Daily Current Affairs MCQ / UPSC 2020 / IAS / 18-12-19

Table of Contents

MCQ 1

The Global Gender Gap Index for the year 2020 was released by UNESCO
The largest gender disparity is in political empowerment.

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Global Gender Gap Index

The Global Gender Gap Index for the year 2020 was released by World Economic Forum.
Iceland, Norway, and Finland occupy the top three spots in the Report.

Yemen ranked at the last place (153^rd).

India has ranked 112th among 153 countries, slipped four places from the previous year ranking.
Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and China are ranked at 50, 101 , 102 and 106 respectively. Pakistan is ranked at 151.

It measures progress towards parity between men and women in –

Economy
Education
Health &
Political representation.

The index lies between 0 and 1, with 1 denoting complete parity and 0, complete inequality.

Key Findings – The largest gender disparity is in political empowerment.

Only 25% of the total seats in parliaments around the world are occupied by women, and only 21% of the ministers are women.
By following the current trends, the overall global gender gap will close in 99.5 years.
It can potentially be closed 71.5 years in South Asia.

India –

Ranked 18th in political empowerment and 4th in the number of years a female or a male ruled a state.
Ranked in the bottom-five in terms of women’s health and survival and economic participation.
On health and survival, four large countries such as Pakistan, India, Vietnam and China fare badly with millions of women not getting the same access to health as men.
It has closed two-thirds of its overall gender gap (score of 66.8%)

Other Gender Related Reports

The Gender Parity Index is released by UNESCO.
The Gender Inequality Index is released by

MCQ 2

The first Global Refugee Forum (GRF) was held in Geneva, Switzerland.
The GRF will be held every year at the Ministerial level.

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Global Refugee Meet

The first Global Refugee Forum (GRF) was held in Geneva, Switzerland.
It is a two-day gathering of United Nations member states
It is jointly hosted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Refugee Agency, and the Government of Switzerland.
It aims to debate and discuss the response of the world’s countries to the global refugee situation.
It is guided by the Global Compact on Refugees.
It has been organized around 6 areas of focus –

Burden and responsibility-sharing,
Education,
Jobs and livelihoods,
Energy and infrastructure,
Solutions, and
Protection capacity

The Issues discussed at the forum include

Displacement of Afghans and Central Americans
Providing education for refugee children, and
Emergency situations and financial support through Islamic finance.
Pakistan PM sought to use the platform to attack India over Kashmir.
The GRF will be held every four years at the Ministerial level.
Presently, the number of refugees has risen to over 25 million people worldwide.

MCQ 3

Government e-Marketplace (GeM) is the national public procurement portal launched by the NITI Aayog in 2016

Recently launched GeM Samvaad, will take place with stakeholders across the country and with local sellers in order to facilitate on-boarding of local sellers on the marketplace

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Government e-Marketplace (GeM) is the national public procurement portal launched by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in 2016.
It offers end to end solutions for all procurement needs of Central and State Government Departments, PSUs, autonomous institutions and local bodies.
It has more than 3 lakh registered sellers and service providers and more than 40,000 Government buyer organizations.
Sellers from the State are benefitting through the access to national Public Procurement market using the portal.
It makes procurement contactless, paperless and cashless.

GEM Samvaad

The government has recently launched GeM Samvaad, which is a national outreach programme.
It will take place with stakeholders across the country and with local sellers in order to facilitate on-boarding of local sellers on the marketplace while catering to specific requirements and procurement needs of buyers.
The outreach programme will cover all the States and UTs of the country.
Through GeM Samvaad the marketplace is looking forward to receiving feedback from users which shall be used for making improvements and advancements in the system.

MCQ 4

The Sahitya Academy Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers
It awards writings in 22 languages of 8^thschedule of Indian constitution.

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The Sahitya Academy Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the major Indian languages (24 languages recognized by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi).
Besides the 22 languages enumerated in the Constitution of India, the Sahitya Akademi has recognised English and Rajasthani as languages in which its programme may be implemented.
Established in 1954, the award comprises a plaque and a cash prize of ₹ 1,00,000.
The award’s purpose is to recognize and promote excellence in Indian writing and also acknowledge new trends.
The annual process of selecting awardees runs for the preceding twelve months.
The plaque awarded by the Sahitya Akademi was designed by the Indian film-maker Satyajit Ray.

Tharoor wins Akademi’s 2019 award for English

The Sahitya Akademi on Wednesday announced its annual literary awards for 2019 for works in 23 languages, including one for Shashi Tharoor’s non-fiction book about British rule in India.
The Akademi announced that it would honour seven books of poetry, four novels, six books of short stories, three of essays and one each of non-fiction, autobiography and biography. The award, including ₹1 lakh in cash, would be presented at a ceremony on February 25, 2020, the Akademi said in a statement.
‘An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India’ by Mr. Tharoor, who is a Congress MP, was selected in the English category.
The awards honour works of poetry by Dr. Phukan Ch. Basumatry (Bodo), Nand Kishore Acharya (Hindi), Nilba A. Khandekar (Konkani), Kumar Manish Arvind (Maithili), V. Madhusoodanan Nair (Malayalam), Anuradha Patil (Marathi) and Prof. Penna Madhusudan (Sanskrit).
Novels by Dr. Joysree Goswami Mahanta (Assamese), L. Birmangol Singh (Manipuri), Cho. Dharman (Tamil) and Bandi Narayana Swamy (Telugu) were also among the winners.
Books of short stories by Abdul Ahad Hajini (Kashmiri), Tarun Kanti Mishra (Odia), Kirpal Kazak (Punjabi), Ramsawroop Kisan (Rajasthani), Kali Charan Hembram (Santali) and Ishwar Moorjani (Sindhi), an autobiography by Dr. Vijaya (Kannada) and a biography by Prof. Shafey Kidwai (Urdu) were also among the winners.

MCQ 5

MeiTY has recently launched a new “National Broadband Mission”.

The mission aimed at providing broadband access in all village panchayats in the country by 022.

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National Broadband Mission

Ministry of communications have recently launched a new “National Broadband Mission”.
The mission aimed at providing broadband access in all villages in the country by 2022.
Under the mission, the government plans to lay incremental 30 lakh route km of Optical Fiber Cable.
It aims to increase tower density from 0.42 to 1 tower per thousand of population by 2024.
It entails investments of around ₹7 lakh crore from various stakeholders.
Additionally, a Broadband Readiness Index will be developed to measure the availability of digital communications infrastructure within a State/UT.
Other Objectives – Creation of a digital fiber map of the Digital Communications network and infrastructure, including Optical Fiber Cables and Towers, across the country.
Investment from stakeholders of USD 100 billion (Rs 7 Lakh Crore)
National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) was an ambitious initiative to trigger a broadband revolution in rural areas. 2011
NOFN was envisaged as an information super-highway through the creation of a robust middle-mile infrastructure for reaching broadband connectivity to Gram Panchayats.
The National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) aims to connect all the 2,50,000 Gram panchayats in the country and provide 100 Mbps connectivity to all gram panchayats (GPs).
To achieve this, the existing fibres of PSUs (BSNL, Railtel and Power Grid) were utilised and incremental fibre was laid to connect to Gram Panchayats wherever necessary.
Based on NOFN experiences, newer, updated and upgraded version – BharatNet was conceived as a nation-wide broadband network
Universal service Obligation Fund (USOF),which was set up for improving telecom services in rural and remote areas of the country.
The objective is to facilitate the delivery of e-governance, e-health, e- education, e-banking, Internet and other services to the rural India.
BharatNet is a project of national importance to establish, by 2017, a highly scalable network infrastructure accessible to provide on demand, affordable broadband connectivity of 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps for all households and on demand capacity to all institutions, to realise the vision of Digital India, in partnership with States and the private sector.
The entire project is being funded by Universal service Obligation Fund (USOF), which was set up for improving telecom services in rural and remote areas of the country.
The objective is to facilitate the delivery of e-governance, e-health, e- education, e-banking, Internet and other services to the rural India.

MCQ 6

Recycling of Ships Act imposes a statutory duty on ship recyclers to ensure safe and environmentally sound removal and management of hazardous wastes from ships.
Ships to be recycled in India shall be required to obtain a Ready for Recycling Certificate in accordance with the Hong Kong Convention for Ship Recycling.

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Recycling of Ships Act

Recycling of Ships Act, recently comes into force, provide for the regulation of recycling of ships by setting certain international standards.
It lays down the statutory mechanism for enforcement of such standards.
It restricts and prohibits the use or installation of hazardous materials, which applies irrespective of whether a ship is meant for recycling or not.
For new ships, such restriction or prohibition on use of hazardous materials will be immediate, that is, from the date the legislation comes into force, while existing ships shall have a period of five years for compliance.
Restriction or prohibition on use of hazardous materials would not be applied to warships and non-commercial ships operated by
Ships shall be surveyed and certified on the inventory of hazardous materials used in ships.
Under this Act, ship recycling facilities are required to be authorized and ships shall be recycled only in such authorized ship recycling
It also provides that ships shall be recycled in accordance with a ship-specific recycling plan.
Ships to be recycled in India shall be required to obtain a Ready for Recycling Certificate in accordance with the Hong Kong Convention for Ship Recycling.
The Act imposes a statutory duty on ship recyclers to ensure safe and environmentally sound removal and management of hazardous wastes from ships.
Appropriate penal provisions have been introduced in the Act to deter any violation of statutory provisions.

Hong Kong Convention for Ship Recycling

India has recently acceded to the Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships.
The convention is aimed at ensuring that recycling ships, do not pose any unnecessary risk to human health and safety or to the environment.
It was adopted by International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in 2009.
It was developed with input from IMO, International Labour Organization and the Parties to the Basel Convention.
It addresses all concerns about working and environmental conditions in ship recycling facilities,
It regulates the design, construction, operation and preparation of ships so as to facilitate safe and environmentally sound recycling.
It checks for scrapping ships that may contain environmentally hazardous substances such as asbestos, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, ozone depleting substances and others.
It requires ships to be sent for recycling will be required to carry an inventory of hazardous materials.
Ship recycling yards will be required to provide a Ship Recycling Plan and parties will be required to take effective measures to ensure that ship recycling facilities under their jurisdiction comply with the

MCQ 7
Places where 2G bio-refinery projects are going on

Kota
Bhatinda
Bargarh
Barauni
Sonipat

(A) 1,2,3
(B) 2,3,4
(C) 2 & 3
(D) All

2^ndGENERATION ETHANOL

Subsequent to opening up of Second Generation (2G) route for ethanol production, Oil Marketing Companies are in the process of setting up 12 2G bio-refineries with an investment of Rs.14,000
Five 2G bio-refinery projects in Bhatinda, Bargarh (Baulasingha village) , Numaligarh, Panipat and Gorakhpur are in advanced stage of construction.

MCQ 8
The proposal of the Cripps mission was that

India would be a dominion associated with the United kingdom.
An elected body charged with the task of making the constitution would be setup immediately after the WW-II is stopped.

Which of the above is/are correct?

1. 1 only
2. 2 only
3. Both 1 and 2
4. None

The Second World War and Nationalists Response

In 1937 elections were held under the provisions of the Government of India Act of 1935
Congress Ministries were formed in seven states of India.
On 1 September 1939, 2ndWorld War broke out
The British Government without consulting the people of India involved the country in the war.
The Congress vehemently opposed it.
As a mark of protest the Congress Ministries resigned in all the seven Provinces on 12 December 1939
The Muslim League celebrated this day as the Deliverance Day
In March 1940 the Muslim League demanded the creation of Pakistan.

August offer

During the course of the 2^ndWorld War, in order to secure the cooperation of the Indians, the British Government made an announcement on 8 August 1940, which came to be known as the ‘August Offer’, which proposed –
Dominion status as the objective for India.
Expansion of viceroy’s executive council & setting up of a constituent assembly after the war consisting of Indians to
Decide their constitution according to their social, economic and political conceptions, subject to fulfilment of the obligation of the Government regarding defence, minority rights, treaties with states & all India services
No future constitution to be adopted without the consent of minorities.
India’s Reaction to August offer
The Congress rejected the August Offer
“Dominion status concept is dead as a door nail”
In March 1942, a mission headed by Stafford Cripps was sent to India with constitutional proposals to seek Indian support for the war.

Main Proposals

An Indian Union with a dominion status would be set up;
It would be free to decide its relations with the Commonwealth and free to participate in the United Nations and other international
After the end of the war, a constituent assembly would be convened to frame a new constitution.
Members of this assembly would be partly elected by the provincial assemblies through proportional representation and partly nominated by the princes.
The British Government would accept the new constitution subject to two conditions –
any province not willing to join the Union could have a separate constitution and form a separate Union, and the new constitution making body and the British Government would negotiate a treaty to effect the transfer of power and to safeguard racial and religious minorities.
In the meantime, defence of India would remain in British hands and the governor-general’s powers would remain intact.

The Congress objected to:

The offer of dominion status instead of a provision for complete independence
Representation of the states by nominees and not by elected representatives
Right to provinces to secede as this went against the principle of national unity
Absence of any plan for immediate transfer of power and absence of any real share in defence
The governor general’s supremacy had been retained, and the demand for governor-general being only the constitutional head had not been accepted

The Muslim League objection:

Criticized the idea of a single Indian Union
Did not like the machinery for the creation of a constituent assembly and the procedure to decide on the accession of provinces to the Union
Thought that the proposals denied to the Muslims the right to self- determination and the creation of Pakistan

MCQ 9

India is not a party to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (commonly known as the United Nations Convention against Torture)
26 June is recognized as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

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Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

(commonly known as the United Nations Convention against Torture (UNCAT)) is an international human rights treaty, under the review of the United Nations, that aims to prevent torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment around the world.
The Convention requires states to take effective measures to prevent torture in any territory under their jurisdiction, and forbids states to transport people to any country where there is reason to believe they will be tortured.
The text of the Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1984 and, following ratification by the 20th state party, it came into force on 26 June 1987.
26 June is now recognized as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, in honor of the Convention.
Since the convention’s entry into force, the absolute prohibition against torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment has become accepted as a principle of customary international
As of October 2019, the Convention has 169 state parties

MCQ 10
Consider the following statements about Ramsar Convention.

It is the United Nations Convention that provides the framework for the conservation and wise use of wetlands.

Almost 90% of UN member states, have acceded to become “Contracting Parties”.

It does not consider underground aquifers and human-made sites as wetlands.
Montreux Record is maintained as part of the Ramsar List.

Which of the above statements is/are incorrect?
(A)1, 3
(B) 2, 4
(C) 1, 2, 3
(D) 2, 3, 4

The Convention on Wetlands, called the Ramsar Convention, is the intergovernmental treaty that provides the framework for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources.
The Convention was adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar in 1971 and came into force in 1975.
Since then, almost 90% of UN member states, from all the world’s geographic regions, have acceded to become “Contracting Parties”.
The Convention uses a broad definition of wetlands.
It includes all lakes and rivers, underground aquifers,
swamps and marshes, wet grasslands, peatlands, oases, estuaries, deltas and tidal flats, mangroves and other coastal areas, coral reefs, and all human-made sites such as fish ponds, rice paddies, reservoirs and salt pans.
Montreux Record under the Convention is a register of wetland sites on the List of Wetlands of International Importance where changes in ecological character have occurred, are occurring, or are likely to occur as a result of technological developments, pollution or other human
It is maintained as part of the Ramsar List.