QUIZ – 2020: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 20 February 2021

Solution: d)

The government in the Budget unveiled the Disinvestment/Strategic Disinvestment Policy and identified four sectors — Atomic energy, Space and Defence; Transport and Telecommunications; Power, Petroleum, Coal and other minerals; and Banking, Insurance and financial services — as strategic sectors, where bare minimum CPSEs would be retained.

The strategic sectors have been classified in four broad baskets — national security, critical infrastructure, energy and minerals and financial services.

Bare minimum to be retained means rest can be privatised, or can be closed, or merged, or made subsidiary of another CPSEs.

Source

Solution: b)

Brent blend is the name of one of two internationally-recognized types of crude oil that are used as benchmarks for prices of crude oil. Brent Blend comes from the North Sea and is considered a light, sweet crude oil. Brent blend is more than half of the crude oil traded internationally.

Brent blend is a blend of crude oil extracted from oilfields in the North Sea between the United Kingdom and Norway.

Solution: a)

Flash droughts are those that occur very quickly, with soil moisture depleting rapidly.

Normally, developing drought conditions take months, but these happen within a week or in two weeks’ time.

Several factors including atmospheric anomalies, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions play an important role.

It is widely believed that flash droughts will occur during the summer months as was reported in the Western countries, mostly driven by heat waves and very high temperature. But in India, 82 per cent of such extreme weather events happen during the monsoon period.

Solution: c)

With the numbers given in the below chart, it is doubtful whether India will be able to achieve Goal 3 (good health and well-being) of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. India failed to achieve the earlier Millennium Development Goals because of the poor performance of the northern States. It is surprising that the Government of India does not hold them responsible and accountable for poor performance but is satisfied with the average.

Since health is a State subject, the primary onus lies with the State governments. Each State government must focus on public health and aim to improve the health indicators mentioned above.

The northern States are performing very poorly in these vital health parameters.

Total Fertility Rate, is very high in Bihar (3.2) against the stabilisation rate of 2.1. Tamil Nadu and Kerala have done so well that their population will decline over the years.

Solution: d)

Borneo Island is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. The island is politically divided among three countries: Malaysia and Brunei in the north, and Indonesia to the south.