MCQ - Current Affairs (December - 2019) - UPSC MCQ

In 2017, the Ministry of Women and Child Development launched the ‘Sexual Harassment electronic Box or SHe-Box. It has been developed to ensure the effective implementation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act (the SH Act), 2013. SHe-Box is an online complaint management system for registering complaints related to sexual harassment of women at the workplace. Every woman, irrespective of her work status, whether working in organised or unorganized, private or public sectors can register sexual harassment complaints through this portal.

The Accelerator Lab is an innovative initiative by the UNDP, Qatar Government and the Federal Republic of Germany to find 21st century solutions to today's complex new challenges. These labs seek to identify grassroots solutions together with local actors and validate their potential to accelerate development.

The Hornbill Festival is a celebration held every year in Nagaland. The festival is also called the 'Festival of Festivals'. The festival is organized by the Nagaland State Tourism and Art & Culture Departments. The festival aims to encourage inter-tribal interaction and to promote culture through colorful performances, crafts, sports, food fairs, games and ceremonies. The festival is named after the Great Indian hornbill, the large and colorful forest bird which is displayed in the folklore of most of the state’s tribes.

Recently, Operation Clean Art was conducted in India to ensure that the mongoose hair brush trade be closed down across the country. Operation Clean Art was the first pan India operation to crackdown on the smuggling of mongoose hair in the country. It was conceived by Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) with the aim of ensuring that the mongoose hair brush trade should be closed down across the country.

Minor Forest Produce (MFP) is a subset of forest produce. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 defines minor forest produce as all non-timber forest produce of plant origin. These include bamboo, brushwood, stumps, canes, cocoon, honey, waxes, Lac, tendu leaves, medicinal plants and herbs, roots among others.

India has requested for an early delivery of Meteor air-to-air missiles from France. These missiles will provide India the power to take on US supplied AMRAAM missiles possessed by the Pakistan Air Force. The Meteor missiles are air-to-air missiles with a range of 150 km and no escape zone of 60 km. This no escape zone is the largest in the world according to its manufacturers. These missiles are to be attached to the Rafale jets. With increasing tensions between India and Pakistan, India is requesting for an early delivery

Chief Minister of Odisha has launched a smart learning phone application ‘MadhuApp’ for school children. This app is aims to help school students in learning their lessons via videos and tutorials.
The app named after ‘Utkal Gourab’ Madhusudan Das, the first graduate and advocate of Odisha. The app has been developed by Ganjam district administration in accordance with the 5T action plan of state government. The 5T stands for Technology, Transparency, Teamwork, Transformation and Time.
The app is equipped with video lectures and exercises in Odia language by leading subject experts and educationists. In 1st phase, the study material has been created for Mathematics and Science Subjects of classes V to Vlll.

The Minister of Civil Aviation Shri P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju released the National Civil Aviation Policy 2016 in New Delhi today. This is the first time since independence that an integrated Civil Aviation Policy has been brought out by the Ministry. Speaking on the occasion Shri Raju said that the centre-piece of the policy is to make regional air connectivity a reality. He said that the policy aims to take flying to the masses by making it affordable and convenient, establish an integrated eco-system which will lead to significant growth of the civil aviation sector to promote tourism, employment and balanced regional growth, enhance regional connectivity through fiscal support and infrastructure development and enhance ease of doing business through deregulation, simplified procedures and e-governance.
The policy is very comprehensive, covering 22 areas of the Civil Aviation sector. Its salient features are as follows: Regional Connectivity Scheme
• This scheme will come into effect in the second quarter of 2016-17
• Airfare of about Rs2500 per passenger for a one-hour flight

Recently, to find a solution to stubble burning issue, India is testing a Swedish technology torrefaction that can convert rice stubble into ‘bio-coal’. Torrefaction is a thermal process to convert biomass into a coal-like material which has better fuel characteristics than the original biomass. It involves heating up straw, grass, saw mill residue and wood biomass to 250 degrees Celsius to around 350 degrees Celsius. This changes the elements of the biomass into ‘coal-like’ pellets. These pellets can then are used for combustion along with coal for industrial applications like steel and cement production.

Operation Chammal is a French Military operation in Syria and Iraq to contain the expansion of Islamic State. The name of the operation comes from the north westerly wind that blows over Persian Gulf and Iraq. France has also proposed a visit by the Indian Air force (IAF) to the Al Dhafra air base in the United Arab Emirates where French Air Force Rafale jets stationed in support of Operation Chammal.

Fit India Plogging Run is a part of the Fit India Movement. It was launched on October 2, 2019. Plog Run is a unique way of picking up garbage while jogging. Fit India Plogging Run combines the Fit India Movement and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports has announced Ripu Daman Bevli as the Plogging Ambassador of India.

The main objectives of the RESPOND Programme is to establish strong links with premiere academic institutions in the country to carry out research and developmental projects which are of relevance to Space and derive useful outputs of such R&D to support ISRO programmes. RESPOND programme aims to enhance academic base, generate human resources and infrastructure at the academic institutes to support the Indian Space programme. Under RESPOND, projects in the advanced areas of relevance to Space programme are encouraged to be taken up by premiere universities/academic institutions.

The Paikas were a class of military retainers who had been recruited since the 16th century by kings in Odisha from a variety of social groups to render martial services in return for hereditary rent-free land (nish-kar jagirs) and titles. President will lay the foundation stone for a memorial to mark 200 years of the Paika Rebellion.

Santhali is the language from the North Mundari group of the Austro asiatic Munda family. Santhali is written in Ol Chiki script which was created by Pt. Raghunath Murmu in 1925. The language is primarily spoken in India (Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Assam), Bangladesh and Nepal. By 92nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 2003, Santhali along with Bodo, Maithili and Dogri were added to the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution. Recently, Santhali language has been spoken for the first time in the Rajya Sabha.

The Human Development Report 2019 has placed Norway as the leading country in the world.
The annual report takes into account factors including life expectancy at birth, expected years of schooling, mean total years of schooling, and gross national income per capita.

A product of these factors is used to calculate a country’s Human Development Index (HDI).

Norway’s overall score on the index was 0.954, moving it from number 5 on the 2018 index to number 1 in 2019.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) ranks countries into four tiers of human development by combining measurements of life expectancy, education, and per-capita income into the Human Development Index (HDI) in its annual Human Development Report.

Launched in 2017, it is an initiative by the Ministry of Tourism in close collaboration with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). It aims to develop the heritage sites/monuments, make them tourist-friendly to enhance the tourism potential. Under this scheme, heritage sites/monuments and other tourist sites are entrusted to private players or public sector companies for the development of tourist amenities. The Red Fort was adopted by the Dalmia Group, while the Qutub Minar and the Ajanta Caves were adopted by Yatra Online.

The Prime ministers of India and Bangladesh had signed the Land Boundary Agreement in 1974 to exchange enclaves and simplify their international border. Enclaves refer to territories inside India that actually belongs to Bangladesh and vice versa. A revised version of the agreement was adopted by the two countries in 2015 when the Parliament of India passed the 100th Amendment to the Indian Constitution. Under this agreement, which was ratified in 2015, India received 51 Bangladeshi enclaves in the Indian mainland while Bangladesh received 111 Indian enclaves in the Bangladeshi mainland. More than four years after the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) between India and Bangladesh, a report released by civil rights organizations has found that the situation in erstwhile enclave’s states is not good.

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) has released the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) E-commerce Index 2019. The index compares 152 countries on four major indicators that are highly related to E-Commerce which includes population age, individuals using the internet, postal reliability index and secure internet servers. India has showed slight improvement in its ranking. It was ranked at jump 73rd among 152 countries.

InvITs are investment scheme similar to mutual funds. They allow investment from individuals and institutional investors in infrastructure projects to earn a portion of the income as return. This investment is more attractive for investors as it provides greater flexibility and they don’t have to build an infrastructure project from scratch and is averse to construction risk. Besides, mutual funds and institutes like Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) can also invest in infrastructure space through InvITs.

The Inner Line Permit (ILP) regime has been extended to Manipur. It is a legal travel certificate provided by the Government of India to Indian citizen. It is required to travel into a protected area for a limited time. The aim of the ILP is to regulate movement to certain areas located near the international border of India. ILP was under Bengal Frontier Provision Act, 1873. At present, the ILP is implemented in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, and Nagaland. The respective state governments issue ILPs.

Economic Census is a complete count of all economic establishments located within the geographical boundary of India. It is conducted every five years by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). The Seventh Economic Census was launched in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. The first Economic census was held in 1978. The MoSPI has partnered with Common Service Centres e-Governance Services India Limited, Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) as the implementing agency for 7th Economic Census.

The National Ganga Council will meet on 14th December in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. It has been established as an Authority under National Council for River Ganga (Rejuvenation, Protection and Management) Act, 2016. It comprises the chief ministers of 5 states along the Ganga — Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Jharkhand. Other members include nine Union ministers and the NITI Aayog vicechairman. Prime minister of India is the chairperson of the Council.

Union Home Ministry has warned states about the vulnerability of the Android operating system to a bug called ‘StrandHogg’. It is a vulnerability in Android devices that allows malware to hijack legitimate apps.

India's retail price inflation has jumped to a 40-month high at a time when India’s growth has slowed down to a six-year low. This has prompted some economists to warn that the country could be entering into a stagflationary phase. The term Stagflation was first coined by Paul Samuelson who was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics. Stagflation is a condition of slow economic growth and relatively high unemployment, or economic stagnation, accompanied by rising prices, or inflation.

World Economic Forum (WEF) has released the Global Gender Gap Index Report 2019.
About Global gender gap Index:
• The Global gender gap Index is published annually by the World Economic Forum (WEF) since 2006.
• The report ranks 153 countries on their progress towards gender parity in four dimensions namely
(a) Economic Participation and Opportunity
(b)Educational Attainment
(c) Health and Survival and
(d) Political Empowerment.
• In addition,this year’s report examines gender gap prospects in the professions of the future.