UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | March 17 to March 23, 2025
Lost track of last week’s must-know current affairs for UPSC Prelims 2025? Catch up with the Jnanpith Award 2023 winner, World Happiness Report rankings, the caracal’s conservation spotlight, and Sepaktakraw World Cup 2025. You can also test your knowledge by solving MCQs.
UPSC Current Affairs Pointers: Shukla, a renowned Hindi writer, poet and novelist, becomes the first person from Chhattisgarh state who is being awarded this honour. Current affairs form a major part of UPSC preparation. Every Monday, UPSC Current Affairs Pointers aim to go beyond the headlines and provide you with relevant information for your Prelims and Mains preparation for UPSC, State PCS, and other competitive examinations.
If you missed the UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | March 10 to March 16, 2025, from the Indian Express, read it here.
Report
(FYI: The data provided in these reports can be used to substantiate your Mains answer and create a broad understanding of the topic.)
In 2024, the UPSC Essay topic was “There is no path to happiness, Happiness is the path.”
— Recently, the World Happiness Report 2025 was published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford.
— The rankings are based on people’s self-assessed life evaluations, compiled through surveys conducted by Gallup in partnership with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
— For the eighth consecutive year, Finland has been named the happiest country in the world. Other Nordic nations—Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden—also retained their top positions, highlighting the strong social support systems and quality of life in these countries.
— India ranked 118th on the happiness index while neighbouring Pakistan stood at 109th. Despite facing significant economic and social challenges, Pakistan’s relatively higher ranking suggests a stronger sense of social support among its citizens, as per the report’s analysis.
| Rank | Country |
| 1. | Finland |
| 2. | Denmark |
| 3. | Iceland |
| 4. | Sweden |
| 109. | Pakistan |
| 118. | India |
| 133. | Sri Lanka |
| 134. | Bangladesh |
| 147. | Afghanistan |
Award
The Jnanpith Award is the highest literary honour of India given to writers who have excelled in literature in different Indian languages. (Photo: Devendra Shukla)
- Jnanpith Award: First from Chhattisgarh
— Eminent Hindi litterateur, Vinod Kumar Shukla, 88, has been named the recipient of the 59th Jnanpith Award 2024 for his contributions to Hindi Literature.
— The Jnanpith Award is the highest literary honour in India given to writers who have excelled in literature in different Indian languages.
Don’t confuse the Jnanpith Award with the Sahitya Akademi. Every year, the Sahitya Akademi announces awards for authors of works of outstanding literary merit in Indian languages. Awards are currently given for 24 languages; the most recent additions being Bodo and Santhali in 2005.
— Shukla, a renowned Hindi writer, poet and novelist, becomes the first person from Chhattisgarh state who is being awarded this honour.
— His first booklet of poetry ‘Lagbhag Jai Hind’ was published in 1971. His major novels include ‘Naukar Ki Kameez’. ‘Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rahti Thi’ and ‘Khilega To Dekhenge’.
— It was constituted in 1961 and every year creative literary outputs from writers in any of the 22 languages recognised by the Constitution along with English which was included in 2013 are awarded. The first Jnanpith Award was given to G.S. Kurup for his contribution to Malayalam literature.
(Source: jnanpith.net)
Polity
— The Smart Cities Mission is set to end on March 31, though the 7% of the ongoing projects are likely to go beyond the deadline.
— The mission was launched in 2015 with the objective of creating 100 smart cities. The cities were selected in rounds of competition held from January 2016 to June 2018, and they had five years from their respective selection, that is 2021 to 2023, to complete the projects.
- Competition Commission of India
— The Competition Commission of India (CCI) raided the offices of media agencies over alleged fixing of ad rates and discounts.
— It is a statutory body consisting of a Chairperson and not more than 6 Members appointed by the Central Government.
— It aims to eliminate practices having adverse effect on competition, promote and sustain competition, protect the interests of consumers, and ensure freedom of trade.
International Cooperation
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, greets visiting New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon before their meeting in New Delhi, India. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
— India and New Zealand have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for Defence Cooperation. This will further strengthen bilateral defence cooperation and establish regular bilateral defence engagement.
— They also announced the relaunch of free trade agreement (FTA) talks after a 10-year break.
— Trade status: In 2023-24, New Zealand exported US$ 0.84 billion of total goods and services to India and imported US$ 0.91 billion and had a total trade value of US$ 1.75 billion.
— India’s key goods exports to New Zealand include clothing, fabrics, and home textiles, valued at $72.8 million. Medicines and medical supplies followed closely at $67.5 million, while refined petroleum exports totalled $52.2 million. Other notable exports included automobiles and parts.
— New Zealand’s goods exports to India primarily consist of agricultural products, minerals, and scrap metals.
- Combined Maritime Forces (CMF)
— New Zealand welcomes India’s full membership to the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF).
— The CMF is a multinational maritime partnership that upholds the International Rules-Based Order (IRBO) by countering illicit non-state actors on the high seas and promoting security, stability and prosperity.
— It comprises five task forces: CTF 150 (Gulf of Oman security and counter-terrorism), CTF 151 (counter piracy), CTF 152 (Arabian Gulf security and cooperation), CTF 153 (Red Sea/Gulf of Aden security and cooperation) and CTF 154 (maritime security training).
Here’s something interesting for you: Do you know what Orwellian reversal is? According to Pratap Bhanu Mehta Trump’s policies are full of ‘Orwellian reversal’. He has written that Trump’s critique of elitism serves oligarchy, the defense of free speech justifies curbs on speech, and toughness in foreign policy is beating up on small powers but not having the guts to take on Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin and the exposure of the corruption of the old order possibly in service of new forms of conflicts of interest. Click here to read the full context.
- Five Eyes Alliance
— “Five Eyes” refers to an intelligence-sharing alliance of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It was formed during World War II.
— A central feature of this alliance is the intelligence sharing agreement that Washington and London signed in 1946 that built on the bilateral wartime cooperation on intercepting and decoding enemy communications.
— US President Donald Trump invoked an 18th-century law for the first time since World War II in a bid to deport members of the Venezuelan-origin gang Tren de Aragua.
— The Tren de Aragua (TdA), or “train from Aragua” in Spanish, was founded in 2014 in the Tocorón prison in the state of Aragua in central Venezuela. The name is attributed to a union of railroad workers who were building a railroad connection between Caracas and Aragua.
— The TdA emerged as part of the “pran” system, where incarcerated crime bosses organised elaborate drug and kidnapping networks and collaborated with gangs outside prisons.
— The onset of Venezuela’s economic crisis in 2017 led the TdA to expand its criminal operations to neighbouring Colombia, Peru and Chile.
Environment
— Recently, Madhav National Park in Shivpuri district, Madhya Pradesh, was declared a tiger reserve, taking the tally of such reserves in the country to 58.
— A tiger reserve in India is a designated area established under the Project Tiger initiative to ensure the conservation of tigers and their habitats. These reserves are part of the government’s efforts to protect the tiger population, maintain biodiversity, and restore ecological balance.
The ears are a caracal’s signature feature (Source: Wikimedia)
— Rajasthan’s Forest Minister shared a photo on social media to celebrate the “first photographic record” of a caracal in Mukundra Hills Tiger Reserve of Rajasthan.
— Caracal has long legs, a short face, long canine teeth, and distinctive ears — long and pointy, with tufts of black hair at their tips. The iconic ears are what give the animal its name — caracal comes from the Turkish karakulak, meaning ‘black ears’.
— In India, it is called siya gosh, a Persian name that translates as ‘black Ear’. A Sanskrit fable exists about a small wild cat named deergha-karn or ‘long-eared’.
— Besides India, the caracal is found in several dozen countries across Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia.
— IUCN status: Least Concerned
— Wildlife Protection Act, 1972: Schedule I
Science and Technology
— According to the new study, water spray is sufficient to generate organic compounds without the requirement of external electricity. These findings add another angle to the much-disputed Miller-Urey hypothesis on the emergence of life on Earth.
— When water droplets divide, they develop opposing charges. While larger droplets have positive charges, smaller ones carry negative ones. When these oppositely charged droplets move close together, tiny sparks leap between them. This process is called “microlightning” by the researchers. It imitates how lightning forms in clouds.
— The Earth formed around 4.6 billion years ago. For a few billion years afterwards, it had a rich mixture of chemicals but almost no organic molecules with carbon-nitrogen bonds. These bonds are crucial for proteins, enzymes, nucleic acids, chlorophyll, and other compounds that makeup living beings today.
— In 1952, American chemist Stanley Miller and physicist Harold Urey performed an experiment in which they successfully demonstrated that the organic compounds (such as amino acids) needed for life could form with the application of electricity to a mixture of water and inorganic gases.
— The two scientists showed that a lightning bolt struck the ocean, triggering chemical interaction with gases such as methane, ammonia, and hydrogen that created organic molecules. This is the Miller-Urey hypothesis on the origin of life on Earth.
Nasa astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore. (Source: X/@ISS_Research)
— NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore landed safetly on Earth on 19th March 2025. They have spent 286 days in the International Space Station due to a technical fault in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
— CST-100 Starliner of Boeing carried to the International Space Station (ISS), situated in the Low-earth orbit, altitude of 2,000 km or less, in June 2024. The flight that took Williams and Wilmore to the space station was Starliner’s first attempt to carry humans in space.
— They were brought back from space through SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX developed Crew Dragon as part of NASA’s plan to hand over space station flights to American companies after the space agency retired its space shuttle in 2011.
— Microgravity, or the near-weightlessness experienced in space, plays a role in compromising the body’s ability to repair damaged DNA. In microgravity, cellular functions, including the DNA repair processes, are altered.
— Astronauts also develop “baby feet” when they stay for long in space. Air and gravity are absent in space resulting in weightlessness and it leads to calluses on the feet disappearing.
— Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic has denied that his police forces used a banned ‘sonic weapon’ to disperse protesters in Belgrade.
— Acoustic or sonic weapons are devices that deliver very loud sounds over long distances. They can be designed to emit painful audible or inaudible sound waves. These devices can also be used to act like voice amplifiers to deliver voice messages or other sounds.
— It usually comprises hundreds of modern transducers — an electronic device that converts energy from one form to another — to create highly concentrated and amplified sound.
— There are three types of Sonic weapons: Long-range acoustic device (LRAD), Mosquito, and Infrasonic weapon.
— Loud noises emitted by LRAD can cause a sensation of ringing ears, also called tinnitus, which can last for minutes after the exposure or for days.
— March 20 marks the start of the spring season for the Northern Hemisphere and fall in the Southern Hemisphere, with the arrival of the vernal equinox.
— Equinoxes occur twice a year, in March and in September. On this day, the sun appears directly above the Equator at noon. It is the only time when both poles are sunlit at the same time.
— Solstices mark the days when the Earth is extremely tilted toward or away from the sun. On these days, each hemisphere gets significantly different amounts of light and warmth from the sun, with the days and nights being just as lopsided.
— The summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, between June 20 and 22, creates the longest day and shortest night of the year.
Saturn’s rings disappear for a while every 13 to 15 years. (Image Source: Cassini spacecraft)
— Saturn’s rings, which are primarily made of ice and rocks, have disappeared from view due to the phenomenon dubbed as “ring plane crossing”.
— It usually occurs every 13 to 15 years. In this the planet’s rings perfectly aligning with Earth’s line of sight, causing them to go nearly invisible.
— Once these rings disappear, Saturn appears as a pale yellow sphere when viewed via the majority of telescopes.
— Saturn completes one orbit around the Sun every 29.4 Earth years. As the planet rotates on an axis at 27 degrees, sometimes the rings are tiled, which is when observers on Earth get a good view of them.
Economy
— Valueattics Re, a company promoted by Prem Watsa-backed FAL Corporation and GoDigit Founder Kamesh Goyal, is the first private reinsurer in India to be granted a reinsurance license.
— Currently, the public sector General Insurance Corporation (GIC Re) is the only reinsurance company operating in India.
— Reinsurance companies play a crucial role in the insurance industry by providing insurance to other insurance companies, acting as a second level of insurance or insurers’ insurer to manage and transfer risk, particularly large or catastrophic losses.
Persons in News
(Just FYI: Noting historical personalities’ anniversaries aids UPSC prep. UPSC often includes such personalities in questions, so revisiting their lives refreshes your static syllabus.)
Spivak was born in 1942, Kolkata and rose to fame partly on the back of Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988), an essay about the place of women in colonial India (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
— Gayatri Spivak, celebrated literary critic and postcolonial scholar, has won the 2025 Holberg Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of humanities, social sciences, law or theology research.
Spivak’s “critique of structures of power and knowledge in an unequal world” and efforts to combat “illiteracy in marginalised rural communities across several countries” make her a “highly worthy recipient of the prize” reads the citation note.
— Former Calcutta High Court judge Justice Joymalya Bagchi was sworn in as a judge of the Supreme Court by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna.
— Justice Bagchi has a tenure of more than six years in the Supreme Court, during which he will also serve as the Chief Justice of India from May 25, 2031, to October 2, 2031.
— Articles 124(2) and 217 of the Constitution deal with appointing judges to the Supreme Court and High Courts. The appointments are made by the President, who is required to hold consultations with “such of the judges of the Supreme Court and of the High Courts” as he may think is needed.
— Union Home Minister Amit Shah inaugurated the first phase of the revamped police academy in Assam’s Dergaon, hailing the state government’s decision to name it after storied Ahom general Lachit Barphukan.
— Lachit Barphukan is known for his leadership in the 1671 ‘Battle of Saraighat.’ He is considered one of the greatest of Assamese heroes. 24th November is celebrated as the ‘Lachit Diwas’ to mark his birth anniversary.
A look at the past: These are not current topics however, they have appeared in the news and are important for your UPSC preparation. Do you know who was India’s first woman legislator of pre-independent India?
Kirsty Coventry was the only woman in a field of seven candidates fighting the elections to replace outgoing IOC president Thomas Bach. (PHOTO: IOC/Greg Martin)
— Former Olympic champion swimmer from Zimbabwe, Kirsty Coventry, was elected as the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Greece.
— In the organisation’s 130-year history, this is the first time a woman — and an African — has been elected to the all-important post.
— She was the back-to-back Olympic champion in the 200 meters backstroke in 2004 and 2008. She retired from swimming after the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 with seven Olympic medals, more than anyone else from Africa.. She is also currently Zimbabwe’s minister of youth, sports, arts and recreation.
Sports
(Just FYI: With the unpredictability of the UPSC examinations and questions like the ICC World Test Championship question 2021, you can’t be sure of anything. It is wise to know what it is and not go into too much detail.)
- Sepak Takraw
— The BIHAR Sepaktakraw World Cup 2025 is being held in Patna, Bihar, from March 20 to March 25, 2025.’
— According to the website of sepaktakrawindia, SepakTakraw is a traditional Malaysian sport and is popular in South East Asian countries. It is played in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Brunei, and Indonesia. It was introduced in India in 1980.
— Sepak is the Malay word for kick, and takraw is the Thai word for woven ball. The ball is spherical and made out of synthetic fibre. It is also known as ‘kick volleyball’.
Terms making buzz
— Autopen: An autopen is essentially a printer-size machine that duplicates signatures using real ink. The machine has an arm that can hold a standard pen or pencil and can reproduce the programmed signature on paper.
— Muzharas: March 19 commemorates the anniversary of the Muzhara movement, a significant agrarian struggle in Punjab. The movement began in the 1930s and later renamed the PEPSU Muzhara movement. The muzharas were landless tenant farmers seeking ownership rights on the land they had cultivated for generations. The British also forced some small farmers to surrender the land they owned and work as muzharas.
Test Your Knowledge
(Note: The best way to remember facts for UPSC and other competitive exams is to recall them through MCQs. Try to solve the following questions on your own.)
(1) What are transducers?
(a) A new AI chip developed by the International Energy Agency (IEA) to use renewable energy
(b) A text-to-speech conversion mechanism
(c) An electronic device that converts energy from one form to another
(d) A Semi-Humanoid Robot to deduct the impact of solar flares on energy transmission
(2) Consider the following protected areas:
1. Manas
2. Buxa
3. Bhitarkanika
4. Keoladeo
Which of the above are declared tiger reserves?
(a) 1 and 2
(b) 3 and 4
(c) 1, 2 and 3
(d) 2, 3 and 4
(3) Consider the following statements:
1. Urdu poet Gulzar and Sanskrit scholar Jagadguru Rambhadracharya were recipients of the 59th Jnanpith Award.
2. It gives 24 awards annually to literary works in the languages that also include English and Rajasthani.
Which of the following statements is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2
| Answer key |
| 1. (c) 2. (a) 3. (d) |
Previous Articles
UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | March 10 to March 16, 2025
UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | March 3 to March 9, 2025
UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | February 24 to March 2, 2025
UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | February 17 To February 23, 2025
For your answers, queries and suggestions write at khushboo.kumari@indianexpress.com
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Khushboo Kumari is a Deputy Copy Editor with The Indian Express. She has done her graduation and pos... Read More
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