Daily Current Affairs MCQ - October 16, 2021 - UPSC MCQ

Drought is generally considered as a deficiency in rainfall /precipitation over an extended period, usually a season or more, resulting in a water shortage causing adverse impacts on vegetation, animals, and/or people.

There is no single, legally accepted definition of drought in India. Some states resort to their own definitions of drought. State Government is the final authority when it comes to declaring a region as drought affected. 

The Supreme Court of India in its verdict in the matter of Swaraj Abhiyan Vs Union of India stated that drought would certainly fall within the definition of “disaster” as defined under Section 2(d) of the Disaster Management (DM) Act, 2005.

What is a production linked-incentive?

A Production-Linked Incentive, or PLI scheme, provides incentives to companies in order to boost domestic manufacturing. 

This is done by the government in an effort to make products more competitively priced, reduce a country’s dependence on imports and generate employment.

The incentives in EV PLI, like most, are purely percentage based, with a maximum of 18% incentives to be offered by the government, based on the incremental turnover of a company. The idea is to promote the development of technologies that are currently lacking in India and can be availed simultaneously along with the Faster Adoption of Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme, PLI scheme for advanced chemistry cell (ACC) among others. With the EV supply and value chain apparatus yet to be fully built, a PLI of this scale can help with its rapid development.

• Recently, the Reserve Bank of India launched the Account Aggregator Frameworkaimed at making financial data more easily accessible.
• According to the Reserve Bank of India, an Account Aggregator is a non-banking financial company engaged in the business of providing, under a contract, the service of retrieving or collecting financial information pertaining to its customer.
• It is also engaged in consolidating, organising and presenting such information to the customer or any other financial information user as may be specified by the bank.
• The licence for Account Aggregator is issued by the RBI, and the financial sector will have many AAs.

How will an account aggregator work?

• The framework will allow financial data to be exchanged between the holders of data and its users.
• The RBI has allowed a number of companies like PhonePe to act as account aggregators to facilitate this process.
• Account aggregators will act as intermediaries who will collect data from one financial entity and exchange it with another.

For example, a bank which is processing a loan application from a potential borrower may want to access a variety of financial data about the borrower.

The lending bank can access details of the borrower’s savings, past loan repayment record, mutual fund holdings and insurance holdings through an account aggregator.

The borrower, however, will have to grant consent for the sharing of his data with the lending bank.

Minister for Transport and Tribal Welfare, Karnataka inaugurated Piaggio Vehicles Pvt. Ltd. Karnataka’s second EV experience centre at Bengaluru.

Karnataka were the first State to introduce an electric vehicle policy and more recently Karnataka became the first State to set up a new battery-swapping network in its capital to help clean and reliable last-mile connectivity in the region.

Battery swapping stations

Instead of charging the batteries immediately, there is another way to refuel the energy source of EVs: mechanically swapping the discharged batteries with fully charged batteries. 

All these batteries should be owned by the service station or battery company while the EV driver is only a battery borrower. 

The discharged batteries will either be charged at the service station or centrally collected and charged. 

Since the battery swapping process involves mechanical replacement and battery recharging, it is also named as mechanical refuelling or mechanical recharging. 

There are many obstacles to practically implementing battery swapping. Firstly, the initial cost to set up this battery swapping system is very high. Secondly, space to build a battery swapping station is much larger than that for a charging station. Thirdly, the EV batteries need to be standardized in physical dimensions and electrical parameters before the possible implementation of automatic battery swapping.

Indian aviation kicked off in 1932, with the introduction of the first airline, Tata Air Services. The airline, founded by J.R.D Tata, started as an airmail carrier within India. The airline flew its inaugural flight in October 1932, flying from Karachi to Mumbai.

The aluminium industry has sent an SOS to Coal India, demanding the immediate resumption of supplies for survival of the industry that is facing an ‘alarming’ situation following coal shortage.

The current acute coal crunch has created an immensely precarious situation, majorly for the highly power-intensive industries like aluminium wherein coal accounts for about 40% of the production cost

Aluminum is the second most used metal in the world after steel

India is the fourth largest producer of aluminium in the world with a share of around 5.3% of the global aluminium output.

The principal user segment of the aluminium industry in India continues to be the electrical and electronics sector followed by automotive, transportation, building, construction, packaging, consumer durables, industrial and defence.

The first Prime Minister’s Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (PM-WANI) project was launched at Uyyalawada village in Kurnool district.

As part of the project, Public Data Offices (PDOs) will work like Public Call Offices (PCOs) to facilitate user’s data service at cheaper rates so that every citizen can enjoy Internet facility.

As per the National Digital Communication Plan, the Central government has set a target of setting up millions of Wi-Fi hotspots by 2022 and the PM-WANI scheme will facilitate this.

The Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi approved the proposal of Department of Telecom (DoT) to proliferate Broadband through Public Wi-Fi networks under the framework of the Prime Minister’s Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (PM-WANI).

To facilitate ease of doing business and encourage local shops and small establishments to become Wi-Fi providers, it has been approved that the last-mile Public Wi-Fi providers require no license, no registration and will not need to pay any fees to DoT.

India’s trade with China set to exceed $100 billion in 2021

India’s biggest exports to China are iron ore, cotton, and other raw material-based commodities. India imports mechanical and electrical machinery in large quantities, while imports of medical supplies have soared in the past two years.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is India’s national standards body, tasked with maintaining the quality and safety of products meant for consumption in the country. It applies to products produced domestically as well as imports.

The bureau allows use of the ISI Mark under its product certification schemes. While certification is largely voluntary, some product categories require mandatory certification. In the case of imports, these products come under two certification schemes:

Compulsory Registration Scheme (CRS): It covers all electronic and information technology products (mobiles, laptops, smart watches, bluetooth speakers, televisions, LED lights, etc). It is mandatory for an importer sourcing a CRS product from China (or any other country) to register that product with BIS. Certification is granted to the manufacturer of the goods and not the importer.

Foreign Manufacturers Certification Scheme (FMCS): Several product categories require a mandatory ISI mark to be sold in India. These include cement, batteries, car tyres, medical equipment (X-ray machines), iron and steel products, chemicals, fertilizers, toys and food items (milk powder, packaged water, baby formula, etc). Importers of such products can register them with BIS under the Foreign Manufacturers Certification Scheme. Manufacturers with factories located outside India are eligible for a license under this scheme provided they ensure compliance with BIS quality standards and have the required manufacturing infrastructure, production process, quality control and testing capabilities at their premises

Vultures not only keep our environment free of carcasses but also help control disease outbreak.

India has nine species of vultures. Many are critically endangered. The main reason for the decline in the vulture population is the use of the drug, diclofenac. Diclofenac, which relieves cattle of pain, is toxic to vultures even in small doses and causes kidney failure and death.

India banned diclofenac for veterinary use in 2006. Five States are to get vulture breeding centres under the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation for 2020-2025.

Mangalyaan, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft has completed seven earth years in its orbit in 2021.

According to ISRO officials, the spacecraft has successfuly covered three Martian years.

Mangalyaan, ISRO’s maiden interplanetary mission, was launched from the Sriharikota spaceport on November 5, 2013.

The orbiter got inserted into Martian orbit on September 24, 2014 in its first attempt, making India the first Asian country to have successfully launched its Mars orbiter mission and also the first country to have entered the Martian orbit in its first attempt.

An important conclusion of the mission has been the finding that dust storms on the Martian can rise up to hundreds of kilometres.

Built at a cost of Rs. 4.5 billion, Mangalyaan is hailed for being much cheaper than NASA’s Maven Orbiter, which was similar to India’s Mars mission.

What are Martian years?

It is one of several units for timekeeping on Mars. A sol is slightly longer than an Earth day. It is approximately 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds long. A Martian year is approximately 668 sols, equivalent to approximately 687 Earth days or 1.88 Earth years.