Current Affairs Quiz 02 September 2026

Statements 1 and 3 are correct. Article 17 abolishes untouchability "in any form" and makes enforcement of related disabilities a criminal offence, and the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 was originally enacted as the Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955, renamed by a 1976 amendment. The Supreme Court, in Sukanya Shantha v Union of India (2024), actually held that Article 17 is enforceable against non-State actors as well, making it one of the few fundamental rights with horizontal effect, contrary to Statement 2, and the Constitution deliberately does not define "untouchability," leaving the term open so it can reach all its manifold complexities in social life, contrary to Statement 4. It is worth remembering Article 17's horizontal application as a distinguishing feature worth verifying whenever private-party enforceability is in question.

Both statements are true. The Assertion is correct, since whether a post-use purification ritual constitutes an offence depends on whether it is connected to caste-based notions of purity and pollution, with no offence established if the reason is unconnected to caste, and the Reason correctly describes Section 7(1)(d) as extending the PCR Act beyond mere denial of access. However, R is not the full or direct explanation of A, since the Assertion turns on the requirement that the insult be "on the ground of untouchability," an evidentiary question of intent and causation rather than simply the existence of Section 7(1)(d). In such A-R questions, it is worth checking for logical sufficiency rather than just the independent truth of each statement, since in untouchability cases the ground, or caste-based pollution belief, is always the decisive element.

Semicon 2.0's Track 3, the Deployment-Linked Incentive, offers 9% reimbursement on net sales for five years for eligible chips, SoCs, or IPs launched after the scheme's notification, specifically to help young fabless companies overcome the adoption barrier with electronics manufacturers. Option (a) is incorrect since Pillar 1 focuses on chip design rather than only fabrication, with 40% capex support for large silicon wafer fabs and 30% for equipment R&D, option (b) is wrong since OCI-owned companies are actually eligible for Track 2 provided they are incorporated and headquartered in India, and option (d) swaps the seed funding cap, which is actually ₹15 crore rather than ₹30 crore, since ₹30 crore is instead the per-application cap for the DLI. Three figures worth memorising together are the seed funding cap of ₹15 crore, the DLI per-application cap of ₹30 crore, and the DLI per-company cap of ₹120 crore.

Track 1 targets government-identified SoCs for defence and critical infrastructure, Track 2 provides seed funding up to ₹15 crore for start-ups and MSMEs, Track 3 is the Deployment-Linked Incentive at 9% of net sales for five years, and Ecosystem Support under Pillars 2-6 includes 30% capex for equipment R&D. Options (a) and (c) swap the Track 2 and Track 3 incentives, the most common confusion in this scheme, and it helps to anchor Deployment with reimbursement, since it applies after the chip is designed and needs buyers, while Design pairs with seed funding, since it applies during creation, giving the memory hook: Design leads to seed funding to build it, Deployment leads to reimbursement to sell it.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's three primary science goals are probing the nature of dark energy through wide-field surveys of large-scale structure using baryon acoustic oscillations and weak gravitational lensing, conducting a statistical exoplanet census via gravitational microlensing, including detection of free-floating rogue planets, and carrying out infrared astrophysics surveys at scales impossible with previous instruments, with a field of view over 100 times larger than Hubble's. Options (a), (b), and (c) describe entirely different instruments, gravitational wave detectors like LIGO or LISA, radar imagers, and CMB polarimetry satellites respectively, since Roman is an optical-near-infrared wide-field imager rather than a gravitational wave or radio instrument. The memory hook worth keeping is Roman equals wide-field, near-infrared, dark energy, and microlensing exoplanets.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct mechanistic explanation of A. Plasma wakefield devices achieve gradients up to roughly 100 GV/m, compared to about 50 MV/m for conventional RF cavities, three to four orders of magnitude stronger, enabling acceleration over centimetres, and the mechanism described in R, a laser pulse or particle beam ionising gas to create a plasma, displacing electrons that oscillate back to form a travelling wake of alternating electric fields on which injected electrons surf to gain energy, directly causes the high gradient capability described in A. Since removing R would destroy the explanation for why A is true, this is a genuine case where R explains A, making option (a) correct.

Statements 1, 2 and 3 are correct, while Statement 4 is wrong. Vembanad-Kol is Kerala's largest lake, designated a Ramsar Wetland in 2002, and supports the Kuttanad agricultural system, water hyacinth is native to the Amazon basin and is indeed on the IUCN's 100 worst invasive alien species list, and the harvesting project is nodally under the State Wetland Authority Kerala, led by CWRDM, with implementation by FERI. Statement 4 directly inverts the ecological effect, since water hyacinth mats actually block sunlight and deplete dissolved oxygen, creating dead zones for fish, rather than adding dissolved oxygen. The pattern worth remembering: a hyacinth mat blocks light and depletes oxygen, creating a dead zone below and a fish population collapse.

FSSAI is a statutory body under the FSSAI Act, 2006, sitting under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, and the proposed label is red hexagonal, triggering in Phase 1 when two or more nutrients exceed thresholds. Option (b) gets both the ministry, Commerce instead of Health, and the colour, green instead of red, wrong, option (c) describes the earlier Health Star Rating approach that was already rejected, with single-ingredient items like ghee, oil, salt, and sugar explicitly exempted, and option (d) reverses the initiator, since the Supreme Court actually intervened in response to a petition by a Kerala-based NGO rather than at FSSAI's own initiative. The memory hook worth fixing is FSSAI equals the FSSAI Act 2006 equals the Health Ministry equals a red hexagonal label equals Phase 1 triggering at 2-plus nutrients.

Dark energy is estimated to constitute approximately 68% of the total energy content of the universe, the label for the unknown force or field responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe, first confirmed by observations of Type Ia supernovae in 1998. Option (a) describes dark matter's approximate share of about 27% and incorrectly attributes gravitational attraction to dark energy, when dark energy actually drives expansion rather than attraction, option (b) is false since dark energy is not a particle of the Standard Model and has not been detected at the LHC, and option (d) inverts the proportion, since ordinary matter is about 5%, dark matter about 27%, and dark energy about 68%. The descending order worth memorising is dark energy 68%, dark matter 27%, ordinary matter 5%.

Statements 1, 2 and 4 are correct, while Statement 3 is wrong. The current account's four components and the definition of a deficit are accurately described, gold imports sit under merchandise, with India the world's second-largest gold consumer, and inward remittances are correctly recorded as a credit under secondary income, a major positive item partially offsetting India's trade deficit. Statement 3 is the trap, since outbound tourism spending by Indians abroad is actually a debit, or outflow, in the current account under services, not a credit, with only inbound tourism, foreigners spending in India, recording as a credit. The rule worth fixing is that remittances coming in to India count as a credit, while Indians spending outside India counts as a debit, always identifying who is spending and in which direction money crosses the border.