Daily Current Affairs MCQ - September 27, 2021 - UPSC MCQ

The geographical influence of Maoists has contracted to only 41 districts in the country, a sharp reduction from 96 such districts in 10 States in 2010, according to data provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to Chief Ministers and other officials at a meeting held.

• These miscreants have been pushed to a few pockets with only 25 districts accounting for 85% of the LWE (Left Wing Extremism) violence in the country.
• Union Home Minister Amit Shah chaired the meeting to review the security and other developmental aspects in the LWE-hit States.
• Addressing the meeting, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren accused the Centre of slashing the number of LWE-affected districts in the State that could avail ₹33 crore under the Special Central Assistance (SCA) and Security Related Expenditure (SRA) scheme for infrastructure-related projects.
• According to the ministry, there has been a gradual decline in the number of LWE incidents in the last decade. The incidents have reduced from 2,258 in 2009 to 349 incidents till August 31 this year. The number of deaths reduced from 908 to 110 during the same period.
• Hence both statements are correct.

Continuing its infrastructure build-up in Tibet, China has completed a key section of the Beijing-Lhasa expressway, a 295-km stretch from Lhasa to Nagqu.

• This section is located at an average altitude of 4,500 metres above sea level, which Chinese state media have termed the world’s highest expressway.
• The Lhasa-Nagqu section is part of the G6 Beijing-Lhasa expressway and is the first expressway linking Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region to north Tibet.
• It also connects the PLA’s Central Theatre Command with the Western Theatre Command which is responsible for the border with India, an official source said.
• An important stretch of the expressway between Nagqu to Yangbaijain of Lhasa-Nagqu section was put into operational trial on August 21. On completion of Lhasa-Nagqu section, the driving time between Lhasa and Nagqu has reduced from six hours to three hours.
• The completed expressway will pass through seven major cities of China including Beijing, Hebei, inner Mangolia, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai and Lhasa with an approximate length of 3,710 km.
• In June, China had launched a high speed bullet train connecting Lhasa with Nyingchi, a strategically located Tibetan town located close to Arunachal Pradesh.
• Hence, option (a) is the correct answer.

Setting the stage for an overhaul of the multiple tax rates under the Goods and Services Tax regime, the government has tasked a Group of Ministers (GoM), led by Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj S. Bommai, with proposing a rationalisation of tax rates and considering the merger of different tax slabs within two months.

• Currently, the GST regime has five broad tax rate slabs of zero, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%, with a cess levied over and above the 28% on some goods, and special rates for items like precious stones and diamonds.
• Mr. Bommai’s seven-member group constituted by the Finance Ministry on Friday includes West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra and Kerala Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal, as well as GST Council members from Goa, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
• The GoM shall review the current tax slab rates and recommend changes in the same as may be needed to garner required resources (and) review the current rate slab structure of GST, including special rates, and recommend rationalisation measures, including merger of tax rate slabs, required for a simpler rate structure in GST.
• Hence, option (a) is the correct answer.

In a historic initiative, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi will launch the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission on 27th September 2021.

• The pilot project of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission had been announced by the Prime Minister from the ramparts of Red Fort on 15th August, 2020. Currently, Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission is being implemented in pilot phase in six Union Territories.
• The nation-wide rollout of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission coincides with NHA celebrating the third anniversary of Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY).
• Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission is based on the foundations laid down in the form of Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile (JAM) trinity and other digital initiatives of the government
• Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission will create a seamless online platform through the provision of a wide-range of data, information and infrastructure services, duly leveraging open, interoperable, standards-based digital systems while ensuring the security, confidentiality and privacy of health-related personal information.
• The key components of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission include
  • a health ID for every citizen that will also work as their health account, to which personal health records can be linked and viewed with the help of a mobile application;
  • a Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) and Healthcare Facilities Registries (HFR) that will act as a repository of all healthcare providers across both modern and traditional systems of medicine.
• Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission Sandbox, created as a part of the Mission, will act as a framework for technology and product testing that will help organizations, including private players, intending to be a part of National Digital Health Ecosystem become a Health Information Provider or Health Information User.
• Hence both statements are correct.

Last week, an eviction drive in Sipajhar in Assam’s Darrang district took a violent turn, leaving two dead and several injured, after clashes broke out between the police and protesters.

• The eviction drive in Dholpur of Sipajhar, where primarily Bengali-speaking Muslims live, was aimed at removing “illegal encroachers” to free up government land for “landless indigenous communities”.
• Portions of the land in Dholpur — as well as the larger Garukhuti area — have been a site of conflict for decades, with indigenous residents claiming their land has been usurped by migrants.

What is the extent of encroachment of land in Assam?

• Land has long been at the centre of ethnic contestations in Assam, with the common belief that the “indigenous” Assamese were losing its land to “migrants from Bangladesh”.
• The Brahma Committee, formed by the previous Sarbananda Sonowal government to make recommendations on land rights, said in its interim report in 2017 that 63 lakh bighas of government land was under “illegal occupation”.
• Hence, option (a) is the correct answer.

• Left-wing extremists, popularly known as Maoists worldwide and as Naxalites in India. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
• The term Naxalism derives its name from the village Naxalbari of West Bengal. It originated as a rebellion against local landlords who bashed a peasant over a land dispute.
  • The rebellion was initiated in 1967, with an objective of rightful redistribution of the land to working peasants under the leadership of Kanu Sanyal and Jagan Santhal.
• It is considered that Naxals support Maoist political sentiments and ideology.
  • Maoism is a form of communism developed by Mao Tse Tung. It is a doctrine to capture State power through a combination of armed insurgency, mass mobilization and strategic alliances.
  • The region, affected by Left-wing extremism, is referred to as the Red corridor. Hence, statement 2 is correct.

• Z-Morh Tunnel: It is an under construction tunnel, 20 km away from the Zojila Pass, on Srinagar-Kargil-Leh highway.
  • The 6.5 km long tunnel will connect Gagangir directly to Sonamarg in Kashmir.
• Nilgrar Tunnels:
  • The Nilgrar-I is a twin tube tunnel of 433 m length each.
  • The Nilgrar twin tunnel-II is of 1.95 Km length each.
  • Nilgrar-I and Nilgrar-II tunnels are part of the 18 Km long approach road to Zojila west portal.
    • Zojila tunnel will provide connectivity to Ladakh region Kargil, Drass and Leh.
• Chattergala Tunnel: It is an under construction road tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir.
  • The tunnel will be 6.8 km long and will connect Kathua and Doda districts of Jammu and Kashmir via basohli-bani through Chattergala.
• The Atal Tunnel is located in Himachal Pradesh’s Rohtang, which connects Solang Valley near Manali to Sissu in Lahaul and Spiti district.
  • The 9.02-km tunnel is the longest highway tunnel in the world above the height of 3,000 metres.
  • It cuts through a mountain west of the Rohtang pass and will shorten the distance between Solang Valley and Sissu by around 46 km and will take around 15 minutes to cover. Earlier, it would take nearly 4 hours to travel between the two points.
• Hence, option D is correct.

• Recently, an international team of researchers made the first direct detection of dark energy. The experiment named XENON1T, is the world’s most sensitive dark matter experiment and was operated deep underground at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy.
  • Dark energy is the mysterious form of energy that makes up about 68% of the universe, and has intrigued physicists and astronomers for decades.
• The XENON1T is a dark matter research project, operated at the Italian Gran Sasso National Laboratory.
  • It is a deep underground research facility featuring increasingly ambitious experiments aiming to detect dark matter particles.
  • The experiments aim to detect particles in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) by looking for rare interactions via nuclear recoils in a liquid xenon target chamber.
• Hence, option B is correct.

The National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRD&PR), Hyderabad under the auspices of the Ministry of Rural Development presented Hunarbaaz Awards to 75 diyangjan candidates from 15 states.

• The virtual award ceremony was organised by NIRDPR with MoRD, in association with State Rural Livelihood Missions (SRLMs) and Rural Self-employment Training Institutes (RSETIs).
• Hunarbaaz Awards have been instituted by the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRD&PR), Hyderabad under the auspices of the Ministry of Rural Development for 75 differently-abled candidates as part of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav.
• The awards are given to the candidates who were trained through Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY) and RSETI schemes of the Ministry in various trades, they subsequently got placed and worked in the organizations for more than one year or were successfully settled in the trade of their choice as self-employed.
• Hence, option (a) is the correct answer.

An international team of researchers made the first putative direct detection of dark energy.

• Dark energy, the mysterious form of energy that makes up about 68% of the universe, has intrigued physicists and astronomers for decades.
• Dark energy has been noted as “the most profound mystery in all of science”.

Dark energy Vs Dark matter

• Everything we see – the planets, moons, massive galaxies, you, me, this website – makes up less than 5% of the universe.
• About 27% is dark matter and 68% is dark energy.
• While dark matter attracts and holds galaxies together, dark energy repels and causes the expansion of our universe.
• Despite both components being invisible, we know a lot more about dark matter, since its existence was suggested as early as the 1920s, while dark energy wasn’t discovered until 1998

Recent detection

• They noticed certain unexpected results in an underground experiment and write that dark energy may be responsible for it.
• The XENON1T experiment is the world’s most sensitive dark matter experiment and was operated deep underground at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy.
• The finding also suggests that experiments like XENON1T, which are designed to detect dark matter, could also be used to detect dark energy.
• Hence both statements are correct.