2nd July 2026 Current Affairs MCQ

VB-G RAM G — the Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) — replaced MGNREGA, 2005, which had run as India's flagship rights-based, demand-driven rural employment scheme for two decades. Under MGNREGA, any rural household could demand work and the government was legally bound to provide it within 15 days or pay an unemployment allowance, guaranteeing 100 days of work per household per year. VB-G RAM G bumps that guarantee to 125 days and sets a floor wage of ₹300/day, but it also shifts the programme toward being more project-linked than purely demand-driven — a structural change critics say weakens the safety-net character of the old law, especially during downturns when demand for work spikes suddenly.

The restructured Centre-State funding pattern shifts a significantly larger share of wage costs onto states, with projected state expenditure estimated to rise up to six-fold compared to actual 2024-25 spending. This hits poorer states hardest — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh have the highest MGNREGA participation but the least fiscal capacity to absorb new costs. New liabilities like the unemployment allowance (if 125 days can't be provided) and delayed-payment compensation now fall fully on states, which is exactly why this funding shift has become such a politically charged issue, with pending Central dues of ₹20,422 crore still owed to states from the earlier scheme adding to the tension.

NCeG 2026 was held in Jaipur, Rajasthan, with the theme "Empowering Citizens Through Digital Governance." It's jointly organised by DARPG and DPIIT and is where the National Awards for e-Governance (NAeG) get presented each year — a good detail to remember since exams often test who organises what. The move from Bhubaneswar (28th edition, December 2025) to Jaipur reflects Rajasthan's growing digital governance profile under CM Bhajan Lal Sharma. The timing is notable too — it landed the same week as VB-G RAM G's digital attendance tracking and the FCRA 2.0/e-OCI launches, all pointing to the same theme: digital infrastructure is now central to how India governs, not a side project.

FCRA 2.0 brings AI-driven flagging of suspicious patterns, real-time dashboards, and automated compliance verification to how the government monitors foreign contributions under the Ministry of Home Affairs. The underlying law — the FCRA, 2010 — governs how NGOs, associations, and individuals in India receive foreign donations, and it's been controversial for years as the government has used it to cancel several NGOs' registrations. The 2.0 upgrade essentially swaps manual scrutiny for machine learning that spots unusual fund flows automatically — a shift toward faster, more data-driven enforcement rather than periodic manual audits.

Before this reform, OCI holders had to get a new physical booklet stamped every time they renewed their passport after turning 20 — a genuinely painful bureaucratic requirement given India's OCI holder base spans over 50 lakh people globally. OCI status itself was introduced under the Citizenship Act, 1955 (amended in 2005), and holders enjoy lifelong visa-free travel to India along with near-parity rights to citizens — except voting, holding constitutional posts, and owning agricultural land. Going fully digital removes this friction entirely, making the whole system finally match how mobile and international the Indian diaspora actually is.

India and Bangladesh share the Sundarbans — the world's largest mangrove forest and home to a significant Bengal Tiger population — making this transboundary tiger corridor one of the most critical conservation landscapes on the planet. IBCA, launched in April 2023 to mark Project Tiger's 50th anniversary, focuses on seven big cat species: tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, cheetah, jaguar, and puma. Bangladesh joining brings the total to 27 members, following Saudi Arabia's entry as the 26th member back in May. Having both India and Bangladesh under the same institutional framework means coordinated protection efforts for a shared ecosystem become far more feasible than each country acting alone.

India's national sex ratio at birth for 2024 stands at 917 females per 1,000 males — below the natural biological ratio of roughly 950-952 — while Arunachal Pradesh leads with 1,050 females per 1,000 males. On the other end, Nagaland and Lakshadweep tie for the weakest performance at 865 each. This data comes from the CRS 2024 report by the Office of the Registrar General of India, published under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969. The ratio is watched closely because it's a direct indicator of sex-selective practices, which the PCPNDT Act specifically exists to curb — worth remembering alongside the historic 2011 Census lows of Haryana (834) and Punjab (846).

Green Urea keeps the exact same chemical formula, CO(NH₂)₂, and the same nutrient value and appearance as regular urea — the only difference is the manufacturing pathway. Instead of using natural gas, it's produced using renewable hydrogen (from solar/wind-powered electrolysis) and captured carbon dioxide. This matters because India currently imports over 50% of its urea requirement, and domestic production still relies on fossil fuel feedstock. Green Urea plants would tackle both problems at once — cutting import dependence and reducing the fertiliser sector's carbon footprint — fitting neatly alongside India's National Green Hydrogen Mission and National Coal Gasification Mission as parallel decarbonisation pushes.

UPI is now live in over 8 countries — including Singapore, UAE, France, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Nepal, Bhutan, and Malaysia — with MoUs signed with 24 nations signalling much bigger expansion ahead across Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and parts of Africa. What launched in 2016 as a purely domestic real-time payments system has become a genuine soft-power export by 2026. On the same day, NPCI partnered with HSBC India and JP Morgan Payments to enable real-time FX settlement for international UPI transactions — replacing slow correspondent banking chains with instant cross-currency settlement, which is really the missing piece that makes UPI usable at true global scale.

On the very day Delhi's monsoon arrived with a red alert for heavy rainfall, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck Afghanistan, with tremors felt across Delhi and the NCR — though thankfully no damage or casualties were reported in Delhi itself. Delhi's monsoon onset on 2 July actually falls within its normal window (around 27 June to 5 July), following the broader 2026 monsoon's strong pace after an early Kerala onset back on 24 May. It's a good reminder for exams that weather and geological events are tracked independently — one doesn't cause the other, but their coincidence made for a genuinely dramatic single day in Delhi.