Daily Current Affairs- 18th January 2026

Daily Current Affairs- 18th January 2026

DGCA Slaps ₹22.2 Crore Penalty on IndiGo

In the News: The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India's civil aviation regulator, levied a penalty of ₹22.2 crore on IndiGo for large-scale flight disruptions in December 2025. More than 2,500 flights were cancelled and over 1,800 were delayed between December 3 and 5, 2025, affecting more than three lakh passengers across the country. The regulator also ordered the airline to furnish a ₹50 crore bank guarantee and issued warnings to senior executives including CEO Pieter Elbers.

Key Points:

• Scale of Disruption: Between December 3 and 5, 2,507 flights were cancelled and 1,852 flights were delayed, impacting over 3 lakh passengers at airports across the country. This marked one of the largest operational failures recorded in India's civil aviation sector, causing massive inconvenience with passengers facing extended wait times, confusion, and insufficient communication.
• Penalty Breakdown: The penalties include a ₹20.4-crore fine for non-compliance from December 5, 2025, to February 10, 2026, translating to ₹30 lakh per day, along with additional ₹1.8 crore for specific violations under Rule 133A of the Aircraft Rules, 1937.
• Root Causes Identified: A DGCA committee concluded that the disruption stemmed from over-optimisation of operations, inadequate regulatory preparedness, and deficiencies in system software support and management oversight, apart from failure to implement revised flight duty time limitation provisions.
• FDTL Compliance Failure: The investigation revealed that the airline did not adequately maintain operational buffers and did not successfully apply the updated Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) regulations, which were intended to increase safety by controlling pilot duty and rest periods.
• Management Warnings: DGCA issued warning to CEO Pieter Elbers for inadequate overall oversight of flight operations and crisis management, along with issuing warning to the accountable manager (COO) for failure to assess the impact of winter schedule 2025 and the revised FDTL CAR leading to widespread disruptions.
• Bank Guarantee and Reform Scheme: The airline must pledge a ₹50-crore bank guarantee under the IndiGo Systemic Reform Assurance Scheme (ISRAS), with the release of funds phased and linked to DGCA verification of reforms across leadership and governance (₹10 crore), manpower planning and fatigue-risk management (₹15 crore), digital systems and operational resilience (₹15 crore), and board-level oversight (₹10 crore).

Production Linked Incentive Scheme

In the News: Though the 2025-26 Union Budget allocated increased funding to the Make in India initiative, no dedicated production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme exists for wind components, limiting the sector's ability to scale and reduce costs effectively. Wind energy firms and industry bodies are demanding a PLI scheme similar to the one implemented for solar panel manufacturing to reduce India's import dependency and boost domestic production of wind turbine components.

Key Points:

• Current Status: India's wind energy sector has surpassed 51 GW in capacity, positioning the country as the fourth-largest wind energy market globally.
• Import Dependency Concerns: Imports from countries like China raise significant data security concerns, including OEMs' data collection servers located outside India and vulnerabilities in power system network operations.
• Industry Demand for PLI: A strong case has been made by the local industry to extend the government's PLI scheme to the manufacture of wind power equipment similar to the support for solar panel factories. The industry envisages investments to the tune of Rs 15,000 crore in wind energy component manufacturing.
• Manufacturing Capacity: Factories making wind turbines and equipment already have a capacity of 10 GW in India, and over the years India has become a global hub for wind equipment supplies with the export of turbines.
• Solar PLI Success Model: Indigenous solar module manufacturing capacity under the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) for Solar Modules has reached around 144 GW per annum, with about 81 GW added in calendar year 2025 alone, reflecting an impressive 99% year-on-year increase.

Uttarakhand awarded Leader status in startup India Ranking

In the News: Uttarakhand was recognised as a "Leader" in building a strong startup ecosystem in the States' Startup Ecosystem Ranking (5th Edition) released by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India.

Key Points:

• Ranking Framework: The States' Startup Ranking is a yearly capacity building exercise launched in February 2018 by DPIIT that evaluates all of India's states and Union Territories on their efforts to build an ecosystem conducive to startup growth.
• Category Classification: States scoring between 50-69 percentile are classified as 'leaders,' while 'top performers' score between 70-89 percentile and 'best performers' score above 90 percentile. Uttarakhand secured the "Leader" status in Category A (states and UTs with population over 1 crore).
• Leader Category States: Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand in Category A, and Manipur, Meghalaya, and Nagaland in Category B were categorised as leaders.
• Best Performers: Gujarat has been ranked as the best performer for the fifth time in a row, along with Arunachal Pradesh and Goa. Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh were categorised as top performers.
• National Startup Awards Recognition: Sunfox Technologies Private Limited from Uttarakhand won the Innovation Trailblazers Award at the National Startup Awards 5.0, announced alongside the state rankings on National Startup Day 2026.
• Total Participation: A total of 34 states and Union territories participated in the fifth edition of the ranking exercise, which aims to support states in developing their startup ecosystems and learning from each other's best practices.

Has an Arbitration Council been Constituted?

In the News: The Supreme Court issued notice in a writ petition seeking directions to the Union government to immediately constitute the Arbitration Council of India (ACI) and frame uniform policies governing arbitral institutions and arbitrators. Nearly six years after the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 was amended in 2019, the Union government has still not constituted the Arbitration Council of India, adversely affecting efforts to make India a hub of international arbitration.

Key Points:

• Legislative Mandate: The Arbitration Council of India is to be established by the Central Government. The Council was envisaged under Sections 43A and 43B of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, introduced through 2019 amendments based on recommendations of the High-Level Committee on Arbitration chaired by B. N. Srikrishna.
• Prolonged Delay: Draft notifications for the ACI were issued in 2020, and subsequent amendments were made in 2021, yet the Council remains unconstituted more than six years after the legal framework was established.
• Concerns Over Independence: A key criticism is the perceived lack of independence, as most members would be appointed or nominated by the Union government—India's largest litigant—raising fears of undue executive influence over arbitration and undermining neutrality.
• Pending Reforms: In February 2024, an expert committee headed by former law secretary T K Vishwanathan submitted its report on arbitration reforms, and in October 2024, the law ministry floated a draft Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2024, but the amendments have taken a back seat.
• Supreme Court Intervention: The petition challenges unregulated arbitrations conducted by trade associations like the Cotton Association of India (CAI), alleging they are arbitrary and violative of Articles 14 and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution, forcing traders to agree to arbitrary rules as a pre-condition for doing business.

What America's Greenland claim could mean for NATO, Russia, and Canada

In the News: Since early January 2026, Greenland has catapulted from the sidelines of international affairs to the center as President Donald Trump repeatedly calls for the United States to take over the remote Arctic island, throwing Washington's relationship with its European NATO allies into crisis.

Key Points:

• Trump's Escalating Threats: Trump stated that "anything less" than US control of Greenland is "unacceptable" and that he would take Greenland "one way or the other," even if that requires going about it the "hard way". Following the US military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, Trump's statements have gained renewed force.
• Existential Threat to NATO: If the United States—as NATO's most powerful member—annexed the territory of another NATO member, the alliance's defense pledge would lose credibility. Denmark is a founding member of NATO and has been a loyal ally since 1949. A US attack on Danish territory would fundamentally violate Article 5 of the NATO treaty.
• Strategic Importance: The US has operated the Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base) in Greenland since the 1950s under a 1951 defense agreement with Denmark, which already provides extensive military basing rights without questioning Danish sovereignty.
• Economic Leverage: Trump announced the US would impose 10% tariffs on eight NATO allies—Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Finland—until a deal is reached for the complete and total purchase of Greenland. The dispute centers partly on Greenland's vast mineral reserves, with 25 of 34 elements classified as critical raw materials by the European Commission found on the island.
• Greenlandic Opposition: Greenland's Premier has repeatedly stated that Greenland is not for sale and will not become part of the United States.

What happened to ISRO’s PSLV C62- Mission?

In the News: ISRO's PSLV-C62 mission failed to reach orbit due to an anomaly during the third stage of the rocket, resulting in the loss of 15 out of 16 satellites. This marked India's first space launch of 2026 and the second consecutive failure of ISRO's reliable workhorse rocket, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), after a similar failure in May 2025.

Key Points:

• Mission Overview: PSLV-C62 was the 9th dedicated commercial mission undertaken by NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) carrying the EOS-N1 earth observation satellite along with 15 co-passenger satellites from domestic and international customers.
• Flight Failure: The first and second stages performed normally, but near the end of the third stage's operation, a deviation was observed in the flight controls related to roll-rates just prior to stage separation.
• Lost Payloads: Among the 15 lost satellites were DRDO's Anvesha (EOS-N1), a strategic Earth observation satellite designed to detect military camouflage, AayulSAT (India's first in-orbit fuelling experiment), CGUSAT (a student-developed satellite for disaster communication), and a foreign Earth observation satellite jointly built by Thailand.
• Sole Survivor: The KID (Kestrel Initial Demonstrator), a prototype re-entry capsule developed by a Spanish startup, successfully separated from the rocket and transmitted data back to Earth. The capsule operated briefly despite the failed mission, transmitting flight data for three minutes with a peak of 28 g during its descent.
• Commercial Impact: The failure has particularly affected India's private space sector, with six satellites belonging to Indian startups lost in the mission.
• Ongoing Investigation: ISRO has launched a detailed analysis to identify the root cause of the failure. The space agency must demonstrate corrective actions and a successful return to flight to restore confidence in India's commercial space capabilities.

Can Datacenters in orbit solve for AI model’s energy demand?

In the News: The exponential growth of artificial intelligence is driving unprecedented energy consumption in datacenters, prompting researchers and companies to explore radical solutions—including building datacenters in space.

Key Points:

• Energy Crisis in AI: Training and running large AI models requires massive computational power, with major datacenters consuming hundreds of megawatts—equivalent to small cities. Current datacenter infrastructure accounts for approximately 1-2% of global electricity demand, projected to rise significantly as AI adoption accelerates.
• Orbital Datacenter Concept: Space-based datacenters would operate in orbit, leveraging continuous solar exposure (24/7 sunlight without atmospheric interference) to generate power through solar panels. This eliminates day-night cycles and weather-related energy fluctuations that ground-based solar installations face.
• Cooling Advantages: Space provides natural thermal management through radiative cooling. The vacuum of space allows heat dissipation without requiring water or air-conditioning systems, which currently consume 30-40% of datacenter energy on Earth.
• Technical Challenges: Major hurdles include launch costs (despite reductions from companies like SpaceX), radiation hardening of computer components, maintenance and repair in orbit, data transmission latency, and initial capital investment for space infrastructure.