QUIZ – 2020: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 29 September 2020

Solution: b)

India’s tax system is regressive with heavy dependence on indirect tax. This would be clear by mapping the gross tax revenue (of both centre and states)-as reproduced below. Indirect-tax-to-GDP ratio remains consistently higher than that of direct tax-to-GDP (2011-12 series, current prices).

In the OECD countries, the average share of direct tax is about two-third of the total tax, while it is a little over one-third in India.

Solution: d)

The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was published in 2013, identified a few factors that could influence the way wildfires play out. These include global increase in average temperatures, global increases in the frequency, intensity and extent of heatwaves (breaching of historically extreme temperature thresholds) and regional increases in the frequency, duration and intensity of droughts.

Source

Solution: b)

Bhabha Kavach, billed as “India’s lightest bullet-proof jacket”, was launched at the International Police Expo 2019.

The bullet-proof jacket, developed jointly by the Ordnance Factories Board and the public sector metals and metal alloys manufacturer MIDHANI, can withstand bullets from an AK-47 assault rifle (7.62 mm hard steel core bullets), and the 5.56 mm INSAS rifle.

The Kavach weighs 9.2 kg, a half kilogram less than the weight for a bullet-proof jacket prescribed by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

The jacket “is powered with nano technology from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre”, and has a five-year warranty.

Source

Solution: a)

Highest central bank buying in 50 years drives 4% growth in gold demand in 2018.

India’s gold reserves have grown substantially in the past couple of decades from 357.8 tonnes in the first quarter of 2000 to 657 tonnes as of August 2020.

Here’s a list of countries with the highest gold reserve as of August 2020, according to the latest data from the International Monetary Fund and the World Gold Council.

Solution: a)

History of the 1897 Epidemic Diseases Act

The colonial government introduced the Act to tackle the epidemic of bubonic plague that had spread in the erstwhile Bombay Presidency in the 1890s.

Using powers conferred by the Act, colonies authorities would search suspected plague cases in homes and among passengers, with forcible segregations, evacuations, and demolitions of infected places.

Historians have criticised the Act for its potential for abuse.

In 1897, the year the law was enforced, freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak was punished with 18 months’ rigorous imprisonment after his newspapers Kesari and Mahratta admonished imperial authorities for their handling of the plague epidemic.

Provisions of the 1897 Epidemic Diseases Act

The Act, which consists of four sections, aims to provide “for the better prevention of the spread of Dangerous Epidemic Diseases.”

Section 2 empowers state governments/UTs to take special measures and formulate regulations for containing the outbreak. It reads:

“Power to take special measures and prescribe regulations as to dangerous epidemic disease.

Source