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UPSC Current Affairs — 10 October 2026

The Hindu, The Indian Express & The Economic Times (Delhi Editions) — 10 October 2026

हिंदी संस्करण

Polity & Governance

All three stories turn on the same test: can the State show its reasons? Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh could not justify going past the 50% reservation line, Delhi could not justify halting the Metro for a protest, and the Election Commission has had to stop people filing objections against voters in bulk without grounds. In each case the courts or the rules now demand proof before the State acts.

Economy

All three stories are about plumbing, not headlines. A repo hike means little while surplus cash keeps overnight money cheap, so the RBI has tightened the daily reserve rule. A State’s borrowing room and tax share rest on a GDP number each State compiles its own way, so MoSPI wants a common check. And a treaty means little to investors who must wait five years in Indian courts, so India is shortening the wait while guarding its right to regulate.

Agriculture & Food

A rural job guarantee is a drought alarm that rings before the crop data does. September’s jump in work demand, in a year of a 13% monsoon deficit and a strengthening El Niño, says the countryside is already leaning on the State; the test of the new law is whether money follows that demand now that States share the bill.

International Relations

On the same day, Oslo honoured a judge who helped build international criminal law and Washington moved to cripple the court she once sat on. International law is strong as a norm and weak against great-power resistance. India watches from outside the court, a position worth re-examining, not abandoning.

Environment & Ecology

Lucknow did not flood because it rained in Lucknow; it flooded because rain 100 km upstream met a city that has built on the land its river needs. Urban floods are planning failures that arrive with a delay, and embankments only move the bill downstream.

Health & Life Sciences

The WHO’s first guideline on child obesity says the clinic is the last line of defence, not the first. For India, which still fights stunting and wasting, the lesson is sharper: the same poor diets feed both problems, so the answer lies in schools, food labels and advertising rules more than in pills.

Science & Technology

Apple Pay’s late arrival in India is a story about regulation, not a gadget. By fixing the security result it wants and letting firms choose the tool, the RBI has opened payments to fingerprints and faces while keeping banks liable. The test now is whether that liability reaches the phone-makers who hold the keys.

Society

A competitive examination is a promise that effort, not money or connections, decides who gets the seat or the job. A leaked paper breaks that promise for lakhs at once, and the poorest pay longest, in rent, coaching fees and lost years. Parliament’s education panel now says the fix lies less in harsher punishment than in how the testing agency is built.

Internal Security

The war on drugs in the North-East is usually counted in hectares destroyed; Manipur is now counting hectares replanted. That is the right instinct, because poppy is a livelihood before it is a crime, and in Manipur it also fuels an ethnic conflict that no seizure figure can end.