Weekly Current Affairs Quiz: 20/12/2021 to 25/12/2021

EXPLANATION:

• Deposit Insurance: It is a protection cover against losses accruing to bank deposits if a bank fails financially and has no money to pay its depositors and has to go in for liquidation. Hence, statement 1 is incorrect.
• Credit Guarantee: It is the guarantee that often provides for a specific remedy to the creditor if his debtor does not return his debt. Hence statement 2 is incorrect.
  DICGC Bill, 2021
• The bill will cover 98.3% of depositors and 50.9% of deposit value in the banking system, way above the global level of 80% and 20-30%, respectively.
• It will cover all types of banks, which also include regional rural banks and cooperative banks.
• It will cover banks already under the moratorium and those that could come under the moratorium.
• The moratorium is a legally authorized period of delay in the performance of a legal obligation or the payment of a debt. Hence statement 3 is correct.

EXPLANATION:

• VL-SRSAM has been designed and developed jointly by three facilities of the Defence Research and Development Organisation for deployment of Indian Naval warships. The missile has been designed to strike at the high-speed airborne targets at the range of 40 to 50 km and at an altitude of around 15 km. Hence statement 1 is correct.
• The missile has the capability of neutralising various aerial threats at close ranges including sea-skimming targets. The tactic of sea skimming is used by various anti-ship missiles and some fighter jets to avoid being detected by the radars onboard warships. For this, these assets fly as close as possible to sea surface and thus are difficult to detect and neutralise. Hence statement 2 is correct.

EXPLANATION:

• Measles is caused by a single-stranded, enveloped RNA virus with 1 serotype. It is classified as a member of the genus Morbillivirus in the Paramyxoviridae family. Humans are the only natural hosts of the measles virus. Hence, statement 1 is incorrect.
• When an individual is infected with measles, the immune system abruptly forgets every pathogen it’s ever encountered before – every cold, every bout of flu, and every exposure to bacteria or viruses in the environment, every vaccination. Hence, statement 2 is correct.

• The loss is near-total and permanent. Once the measles infection is over, the body has to re-learn what’s good and what’s bad almost from scratch. Hence, statement 3 is correct.

EXPLANATION:

• White rhinos are the second-largest land mammal and their name comes from the Afrikaans, a West Germanic language, word “weit” which means wide and refers to the animal’s mouth. They are also known as the square-lipped rhinoceros, white rhinos have a square upper lip with almost no hair.
• They live in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya and are protected round-the-clock by armed guards.
• The majority (98.8%) of the southern white rhinos occur in just four countries: South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya.
• Breeding females are prevented from leaving a dominant male’s territory, which is marked and patrolled by its owner on a regular basis. Hence option (b) is correct.

EXPLANATION:

• The Swachhta Udyami Yojana extends financial assistance for Construction, Operation and Maintenance of Pay and Use Community Toilets in Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Mode and Procurement and Operation of Sanitation related Vehicles.
• Provision of easy accessibility of the community latrines to the households (not having any such facilities in their houses) and for the floating population in public places with high footfall e.g. bus stands, railway stations, markets etc.
• This Scheme has twin objectives of cleanliness and providing livelihood to Safai Karamcharis and Liberated Manual Scavengers to achieve the overall goal of “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan”. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
• The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment launched the Swachhta Udyami Yojana (SUY) on 2nd October 2014. Hence statement 2 is incorrect.

EXPLANATION:

• The Government of India has approved a new scheme namely Mahila Shakti Kendra to empower rural women through community participation during 2017-18 up to 2019-20.
• The Scheme is implemented through the State Government/UT Administration and is implemented with a cost-sharing ratio of 60:40 between centres and states except for North East and the Special Category States where the ratio is 90:10. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
• District Level Centre for Women (DLCW) has also been envisaged for 640 districts to be covered in a phased manner.
• These centres serve as a link between the village, block and state levels in facilitating women centric schemes and also give a foothold for Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) scheme at the district level. Hence statement 2 is correct.

EXPLANATION: 

Chocolate-bordered flitter:

• The new species of butterfly, now named the Chocolate-bordered Flitter, also carries the scientific name Zographetus dzonguensis, after Dzongu in North Sikkim, the place where it was discovered.
• It is a golden yellow butterfly with brown borders and spots. The physical appearance of the species differs slightly and the internal structures of the males also differ slightly.
• Its closest relatives are Zographetus Pangi in Guangdong, and Zographetus hainanensis in Hainan, both in southeastern China, close to Hong Kong.
• It is mentioned on the ‘Butterflies of India’ website which is maintained by the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru. Hence option (b) is correct. 

EXPLANATION:

• It aims at providing strategic funding to higher education institutions throughout the country. The scheme is being operated in mission mode for funding state universities and colleges to achieve the aims of equity, access and excellence. Ensure adequate availability of quality faculty in all higher educational institutions and ensure capacity building at all levels of employment. Hence statement 1 is correct.
• It is a centrally sponsored scheme launched in October 2013. Since 2016-17, the government has spent an average of Rs. 1,500 crore every year on RUSA.The University Grants Commission will monitor the progress of work done by Institutions that received funding under the RUSA scheme. Hence statement 2 is incorrect.

EXPLANATION:

• “Aggregate Measurement of Support” and “AMS” mean the annual level of support, expressed in monetary terms, provided for an agricultural product in favour of the producers of the basic agricultural product or non-product-specific (fertilizer subsidy) support provided in favour of agricultural producers in general.
• Developing countries such as India are allowed to provide a de minimis level of product and non-product domestic subsidy.
• The procurement at MSP, after comparing it with the fixed external reference price (ERP) — an average price based on the base years 1986-88 — has to be included in AMS. Hence, statement (a) is correct.

 EXPLANATION:

• National Litigation Policy is formulated by the Ministry of Law and Justice of the Government of India. It aims to bring down the litigation from government agencies by making them more responsible in filing cases. It is based on the recognition that the government and its various agencies are the predominant litigants in courts and tribunals in the country. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
• The policy idealistically states that there should be greater accountability regarding governmental litigation, and mandates “suitable action” against officials violating this policy. It created “Empowered Committees” at the national and regional levels, apparently to regulate the implementation of the policy. Hence statement 2 is correct.
• It also lacks any form of impact assessment to evaluate the actual impact on reducing government litigation. Hence statement 3 is incorrect.

EXPLANATION:

• A natural farming technique that uses biological pesticides instead of chemical-based fertilizers. Farmers use earthworms, cow dung, urine, plants, human excreta and such biological fertilizers for crop protection. It reduces farmers’ investment. It also protects the soil from degradation. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
• Zero budget natural farming requires only 10 percent water and 10 percent electricity than what is required under chemical and organic farming. Hence statement 2 is correct.
• The “four wheels” of ZBNF are ‘Jiwamrita’, ‘Bijamrita’, ‘Mulching’ and ‘Waaphasa’.

Jiwamrita

• It's a fermented mixture of cow dung and urine (of desi breeds), jaggery, pulses flour, water and soil from the farm bund.

Bijamrita

• It is used as a seed treatment solution prior to sowing.

Mulching

• The covering of the plants with a layer of dried straw or fallen leaves is meant to conserve soil moisture and keep the temperature around the roots at 25-32 degrees 

Waaphasa

• Providing water to maintain the required moisture-air balance.

EXPLANATION:

• Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai informed the Centre that the state is opposed to the Kasturirangan Committee report on the Western Ghats.

• Gadgil Commission, an environmental research commission is named after its chairman Madhav Gadgil. The commission submitted the report to the Government of India on 31 August 2011. Gadgil report recommended that “no new dams based on large-scale storage be permitted in Ecologically Sensitive Zone 1. Since both the Athirappilly of Kerala and Gundia of Karnataka hydel project sites fall in Ecologically Sensitive Zone 1. Hence statement 1 is correct.
• The Kasturirangan committee was constituted to examine the WGEEP report. The committee is often called HLWG – it denotes the 10 members high-level working group (HLWG), headed by Kasturirangan. Instead of the total area of Western Ghats, only 37% (i.e. 60,000 sq. km.) of the total area be brought under ESA under the Kasturirangan report. Hence statement 2 is correct.