UPSC Darpan

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UPSC Current Affairs — 6 October 2026

The Hindu, The Indian Express & The Economic Times (Delhi Editions) — 6 October 2026

हिंदी संस्करण

Polity & Governance

Both stories turn on a procedural rule that quietly settles a question of rights. The Supreme Court has begun asking whether the Election Commission decides as a body or as one man, and whether a former CEC should be beyond the courts. Bihar has decided that a woman’s claim to a quota travels with her father’s address, not her own life.

Economy

Today’s three stories are about who sets the rules of the economic game. With the United States, tariffs have become a weapon rather than a bargaining chip, so India is turning to the EU deal. At home, the Centre has used a mining law to limit States’ taxing power, and the courts must again draw the line. The new rural job Schedule shows the Centre deciding, from Delhi, what a village may build with guaranteed work.

International Relations

All three stories are about the rules India must live by when others write them. With Switzerland, India is trading market access for capital and visas, and now faces a bill in investment protection and patents. At the WTO, 66 members are building an e-commerce rulebook around India’s veto. In the Gulf, Pakistan has made itself a security provider to Saudi Arabia just as the United States steps back. In each case, saying no is cheap; shaping the outcome takes more work.

Environment & Ecology

Both stories turn on things India cannot easily replace: a tribe’s way of life on an island rainforest, and a big cat lost in 1952. In Great Nicobar the Supreme Court has refused to let “strategic importance” close the hearing before it begins. At Kuno the cheetah count looks healthy, but the real measure is genetic breadth and wild survival, not births. In both, the honest test of success comes years after the headline.

Health & Life Sciences

Today's story is about the State knowing what it governs: who makes the injection that goes into a vein. The Constitution puts drug licensing mainly with the States while the risk crosses every border. The answer is not to choose between Centre and States but to give the Centre the standards and the States the means, and courts are now pushing both.

Science & Technology

This year’s Medicine Nobel rewards a question nobody would have funded as a priority: why does a single-celled alga react to light so fast? Three decades later the answer is a switch that turns chosen brain cells on and off, and trials to restore sight. The lesson for India is about patient money for basic research, not one more gadget.

Society

India has never measured how its people get to work, and the first answer is humbling: on two wheels or on foot, rarely by public transport. The gender cut is the real finding. Where buses exist, women use them three times as much as men, which makes the bus a question of women’s work, not only of traffic.