UPSC GK Questions 2026

The scheme envisages 60 GWh of hydro Pumped Storage Plant capacity, 30 GWh of Battery Energy Storage System capacity and 2 GWh of capacity through alternative energy storage technologies, which add up to the headline figure of 92 GWh.

The Union Cabinet cleared the Viability Gap Funding Scheme for Development of Grid-Scale Energy Storage Systems with this amount of support for the period FY 2026-27 to FY 2030-31.

It forms the third component of VISTAR and will be undertaken by MoSPI together with the States and Union Territories.

Under the component called Comprehensive Statistical Operations and Strengthening of Ecosystem, the ministry proposes to conduct 59 surveys during the 16th Finance Commission cycle.

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, cleared this central sector scheme of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation for the period FY 2026-27 to FY 2030-31 with an outlay of Rs 4,371.10 crore.

Selection runs in two stages. In the first, applications are examined for technical qualification, and only applicants who clear that stage may take part in the second stage of financial bidding.

The scheme funds four critical mineral processing plants in all. Two of them process nickel and each must have a minimum capacity of 50 kt, while the other two process lithium and each must have a minimum capacity of 30 kt.

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, approved the Capex Support Scheme to Promote Critical Mineral Processing with exactly this outlay, spread across five years from FY 2026-27 to FY 2030-31.

Besides revising the numerical limits, the draft adopts the World Health Organization position that the detection of any microbial growth in a Grade A area must itself set off an investigation, rather than being measured against a permitted level and passed over.

A Grade A area is described as the critical zone of a sterile medicine plant, the place where a product still lies open, where containers are handled, and where components that have already been sterilised are dealt with before the product is closed and sealed.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has said that the revised limits for microbial contamination in Grade A clean areas are being drawn from the World Health Organization Technical Report Series No. 1044, and specifically from its Annexure 2, which carries Good Manufacturing Practices for sterile pharmaceutical products.

Schedule M sits inside the Drugs Rules, 1945, and it is this schedule that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has proposed to amend.

The minister named these as the channel through which Ayush-based health services are reaching people where they live, and he paired the point with a call for scientific research, quality standards and evidence-based practice in India's traditional systems of medicine.

The Ayush Minister cited this maxim to make the case that prevention deserves as much attention as treatment, noting that discussion of health usually begins only after an illness has already developed.

It was in that capacity that he appealed to citizens to make health and disease prevention part of their Dhanteras observance.

Dhanteras is observed in that form as well, and the day recalls the appearance of Lord Dhanvantari during the Samudra Manthan, the churning of the ocean, when he emerged bearing the Amrit Kalash.

The whole design of the pact rests on it: DAKSHIN works for the countries of the Global South, and CSIR is bringing its ready-to-deploy, affordable and adaptable technologies to that group.

The Director General of RIS, Professor Sachin Kumar Sharma, named five areas as holding particular promise: healthcare, infrastructure, agriculture, the blue economy and the digital economy.

That is what DAKSHIN is, and it sits at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries, working to spread knowledge and mutual learning among developing countries.

DAKSHIN, the Global South Centre of Excellence, is housed at RIS, and it was in that capacity that it signed the Letter of Association with CSIR on 3 November 2026.