The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE), in collaboration with the World Economic Forum (WEF), deliberated on the “India Skills Accelerator”

About the Skills Accelerator initiative

• Key Objectives
  • Enable agile career transitions
  • Promote scalable training
  • Align education with industry needs, particularly in sectors such as AI, robotics, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy. 
• Platform Structure: A public-private collaboration platform for cross-sector innovation

Part of the WEF’s Reskilling Revolution: It incentivises governments to provide upskilling and reskilling to all workers, regardless of education levels or employment status. 

A study of RBI has proposed the construction of a FCI for India to track market trends with daily frequency.

About Financial Conditions Index (FCI)

• It assesses the degree of relatively tight or easy financial market conditions with reference to its historical average since 2012. 
• The chosen indicators represent five market segments: money market, G-sec market, corporate bond market, forex market, and equity market.
•  A higher positive value of the FCI indicates tighter financial conditions. 

Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) informed that AI for India 2.0 Programme enabled tech learning in 9 vernacular languages (e.g., Hindi, Telugu, Kannada)

empowering the youth. 

About the AI for India 2.0 

• Purpose: To make tech skills accessible and inclusive for India’s youth.
• Target group: College students, fresh graduates, and early-career professionals, especially from rural or non-English-speaking backgrounds. 
• Programme offers: Free online training in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

The European Commission will introduce a new measure to address the risk of carbon leakage for EU-produced goods produced in CBAM sectors. 

• Carbon leakage is the shifting of greenhouse gas emitting industries outside the country with stringent norms (in this case EU) to countries with lesser stringent norms to avoid tighter standards.

About the CBAM

• It is being rolled out, requiring importers to pay for the carbon emissions embedded in specific goods across 6 CBAM sectors
  • These CBAM sectors include cement, aluminium, fertilisers, iron and steel, hydrogen and electricity.
• This move is a crucial step in promoting a sustainable and low-carbon economy.

The World Health Organization warned that a major chikungunya virus epidemic risks sweeping around the globe, calling for urgent action to prevent it.

About Chikungunya

• Type: It’s a mosquito-borne viral disease caused by the chikungunya virus.
• Transmission: Transmitted by infected female mosquitoes, most commonly Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, which can also transmit dengue and Zika viruses.
• Treatment: No specific antiviral drug treatment.
• Indian Govt Initiative: National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) is a comprehensive programme for prevention and control of vector borne diseases namely Dengue, Chikungunya etc.

The Ministry of Home Affairs Notified the Disaster Management National Crisis Management Committee (Procedure) Rules, 2025.

About NCMC

• Background: The Disaster Management Act (Amendment) Act, 2025, granted statutory status to NCMC.
• Composition: Headed by the Cabinet Secretary, with members including the Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, etc.
• Powers and Functions
  • Act as the nodal body to deal with the major disasters which have serious or national ramifications.
  • Can evaluate preparedness for any disaster or emergency situation.
  • Coordinates and monitors national disaster response efforts.

India’s ranking in Henley Passport Index jumps from 85 (2024) to 77 (2025).

• Indian citizens can now travel to 59 destinations without needing to secure a visa beforehand.

About Henley Passport Index 

• It is the original, authoritative ranking of all the world’s passports according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a prior visa. 
• It is based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
• Singapore holds the top spot in the Index.

Central Electricity Regulatory Commission directed that Power market coupling will begin with the Day-Ahead Market (DAM) from January 2026.

• DAM is a physical electricity trading market which allows market participants to buy and sell electricity for the next day. 

About Power Market Coupling

• Market coupling refers to the process where orders from all power exchanges are aggregated and then matched to determine a uniform market-clearing price.
• Market coupling helps achieve price convergence between different electricity markets.