Each day Present Affairs Highlights – December 8, 2025

Border Roads Organisation (BRO)

Supply:  DD Information

Topic: Defence

Context: Defence Minister of India inaugurated 125 BRO infrastructure tasks value ₹5,000 crore, the most important single-day launch within the organisation’s historical past.

About Border Roads Organisation (BRO):

• What’s BRO?
  • BRO is a premier highway development government pressure underneath the Ministry of Defence liable for growing and sustaining strategic infrastructure in India’s border areas and in pleasant international nations.
• Established: 7 Might 1960
• Mum or dad Physique: Border Roads Growth Board (BRDB)
• Headquarters: New Delhi
• Intention:

• • To fulfill the strategic wants of the Armed Forces by means of environment friendly, time-bound and high-quality infrastructure improvement.
  • To help socio-economic improvement of distant border areas.

• • Peace-time Function:
    • Develop and keep operational highway infrastructure in border areas.
    • Help socio-economic improvement in distant terrains.
    • Execute tasks in pleasant nations (Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, Tajikistan, Sri Lanka).
  • Conflict-time Function:
    • Assemble and keep roads required for troop mobility and logistics.
    • Hold provide routes open by clearing snow, landslides and avalanches.
    • Execute extra duties assigned by the Authorities throughout battle.
  • Different Features:
    • Building of roads, bridges, airfields in excessive climatic and high-altitude environments.
    • Use of indigenous applied sciences (e.g., Class-70 modular bridges).
    • Using native labour (over 2 lakh staff), aiding rural livelihoods.
    • Catastrophe response help (tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, landslides).

• • Strategic: Enhances army mobility alongside crucial borders with China, Pakistan and in high-altitude areas.
  • Financial: Boosts commerce, tourism, connectivity and native improvement in distant areas.
  • Geopolitical: Strengthens India’s neighbourhood outreach by way of infrastructure diplomacy.
  • Humanitarian: Performs a key function in rescue operations throughout pure disasters.

Hindu Charge of Progress

Supply:  NDTV

Topic: Economic system

Context: Prime minister criticised the phrase “Hindu charge of progress” as a colonial and communalising label that unfairly tied India’s previous financial stagnation to Hindu tradition and id.

About Hindu Charge of Progress:

• What is supposed by ‘Hindu charge of progress’?

• • The “Hindu charge of progress” is an financial time period for India’s persistently low GDP progress (about 3.5–4% per 12 months) from the Nineteen Fifties to the Nineteen Eighties, earlier than the 1991 reforms.
  • It refers particularly to long-run actual GDP progress, to not religion-based financial behaviour in any technical macro mannequin.

• Options:
  • Low and Persistent GDP Progress: India’s GDP stayed caught round 3.5–4% yearly from the Nineteen Fifties to Nineteen Eighties, and per capita earnings rose even slower as a consequence of excessive inhabitants progress, reflecting long-term structural stagnation.
  • Stability Throughout Shocks and Regimes: The expansion charge barely modified regardless of wars, droughts, famines, political shifts, and coverage variations, making economists view it as a deeply entrenched, system-wide equilibrium.
  • Licence–Allow–Quota Raj: A closely managed financial system with industrial licensing, import substitution, excessive tariffs, and a dominant public sector restricted personal enterprise and stored productiveness low.
  • Blended however State-Led Financial System: India pursued a combined financial system with the state controlling core industries, credit score, commerce, and planning, limiting market competitors and international participation in progress sectors.
  • Distinction with East Asian “Miracle” Economies: Whereas India grew at ~3.5%, East Asian economies like South Korea and Taiwan achieved 7–10%, underscoring India’s relative underperformance amongst post-colonial friends.
  • Turnaround Earlier than 1991: Research present progress accelerated to ~5.6–5.8% within the Nineteen Eighties, indicating India had already moved past the previous progress entice as a consequence of gradual deregulation and inner reforms pre-1991.

Nationwide Intelligence Grid (NATGRID)

Supply:  TH

Topic:  Polity

Context: The Nationwide Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) is receiving round 45,000 information requests per 30 days, as Central businesses and State police more and more use the platform for real-time intelligence entry.

About Nationwide Intelligence Grid (NATGRID):

• What it’s?
  • NATGRID is a real-time built-in intelligence platform underneath the Ministry of House Affairs that hyperlinks a number of authorities and personal databases for safe entry by authorised safety and law-enforcement businesses to counter terrorism and organised crime.
• Conceptualised: 2009 (after the 26/11 Mumbai assaults)
• Operationalised: 2023 (platform grew to become purposeful and opened to wider businesses)
• Intention:

• • To offer seamless, real-time intelligence by integrating various datasets for sooner investigations.
  • To remove delays attributable to businesses individually requesting information from a number of sources.

• • Knowledge Integration Throughout Databases: Connects datasets reminiscent of Aadhaar, driving licences, financial institution information, telecom information, airline PNRs, immigration logs, and social media exercise.
  • Safe Entry for Investigative Businesses: Supplies authorised officers (now together with SP-rank officers) entry to delicate data whereas sustaining person confidentiality.
  • Helps Intelligence & Investigation: Helps businesses “be a part of the dots” with out an FIR, enabling predictive intelligence, monitoring suspicious behaviour, and analysing crime patterns.
  • Inter-Company Coordination: Facilitates cooperation between IB, RAW, NIA, ED, FIU, DRI, NCB and State police by providing a single unified data platform.
  • Knowledge Safety & Cyber Safety: Makes use of superior cybersecurity protocols to guard delicate data amid rising cyberattacks on crucial infrastructure.

• • Counter-Terror Spine: Created after 26/11 to forestall intelligence gaps by offering sooner, deeper, and built-in information entry.
  • Reduces Investigation Time: Eliminates bureaucratic delays; accelerates terrorism, narcotics, monetary fraud, and cybercrime probes.
  • Strengthens Federal Policing: Empowers State police forces by giving them the identical intelligence entry beforehand restricted to central businesses.

two hundredth anniversary of Dadabhai Naoroji

Supply:  FPJ

Topic:  Historical past

Context: India celebrated the two hundredth start anniversary of Dadabhai Naoroji in 2025, honouring his legacy as a nationalist chief, financial thinker and early architect of the liberty motion.

About two hundredth anniversary of Dadabhai Naoroji:

Who he was?

• Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) was an Indian nationalist chief, financial theorist, social reformer, scholar, and the primary Indian Member of British Parliament.

Early Life & Training:

• Born on 4 September 1825 in Bombay (some sources say Navsari), in a middle-class Parsi household.
• Educated at Elphinstone Institute, the place he excelled in arithmetic and English.
• Turned the first Indian Professor at Elphinstone School, symbolising fashionable Indian mental awakening.

Contributions to the Indian Freedom Motion:

• • Drain of Wealth Concept: Systematically demonstrated how British rule drained India’s sources by means of salaries, pensions, remittances, and unequal commerce.
  • Authored main works:
    • Poverty and Un-British Rule in India
    • Poverty of India
  • His advocacy led to the creation of the Welby Fee (1895) on Indian expenditure, the place he served as a member.
  • Popularised financial nationalism and laid foundations for Swadeshi and monetary self-reliance.

• • Founding member of Indian Nationwide Congress (INC) and its President in 1886, 1893, and 1906.
  • Elected first Indian MP in British Parliament (1892) from Central Finsbury on a Liberal Get together ticket.
  • Advocated self-government, constitutional strategies, and parliamentary democracy.
  • Performed a unifying function between Moderates and Extremists, presiding over the 1906 Calcutta Session that adopted the demand for Swaraj.
  • Mentored future leaders together with Tilak, Gokhale, and Mahatma Gandhi.

• • Champion of ladies’s training—helped run particular courses at Elphinstone and supported women’ education.
  • Based Rast Goftar, a Gujarati newspaper selling social reform.
  • Co-founded Rahnumai Mazdayasan Sabha (1851) to reform Parsi society.
  • Led efforts for obligatory main training, submitting suggestions (with Jyotiba Phule) to the Hunter Fee (1882).

• • Based or co-founded key establishments to internationalise India’s trigger:
    • London Indian Society (1865)
    • East India Affiliation (1866)
  • These teams later merged with the INC and served as platforms for India’s political diplomacy.

Distinctive Info:

• Recognized worldwide because the “Grand Previous Man of India.”
• Known as the “Unofficial Ambassador of India” for championing India’s trigger in Britain.
• Taught Gujarati at College School London, breaking tutorial boundaries.
•  Among the many first to scientifically analyse poverty in India utilizing data-based strategies.
• His 1906 INC presidential handle was the first to undertake “Swaraj” because the nationwide aim.

Seventh UN Setting Meeting (UNEA-7)

Supply:  UNEP

Topic: Setting

Context: A deep divide has emerged amongst member states over UNEP’s Medium-Time period Technique (2026–2030), triggering tense negotiations as UNEA-7 opens in Nairobi.

About Seventh UN Setting Meeting (UNEA-7):

• What’s UNEA-7?
  • UNEA-7 is the world’s highest environmental decision-making discussion board, convened underneath the UN Setting Programme (UNEP). It brings collectively all UN member states to barter resolutions and chart international environmental coverage.
• Venue: UNEP Headquarters, Nairobi, Kenya
• Historic Background:

• • UNEA was created in 2012 after the Rio+20 Convention to raise environmental diplomacy to the identical standing as UN our bodies on peace and improvement.
  • Since 2014, six assemblies have adopted 105 resolutions on points starting from plastics to unlawful wildlife commerce.

• Theme of UNEA-7 (2025): “Advancing sustainable options for a resilient planet.”
• Intention:

• • To safe a coherent international environmental agenda for 2026–2030.
  • To approve UNEP’s Medium-Time period Technique (MTS) and align it with international treaties.

• Key Options of UNEA-7:
  • Intense Negotiations on UNEP’s Medium-Time period Technique (2026–2030): International locations are break up on whether or not the MTS needs to be reopened, renegotiated, or adopted as drafted.
  • Funding Disaster inside UNEP:

• • • UNEP’s common UN funds share dropped by 20% because of the US halting funds.
    • Contributions to the Setting Fund have declined by 11–12%.

• Slimmer Set of Resolutions: Of 19 proposed resolutions, solely 15 survive, many “on life help.”
• Significance of UNEA in International Inexperienced Diplomacy: UNEA is the one discussion board addressing local weather, biodiversity, and air pollution collectively.

• Key options of UNEP Medium-Time period Technique 2026–2030:

• • Local weather Stability: Scale mitigation and adaptation measures; strengthen science-policy interfaces.
  • Thriving Biodiversity: Help implementation of nature-positive restoration and conservation frameworks.
  • Zero Air pollution: Sort out waste, plastics, chemical compounds, and air air pollution with life-cycle options.
  • Resilient Land & Ecosystems: Handle land degradation and desertification.
  • Sustainable Sources & Consumption: Shift economies towards circularity and effectivity.
  • Strengthened Environmental Governance: Improve compliance programs, information platforms and clear monitoring.

Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) Occasion

Supply:  NW

Context: Meteorologists have warned that one other Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) occasion could happen in December 2025, probably disrupting the polar vortex and sending unusually chilly Arctic air into elements of america.

About Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) Occasion:

• What’s SSW?
  • Sudden Stratospheric Warming is a fast temperature rise (as much as 50°C) within the stratosphere, about 10–50 km above Earth’s floor.
  • It disrupts the polar vortex, the circulation of sturdy westerly winds across the Arctic, usually inflicting main climate anomalies on the floor.
• How Does SSW Happen?
  • Polar Vortex Formation: In winter, sturdy westerly winds tighten across the Arctic forming the stratospheric polar vortex, a chilly, round wind belt that traps frigid air excessive above the pole.
  • Upward Rossby Waves: Massive atmospheric disturbances known as Rossby waves rise from the troposphere into the stratosphere, carrying vitality that disrupts the vortex’s secure circulation.
  • Wave Breaking: When these waves “break,” very similar to ocean waves, they weaken and even reverse the vortex’s westerly winds, destabilising the complete polar wind system.
  • Fast Descending Air: Because the weakened system collapses, chilly stratospheric air descends quickly, compresses, and warms sharply—creating the sudden stratospheric temperature spike.
  • Vortex Cut up or Shift: The disrupted vortex can break up or drift south, releasing Arctic air into mid-latitudes and triggering chilly outbreaks throughout North America, Europe, or Asia.
• Key Options of an SSW:
  • Fast stratospheric warming: As much as a 50°C enhance inside days.
  • Vortex weakening or reversal: Westerly winds flip easterly.
  • Jet stream disruption: The jet stream turns into wavier or blocked.
  • Floor impacts lag: Climate results seem 1–3 weeks later.
  • Irregular incidence: Not each winter sees an SSW, and never all occasions have an effect on floor climate.
• Implications of SSW Occasions:
  • Climate Impacts:
    • May cause sudden chilly waves, snowstorms, and prolonged freezing circumstances throughout North America and Europe.
    • Might shift storm tracks and create high-pressure blocks over the North Atlantic.
  • Forecast Challenges:
    • Laborious to foretell greater than 7–10 days upfront.
    • Fashions battle to pinpoint the place the displaced Arctic air will descend.
    • Floor climate could affect the stratosphere, creating advanced suggestions loops.

UPSC CURRENT AFFAIRS – 8 December 2025 Mapping: