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Daily Current Affairs: 14 August 2026

Current affairs of 14 August 2026: Gaj Gaurav Awards 2026: Mahouts Honoured on World Elephant Day; Small Modular Reactors: India’s Plan for Five SMRs by 2033; NITI Aayog Manufacturing Report: Four Priority Sectors, and 8 more topics. Key facts for every exam, with a quiz.

Take the quiz (16 questions)August 2026
11 TOPICSDaily CurrentAffairs14 August 2026In focus: Gaj Gaurav Awards 2026: Mahouts…safalsetu.com

In this issue: 11 topics

National Affairs

  1. Joint Parliamentary Committee: features and working

Government Schemes

  1. Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme: Rs 10,000 Crore Plan

Banking & Finance

  1. Bank in a Box: Amit Shah Launches Tech Platform for UCBs

Economy

  1. Bank of America to Acquire Up to 49.9% Stake in Jio Credit

International Affairs

  1. Zhu Rongji, Former Chinese Premier, Dies at 97

Science & Technology

  1. Small Modular Reactors: India’s Plan for Five SMRs by 2033
  2. SraVaani: IISc Releases Speech AI Model for 65 Indian Languages
  3. BHASHINI and NITI Aayog Sign Statement of Intent on Multilingual AI

Environment & Ecology

  1. Three New Cascade Frog Species Described from Northeast India

Reports & Indexes

  1. NITI Aayog Manufacturing Report: Four Priority Sectors

Awards & Persons

  1. Gaj Gaurav Awards 2026: Mahouts Honoured on World Elephant Day

National Affairs

Government Schemes

Economy

2. Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme: Rs 10,000 Crore Plan

  • The Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme (CMAS) has an outlay of Rs 10,000 crore over five years, announced in Union Budget 2026-27.
  • It aims to lift India's annual domestic container production to about 7.5 lakh TEUs.
  • Support includes capital aid for greenfield and brownfield units, operational assistance, testing infrastructure and skilling.
  • The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways oversees the scheme.
Full notes and 3 MCQs ›

Banking & Finance

Banking & Finance

3. Bank in a Box: Amit Shah Launches Tech Platform for UCBs

  • Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah inaugurated NUCFDC's new premises in Mumbai and launched the 'Bank in a Box' platform for Urban Cooperative Banks.
  • A Security Operations Centre will give participating UCBs round-the-clock cyber monitoring.
  • NUCFDC signed an MoU with the National Forensic Sciences University on cybersecurity and digital forensics.
  • NUCFDC has over Rs 306 crore capital; about 650 of nearly 1,400 UCBs have joined it.
Full notes and 3 MCQs ›

Economy

Economy

4. Bank of America to Acquire Up to 49.9% Stake in Jio Credit

  • Bank of America will buy up to 49.9% of Jio Credit Limited, a Jio Financial Services subsidiary.
  • The total deal is about Rs 18,268 crore, roughly USD 1.9 billion.
  • First step is a 26.5% equity stake for Rs 6,612.90 crore through preferential allotment.
  • Warrants worth Rs 11,655.3 crore, convertible within 18 months, take the stake towards 49.9%.
  • The board will have equal representation from Jio Financial Services and Bank of America.
Full notes and 3 MCQs ›

International Affairs

Science & Technology

Science & Technology

7. SraVaani: IISc Releases Speech AI Model for 65 Indian Languages

  • IISc Bengaluru unveiled SraVaani on August 13, 2026; SPIRE Lab built it with ARTPARK and Google support.
  • It covers 65 Indian languages and dialects: 20 scheduled and 45 regional, across 10 scripts.
  • On Garo, it recorded a 9.5% word error rate against 69.4% for a competing system.
  • Training used Project Vaani data: over 31,000 hours of speech from 156,000 people in 165 districts.
  • The model is available on Hugging Face under an MIT licence.
Full notes and 3 MCQs ›

Environment & Ecology

Environment & Ecology

9. Three New Cascade Frog Species Described from Northeast India

  • Delhi University scientists led by Prof S. D. Biju described three new cascade frog species of the genus Amolops.
  • Ammachi's Cascade Frog comes from Jampui Hills, Tripura; Sendenyu is from Nagaland; Beautiful Cascade Frog is from West Bengal.
  • Ammachi's frog honours Kerala social worker Padmini Varkey, known as Ammachi.
  • The work appeared in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.
  • Researchers studied more than 300 frog populations over 15-plus years using DNA and morphology.
Full notes and 3 MCQs ›

Reports & Indexes

Economy

10. NITI Aayog Manufacturing Report: Four Priority Sectors

  • NITI Aayog released 'Key Sectors to Position India as a Global Manufacturing Hub', covering chemicals, textiles, telecom and networking equipment, and solar PV.
  • Eight more sectors will follow in later reports, and the assessment weighs seven factors.
  • Textiles supply about 2% of GDP, employ over 45 million people and export about $37.7 billion.
  • Solar capacity was 106 GW in March 2025 against a 2030 target of 280 GW.
Full notes and 3 MCQs ›

Awards & Persons

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