Test: September 2023 Weekly Current Affair - 1 - UPSC MCQ

• Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud said Article 35A, which empowered the Jammu and Kashmir Legislature to define “permanent residents” of the State and provide them special privileges, denied fundamental rights to others.
• “Article 35A gave special rights and privileges to permanent residents and virtually took away the rights for non-residents. These rights included the right to equal opportunity of State employment, right to acquire property and the right to settle in Jammu and Kashmir,” Chief Justice Chandrachud, heading a Constitution Bench, observed.
• ‘Permanent residents’ included people who were hereditary State subjects as in 1927, when J&K was a princely state prior to its accession to the Indian Dominion in 1947. Article 35A, which was introduced through the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 1954 issued by the President under Article 370, demarcated permanent residents with exclusive right to purchase land, seek State government employment and other benefits in education and health care. The others, called ‘non-permanent residents’, were not privy to these privileges.

Yangtse in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh is one of the contested areas along the 3488-km Line of Actual Control between India and China, stretching from the Western Sector to Middle Sector to Eastern Sector.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) received 3801 project proposals to study the impact of various Centrally sponsored schemes and 514 among them — from collaborative and individual categories.
• Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) was established in the year of 1969 by the Government of India to promote research in social sciences in the country.
• ICSSR provide grants for projects, fellowships, international collaboration, capacity building, survey, publications etc. to promote research in social sciences in India.

Statement 2 is incorrect.

• When we recently mapped these Open Natural Ecosystems (ONEs), we discovered that they are staggeringly diverse, ranging from woodland savannas, scrublands and grasslands, to rocky outcrops, ravines and dunes.
• ONEs also have a remarkable assemblage of animal species, many of which, such as the black buck and the critically endangered great Indian bustard, occur only in the Indian subcontinent.
• India’s ONEs continue to be misunderstood, misrepresented, and destroyed. Successive governments have carried forward a colonial legacy of terming ONEs as ‘wastelands’ and sought to make them ‘productive’; they have tried to ‘develop’ them, thereby incentivising their erasure. Unlike with forests, there are no conservation laws that protect against diversion of biodiversity-rich ONEs. 

The National School of Drama is one of the foremost theatre training institutions in the world and the only one of its kind in India. It was set up by the Sangeet Natak Akademi as one of its constituent units in 1959. In 1975, it became an independent entity and was registered as an autonomous organization under the Societies Registration Act XXI of 1860, fully financed by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India.

Only statement 2 is correct.

• For the first time, in 1966-67, the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat and paddy was fixed. To fix the price, the central government constituted the Agricultural Prices Commission, which was later renamed as the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) in 1985.
• This means that the minimum support price (MSP) system was introduced in the country to protect the interests of the farmers in general. Under this system, even if the price of a crop falls in the market, the central government procures it at the fixed MSP from the farmers so that they can be shielded against losses.
• The MSP of a crop is the same throughout the country.
  • The Food Corporation of India (FCI) was constituted in 1965 on the recommendation of the LK Jha Committee. The government stores the grains procured from the farmers with the FCI and NAFED (National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India) from where the grains are distributed to the poor under the Public Distribution System (PDS).
  • Since 2009, the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices fixes the minimum support price of a crop based on cost, demand, supply position, price changes, market price trend, different costs and international market prices.
  • The Ministry of Agriculture also claims that the cost of production of cultivation does not only include cash expenditure (as per market) but also the cost of labour (as per market rate). This means that agricultural wage rate is also considered while setting up of the MSP.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• In India, there is no specific legislation that protects journalists from being asked to disclose their sources. Article 19 of the Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech and expression to all citizens.
• Investigative agencies can issue notice to anyone, including journalists, to provide information. Like any citizen, a journalist can be compelled to give evidence in Court. If she does not comply, the journalist can face charges of Contempt of Court.
• However, the absence of a specific law, it is often the discretion of a Court. Courts have in “public interest asked journalists to disclose their sources.
• Under the Press Council of India (PCI) Act, of 1978, the Press Council has powers of a civil court to deal with complaints when a newspaper has “offended against the standards of journalistic ethics or public taste or that an editor or working journalist has committed any professional misconduct.” However, the Council cannot force a newspaper, news agency, journalist, or editor to reveal their sources during the proceedings.

• Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are bright explosions that release gamma-ray light. They are the most energetic form of light, a million times brighter than the sun. But they typically last for only seconds. And so much energy is put out in such a little time.
• GRB also happens when two neutron stars merge. It can occur when a neutron star joins with the black hole also.

Kheer Bhawani temple is situated in Jammu and Kashmir.

Eliminating all forms of illicit trade in tobacco products through a package of measures is one of the major objectives of the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products under the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The Protocol provides the tools and the measures to eliminate or minimise illicit trade which includes strong governance, establishing an international track and trace system, and securing supply chains. India has already ratified the World Health Organization Protocol.

Only statement 1 is correct.

• Inflation redistributes wealth from creditors to debtors, i.e., lenders suffer and borrowers benefit out of inflation. The opposite effect takes place when inflation falls (i.e., deflation).
• With every inflation the currency of the economy depreciates (loses its exchange value in front of a foreign currency) provided it follows the flexible currency regime.
• Holding money does not remain an intelligent economic decision (because money loses value with every increase in inflation).

Statement 2 is incorrect.

• Normally, when water freezes, it crystallizes and its molecules are arranged into the familiar hexagonal, solid structure that we call ice. Ice is less dense than its liquid form — an unusual property for a crystal. Depending on conditions such as pressure and the speed of freezing, water can also solidify in any of two dozen other regular arrangements. Amorphous ice is different: it has no such order.

• MISHTI is a new programme that will facilitate mangrove plantation along India’s coastline and on salt pan lands. The programme will operate through “convergence between MGNREGS, Campa Fund and other sources.
• This new programme will aim at intensive afforestation of coastal mangrove forests. India has such forests on both its Eastern and Western coasts with the Sundarbans in Bengal being one of the largest mangrove forests on the planet.

• The earth’s crust is broken up into tectonic plates that are constantly moving, slowly, often getting stuck at their edges due to friction. When the stress on the edge overcomes the friction, there is an earthquake that releases energy in waves that travel through the earth’s crust, resulting in the vibration felt.
• A network of seismographs are used to record earthquakes with each individual seismograph recording and measuring the movement of the ground in its location. A seismograph is securely mounted onto the surface of the earth so that when the earth shakes, the entire unit shakes with the exception of the mass on the spring, which remains in its place because of inertia.
• During shaking, the recording device on this mass records the relative motion between itself and the rest of the instrument, thus recording the ground motion. According to the USGS, these mechanisms are no longer manual, but instead work by measuring electronic changes produced by the motion of the ground with respect to the mass.

1955 Afro-Asian Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, of which India was a key architect. For the first time, former colonial territories of Asia and Africa came together in Bandung, igniting the spirit of third-world solidarity and paving the way for the creation of a Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

• MISHTI is a new programme that will facilitate mangrove plantation along India’s coastline and on salt pan lands. The programme will operate through “convergence between MGNREGS, Campa Fund and other sources.
• This new programme will aim at intensive afforestation of coastal mangrove forests. India has such forests on both its Eastern and Western coasts with the Sundarbans in Bengal being one of the largest mangrove forests on the planet.

• The earth’s crust is broken up into tectonic plates that are constantly moving, slowly, often getting stuck at their edges due to friction. When the stress on the edge overcomes the friction, there is an earthquake that releases energy in waves that travel through the earth’s crust, resulting in the vibration felt.
• A network of seismographs are used to record earthquakes with each individual seismograph recording and measuring the movement of the ground in its location. A seismograph is securely mounted onto the surface of the earth so that when the earth shakes, the entire unit shakes with the exception of the mass on the spring, which remains in its place because of inertia.
• During shaking, the recording device on this mass records the relative motion between itself and the rest of the instrument, thus recording the ground motion. According to the USGS, these mechanisms are no longer manual, but instead work by measuring electronic changes produced by the motion of the ground with respect to the mass.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• Biogas is a co-product of the anaerobic digestion (under the absence of oxygen) of biodegradable waste such as agricultural waste, animal waste like dung and segregated organic fraction of municipal solid waste.
• Anaerobic digestion yields a variety of products in three different formats. The slurry obtained from the process is usually passed through a solid-liquid separation unit to extract the liquid by-product, known as liquid fertiliser and the solid fraction, known as fermented organic manure (FOM).
• The co-product obtained in the liquid fraction is usually re-circulated and used in the digestion process, while the solid fraction can be used as a soil conditioner or fertiliser.
• The gaseous fraction obtained in the process is known as biogas. Biogas contains about 55-65 per cent methane, 35-44 per cent of carbon dioxide and traces of other gases such as hydrogen sulphide, ammonia and nitrogen.

• Import cover is the number of months of imports that could be covered for by a country’s international reserves. Import cover is an important indicator of the stability of a currency.
• ‘Import Substitution’ (IS) generally refers to policy that eliminates the importation of the commodity and allows for the production in the domestic market. The objective of this policy is to bring about structural changes in the economy.

Statement 2 is incorrect.

• Tritium is a form of hydrogen that occurs naturally in Earth’s atmosphere. It is radioactive but far less dangerous than cesium-137 or strontium-90 — both of which are life-threatening.
• It emits a weak beta particle that can be stopped by a sheet of plastic or human skin.

Only statement 3 is correct.

The IAEA is the world’s centre for cooperation in the nuclear field.

• It was set up as the world’s “Atoms for Peace” organization in 1957.
• It was established as an autonomous organization in 1957 through its own international treaty, the IAEA Statute.
• Reports to both the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council.
• Headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
• The IAEA serves as an intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear technology and nuclear power worldwide.

Functions:

• Works with its Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies.
• Seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons.

Statement 2 is incorrect.

• When inflation goes up, and the interest rates also go up, the cost of capital will also go up. The cost of capital is a combination of the cost of equity and the cost of debt. When the bond yields go up, the cost of capital goes up, and therefore the future cash flows of the company will be valued lower. …The valuation of equities is done by discounting future cash flows. When the rate of discounting goes up, obviously, equity valuations go down.

Only statement 1 is correct.

• The latest edition of the Minor Irrigation Census (MIC) — a compendium of borewells, tubewells, and other privately owned irrigation sources by farmers — finds that electricity is the dominant source of power to extract water, over diesel, windmills, and solar pumps.
• While the use of electricity showed a quantum jump from powering only 56% of sources in 2011 to 70% in 2017, the latest report, made public last week, shows electricity as powering 76% of sources – a slower growth rate.
• The MIC reports aren’t a reflection of the present state of use. The data made public in the latest, sixth edition of the report, reflects irrigation trends in 2017-18. Similarly the report released in 2017, or the fifth edition, reflected data in 2013-14 and the report of 2011, the situation in 2006-07. Because data collection requires collecting granular data down to the block level, it takes a few years to compile and make the data public.
• This electrification of groundwater withdrawal corresponds to a rise in the use of tubewells and borewells that are capable of extracting water at greater depths.

Only statement 3 is correct.

• Ramsar secretariat designating a wetland as wetland of global importance may not lead to any extra funding by the global body.
• But from the management point of view, it is like an accreditation. It is like an ISO certification. They can take you off the list as well if you don’t meet their standards continuously. 
• Not every Ramsar Site is a notified protected area under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

Only statement 1 is correct.

• The Supreme Court held that chargesheets are not ‘public documents’ and enabling their free public access violates the provisions of the Criminal Code of Procedure as it compromises the rights of the accused, victim, and the investigation agencies.
• Section 74 of the Evidence Act defines ‘public documents’ as those which form the acts or records of sovereign authority, official bodies, tribunals, and of public offices either legislative, judicial or executive in any part of India, Commonwealth or a foreign country. It also includes public records “kept in any State of private documents”.
• Meanwhile, Section 76 of the Evidence Act mandates every public officer having custody over such documents to provide its copy pursuant to a demand and payment of legal fee, accompanied by a certificate of attestation along with the date, seal, name and designation of the officer.