Daily Current Affairs MCQ / UPSC / IAS / 29-06-19

Table of Contents

MCQ 1

With a vision to ‘Cultivate one Million children in India as Neoteric Innovators’, Atal Innovation Mission is establishing Atal incubation centres (AIC)in schools across India
Atal tinkering labs (ATL) will be established for Higher education institutes, R&D institutes, corporate sector, alternative investment funds registered with SEBI.

Choose correct
(A) Only 1
(B) Only 2
(C) Both
(D) None

Context: 8878 schools have been selected for establishing Atal Tinkering Lab (ATLs) to promote research and innovation in schools.

Atal Innovation Mission

Objective
Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) including Self-Employment and Talent Utilization (SETU) is Government of India’s endeavor to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. Its objective is to serve as a platform for promotion of world-class Innovation Hubs, Grand Challenges, Start-up businesses and other self-employment activities, particularly in technology driven areas.
The Atal Innovation Mission shall have two core functions:
Entrepreneurship promotion through Self-Employment and Talent Utilization, wherein innovators would be supported and mentored to become successful entrepreneurs
Innovation promotion: to provide a platform where innovative ideas are generated
Atal Tinkering Labs
Atal Incubation Centers
Scale-up support to Established Incubators

Atal Tinkering Lab (ATLs)

With a vision to cultivate one million child innovators in India, Atal Innovation Mission by NITI Aayog and Government of India, envisaged a novel program – establishment of Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATLs) in schools across the country.
The Government of India aims to create an eco-system in the country that promotes the development and use of technology to find feasible solutions to problems. Taking the Prime Minister of India’s vision to enable children to innovate and do things on their own in India and to move India forward, more than 13 thousand schools have applied for ATLs. The objective of this program is to foster curiosity, creativity and imagination in young minds; and to inculcate skills such as design mind set, computational thinking, adaptive learning, physical computing etc. This is in sync with the global scenario where Future Work Skills are increasingly being considered as an important skill set for creating new avenues, providing solutions to global problems and leading the global economy towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Atal Tinkering Lab (ATLs)
Financial Support: AIM will provide grant-in-aid that includes a onetime establishment cost of Rs. 10 lakh and operational expenses of Rs. 10 lakh for a maximum period of 5 years to each ATL.
Eligibility: Schools (minimum Grade VI – X) managed by Government, local body or private trusts/society can set up ATL.

Atal Incubation Centres

Background
AIM intends to support the establishment of new incubation centres called Atal Incubation Centres (AICs) that would nurture innovative start-up businesses in their pursuit to become scalable and sustainable enterprises. The AICs would create world class incubation facilities across various parts of India with suitable physical infrastructure in terms of capital equipment and operating facilities, coupled with the availability of sectoral experts for mentoring the start-ups, business planning support, access to seed capital, industry partners, trainings and other relevant components required for encouraging innovative start-ups. Moreover, AICs would be established in subject specific areas such as manufacturing, transport, energy, health, education, agriculture, water and sanitation etc.
Eligibility
Entities such as such as higher educational institutions, R&D institutes, corporate sector, alternative investment funds registered with SEBI, business accelerators, group of individuals, and individuals are eligible to apply.
Financial Support
AIM will provide a grant-in-aid of upto Rs. 10 crore for a maximum period of 5 years to cover the capital and operational expenditures to establish the AIC

MCQ 2
Bio Fortification is

Growing crops in boundary support
It’s a method for conserving soil & nutrients
To increase nutritional value of food
None

Biofortification is the idea of breeding crops to increase their nutritional value. This can be done either through conventional selective breeding, or through genetic engineering. Biofortification differs from ordinary fortificationbecause it focuses on making plant foods more nutritious as the plants are growing, rather than having nutrients added to the foods when they are being processed.
This is an important improvement on ordinary fortification when it comes to providing nutrients for the rural poor, who rarely have access to commercially fortified foods.
As such, biofortification is seen as an upcoming strategy for dealing with deficiencies of micronutrients in low and middle-income countries. In the case of iron, WHO estimated that biofortification could help curing the 2 billion people suffering from iron deficiency-induced anemia
Department of Food & Public Distribution has approved the “Centrally Sponsored Pilot Scheme on Fortification of Rice & its distribution through Public Distribution System”.
Financial Assistance up to 90% in case of North-Eastern, Hilly and Island States and up to 75% in case of rest of the States has been extended.
Fortification is the practice of deliberately increasing the content of an essential micronutrient, i.e. vitamins and minerals (including trace elements) in a food, so as to improve the nutritional quality of the food supply and provide a public health benefit with minimal risk to health. Rice fortification is the practice of increasing the content of essential micronutrients in rice and to improve the nutritional quality of the rice.
Rice is the world’s most important staple food. An estimated 2 billion people eat rice every day, forming the mainstay of diets across large of Asia and Africa.
Regular milled rice is low in micronutrients and serves primarily as a source of carbohydrate only. The fortification of rice is a major opportunity to improve nutrition.
Fortified rice are contains Vitamin A, Vitamin B1, Vitamin B12, Folic Acid, Iron and Zinc.
Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has formulated a comprehensive regulation on fortification of foods namely ‘Food Safety and Standards (Fortification of Foods) Regulations, 2016’.
These regulations set the standards for food fortification and encourage the production, manufacture, distribution, sale and consumption of fortified foods.
The regulations also provide for specific role of FSSAI in promotion for food fortification and to make fortification mandatory. This sets the premise for the national summit on fortification of food.

MCQ 3

Founded in 1924, with the aim to develop and publish standard procedures in the field of seed testing, ISTA is inextricably linked with the history of seed testing. With member laboratories in over 70 countries/distinct economies worldwide, ISTA membership is truly a global network.
It’s a specialized agency of UN 3. The International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) is to hold its 32nd Congress in New Delhi. Choose correct

(A) 1 & 2
(B) All
(C) 2 & 3
(D) 1 only

Context: The International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) is to hold its 32nd Congress in Hyderabad.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare and the Telangana government are jointly hosting the conference, which will be attended by stakeholders from across the globe.
About ISTA:
Founded in 1924, with the aim to develop and publish standard procedures in the field of seed testing, ISTA is inextricably linked with the history of seed testing.
It is an association of laboratories which are authorised to check on the marketability of seed as defined in various countries’ laws.
Its duties include defining methods to determine the ability to germinate, the vigour of seed, and the content of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in seed.
The test results, as certified by ISTA member laboratories, are accepted by the trading partners of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in international seed traffic.
The North American equivalent of the ISTA is the Association of Official Seed Analysts(AOSA).

MCQ 4

In a bid to cultivate, promote and enhance opportunities on business, academic and cultural fronts between ________and Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India, a sister-city agreement has been inked between the two cities.
Osaka
Abe
Kobe
Geotgetown

In a bid to cultivate, promote and enhance opportunities on business, academic and cultural fronts between Kobe in Japan and Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India, a sister-city agreement has been inked between the two cities.
This agreement will formalize the relationship between the two cities, both of which are unique in their own ways. While Kobe is the Creative Design City of Asia, Ahmedabad is India’s first World Heritage City.
After the agreement, a plan will be laid out on creating more opportunities for cooperation between the two cities on the academic, cultural as well as business fronts.
PM Narendra Modi and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe have also inked a sisterstate agreement for Gujarat and Hyogo Prefecture.
Kobe is the sixthlargest city in Japan and the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture.
It is located on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, on the north shore of Osaka Bay and about 30 km (19 mi) west of Osaka.
With a population around 1.5 million, the city is part of the Keihanshin me tropolitan area along with Osaka and Kyoto

MCQ 5

Maharaja Ranjit Singh was last of Sikh gurus
He was popularly known as Sher-e-Punjab, or “Lion of Punjab”.
He turned Harmandir Sahib at Amritsar into the Golden Temple by covering it with gold.

Choose correct
(A) 1 & 2
(B)2 & 3
(C) All
(D) 2 only

Context: A statue of Ranjit Singh, who ruled Punjab for almost four decades (1801-39), was recently inaugurated in Lahore.
Maharaja Ranjit Singh (13 November 1780 – 27 June 1839) was the leader of the Sikh Empire, which ruled the northwest Indian subcontinent in the early half of the 19th century. He survived smallpox in infancy but lost sight in his left eye. He fought his first battle alongside his father at age 10. After his father died, he fought several wars to expel the Afghans in his teenage years and was proclaimed as the “Maharaja of Punjab” at age 21.
His empire grew in the Punjab region under his leadership through 1839.
Prior to his rise, the Punjab region had numerous warring misls (confederacies), twelve of which were under Sikh rulers and one Muslim. Ranjit Singh successfully absorbed and united the Sikh misls and took over other local kingdoms to create the Sikh Empire. He repeatedly defeated invasions by outside armies, particularly those arriving from Afghanistan, and established friendly relations with the British.
Ranjit Singh’s reign introduced reforms, modernisation, investment into infrastructure and general prosperity. His Khalsa army and government included Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Europeans.
His legacy includes a period of Sikh cultural and artistic renaissance, including the rebuilding of the Harimandir Sahib in Amritsar as well as other major gurudwaras, including Takht Sri Patna Sahib, Bihar and Hazur Sahib Nanded, Maharashtraunder his sponsorship.
He was popularly known as Sher-e-Punjab, or “Lion of Punjab”.
Maharaja Ranjit Singh was succeeded by his son Maharaja Kharak Singh.
Ranjit Singh was born on November 13, 1780 in Gujranwala, now in Pakistan. At that time, Punjab was ruled by powerful chieftains who had divided the territory into Misls. Ranjit Singh overthrew the warring Misls and established a unified Sikh empire after he conquered Lahore in 1799.
He was given the title Lion of Punjab (Sher-e-Punjab) because he stemmed the tide of Afghan invaders in Lahore, which remained his capital until his death.
His general Hari Singh Nalwa built the Fort of Jamrud at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, the route the foreign rulers took to invade India.
At the time of his death, he was the only sovereign leader left in India, all others having come under the control of the East India Company in some way or the other.
He also employed a large number of European officers, especially French, to train his troops. He appointed French General Jean Franquis Allard to modernise his army. In 2016, the town of St Tropez unveiled the maharaja’s bronze statue as a mark of respect.
Ranjit Singh’s trans-regional empire spread over several states. His empire included the former Mughal provinces of Lahore and Multan besides part of Kabul and the entire Peshawar. The boundaries of his state went up to Ladakh — Zorawar Singh, a general from Jammu, had conquered Ladakh in Ranjit Singh’s name — in the northeast, Khyber pass in the northwest, and up to Panjnad in the south where the five rivers of Punjab fell into the Indus.
During his regime, Punjab was a land of six rivers, the sixth being the Indus.
The maharaja was known for his just and secular rule; both Hindus and Muslims were given powerful positions in his darbar.
He turned Harimandir Sahib at Amritsar into the Golden Temple by covering it with gold.
He is also credited with funding Hazoor Sahib gurudwara at the final resting place of Guru Gobind Singh in Nanded, Maharashtra.

MCQ 6

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar founded the Bethune school at Calcutta with the main aim of encouraging education for women
Prarthana Samaj of MG Ranade was an offshoot of Brahmo Samaj of India
Keshav Chandra sen’s campaign against Sati led to the formation of a law to ban Sati by the then Governor General

Which of the above statements are correct

2 only
1 and 2 only
2 and 3 only
1,2 and 3

John Elliot Drink Water Bethune (JED Bethune), a British law member of Governor General’s Council established a school for girls {Hindu Kanya Vidyalaya} in 1849 in Calcutta. This was later known as Bethune school.
One student of this school Kadambini Ganguly joined Calcutta Medical College as the first Indian girl student of a medical college and later she became first practicing lady doctor in India. • Raja Ram Mohan Roy campaigned for abolition of Sati practice and was successful in getting a legislation enacted by company.
Efforts of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar led to enactment of Widow Remarriage Act in 1856.
In South India, Kandukuri Virasalingam Pantulu (1848-1919) published Viveka Vardhani and opened his first girls’ school in 1874 and made widow remarriage and female education the key points of his programme for social reform. He also launched antinautch movement (against hiring of dancing girls for celebrations).
Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-1901) and his wife Ramabai also contributed greatly to the cause of women.
In 1869, Ranade founded the Widow Remarriage Association and encouraged widow remarriage and female education and opposed child marriage.
He founded the National Social Conference, which became a pre-eminent institution for social reform.
Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922) was also a pioneer in women’s education and a rebel champion of women’s rights. She founded the Sharda Sadan, a school for widows, in Bombay and at Mukti, near Pune. Her greatest legacy was her effort, the first in India, to educate widows
Dhondo Keshav Karve (1858-1962) founded the female school and widow homes in Pune. The curriculum in his schools was designed to make young widows employable and self-sufficient.
Karve believed that “widows needed an education that would make them economically independent and enable them to think for themselves”.
He also founded the first Indian women’s university in 1916.
Prarthana Samaj was founded by Dr Atmaram Pandurang in 1867 when Keshab Chandra Sen visited Maharashtra. Another leader of Prarthana Samaj was R.G. Bhandarkar.
In I870, Justice Mahadev Gobind Ranade joined this society and much of the work of this society was done by zeal and dedication of Ranade only. Under Ranade, it got all India character.
The two main planks of the Samaj were worship and social reforms.
Ranade was a revivalist, who pointed that most of the prevailing evil customs ran counter to the practices observed in earlier times.
Ranade also launched a Purity Movement comprising anti-dancing and temperance agitation, admission of converts from other faiths and reduction in extravagant marriage expenses.
Hinduism the faith of Prarthana Samaj but it needed to be purified and reinterpreted in the light of the modern theistic philosophy.
His views regarding theism are set out in 39 articles which he drew up under the title “A Theist’s Confession of Faith”
Two other champions of social reform with him were Dhondo Keshav Karve and Vishnu Shastri. Ranade and Karve launched the Widow Remarriage Movement and started Widows’ Home Association, to provide education to widows.
The Widows’ Home aimed at making widows self supporting by giving them training as teachers, midwives or nurses. In no other part of India did the social reform movement work so successfully and create so profound an influence as in Maharashtra under the auspices of the Prarthana Samaj.
The Bengal Presidency started collecting facts and figures on the practice of Sati in 1813. The data showed that in 1817 only, 700 widows were burnt alive in Bengal alone.
From 1812 onwards, it was Raja Rammohan Roy, who started his own campaign against the Sati practice. His own sister-in-law had been forced to commit Sati. Raja Rammohan Roy used to visit the Calcutta cremation grounds to persuade widows not to die in this way. He also formed the watch groups. In Sambad Kaumudi he wrote articles and showed that it was not written in any Veda or epics to commit this crime
It was on 4 December 1829, when the practice was formally banned under Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829, in all the lands under Bengal Presidency by Lord William Bentinck. By this regulation, the people who abetted sati were declared guilty of “culpable homicide.”
The ban was challenged in the courts. The matter went to the Privy Council in London. The Privy Council upheld the ban in 1832. After that other territories also started following banning, but it remained legal in princely states, particularly in the Rajputana where it was very common.
Under the British control, Jaipur banned the practice in 1846