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

PM-KISAN Scheme 

• PM Kisan is a Central Sector scheme with 100% funding from Government of India. 
• It has become operational from 1.12.2018.
• Under the scheme an income support of 6,000/- per year in three equal installments will be provided to all land holding farmer families. 
• Definition of family for the scheme is husband, wife and minor children. 
• State Government and UT administration will identify the farmer families which are eligible for support as per scheme guidelines. 
• The fund will be directly transferred to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries. 
• There are various Exclusion Categories for the scheme. 

• The Representation of Peoples Act, 1951 provides a legal framework for the conduct of elections in India.
• The key provisions of the act include allocation of seats in the House of the People and in the Legislative Assemblies and Legislative Councils of States.
• The Act also lays down procedures for electoral rolls and the manner of filling seats. There are provisions under ROPA for disqualification of candidates.

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is vested with the responsibility of conducting monetary policy. This responsibility is explicitly mandated under the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934.
• The primary objective of monetary policy is to maintain price stability while keeping in mind the objective of growth. Price stability is a necessary precondition to sustainable growth.
• In May 2016, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act, 1934 was amended to provide a statutory basis for the implementation of the flexible inflation targeting framework.

The presidential electoral college is made up of the following:

• elected members of the Rajya Sabha;
• elected members of the Lok Sabha;
• elected members of each state’s Legislative Assembly; and
• elected members of each union territory possessing a Legislative assembly (i.e. Delhi, (Jammu & Kashmir not included) and Puducherry)

The MLAs of the UT of J&K are no longer part of the electoral college. 

• Any Bill, barring those designated as Money Bills by the Lok Sabha Speaker, needs the assent of the second chamber to become law.
• The Rajya Sabha should consist of not more than 250 members – 238 members representing the States and Union Territories, and 12 members nominated by the President. As of 2021 it has a membership of 245, of which 233 are elected by the legislatures of the states and union territories using single transferable votes through open ballots, while the president can appoint 12 members for their contributions to art, literature, science, and social services.
• In the last three-and-a-half-decades, no ruling party has ever crossed halfway mark of the total number of seats in the Rajya Sabha.

• India’s Project 75-I, under which conventional (non-nuclear or diesel-electric) submarines are to be built domestically.
• A major issue of contention in Project 75-I appears to be the installation of an air independent propulsion system (AIP) on these vessels. Since conventional submarines are propelled underwater by electric-power, battery endurance remains a major limitation. The submarine has to periodically expose itself to draw air for running generators that charge their battery-banks. It was to overcome this major vulnerability that several types of propulsion systems were evolved in Europe using “air independent,” closed-cycle diesel or steam engines which would endow conventional submarines with much longer underwater endurance.
• Project 75-I is also the first programme to be progressed under the MoD’s new Strategic Partnership concept which ostensibly offers a “level-playing field” to the private sector. In this model, MDL and Larsen & Toubro will choose a foreign submarine-builder for collaboration and offer competing bids to build six modern conventional submarines.

• Three out of every four river monitoring stations in India posted alarming levels of heavy toxic metals such as lead, iron, nickel, cadmium, arsenic, chromium and copper.
• State of Environment Report 2022 from the environmental NGO, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). The report is an annual compendium of environment-development data and is derived from public sources.
• India has 764 river quality monitoring stations across 28 states. Of these, the Central Water Commission tested water samples from 688 stations for heavy metals between August 2018 and December 2020.
• Of the 588 water quality stations monitored for pollution, total coliform and biochemical oxygen demand were high in 239 and 88 stations across 21 States – an indicator of poor wastewater treatment from industry, agriculture and domestic households. 

• Tamil Nadu topped the State Food Safety Index this year, followed by Gujarat and Maharashtra this year.
• FSSAI has developed State Food Safety Index to measure the performance of states on various parameters of Food Safety. This index is based on performance of State/ UT on five significant parameters, namely, Human Resources and Institutional Data, Compliance, Food Testing – Infrastructure and Surveillance, Training & Capacity Building and Consumer Empowerment. The Index is a dynamic quantitative and qualitative benchmarking model that provides an objective framework for evaluating food safety across all States/UTs.

• The Union government has made capturing of attendance through its app, National Mobile Monitoring System, compulsory at worksites where 20 or more workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are employed.
• The Ministry of Rural Development had started the exercise on a pilot basis on May 21, 2021. Initially, the utilisation of application was to be voluntary but from May 16, 2022 it has been made mandatory. The Ministry’s directive claims that the app, which requires two time-stamped and geotagged photographs of the workers in a day, encourages transparency and increases citizen oversight.
• The biggest setback after the move has been for women employees, especially the supervisors or “work mates”. In a majority of cases, the employees’ families are averse to giving phones to women, especially smartphones. Hence, many women have dropped out.

• The total value of votes would be 10,86,431 (5,43,200 for MPs or 700 votes each and 5,43,231 for MLAs based on 1971 Census population figures).
• Each candidate would require 50 members of the electoral college to propose their name and another 50 to second it. 
• The polling would be carried out in the Parliament House for MPs and at the respective State Assemblies for MLAs, with the Rajya Sabha Secretary General declared as the Returning Officer. The electors would cast their ballots using the pen provided by the EC as has been the norm.
• Among all the States, Sikkim has the lowest value of the vote of each MLA.

• ‘Green jobs’ refer to a class of jobs that directly have a positive impact on the planet, and contribute to the overall environmental welfare. Jobs involving renewable energy, conservation of resources, ensuring energy efficient means are categorised under the same. In all, they’re aimed at reducing the negative environmental impact of economic sectors and furthering the process of creating a low-carbon economy.
• The Skill Council for Green Jobs was launched by the Union government on October 1, 2015. Aligned to the National Skill Development Missions, it was set up to be a not-for-profit, independent, industry-led initiative. Promoted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the council aims to help manufacturers and other service providers in India’s ‘green business’ sector to implement industry-led, collaborative skills push the country on the path to truly realising the real potential and significance of ‘green jobs’. 

• India is home to over 1,000 museums representing a rich and diverse blend of the cultural, religious and scientific achievements that our civilisation has witnessed over the years. These museums do not just lie under the control of the Ministry of Culture. Other Ministries manage the Railway museums, the crafts and textiles museums, and the food museum, to name a few. Therefore, the government is taking a whole-of -government approach to provide a wholesome experience to all stakeholders. To achieve this, as an example, the 25 science cities, centres and museums under the National Council of Science Museums, an autonomous body under the Ministry of Culture, are backed with a Memoranda of Understanding with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
• The Ministry of Culture organised a first-of-its-kind Global Summit on ‘Reimagining Museums in India’ in February this year.

• The Chilika Lake, Asia’s largest brackish water lagoon, has 176 fishing cats, according to a census conducted by Chilika Development Authority (CDA) in collaboration with The Fishing Cat Project (TFCP).
• This is the world’s first population estimation of the fishing cat, which has been conducted outside the protected area network.
• A total of 150 camera traps were deployed in two phases with each fixed in the field for 30 days. Spatially Explicit Capture Recapture (SECR) method was used to analyse the data.
• Spatially explicit capture–recapture (SECR or SCR) is used to estimate the density of an animal population from capture–recapture data collected using an array of ‘detectors’.

Every year, the Rabha community in India’s north-eastern state of Assam celebrates the Baikho festival, to please a deity of wealth and ask for good rains and a good harvest.

• The amended RBI Act also provides for the inflation target to be set by the Government of India, in consultation with the Reserve Bank, once in every five years. Accordingly, the Central Government notified in the Official Gazette 4 per cent Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation as the target for the period from August 5, 2016 to March 31, 2021 with the upper tolerance limit of 6 per cent and the lower tolerance limit of 2 per cent. On March 31, 2021, the Central Government retained the inflation target and the tolerance band for the next 5-year period – April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2026.
• The amended RBI Act explicitly provides the legislative mandate to the Reserve Bank to operate the monetary policy framework of the country.
• The Monetary Policy Framework aims at setting the policy (repo) rate based on an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation; and modulation of liquidity conditions to anchor money market rates at or around the repo rate. Repo rate changes transmit through the money market to the entire the financial system, which, in turn, influences aggregate demand – a key determinant of inflation and growth.

• The Four-metre International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) saw the first light recently, gazing out from its vantage on Devasthal, a hill in Uttarakhand, into the deep sky.
• The telescope, staring at the sky overhead, will make sky surveys possible and obtain images that can help observe transient phenomena such as supernovae and record the presence of space debris or meteorites – basically, watch the skies.
• The telescope has been built by a collaboration of scientists from Canada, Belgium and India and is located at an altitude of 2,450 metres at the Devasthal Observatory campus of the Aryabhata Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) in Nainital district, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.
• A large pool of mercury placed in a vessel is spun around so fast that it curves into a parabolic shape. Since mercury is reflective, this shape helps in focusing the reflected light. A thin sheet of mylar protects the mercury from the wind.
  

Injeti Srinivas Committee: A High Level Committee on CSR was formed in 2018 under the Chairmanship of Injeti Srinivas.
The main recommendations included making CSR expenditure tax deductible, allowing the carry-forward of unspent balance for a period of 3-5 years, and aligning Schedule VII of the Companies Act with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

India has the highest number of incident and prevalent cases of Type-1 diabetes in the world as per recent estimates from the International Diabetes Federation.

Type I diabetes, also called juvenile diabetes , is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin. It typically appears in adolescence and symptoms include increased thirst, frequent urination, hunger, fatigue and blurred vision. Treatment is aimed at maintaining normal blood sugar levels through regular monitoring, insulin therapy, diet and exercise.

The Repo rate hike will force banks and non-banking finance companies to increase repo-linked lending rates and minimum cost of funds based lending rates (MCLR) further. This is because the cost of funds of banks will rise with the Repo rate hike. The net result will be a further rise in equated monthly instalments (EMIs) of existing borrowers. Moreover, new home, vehicle and personal loans will also become costlier. Analysts also say consumption and demand can be impacted by the Repo rate hike.

Foreign Contribution Regulation (Amendment), Act 2020:

• Under the Act, foreign contribution cannot be transferred to any other person unless such person is also registered for that purpose.
• The amendment also forbids sub-granting by NGOs to smaller NGOs who work at the grassroots.
• The act states that foreign contributions must be received only in an FCRA account opened in the State Bank of India, New Delhi Branch. No funds other than the foreign contribution should be received or deposited in this account.
• Restriction in utilisation of foreign contribution: The act gives government powers to stop utilization of foreign funds by an organization through a “summary enquiry”.
• Reduction in use of foreign contribution for administrative purposes: The act decreases administrative expenses through foreign funds by an organization to 20% from 50% earlier.
• Surrender of certificate: The act allows the central government to permit a person to surrender their registration certificate.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by Prime Minister, approved the increase in MSPs for all 14 kharif (summer) crops for 2022-23 crop year.
Announcing the MSP hike before the sowing of kharif crops will give farmers an indication about the price which they would get and help them in deciding which crops to grow.

Global Environment Facility (GEF):

• The Global Environment Facility was established on the eve of the 1992 Rio Earth Summitto help tackle our planet’s most pressing environmental problems.
• It is an international partnership of 184 countries, international institutions, civil society organizations and the private sector that addresses global environmental issues.
• GEF funds are available to developing countries and countries with economies in transition to meet the objectives of the international environmental conventions and agreements.
• The World Bank serves as the GEF Trustee, administering the GEF Trust Fund.
• It is a FINANCIAL MECHANISM for five major international environmental conventions: 
  • Minamata Convention on Mercury,
  • Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs),
  • United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD),
  • United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
  • United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

• India has the highest number of incident and prevalent cases of Type-1 diabetes in the world as per recent estimates from the International Diabetes Federation.
• Type I diabetes, also called juvenile diabetes , is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin. It typically appears in adolescence and symptoms include increased thirst, frequent urination, hunger, fatigue and blurred vision. Treatment is aimed at maintaining normal blood sugar levels through regular monitoring, insulin therapy, diet and exercise.

Assets are things a firm owns or what a firm can claim from others. In case of a bank, apart from buildings, furniture, etc., its assets are loans given to public.

Reserves are deposits which commercial banks keep with the Central bank, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and its cash. These reserves are kept partly as cash and partly in the form of financial instruments (bonds and treasury bills) issued by the RBI. Reserves are similar to deposits we keep with banks. We keep deposits and these deposits are our assets, they can be withdrawn by us. Similarly, commercial banks like State Bank of India (SBI) keep their deposits with RBI and these are called Reserves.

Assets = Reserves + Loans

Liabilities for any firm are its debts or what it owes to others. For a bank, the main liability is the deposits which people keep with it.