7 November 2025

• Economy: the Universal Basic Income debate sharpened as India's wealth Gini index stood at 75, with the top 10 per cent controlling 77 per cent of national wealth.
• Environment: Gogabeel Lake in Bihar was notified as India's 94th Ramsar Wetland of International Importance.
• Agriculture: the FAO State of Food and Agriculture 2025 found that 20 per cent of global cropland shows declining productivity.
• Governance: the Comptroller and Auditor General announced restructuring into two new audit cadres effective 1 January 2026.
• Development: Ethiopia formally adopted India's DAY-NRLM self-help group model, recognising a programme that has enrolled over 10 crore rural women.

GS area: Economy (social policy, poverty), Society

India's wealth Gini index of 75 and the fact that the top 10 per cent controls 77 per cent of national wealth have renewed the Universal Basic Income debate.

• What UBI proposes: a periodic unconditional cash transfer to every citizen regardless of income or employment status. It is distinct from targeted conditional transfers.
• Fiscal estimate: delivering a meaningful UBI across India would cost approximately 5 per cent of GDP annually, raising questions about fiscal sustainability and resource mobilisation.
• Madhya Pradesh pilot evidence: a pilot conducted in Madhya Pradesh from 2011 to 2013 reported a 25 per cent improvement in nutrition outcomes, a 12 per cent increase in school attendance, and a 17 per cent rise in small business creation among recipient households.
• Delivery mechanism: implementation via Aadhaar-linked Direct Benefit Transfer channels. The JAM trinity (Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar and Mobile) is the existing infrastructure.
• Gini index: a value of 0 indicates perfect equality; a value of 100 indicates perfect inequality. India's wealth Gini of 75 is among the highest globally, higher than income Gini, reflecting that assets are more concentrated than earnings.

GS area: Agriculture, Environment

The Food and Agriculture Organisation released its flagship annual report, this year titled "Addressing Land Degradation Across Landholding Scales."

• Cropland decline: 20 per cent of global cropland shows declining productivity due to soil degradation, salinisation, erosion and loss of organic matter.
• Yield gaps: yields in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are up to 70 per cent below their achievable potential under good management.
• Abandoned land: 60 million hectares of agricultural land were abandoned globally between 1992 and 2015, concentrated in fragile and conflict-affected zones.
• Economic cost: land degradation costs the global economy approximately USD 300 billion annually in lost agricultural output.
• Farm size paradox: 84 per cent of the world's farms are smaller than 2 hectares, yet these smallholders control only 12 per cent of farmland. The top 1 per cent of farms control over 70 per cent of global farmland by area.
• FAO: the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations is headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1945.

GS area: Environment (wetlands, biodiversity)

Gogabeel Lake in Bihar's Katihar district was designated as India's 94th Ramsar Wetland of International Importance.

• Location: situated between the Ganga and Mahananda rivers in Katihar district, Bihar. It is a natural oxbow lake formed by the meandering of the Mahananda.
• Area: 57 hectares, notified as a Community Reserve.
• Conservation history: declared a Closed Area in 1990, lost that protection in 2002, recognised as an Important Bird Area in 2004 and 2017, notified as a Community Reserve in 2019, and finally designated a Ramsar site in 2025.
• Biodiversity: hosts over 90 bird species, including approximately 30 migratory species that arrive during the winter months.
• Threatened species: the Common Pochard (Aythya ferina) and the Lesser Adjutant Stork (Leptoptilos javanicus) are among the vulnerable species recorded.
• Ramsar Convention: adopted in 1971 in Ramsar, Iran. India became a signatory in 1982. The Convention uses the water-bird habitat criterion as its primary designation benchmark.

GS area: Polity (constitutional bodies, governance)

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India announced a structural reorganisation creating two new audit cadres, effective 1 January 2026.

• New cadres: Central Revenue Audit (CRA) for tax and revenue accounts, and Central Expenditure Audit (CEA) for expenditure and scheme audits.
• Scale of change: affects over 4,000 audit professionals out of a total CAG staff of approximately 42,000.
• Constitutional basis: Articles 148 to 151. Article 148 establishes the CAG. Article 149 defines the CAG's duties and powers. Articles 150 and 151 cover accounts and audit reports.
• Appointment and tenure: the CAG is appointed by the President. The tenure is six years or age 65, whichever comes earlier.
• Removal: the CAG can be removed only through a special majority resolution passed by both Houses of Parliament, on the same grounds as a Supreme Court judge.
• Objective of restructuring: specialised cadres are expected to improve audit depth in areas with distinct technical requirements, particularly in GST revenue audits.

GS area: Economy (rural development, international recognition)

Ethiopia formally adopted the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana, National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) as a model for its own rural poverty reduction programme.

• Programme history: launched by India in 2011 as the National Rural Livelihoods Mission. Renamed DAY-NRLM in 2016.
• Scale in India: the programme has enrolled 10.05 crore rural women in 90.9 lakh Self-Help Groups across 28 States and 6 Union Territories.
• Credit performance: cumulative credit disbursement of Rs 11 lakh crore with a 98 per cent repayment rate, demonstrating financial discipline among SHG members.
• Skill linkage: the DDU-GKY (Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana) and the RSETIs (Rural Self Employment Training Institutes) linked to the programme had cumulatively trained 74 lakh youth by mid-2025.
• SHG model: groups of 10 to 20 women from the same village pool savings, access credit collectively and build creditworthiness for formal banking linkage.
• Significance: India's SHG-bank linkage programme is the world's largest microfinance initiative by beneficiary count. Ethiopia's adoption validates its scalability.

GS area: Art and Culture, History (Mughal period)

A commemorative film on the Taj Mahal's cultural legacy brought its history back into public discussion. Key facts for Prelims:

• Commissioned: 1632 CE by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth.
• Completed: 1648 CE, after approximately 16 years of construction.
• Architect: Ustad Ahmad Lahori is credited as the principal architect.
• Location: right bank of the Yamuna River, Agra, Uttar Pradesh.
• UNESCO designation: inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1983.
• Architectural features: white Makrana marble inlaid with pietra dura (stone inlay). The garden follows the charbagh pattern, a quadripartite Persian garden layout with four water channels dividing it into equal sections.
• Visitor figures: over 6 million annual visitors, making it one of India's most visited monuments.

GS area: Geography (disasters), International Relations

Typhoon Kalmaegi caused over 114 deaths in the Philippines before moving towards Vietnam, highlighting the region's cyclonic vulnerability.

• Name origin: "Kalmaegi" means "seagull" in Korean. Tropical storm names in the western Pacific are maintained by the World Meteorological Organisation's Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre for Asia.
• Philippines geography: an archipelago of over 7,000 islands in the western Pacific Ocean. Lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire, making it prone to typhoons, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
• Typhoon belt: the Philippines sits within the typhoon belt between 5 and 20 degrees North latitude. It experiences an average of 20 tropical cyclones per year, of which 8 to 9 make landfall.
• India comparison: tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea are tracked by the India Meteorological Department, which is the Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre for the North Indian Ocean.

GS area: International Relations, Social issues

The second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD-2) concluded in Doha, Qatar from 4 to 6 November 2025, producing a Doha Political Declaration on Social Development.

• Attendance: over 8,000 participants including heads of state, ministers, UN agencies and civil society organisations.
• Historical anchor: the summit builds on the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development of 1995, which first established global consensus on poverty eradication, employment and social integration as interlinked goals.
• 2030 alignment: the Doha Declaration aligns social progress frameworks with the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda.
• Host: Qatar hosted the summit as part of its role in multilateral diplomacy and South-South cooperation.
• India's social indicators: the declaration's poverty and employment pillars are directly testable against India's National Social Assistance Programme, MGNREGS and the PM Garib Kalyan Yojana.

GS area: Environment (governance, afforestation)

Puducherry launched a green transformation initiative under IFS officer Dr P. Arulrajan targeting a doubling of the Union Territory's green cover.

• Current baseline: green cover at 12.57 per cent of Puducherry's total area.
• Target: reach 24 per cent by 2030, representing approximately a doubling.
• Amma Vanam Programme: the flagship plantation drive has planted 1.08 lakh trees involving MGNREGA workers, Self-Help Groups and school students as community participants.
• Institutional approach: convergence across MGNREGA employment generation, SHG livelihoods and school education, reflecting multi-stakeholder plantation models.
• Significance: Puducherry is a Union Territory with a legislature. Its governance structure differs from states: the Lieutenant Governor acts on the advice of the Council of Ministers except in matters reserved to the Centre.

• PMAY-G progress: the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin completed 3.2 crore houses as of November 2025, with the fourth phase targeting an additional 2 crore beneficiaries by 2029.
• RBI monetary policy signals: the Reserve Bank of India signalled a pause in its rate-cut cycle following elevated food inflation data for October 2025, keeping the repo rate at 6.25 per cent.
• India Semiconductor Mission: the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology approved two new semiconductor fabrication units under the India Semiconductor Mission, taking total approved projects to seven.