QUIZ – 2020: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 26 September 2020

Solution: a)

The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill does not give any statutory backing to MSP. There isn’t even a mention of either “MSP” or “procurement” in the Bill passed by both Houses of Parliament. The new legislation has “nothing to do with MSP”. Instead, its objective is simply to grant farmers and traders the freedom of choice to sell and buy agricultural produce outside the premises of APMC mandis. 

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Solution: b)

The National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA) provides a legal basis for the public distribution system (PDS). The NFSA made access to the PDS a right, entitling every person belonging to a “priority household” to receive 5 kg of foodgrains per month at a subsidised price not exceeding Rs 2/kg for wheat and Rs 3/kg for rice. Priority households were further defined so as to cover up to 75% of the country’s rural population and 50% in urban areas.

MSP, by contrast, is devoid of any legal backing. Access to it, unlike subsidised grains through the PDS, isn’t an entitlement for farmers. They cannot demand it as a matter of right.

CACP is not a statutory body set up through an Act of Parliament. “CACP is an attached office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India”. It recommends MSPs.

Sugarcane pricing being governed by the Sugarcane (Control) Order, 1966 issued under the Essential Commodities Act. That order, in turn, provides for the fixation of a ‘fair and remunerative price’ (FRP) for cane during every sugar year (October-September). But even the FRP — which, incidentally, was until 2008-09 called the ‘statutory minimum price’ or SMP — is payable not by the government. The responsibility to make FRP payment to farmers within 14 days of cane purchase lies solely with the sugar mills.

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Solution: d)

Recently Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Virat Kohli discussed about yo-yo test during their interaction. yo-yo test, is a vital part of the Indian cricket team’s fitness routine. Players who fail in the test are not available for selection.

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Solution: d)

According to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, which implements the Act, the Schedule at present contains seven commodities — drugs; fertilisers, whether inorganic, organic or mixed; foodstuffs including edible oils; hank yarn made wholly from cotton; petroleum and petroleum products; raw jute and jute textiles; seeds of food-crops and seeds of fruits and vegetables, seeds of cattle fodder, jute seed, cotton seed.

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Solution: d)

Carbon offsetting allows a country to help reach its own emissions reduction targets by funding emission reductions in another country. Companies are also increasingly using carbon credits to offset their emissions.

The first major offsetting scheme, the U.N.s clean development mechanism (CDM), was set up under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which 190 countries agreed country-by-country emission reduction targets.

The scheme was designed to help fund emission reduction projects in developing countries, while also providing offset credits to the developed world to help meet its Kyoto targets.

More than 8,100 projects in 111 countries have registered with the CDM scheme, which has handed out over 2 billion carbon credits, called Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), representing 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide reduction.

Projects registered under the scheme range from capturing and using methane gasses in pig manure to create electricity to replacing traditional wood and coal burning cookstoves with cleaner alternatives such as ethanol. Offsets can be bought by individuals, companies or countries.

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