News

Q- Consider the following statements: 1. IRNSS has seven satellites in total 2. It will provide positioning only in India A. 1 only B. 2 only C. Both D. None Q- Which of the following is part of Insolvency and bankruptcy act? a) decision to liquidate a company will have to be reached within 180 days. b) setting up of an Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India to regulate insolvency professionals and agencies. A) a only B) b only C) Both D) None Q- Which of the following are findings of National family health survey-4? 1. Infant mortality rate has been steady since National family health survey-3 2. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttarakhand has sex ratio of more than 1000 A. 1 only B. 2 only C. Both D. None  Answer 1-A,  2-C,  3-D

Q- Which of the following is correct regarding Gorkhaland Territorial Administration? 1. Its an autonomous administrative body for the Darjeeling and Kalimpong hills 2. GTA presently has three hill subdivisions Darjeeling, Kurseong and Mirik and some areas of Siliguri subdivision of Darjeeling district and the whole of Kalimpong district under its authority. A. 1 only B. 2 only C. Both D. None Q-1. Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai was presented the Man Booker International Prize for 2015. 2. The literary prize, worth £60,000 , is given to a living author of any nationality who has published fiction either in English or in French. Which of the following statements is/are true-? a) Only 1 b) Only 2 c) Both 1 & 2 d) Neither 1 nor 2 Q- Which of the following is correct regarding India’s current account deficit (CAD)? 1. India’s yearly CAD in terms of GDP has continuously increased during last decade 2. India has highest trade deficit with the USA A. 1 only...

Our oceans are facing multiple problems and the world is trying to find solutions to deal with these at the UN Ocean Conference in New York. Carl Gustaf Lundin, director of Global Marine and Polar Programme at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Switzerland, talks to Vibha Varshney about the solutions the world community is expecting to save the oceans. What is the status of our oceans? Every second breath we take is from the oceans and we have many reasons to care about them. Over the years, we have done a lot of damage to our oceans. India, for example, has lost most corals, mainly due to human activity. This year, we have lost reefs from across the world. Australia has lost nearly half of its coral reefs due to warming waters. Maldives has lost as much as 90 per cent in some parts of the country in the past year. Due to warming, there is as much as 3 per cent less oxygen in the water and this makes it very difficult for fast-moving fish like tuna, as it sh...

The day (June 7) ended with as many as 1,001 voluntary commitments registered on the UN Ocean Conference site. The meeting is unique as the call of action, which would be adopted on June 9, is not mandatory. Even a legally binding Paris agreement is not very successful, so why should voluntary commitments work? However, experts at the meeting feel that these would work better. They feel that the time taken over the negotiations is not worth the outcome. Carl Gustaf Lundin, the director of International Union for Conservation of Nature's Global Marine and Polar Programme says that negotiations generally lead to mediocre agreements as countries do not like to be told what to do. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which was ratified in 1994 has still not been signed by countries like the USA. The International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships' Ballast Water and Sediments took 10 years to be negotiated upon and just got ratified. During this t...

India's demand for electricity is seeing a steady rise. With an increasing number of villages being connected to the grid, this demand is only set to accelerate in the coming years. Currently, around 80 per cent of India’s electricity supply comes from coal-based power. But the sector has been facing a difficult time over the past few years. The energy needs of consumers in remote villages, where the grid has just reached, as well as in rich urban areas are not being met since power distribution companies (discoms) do not have money to buy sufficient power from generating companies. The accumulated losses of state discoms stood at Rs 4 lakh crore in 2014-15, as per the Power Finance Corporation. The result is: millions have no electricity; an equally large number gets limited supply and practically everyone else suffers from periodic power cuts. At the other end, due to the inability of distressed discoms to buy power, power plants are not generating electricity as per their c...

Sans quality jobs, ‘aspirational young India’ will become ‘angry young India’ The government – and Paytm – may not agree, but there are some downsides to the rising digitisation and connectivity. One is an unleashing of aspirations. Everyone wants not just what Bengal’s leftists used to contemptuously dismiss as components of the middle-class Indian dream — gaadi, baadi, chaakri (car, home, job) — but a whole lot of other things. From watching the latest Salman-starrer now — which is why India is the ‘download’ capital of the world — to the latest phone and footwear, people desire for all forms of comfort. This is a downside because the Indian economy is simply not in a position to create the kind of ecosystem which will enable all these aspirations to be realised by a vast majority of the people. The other downside is the near-instantaneous transmission of unrest. Thanks to YouTube and WhatsApp, an expression of farmer unrest can travel from Mannargudi to Mandsaur faster than any...

JHABUA IS a dramatic story because of the three key ingredients that are missing in most government progr ammes: political will, competent and committed bureaucratic support, and people’s participation”, wrote Anil Agar wal, founder editor of Down To Earth (DTE), in 1998 after he visited the tribal district in Madhya Pradesh to witness the dramatic recovery of poor villages in the hilly area from extreme ecological degradation. It shows how poverty can be eradicated very fast and very cheaply, he noted. Nearly two decades later, DTE visits Jhabua again. At the outset, our fear was that the district might have suffered the same fate as other model villages that fell from grace after the initial enthusiasm of people and bureaucracy died down (see ‘Sukhomajri falls apart’); watershed development struc tures that transformed the water-scarce region into a water-sufficient one might have silted up. Instead, what we see is a rare example of sustained bureaucratic will and continued partic...

India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued its first long-range forecast for the 2017 monsoon in mid-April. Rainfall was to be normal, between 96-104 per cent of the long period average. Last week, in its second long range forecast (LRF) of the season, the IMD reiterated that rainfall during monsoon 2017 will be normal. The onset in Kerala, advanced by a day, seemed to reaffirm met department’s prediction. But in the last 10 days, monsoon’s progression has been more of a start-stop affair rather than the smooth trajectory that we normally see. After stalling in Kerala on the western coast for about a week immediately upon arrival, the monsoon has slowly staggered upwards—halting in coastal Karnataka, Goa and now in Maharashtra. While the latest weather inference issued by IMD indicates continued favourable conditions for further advancement of the monsoon—into inner-Maharashtra and parts of Chattisgarh from the Arabian sea arm of the Indian monsoon—these conditions have been repor...