QUIZ – 2020: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 18 April 2020

Solution: a)

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), recently announced a 60% increase in the Ways and Means Advances (WMA) limit of state governments over and above the level as on March 31, with a view to enabling them “to undertake COVID-19 containment and mitigation efforts” and “to better plan their market borrowings”.

What exactly is Ways and Means Advances (WMA)?

Simply put, it is a facility for both the Centre and states to borrow from the RBI. These borrowings are meant purely to help them to tide over temporary mismatches in cash flows of their receipts and expenditures. In that sense, they aren’t a source of finance per se. Section 17(5) of the RBI Act, 1934 authorises the central bank to lend to the Centre and state governments subject to their being repayable “not later than three months from the date of the making of the advance”.

The interest rate on WMA is the RBI’s repo rate, which is basically the rate at which it lends short-term money to banks. That rate is currently 4.4%. The governments are, however, allowed to draw amounts in excess of their WMA limits. The interest on such overdraft is 2 percentage points above the repo rate, which now works out to 6.4%. Further, no state can run an overdraft with the RBI for more than a certain period.

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Solution: b)

A vaccine-preventable disease is an infectious disease for which an effective preventive vaccine exists. If a person acquires a vaccine-preventable disease and dies from it, the death is considered a vaccine-preventable death.

The WHO lists 27 diseases for which vaccines are available. They are:

Cholera

Dengue fever

Diphtheria

Haemophilus influenzae type b

Hepatitis A

Hepatitis B

Hepatitis E

Human papilloma-virus

Influenza

Japanese encephalitis

Malaria

Measles

Meningococcal disease

Mumps

Pneumococcal disease

Pertussis

Poliomyelitis

Rabies

Rotavirus gastroenteritis

Rubella

Tetanus

Tick-borne encephalitis

Tuberculosis

Typhoid fever

Varicella

Yellow fever

Shingles (Herpes Zoster)

Vaccination is not there for genetic disorders like haemophilia, colour blindness; these are not caused by bacteria or viruses.

Common cold can be caused by more than 100 different viruses. Hence, vaccine for common cold will not work because a specific antibody is effective only against a specific kind of virus or bacterium.

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Solution: c)

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, the term “herd immunity” has been flung around as one solution to the devastating virus ravaging countries all over the globe since December 2019. The term explains the situation in which a high percentage of people in a given community (a city, state or entire country) is immune to a disease, either through vaccination or because those people have been exposed to the virus and their immune systems have built antibodies to protect them from it.

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Solution: d)

To compensate the loss of forest area and to maintain the sustainability, the Government of India came up with a well-defined Act, known as CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority).

The law establishes the National Compensatory Afforestation Fund under the Public Account of India, and a State Compensatory Afforestation Fund under the Public Account of each state.

These Funds will receive payments for: (i) compensatory afforestation, (ii) net present value of forest (NPV), and (iii) other project specific payments.

The National Fund will receive 10% of these funds, and the State Funds will receive the remaining 90%.

According to the Act’s provision, a company diverting forest land must provide alternative land to take up compensatory afforestation.

For afforestation, the company should pay to plant new trees in the alternative land provided to the state.

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Solution: b)

The government launched an online ‘e-Sahaj’ portal for grant of Security Clearance. The objective of national security clearance is to evaluate potential security threats, including economic threats, and provide risk assessment before clearing investment and project proposals in key sectors.

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