Current Affairs is defined as ‘events of political or social interest and importance happening in the world at the present time’. Basically, this means that Current Affairs is an avenue of broadcast journalism that serves to inform its readers on events of political or social interest that are occurring presently or have happened at a very recent time, and of various discussions, takes and perceptions of the same events. It often contains a thorough analysis by various important people.

Although Current Affairs is a wide part of all types of publications, as various people write about occurring events or about their opinions and take on various events, the most widespread and popular method of spreading news of Current Affairs is the Internet. While there are many advantages to using the Net to publish pieces about Current Affairs, one of the most noticeable and significant ones is that the process, due to the extensive speed of the Internet, is an instantaneous one, resulting in readers being informed about new events, or receiving updates on past events within bare minutes of them taking place.

Current Affairs reports on everyday events in a variety of fields like political, industrial, Finance, Social and Administrative controversy, Scientific and Technological advancements, innovations and inventions, along with diplomatic and international events, and generally is present in all areas, including areas which are not deemed important enough by Newspapers, magazines or such publications to report on.

The reach of Current Affairs is quite wide: the areas where the events occur can be anywhere in the world, including First world Nations like the U.S or U.K, developing nations like some Latin American ones, with a special focus on the events in third world countries.

Current Affairs is a venue of reporting the information that almost the entirety of the world is interested in. Current Affairs plays a big role in education. In the current scenario in India, all kinds of competitive examination have Current Affairs as a part of it the scope of which can be anything from administrative news to Election results and to the immense enjoyment of some, the results of sports matches. The time frame of questions being asked can be from events that happened the past month or even stretching back to events from past years.

Current Affairs is a large part of most exams, at all levels of education, whether one is talking about the simple School Examinations, the gut-wrenching College Examinations, the maddeningly tough University Exams, and even the vexing Competitive Exams. While most Schools keep Current Affairs as an entirely separate subject (or joined with the exam of General Knowledge), Colleges keep a healthy portion of Current Affairs in almost all semester and other exams. And we can never forget how important it is for Competitive examinations such as Bank, Railways, SSC and UPSC where at-least one-fourth weight is given to current affairs.

The point of putting Current Affairs in the curriculum of most examinations is a quite simple one: the objective is to test how much the participant is up-to-date on recent events, and also to test the information gathering ability of the participant (which can be seen in the level of difficulty of questions one is able to answer, and how far back one’s knowledge of Current Affairs go. It displays the level of preparation done for the exam).

Current Affairs is also included in exams needed for jobs, like Banking Exams. The happenings in a country can have sudden and varied effects on the market, with prices of stocks rising or falling and the prices of commodities sky rocketing or going dirt cheap. Most Trade or Finance related exams include a Current Affairs portion, both to observe whether their future employees keep updated on the recent news and often feature reaction based questions to gauge how well a particular person responds to a situation.