Daily Current Affairs MCQ - December 20, 2021 - UPSC MCQ

The World Bank's fund to help the world's poorest nations got a $93 billion injection of cash to help scale up aid for pandemic recovery and other programs, the institution announced.

• It was the biggest replenishment ever for the International Development Association (IDA), which provides grants for 74 countries, most of which are in Africa, the Washington-based development lender said.
• The package includes $23.5 billion of contributions from 48 high- and middle-income countries as well as financing raised in the capital markets and the World Bank's own contributions.
• The IDA fund is replenished every three years, but because of the pandemic, the latest cash injection was pulled forward by a year and will be in place through June 2025.
• The World Bank said the funds will help countries better prepare for future crises, including pandemics, financial shocks, and natural disasters.

Key facts

• The International Development Association (IDA) is an international financial institution which offers concessional loans and grants to the world's poorest developing countries.
• The IDA is a member of the World Bank Group and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States.
• It was established in 1960 to complement the existing International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
• Hence, option (a) is the correct answer.

National Cadet Corps, NCC, and National Highways Authority of India, NHAI has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to reuse plastic wastes collected by NCC Cadets during Puneet Sagar Abhiyan and other Swachhta activities.

• Plastic wastes collected is planned to be handed over to NHAI which can use in road construction across the country.
• A total of three lakh forty thousand cadets from 127 coastal area NCC Units are participating in the month-long activity.
• So far, cadets at different locations of these areas have collected plastic wastes amounting to almost six tons.
• The aim of Puneet Sagar Abhiyan is to propagate the message of the Importance of clean seashores and beaches amongst the local population.
• Hence both statements are correct.

The Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) which has been constituted to monitor the implementation of PM GatiShakti held its first meeting under the chairmanship of the Cabinet Secretary.

• The EGoS made several important decisions in the meeting.
• It has been decided to compile the infrastructural gaps as felt by various Economic Ministries. This is to be forwarded to the concerned Infrastructure Ministry for appropriate consideration to include in the annual action plan for the next financial year.
• Ministry of Commerce and Industry said that decision was made to study the multimodal connectivity to all the economic zones in the country on priority so that gaps are identified.
• During the meeting, EGoS emphasised the need for digitisation and It was felt to integrate all management information systems of different so as to enable ease of usage.
• EGoS has also emphasised that all the Ministries should include in their planning logistics cost reduction at the core so as to achieve the objective of PM GatiShakti.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan for providing multimodal connectivity to various Economic Zones in the country.
• PM GatiShakti aims to reduce logistics cost.
• Currently, the logistics cost in India is about 13 per cent of the GDP whereas in other developed countries it is to the extent of 8 per cent .
• Hence both statements are correct.

• Recently, India and Vietnam signed a letter of intent (LOI) to collaborate in the field of digital media, paving the way for further strengthening the partnership between the two countries.
• Cooperation at Multiple Fora:
  • At the UN Security Council, both India and Vietnam are serving concurrently as non-permanent members in 2021. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
  • India and Vietnam closely cooperate in various regional forums such as East Asia Summit, Mekong Ganga Cooperation, Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM).
    • The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) is an initiative by six countries – India and five ASEAN countries, namely, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam for cooperation in tourism, culture, education, as well as transport and communications. Hence, statement 2 is correct.

• About Chalcolithic Period
  • The end of the Neolithic period saw the use of metals. Several cultures were based on the use of copper and stone implements.
  • Such a culture is called Chalcolithic and as the name indicates, during the Chalcolithic (Chalco = Copper and Lithic = Stone) period, both metal and stone were utilised for the manufacture of the equipment in day-to-day life.
  • It is the first metal age, copper and its alloy bronze which melted at low temperature were used for the manufacture of various objects during this period.
  • The specialty of the Chalcolithic culture was wheel made pottery mostly of red and orange colour.
• The Malwa culture was a Chalcolithic archaeological culture which existed in the Malwa region of Central India and parts of Maharashtra in the Deccan Peninsula.
  • Sites of the Malwa Culture include Daimabad, Inamgaon, Kayatha, Nagda, Vidisha, Eran, Mandsaur, and Navdatoli (near Maheshwar).
• Hence, option A is correct.

• An ‘Application Programming Interface’ (API) is an interface that can be used to program software that interacts with an existing application.
• An open source API, also called public API, is an application programming interface made publicly available to software developers.
  • Open APIs are published on the internet and shared freely, allowing the owner of a network-accessible service to give universal access to consumers. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
• APIs vs Web Services:
  • APIs and web services are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one is a subset of the other: every web service is an API — since it exposes an application’s data and/or functionality — but not every API is a web service. Hence, statement 2 is correct.
  • APIs are protocol agnostic. While APIs can use any protocols or design styles, web services usually use specific protocols. Hence, statement 3 is correct.
• Hence, option D is correct.

Decarbonization means the reduction of carbon. More specifically, the term refers to the conversion of the economic system or individual carbon emitting entity converting to reduce the carbon intensity of its (direct or value chain) emissions over time.

A “carbon credit” (also known as a “carbon offset”) is an electronic and serialized unit that represents one ton of CO2 equivalent that is reduced, avoided, or sequestered from projects applying an approved carbon credit methodology.

India is the largest importer of gold, which mainly caters to the demand of the jewellery industry. In volume terms, the country imports 800-900 tonnes of gold annually.

Sowing Area Coverage of Kharif Crops : as on 31.07.2020, the total Kharif crops has been sown on 882.18 lakh ha area against 774.38 lakh ha area during the corresponding period of last year.

Rice: About 266.60 lakh ha area coverage

Oilseeds: About 175.34 lakh ha area coverage

Pulses: About 111.91 lakh ha area coverage

Sugarcane: About 51.78 lakh ha area coverage

Launched into low Earth orbit in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has made more than 1.4 million observations, including tracking interstellar objects, capturing a comet colliding with Jupiter, and discovering moons around Pluto. Hubble has captured galaxies merging, probed supermassive black holes and has helped us understand the history of our universe.