Test: August 2023 Weekly Current Affair - 3 - UPSC MCQ

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• The TFR has fallen sharply for India in the past three decades. Between 1992-93 and 2019-21, it came down from 3.4 to 2; the fall was especially significant in the rural areas.
• A TFR of 2.1 is considered as “replacement-level fertility”. Simply understood, a woman having two children replaces herself and her partner with two new lives. Since all infants may not survive, the replacement TFR is taken at slightly above two.
• The TFR is the average number of births by women aged 15-49 based on surveys for a particular period/year. Populations can keep growing even with TFRs falling. De-growth requires TFRs to remain below replacement levels for extended periods. The effects of that — fewer children today becoming parents tomorrow and procreating just as much or less — may reflect only after a couple of generations.

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.

Statement 1 is incorrect.

• Methane is one of the main drivers of climate change, responsible for 30 per cent of the warming since preindustrial times, second only to carbon dioxide. Over a 20-year period, methane is 80 times more potent at warming than carbon dioxide, according to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme.
• It’s also the primary contributor to the formation of ground-level ozone, a colourless and highly irritating gas that forms just above the Earth’s surface.
• While carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for much longer than methane, methane is roughly 25 times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere, and has an important short-term influence on the rate of climate change.

The Vishaka Guidelines were a set of procedural guidelines for use in India in cases of sexual harassment. They were promulgated by theIndian Supreme Court in 1997 and were superseded in 2013 by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act.

Statement 4 is incorrect.

• The Chips to Startup (C2S) Programme aims to train 85,000 number of high-quality and qualified engineers in the area of Very large-scale integration (VLSI) and Embedded System Design as well as result in development of 175 ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits), Working Prototypes of 20 System on Chips (SoC) and IP Core repository over a period of 5 years.
• The programme would be implemented at about 100 academic institutions/R&D organisations across the Country (including IITs, NITs, IIITs, Government/Private Colleges and R&D Organisations). Startups and MSMEs can also participate in the programme by submitting their proposals under Academia- Industry Collaborative Project, Grand Challenge/ /Hackathons.
• The C2S Programme addresses each entity of the value chain in electronics viz. quality manpower training, research and development, hardware IPs design, System design, application-oriented R&D, Prototype design and deployment with the help of academia, industry, start-ups and R&D establishments.

Only statement 1 is correct.

• India possesses an estimated 10 million manuscripts in 80 ancient scripts like Brahmi, Kushan, Gaudi, Lepcha, and Maithili, says the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM), an autonomous body under the Culture Ministry, which is mandated with preserving the vast manuscript wealth of India.
• Manuscripts are written on materials such as palm leaf, paper, cloth, and bark on themes ranging from history and religion to literature, astrology, and agricultural practice. While 75% of the existing manuscripts are in Sanskrit, 25% are in regional languages.

The Nehru Trophy Boat Race is an annual vallam kali held in the Punnamada Lake near Alappuzha, Kerala.

The Bakhshali manuscript, an ancient Indian mathematical text written on birch bark, is considered to be the earliest recorded example of the use of zero.

He is believed to be a disciple of the bhakti saint-poet Ramananda and a contemporary of the bhakti saint-poet Kabir.

• One of his famous disciples was the saint, Mirabai.
• Among Ravidas’s moral and intellectual achievements were the conception of “Begampura”, a city that knows no sorrow; and a society where caste and class have ceased to matter. The Adi Granth of Sikhs, in addition to the Panchvani are the two of the oldest documented sources of the literary works of Guru Ravidas.
• Notably, he belonged to an untouchable caste and suffered a lot of atrocities as a result. However, the saint chose to focus on spiritual pursuits and also penned several devotional songs which made a huge impact in the Bhakti movement during the 14th to 16th century CE.
• Ravidas’ devotional songs were included in the Sikh scriptures, Guru Granth Sahib.

Statements 2 and 3 are correct.

• Mangrove forests are formed when there is intertidal flow and where adequate sediments are available for the trees to set down roots. Experts say aquaculture or fisheries along the coast obstructing tidal flow is one of the biggest threats to the mangrove ecosystem. In the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the country, several instances of clearing mangroves for fisheries have come to light. Along the country’s coastline, land reclamation for agriculture, aquaculture and industrial activities have occurred in areas which are under the Coastal Regulation Zone. Restoration of the land and allowing intertidal flow is crucial for plantation and survival of mangrove forests.
• Discharge of untreated domestic and industrial effluents into the rivers impede the natural inter-tidal flow along the coast and the mixing of freshwater and saline water which help in gradual formation of the mangrove forest.

Option 5 is incorrect.

National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) is an organisation of the Government of India created under Sec 70A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (amended 2008), through a gazette notification on 16th Jan 2014 based in New Delhi, India. It is designated as the National Nodal Agency in respect of Critical Information Infrastructure Protection.
Vision: To facilitate safe, secure and resilient Information Infrastructure for Critical Sectors of the Nation.
Mission: To take all necessary measures to facilitate protection of Critical Information Infrastructure, from unauthorized access, modification, use, disclosure, disruption, incapacitation or destruction through coherent coordination, synergy and raising information security awareness among all stakeholders.

NCIIPC has broadly identified the following as ‘Critical Sectors’ :-

• Power & Energy
• Banking, Financial Services & Insurance
• Telecom
• Transport
• Government
• Strategic & Public Enterprises

Demographic dividend, as defined by the United Nations Population Fund, is “the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population is larger than the non-working-age share of the population”.

• Under the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994, amended in 2011 and 2014, organs can be harvested from deceased donors or from living relatives of the recipient (children, siblings, spouse, or grandparents, and grandchildren). The Act also allows unrelated donors such as relatives other than close ones, long-term friends, or in-laws, but prohibits any financial exchange.
• Although livers, pancreas, or lungs can be harvested from living donors, the rackets mainly target the kidney as it is the most in demand.
• The kidney can survive longer outside of the body — 24 to 36 hours — than the lungs (4-5 hour) and the liver (8-12).
• The most common cause is hypertension and diabetes. Other causes include certain hereditary diseases, infections, and autoimmune diseases. “High blood pressure and diabetes are the biggest causes of kidney damage in India, leading to 50% of kidney failures. Obesity is also a big risk factor because it increases the risk of diabetes and hypertension.

The Assam Rifles is India’s oldest paramilitary force — it was raised in 1835 with just 750 men. It has since fought in the two World Wars and the Sino-Indian war of 1962, and has been used as an anti-insurgency force against militant groups in the Northeast.

The AR was raised as the Cachar Levy, a militia that would protect tea estates and British settlements against raids by the tribal peoples of the Northeast. The force was subsequently reorganised as the Assam Frontier Force, and its role was expanded to conduct punitive operations beyond the borders of Assam. Given its contribution in opening the Northeastern region to administration and commerce, it came to be known as the “right arm of the civil and left arm of the military”.

• 2015 “sponge city” initiative aimed at reducing urban flood risks.
• The initiative was launched to boost flood resilience in major cities and make better use of rainwater through architectural, engineering and infrastructural tweaks.
• China has long sought to improve the way it handles extreme weather, and make highly populated cities less vulnerable to flooding and drought. The “sponge city” initiative was designed to make greater use of lower-impact “nature-based solutions” to better distribute water and improve drainage and storage.
• Those solutions included the use of permeable asphalt, the construction of new canals and ponds and also the restoration of wetlands, which would not only ease waterlogging, but also improve the urban environment.

• Introduced on April 1, 2016, MCLR is the minimum interest rate below which banks cannot lend. Banks calculate all operating costs as a percentage of marginal cost of funds for computing MCLR. Under the MCLR regime, banks decide on the interest rate at which they will offer to borrowers on the basis of the marginal cost at which they get funds and borrowing from the RBI.
• Any change in the repo rate — the rate at which the RBI lends money to banks to meet their short-term funding needs — impacts the interest rate for borrowers. Banks review their MCLR of different maturities every month on a pre-announced date with approval from their boards.

• The balance of payments divides transactions into two accounts: the current account and the capital account. The current account includes transactions in goods, services, investment income, and current transfers.
• The capital account, broadly defined, includes transactions in financial instruments and central bank reserves.
• The current account is included in calculations of national output, while the capital account is not. 

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• The Constitution refers to civil code only in its Directive Principles. It is critical to note that the Uniform Civil Code was limited to Directive Principles. Implementation of Directive Principles is not mandatory. The court may order to enforce Fundamental rights. But the Directive Principles of Article 44 of the Constitution cannot be enforced even by the courts. It is essential to understand how much thought the founders of the Constitution put into their decision.
• The issue of personal laws falls in List III —the Concurrent List of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution. While subjects in the Union lists fall within the purview of the Parliament, states can legislate on subjects in the State List.

• The issue of personal laws falls in List III —the Concurrent List of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution. While subjects in the Union lists fall within the purview of the Parliament, states can legislate on subjects in the State List.
• For entries in the Concurrent List, Article 162 of the Constitution gives state governments the power to legislate on subjects where a central law does not occupy the field. If there is a central law, it automatically gains precedence over the state law on the subject.
• Entry 5 of the Concurrent lists “Marriage and divorce; infants and minors; adoption; wills, intestacy and succession; joint family and partition; all matters in respect of which parties in judicial proceedings were immediately before the commencement of this Constitution subject to their personal law.”
• This allows states the power to legislate on the subject but only in the absence of a central law.

The Directorate of Enforcement is a multi-disciplinary organization mandated with investigation of offence of money laundering and violations of foreign exchange laws. The statutory functions of the Directorate include enforcement of following Acts:

• The Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA):It is a criminal law enacted to prevent money laundering and to provide for confiscation of property derived from, or involved in, money-laundering and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
• The Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA): ED has been given the responsibility to conduct investigation into suspected contraventions of foreign exchange laws and regulations, to adjudicate and impose penalties on those adjudged to have contravened the law.
• The Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018 (FEOA): It is a law whereby Directorate is mandated to attach the properties of the fugitive economic offenders who have escaped from the India warranting arrest and provide for the confiscation of their properties to the Central Government.
• Sponsoring agency under COFEPOSA: Under the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act, 1974 (COFEPOSA), this Directorate is empowered to sponsor cases of preventive detention with regard to contraventions of FEMA.

In one of the worst natural disasters to hit the US, multiple wildfires are raging through Hawaii, especially the island of Maui. Maui is one of the eight main islands that make up the archipelago of Hawaii.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• CITES is an international agreement to which States and regional economic integration organizations adhere voluntarily. States that have agreed to be bound by the Convention (‘joined’ CITES) are known as Parties. Although CITES is legally binding on the Parties – in other words they have to implement the Convention – it does not take the place of national laws. Rather it provides a framework to be respected by each Party, which has to adopt its own domestic legislation to ensure that CITES is implemented at the national level.
• CITES was drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of members of IUCN (The World Conservation Union).

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• The solar weather and environment affect the weather of the entire system. Variations in this weather can change the orbits of satellites or shorten their lives, interfere with or damage onboard electronics, and cause power blackouts and other disturbances on Earth. Knowledge of solar events is key to understanding space weather.
• Every storm that emerges from the Sun and heads towards Earth passes through L1, and a satellite placed in the halo orbit around L1 of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses.
• L1 refers to Lagrangian/Lagrange Point 1, one of five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system. Lagrange Points, named after Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange, are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two-body system (like the Sun and the Earth) produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion. These can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position. The L1 point is home to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite (SOHO), an international collaboration project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Only Statement 1 is correct.

• The Centre enhanced the buffer stock of onion from three lakh tonnes to five lakh tonnes.
• The Union Consumer Affairs Department has directed the National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India (NCCF) and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) to procure one lakh tonne each to achieve the additional procurement target alongside calibrated sale of the procured stocks in major consumption centres.
• NCCF, as an organization to promote consumer cooperative movement in the country, aspires to facilitate the voluntary formation and democratic functioning of cooperatives, based on self-reliance and mutual aid for overall economic betterment and financial autonomy. It functions under Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution.