UPSC 2023: Weekly GK and Current Affairs Quiz Jan 28 - Feb 03

• The Ganga Sagar Mela is a religious festival and the second-biggest fair of India after the Kumbha Mela, celebrated on the Ganga Sagar Island, at the mouth of the river Hooghly in West Bengal.
• It is held in the month of January-February. It is attended by thousands of pilgrims every year. A dip in the water at this place, during Gangasagar Mela, is considered to be sacred.

• The Indian Pangolin is widely distributed in India, except in the arid region, high Himalayas and the North-East. It can be found at elevations up to 2500 m. The species also occurs in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
• Pangolins are listed in Schedule I of India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, implying the highest degree of protection.
• Nandankanan Zoological Park is the only conservation breeding centre of Indian Pangolins in the world.

• India and UAE share a robust trade relationship.
• UAE is India’s third-largest trading partner for the year 2019-20 after China and US.
• UAE is the second-largest export destination of India (after the US) with an amount of nearly US$ 29 billion for the year 2019-20.
• India is currently negotiating a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with UAE.
• Notably, India has a working CEPA with ASEAN, Japan and South Korea.

• Under the GST law, states are compensated for any loss of revenue arising on account of the implementation of GST for five years till June 2022.
• The compensation is calculated based on the difference between the states’ current GST revenue and the protected revenue after estimating an annualised 14% growth rate from the base year of 2015-16.
• The amount would be paid every two months based on provisional accounts, and adjusted every year after the State’s accounts are audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The Indian Forest (Amendment) Ordinance, 2017 was promulgated on November 23, 2017. It amends the Indian Forest Act, 1927. Under the Act, the definition of tree includes palms, bamboos, stumps, brush-wood and canes. The Ordinance amends this definition to remove the word bamboos.

• Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach under which producers are given a significant responsibility – financial and/or physical – for the treatment or disposal of post-consumer products.
• It is a commitment on the producer to facilitate a reverse collection mechanism and recycling of end of life, post-consumer waste. The objective is to circle it back into the system to recover resources embedded in the waste.
• In the last few years, India has framed laws that have introduced the concept of Extended Producer Responsibility for plastic packaging waste and e-waste.
• The e-waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011 introduced ‘extended producer responsibility’.

• The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is a tax on goods and services.
• It is an indirect tax that has mostly superseded several other indirect taxes in India, such as excise duty, VAT, and services tax.
• At present, the following items are kept outside the purview of GST in India:
  • Alcohol for human consumption: In India, alcohol for human consumption is currently exempt from the GST regime. The taxes on alcohol for human use, on the other hand, will remain in place as they were before the establishment of the GST. Hence Statement 1 is correct.
  • Petroleum products: Petroleum products such as crude oil, motor spirit (petrol), high-speed diesel, natural gas, and aviation turbine fuel, among others, are exempt from GST in India. However, the taxes on these items will be levied in accordance with the framework in place before the implementation of GST. Hence Statement 2 is correct.
  • Medicines: GST levies on pharmaceutical products can range between different tax rates, i.e. Nil, 5%, 12% and 18%. Hence Statement 3 is not correct.

• Algal blooms may appear in both freshwater and marine habitats. Hence Statement 1 is correct.
• Overgrowths of algae in water are known as harmful algal blooms. Harmful algal blooms may produce very toxic poisons that can make humans and animals sick or even kill them. Hence Statement 2 is correct.

• The Zulu rebellion against British control in southern Africa was known as the Bambatha Rebellion. The insurrection took place in Zululand, now KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in 1906.
• Hence Option D is correct.

• Many native Indian ideas, including yogic postures, music, and dance, were absorbed by Sufism in India. During the time of the Delhi Sultanate in the 10th and 11th centuries, Sufism rose to prominence. Hence Statement 1 is correct.
• Khwaja Muin-ud-din Chisti (also known as Gharib Nawaz) founded the Chisti order in India in 1192 CE. Hence Statement 2 is not correct.
• The Chistis avoided the company of kings and nobles, preferring to stay out of state politics. Hence Statement 3 is not correct.

• The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a real-time payment system designed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to facilitate inter-bank transactions through mobile phones.
• UPI allows you to send money instantly from your bank account to multiple retailers without having to type in your credit card number or your net banking or wallet password.
• UPI is a payment mechanism that allows you to send money from one bank account to another using your smartphone.
• Hence Option A  is correct.

• Four major categories of musical instruments include:
  • Percussion instruments (Avanaddha vadya)
  • Ghana Vadya or idiophones
  • Sushira vadya or aerophones
  • Tata vadya or chordophones
• Alingya, Chenda and Oordhwaka are percussion instruments while Kamaicha is a string instrument.

• Garhjat Hills is located in the state of Odisha.
• Nallamala Hills is located across the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
• Ponmudi Hills is located in Kerala.

• Kaziranga National Park is a national park located in the state of Assam. It hosts two-thirds of the world’s great one-horned rhinoceroses and is a declared World Heritage Site.
• It is also designated as an ‘Important Bird Area’ by Birdlife International.

• Basel norms or Basel accords are the international banking regulations issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The Basel norms are an effort to coordinate banking regulations across the globe, with the goal of strengthening the international banking system.
• It aims to strengthen regulation, supervision and risk management for more resilient banks and banking systems.

• Corbett National Park: Ramganga
• Kaziranga National Park: Brahmaputra, Diphlu, Mora Diphlu and Mora Dhansiri
• Silent Valley National Park: Kunthipuzha

• The Gaganyaan Programme envisages undertaking the demonstration of human spaceflight to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in the short term and will lay the foundation for a sustained Indian human space exploration programme in the long run.
• The objective of the Gaganyaan programme is to demonstrate the indigenous capability to undertake human space flight missions to LEO.
• As part of this programme, two unmanned missions and one manned mission are approved by the Government of India (GoI).
• The initial target was to launch human spaceflight before the 75th anniversary of India’s independence on August 15, 2022. However, due to the pandemic, this timeline has been shifted. The two unmanned flights under the Gaganyaan mission will happen in 2022 and the third, carrying an Indian crew will happen in 2023.
• GSLV Mk III, heavy lift launch vehicle, will be used to launch Gaganyaan.

• Pangong Tso is an endorheic lake spanning eastern Ladakh and West Tibet. It has a land-locked basin separated from the Indus River basin by a small elevated ridge, but is believed to have been part of the latter in prehistoric times.
• Lake Baikal is the highest freshwater lake. It is in the southern part of eastern Siberia, Russia.

• The Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.
• Opened for signature in 1968, the treaty entered into force in 1970.

• The headquarters and Secretariat of SAARC are in Kathmandu, Nepal.

There are vaccines to prevent hepatitis A and hepatitis B; however, no vaccine is available for hepatitis C.

• 243B of the Indian Constitution states that there shall be constituted in every State, Panchayats at the village, intermediate and district levels. However, it also states that panchayats at the intermediate level may not be constituted in a State having a population not exceeding twenty lakhs.
• There is no such provision regarding the reservation of seats for tribals.

• The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has approved a testing kit for detecting the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. The kit will be used to confirm Omicron in patients with its S-Gene Target Failure (SGTF) strategy.

• Gujarat is the largest cotton-producing state in India. The state accounts for around 30% of the total cotton production in the country.
• Cotton requires well-drained black soil for cultivation. Black soils are very fine-grained and dark and contain a high proportion of calcium and magnesium carbonates. They also have a high moisture retention capacity which is required for cotton plants.
• Government announces minimum support price (MSP) for raw cotton as well.

• Saint Chavara was an Indian Syro-Malabar Catholic priest, philosopher and social reformer.
• He led the Pallikkoodam movement which involved setting up schools on church premises. He also started free mid-day meals to reduce drop-outs among the poor and Dalit students.
• In 1846, he established a Sanskrit school in Mannanam in Kerala.

• The observation involved the merging of two black holes. Upon merging they twisted together to form a single spinning hole. The missing mass after merging, became energy, expelled as gravitational waves.
• In the experiment, it was observed that gravitational wave detectors detected signals whereas black holes emit no electromagnetic radiation and are impossible to directly observe, gravitational waves provide an opportunity to study and understand them.

Image Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

• The Caspian Sea is the world’s largest inland body of water. It lies to the east of the Caucasus Mountains and the west of the vast steppe of Central Asia. The sea’s name derives from the ancient Kaspi peoples, who once lived in Transcaucasia to the west.
• It is an endorheic basin that lies between Europe and Asia. The sea is bordered by Kazakhstan in the northeast, by Turkmenistan in the southeast, by Iran in the south, by Azerbaijan in the southwest, and by Russia in the northwest.
• The shores of the northern Caspian are low and reflect the great accumulation of alluvial material washed down by the Ural, Terek, and Volga rivers that empty into the sea whose deltas are extensive.

Image Source: WorldAtlas

• The Aral Sea separates Kazakhstan from Uzbekistan to the north and Uzbekistan from Kazakhstan to the south.
• It was previously Central Asia’s largest saltwater lake spanning 63,000 square kilometers. However, the lake started shrinking in the 1960s, when the Soviet government decided to divert two of its main rivers, the Syr-Darya and the Amu-Darya, to irrigate the surrounding arid region.
• It is the world’s fourth-largest body of inland water.

• Pradhan Mantri Formalisation of Micro food processing Enterprises (PM FME) Scheme was launched on 29th June 2020.
• It is a part of Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.
• It is a centrally sponsored scheme. The share of expenditure under the PM FME scheme is as follows:
  • 60:40 between the central government and state governments and UTS with the legislature
  • 90:10 between central and North Eastern and Himalayan states
  • 100 percent central assistance for UTs without legislatures.
• It aims to enhance the competitiveness of existing individual micro-enterprises in the unorganized segment of the food processing industry and promote formalization of the sector and support Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), Self Help Groups (SHGs), and Producers Cooperatives along their entire value chain.
• Under the scheme, 2,00,000 micro food processing units will be directly assisted with credit-linked subsidies.
• It has an outlay of 10,000 crore and will run for five years – 2020-21 to 2024-25. The central government will bear the expenditure for the first year irrespective of who incurs it; later it will be adjusted in the ratio mentioned above; in the next four years.
• The central government will provide funds to the state based on the approved Project Implementation Plan (PIP).
• One-District One-Product Approach (ODOP) plan to be implemented to encompass input procurement, common services availability, and product marketing.

• Statement 1 is not correct.

As per Article 348 of the Constitution of India,

• All proceedings in the Supreme Court and in every High Court (Not all the Courts).
• The authoritative texts of all,
  • Bills to be introduced or amendments to be moved in either House of Parliament or in the House or either House of the Legislature of a State,
  • Acts passed by Parliament or the Legislature of a State and all Ordinances
  • Orders, rules, regulations and bye-laws issued under this Constitution.

“shall be in the English language”.

• Statement 2 is not correct.

The Governor of a State may, with the previous consent of the President, authorise the use of the Hindi language, or any other language used for any official purposes of the State, in proceedings in the High Court having its principal seat in that State: Provided that nothing in this clause shall apply to any judgment, decree or order passed or made by such High Court.