Test: March 2023 Weekly Current Affair - 3 - UPSC MCQ

Both statements are correct.

Explanation:

1. A stock broker holds securities like shares, debentures, and bonds of investors in electronic form at the request of the investors. This is done to make the process of trading and managing investments more efficient and convenient. The electronic form of holding securities is called dematerialized or demat form.

2. National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) and Central Depository Services (India) Ltd (CDSL) are the two main depositories in India. They provide depository services to investors through their registered intermediaries called Depository Participants (DPs). DPs can be banks, financial institutions, or stockbrokers, and they act as a link between the depositories and the investors. Investors open demat accounts with depository participants to hold their securities in electronic form and avail the services of the depositories.

• The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Shri BVR Subrahmanyam, IAS (Retd.) as Chief Executive Officer, NITI Aayog.
• Formed on January 1, 2015, NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog replaced the Planning Commission. The first meeting of NITI Aayog was chaired by Prime Minister on February 8, 2015.
• As the apex think tank of India’s government, NITI Aayog provides both directional and policy inputs.
• The numerous objectives of the NITI Aayog include fostering cooperative federalism, evolving a shared vision of national development priorities, sectors and strategies with the active involvement of states, and developing mechanisms to formulate credible plans at the village level and aggregate these progressively at higher levels of government.

• Earlier in February, 14 pilot whales were stranded near the shore of Kalpitiya, a town located on Sri Lanka’s west coast.
• Apart from Sri Lanka, Australia’s Tasmania has also seen mass beaching of whales. Last year in September, more than 230 pilot whales were stranded on the west coast of the region.
• Whale stranding is a phenomenon in which whales are stuck on land, usually on a beach. Other aquatic animals like dolphins and porpoises are also known to beach. Most of the stranding events involve single animals but sometimes, mass strandings, consisting of hundreds of marine animals at a time, can happen.
• The reasons for mass strandings are several, including the topography of the region, illness, human activities and increasing noise pollution in the oceans.
• Among the major hotspots for the beaching of aquatic animals are Tasmania, New Zealand‘s Golden Bay and Massachusetts’s Cape Cod in the United States. Pirotta explained that these areas witness several instances of stranding possibly because the deep water here quickly becomes shallow due to tidal variations.

• The Special Marriage Act of 1954 (SMA) was passed by the Parliament on October 9, 1954. It governs a civil marriage where the state sanctions the marriage rather than the religion.
• Issues of personal law such as marriage, divorce, adoption are governed by religious laws that are codified. These laws, such as the Muslim Marriage Act, 1954, and the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, require either spouse to convert to the religion of the other before marriage.
• The SMA enables marriage between inter-faith or inter-caste couples without them giving up their religious identity or resorting to conversion.
• The applicability of the Act extends to the people of all faiths, including Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, and Buddhists, across India.
• The minimum age to get married under the SMA is 21 years for males and 18 years for females.
• AS per Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006, the minimum age of marriage is 21 years in case of males, and 18 years in case of females.

• International Mother Language Day is observed every year on February 21 to honour those in Bangladesh who sacrificed their lives to protect their mother tongue, Bangla, against the then rulers of West Pakistan and to honour the ethno-linguistic rights of individuals across the world.
• The UN proclaimed the period between 2022-2032 as the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, “to draw global attention to the critical status of many indigenous languages around the world and to mobilize stakeholders and resources for their preservation, revitalization, and promotion.

• Carbon tax is a form of pollution tax. It levies a fee on the production, distribution or use of fossil fuels based on how much carbon their combustion emits.
• From an economic perspective, carbon taxes are a type of Pigovian tax. A Pigovian tax is a tax assessed against private individuals or businesses for engaging in activities that create adverse side effects for society. Adverse side effects are those costs that are not included as a part of the product’s market price. These include environmental pollution, strains on public healthcare from the sale of tobacco products, and any other side effects that have an external, negative impact.

• Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), was established by the Government of India in September 1942 as an autonomous body that has emerged as the largest research and development organisation in India.
• Although it is mainly funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, it operates as an autonomous body through the Societies Registration Act, 1860.
• The research and development activities of CSIR include aerospace engineering, structural engineering, ocean sciences, life sciences and healthcare including diagnostics, metallurgy, chemicals, mining, food, petroleum, leather, and environmental science.
• Prime Minister of India is the President of CSIR.

• 5th and 6th schedule directly concern themselves with tribal governance as all the special provisions made under the constitution fall under it. For e.g. constituting a tribal advisory council; giving tribals control over land and forests etc.
• 7th schedule is concerned with the division of legislative power between Centre and States. It concerns with forests; welfare; mining and minerals which have a direct bearing on the tribal community in India.
• 10th schedule is about anti-defection.

India supported freedom of navigation and overflight, and unimpeded commerce based on the principles of international law, reflected notably in the UNCLOS 1982. As a State party to the UNCLOS, India promoted utmost respect for the UNCLOS, which established the international legal order of the seas and oceans.

“Seaweed” is the common name for countless species of marine plants and algae that grow in the ocean as well as in rivers, lakes, and other water bodies.
Some seaweeds are microscopic, such as the phytoplankton that live suspended in the water column and provide the base for most marine food chains. Some are enormous, like the giant kelp that grow in abundant “forests” and tower like underwater redwoods from their roots at the bottom of the sea. Most are medium-sized, come in colors of red, green, brown, and black, and randomly wash up on beaches and shorelines just about everywhere.
Seaweed is chock-full of vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

Scientists have recorded four species of azooxanthellate corals from Indian waters. These non-reef building, solitary corals were found from the waters of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Azooxanthellate corals are a group of corals that do not contain zooxanthellae and derive nourishment not from the sun but from capturing different forms of plankton. These groups of corals are deep-sea representatives, with the majority of species reporting from between 200 m to 1000 m. Their occurrences are also reported from shallow coastal waters.
Zooxanthellate corals, meanwhile, are restricted to shallow waters.

The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain.

The Mekong River is a trans-boundary river, flowing in East Asia and Southeast Asia.
It is the longest river in Southeast Asia. Originating in the Tibetan Plateau, it runs across China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
It drains into the South China Sea.

• The National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) is India’s first-ever Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF).
• It is a state-owned fund set up by the Department of Economic Affairs, Government of India in 2015.
• The NIIF is an alternative for providing long-term capital for the infra-related projects.
• It is registered under the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) under Category II Alternative Investment Fund.
• It is a collaborative investment platform for both international and Indian investors.

Currently, the NIIF is managing the Master Fund, Fund of Funds, and Strategic Fund.
Strategic Fund: This fund is registered as an Alternative Fund II under the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in India. Strategic funds invest primarily in equity and equity-linked instruments.

• The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) recently opened the strategic Zojila Pass located on the Greater Himalayan Range at an altitude of 11,650 feet which acts as a gateway between Union Territories of Ladakh, and Jammu & Kashmir.
• It remained closed for only 68 days this year as compared to 73 days last year and 160-180 days in the past.
• Since the first week of February, snow clearance operations were undertaken from both sides of the pass by Project Beacon and Vijayak, located in J&K and Ladakh, respectively.

The Kessler Syndrome is a phenomenon in which the amount of junk in orbit around Earth reaches a point where it just creates more and more space debris, causing big problems for satellites, astronauts and mission planners.

• Stepping up from its ongoing initiative of providing potable water in six islands of Lakshadweep using Low Temperature Thermal Desalination (LTTD) technology, the Chennai-based National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) is working at making this process free of emissions.
• LTTD exploits the difference in temperature (nearly 15°C) in ocean water at the surface and at depths of about 600 feet. This cold water condenses water at the surface, that is warmer but whose pressure has been lowered using vacuum pumps. Such de-pressurised water can evaporate even at ambient temperatures and this resulting vapour when condensed is free of salts and contaminants and fit to consume.
• The NIOT, an institute under the aegis of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), has worked for years on harnessing energy from the ocean. 

• While hydrogen generated through renewable energy sources is green, it is blue when the carbon generated from the process is captured and stored without dispersing it in the atmosphere. When the carbon is not captured, the generated hydrogen is labelled grey.
• The major challenge in the usage of green hydrogen will be its storage. Given the very low density of hydrogen, it will require large volumes for its storage.
• Alternatively, if one chooses to store it in the liquid form, reducing the storage space requires the maintenance of temperatures as low as minus 253° C. This will entail huge costs.
• The ‘production cost’ of ‘Green hydrogen’ has been considered to be a prime obstacle to the usage of green hydrogen.

Trace metals like cadmium or copper are supplied to oceans via continental run-offs, atmospheric deposition, hydrothermal activities and continental shelf interaction. They are essential for ocean productivity.

• Carbon dating is a widely-used method applied to establish the age of organic material, things that were once living. Living things have carbon in them in various forms. The dating method makes use of the fact that a particular isotope of carbon called C-14, with an atomic mass of 14, is radioactive, and decays at a rate that is well known.
• The most abundant isotope of carbon in the atmosphere is carbon-12 or a carbon atom whose atomic mass is 12. A very small amount of carbon-14 is also present. The ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the atmosphere is almost static, and is known.
• Plants get their carbon through the process of photosynthesis, while animals get it mainly through food. Because plants and animals get their carbon from the atmosphere, they too acquire carbon-12 and carbon-14 isotopes in roughly the same proportion as is available in the atmosphere.
• But when they die, the interactions with the atmosphere stops. There is no further intake of carbon (and no outgo either, because metabolism stops). Now, carbon-12 is stable and does not decay, while carbon-14 is radioactive. Carbon-14 reduces to one-half of itself in about 5,730 years. This is what is known as its ‘half-life’.

Operation Polo: Indian armed forces ended the rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad and led to the incorporation of the princely state of Hyderabad into the Indian Union.

• The bond-buying programme, also known as quantitative easing, was put in place in 2020 as an extraordinary measure to help the financial markets and the economy counter the impact of the pandemic.
• Quantitative easing (QE) is a form of monetary policy in which a central bank, like the U.S. Federal Reserve, purchases securities from the open market to reduce interest rates and increase the money supply.
• Quantitative easing creates new bank reserves, providing banks with more liquidity and encouraging lending and investment.
• Tapering is the reversal of quantitative easing policies, implemented by a central bank and intended to stimulate economic growth.
• Tapering refers specifically to the reduction of central bank assets.
• Financial markets may experience a downturn in response to tapering, known as a “taper tantrum.”
• Interest rate hikes are the primary monetary policy tool used by central banks to tackle sporadic spurts in inflation. When interest rates go up in an economy, it becomes more expensive to borrow; so households are less inclined to buy goods and services, and businesses have a disincentive to borrow funds to expand, buy equipment or invest in new projects.

• A full court meeting literally means one which is attended by all the judges of the court.
• There are no written rules dealing with this. As per convention, full-court meetings are called by the Chief Justice of India to discuss issues of importance to the judiciary. The senior designations of practising advocates in the Supreme Court and high courts are also decided during the full court meetings.
• The basic idea is to take everyone along. Full court meetings are an ideal occasion to arrive at common solutions to deal with problems that beset the country’s legal system and to make any amends, if necessary, in the administrative practices of the court.
• As a full court meeting is convened at the discretion of the Chief Justice of India, it does not follow any particular calendar.

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona. They can eject billions of tons of coronal material and carry an embedded magnetic field (frozen in flux) that is stronger than the background solar wind interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) strength. CMEs travel outward from the Sun at speeds ranging from slower than 250 kilometers per second (km/s) to as fast as near 3000 km/s.
The fastest Earth-directed CMEs can reach our planet in as little as 15-18 hours. Slower CMEs can take several days to arrive. They expand in size as they propagate away from the Sun and larger CMEs can reach a size comprising nearly a quarter of the space between Earth and the Sun by the time it reaches our planet.

Sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation have been found in a large area extending from Sutkagen Dor in Balochistan near the Pakistan-Iran border to Rakhigarhi in Haryana’s Hisar district, and from Manda in Jammu to Daimabad in Maharashtra. Other important sites of the Harappan civilization in India are at Lothal and Dholavira in Gujarat, and Kalibangan in Rajasthan.