UPSC Current Affairs Quiz : 27 January 2024

Solution: a)

Only statement 1 is correct.

Writing off a loan essentially means it will no longer be counted as an asset. By writing off loans, a bank can reduce the level of non-performing assets (NPAs) on its books. An additional benefit is that the amount so written off reduces the bank’s tax liability.

The bank writes off a loan after the borrower has defaulted on the loan repayment and there is a very low chance of recovery. The lender then moves the defaulted loan, or NPA, out of the assets side and reports the amount as a loss.

After the write-off, banks are supposed to continue their efforts to recover the loan using various options. They have to make provisioning as well. The tax liability will also come down as the written-off amount is reduced from the profit.

However, the chances of recovery from written-off loans are very low.

Solution: c)

Indira Point on the southern tip of Great Nicobar Island is India’s southernmost point, less than 150 km from the northernmost island of the Indonesian archipelago.

The Great Nicobar Island has tropical wet evergreen forests, mountain ranges reaching almost 650 m above sea level, and coastal plains. The leatherback sea turtle is the island’s flagship species.

Solution: b)

Statement 3 is incorrect.

Glaciers are the largest source of freshwater outside of the polar regions. Glaciers and snow melt in the Himalayan ecosystem are the source of water for several rivers across the subcontinent, and are responsible for maintaining the perennial supply of water in the river systems like the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra to over a billion people.

Some models predict that an increase in global temperatures by 2°C from 1850 by 2070 would result in 45% of the medium and large glaciers (10 sq km or more) disappearing completely. Nearly 70% smaller glaciers are likely to melt away. Shrinking glaciers have led to the formation of a large number of glacial lakes all across the Himalayas. Many of these high-altitude lakes are potentially dangerous, because of their potential to cause flash floods in the event of a breach.

A glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) is a type of outburst flood caused by the failure of a dam containing a glacial lake. 

Solution: c)

The Pradhan Mantri JI-VAN Yojana provides financial support to integrated bio-ethanol projects to set up second generation (2G) ethanol projects. 

Solution: a)

Only statement 3 is correct.

Diesel was promoted as a green-friendly auto fuel as part of the European Union’s response to the Kyoto Protocol (1997) to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. While diesel as a fuel contains a little more carbon per litre than petrol, diesel engines are more “lean-burn”, which means they use a smaller amount of fuel to produce the same level of performance as a petrol engine.