Daily Current Affairs MCQ - February 17, 2022 - UPSC MCQ

India plans to prepare digital maps of all its 6,00,000 villages and pan-India 3D maps will be prepared for 100 cities, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh said at an event to mark a year of the updated geospatial policy guidelines.

• An ongoing scheme, piloted by the Panchayati Raj Ministry, called SVAMITVA (Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas) was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April 2020.
• The updated guidelines help private companies prepare a variety of maps without needing approvals from a host of Ministries and make it easier to use drones and develop applications via location mapping.
• The “trinity of geospatial systems, drone policy and unlocked space sector will be the hallmark of India’s future economic progress”.
• The complete geospatial policy would be announced soon as the liberalisation of guidelines had yielded very positive outcomes within a year’s time.
• The geographical information based system mapping would also be useful in forest management, disaster management, electrical utilities, land records, water distribution, and property taxation.
• The size of the Indian geospatial market in 2020 to be ₹23,345 crore, including ₹10,595 crore of export which was likely to grow to ₹36,300 crore by 2025.
• Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will deliver the inaugural address at The Energy and Resources Institute’s (TERI) World Sustainable Development Summit on 16th February, 2022 via video message.

• World Sustainable Development Summit is TERI’s annual flagship event.
• The theme for this year’s Summit is ‘Towards a Resilient Planet: Ensuring a Sustainable and Equitable Future’.
• The Summit will discuss a wide range of issues including climate change, sustainable production, energy transitions, global commons and resource security.
• Hence both statements are correct.

The Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, will launch the Scheme for Economic Empowerment of DNTs (SEED) on 16th February, 2022 at Dr. Ambedkar International Centre, New Delhi for the welfare of De-notified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic Communities.

• The Scheme will have four components with an approximate cost of Rs 200 crore to be spent over a period of 5 years starting Financial Year 2021-22 to 2025-26.
• The four components are:
  • To provide coaching of good quality for DNT/NT/SNT candidates to enable them to appear in competitive examinations.
  • To provide health insurance to DNT/NT/SNT Communities.
  • To facilitate livelihoods initiative at community level to build and strengthen small clusters of DNT/NT/SNT Communities institutions.
  • To provide financial assistance for construction of houses to members of the DNT/NT/SNT Communities.
• The Scheme will be implemented through a portal, developed by the Department of Social Justice & Empowerment.
• The funds will be transferred directly to the beneficiaries in their account.
• The other implementing agencies are Ministry of Rural Development, National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) and National Health Authority (NHA).
• Hence only statement 1 is correct.

India’s Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar visited the Maldives on February 13-14, for discussions with the Maldives National Defence Force as part of the second Defence Cooperation Dialogue.

• The Defence Cooperation Dialogue is one of India’s policy-level frameworks that aims to strengthen long-standing and mutually beneficial bilateral defence ties.
• The first Defence Cooperation Dialogue was held in July 2016 during the presidency of Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom and the second DCD was held in January 2019.
• The location of the Maldives, at the intersection of commercial sea-lanes running through the Indian Ocean, makes it strategically important for India, particularly in the light of China’s growing aggression in the region.
• During the visit, Dr. Kumar handed over the refitted ship, the CGS Huravee to the Maldives.
• The Trinkat-class patrol vessel was gifted to the Maldivian Coast Guard in 2006. This vessel is used by the Maldives for coastal surveillance and for combating transnational crimes such as drug trafficking, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

Why is this important for bilateral relations?

• Since 1988, defence and security have been major areas of cooperation between India and Maldives.
• This cooperation extends to assisting the Maldives with defence training and equipment requirements. India provides the largest number of training opportunities for Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF), meeting around 70 per cent of their defence training requirements.
• In 2016, the two countries also signed a comprehensive action plan to consolidate defence partnership.
• Hence both statements are correct.

The Karnataka High Court is hearing a challenge to the constitutionality of the state government’s ban on students wearing a hijab in educational institutions. The judges heard an argument on whether the state can justify the ban on the ground that it violates ‘public order’.

• Public order is one of the three grounds on which the state can restrict freedom of religion. Public order’ is also one of the grounds to restrict free speech and other fundamental rights.
• Article 25 of the Constitution guarantees to all persons right to freedom and conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion subject to public order, morality and health.
• Public order is normally equated with equated with public peace and safety. According to List 2 of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, the power to legislate on aspects of public order rests with the states.
• According to the government order issued on February 5 under the Karnataka Education Act, 1983, “public order” is one of the reasons for not allowing students to wear a headscarf in educational institutions along with “unity” and “integrity”.
• Hence only statement 1 is correct.

NITI Aayog and Mastercard recently released a report titled ‘Connected Commerce: Creating a Roadmap for a Digitally Inclusive Bharat’.

• The report identifies challenges in accelerating digital financial inclusion in India and provides recommendations for making digital services accessible to its 1.3 billion citizens.

Key recommendations in the report include:

• Strengthening the payment infrastructure to promote a level playing field for NBFCs and banks.
• Digitizing registration and compliance processes and diversifying credit sources to enable growth opportunities for MSMEs.
• Building information sharing systems, including a ‘fraud repository’, and ensuring that online digital commerce platforms carry warnings to alert consumers to the risk of frauds.
• Enabling agricultural NBFCs to access low-cost capital and deploy a ‘phygital’ (physical + digital) model for achieving better long-term digital outcomes. Digitizing land records will also provide a major boost to the sector.
• To make city transit seamlessly accessible to all with minimal crowding and queues, leveraging existing smartphones and contactless cards, and aim for an inclusive, interoperable, and fully open system such as that of the London ‘Tube’.
• Hence, option (b) is the correct answer.

Acute shortage of anti-fungal injection ‘amphotericin’ and other anti-fungal medicines used to treat mucormycosis, a life-threatening infection that follows Covid-19 in roughly 30% diabetics, is now adding to difficulties of patients.

• Amphotericin B injection is used to treat serious and potentially life-threatening fungal infections. Amphotericin B injection is in a class of medications called antifungals. It works by slowing the growth of fungi that cause infection.
• It is typically given by injection into a vein.
• Amphotericin B was isolated from Streptomyces nodosus in 1955 and came into medical use in 1958. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.

Hence only statement 2 is correct.

An unfamiliar lineament is among four factors behind frequent earthquakes in northern Assam’s Sonitpur area.

• A lineament is a linear feature in a landscape dictated by an underlying geological structure such as a fault.
• According to the Geological Survey of India (GSI), Sonitpur district lies within a tectonically complex triangular area bounded by the east-west trending Atherkhet Fault, the northwest-southeast trending Kopili Fault and a north-south trending lineament.
• The two faults and the lineament, along with the oblique convergence of the Indian plate, have caused frequent earthquakes.
• The National Centre of Seismology recorded 29 earthquakes of magnitude varying from 2.6 to 4.7 in Sonitpur after the 6.4 tremblor on April 28 that damaged several buildings, bridges and a river embankment.
• The northeast is demarcated as Seismic Zone V, which indicates a zone with high vulnerability. The Indian plate is moving northeast toward the Eurasian plate in the Himalayan region, their oblique collision and release of stress and strain accumulated in the local tectonic or fault environments lead to earthquakes.

Hence, option (d) is the correct answer.

The supreme court said that the Centre alone is empowered to identify Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) and include them in the Central List for claiming reservation benefits.

• The President (that is the Central government) alone, to the exclusion of all other authorities, is empowered to identify SEBCs and include them in a list to be published under Article 342A (1), which shall be deemed to include SEBCs in relation to each State and Union Territory for the purposes of the Constitution.
• States could only make suggestions to the President or the statutory commissions concerned for inclusion, exclusion or modification of castes and communities to be included in the List.
• The Central List is to be the “only list” for the SEBC.
• Once published, under Article 342A (1), the list can only be amended through a law enacted by Parliament, by virtue of Article 342A (2).
• In the task of identification of SEBCs, the President shall be guided by the Commission (National Commission for Backward Classes) set up under Article 338B; its advice shall also be sought by the State in regard to policies that might be framed by it.
• If the commission prepares a report concerning matters of identification, such a report has to be shared with the State government, which is bound to deal with it, in accordance with provisions of Article 338B.
• However, the final determination culminates in the exercise undertaken by the President (i.e. the Central Government, under Article 342A (1).
• However, the President’s prerogative as far as the identification and inclusion of SEBCs in the List would not affect the States’ power to make reservations in favour of particular communities or castes within the ambit of Articles 15 and 16.

Hence only statement 2 is correct.

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has dissolved Parliament, opening the way for lawmakers from opposing sides of the country’s civil war to be appointed under a 2018 peace accord.

• The setting up of a new legislative body was part of an accord signed in September 2018 between Mr. Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar, for years on opposition sides during the five-year civil war that left 3,80,000 people dead and four million displaced.
• In accordance with the 2018 accord, the new assembly will number 550 lawmakers, the majority — 332 — from Mr. Kiir’s governing SPLM party. The parliamentarians will be nominated by the different parties.
• South Sudan is a landlocked country in east/central Africa.
• It is bordered to the east by Ethiopia, to the north by Sudan, to the west by the Central African Republic, to the southwest by Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south by Uganda and to the southeast by Kenya.
• It gained independence from the Republic of the Sudan in 2011, making it the most recent sovereign state or country with widespread recognition as of 2021.
• Its capital is Juba.
• It includes the vast swamp region of the Sudd, formed by the White Nile and known locally as the Bahr al Jabal meaning "Mountain River".
• The White Nile passes through the country, passing by Juba.

Hence, option (a) is the correct answer.