Daily Current Affairs MCQ / UPSC / IAS / 14-07-19 | PDF Downloads

 
MCQ 1
Waorani tribe is a native of

1. Western Ghats
2. North East India
3. Pakistan
4. Equador

MCQ 2
Recently in news, what is H.R.1044

1. A submarine which was attacked in Indian Ocean
2. High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 in US
3. New labour Code
4. None

• H.R.1044 – Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019
• Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019
• This bill increases the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from 7% of the total number of such visas available that year to 15%, and eliminates the 7% cap for employment-based immigrant visas. It also removes an offset that reduced the number of visas for individuals from China.
• The bill also establishes transition rules for employment-based visas from FY2020-FY2022, by reserving a percentage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability), EB-3 (skilled and other workers), and EB-5 (investors) visas for individuals not from the two countries with the largest number of recipients of such visas. Of the unreserved visas, not more than 85% shall be allotted to immigrants from any single country.

Key changes proposed:

• As per the present system, out of the total number of family-based immigrant visas to be given by the US in a particular year, the people of a country can be given a maximum of seven per cent of such visas. The new Bill seeks to increase this seven per cent per-country limit to 15 per cent.
• Similarly, it also seeks to eliminate the seven per cent per-country cap on employment-based immigrant visas.
• It also removes an offset that reduced the number of visas for individuals from China.
• The bill also establishes transition rules for employment-based visas from FY 2020-22 by reserving a per centage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability), EB-3 (skilled and other workers) and EB-5 (investors) visas for individuals from other than the two countries that get the largest number of such visas.
• As per another provision of the Bill, not more than 85 per cent of the unreserved visas, would be allotted to immigrants from any single country.

Impact:

• The Bill will create a first-come, first-served system providing certainty to workers and families and enabling the US companies to flourish and compete in a global economy as they hire the brightest people to create products, services, and jobs, regardless of where they were born.

How will this law help the Indian IT professionals working there?

• Lifting the per-country cap on Green Card would mainly benefit high-tech professionals on H-1B work visas from countries like India, for whom the wait for Green Card is more than a decade.
• Under current rules, citizens of India are getting about 25 percent of all the professional employment green cards each year. If this bill becomes law citizens of India will get more than 90 percent of the professional employment green cards.

MCQ 3

1. GAFA tax was recently introduced in budget 2019-20
2. It is related to FDI rules in e commerce business

Choose correct

1.  Only 1
2.  Only 2
3.  Both
4.  None

Gafa tax:

• What is it? It is a legislation — dubbed the GAFA tax — an acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon – passed recently by France Parliament.
• With this, France has become the first major economy to impose a tax on digital giants.
• The new law aims at plugging a taxation gap that has seen some internet heavyweights paying next to nothing in countries where they make huge profits.
• The law will levy a 3 per cent tax on total annual revenues of the largest tech firms providing services to French consumers.
• The tax would be applied only to companies with global revenues in excess of €500 million and revenue of at least €25 million from UK activities.

MCQ 4

1. Kalyani Rafael Advanced Systems Ltd (KRAS) is 1st private missile production facility in India.
2. It will build Barak-8 Medium-Range Surface-to-Air Missiles (MRSAM) of America for IAF.

Choose correct

1.  Only 1
2.  Only 2
3.  Both
4.  None

MCQ 5
 The end objective of ‘Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti’ is

1. To end gender bias in forces
2. To upliftment of women across all areas of development
3. To inculcate IP culture in Indian defence manufacturing ecosystem.
4. To bring highest level of autonomy in private defence manufacturing

• Intellectual Property Facilitation Cell (IPFC), Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence and National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), Ministry of Science and Technology, yesterday signed an MoU with a vision to bridge the capacity shortfall and provide a major fillip to the ongoing efforts of Ministry of Defence towards promoting a culture of Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights IPR in Indian Defence industry.
• An official release said, the move will be a boost to the Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti. It may be recalled that Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti was launched with the aim to inculcate IP culture in Indian defence manufacturing ecosystem.
• Under this mission, an IPFC has been established under the aegis of Directorate General Quality Assurance (DGQA) which has within a short span of a year achieved the challenging target of training more than 12,000 personnel on IPR and facilitating the filing of more than 1000 new IPR applications.
• It should be noted that Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti, conceptualised by Ajay Kumar, Secretary, Defence Production, was formally launched by former Defence Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, last November, with an aim to inculcate Intellectual Property culture in Indian defence manufacturing ecosystem.
• Under this Mission, an Intellectual Property Facilitation Cell (IPFC) has been established under the aegis of Directorate General Quality Assurance (DGQA), which has achieved a challenging target of training more than 12,000 personnel on IPR and facilitating filing of more than 1000 new IPR applications within a short span of a year.
• The IPR has emerged as a key ingredient of an ecosystem which stimulates innovation and ingenuity. An IP Facilitation Cell was established in April last year which has worked tirelessly to achieve ambitious targets of training 10,000 personnel of OFB and DPSUs on IPR and to facilitate filing of at least 1,000 new IPR applications.
• As part of the ongoing initiatives to enhance self-reliance in defence, the Department of Defence Production has instituted a new framework titled ‘Mission Raksha GyanShakti’ which aims to provide a boost to the IPR culture in indigenous defence industry. The Directorate General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) has been entrusted with the responsibility of coordinating and implementing the programme. The event brought out that the end objective of ‘Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti’ is to inculcate IP culture in Indian defence manufacturing ecosystem.
• The action plan 2019-20 of Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti has also been approved by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, which includes training of additional 20,000 personnel from Public/Private Sector Industry and Armed Forces on relevance of Intellectual Property culture to Indian Defence manufacturing industry and to institute a framework which enables full utilisation of new ideas and innovation towards achieving self-reliance in defence sector.
•  About National Research Development Corporation It was established by Government of India in 1953. Objective: To promote, develop and commercialize technologies, know-how, patents, inventions and processes emanating from various national R&D institutions or Universities. It is presently working under administrative control of Dept. of Scientific & Industrial Research, Union Ministry of Science & Technology

MCQ 6
 Jal dharo Jal bharo a water conservation program is of

1. UP
2. Uttarakhand
3. Rajasthan
4. None

• On 12 July 2019, West Bengal government observed Save Water Day across the state to spread the message of water conservation. This is the 1st time the day was observed. From now onwards it will be observed in state each year to create awareness among people to check misuse of water.
• The Jal Dharo Jal Bharo Abhiyan was launched in 2011 with the objective of conserving precious water resources through all kinds of water bodies, viz. tanks, ponds, reservoirs, canals, etc., and through artificial recharging of underground water via rooftop rainwater harvesting. These conservation measures, in turn, provide wage security for rural people through labourintensive jobs.
• Besides preserving naturally formed bodies of water, the department is engaged in the creation of water bodies through the construction of water detention structures and re-excavation of tanks and other water bodies. Check dams, water harvesting tanks, surface flow minor irrigation schemes, etc. are being constructed for arresting surface run-off water for utilisation in supplementary irrigation and for other purposes during dry spells.
• Apart from agricultural activities, pisciculture and animal husbandry are being promoted for using these water bodies, resulting in additional income for rural people.
• The excavation and re-excavation work is also being engaged in under the NREGA programme in convergence with the Panchayats and Rural Development (P&RD) Department. Mass awareness campaigns are regularly conducted by the State Government regarding the importance of conserving water.

MCQ 7

1. Anshula Kant, Managing Director of State Bank of India (SBI) has been appointed as Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of World Bank.
2. She will be the 1st woman CFO of World Bank.

Choose correct

1. Only 1
2. Only 2
3. Both
4. None

MCQ 8
Hayabusa2 probe is by

1. NASA
2. JAXA
3. ROSCOMOS
4. ESA

• Hayabusa2 is an asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japanese space agency, JAXA. It follows on from the Hayabusa mission which returned asteroid samples in 2010. Hayabusa2 was launched on 3 December 2014 and rendezvoused with near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu on 27 June 2018.
• It is in the process of surveying the asteroid for a year and a half, departing in December 2019, and returning to Earth in December 2020.
• Hayabusa2 carries multiple science payloads for remote sensing, sampling, and four small rovers that are investigating the asteroid surface to inform the environmental and geological context of the samples collected
• Before this touchdown by Hayabusa2 probe, a sub-surface material from a celestial body further away than moon have never been gathered. Thus Japan became 1st country to do so. Hayabusa2 also made history with the creation of the crater on Ryugu’s surface.
• Objective: It is intended to collect pristine materials from beneath surface of desolate asteroid as it is believed that collected material could provide insights into what solar system was like at its birth, some 4.6 billion years ago.

MCQ 9
Global MPI 2019 Report is prepared by

1. UNGA
2. Poverty international
3. UNDP & OPHI
4. OECD

• Global MPI 2019 Report prepared by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.
• In the 101 countries assessed– 31 low income, 68 middle income and 2 high income –about 1.3 billion people are “multi-dimensionally poor“.
• The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was developed in 2010 by the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative and the United Nations Development Programme, and uses different factors to determine poverty beyond income-based lists. It replaced the previous Human Poverty Index. The global MPI is released annually by OPHI and the results published on its website.
• Definition of MPI poor:
• Multi-dimensional poverty defines poor not only on the basis of income, but on other indicators, including poor health, poor quality of work and the threat of violence.
• The global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is an international measure of acute poverty covering over 100 developing countries. It complements traditional income-based poverty measures by capturing the severe deprivations that each person faces at the same time with respect to education, health and living standards. The MPI assesses poverty at the individual level. If someone is deprived in a third or more of ten (weighted) indicators, the global index identifies them as ‘MPI poor’, and the extent – or intensity – of their poverty is measured by the number of deprivations they are experiencing in this ten factors which includes education, sanitation, food and various other indicators. The MPI can be used to create a comprehensive picture of people living in poverty, and permits comparisons both across countries, regions and the world and within countries by ethnic group, urban/rural location, as well as other key household and community characteristics.
• These characteristic make the MPI useful as an analytical tool to identify the most vulnerable people – the poorest among the poor, revealing poverty patterns within countries and over time, enabling policy makers to target resources and design policies more effectively.

Key findings:

•  India specific:
• Incidence of multidimensional poverty almost halved between 2005-06 and 2015-16, climbing down to 27.5%, indicating that the number of poor people in India fell by more than 271 million within ten years.
• Incidence of multidimensional poverty halved in India due to faster progress among the poorest in the country. Among states, Jharkhand had the greatest improvement, with Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Nagaland only slightly behind.
• However, Bihar was still the poorest state in 2015- 16, with more than half of its population living in poverty. In 2015-16, the four poorest states – Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh – were home to 196 million multidimensional poor people – over half of all the people living in multidimensional poverty in India.
• Least poor regions also saw reduction in poverty. Relative to their starting levels, they netted some of the highest rates of reduction. For example, Kerala, one of the least poor regions in 2006, reduced its MPI by around 92%.
• The positive trend of pro-poor poverty reduction was seen also across religions and caste groups. In both cases, the poorest groups (Muslims and Scheduled Tribes) reduced poverty the most over the ten years from 2005-06 to 2015-16.
• The poorest district is Alirajpur in Madhya Pradesh, where 76.5% of people are poor – the same as Sierra Leone in Sub-Saharan Africa. Only eight countries have higher rates of MPI.
• The index uses the same three dimensions as the Human Development Index: health, education, and standard of living. These are measured using ten indicators

Indicators used

• The following ten indicators are used to calculate the MPI:
• Education (each indicator is weighted equally at 1/6)

1. Years of schooling: deprived if no household member has completed six years of schooling
2. school attendance: deprived if any school-aged child is not attending school up to class 8

• Health (each indicator is weighted equally at 1/6)

1. Child mortality: deprived if any child has died in the family in past 5 years
2. Nutrition: deprived if any adult or child, for whom there is nutritional information, is stunted

• Living Standards (each indicator is weighted equally at 1/18)

1. Electricity: deprived if the household has no electricity
2. Sanitation: deprived if the household’s sanitation facility is not improved (according to MDG guidelines), or it is improved but shared with other households
3. Drinking water: deprived if the household does not have access to safe drinking water (according to MDG guidelines) or safe drinking water is more than a 30-minute walk from home roundtrip
4. Housing: deprived if the household has a dirt, sand or dung floor
5. Cooking fuel: deprived if the household cooks with dung, wood or charcoal
6. Assets ownership: deprived if the household does not own more than one of: radio, TV, telephone, bike, motorbike or refrigerator and does not own a car or truck

• A person is considered poor if they are deprived in at least a third of the weighted indicators. The intensity of poverty denotes the proportion of indicators in which they are deprived.

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