Plutus IAS ‘Weekly Current Affairs: Quizzes, 30 January to 04 February, 2023

EXPLANATION:

• Recently in the news, the term Polycrises is used by economists.This term is used for the economy when numerous crises in numerous global systems become causally intertwined in ways that drastically worsen the prospects for humanity. The economic crises in multiple dimensions are the polycrises. The situation when a country's economy faces internal and external economic crises in multiple directions. (This is seen recently in newspapers). Hence statement 1 is correct.
• Polycrises are all related to the Economic crises. The term is not related to political philosophy. Hence statement 2 is not correct. However, the world’s democracy is also facing various threats.

EXPLANATION:

• ASER stands for Annual Status of Education Report. This is an annual survey that aims to provide reliable estimates of children’s enrolment and basic learning levels for each district and state in India. ASER has been conducted every year since 2005 in all rural districts of India. It is the largest citizen-led survey in India. It is also the only annual source of information on children’s learning outcomes available in India today.The report is published by The Pratham Foundation. Pratham is one of the largest non-governmental organizations in India. It was co-founded by Madhav Chavan and Farida Lambay. It works towards the provision of quality education to the underprivileged children in India.
• First ASER Report was published in 2005. Hence, option (a) is correct.

EXPLANATION:

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 23, named 21 Islands in Andaman and Nicobar after recipients of India’s highest military decoration, the Param Vir Chakra. The naming was done on the occasion of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s 126th birth anniversary, which is officially observed as Parakram Diwas (Day of Valor). The prime minister also virtually unveiled a model of a proposed memorial dedicated to Bose, which will be constructed in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago.The memorial to Netaji will be located on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep, which was called Ross Island before 2018.The largest unnamed island was named after the first Param Vir Chakra awardee, the second largest unnamed island after the second Param Vir Chakra awardee, and so on. The first recipient of the award was Major Somnath Sharma, who lost his life while fighting against Pakistani infiltrators near Srinagar airport on November 3, 1947.
• 21 people have received the Param Vir Chakra, 20 served in the Indian Army and one in the Indian Air Force. Hence option (b) is correct.

EXPLANATION:

• 1st edition of the Indo-Egypt joint training exercise Cyclone culminates in Rajasthan. The exercise aims to bolster defense cooperation between the two nations and focus on sharing professional skills and interoperability of Special Forces in desert terrain while undertaking counter terrorism, reconnaissance, raids and other special operations.
• Exercise “Cyclone - I” is the first exercise of its kind bringing the special forces of both the nations on a common platform. The 14 days long exercise which is being carried out in the deserts of Rajasthan engages both the contingents to advance special forces skills such as Sniping, Combat Free Fall, Reconnaissance, Surveillance & Target Designation, sharing of information on weapons, equipment, innovations, tactics, techniques & procedures. The participants would also undertake joint planning and drills for Special Forces operations in a mechanized warfare setting as well as surgical strikes on terrorist camps / hideouts to include sniping of High Value Targets.
• The joint exercise would provide an insight into the culture and ethos of both armies thereby fostering military cooperation and interoperability to further strengthen the diplomatic relations between India and Egypt. Hence option (a) is correct.

EXPLANATION:

• The ceremony for the 130-km IBFPL was held in September 2018 in the presence of Prime Ministers of India and Bangladesh through video conferencing.
• The ambitious 130-km long Indo-Bangla Friendship Pipeline (IBFPL), constructed at a cost of ₹377.08 crore, is likely to be commissioned by next month. The international oil pipeline, IBFPL, will carry fuel from Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery Limited's (NRL) marketing terminal at Siliguri in West Bengal to the Parbatipur depot of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC). Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his meeting with Hasina in 2017 had agreed to finance this pipeline with a capacity of one million metric tonne per annum (MMTPA). It will supply the Diesel to Bangladesh, not petrol. Hence statement 1 is not correct.
• The supply of fuel will be from Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery Limited's (NRL) marketing terminal at Siliguri in West Bengal to the Parbatipur depot of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC). The supply is not from Digboi. Hence statement 2 is also not correct.

EXPLANATION:

• A policy for controlling blindness with the goal of 'Right to Sight' has been put into place by the Rajasthan government under its 'Nirogi Rajasthan' scheme. With this initiative, Rajasthan has become the first state in the country to implement such a policy.
• The goal of the newly implemented policy is to improve the lives of more than three lakh visually impaired residents of the state. It should be noted that the prevalence rate of blindness in the nation was 1.1 per cent in 2020. But through the state's new Blindness Control Policy, efforts would be made to lower it to a significant 0.3 per cent. Additionally, Keratoplasty Centers (facilities that conduct plastic surgery on the cornea) and Eye Banks would be operated at government medical institutes across the state by the Rajasthan government as per the policy. Moreover, cornea collected by for-profit businesses and NGOs that receive financial support from the government must be given to government institutions first and then to private medical institutions, the policy dictates.
• The M.P government did not start this initiative. Hence, option (b) is correct.

EXPLANATION:

• On Parakram Diwas, Prime Minister will participate in a ceremony to name 21 largest unnamed islands of Andaman & Nicobar Islands after 21 Param Vir Chakra awardees on 23rd January. Jadunath Singh was a Param Vir Chakra awardee, so one island is also named on him. But it is not situated in the Arabian sea. It is situated in the bay of Bengal. Hence, the pair 1 is not correctly matched.
• The proposed diamond mine in the Buxwaha protected forest region in Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh may have a greater ecological impact on the region than projected so far. The project threatens to further deplete the already scarce water reserve of the drought-prone Bundelkhand region to excavate about five million tonnes of diamond-bearing kimberlite ore per annum. Since it is not situated in Chhattisgarh. Hence, pair 2 is not correctly matched.
• PM Modi unveiled a 28ft statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose near India Gate today. Hence, pair 3 is correctly matched because this statue is situated in delhi.
  Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday inaugurated a 182-meter statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel overlooking the Narmada river in Gujarat as a tribute to the country’s ‘Iron Man’. This statue is located near Kevadia dist in the state of Gujarat. It is not located in Savarmat Dist. Hence, the pair 4 is not correctly matched.

EXPLANATION:

• Food Safety and Standards Authority of India is a statutory body established under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India. The FSSAI has been established under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, which is a consolidating statute related to food safety and regulation in India. It is not a constitutional Body. Hence statement 1 is not correct.
• Its headquarter is in Delhi. Hence statement 2 is correct.
• The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), in Financial Year 2021-2022, tested 145,000 protein powder samples and found 4,890 were unsafe and 16,582 substandard. Health experts have expressed concern about the unsupervised consumption of dietary supplements, warning poor-quality products can affect cardiovascular health and kidneys.It released a Survey on dietary supplements. Hence statement 3 is also correct.

EXPLANATION:

• Revolutionaries- The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom’ is written by Sanjeev Sanyal. He is an Indian economist and popular historian. He is a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, and has helped prepare six editions of the Economic Survey of India starting in 2017. Sanyal has written several books on Indian history. Hence pair 1 is not correctly matched.
• Land of the Seven Rivers is also the book of Sanjeev Sanyal. Hence pair 2 is correctly matched.
• Bose : The untold story of an inconvenient nationalist is written by Chandrachur Ghose who is an author, researcher and commentator on history, economics and environment, having graduated from Visva Bharati and the University of Sussex. Hence Pair 3 is also correctly matched
• The Legend of Birsa Munda is the story of a subaltern tribal hero whose contribution to India's struggle for independence must never be forgotten.” The legend of birsa munda is written by Tuhin A Sinha and Ankit Verma. Hence, pair 4 is also not correctly matched.

EXPLANATION:

• ChatGPT is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3 family of large language models, and is fine-tuned with both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
• ChatGPT was created by San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company OpenAI. OpenAI Inc. is the non-profit parent company of the for-profit OpenAI LP. OpenAI is famous for its well-known DALL·E, a deep-learning model that generates images from text instructions called prompts. The CEO is Sam Altman, who previously was president of Y Combinator.
• ChatGTP can also “address follow-up inquiries” in addition to being able to “admit its mistakes, contest misleading premises, and decline unsuitable requests.” Hence, statement 2 is also correct.

EXPLANATION:

• The Etalin hydroelectric project in Arunachal Pradesh has been rejected in its present form by the Forest Advisory Committee in the face of overwhelming opposition to its construction. Since it is located in Arunachal. Hence statement 1 is not correct
• HEP is based on the Dibang River. Dibang River, also known as Sikang by the Adi and Talo in Idu, is an upstream tributary river of the Brahmaputra in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. The Dam site is located about 1.5 km upstream of the confluence of Ashu Pani and Dibang rivers and about 43 km from Roing, District Headquarter. Hence statement 2 is correct.

EXPLANATION:

• The doctrine of essentiality (DoE) is jurisprudence (legal principle) framed by the Supreme Court to determine which religious practices qualify as essential religious practices and are protected under Article 25. DoE was invented by SC in the Shirur Mutt case 1954. Hence Statement 1 is correct .
• In this case The court held that the term “religion” will cover all rituals and practices “integral” to religion and upon itself the responsibility of determining the essential and non-essential practices of a religion. Hence statement 2 is also correct.