Daily Current Affairs MCQ - April 14, 2021 - UPSC MCQ

• The Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations has recently released the World Happiness Report 2021.

  • The United Nations started to celebrate the International Day of Happiness in 2013 but a resolution was passed in July, 2012.

• Bhutan first initiated this resolution, which emphasized the importance of national happiness over national income since the early 1970s, thereby adopting the Gross National Happiness (GNH) over Gross National Product (GNP). 

  • Gross National Happiness: The phrase 'gross national happiness was first coined by the 4th King of Bhutan, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in 1972.

• The rankings are based on polling which looks at six variables:

  • Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Per Capita (Purchasing Power Parity).

  • Social Support.

  • Healthy life expectancy at birth.

  • Freedom to make life choices.

  • Generosity.

  • Perceptions of corruption.

• Finland has been ranked as the happiest country globally for the fourth consecutive year, followed by Iceland, Denmark, and Switzerland. 

  • Afghanistan (149) is the most unhappy country, followed by Zimbabwe (148), Rwanda (147), Botswana (146), and Lesotho (145).

  • India has been ranked 139 out of 149 countries evaluated.

• Open Market Operations refers to buying and selling bonds issued by the Government in the open market. 

• OMO is one of RBI's quantitative tools to smoothen the liquidity conditions through the year and minimize its impact on the interest rate and inflation rate levels. 

  • Quantitative tools control the money supply's extent by changing the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR), or bank rate or open market operations.

  • Qualitative tools include persuasion by the Central bank to make commercial banks discourage or encourage lending, which is done through moral suasion, margin requirement, etc.

• Gluten is a family of storage proteins — formally known as prolamins — naturally found in certain cereal grains, such as wheat, barley etc. 

  • The two main proteins in gluten are glutenin and gliadin.

• Gluten offers various functional culinary benefits and is responsible for the soft, chewy texture that is characteristic of many gluten-containing, grain based foods.

• When heated, gluten proteins form an elastic network that can stretch and trap gas, allowing for optimal leavening or rising and maintaining moisture in breads, pasta, and other similar products.

• Celiac disease, also spelled as coeliac disease, is the most severe form of gluten intolerance. 

• Tax buoyancy explains this relationship between Government's tax revenue growth and GDP changes. It refers to the responsiveness of tax revenue growth to GDP changes when a tax is buoyant. Its revenue increases without increasing the tax rate.

• If the output grows and the tax buoyancy is not commensurate, it means one of the following or both: There is tax evasion or growth in the non-taxed part of GDP (Eg: agriculture)

• The Global Tiger Initiative (GTI) was launched in 2008 as a global alliance of governments, international organizations, civil society, the conservation and scientific communities, and the private sector to work together to save wild tigers from extinction. In 2013, the scope was broadened to include Snow Leopards.

The GTI's founding partners included the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Smithsonian Institution, Save the Tiger Fund, and International Tiger Coalition (representing more than 40 non-government organizations). The 13 tiger range countries lead the initiative (TRCs).

Primary Deficit = Fiscal Deficit – Interest Payments

• The government's total borrowing requirement includes the interest commitments on accumulated debts.

• Primary deficit reflects the extent to which such interest commitments have compelled the government to borrow in the current period.

• It excludes the past debt burden and shows the net increase in the government's indebtedness due to the current year's fiscal operations. A reduction in primary deficit is reflective of government's efforts at bridging the fiscal gap during a financial year.

Dr Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, Judge, Supreme Court of India and Chairperson, e-Committee of the Supreme Court inaugurated a Judgments and Orders Portal e-Filing 3.0 module.

• The Judgments and Orders search portal is a repository of judgments pronounced by various High Courts in the country. It provides facility to search judgements and final orders based on multiple search criteria.

• The e-filing 3.0 module, introduced by the e-Committee of the Supreme Court, allows electronic filing of court documents. With the introduction of the new module, there will be no need for lawyers or clients to visit the court premises to file a case.

• The eCourts project has played a sustained role in ensuring citizen-centric justice and recognizing this exemplary work. This project has been conferred the Excellence in Digital Governance Award in 2020 by India's Government.

Last week, the Supreme Court appeared to accept the Centre's contention that the Rohingya people in India are illegal immigrants. Most of them are in a detention camp in Jammu, and others in Delhi. It said they should be deported according to procedures under the Foreigners Act, 1946.

• Under the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and the subsequent 1967 Protocol, the word refugee pertains to any person who is outside their country of origin and unable or unwilling to return owing to well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

• Stateless persons may also be refugees in this sense, where country of origin (citizenship) is understood as 'country of former habitual residence'.

India & UN convention

• India has welcomed refugees in the past, and on date, nearly 300,000 people here are categorised as refugees.

• But India is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and the subsequent 1967 Protocol.

• Nor does India have a refugee policy or a refugee law of its own.

• In recent years, the closest India has come to a refugee policy is the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, which discriminates between refugees based on religion in offering them Indian citizenship.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Raisina Dialogue on April 13, 2021.

• The 4 day Dialogue will be held virtually.

• It is India's flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics, held annually since 2016.

• It is jointly organised by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation.

• The theme for the 2021 Edition is "#ViralWorld: Outbreaks, Outliers and Out of Control".

• In the past six years, the Raisina Dialogue has grown in stature and profile to emerge as a leading global conference on international affairs. It attracts leading minds from the global strategic and policy-making community to discuss broader foreign policy and strategic issues facing the world.

Union Health Minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan will launch a new mission called `Aahaar Kranti’.

• The mission aims to spread the message of the need for a nutritionally balanced diet and understand the importance of accessible to all local fruits and vegetables.

• Vijnana Bharati (Vibha) and Global Indian Scientists’ and Technocrats’ Forum (GIST) have come together to launch the mission with the motto of ‘Good Diet-Good Cognition’.

• The `Aahaar Kranti’ movement is designed to address the problem of `hunger and diseases in abundance’.

• Union Ministry of Science and Technology’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)’s Pravasi Bharatiya Academic and Scientific Sampark (Prabhaas) is collaborating, and various central and state government ministries and agencies are involved.

• The programme will focus on training teachers, who, in turn, will pass on the message to the multitudes of students, and through them to their families and finally the society at large. Such a strategy was adopted to eradicate polio and it turned out to be a grand success.

• Studies estimate that India produces as much as two times the amount of calories that it consumes. However, many in the country are still malnourished. This strange phenomenon's root cause is a lack of nutritional awareness in all sections of our society.

• The United Nations has also declared 2021 as the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables, which vibes very well with Aahaar Kranti. Fruits and vegetables make a large part of a balanced diet.

• Further, UN sustainable goal # 3 that emphasizes human well-being reads, “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages.” This goal too makes Aahaar Kranti more meaningful. Diet and well-being are inseparable partners.