Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2017

Notes:
The 29th edition of the International Yoga festival has started at Parmarth Niketan along the banks of holy Ganges River in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand from March 1, 2017. The week-long event is jointly organised by the AYUSH ministry, Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board, Parmarth Niketan and Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam and was inaugurated by the Governor of Uttarakhand K K Paul. Nearly 70 saints, yogacharyas, presenters and experts from more than 20 countries around the world are participating this year at the festival.

Notes:
India will attend the meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC), which is scheduled to be held in Lahore, Pakistan on March 2017. The PIC is a bilateral commission of officials from India-Pakistan, created to implement and manage goals of Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). Under the IWT treaty, it is required that India and Pakistan meet every financial year. As per the provisions in the treaty, India can use only 20% of the total water carried by the Indus River. The treaty which was signed in 1960 by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan President Ayub Khan, gives India control over the three eastern rivers of the Indus basin, the Beas, the Ravi and the Sutlej, while Pakistan has the three western rivers, the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum.

Notes:
Mobile manufacturer OPPO Mobiles India Pvt Ltd has become the new team sponsor for the Indian cricket team for 5 years. The company in association with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will start from April 2017 for a period of five years. The team sponsor gets to have its commercial logo on the both the men’s and women’s kits. Oppo will replace broadcasting giants Star India, whose tenure will expire in March 2017.

Notes:
The Global rating agency Fitch has forecasted India’s GDP growth for FY 17 to 7.1% and for both FY 2017-18 and FY 2018-19 to 7.7%. Fitch stated that the December quarter GDP number suggests that economic activity was hardly hit by the cash crunch after the government’s move to remove 86% of currency in circulation overnight. It expects the policy interest rate to stay at its current level of 6.25%. Fitch projection of growth for this fiscal is in line with the estimates of global think-tank Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Notes:
HDFC Bank has recently launched India’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based banking chatbot “Electronic Virtual Assistant (EVA)” for customer service. EVA can answer millions of customer queries across multiple channels instantly. Eva can assimilate knowledge from thousands of sources and provide answers in simple language in less than 0.4 seconds.

Notes:
IDFC Bank has become the India’s first bank to launch the biometric-based digital payment system ‘Aadhaar Pay’ through its network that will allow even those without mobile phones to do cashless transactions. The Aadhar Pay service is for merchants which will enable them to receive Aadhaar-enabled payments by passing credit and debit cards, pin and password.

Notes:
The book “From Inside the Steel Frame: The Memoirs of an Administrator” has been authored by Dr. Ashok Pandey, a retired IAS officer. This is an account of his journey from a small village in Bihar to the corridors of powers in Delhi.

Notes:
The Commonwealth Day is observed every year on the second Monday in March month, which provides an opportunity for individuals, communities and organizations to promote the values of peace, democracy and equality that the Commonwealth stands for. The 2017 Commonwealth Day is celebrated on March 13 with the theme “A Peace-building Commonwealth”.

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare has launched Mission Fingerling programme with a total expenditure of about Rs. 52000 lakh to achieve Blue Revolution. The focus of the programme is to create an enabling environment for an integrated and holistic development and management of fisheries for the socio-economic development of the fishers and fish farmers. The target of the mission is to increase the fisheries production from 10.79 mmt (2014-15) to 15 mmt by 2020-21.

Notes:
The World Bank (WB) has recently sanctioned a $210 million loan for the West Bengal to strengthen the state’s Gram Panchayats (GPs), the lowest tier of rural local governments. The loan will be used to strengthen local communities’ participation in the planning, budgeting and financial eanagement of projects undertaken in rural areas, where most of the poor in the state reside. The loan has a grace period of eight years and a maturity of 15 years.