Test: October 2022 Weekly Current Affair - 4 - UPSC MCQ

Port towns of  the Indus Valley Civilization: Balakot (Pakistan), Khirasa (in Gujarat’s Kutch) and Kuntasi (in Rajkot).

Green crackers and traditional crackers cause pollution and people should refrain from using either. However, the only difference is that green crackers cause 30 per cent less air pollution as compared to traditional ones. “Green crackers reduce emissions substantially and absorb dust and don’t contain hazardous elements like barium nitrate. Toxic metals in traditional crackers are replaced with less hazardous compounds.
Green crackers developed by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

The Constitution states two things with utmost clarity. One, India, is ‘a union of states’; and two, the official language used for communication between the States shall be the language that has been in use at the time of adoption of the Constitution. 
According to the Constitution the regions of India are eligible to use any of the official languages of India for official purposes. It also acknowledges the possibility of a regional language being adopted and becoming an official language of India, if the President deems that a large enough proportion of the population of India desires it.

FCRA seeks to “regulate the acceptance and utilisation of foreign contribution or foreign hospitality by certain individuals or associations or companies and to prohibit [such] acceptance and utilisation…for any activities detrimental to the national interest…”
The law was enacted during the Emergency in 1976.
FCRA requires every person or NGO wishing to receive foreign donations to be registered under the Act, to open a bank account for the receipt of the foreign funds in State Bank of India, Delhi, and to utilise those funds only for the purpose for which they have been received, and as stipulated in the Act.
They are also required to file annual returns, and they must not transfer the funds to another NGO.
The Act prohibits receipt of foreign funds by candidates for elections, journalists or newspaper and media broadcast companies, judges and government servants, members of legislature and political parties or their office-bearers, and organisations of a political nature.
FCRA registrations are granted to individuals or associations that have definite cultural, economic, educational, religious, and social programmes.
Following the application, the MHA makes inquiries through the Intelligence Bureau into the antecedents of the applicant, and accordingly processes the application. The MHA is required to approve or reject the application within 90 days — failing which it is expected to inform the NGO of the reasons for the same.
Once granted, FCRA registration is valid for five years. NGOs are expected to apply for renewal within six months of the date of expiry of registration. In case of failure to apply for renewal, the registration is deemed to have expired.
The government reserves the right to cancel the FCRA registration of any NGO if it finds it to be in violation of the Act. Registration can be cancelled for a range of reasons including, if “in the opinion of the Central Government, it is necessary in the public interest to cancel the certificate”. Once the registration of an NGO is cancelled, it is not eligible for re-registration for three years. All orders of the government can be challenged in the High Court.

The Coinage Act, 2011 gives the central government the power to design and mint coins in various denominations. In the case of coins, the role of the RBI is limited to the distribution of coins that are supplied by the central government.
The government decides on the quantity of coins to be minted on the basis of indents received from the RBI on a yearly basis, the central bank says. Coins are minted in four mints owned by the Government of India in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Noida.
Two of India’s currency note printing presses (in Nasik and Dewas) are owned by the Government of India; two others (in Mysore and Salboni) are owned by the RBI through its wholly owned subsidiary, Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Ltd (BRBNML).
Ashoka Pillar Banknotes: The first banknote issued in independent India was the Re 1 note issued in 1949. While retaining the existing design, the new banknotes replaced the portrait of King George with the symbol of the Lion Capital of the Ashoka Pillar at Sarnath in the watermark window.

• The Blue Flag is an exclusive eco-label or certification that is given to coastal locations around the world as a badge of environmental honour. The Blue Flag programme is run by the Copenhagen, Denmark-headquartered Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE), a nonprofit which, through its work, contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.
• According to the FEE, “the iconic Blue Flag is one of the world’s most recognised voluntary awards for beaches, marinas, and sustainable boating tourism operators. In order to qualify for the Blue Flag, a series of stringent environmental, educational, safety, and accessibility criteria must be met and maintained.”
• The Blue Flag programme started in 1987, initially in Europe. Certification is awarded annually. A total 5,042 beaches, marinas, and tourism boats in 48 countries have been awarded the label so far. A marina is a small harbour where mainly pleasure boats and yachts dock.
• The certification is given by an international jury comprising members of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), and International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), besides FEE.

The Governor can have his pleasure as long as the government enjoys majority in the House. The Governor can withdraw his pleasure only when the government loses majority but refuses to quit. Then he withdraws the pleasure and dismisses it.
Without the advice of the Chief Minister, a Governor can neither appoint nor dismiss a minister. That’s the constitutional position.

• The first World Sloth Bear Day was observed on October 12, 2022 to generate awareness and strengthen conservation efforts around the unique bear species endemic to the Indian subcontinent. Classified as `Vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List, sloth bears are endemic to the Indian sub-continent and 90% of the species population is found in India.
• A proposal for observing the World Sloth Bear Day was mooted by Wildlife SOS India, an organisation involved in sloth bear conservation and protection for over two decades.
• Sloth bears are identified by their very distinct long, shaggy dark brown or black fur, distinct white V-shaped chest patch and four-inch long ivory-coloured curved claws used for digging out termites and ants from rock-hard mounds. Listed under Schedule I of The (Wildlife Protection) Act of India, 1972 the species has the same level of protection as tigers, rhinos and elephants.

• Dr Dilip Mahalanabis was working in overflowing refugee camps during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war when he came up with ORS, which The Lancet called “the most important medical discovery of the 20th century.’’
• Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) is a simple, effective remedy for dehydration.
• According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), diarrhoeal diseases, such as cholera, are among the leading causes of mortality in infants and young children in many developing countries, where the patient dies of dehydration. ORS, a combination of water, glucose and salts, is a simple and cost-effective method of preventing this.
• The Union Health Ministry has popularised guidelines on preparing and using ORS available in powder form at health centres and chemists. The guidelines, available at the India Health Portal site, advise that contents of the ORS packet should be mixed with the correct amount of water in a clean container. This is important, because too little water could make the diarrhoea worse, the government cautions.
• Also, the ORS must be added only to water, and not to milk, soup, fruit juice, or any soft drink. Sugar should not be added to the solution.
• The ORS solution should be covered and not kept for more than 24 hours, due to the risk of bacterial contamination, the portal says.

• India currently has three operational launch vehicles — the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle or PSLV, of which there are multiple versions; the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle or GSLV Mk-II; and the Launch Vehicle Mark-3 or LVM3.
• The PSLV has been the most commonly used, having carried as many as 53 successful missions since 1993. Only two flights of PSLV have failed.
• The GSLV-MkII rocket has been used in 14 missions, of which four have ended in failures, most recently in August 2021. The LVM3 has flown five times, including the Chandrayaan 2 mission, and has never disappointed.
• The Ariane 5 rockets (of Europe), frequently used by ISRO earlier for its heavy payloads, has a lift-off mass of 780 tonnes, and can carry 20-tonne payloads to lower earth orbits and 10 tonnes to GTO.
• Not surprisingly, most of a rocket’s energy is burnt in travelling to the lower earth orbit. This is because the force of gravity is the strongest here. The journey farther into space is much more smooth, and requires far less energy. In fact, it takes half as much energy for a rocket to travel to the Moon from the LEO (a journey of nearly 4 lakh km) compared to what it takes to travel to LEO from Earth (about 200 km).

• The United States is considering retrieving older HAWK air defence equipment from storage to send to Ukraine which is facing a heavy barrage of Russian drone-fired and cruise missiles.
• HAWK, short for ‘Homing All the Way Killer’, entered service with the US Army in 1959, during the Vietnam war. It underwent upgrades over the decades that followed, including a major one in 1971 that produced the so-called I-HAWK (or improved HAWK), with a kill probability of 85%.
• The HAWK system was the predecessor to the PATRIOT missile defence system that Raytheon built in the 1990s. US forces largely stopped using HAWK from the early years of the new century.

Hybridisation involves crossing two genetically dissimilar plant varieties that can even be from the same species. The first-generation (F1) offspring from such crosses tend to have higher yields than what either parent can individually give.
Such hybridisation isn’t easy in mustard, as its flowers have both female (pistil) and male (stamen) reproductive organs, making the plants largely self-pollinating. Since the eggs of one plant cannot be fertilised by the pollen grains from another, it limits the scope for developing hybrids — unlike in cotton, maize or tomato, where this can be done through simple emasculation or physical removal of anthers.
GEAC is a body responsible for appraisal of proposals relating to the “release” of GM organisms and products (ordinarily considered hazardous) into the environment.

The two new beaches to have been awarded the eco-label are Minicoy Thundi beach and Kadmat beach, both in Lakshadweep.
The other 10 Indian beaches on the list, according to the FEE site, are Shivrajpur in Gujarat’s Devbhumi Dwarka district; Ghogla beach in Diu; Kasarkod (Uttara Kannada) and Padubidri (Udupi) in Karnataka; Kappad (Kozhikode) in Kerala; Eden beach in Puducherry; Kovalam (Chennai) in Tamil Nadu; Rushikonda (Visakhapatnam) in Andhra Pradesh; Golden beach in Puri, Odisha; and Radhanagar Swarajdeep in Andaman and Nicobar.

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has renamed the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark -III as Launch Vehicle Mark-III, mainly to identify its task of placing satellites into a variety of orbits.
• The LVM-3 rocket will also be used for India’s maiden human space flight tentatively scheduled for late 2024.
• A GSLV – for the GEO orbit – will continue to be called so, but the GSLV-Mark III has been renamed as LVM3. The LVM3 will go everywhere —GEO (Geosynchronous Earth Orbit), MEO (Medium Earth Orbit), LEO (Low Earth Orbit), missions to the moon, sun.
• GSLV Mark-III or LVM3 was used to launch the Chandrayaan-2 mission to the moon in 2019, which was the first operational flight of the rocket.

A greenhouse is a structure with walls and roof made chiefly of transparent material, such as glass, in which plants requiring regulated climatic conditions are grown.
The shorter wavelength infrared radiations from the sun can enter into the greenhouse, while longer wavelength infrared radiation from the ground and the plants inside the greenhouse cannot pass back out through the glass.

• Satellite connectivity relies on satellites — rather than cell phone towers, which provide connectivity to regular cell phones. Satellite phones work in remote areas where there are no cell phone towers and therefore, no cellular connectivity. Satellite (or sat) phones usually cover most of the planet with fairly robust connectivity.
• A notification on the website of the Department of Telecommunications says: “Satellite phones are permitted: (i) With specific permission/ NOC from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India; or (ii) As provisioned by M/s BSNL in accordance with license granted to M/s BSNL for provision and operation of satellite based service using Gateway installed in India.”
• Visitors and tourists traveling to India are advised to comply with Indian laws and not bring in or use satellite phones in India without obtaining specific permission from the concerned authorities.
• “Use of Thuraya/Iridium satellite phones is unauthorized/illegal in India”, and that “any passenger carrying satellite phone(s) via baggage is required to declare the same to Customs on arrival and produce permission for use from the concerned authority.”

• Changes in the design and form of bank notes and coins are decided by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the central government. Any change in design of a currency note has to be approved by the RBI’s Central Board and the central government. Changes in the design of coins are the prerogative of the central government.
• Section 22 of The Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, gives RBI the “sole right” to issue banknotes in India. Section 25 states that “the design, form, and material of bank notes shall be such as may be approved by the Central Government after consideration of the recommendations made by the [RBI’s] Central Board”.
• The RBI’s Department of Currency Management — currently headed by Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar — has the responsibility of administering the core function of currency management. According to the RBI website, the Department addresses policy and operational issues relating to the “designing of banknotes; forecasting demand for notes and coins; ensuring smooth distribution of banknotes and coins throughout the country and retrieval of unfit notes and uncurrent coins from circulation; ensuring the integrity of bank notes”, etc.

The recent sighting of three Great Indian Bustards (GIBs) deep in Pakistan’s Cholistan desert has given rise to speculation that the endangered birds might have flown across the international border from India’s Desert National Park (DNP). GIBs are critically endangered in Pakistan because of lack of protection and rampant hunting.
The GIB, which is the State bird of Rajasthan, is also considered India’s most critically endangered bird and is protected under the Wildlife Protection Act. Its population of about 150 in Rajasthan accounts for 95% of its total world population. The captive breeding of GIBs was taken up in the DNP through a project executed by the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India in 2019.

The News Broadcasting & Digital Standards Authority (NBDSA), a self-regulatory agency set up by news and digital broadcasters, has fined the Hindi TV channel News18 India Rs 50,000 for turning a news debate on hijab into a “communal issue” and not adhering to guidelines. The NBDSA held that the programme was in violation of the principles relating to impartiality, neutrality, fairness and good taste and decency.

The NBDSA is an independent body set up by the News Broadcasters & Digital Association (NBDA), which serves as a representative of private television news, current affairs and digital broadcasters. It describes itself as “the collective voice of the news, current affairs and digital broadcasters in India.”

Funded entirely by its members, the NBDA has 26 news and current affairs broadcasters (comprising 119 news and current affairs channels) as its members. Various senior members of Indian media organisations serve on its Board of Directors.

Earlier, RBI used to keep a major chunk of this surplus for its Contingency Fund and Asset Development Fund. However, after the Malegam Committee (2013) recommendations its transfer of surplus to government increased.
Later, the Bimal Jalan committee provided a revised Economic Capital Framework or ECF. ECF provides a methodology for determining the appropriate level of risk provisions and profit distribution to be made under Section 47 of the RBI Act, 1934.

Vembanad is the longest lake in India, as well as the largest lake in the state of Kerala. Kuttanad, also known as The Rice Bowl of Kerala, has the lowest altitude in India, and is also one of the few places in world where cultivation takes place below sea level. Kuttanad lies on the southern portion of Vembanad.

Gastric juice is made up of digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid and other substances that are important for absorbing nutrients – about 3 to 4 liters of gastric juice are produced per day. The hydrochloric acid in the gastric juice breaks down the food and the digestive enzymes split up the proteins. Stomach acid’s low pH level is largely due to hydrochloric acid (HCl).

• The IMFC advises and reports to the IMF Board of Governors on the supervision and management of the international monetary and financial system, including on responses to unfolding events that may disrupt the system.
• Although the IMFC has no formal decision-making powers, in practice, it has become a key instrument for providing strategic direction to the work and policies of the Fund.
• The size and the composition of the IMFC mirrors that of the Executive Board. The IMFC has 24 members who are central bank governors, ministers, or others of comparable rank.
• The IMFC operates by consensus, including on the selection of its chair. A number of international institutions, including the World Bank, participate as observers in the IMFC’s meetings.

• The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice through setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919, it is the first and oldest specialised agency of the UN. 
• The only tripartite U.N. agency, since 1919 the ILO brings together governments, employers and workers of 187 member States, to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all women and men.
• It was created in 1919, as part of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, to reflect the belief that universal and lasting peace can be accomplished only if it is based on social justice.

The United Nations Global Compact is a non-binding United Nations pact to encourage businesses and firms worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation. The UN Global Compact is a principle-based framework for businesses, stating ten principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment and anti-corruption. Under the Global Compact, companies are brought together with UN agencies, labor groups and civil society. Cities can join the Global Compact through the Cities Programme.