[Mission 2023] QUED ( Questions from Editorials ) 6 February 2023

Solution: c)

Dementia is a group of symptoms that affect memory and thinking and interfere with daily life. Alzheimer’s Disease is the main and major cause of dementia. Treatments to reduce the symptoms and progression of dementia can be clinical, or methods such as practising yoga, breathing exercises, brisk walking and listening to tuneful music. It is an age-related disease, affecting over 55 million people across the world. The National Health Portal of India says that as per the Census 2011, dementia affects 2.7% of the 65 million Indian Senior Citizens over 65 years of age.

Solution: d)

WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture:

The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is an international treaty of the World Trade Organization. It was negotiated during the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and entered into force with the establishment of the WTO on January 1, 1995.

It is aimed to remove trade barriers and to promote transparent market access and integration of global markets.

The WTO’s Agriculture Committee oversees implementation of the Agreement and provides a forum for members to address related concerns.

Solution: c)

Section 135 of the Companies Act mandates corporates who are beyond a certain level of profits and turnover to pay at least 2% of their net profits before tax to the development space. This law gives corporates the necessary impetus to collaborate with non-state actors like Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). This is a classic case of state-driven governance mechanism promoting collaboration among non-state actors.

A key pillar of democratic governance is citizens’ power to question the state.

Solution: d)

The Bhakti movement, which began in the 7th century in South India, had begun to spread across north India in the 14th and the 15th centuries. The movement was characterized by popular poet-saints who sang devotional songs to God in vernacular languages, with many preaching for the abolishing the Varna system and some kind of Hindu-Muslim unity. They emphasized an intense emotional attachment with God.

One school within the Bhakti movement was the Nirguni tradition and Sant Kabir was a prominent member of it. In this tradition, God was understood to be a universal and formless being.

Solution: a)

For the first time, in 1966-67, the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat and paddy was fixed. To fix the price, the central government constituted the Agricultural Prices Commission, which was later renamed as the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) in 1985.

This means that the minimum support price (MSP) system was introduced in the country to protect the interests of the farmers in general. Under this system, even if the price of a crop falls in the market, the central government procures it at the fixed MSP from the farmers so that they can be shielded against losses.

The MSP of a crop is the same throughout the country.

The Food Corporation of India (FCI) was constituted in 1965 on the recommendation of the LK Jha Committee. The government stores the grains procured from the farmers with the FCI and NAFED (National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India) from where the grains are distributed to the poor under the Public Distribution System (PDS).

Since 2009, the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices fixes the minimum support price of a crop based on cost, demand, supply position, price changes, market price trend, different costs and international market prices.

The Ministry of Agriculture also claims that the cost of production of cultivation does not only include cash expenditure (as per market) but also the cost of labour (as per market rate). This means that agricultural wage rate is also considered while setting up of the MSP.