QUIZ – 2020: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 20 November 2020

Solution: b)

MGNREGA is the largest social security scheme in the world — guaranteeing 100 days of unskilled manual work to all rural households in India.

The work is usually on projects to build durable assets like roads, canals, ponds and wells.

The Act stipulates a minimum wage-material ratio of 60:40.

MGNREGA is to be implemented mainly by gram panchayats (GPs). The involvement of contractors is banned.

Solution: c)

Laïcité is the French word for secularism.

Solution: a)

Measles is a highly contagious, serious disease caused by a virus.

Measles is an airborne disease which spreads easily from one person to the next through the coughs and sneezes of infected people.

India was among six countries with the highest number of infants who had not received the vaccine against measles — while the contagious viral disease surged worldwide in 2019 reaching the highest number of reported cases in 23 years — last year, according to a new report of the World Health Organisation and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Source

Solution: a)

India is one of the very few countries to set up a permanent station in the Arctic for the purposes of scientific research. The station has been used to carry out a variety of biological, glaciological and atmospheric and climate sciences research projects in the last one decade.

The Himadri research station, located in Ny Alesund, Svalbard in Norway, about 1200 km south of the North Pole, was started in July 2008. The Goa-based National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCOAR) is the nodal organisation coordinating the research activities at this station.

India, along with 12 other countries, is Observers to the Arctic Council.

The Observer status is granted to entities that support the objectives of the Arctic Council, and have demonstrated capabilities in this regard, including the ability to make financial contributions. The renewal of Observer status is a formality. The status, once granted, continues till there is a consensus among the members that the Observer was engaging in activities that run counter to the objectives of the Arctic Council.

India had been given the Observer status in 2013, along with five other countries — China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.

The Arctic Council does not prohibit the commercial exploitation of resources in the Arctic. It only seeks to ensure that it is done in a sustainable manner without harming the interests of local populations and in conformity with the local environment.

Source

Solution: d)

Citing “legislative intent” of Section 11 of the RP Act, the ECI said: “The legislature has, in its wisdom, deemed it necessary to vest this Commission with this power with the understanding that socio-economic-political factors may, in certain peculiar circumstances, warrant that the general disqualification prescribed by statutory rule should be removed/reduced by exercising this extraordinary power.”