UPSC Current Affairs Pointers of the past week | From India-France bilateral ties to second phase of Vibrant Villages programme: February 16 to 22, 2026

— Both leaders agreed to elevate their ties to a Special Global Strategic Partnership to guide bilateral cooperation in the coming decades.

— They jointly inaugurated the H125 Final Assembly Line, a first-of-its-kind private sector helicopter manufacturing facility in India. It will combine the strength of TATA Advanced Systems and Airbus to serve India’s growing market and export to third countries.

— They also launched the Indo-French Centre for AI in Health, Indo-French Centre for Digital Science and Technology, and National Centre of Excellence for Skilling in Aeronautics.

• Helsinki Treaty

— Nordic government ministers meet in Denmark to discuss elevating Greenland and two other autonomous territories to equal status in a regional forum, boosting cooperation after U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to control the Arctic island. One of the agenda items of the meeting was to update the Helsinki treaty.

— The Helsinki Accords, signed on August 1, 1975, framed a common security framework for Europe. It represents a collective effort to foster cooperation among 35 participating states from Europe, the U.S., and Canada during the Cold War.

• India AI Impact Summit 2026

— India hosted the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi from February 16 to February 20. The AI Impact Summit 2026 is the fourth edition in a series of such global gatherings.

Key takeaways from the Summit:

(i) New Delhi Declaration on AI Impact: The key outcome document of the five-day India AI Impact Summit was so far have been signed by 88 countries and international organisations, including the United States, China, France, Australia and the UK. The declaration has been centered along the seven Chakras (pillars) of the AI Impact Summit 2026.  Through the declaration, India has maintained the focus on its key pitch ahead of the AI Summit — “democratising” AI, while respecting the sovereignty of countries.

(ii) ‘MANAV’ vision 

— During the summit, PM Modi unveiled India’s AI vision ‘MANAV’, which encompasses moral and ethical systems, accountable governance, and national sovereignty. He outlined a nuanced approach to AI not as an autonomous force driven solely by data and algorithms, but as an extension of human aspirations, ethics, and dignity.

MANAV stands:

M– moral and ethical systems: AI should be based on ethical guidance.

A– accountable governance means transparent rules, robust oversight;

N– national sovereignty means whose data, his right.

A– accessible and inclusive means AI should be a multiplier, not a monopoly.

V– valid and legitimate means AI should be lawful and verifiable”.

(iii) Prime Minister Modi has outlined three key suggestions for the ethical and responsible use of artificial intelligence.

First, Modi called for a global trusted data framework that respects data sovereignty.

Second, he stressed transparency in AI systems, advocating for what he described as a “glass box” approach. “We need a glass box approach instead of a black box, where safety rules can be viewed and verified,” he said, adding that this would strengthen accountability and ethical business practices.

Third, referring to the “paperclip problem” often cited in AI research, Modi warned about unchecked machine objectives. “If a machine is given the goal of simply making paperclips, it will continue to do so, even at the cost of devouring all the world’s resources. Therefore, AI requires clear human values and guidance,” he said.

(iv) India enters Pax Silica

— On the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit, India signed the Pax Silica declaration to formally enter into the American-led strategic initiative to counter China’s dominance in artificial intelligence and technology supply chains.

— Pax Silica is a US-led initiative to counter China’s dominance in new age sectors such as critical minerals that has created a wide gap in the price points of Chinese products and those produced elsewhere.

— Members of Pax Silica: the USA, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, Qatar, Greece, the United Kingdom, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and India.

(v) Qualcomm Technologies has announced a strategic collaboration with the Anusandhan National Research Foundation to strengthen India’s research ecosystem in science, engineering and next-generation technologies. Under the partnership, Qualcomm will contribute up to Rs 90 crore over the next five years to support mission-driven research programs identified through ANRF’s evaluation frameworks. The focus areas include AI systems, advanced wireless technologies and next-generation computing.

(vi) Adobe has announced free access to Acrobat, Firefly AI, and over 20 Creative Cloud apps for students in 15,000 schools and 500 colleges under the government’s Content Creator Labs initiative. This initiative was announced in the Union Budget 2026 to boost the orange economy in India.

(vii) Gnani.ai has announced the launch of Vachana STT, a foundational, enterprise-grade Indic speech recognition model trained on over 1 million hours of real-world voice data spanning 1,056 domains. Vachana STT is the first model released under Inya VoiceOS, a sovereign AI model stack being built as part of the India AI Mission.

(viii) At the summit, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a new initiative called the India-America Connect Initiative. The initiative aims to increase AI connectivity between India, the US and multiple locations across the Southern Hemisphere, delivering new sub-scale cable routes. The project will establish a new international subsea gateway in Visakhapatnam; three new subsea paths connecting India to Singapore, South Africa and Australia; and four strategic fiber-optic routes to boost network connectivity between the US, India and multiple locations across the Southern Hemisphere. This builds on Google’s ongoing subsea cable projects across the Pacific and Africa, it said in a press release.

AI IMpact summit 2026 (Image generated using AI)

• India-Brazil relationship

— Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva paid a state visit to India from February 18 to 22, 2026. He also participated in the AI Impact Summit.

— This is Lula’s second state visit to India — he had last visited Delhi for the G20 leaders summit in September 2023.

— Last year, in July 2025, the State Visit of Prime Minister Modi to Brasilia (7-8 July 2025) was the second-ever bilateral visit by the Prime Minister of India, taking place after a gap of 57 years.

— A total of ten agreements were exchanged between India and Brazil in areas such as critical minerals, digital cooperation, sharing of traditional knowledge, health, MSME, entrepreneurship, and mass communication, among others.

— India-Brazil Digital Partnership for the Future agreement was signed that embodies a shared vision for a digitally empowered future, to be built on mutual trust and collaborative progress. It will encompass bilateral cooperation across a wide range of critical areas, including Digital Public Infrastructure (DPIs), through joint initiatives, institutions, and projects that draw on the experience of the two countries.

President Donald Trump speaks during a Board of Peace meeting at the U.S. Institute of Peace (AP Photo)

• Board of Peace

— The first meeting of the ‘Board of Peace’ was held in Washington to discuss the reconstruction of Gaza, with India taking part as an “observer”. The Board was proposed by Donald Trump last September when he announced the plan to end Israel’s war in Gaza.

— India’s decision to attend the meeting as an observer was, therefore, an attempt to maintain a circumspect level of engagement with a controversial body while not shutting the door on a country with whom it has just agreed a trade pact framework.

— The board’s 27 members include major West Asian countries such as Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey and Bahrain. Trump’s right-wing allies Argentina and Hungary are members, as are Vietnam and Cambodia. Pakistan, too, is a member.

— Besides the board members, 22 countries took part in the meeting as “observers”. These include the UK, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, Poland and the Netherlands. The EU, too, took part, as did Oman and Japan.

— The countries that accepted the membership will get a tenure of three years, unless they pay $ 1 billion in cash in the first year of membership, in which case they become permanent members.

Index

(FYI: The data provided in these reports can be used to substantiate your Mains answer and create a broad understanding of the topic.)

• Corruption Perspective Index 2025

— Transparency International has published the 2025 Corruption Perception Index (CPI). The index evaluated 182 countries based on perceived public sector corruption, using a scale from zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

— The index shows that corruption globally is worsening, even in advanced democracies, as the number of countries scoring above 80 has decreased from 12 a decade ago to just five this year.

— Denmark, maintaining its eight-year streak, tops the CPI 2025 with the highest score of 89, followed closely by Finland (88) and Singapore (84).

— South Sudan and Somalia, both scoring 9, tied at rank 181. Venezuela ranks slightly higher at 180 with a score of 10, placing these three nations at the bottom of the index.

— In 2025, India ranked 91st globally on the Corruption Perceptions Index, scoring 39 out of 100, which is a slight improvement from the previous year. In 2024, India’s overall score was 38 and ranked 96 out of 180 countries.

Polity

• Vibrant Villages programme

— Union Home Minister Amit Shah has formally launched the second phase of the central government’s Vibrant Villages programme in a village on the Indo-Bangladesh border in Assam’s Cachar district.

— With a total outlay of Rs 6839 crore till the financial year 2028-2029, the second phase of Vibrant Villages programme aims to cover a total of 1,954 villages in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, J&K, Ladakh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, Shah said.

— In April 2023, the first phase of the Vibrant Villages programme was launched in the Indo-China border village of Kibithoo in Arunachal Pradesh. In that first phase, 662 villages had been identified for comprehensive development in 19 districts along the northern border in Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Ladakh.

Science and Technology

• Bodhan AI 

— The Bharat Bodhan AI Conclave 2026 was organised by the Ministry of Education on 12 and 13th February in New Delhi. It concluded with reaffirming a collective commitment towards the responsible AI-driven transformation of India’s education ecosystem.

— The Center plans to involve AI in education through Bodhan AI. The not-for-profit company, Bodhan AI, will develop the Bharat EduAI Stack as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for education. DPI is a digital system that can provide access to services on a large scale, like UPI (Unified Payments Interface) for payments.

— The company will work on research to build AI capabilities for Indian languages, and develop assets like automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis. Applications will then be built, with the aim of taking them to schools and other institutions through collaborations with state governments.

• Bharat-VISTAAR

— Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has launched the Bharat-VISTAAR (Virtually Integrated System to Access Agricultural Resources), an AI-powered multilingual tool designed to provide farmers with relevant information.

— This AI tool was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Union Budget 2026-27, and allocated Rs 150 crore.

— Bharat-VISTAAR is a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiative in agriculture that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to personalise advice by integrating information from trusted sources across the Centre, state government, and cooperative systems.

— It is an AI-powered multilingual tool that provides information to farmers in their native language through mobile or a simple phone call. The tool offers guidance on crop planning, agricultural practices, pests, weather forecasts, markets, scheme information, eligibility, applications, and grievances. It serves as a single “digital doorway” for farmers to access required information.

— Farmers can access Bharat-VISTAAR by dialling the dedicated telephone number 155261 and talking to the AI Assistant, named ‘Bharati’. They can also download a mobile app from the Google Play Store or access it through a web interface link, which functions similarly to the app.

Places in News

• Great Nicobar Island Project

— A six-member National Green Tribunal (NGT) special bench has given nod to the Great Nicobar mega infrastructure project.

— The bench, headed by NGT chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava, also noted the “strategic importance of the project” and the issues that were dealt with by a high-powered committee (HPC) tasked with revisiting the project’s environmental clearance, as per a 2023 order of the NGT.

— The Great Nicobar Island (GNI) infrastructure project was conceived by NITI Aayog and launched in 2021. The project involves construction of an international container transshipment terminal, a township and area development, a 450 MVA gas and solar-based power plant, and a dual use civilian and military airport. The project will be spread over 166 sq km.

— The project is being implemented by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation (ANIIDCO). It aligns with India’s Maritime Vision 2030 and is one of the key projects under the Amrit Kaal Vision 2047.

— The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a cluster of 836 islands, split into two groups — the Andaman Islands to the north and the Nicobar Islands to the south — by the 150-km wide Ten Degree Channel.

— Great Nicobar is the southernmost and largest of the Nicobar Islands, a sparsely inhabited 910-sq-km patch of mainly tropical rainforest in the southeastern Bay of Bengal. Indira Point on the island, India’s southernmost point, is only 90 nautical miles (less than 170 km) from Sabang at the northern tip of Sumatra, the largest island of the Indonesian archipelago.

— Great Nicobar has two national parks, a biosphere reserve, small populations of the Shompen and Nicobarese tribal peoples, and a few thousand non-tribal settlers. Notably, the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve was included in the list of Man and Biosphere (MAB) Program of UNESCO in 2013.

• Naneghat caves

— Recently, the Pune Police have booked a man after an illegal construction was found adjacent to the historic Naneghat Caves in Junnar taluka of Pune district. Over the past year, at least eight cases of illegal constructions of hotels, eateries and houses have been reported within these protected areas.

— The case was registered under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act following a complaint by officials of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

— Junnar taluka of Pune is home to several historical sites from various eras. Of these, three sites, Naneghat rock-cut caves, Shivneri fort and Lenyadri caves are under the purview of the ASI.

— The Naneghat caves, dating back to the 1st century BCE, are known for their early Brahmi inscriptions that provide valuable insights into the Satavahana dynasty and ancient trade routes. Archaeologically, they are crucial for understanding the region’s role as a corridor between the Deccan plateau and the western coast.

Strait of Hormuz. (Wikimedia Commons)

• Strait of Hormuz

— Iran has temporarily closed the Strait of Hormuz during live-fire drills as tensions with the US escalated alongside nuclear talks in Geneva.

— A strait is a narrow water body connecting two larger bodies of water. The two water bodies that the Strait of Hormuz connects are the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, which further flows out into the Arabian Sea.

— Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles (33 km) wide at its narrowest point, with the shipping lane just two miles (three km) wide in either direction.

— It is a key passage through which 20–25 per cent of global oil supply transits, as well as a critical corridor for LNG shipments from Qatar and the UAE.

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.)

Magnus Carlsen with the trophy, alongside Fabiano Caruana (left) and Nodirbek Abdusattorov. (Photo: Lennart Ootes/Freestyle Chess.)

• Freestyle Chess World Championship

— Magnus Carlsen of Norway is the winner of the 2026 FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship. He defeated Fabiano Caruana in a four-game finale. This is the first official FIDE-recognized Freestyle Chess World Championship.

— Carlsen has five classical World Championships besides six World Rapid Championships and nine World Blitz Championships. Now Carlsen adds a world title in the one format that was missing, marking his 21st World Championship title.

About the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship.

— It’s a new world championship, born out of a partnership between the global governing body of chess, FIDE, and the Freestyle Chess organisers, who conducted the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour last season.

— While officially it will be the first official FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship, FIDE had organised a world championship in the Chess960 format (as the freestyle format is also known) twice before.

— Back then, it was known as the Fischer Random World Championship, with Wesley So winning the title in 2019 and Hikaru Nakamura claiming the crown in 2022.

— The total prize fund for the weekend is $3,00,000, with $1,00,000 (approximately Rs 90.5 lakh) awarded to the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Champion.

About Freestyle Chess

— Freestyle chess is a variant of chess that goes by many names: Fischer Random Chess, Chess 9LX and Chess 960.

— How it differs from regular chess is that instead of positions of chess pieces on the back ranks being fixed, in freestyle chess positions of these pieces are randomised at the start of the game.

— The eight pawns in front of these pieces start where they usually do. But the back ranks will not necessarily have rooks stationed on the corners, the knights starting on the b and g files, the bishops on c and f files.

— Names like Chess960 have been given to the format because there are 960 possible starting positions on the board when the minor and major pieces at the back ranks are shuffled.

— Chess pieces in Freestyle Chess still retain their regular characteristics in action: rooks move in straight lines, bishops cut across the board in sweeping diagonal movements, the knights make sickle-like veering motions and retain the ability to hop over pieces.

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) Which one of the following pairs of islands is separated from each other by the ‘Ten Degree Channel’? (UPSC CSE 2014)

(a) Andaman and Nicobar

(b) Nicobar and Sumatra

(c) Maldives and Lakshadweep

(d) Sumatra and Java

(2) Consider the following statements about the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship:

1. This is the first official FIDE-recognized Freestyle Chess World Championship.

2. In this, the positions of chess pieces are randomised at the start of the game.

3. It is named Chess960 because there are 960 possible starting positions on the board.

How many of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) Only one

(b) Only two

(c) All three

(d) None

(3) Naneghat Caves are located in which of the following states:

(a) Karnataka

(b) Andhra Pradesh

(c) Madhya Pradesh

(d) Maharashtra

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