Test: December 2022 Weekly Current Affair - 2 - UPSC MCQ

• This year, India nominated Garba, a traditional dance form that originated in the state of Gujarat, for inscription on UNESCO’s ICH list.
• The elements which have been on the representative list of intangible cultural heritage from India in the past decade include Kolkata’s Durga Puja (2021), Kumbh Mela (2017), Navroz (2016), Yoga (2016), traditional brass and copper craft of utensil-making among coppersmiths of Punjab (2014), Sankirtana, a ritual musical performance of Manipur (2013), and the Buddhist chanting of Ladakh (2012).
• Before 2011, the list included Chhau dance, Kalbelia folk songs and dance of Rajasthan, and Mudiyettu, a dance drama from Kerala (2010), Ramman, a religious festival and theatre performance of Garhwal in the Himalayas (2009), and Kutiyattam or Sanskrit theatre, and Vedic chanting (2008).
• Ramlila, a traditional performance of Ramayana, was also included in 2008.

• The doctrine of progressive realisation of rights mandates that the laws of a country should be in consonance with its modern ethos, it should be “sensible” and “easy to apply”.
• In modern societies, this primitiveness necessitated the principle of non-retrogression, or the doctrine of progressive realisation of rights. Article 2(1) of International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) — India is a signatory — seeks to “achieving progressively the full realisation of the rights recognised in the Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures”.

• Tarballs are dark-coloured, sticky balls of oil that form when crude oil floats on the ocean surface. Tarballs are formed by weathering of crude oil in marine environments. They are transported from the open sea to the shores by sea currents and waves.
• Some of the balls are as big as a basketball while others are smaller globules. Tarballs are usually coin-sized and are found strewn on the beaches. However, over the years, they have become as big as basketballs and can weigh as much as 6-7 kgs.
• Wind and waves tear the oil slick into smaller patches that are scattered over a much wider area. Various physical, chemical and biological processes (weathering) change the appearance of the oil.
• It is suspected that the oil comes from the large cargo ships in the deep sea and gets pushed to the shore as tarballs during monsoon due to wind speed and direction.

• According to a press release by PIB, several autonomous bodies within the Ministry of Culture actively function towards promoting and preserving intangible cultural heritage within the country.
• The Ministry of Culture has appointed the Sangeet Natak Akademi, an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Culture, as nodal office for matters relating to the intangible cultural heritage including for preparation of the nomination dossiers for the Representative List of UNESCO.
• The Ministry of Culture also launches regular schemes, in an attempt to preserve, protect and promote intangible cultural heritage in the country. Among them, the “Scheme for Safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage and Diverse Cultural Traditions of India” aims to “professionally” enhance “awareness and interest” in the safeguarding, promotion and propagation of ICH.

• Compressed natural gas, or CNG, is natural gas under pressure which remains clear, odourless, and non-corrosive – and can be used as a cheaper, greener, and more efficient alternative to the traditional petrol and diesel fuels for vehicles.
• CNG is comprised mostly of methane gas which, like gasoline, produces engine power when mixed with air and fed into your engine’s combustion chamber.
• CNG engines run more quietly due to the higher-octane rating of CNG over gasoline and they produce less exhaust emissions. Harmful emissions such as carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) can be reduced by as much as 95% when compared to gasoline powered vehicles.

• They are infections that are most common among marginalised communities in the developing regions of Africa, Asia and the Americas.
• Caused by a variety of pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, protozoa and parasitic worms.
• They generally receive less funding for research and treatment than malaises like tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS and malaria.
• Some examples include snakebite envenomation, scabies, yaws, trachoma, Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease.
  

The sovereign gold bond was introduced by the Government in 2015.
Government introduced these bonds to help reduce India’s over dependence on gold imports.
It was also aimed at changing the habits of Indians from saving in physical form of gold to a paper form with Sovereign backing.

Key facts:

• Eligibility: The bonds will be restricted for sale to resident Indian entities, including individuals, HUFs, trusts, universities and charitable institutions.
• Denomination and tenor: The bonds will be denominated in multiples of gram(s) of gold with a basic unit of 1 gram. The tenor will be for a period of 8 years with exit option from the 5th year to be exercised on the interest payment dates.
• Minimum and Maximum limit: The minimum permissible investment limit will be 1 gram of gold, while the maximum limit will be 4 kg for individual, 4 kg for Hindu Undivided Family and 20 kg for trusts and similar entities per fiscal (April-March) notified by the government from time to time.
• Joint Holder: In case of joint holding, the investment limit of 4 kg will be applied to the first applicant only.
• Collateral: Bonds can be used as collateral for loans. The loan-to-value (LTV) ratio is to be set equal to ordinary gold loan mandated by the Reserve Bank from time to time.

The islands are divided on the basis of physical and human geography into three distinct parts —Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia.
The islands are very small in land area, and are spread wide across the vast equatorial swathe of the Pacific Ocean.

The GST Council was given the power to “make recommendations to the Union and States” on several different matters. These include a model GST law, the goods and services that may be subjected to or exempted from GST and the rates at which tax is to be levied.

The green turtle is one of the largest sea turtles and the only herbivore among the different species. Green turtles are in fact named for the greenish color of their cartilage and fat, not their shells. In the Eastern Pacific, a group of green turtles that have darker shells are called black turtles by the local community. Green turtles are found mainly in tropical and subtropical waters. Like other sea turtles, they migrate long distances between feeding grounds and the beaches from where they hatched.

• While a company can go for repurchase of its shares when it is sitting on a lot of cash but does not have many avenues to invest and prefers to return cash to shareholders, the case of Paytm is different – it’s sitting on huge losses and now using part of investors’ proceeds for the buyback.
• To be eligible to participate in the share repurchase process, a shareholder needs to hold the shares of the company, which has announced the buyback, before the record date declared in the announcement. The share also needs to be held in the demat form.
• As many as 56 companies, including Infosys, TCS, Bajaj Auto and ACC, had opted for share buybacks in 2022.

• A cyclone is a low pressure system that forms over warm waters. Essentially, it is a system of high speed winds rotating around a low-pressure area, with the winds blowing counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
• According to the World Meteorological Organization, “Tropical cyclones are one of the biggest threats to life and property even in the formative stages of their development. They include a number of different hazards that can individually cause significant impacts on life and property, such as storm surge, flooding, extreme winds, tornadoes and lighting.
• Cyclones that form in every ocean basin across the world are named by the regional specialised meteorological centres (RSMCs) and Tropical Cyclone Warning Centres (TCWCs). There are six RSMCs in the world, including the India Meteorological Department (IMD), and five TCWCs.
• As an RSMC, the IMD names the cyclones developing over the north Indian Ocean, including the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, after following a standard procedure. The IMD is also mandated to issue advisories to 12 other countries in the region on the development of cyclones and storms.

• Both Parliament and the State legislatures enjoy equal power to legislate on Goods and Services Tax (GST), and that the Goods and Services Tax Council’s recommendations were just that: recommendations that could never be binding on a legislative body.
• When, in July 2017, the Union government introduced the GST regime through the 101st constitutional Amendment, it did so based on an underlying belief that tax administration across India needed unification. ‘One Nation, One Tax’, was the mantra. To give effect to this idea, many entries in the State list of Schedule VII of the Constitution were either deleted or amended. 

There is also a facility for absentee voters to vote through PBs. These voters are those who are unable to physically cast their vote due to their service conditions. For instance, railway employees who are posted outside their home state are counted as absentee voters.

The Returning Officer:

• The RO is appointed for each constituency by the Election Commission. During the duration of the election, the RO is the highest authority in the constituency having a wide range of powers in order to peacefully and impartially conduct elections.
• ROs themselves do not count all votes but verify the counting at multiple stages and announce the results. They are the final authority in the matter of vote counting in an election. To assist the RO, the EC also appoints Assistant Returning Officers (AROs) to assist the RO in carrying out all the duties.
• Generally, the District Magistrate is the ex-officio RO in Lok Sabha elections while the Sub-Divisional Magistrate is the RO in state assembly elections.

• The Uttarakhand Assembly recently passed a Bill to provide 30 per cent horizontal reservation to local women in state government services.
• In simple terms, while a vertical reservation applies separately for each of the groups specified under the law, the horizontal quota is always applied separately to each vertical category, and not across the board.
• Reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes is referred to as vertical reservation. Horizontal reservation refers to the equal opportunity provided to other categories of beneficiaries such as women, veterans, the transgender community, and individuals with disabilities, cutting through the vertical categories.
• For example, if women have 50 per cent horizontal quota, then half of the selected candidates will have to necessarily be women in each vertical quota category — i.e., half of all selected SC candidates will have to be women, half of the unreserved or general category will have to be women, and so on.

• Aichi Biodiversity Targets that expired in 2020. No single country met all 20 Aichi Targets within its own borders, according to a September 2020 UN assessment.
• The Aichi Targets, adopted during the 2010 CBD summit in Nagoya, located in Japan’s Aichi prefecture, included goals such as reducing deforestation by at least half during the coming decade and curbing pollution so that it no longer harmed ecosystems.
• After parties adopted the Aichi Targets, they were expected to devise their own national biodiversity strategies that would mimic the goals laid out by Aichi. Nearly all parties created these strategies, but most were never fully implemented.

Hydrogen fuel:

• Hydrogen is the lightest and first element on the periodic table. Since the weight of hydrogen is less than air, it rises in the atmosphere and is therefore rarely found in its pure form, H2.
• At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a nontoxic, nonmetallic, odorless, tasteless, colorless, and highly combustible diatomic gas.
• Hydrogen fuel is a zero-emission fuel burned with oxygen. It can be used in fuel cells or internal combustion engines. It is also used as a fuel for spacecraft propulsion.

Occurrence of Hydrogen:

• It is the most abundant element in the universe. The sun and other stars are composed largely of hydrogen.
• Astronomers estimate that 90% of the atoms in the universe are hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen is a component of more compounds than any other element.
• Water is the most abundant compound of hydrogen found on earth.
• Molecular hydrogen is not available on Earth in convenient natural reservoirs. Most hydrogen on Earth is bonded to oxygen in water and to carbon in live or dead and/or fossilized biomass. It can be created by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The Indian roofed turtle (Pangshura tecta) is a species of turtle in the family Geoemydidae. It can be distinguished by the distinct “roof” at the topmost part of the shell. It is found in the major rivers of South Asia. It is a common pet in the Indian Subcontinent. It is found in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.
In India, it is found in Ganges, Brahmaputra and Indus River drainages.
It is listed on Appendix I of CITES.

• G20 is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union. The G20 members represent around 85 per cent of the global GDP, over 75 per cent of global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.
• India holds the Presidency of the G20 from December 1, 2022 to November 30, 2023.
• The G20 was founded in 1999 after the Asian financial crisis, as a forum for Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to discuss global economic and financial issues. The G20 was upgraded to the level of Heads of State/Government in the wake of the global economic and financial crisis of 2007, and, in 2009, was designated the “premier forum for international economic cooperation”.
• The G20 Summit is held annually, under the leadership of a rotating presidency. The G20 initially focused largely on broad macroeconomic issues, but it has since expanded its agenda to inter-alia include trade, climate change, sustainable development, health, agriculture, energy, environment, climate change and anti-corruption.
• The G20 consists of two parallel tracks: the Finance track, led by Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors; and the Sherpa track. Within the two tracks, there are thematically oriented working groups in which representatives from the relevant ministries of the members as well as from invited/guest countries and various international organisations participate.

The power under Article 161 is exercisable in relation to matters to which the executive power of the state extends. While the Governor is bound by the advice of the Council of Ministers (Article 163), the binding nature of such advice will depend on the constitutionality of the same. 

Government has modified the earlier scheme of ‘Special Central Assistance to Tribal Sub-Scheme (SCA to TSS) with nomenclature ‘Pradhan Mantri Adi Adarsh Gram Yojna (PMAAGY)’, for implementation during 2021-22 to 2025-26, which aims at mitigating gaps and providing basic infrastructure in villages with significant tribal population in convergence with funds available under different schemes in Central Scheduled Tribe Component.
It is envisaged to cover 36,428 villages having at least 50% ST population and 500 STs across States / UTs with notified STs during the period.
The main objective of this scheme is to achieve integrated socio-economic development of selected villages through convergence approach. It includes the following components.

• Preparing Village Development Plan based on the needs, potential, and aspirations;
• Maximizing the coverage of individual / family benefit schemes of the Central / State Governments;
• Improving the infrastructure in vital sectors like health, education, connectivity and livelihood;

The Climate Transparency Report provides a concise overview of the key facts and figures on the state of climate performance of the G20 in a comparative stocktake. In 2022, the report especially highlights the link between the climate emergency and energy crisis.

Developed by experts from 16 partner organisations from the majority of the G20 countries, the report informs policy makers and stimulates national debates.

• Aadhaar is a verifiable 12-digit identification number issued the Unique Identification Authority of India on behalf of the Government of India.
• The masked Aadhaar number facility — that can be downloaded from the UIDAI website — and which displays only the last four digits of the Aadhaar number. This was a sensible advisory. The masked Aadhaar facility has been in place since 2018 and this came about following a report by the Centre for Internet and Society.

Yangtse in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh has been repeatedly targeted by Chinese PLA troops. Yangtse is one of the 25 contested areas along the 3488-km Line of Actual Control between the two countries, stretching from the Western Sector to Middle Sector to Eastern Sector.

• Stiff person syndrome is a rare autoimmune neurological condition that affects the central nervous system and can cause rigidity throughout the body and painful muscle spasms. 
• The exact cause of the condition is not clear, but “the immune system is involved. The syndrome is difficult to diagnose.
• Stiff person syndrome often begins with stiffness in the torso and abdomen, which can then spread to the legs, arms and face.
• There is no cure for stiff person syndrome, so doctors focus on symptom and pain management. 
• Anyone at any age can get the condition, but it’s most typical for people in middle adulthood, between 30 and 60, and can be associated with highly stressful events. Like many other immune conditions, it’s more common in women than men.