Daily Current Affairs MCQ - February 18, 2022 - UPSC MCQ

India lashed out at the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), after the grouping called on the UN Human Rights Council to take “necessary measures” on the issue of Muslim girl students being told not to wear the hijab in Karnataka schools.

• The Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation is the world’s second largest multilateral body after the UN.
• It counts 57 members, all of which are Islamic countries or Muslim majority members.
• The Central African Republic, Russia, Thailand, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and the unrecognised Turkish Cypriot “state”, have Observer status.
• The OIC’s stated objective is “to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony among various people of the world”.
• The Organisation of the Islamic Conference was established by the First Islamic Summit Conference held in Morocco in September 1969, to marshal the Islamic world after an act of arson at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jersualem by a 28-year-old Australian in 1969.

India & OIC

• As a country with the world’s second largest Muslim community, India had been invited to the founding conference at Rabat in 1969, but was humiliatingly ejected at Pakistan’s behest.
• In 2006, as India turned the economic corner and improved ties with the US, Saudi Arabia invited Delhi to join as an observer.
• But India stayed away because of a multiplicity of reasons, not least of which was that as a secular country, it did not want to join an organisation founded on religion.
• Plus there was the risk that improving bilateral relations with individual member states would come under pressure in a grouping, especially on issues such as Kashmir.
• That invitation came again at the 45th session of the Foreign Ministers’ Summit in 2018, when Bangladesh, the host, suggested that India, where more than 10 per cent of the world’s Muslims live, should be given observer status but Pakistan opposed the proposal.
• In 2019, India made its maiden appearance at the OIC Foreign Ministers’ meeting, as a “guest of honour”.

Role of Pakistan

• The OIC is mainly controlled by Saudi Arabia, but Pakistan, as the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons, has had a large say since its inception.
• As a result, over the years, the organisation has issued several statements on Kashmir that have been supportive of Pakistan and critical of Indian “atrocities”.
• Hence both statements are correct.

Two people were killed and several others injured on February 10 when a portion of a flat on the 6th floor collapsed at Chintels Paradiso housing complex in Gurgaon’s Sector 109. The incident has raised apprehensions regarding safety standards of multi-story residential buildings.

• Every state has building bylaws that have to be followed during the time of construction and it is the role of the authorities to ensure that.
• These bylaws cover aspects like ground coverage, floor area ratio, material used as per the soil requirement, tensile strength, beam and column strength, height restrictions as per the seismic zone.

National Building Code of India (NBC)

• Thereafter, one can check whether National Building Code of India (NBC), a comprehensive building code for regulating the building construction activities across the country, has been followed or not.
• The National Building Code of India (NBC of India) is a comprehensive building code, formulated and published by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)
• It serves as a Model Code for adoption by all agencies involved in building construction works, be they Public Works Departments, other government construction departments, local bodies or private construction agencies.
• Hence both statements are correct.

As a part of the Fintech Open Month, NITI Aayog in association with PhonePe will be hosting the first-ever open-to-all Hackathon event for ideating and coming up with the most creative solutions for the FinTech space.

• The Hackathon will provide an opportunity for innovators, digital creators and developers from all over India to think, ideate and code
• Participants at the hackathon need to use any open-data APIs like PhonePe Pulse along with frameworks such as Account Aggregator as a foundation to power the following use cases:
  • Alternate risk models for Lending, Insurance or Investments with focus on financial Inclusion
  • Innovative Products that use the power data signals for various demographics and Geos for broader adoption of financial services
  • Improved Visualisation and Derived intelligence based on the Digital payments data
• The final app that participants come up with must incorporate one of the above.
• Hence both statements are correct.

The Minister of State for Culture & Parliamentary Affairs Shri Arjun Ram Meghwal launched the career counselling workshop 'Pramarsh 2022' for the students of the Bikaner District region.

• In this workshop one lakh students participated from more than thousands schools of Bikaner district mainly from rural area.
• Workshop was conducted with the support of The National Institute of Career Services (NICS) which comes under the Ministry of Labour & Employment and educational start-up Edumilestones.
• “Pramarsh2022” workshop was an extension of the efforts to bridge the industry academia gap and impart the knowledge about various choices available to the student.
• The ongoing workshop is not limited to training of teach-ers and career workshop for students, but it is also proposed that an offline and online career assessment and service of Edumilestones digital career library will be facilitated to all students.
• Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Government approved a new scheme “New India Literacy Programme for the period FYs 2022-2027 to cover all the aspects of Adult Education to align with National Education Policy 2020 and Budget Announcements 2021-22.

• School will be Unit for implementation of the scheme.
• Schools to be used for conducting survey of beneficiaries and Voluntary Teachers (VTs).
• Foundational Literacy and Numeracy will be imparted through Critical Life Skills to all non-literates in the age group of 15 years and above.
• Performance Grading Index (PGI) for State/UT and district level will show the performance of States and UTs to implement the scheme and achievements on yearly basis by weighing both the physical and financial progress through UDISE portal.
• From now onwards the term “Education For All” will be used in place of “Adult Education” by the Ministry as the terminology “Adult Education” is not incorporating appropriately all non-literates of 15 years and above age group.
• Hence only statement 1 is correct.

• The World Sustainable Development Summit (WSDS) is the annual flagship event of The Energy and Resources Institute’s (TERI). It was earlier known as Delhi Sustainable Development Summit. Instituted in 200. Hence, statement 1 is not correct.
• It is the only Summit on global issues, taking place in the developing world.
• It has been conceptualized as a single platform to accelerate action towards sustainable development and climate change. Hence, statement 2 is correct.
• It aims to bring together global leaders and thinkers in the fields of sustainable development, energy and environment sectors on a common platform.

• The juvenile justice system concerns children who have conflicted with the law and need care and protection.
  • In India, a person below the age of 18 years is considered a juvenile.
  • Minor is a person who has not attained the age of full legal responsibility and the juvenile is a minor who has committed some offence or needs care and protection.
  • In India, any child below the age of 7 years can not be convicted of any crime because of the doctrine of Doli incapax which means incapable of forming intent to commit a crime. Hence statement 2 is correct.
• This Juvenile Justice (care and Protection) Act 2015 was passed by the parliament after much controversy and protest. It has introduced many changes in existing law.
• This act allows juveniles involved in the heinous crimes age group between 16-18 are treated as adults. Hence statement 1 is correct.
• Making the juvenile justice system more responsive and according to the changing circumstances of society.
• The Act gives a clear definition of orphaned, abandoned, surrendered children and provides an organised system for them.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• It describes the action of machines accomplishing tasks that have historically required human intelligence. Hence statement 1 is correct.
• It includes technologies like machine learning, pattern recognition, big data, neural networks, self algorithms etc. Hence statement 2 is correct.
• The origin of the concept can be traced back to Greek mythology, although it is only during modern history when stored program electronic computers were developed.
• AI involves complex things such as feeding a particular data into the machine and making it react as per the different situations. It is basically about creating self-learning patterns where the machine can give answers to the never answered questions like a human would ever do.

• Recently, a new scheme “New India Literacy Programme” for the period FYs 2022-2027 to cover all the aspects of Adult Education to align with National Education Policy 2020 has been approved. Hence, statements 1 and 2 are correct.
• The objective of the New India Literacy Programme
  • To impart not only foundational literacy and numeracy but also to cover other components which are necessary for a citizen of the 21^st century. Hence, statement 3 is not correct.
  • Other components include:
    • Critical life skills (including financial literacy, digital literacy, commercial skills, health care and awareness, child care and education, and family welfare).
    • Vocational skills development (with a view towards obtaining local employment)
    • Basic education (including preparatory, middle, and secondary stage equivalency).
    • Continuing education (including engaging holistic adult education courses in arts, sciences, technology, culture, sports, and recreation, as well as other topics of interest or use to local learners, such as more advanced material on critical life skills).

• Researchers from Indian Institute of Technology Madras have developed such a material, called Origami metamaterials which could have many uses.
  • These combine the Japanese art of paper folding (origami) and the existing material of choice and fold it to obtain desired properties. Hence, statement 2 is correct.
• Researchers have developed a special class of origami metamaterials which show a constant value of Poisson Ratio when subjected to stress. Hence, statement 3 is correct.
  • When a material is crushed or stretched along a particular direction, it undergoes a modification in the perpendicular, or lateral, direction.
  • The ratio between the deformation along the force and the deformation in a direction lateral to the force is called the Poisson ratio. The Poisson ratio can be positive or negative.
  • In order to be useful, materials need to maintain a constant Poisson ratio when they crumble under pressure. However, they are prone not to do so, and the Poisson ratio varies as they deform.
• The benefit is that the observed property does not depend on whether it is made from a sheet of paper, polymer or metal but under impact the sheet folds up along the creases.
• Metamaterials are smart materials that have a wide range of properties and can be so different from each other that there isn’t a definition for them, although what they all have in common is that they are from an artificial origin.
• This means that they aren’t found in nature and have been created by people. Hence, statement 1 is not correct.