QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 18 March 2017

Solution: c.

• The country has abundant coal reserves and the domestic production capacity, yet power plants in India are dependent on imported coal. This is because a major portion of our thermal power plants cannot use more than 30% of domestic coal. The power plants are so designed that they are imported-coal dependent.
• Coal in India is used either from domestic sources, mostly mined by coal India, or is imported. The imports are mainly to compensate the lack of good quality coal, especially coking coal from the mining sources in the country.
• Coking coal is imported by state-run Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) and other steel manufacturing units mainly to bridge the gap between the requirement and indigenous availability and to improve the quality.

October 2016 – ET: Why India will never have zero coal import bill;

PIB: Government to hold Quality Conference with Coal companies;

Solution: a.

The National Physical Laboratory, an organisation of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, is best known for the being the repository of physical standards such as the kilogram, second and the centimetre.

About NPL;

Improvisation: PIB;

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Solution: d.

• NPL has established an atmospheric monitoring station in the campus of Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHBT) at Palampur (Himachal Pradesh) at an altitude of 1391m for generating the base data for atmospheric trace species & properties to serve as reference for comparison of polluted atmosphere in India.
• It is India’s first “Pristine Air-Quality Monitoring Station” at Palampur.
• In India, air quality parameters are mostly measured in industrial and residential areas, however, data for air quality of pristine atmosphere is not available in India. NPL’s station will contribute to fill this important gap.
• One of the instruments that has been employed is the Raman Lidar – this instrument “provides height-and-time-resolved measurements of water-vapor mixing ratio, temperature, aerosol, and cloud optical properties.”
• The NPL’s station will also serve as a base station for inter-comparison of air quality monitoring equipment being used in India to improve quality of monitored data in India.
• This station houses calibrated state-of-the-art-equipment for the continuous measurements of ambient and greenhouse gases (CO, NO, NO2, NH3, SO2, O3, PM1, PM2.5, PM10, hydrocarbons, black-carbon, CO2 & CH4), and weather parameters. (Notice, it does not measure Brown Carbon).
• In addition, this new station has the experimental facilities to investigate the aerosol/cloud interactions, and such investigations would be helpful in generating a better understanding of the Earth’s climate system.

PIB;

Solution: b.

AEPS empowers the marginalised and excluded segments to conduct financial transactions (Credit, Debit, Remittances, Balance Enquiry, etc) through microATMs deployed by Banks in their villages. The key steps in doing transactions via AEPS are:

• Resident provides his/her Aadhaar number, details of financial transaction sought and fingerprint impression at the microATM device.
• Digitally signed and encrypted data packets are transferred via Bank Switch to NPCI to UIDAI.
• UIDAI processes the authentication request and communicates the outcome in form of Yes/No.
• If the authentication response is Yes, bank carries out the required authorization process and advises microATM on suitable next steps.

UIDAI: Aadhaar enabled payments;

Improvisation: PIB;

Solution: b.

• Consultative committees are attached to various ministries/departments of the Central Government.
• Statement 2: They consist of members of both the Houses of Parliament.
• The Minister / Minister of State in charge of the Ministry concerned acts as the chairman of the consultative committee of that ministry.
• Statement 1: These committees are constituted by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs. The guidelines regarding the composition, functions and procedures of these committees are formulated by this Ministry.
• These committees provide a forum for informal discussions between the ministers and the members of Parliament on policies and programmes of the government and the manner of their implementation. PIB: “..the Union Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution briefed the members of Parliamentary Consultative Committee about the achievements and activities of the Department of Food & Public Distribution to in New Delhi, yesterday.”
• Statement 3: These committees shall stand dissolved upon dissolution of every Lok Sabha and shall be reconstituted upon constitution of each Lok Sabha.

Ch-23, ‘Parliamentary Committees’,  Indian Polity by M Laxmikanth;

Solution: c.

A general question. Many of us source much of our information on legislations and ancillary matters from this website, but almost none of us would have read about PRS Legislative Research or about what exactly they do.

• PRS was founded in 2005 as an independent research initiative. The initiative was incubated in the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi, which is a leading Indian think tank. Recently, the initiative has been institutionalised as a not-for-profit Section 25 Company, the Institute for Policy Research Studies.
• The work of PRS was initiated with a grant from Ford Foundation, and subsequently by Google.org. Currently, the work of PRS is supported by a number of Indian institutions and individuals.
• Given that MLAs across states face constraints similar to those faced by MPs, PRS aims to strengthen the legislative process through research support, policy updates and workshops for MLAs to interact with policy experts and academics and exchange policy ideas and best practices. Hence, statement ‘b’ is also applicable to MLAs.
• The Laws of India website is a searchable web based public database created by PRS of all laws passed by the legislatures of different states/UTs in India.

Solution: a.

• In many countries the APA scheme provides for “roll back” mechanism for dealing with ALP issues relating to transactions entered into during the period prior to APA.
• The “roll back” provisions refers to the applicability of the methodology of determination of ALP, or the ALP, to be applied to the international transactions which had already been entered into in a period prior to the period covered under an APA.
• However, the “roll back” relief is provided on case to case basis subject to certain conditions.
• Providing of such a mechanism in Indian legislation would also lead to reduction in large scale litigation which is currently pending or may arise in future in respect of the transfer pricing matters.

Roll back provision in the scheme of APA;

Improvisation: PIB;