UPSC Prelims Past Year Paper 2016: Paper 1 (GS) - UPSC MCQ

When the Lok Sabha is dissolved, all business including bills, motions, resolutions, notices, petitions and so on pending before it or its committees lapse. They (to be pursued further) must be reintroduced in the newlyconstituted Lok Sabha. However, some pending bills and all pending assurances that are to be examined by the Committee on Government Assurances do not lapse on the dissolution of the Lok Sabha.
The position with respect to lapsing of bills is as follows: A bill pending in the Lok Sabha lapses (whether originating in the Lok Sabha or transmitted to it by the Rajya Sabha).
A bill passed by the Lok Sabha but pending in the Rajya Sabha lapses.
A bill not passed by the two Houses due to disagreement and if the president has notified the holding of a joint sitting before the dissolution of Lok Sabha, does not lapse. A bill pending in the Rajya Sabha but not passed by the Lok Sabha does not lapse.
A bill passed by both Houses but pending assent of the president does not lapse.
A bill passed by both Houses but returned by the president for reconsideration of Houses does not lapse.

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger globally and by country and region. Calculated each year by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the GHI highlights successes and failures in hunger reduction and provides insights into the drivers of hunger. By raising awareness and understanding of regional and country differences in hunger, the GHI aims to trigger actions to reduce hunger.
To reflect the multidimensional nature of hunger, the GHI combines the following four component indicators into one index: Undernourishment: the proportion of undernourished people as a percentage of the population (reflecting the share of the population whose caloric intake is insufficient;

Child wasting: the proportion of children under the age of five who suffer from wasting (that is, low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition); Child stunting: the proportion of children under the age of five who suffer from stunting (that is, low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition); and

Child mortality: the mortality rate of children under the age of five (partially reflecting the fatal synergy of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments).

Budget deficit is used to define a status of financial health in which expenditures exceed revenue. Reducing the revenue expenditure will certainly help in bridging the gap. Subsidies are a part of expenditure and rationalizing them would reduce the deficit.

Introducing new welfare schemes will most likely result in increasing expenditure and so will expanding industries which would require capital infusion.

In August 2015, Reserve Bank of India granted 'in-principle' approval to 11 applicants to start payments banks. These include Reliance Industries, Airtel M Commerce Services, Tech Mahindra, Vodafone mpesa, Aditya Birla Nuvo, Department of Posts, Cholamandalam Distribution Services, Fino PayTech, PayTm, National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) and Sun Pharma. They can issue debit cards but not credit cards.FDI of 74% is allowed in these banks.

Using light to deliver wireless internet will also allow connectivity in environments that do not currently readily support Wi-Fi, such as aircraft cabins, hospitals and hazardous environments. Light is already used for data transmission in fibre-optic cables and for point to point links, but Li-Fi is a special and novel combination of technologies that allow it to be universally adopted for mobile ultra high speed internet communications. Using the visible light spectrum, Li-Fi technology can transmit data and unlock capacity which is 10,000 times greater than that available within the radio spectrum.

Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) is a term used under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that all countries that signed the UNFCCC were asked to publish in the lead up to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris, France in December 2015.
The INDCs, which lay out the blueprint for tackling climate change, emphasised eight key goals — sustainable lifestyles, cleaner economic development, reducing emission intensity of GDP, increasing the share of nonfossil fuel based electricity, enhancing carbon sink, adaptation and mobilising finance, technology transfer and capacity building.

The Union Cabinet had given its approval to a new scheme moved by the Ministry of Power - Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojna or UDAY. UDAY provides for the financial turnaround and revival of Power Distribution companies (DISCOMs), and importantly also ensures a sustainable permanent solution to the problem. Under UDAY, state governments will take over 75 per cent of the debt held by their discoms as of September 30, 2015. Half the debt will be taken over in 2015-16 and 25 per cent in 2016-17. The balance 25 per cent of the debt is to be serviced through state government-guaranteed bonds issued by the discoms.

Bonds are instruments of debt - typically used by corporates to raise money from investors. Masala bonds have to be explained in the context of Indian corporates raising money from overseas investors.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank, issued a Rs. 1,000 crore bond in November last year. The purpose of the issue was to fund infrastructure projects in India.

Companies including NTPC, Neyveli Lignite Corporation, Power Finance Corporation, Power Trading Corporation and Rural Electrification Corporation are likely to launch these Masala Bonds totalling $1 billion in the next three or four months in the UK to gauge the investor appetite. The tenor of these bonds is likely to be limited to a band of five to seven years and these are going to be in smaller denominations ranging from $150-250 million. These will be subject to decisions made by the Boards of the PSU energy companies.

Vijayanagara rulers followed an oppressive taxation policy. The prosperity of the empire can be explained through their taxation principles in the following lines. They collected variety of taxes ranging on the nature of lands.
The villages were classified into eight types for tax purpose. They were:
1)The brahmadeya villages
2) The devadana villages
3) The mathapura villages
4) The sarvamanya villages
5) The kodagi lands
6) Rakta-kodagal lands
7) Guttagi lands
8) The rest of the villages or lands.
The first four types prevailed prior to the Vijayanagar times. Private owners also paid industries taxes. Merchant guilds were empowered to levy taxes on goods manufactured, sold or transported

Kalidasa is the most distinguished dramatist and his treatment of the rasa of love in all its possible manifestations in the three plays Malavikagnimitra (Malavika and Agnimitra), Vikramorvasiya (Vikram and Urvasi) and Abhigyana Shakuntala (the recognition of Shakuntala) is unparalleled. He is the poet of love and beauty, and believes in the affirmation of life, the joy of which lies in pure, sacred and ever-widening love

In WTO terminology, subsidies in general are identified by “Boxes” which are given the colours of traffic lights: green (permitted), amber (slow down — i.e. be reduced), red (forbidden). In agriculture, things are, as usual, more complicated. The Agriculture Agreement has no Red Box, although domestic support exceeding the reduction commitment levels in the Amber Box is prohibited; and there is a Blue Box for subsidies that are tied to programmes that limit production.

The 'amber box': For agriculture, all domestic support measures considered to distort production and trade (with some exceptions) fall into the amber box.
The 'green box': In order to qualify for the "green box", a subsidy must not distort trade, or at most cause minimal distortion. These subsidies have to be government-funded (not by charging consumers higher prices) and must not involve price support.
The 'blue box': The blue box is an exemption from the general rule that all subsidies linked to production must be reduced or kept within defined minimal ("de minimis") levels. It covers payments directly linked to acreage or animal numbers, but under schemes which also limit production by imposing production quotas or requiring farmers to set aside part of their land. Countries using these subsidies - and there are only a handful - say they distort trade less than alternative amber box subsidies. 

Currently, the only members notifying the WTO that they are using or have used the blue box are: the EU, Iceland, Norway, Japan, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and the US (now no longer using the box). 

The Capital Budget is an account of the assets as well as liabilities of the central government, which takes into consideration changes in capital. It consists of capital receipts and capital expenditure of the government. This shows the capital requirements of the government and the pattern of their financing The main items of capital receipts are loans raised by the government from the public which are called market borrowings, borrowing by the government from the Reserve Bank and commercial banks and other financial institutions through the sale of treasury bills, loans received from foreign governments and international organisations, and recoveries of loans granted by the central government.
Capital Expenditure: There are expenditures of the government which result in creation of physical or financial assets or reduction in financial liabilities. This includes expenditure on the acquisition of land, building, machinery, equipment, investment in shares, and loans and advances by the central government to state and union territory governments, PSUs and other parties

Desertification, along with climate change and the loss of biodiversity, were identified as the greatest challenges to sustainable development during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Established in 1994, UNCCD is the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management.
The Convention addresses specifically the arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, known as the drylands, where some of the most vulnerable ecosystems and peoples can be found.
The Convention's 195 parties work together to improve the living conditions for people in drylands, to maintain and restore land and soil productivity, and to mitigate the effects of drought.
The UNCCD is particularly committed to a bottom-up approach, encouraging the participation of local people in combating desertification and land degradation.
The UNCCD secretariat facilitates cooperation between developed and developing countries, particularly around knowledge and technology transfer for sustainable land management.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund decided to include the Chinese currency, the renminbi (yuan), into its basket of currencies that make up the IMF’s Special Drawing Right (SDR). The decision was taken during the IMF’s five-yearly review of the basket of currencies.

SDRs are artificial currency created to augment international liquidity. It is neither a currency nor a claim on IMF rather it supplements the existing reserves of member countries of IMF. To be included as SDR a currency must be freely usable, widely used and widely traded. U.S. dollar, the euro, British pound and the Japanese yen form the SDR basket. IMF has decided to include Yuan in the SDR basket with effect from October 1, 2016. The respective weights of the U.S. dollar, euro, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, and pound sterling are 41.73 percent, 30.93 percent, 10.92 percent, 8.33 percent.

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 IMF. A number of international institutions, including the World Bank, participate as observers in the IMFC’s meetings.

Campaign has started in 2001 known as ‘Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan’, (National Campaign for Dignity and Elimination of Manual Scavenging) has proven to be a very innovative and effective program to eliminate manual scavenging practice. Campaign has liberated 11,000 women manual scavengers in various parts of India and urged them to give up this caste-based, unconstitutional practice. In its efforts campaign attain to social, economic, political and cultural rehabilitation of Manual Scavenger.

The twelfth century witnessed the emergence of a new movement in Karnataka, led by a Brahmana named Basavanna (1106-68) who was initially a Jaina and a minister in the court of a Chalukya king. His followers were known as Virashaivas (heroes of Shiva) or Lingayats (wearers of the linga).The Lingayats challenged the idea of caste and the “pollution” attributed to certain groups by Brahmanas. They also questioned the theory of rebirth. These won them followers amongst those who were marginalised within the Brahmanical social order. Siddhas (Sittars) Saiva school in Tamil Nadu which held the monotheistic puritan creed and roundly condemned idolatry, there history are not known they seem to be known as most active during 16th and 17th century.

Import cover is an important indicator of the stability of the currency. It measures the number of months of money available in the national bank to cover the cost of imports or the stock of foreign exchange reserves in terms of months of retained imports of goods as at end of year. During the currency crisis of 2013, when foreign exchange reserves fell to around $275 billion, import cover dipped to around seven months.

The Madhesi also referred to as Teraibasi Nepali are an indigenous ethnic group of Nepalese people who are natives of the Madhesh plains of Southern Nepal in Terai belt of South Asia.
Between 25 and 35 million Kurds inhabit a mountainous region straddling the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia. They make up the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but they have never obtained a permanent nation state.

The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority in the majority Buddhist Myanmar. Many of their enemies refuse to acknowledge that the Rohingya are an ethnically distinct group. They claim instead that the Rohingya are Bengali and that their presence in Myanmar is the result of illegal immigration (more on that later). The Rohingya, for their part, claim to be pre-colonial residents of Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the Middle East Institute explains, with the earliest known appearance of the term Rohingya in 1799

OPCW is the Hague-based autonomous body, which works within the framework of the United Nations, was established in 1997 by the Chemical Weapons Convention to carry out its mandate.

OBJECTIVES:
OPCW Member States share the collective goal of preventing chemistry from ever again being used for warfare, thereby strengthening international security. To this end, the Convention contains four key provisions: destroying all existing chemical weapons under international verification by the OPCW monitoring chemical industry to prevent new weapons from re-emerging; providing assistance and protection to States Parties against chemical threats; and fostering international cooperation to strengthen implementation of the Convention and promote the peaceful use of chemistry.

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) is the new crop damage insurance scheme that has been approved by the Union Cabinet in January 2016. It will replace the existing two crop insurance schemes National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and Modified NAIS. The new scheme will come into force from the Kharif season starting in June this year.
One of the highlights included there will be a uniform premium of only 2% to be paid by farmers for all Kharif crops and 1.5% for all Rabi crops. In case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, the premium to be paid by farmers will be only 5%. Also POST-HARVEST LOSSES includes (individual farm basis): Coverage is available upto a maximum period of 14 days from harvesting for those crops which are kept in "cut & spread" condition to dry in the field after harvesting, against specific perils of cyclone / cyclonic rains, unseasonal rains throughout the country.
Hence only statement 2 is correct.

The great hornbill, a magnificent bird reaching a length of three-and-a-half feet, is distinguished by a big yellow beak with a casque and striking tail feathers the magnificent birds which were a common sight in the Western Ghats are rarely seen, due to deforestation. habitat loss threatens its future, and hunting has depleted populations. It is protected at the highest level under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, but that can do little to save the habitat.

The Central Government set up the ‘National Ganga River Basin Authority’ (NGRBA) in 2009 and mandated it to take up regulatory and developmental functions with sustainability needs for effective abatement of pollution and conservation of the river Ganga by adopting a river basin approach for comprehensive planning and management.
The Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation (MoWR, RD & GR) is the nodal Ministry for the NGRBA. The authority is chaired by the Prime Minister and has as its members the Union Ministers concerned, the Chief Ministers of the States through which Ganga flows, viz., Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, among others. This initiative is expected to rejuvenate the collective efforts of the Centre and the States for cleaning the river. NGRBA functions include development of a Ganga River Basin Management Plan, regulation of activities aimed at prevention, control and abatement of pollution, to maintain water quality and to take measures relevant to the river ecology in the Ganga basin states. It is mandated to ensure the maintenance of minimum ecological flows in the river Ganga and abate pollution through planning, financing and execution of programmes including that of
1) Augmentation of Sewerage Infrastructure
2) Catchment Area Treatment
3) Protection of Flood Plains
4) Creating Public Awareness

Urea is an important supplier of nitrogen, which is necessary for the development of plants. But only 30-40 per cent of nitrogen present in the urea is utilised by crops. The rest gets degraded.
When ordinary urea is applied, it gets converted to ammonium carbamate. Some of this gets converted to ammonia gas in what is called ammonia volatilisation.
About 8-10 per cent nitrogen is lost during volatilization. The rest of the ammonium carbamate undergoes chemical transformation and nitrates are formed. Some of these are absorbed by the plants. The rest are either leached into the underground water or are denitrified to gaseous nitrogen and nitrous oxide under anaerobic conditions (absence of oxygen). Neem has properties that check nitrogen loss at each stage. It slows down the process of nitrate formation and hence excess nitrate is not available for denitrification.
When farmers use this urea, the slow release of nitrogen helps the fertility of the soil. Therefore, there will be more yield to the extent of 15-20%. Also, the higher usage of neem-coated urea would check diversion of urea for industrial use. Neem coated urea also works as insecticide.

The incumbent to the post of Chief Secretary is chosen by and appointed by the Chief Minister and the Ministers of the State. The trend is that the Chief Minister consults the Union Government regarding the appointment of the Chief Secretary but, this consultation is not obligatory. There is no fixed tenure for the post of Chief Secretary. Administrative reform commission in 1969 had recommended that a Chief secretary should have a minimum tenure of three to four years.

"Stand Up India Scheme" was initiated to promote entrepreneurship among Scheduled Castes, Schedule Tribes and Women.
The scheme will provide financial aid through the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) with an initial amount of Rs 10,000 crore. The system will personally guide each entrepreneur through the pre-loan and operational phases.
The scheme will also familiarise the entrepreneurs with factoring services, emarket places and registration with online platforms and other aspects of web entrepreneurship.

Statement 1 is incorrect. GIAHS aims to protect traditional agricultural systems. It will not provide any modern technology and training.

Statement 2 is correct. GIAHS aims to identify and safeguard eco-friendly traditional farm practices and their associated landscapes, agricultural biodiversity and knowledge systems of the local communities.

Statement 3 is also incorrect. There is no such provision.

All the given rivers Dibang, Kameng and Lohit are the tributaries of Brahmaputra.

Only statement 1 is correct. Core banking solution enables customers to operate their accounts, and avail banking services from any branch of the bank on CBS network, regardless of where they oepn and maintain their account.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), created multilaterally under the UNFCCC is one of the mitigation instruments under the Kyoto Protocol.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), defined in Article 12 of the Protocol, allows a country with an emission-reduction or emission-limitation commitment under the Kyoto Protocol (Annex B Party) to implement an emissionreduction project in developing countries. Such projects can earn saleable certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each equivalent to one tonne of CO₂, which can be counted towards meeting Kyoto targets.
Annex-I countries are parties to Kyoto protocol.