QUIZ – 2020: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 3 March 2020

Solution: b)

The ‘State of India’s Birds 2020’ report, the first comprehensive assessment of range, abundance and conservation status of birds in India, has underlined concerns about some bird species and good news about a few others. Released during CMS COP13, the international conference held recently in Gandhinagar, the report was prepared as a partnership among 10 organisations including the World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Institute of India and Nature Biodiversity Authority-India. Much of its data is based on citizen science — information provided by birdwatchers through various platforms. 867: The number of bird species whose status was assessed. This assessment is based on three indices: long-term trend in abundance (over 25+ years); current annual trend in abundance (last 5 years); and distribution range size.

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Solution: d)

Antarctica has exceeded 20C for the first time, after researchers logged a temperature of 20.75C on an island off the coast of the peninsula. This latest reading was taken at a monitoring station on Seymour Island, part of a chain of islands off the same peninsula, at the northernmost point of the continent.

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Solution: a)

With a view to providing a greater measure of protection to depositors in banks the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India, has raised the limit of insurance cover for depositors in insured banks from the present level of ₹1 lakh to ₹5 lakh per depositor with effect from February 4, 2020 with the approval of Government of India. When a bank collapses, depositors will get Rs 5 lakh from the Corporation. However, now depositors holding more than Rs 5 lakh in their account have no legal remedy in case of the collapse of the bank. Irrespective of the deposit amount, be it Rs 25 lakh or Rs 5 crore, the depositor will get only Rs five lakh if a bank collapses. Given the size of insured deposits is likely to increase, the deposit insurance premium paid by banks will increase the operating expenses of banks and will be negative for their profitability to the extent they are not able to pass it on to the bank customers.

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Solution: b)

The Fifteenth Finance Commission (FC) has considered the 2011 population along with forest cover, tax effort, area of the state, and “demographic performance” to arrive at the states’ share in the divisible pool of taxes. As had been widely anticipated, shares of the southern states, except Tamil Nadu, have fallen — with Karnataka losing the most.

The Fifteenth Finance Commission has reduced the vertical devolution — the share of tax revenues that the Centre shares with the states — from 42% to 41%.

The Finance Commission is a constitutionally mandated body that decides, among other things, the sharing of taxes between the Centre and the states.

Over the years, the terms of reference of the Commission too, have been widened. The Thirteenth Commission was told, for example, to assess the impact of the (then) proposed GST from April 1, 2010; the need to improve the quality of public expenditure; to review the finances of both the Centre and the states; to suggest measures to maintain a stable fiscal environment consistent with equitable growth; and to suggest a revised roadmap to maintain the gains of fiscal consolidation through 2015.

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Solution: b)

The broad objective of the Non-lapsable Central Pool of Resources scheme is to ensure speedy development of infrastructure in the North Eastern Region by increasing the flow of budgetary financing for new infrastructure projects/schemes in the Region. Both physical and social infrastructure sectors such as Irrigation and Flood Control, Power, Roads and Bridges, Education, Health, Water Supply and Sanitation – are considered for providing support under the Central Pool, with projects in physical infrastructure sector receiving priority. The Ministry for Development of North-eastern Region (DoNER) allocates funds from NLCPR to various Northeast states for infrastructure projects.