UPSC Daily Current Affairs| One Liners 09-11-2026

One Liners 09-11-2026

History, Art and Culture

100 Drums Wangala Festival

Meghalaya’s 100 Drums Wangala Festival begins in West Garo Hills with traditional music and cultural performances and is taking place from November 11 to 14, 2026.

• 100 Drums Wangala Festival – It is a harvest festival of the Garo tribe, celebrated to honour the Sun God, Misi Saljong, for a bountiful harvest.
• Hosted at – It is a historic four-day grand celebration is hosted at Wangala A·dam within the Garo Heritage Village in Chibragre, near Tura, West Garo Hills.
• Wangala – It is best known for its drum performances and traditional Garo dances.
• A group of performers play long, oval-shaped drums called ‘Dama’ while men and women dance to the rhythm of the music.
• It is famous for its lively folk music, community gatherings, traditional dances, and vibrant costumes featuring colourful ornaments and feathered headgear.
• Duration – Traditionally, Wangala celebrations continue for days.
• But the first day ceremony is known as 'Ragula ', while the second one is called 'Kakkat'.
• These rituals and performances reflect the Garo community’s connection with agriculture, nature and its cultural heritage.
• 2026 Golden Jubilee Milestone – This year’s celebrations are especially important because the Hundred Drums Wangala Festival is celebrating its Golden Jubilee, its anniversary.
• It brought together 1,000 traditional drums in a single, thunderous performance, which is the centrepiece of its Golden Jubilee celebration.
• Significance – The festival is not a celebration after the harvest; it is also an important way of preserving and passing on Garo traditions to younger generations.

Polity

Reduction in Visa Categories

The Union Government has rationalised the Indian Visa Regime, reducing the main categories from 13 to nine.

• Rationalised visa regime – Reducing the number of main visa categories from 13 to nine and sub-categories from 49 to 23.
• Aim – To simplify the procedures and make the system more accessible to foreign nationals visiting the country.
• The consolidation of categories with similar purposes is intended to provide greater clarity to applicants and facilitate legitimate foreign travel to India.
• Previous reforms – The exercise follows an earlier rationalisation in October 2025, when the number of main categories was reduced from 22 to 13 and sub-categories from 63 to 49.
• e-visas – Currently, e-visas are processed through electronic travel authorisation under 13 sub-categories and are available to nationals of 172 countries.
• Implementation – The Ministry of Home Affairs is currently upgrading its backend IT infrastructure to reflect the streamlined rules.
• Visas under this newly rationalised framework are scheduled to be fully active and issued by the end of December 2026.

Governance

Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum (YYBM)

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approves the development of the Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum at the North and South Block Complex, New Delhi.

• YYBM – It is an ambitious mega-museum project approved by the Union Cabinet of India to become the largest museum in the world.
• Location – Housed in the historic North Block and South Block buildings on Raisina Hill in New Delhi, repurposing the former government administrative offices.
• Background – The establishment of the YYBM was announced by the Prime Minister on 18 May 2023.
• Display Area & Scale – It spans over 1.8 lakh square meters (with a display area of over 1 lakh sq. m).
• It is going to be the museum with the largest display area in the world, surpassing global institutions like the Louvre, the British Museum, and the State Hermitage Museum.
• It is designed to eventually replace the existing National Museum.
• Timeline & Phasing – The project will be rolled out in phases from FY 2026–27 to FY 2030–31.
• The first inaugural gallery (themed around Adornment) is scheduled to open in the North Block in 2027.
• Themes & Collections – It will showcase over 5,000 to 10,000 years of India's civilisational journey, continuity, and cultural diversity using modern, non-linear, and immersive technologies.

India’s First AI Police Station

Hyderabad's Panjagutta Police Station is being developed as India's first AI Police Station.

• Panjagutta Police Station – It is set to launch a pilot project in the first week of December 2026 as India’s first AI-powered police station.
• Features
• Automated Drafting – AI will assist police officers in drafting First Information Reports (FIRs), case diaries, and investigation reports.
• "Sethu" Kiosk – A multilingual kiosk named "Sethu" will accept public complaints in roughly 10 different languages and route them directly to the authorities.
• Integrated Services – The pilot project integrates AI across routine station services to speed up paperwork and improve technology-driven policing.
• Predictive patrolling & resource deployment – The software will analyse regional crime patterns, local hostels, commercial establishments, and real-time traffic congestion.
• This intelligence will dynamically optimise the deployment of local patrolling units (Blue Colts).
• Training – Personnel at the Punjagutta station are currently undergoing specialised technical training.

Environment

World’s Largest Artificial Reef

The famed ship SS United States has been deliberately sunk off the Florida coast to become a reef.

• SS United States – The SS United States is the world's largest artificial reef, having been deliberately sunk to become an artificial reef in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Artificial reef – It is a human-made structure placed on the seabed or in a freshwater body—often in areas with flat or featureless bottoms—to mimic some of the characteristics of a natural reef.
• Location – About 25 miles southwest of Destin, Florida, on the Northwest Florida Shipwreck Trail.
• Length – It is 990 feet, making it around 102 feet longer than the previous record holder.
• The controlled scuttling of the vessel was completed in a multi-million-dollar project funded by Okaloosa County to prevent the iconic ship from being scrapped, transforming it instead into a thriving marine habitat and a world-class diving attraction.
• Ecological Purpose – The battle-grade steel hull provides a massive hard surface in an otherwise barren, sandy stretch of the Gulf.
• It is expected to quickly gather a biological layer of sponges, barnacles, and corals, which will build a food chain to support game fish like red snapper, grouper, tuna, marlin, and swordfish.

Royal Bengal Tiger in Debrigarh Wildlife Sanctuary

A Royal Bengal Tiger has been sighted inside the Debrigarh Wildlife Sanctuary in Odisha’s Bargarh district.

• A Royal Bengal Tiger had inhabited the Debrigarh sanctuary for around 1.5 years between 2022 and 2024.
• The animal later died due to electrocution in Chhattisgarh’s Gomarda sanctuary.

Royal Bengal Tiger

• Scientific name – Panthera tigris tigris.
• It is India's National Animal (declared in 1972), with India hosting 70% of the global tiger population.
• Geographic range – The vast majority of the wild population lives in India, with smaller numbers in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and parts of Southwestern China.
• Diverse ecosystems – They thrive in tropical rainforests, dry deciduous forests, and alluvial grasslands.
• They also inhabit the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans, where they have adapted to swim across wide, salty rivers
• Population – According to the All-India Tiger Estimation (conducted every 4 years by the NTCA and Wildlife Institute of India), India's tiger population stands at 3,682 (2022) with an annual growth rate of 6.1%.
• Top Tiger States – Madhya Pradesh holds the highest population (785), followed by Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu.
• Conservation Status
  • IUCN – Endangered
  • Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 – Schedule I.
  • CITES – Appendix I.

Debrigarh Wildlife Sanctuary

• Location – It is a premier 353-square-kilometre ecological haven in the Bargarh and Sambalpur districts of Western Odisha.
• Nestled right along the massive Hirakud Reservoir, the core sanctuary offers an exceptional amphi-terrestrial ecotone where dense dry deciduous forests seamlessly crash into a vast 90-kilometre shoreline.
• Mammals – Home to over 40 species. Beyond its flagship herds of Indian Gaur, it hosts leopards, sloth bears, chital, sambar deer, nilgai, etc.
• Avian Haven – Designated as an International Bird Area (IBA) and a Ramsar Wetland Site, it logs 234+ species of birds.

Security

Koalicja Military exercise

• Exercise Koalicja – It is a multinational military drill currently taking place in Poland, with the main land-based activities taking place near Nowa Dęba in southeastern Poland.
• Objective – To test how participating countries can coordinate, deploy, protect and supply a multinational force if hostilities in Ukraine come to an end.
• Jointly led by – the United Kingdom and France, and being conducted under the Multinational Force-Ukraine (MNF-U).
  • MNF-U is the military arm of the Coalition of the Willing, an international grouping established in March 2025 through an initiative led by the United Kingdom and France.
• Participation – The drill involves approximately 2,800 to 5,000 personnel from 11 nations (including Poland, Germany, Belgium, Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey), alongside Ukrainian troops.
• Multi-Domain Scope – Beyond ground manoeuvres in Poland, the drills include simulated aerial defence operations in Romania and naval mine-clearance exercises led by Turkey in the Black Sea.

Science

PRAGYA - India’s first privately developed tokamak

Bengaluru-based deep-tech startup Pranos Fusion has unveiled Pragya, described as India’s first privately developed compact tokamak.

• PRAGYA – The machine is designed as a compact, low-aspect-ratio tokamak that will serve as an experimental platform for studying and controlling plasma, the superheated state of matter essential for achieving nuclear fusion.
  • Tokamak – A tokamak is a device that uses magnetic fields to trap very hot plasma inside a ring-shaped vacuum chamber.
  • Plasma – A fourth state of matter, it is a gas whose atoms have been stripped of their electrons, leaving free electrons and charged nuclei.
• Purpose – It isn’t yet designed to generate commercial fusion power, but will act as a critical testbed for the technologies needed to build future fusion reactors.
• Timeline & Testing frequency – The reactor took around eight months to build. The company plans to operate Pragya for nearly two decades, targeting between 10 and 12 experimental shots a day, or roughly 3,000 shots annually.
• Architecture – Features a stainless steel 304 vacuum vessel with a compact, low-aspect-ratio design (1.9 to 2.2).
• Plasma Operations – Uses an ultra-high vacuum system and microwaves to ionise helium and argon gases, reaching temperatures up to 10,000°C & it achieved its "first plasma" on September 3, 2026.

Miscellaneous

Public Service Broadcasting Day

• Observed on – 12th of November every year.
• It is also known as Jan Prasaran Divas.
• To commemorate the historic address of the Father of the Nation and freedom Fighter Mahatma Gandhi through the radio (Akashvani).
• Historical significance – An important day in the History of Broadcasting, Mahatma Gandhi paid his first and only visit to the Broadcasting House in New Delhi on this day in 1947.
• Official recognition – In the year 2000, then Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Sushma Swaraj, announced that every 12th of November would henceforth be observed as Public Service Broadcasting Day.
• The Day inspires Broadcasters to carry forward the ideals and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi to every corner of the country.

Booker Prize, 2026

The Booker Prize for the year 2026 was announced recently.

• Booker Prize – It is one of the world's most prestigious literary awards, given each year for the best full-length novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
• Prize Details – The winner receives £50,000, and each shortlisted author receives £2,500.
• Eligibility – Open to any original novel written in English and published by a registered UK or Irish imprint during the prize year, regardless of the author's nationality.
• 2026 Winner – M. John Harrison won the Booker Prize 2026 for his post-apocalyptic novel, “The End of Everything”.
• Significance – At age 81, Harrison became the oldest winner in the prize's history, and the novel marked the first time a science fiction work has taken the award.

Indian-born winners

• Salman Rushdie (1981) – Midnight’s Children, the novel later won the special "Booker of Bookers" (1993) and "Best of the Booker" (2008) awards.
• Arundhati Roy (1997) – The God of Small Things - the first Indian citizen and first Indian woman to win the prize.
• Kiran Desai (2006) – The Inheritance of Loss
• Aravind Adiga (2008) – The White Tiger.