Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2019

Notes:
The Andhra Pradesh government has approved a proposal to grant 5% quota to the Kapu community in the state, after the Central Government recently passed a Bill to provide 10% reservation to Economically Backward Classes (EBCs) from the general category in jobs and education. The decision to ensure that half of the quota under the EBC category be reserved for upper caste Kapus was taken after a state cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. The Kapus are primarily an agrarian community based in the Andhra-Telangana region. It is one of the dominant caste groups with political influence in the state. The Kapu community comprises nearly 26% of the state’s five crore people.

Notes:
The Indian Africa Field Training Exercise (IAFTX-2019) will be conducted at Aundh Military Station and College of Military Engineering in Pune from March 18 to 27. The joint training exercise is being conducted with more than a dozen African countries and India to synergise humanitarian mine action and joint peace operations. The IAFTX-2019 is a positive step towards growing political and military ties with the member nations of African continent and will boost the already strong strategic cooperation between the countries.

Notes:
The Government of India (GoI) has recently instituted an annual award titled Subhash Chandra Bose Aapda Prabandhan Puraskar. The award is to be announced every year on 23rd January on the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. For the year 2019, 8th Battalion of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) located at Ghaziabad has been selected for the award for its commendable work in Disaster Management. The Award recipient will receive a certificate and a cash prize of Rs. 51 lakh. The 8th Battalion of NDRF was raised in 2006 and is a highly specialised Rescue and Response Force with large area of responsibility covering National Capital Region (NCR), Uttarakhand, Western UP & Haryana. The battalion has participated in 314 major operations and rescued over 50,000 people. In the devastating Kerala floods in 2018, the battalion had rescued 5,338 victims and evacuated 24,000 people to safety. Other major disasters in which this NDRF battalion participated are Leh cloud burst (2011), Kedarnath floods (2013), cyclone Hudhud (2014), Chennai floods (2015) and Tripura floods (2018).

Notes:
Atin Bandyopadhyay (85), the renowned Bengali writer, has passed away in Kolkata on 19th January, 2019. Born in 1934 in Dhaka, he had taken up various jobs as a sailor, school teacher, factory manager, journalist to finally became a writer. He won the 2001 Sahitya Akademi award for his compilation of short stories ‘Panchashati Galpo’. His masterpiece is considered to be a four-part tetralogy on the Partition: “Nilkantha Pakhir Khonje”, ”Manusher Gharbari”, “Aloukik Jalajan” and “Ishwarer Bagan”.

Notes:
The Southern Railway has bagged the number one position for cleanliness in the country. This achievement was under the category of other than Premium Category trains in the recent Trains Cleanliness Survey conducted by IRCTC on all India level. During the year 2018, Southern Railway’s gross earnings also stood at more than Rs six thousand crores rupees which is almost 10% higher than the last year earnings. To cater to the growing demands of passengers, Southern Railway has also introduced 54 trains over past four years.

Notes:
The Government of Pakistan has recently declared sugarcane juice as the ‘national drink’ of the country. The announcement came after the government conducted a Twitter poll where people were asked to decide on the country’s national drink with two other options — orange and carrot — besides sugarcane. According to the poll, 7,616 people or 81% cast their votes favouring sugarcane juice, 15% voted for orange juice while 4% chose carrot. Upon securing majority votes, sugarcane juice was declared as the ‘national drink’ of Pakistan.

Notes:
In New Delhi, the Union Human Resources Development (HRD) Ministry signed an agreement with Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for India’s Participation in Programme for International Student Assessment- PISA 2021. The student assessment by PISA will ensure learning outcome through education. Students will be selected by PISA through random sampling. The format for the student assessment will be offline and the question to Indian students will be related to India’s perspective only. The PISA test will help reveal where they stand globally as far as learning outcomes are concerned. PISA is a triennial international survey in which students are assessed in reading, mathematics, science and collaborative problem-solving. The purpose of the survey is to evaluate the education system worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. The CBSE and NCERT will be part of the process and activities leading to the actual test.

Notes:
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has recently announced to launch “Jiban Sampark” project in partnership with UNICEF India to generate awareness about the development and welfare initiatives of state government among the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG) of the state. The announcement was made at the annual tribal fair popularly known as “Adivasi Mela” on 70th Republic Day 2019. The focus areas of the Project will include skill development, empowering communities, cooperation and innovation among the groups. Of 75 tribal communities in the country, 13 PVTGs reside in remote and far-off areas of 12 districts in Odisha.

Notes:
As per latest report of the World Steel Association (WSA), China is the largest producer of crude steel accounting for more than 51% of production. While, India has replaced Japan as world’s second largest steel producing country. The crude steel production of India in 2018 was at 106.5 MT. It went up by 4.9% from 101.5 MT in 2017. Japan produced 104.3 MT in 2018, down 0.3% compared to 2017. Global crude steel production reached 1,808.6 MT for the year 2018 from 1,729.8 MT in 2017, a rise of 4.6%. The WSA is the international trade body for the iron and steel industry. Its members represent around 85% of the world’s steel production, including over 160 steel producers with 9 of the 10 largest steel companies, national and regional steel industry associations, and steel research institutes.

Notes:
On 29th January, the 8-member Lokpal search panel hold its first meeting to select members of anti-corruption ombudsman Lokpal. The committee, headed by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai, is understood to have discussed modalities related to the appointments of the chief and members of Lokpal. The meeting comes days after the Supreme Court set up a February-end deadline for the search committee to send a panel of names who could be considered for the appointment as chairman and members of Lokpal by Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led selection committee. The Lokpal Act, which envisages establishment of the anti-graft body Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas in states to look into cases of corruption against certain categories of public servants, was passed in 2013.