Current Affairs - 2019-20

Notes:
Aadhaar Pay is proposed to be launched in April, 2017 and is meant for merchants to receive digital payments from customers over the counter through Aadhaar authentication.

Notes:
The Vishakhapatnam railway station in Andhra Pradesh has been adjudged as the cleanest railway station among the 75 busiest stations in the country in category A1, followed by Secunderabad, Jammu Tawi, Vijayawada and Anand Vihar railway stations. This was revealed by Third Party Audit Report on Station Cleanliness i.e. released by Ministry of Railway in New Delhi on May 17, 2017. The railway stations are categorised — A1, A, B, C, D, E and F — based on their annual passenger revenue by the ministry. Among the ‘A’ category stations, Beas railway station in Punjab was rated the cleanest station followed by Khammam station in Telangana and Ahmednagar station in Maharashtra. Zone wise South-East Central railway has been ranked first followed by East Coast railway and Central Railway. The survey was carried out by the Quality Council of India (QCI) and was based on criteria such as toilets on platforms, management of tracks and dustbins.

Notes:
S Ganesh Kumar has been appointed the new Executive Director (ED) of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). He succeeded Chandan Sinha, who has taken voluntary retirement on May 31, 2017. As Executive Director (ED), Kumar will look after the departments of Information Technology, Payment and Settlement Systems and External Investments and Operations. Prior to being promoted as ED, he was Chief General Manager-in-Charge, Department of Information Technology. Currently, the central bank has 11 Executive Directors.

Notes:
Recently, Gurdeep Singh from India created three new senior national records in +105 Kilogram weight category in the just-concluded IWF World Weightlifting Championships at Anaheim in USA. Singh finished 13th overall with a total lift of 388kg (172 + 216) but created national records in snatch, clean and jerk, and the total lift. In snatch, he bettered his own earlier national record of 171kg by one kilogramme. In the total lift also, Gurdeep bettered the earlier national record of 384kg.

Notes:
Mulberry silk is the most popular variety of silk in India, accounting for around 79% of the country’s silk production. In 2022, India produced nearly 26,000 metric tons of mulberry silk. The other varieties of silk produced in India are:

• Tasar, which accounted for 8.02% of the total raw silk production
• Eri, which accounted for 20.55% of the total raw silk production
• Muga, which accounted for 0.71% of the total raw silk production

India is the second largest producer of silk in the world. The five states that produce the most silk are Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Jammu & Kashmir.

Notes:
Nanaji Deshmukh was born in a Marathi-speaking Deshastha Brahmin family on 11 October 1916 in Kadoli, a small town in the Hingoli district of Maharashtra. Recently, on 11^th October, 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the birth centenary celebration of Nanaji Deshmukh at IARI at Pusa in New Delhi. Prime Minister launched the Gram Samvad App which will carry information on the progress of rural development works at the Gram Panchayat level and released a commemorative postage stamp on Nanaji Deshmukh. Nanaji Deshmukh established Chitrakoot Gramodya Vishwavidyalaya, India’s first rural university. He also established Bharat’s first Saraswati Shishu Mandir at Gorakhpur in 1950. He established Deendayal Research Institute (DRI) in 1972 to validate the philosophy of Integral Humanism propounded by Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya. He launched the “Campaign for Self-Reliance” thereby carrying out a social restructuring programme in over 500 villages in the country. He passed away in 2010.

Notes:
Astrosat is India’s first dedicated multi-wavelength space observatory. It has recently accomplished the extremely strenuous job of X-ray polarisation, putting up a strong challenge to prevailing theories of high energy radiation from pulsars. The 18-month old study of the Crab Pulsar in the Taurus constellation and measurement of the variations of polarisation as this highly-magnetised neutron star spins around 30 times every second is a commendable task. A pulsar is a celestial body, believed to be made up on neutrons, and rotates 30 times per second. Even though they are comparatively tiny in size, they have mass more than that of the entire Sun, and hence are known as compact objects. Scientists and astronomers, who participated in the project hail from the country’s top scientific institutes — the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai; the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram; ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), Bengaluru; The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune; and Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad.

Notes:
World Wetlands Day is celebrated every year on 2 February. This day marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The theme for World Wetland day 2016 is Sustainable Livelihoods.

Notes:
Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation launched the National Water Quality Sub Mission on Arsenic and Fluoride to provide safe drinking water to about 28,000 affected habitations in the country by March 2021. With this, Government will also fulfil its goal to provide tap water on a sustained basis in every household by 2030 as per the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal.

Notes:
The logic behind the e-Way bill is to track the tax evasion on movement of goods within the state and interstate worth Rs 50000 and above. The government has planned for all-India rollout of e-Way bill by February, 2017.