

Prelims pointers

• The Annual Star Rating Awards Ceremony for FY 2024–25 was held in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, and recognised 50 mines with Five-Star Ratings.
• Ten mines secured first, second or third positions in their respective categories with scores exceeding 93%.
• Northern Coalfields Limited and NTPC won first prize in the opencast category, while SCCL won first prize in the underground category.
• Western Coalfields Limited was appreciated for the highest number of Five-Star Rated mines among Coal India subsidiaries.
• The 2026 R&D hackathon used the theme “NextGen AI for Smart Mining” and focused on efficiency, safety and environmental sustainability.

Prelims pointers

• The sacred relics were brought from the National Museum in New Delhi and received at Tawang on 31 October 2026.
• The exposition was organised by the Ministry of Culture with the Arunachal Pradesh government, International Buddhist Confederation and National Museum.
• The relics originated at Piprahwa in Uttar Pradesh, a site associated with ancient Kapilavastu and the Shakya tradition.
• The exposition coincided with Lhabab Duchen, commemorating the Buddha's descent from the heavenly realm in Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
• The itinerary covered Tawang, Bomdila and Namsai before the relics' scheduled return to New Delhi on 21 November 2026.

Prelims pointers

• The Kishtwar observatory will transmit seismic data in real time to the National Centre for Seismology in New Delhi.
• Jammu and Kashmir now has four stated seismological observatories: Jammu, Srinagar, Udhampur and Kishtwar.
• Four Doppler Weather Radars are installed at Banihal, Jot, Jammu and Srinagar, with four more planned for 2027.
• The Automatic Weather Station network expanded from three stations to twelve after nine additional stations were installed.
• Rain Gauge Stations increased from nine to fifteen across five districts, strengthening local rainfall monitoring.

Prelims pointers

• Rajiv Ranjan Singh visited Sikkim on November 2–3, 2026, to review animal-husbandry and dairy programmes.
• The North District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union Ltd. was digitally launched under White Revolution 2.0 at Mangan.
• A new protocol standardises semen production and artificial insemination using liquid semen in pigs.
• The Siri Cattle Conservation Programme targets conservation and promotion of Sikkim’s indigenous Siri cattle breed.
• The foundation stone for a Siri Bull Mother Farm was laid at Chuchachen in Pakyong district.

Prelims pointers

• Soreng district in Sikkim is India’s first Organic Fisheries Cluster launched under PMMSY.
• Under PMMSY, 34 fisheries production and processing clusters have been notified across India.
• Organic fisheries clusters identified in the release are located in Sikkim and Meghalaya.
• The Union Minister inaugurated ₹375 lakh of PMMSY projects, including hatcheries, feed mills and cold storage.
• Soreng’s cluster emphasises Amur carp, Indian Major Carps and trout without harmful chemicals, antibiotics or pesticides.

Prelims pointers

• Rajesh Agrawal met the director-generals of DG TRADE, DG INTPA and DG TAXUD in Brussels.
• The DG TRADE discussion covered two-way trade, market access, supply-chain resilience and business opportunities.
• Talks with DG TAXUD focused on customs cooperation, trade facilitation and preparations to implement the India–EU FTA.
• Diamond-industry discussions included certification, traceability, responsible sourcing and the global value chain.
• Antwerp, Mumbai and Surat were recognised as major diamond centres in the India–Belgium cooperation context.

Prelims pointers

• Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri is scheduled to visit Kathmandu for two days on November 4 and 5.
• The Ministry of External Affairs announced the visit on November 2, 2026.
• This is Misri’s first Nepal visit since Balendra Shah became Prime Minister in March after an election under an interim government.
• Kathmandu was awaiting India’s agrément for Nischal Nath Pandey to take charge as Nepal’s Ambassador in New Delhi.
• India’s assistance following the Bhote Koshi river disaster was expected to feature on the visit’s agenda.

Prelims pointers

• The two re-issued Government of India dated securities have a combined notified amount of ₹36,000 crore.
• The 7.06% GS 2041, repayable on July 27, 2041, has a notified amount of ₹23,000 crore.
• The 7.43% GS 2076, repayable on January 19, 2076, has a notified amount of ₹13,000 crore.
• The auction uses the multiple-price method and accepts electronic bids through RBI’s e-Kuber system.
• The auction is on November 6, 2026, and successful bidders must pay on November 9, 2026.