Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2018

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the first-ever Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) Parliamentary Conference in the Pravasi Bharatiya Kendra (PBK) in Delhi on January 9, 2018. Approx 124 Members of Parliament (MP) and 17 mayors from 23 countries will participate in this conference. The conference is a way of reaching out to the Indian community overseas by the Central government. The event will have two thematic sessions, the first one will have as special guest senior Congress leader and chairman of the parliamentary committee on external affairs, Shashi Tharoor. The session will be presided over by Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. The second session will have Parliamentary Affairs minister Ananth Kumar as a special guest which will be chaired by Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha.

Notes:
The World Bank (WB) in its latest report “Global Economic Prospects (GEP-2018)” has projected India’s GDP growth rate at 7.3% in 2018 and 7.5% for the next two years. As per report, despite initial setbacks from demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST), India’s economy is estimated to have grown at 6.7% in 2017. Ayhan Kose, the Director of World Bank(WB)’s Development Prospects Group (DPG), stated that India’s growth potential will be around 7% for the next 10 years. For global economy, World Bank’s outlook, for the first time in many years, is better than expected with all regions seeing improved growth. However, it has warned that countries must make investments to improve their growth prospects, and the time to do that is before the next crisis hits, as it inevitably will.

Notes:
Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, has launched a common mobility card scheme to aid seamless travel between the city’s bus transport and the Metro system on January 8, 2018. With this, Delhi has become the India’s first city to have a common mobility card, which can at present be used on 200 DTC and 50 cluster buses plying on different routes, apart from metro trains. The card, which will function like a debit card, will be operational in all DTC and cluster buses from April. The city has around 3,900 DTC and over 1,600 cluster buses.

Notes:
The 22nd National Youth Festival (NYF-2018) has inaugurated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Gautam Buddha University in Greater Noida on January 12. The Festival has commenced on the occasion of birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, the youth icon of India.The theme of 5-day festival is ‘Sankalp Se Siddhi’, to capitalise on the demographic dividend of young India, to capture the vibrancy and fresh perspective of youth and to pledge to accomplish the Goal of New India. The fest is organised by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in collaboration with the Uttar Pradesh government. This is the first time that the NYF is being organised in National Capital Region (NCR). The purpose of organising the NYF is to provide a platform to bring the youth of the country together in an attempt to provide them with an opportunity to showcase their talents in various activities.

Notes:
The Bhopal railway station has become the India’s first railway station to have a sanitary napkin vending machine named as ‘Happy Nari’. The machine dispenses two sanitary napkins at the cost of Rs 5 only and accepts Rs 5 coins. The sanitary pads vending machine has been installed at platform No.1 by the Railway Women Welfare Association of Bhopal. The machine has the capacity of holding 75 sanitary pads. A specially trained female staff will refill the machine.

Notes:
The 7th edition of the Rashtriya Sanskriti Mahotsav (RSM), under the Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat matrix, has started in Karnataka on January 14, 2018. The event, organised by the Ministry of Culture, will continue till the 20th of this month. The state paired with Karnataka is Uttarakhand. An official release said the event will cover a profusion of art forms from classical and folk, music and dance, theatre to literature and visual arts. The Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat programme was launched in 2017 to promote engagement among the people of different states to enhance mutual understanding and bonding. It also took note of the government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative to make the country a global manufacturing hub and of a significant push to improve key enablers and move towards a more connected economy with announcement of a 59 billion dollars investment in infrastructure in 2017.

Notes:
The 44 MW Chutak Hydroelectric Plant is located in Kargil District of Jammu & Kashmir. The barrage site is located about 14 km upstream of Kargil near village Sarzhe. The project is a run-off-river scheme on the river Suru, to generate 216 MU in a 90% dependable year having installed capacity of 44 MW (4 x 11 MW) utlising a rated head of 52m developed by construction of a 15.0 m high barrage and through 4780 m long 5.9M dia horse shoe shaped Head race tunnel.

Notes:
The Army Day is celebrated every year by the Indian Army on January 15 to commemorate the day when General (later Field Marshal) K.M Carriappa took over the command of Army from General Sir Francis Butcher , the last British Commander-in-Chief in 1949 and became the first Commander-in-Chief of Indian Army post Independence. The day is also celebrated to remember the sacrifices made by the gallant soldiers and to pay homage to the martyrs. This year, in 2018, the 70th edition of Army Day has celebrated on Jan 15. On this occasion, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat, Chief of the Naval Staff Sunil Lanba and Air Chief Marshal Birender Singh Dhanoa paid tributes at Amar Jawan Jyoti in Delhi.

Notes:
The NITI Aayog has launched the first Global Initiative on Academic Network (GIAN) course on Sustainable Urban planning using remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) has been launched at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur’s outreach center in Noida on January 15, 2018. The purpose of the course is to give participants state-of-the-art remote sensing and GIS skills which will allow them to rise to the challenge of managing the rapidly changing urban environment of Indian cities. The focus will be on issues such as water resource management, water pollution and strategic emplacements for water treatment facilities. The course is being coordinated by Professor Rajiv Sinha from the Department of Earth Sciences at IIT Kanpur and Dr. Patrice Carbonneau from the Department of Geography, University of Durham, UK.

Notes:
The Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI) is a multidisciplinary research laboratory in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh that employs scientific personnel from various areas of biomedical sciences. CDRI is among the 39 laboratories that are functioning under the aegis of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of India. The CDRI was formally inaugurated on 17 Feb 1951 by the then Prime Minister Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru with a vision to strengthen and advance the field of drug research and development in the country.