DAY – 29 ( INSTA REVISION TEST – 29)INSTA REVISION PLAN 2.0, 2021 – INSIGHTSIAS

Solution: B

Chiang Mai initiative (CMI):

It is a multilateral currency swap arrangement among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the People’s Republic of China (including Hong Kong), Japan and South Korea.

Launched in 2010 to manage regional short-term liquidity problems and to avoid relying on the IMF.

Solution: C

Agriculture Infrastructure Fund:

• It is a new pan India Central Sector Scheme.
• The scheme shall provide a medium – long term debt financing facility for investment in viable projects for post-harvest management Infrastructure and community farming assets through interest subvention and financial support.
• The duration of the Scheme shall be from FY2020 to FY2029 (10 years).

Eligibility:

Under the scheme, Rs. One Lakh Crore will be provided by banks and financial institutions as loans to Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS), Marketing Cooperative Societies, farmer producer organisations (FPOs), SHGs, Farmers, Joint Liability Groups (JLG), Multipurpose Cooperative Societies, Startups etc.

Solution: A

The Moatsu is a festival celebrated by Ao People of Nagaland. This is a festival of community bonding celebrated in May for 3 days. As a celebration, the villagers express their friendship for each other by exchanging gifts, making new friends, feasting, bon fire etc.

Moatsü is celebrated in the first week of May every year. Various rituals are performed during this period. The Aos observe Moatsü Mong after the sowing is done.

Solution: A

Article 18 of the constitution justifies this. Under Right to equality, A18 abolishes titular privileges (except military or academic) granted to citizens of India.

Solution: D

Context: Interpol has issued a Blue Corner notice to help locate fugitive self-styled godman Nithyananda, weeks after the Gujarat Police sought the agency’s intervention for this. Nithyananda fled India last year amid allegations of rape and sexual abuse.

What is a Interpol notice?

1. Notices are international requests for cooperation or alerts allowing police in member countries to share critical crime-related information.
2. There are seven types of notices — Red Notice, Yellow Notice, Blue Notice, Black Notice, Green Notice, Orange Notice, and Purple Notice.

What is blue notice?

• Issued to “collect additional information about a person’s identity, location or activities in relation to a crime.”

What is Interpol?

• The International Criminal Police Organisation, or Interpol, is a 194-member intergovernmental organisation.
• Headquartered in Lyon, France.
• Formed in 1923 as the International Criminal Police Commission, and started calling itself Interpol in 1956.
• Interpol’s declared global policing goals include countering terrorism, promoting border integrity worldwide, protection of vulnerable communities, providing a secure cyberspace for people and businesses, curbing illicit markets, supporting environment security, and promoting global integrity.

India joined the organisation in 1949.

Solution: C

Contingency Fund is created as an imprest account to meet some urgent or unforeseen expenditure of the government.

This fund was constituted by the government under Article 267 of the Constitution of India. This fund is at the disposal of the President.

Parliamentary approval for such expenditure and for withdrawal of an equivalent amount from the Consolidated Fund is subsequently obtained and the amount spent from Contingency Fund is subsequently recouped to the Fund. The corpus of the Fund authorised by the Parliament, at present, is ₹ 500 crore.

Solution: A

Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets, are rocky remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.

Trojans: These asteroids share an orbit with a larger planet, but do not collide with it because they gather around two special places in the orbit (called the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points). There, the gravitational pull from the sun and the planet are balanced by a trojan’s tendency to otherwise fly out of the orbit.

The Jupiter trojans form the most significant population of trojan asteroids. It is thought that they are as numerous as the asteroids in the asteroid belt. There are Mars and Neptune trojans, and NASA announced the discovery of an Earth trojan in 2011.

Solution: A

e-Cigarettes

• The Central government has directed all states and Union Territories to not allow the manufacture, sale and advertisement of e-cigarettes and other Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS).
• Electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes, are devices that do not burn or use tobacco leaves but instead vaporise a solution, which a user then inhales.
• The main constituents of the solution, in addition to nicotine, are propylene glycol (with or without glycerol and flavouring agents).
• ENDS are devices that heat a solution to create an aerosol, which also frequently contains flavours, usually dissolved into propylene glycolor and glycerin.
• A number of metals, including lead, chromium and nickel, and chemicals like formaldehyde have been found in aerosols of some ENDS.
• ENDS are not approved as NRTs (nicotine-replacement therapies) under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act and rules made thereunder.
• According to Global Tobacco Epidemic 2017 report by the WHO, the governemnts of 30 countries like Mauritius, Australia, Singapore etc have already banned ENDS.

Solution: D

Data is information processed or stored by a computer. This information may be in the form of text documents, images, audio clips, software programs, or other types of data.

Big Data is also a data but with a huge size, such a data is so large and complex that none of the traditional data management tools are able to store it or process it efficiently.

Applications of Big Data

Solution: B

Geographical indicators (GI)

• A name or sign used on goods that have a specific geographical origin and posses qualities or a reputation due to that place of origin.
• Its purpose is to create unique identification to customers and thereby creating more demand for products.
• It is given to both man-made and natural products.
• However it is a community right rather than individual or company.
• It is protected under Geographical indications of goods (registration and protection) act, 1999.
• It is managed by Cell for IPR promotion and Management (CIPAM) under the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
• At the International level, GI is governed by World Trade Organisation‘s (WTO‘s) Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
• TIME PERIOD – 10 years + renewed for any time
• The first product in India to be accorded with GI tag was Darjeeling tea in the year 2004-05.
• Once the GI protection is granted, no other producer can misuse the name to market similar products. It also provides comfort to customers about the authenticity of that product.
• Provisions in this regard: GI is covered as element of intellectual property rights (IPRs) under Paris Convention for Protection of Industrial Property.
• At international level, GI is governed by WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). In India, Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection Act), 1999 governs it.

Solution: A

About Seva Bhoj Yojana:

Union Ministry of Culture has launched- ‘Seva Bhoj Yojna’– a scheme to reimburse central share of CGST and IGST on food, prasad, langar or bhandara offered by religious and charitable institutions.

The scheme seeks to reimburse the central government’s share of Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) and Integrated Goods and Service Tax (IGST) on purchase of raw items such as ghee, edible oil, atta, maida, rava, flour, rice pulses, sugar and jaggery, which go into preparation of food/prasad/langar/bhandara offered free of cost by religious institutions.

The main objective of the scheme is to lessen the financial burden of such charitable religious institutions, which provide free of cost without any discrimination to the general public and devotees.

Eligibility:

The charitable religious institutions including temples, gurudwara, mosque, church, dharmik ashram, dargah, monasteries, which fulfill the following criteria are eligible for the grant:

1. The institutions that have been in existence for at least five years before applying for financial assistance/grant.
2. The institutions that serve free food to at least 5000 people in a month.
3. The institutions covered under Section 10(23BBA) of the Income Tax Act or those registered as Society under Societies Registration Act (XXI of 1860) or as a Public Trust under any law for the time being in force of statuary religious bodies constituted under any Act or institutions registered under Section 12AA of Income Tax Act.

Solution: A

The Golden Crescent is the name given to one of Asia’s two principal areas of illicit opium production (with the other being the Golden Triangle). The Golden Crescent is located in Southwest Asia and consists of three contiguous countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran from East to West.

Afghanistan, the only land locked country in this region, has the least area of 6,47,497 sq. km. Iran having the largest coastline of 2440 km in this region is marked by )Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman in the South. Pakistan shares the maximum land boundaries with a total boundary area of 6,774 km.

Iran is not an opium producing country in this region but is more that of a trans-shipment country.

Solution: A

StrandHogg

It is a Malware which allows real-time malware applications to pose as genuine applications and access user data of all kinds.

Threats: It can listen to the conversations, access photo album, read/send messages, make calls, record conversations, get login credentials to various accounts, access private images, files, contact details, call logs and location information without being apparent to the affected users.

Solution: A

International Whaling Commission

• Recently Japan announced to quit from the International Whaling Commission and resume commercial whaling.
• The International Whaling Commission is an Inter-governmental Organization whose purpose is the conservation of whales and the management of whaling.
• It is an international body set up under International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW).
• The IWC currently has 89 member governments from countries all over the world.
• All members are signatories to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW).
• ICRW governs the commercial, scientific, and aboriginal subsistence whaling practices of fifty-nine member nations.
• In 1986, it adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling. This ban still continues.
• This Convention is the legal framework which established the IWC in 1946.

India joined as a member of International Whaling Commission in 1981

Solution: C

Agni II missile

• India recently conducted successfully the first night trial of Agni-II, its versatile surface-to-surface medium range nuclear-capable missile.
• The missile has a strike range of 2000 km.
• Agni-II, an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM), has already been inducted into the armed forces.
• The two-stage missile equipped with advanced high accuracy navigation system, was guided by a novel state-of-the-art command and control system and propelled by solid rocket propellant system.
• Agni-II was developed by Advanced Systems Laboratory along with other DRDO laboratories and integrated by the Bharat Dynamics Limited, Hyderabad.

• Agni-II is part of the Agni series of missiles which includes 700-km range Agni-I, 3,000-km range Agni-III, Agni-IV and Agni-V.