Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - September, 2017

Notes:
India and Switzerland have signed two pacts for technical cooperation in the field of Railways after delegation level talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting President of Swiss Confederation Doris Leuthard in New Delhi. The aim of pacts is to cooperate in the areas of traction rolling stock, EMU and Train sets, traction propulsion equipments, freight and passenger cars, etc. To boost bilateral ties, Swiss president, Doris Leuthard is on a 3-day visit to India. The visit is significant as Switzerland is the chair of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) where India has been seeking membership. The main theme of the presidential visit is the Treaty of Friendship signed between Switzerland and India in 1948, in which the two countries gave assurances of “perpetual peace” and “unalterable friendship”.

Notes:
Noted economist Rajiv Kumar has taken over charge as the new vice-chairman of government think tank Niti Aayog. He replaced Indian-American economist Arvind Panagariya who left the think tank to return to academia. Kumar was a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in economics from Oxford and a PhD from Lucknow University. He also served as Secretary General of industry association, FICCI. He was a member of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) between 2006 and 2008. He also served as the Chief Economist of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and held senior positions in the Asian Development Bank, the Indian Ministry of Industries, and the Ministry of Finance.

Notes:
Rajiv Kumar, a 1984 batch IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre, has been appointed as the new Secretary in the Department of Financial Services (DFS). He succeeded Anjuly Chib Duggal, who superannuated. At present, Kumar is Special Secretary and Establishment Officer in the Ministry of Personnel. The DFS looks after the functioning of banks, financial institutions, insurance companies and the national pension system. Rajiv Kumar has spearheaded several reforms in Indian bureaucracy including an online system for recording of the bureaucrats annual performance appraisal reports.

Notes:
The state-owned NTPC has signed a term loan agreement for Rs. 3,000 crore with ICICI Bank for partially funding its capital expenditure. The loan which has a door-to-door tenure of 15 years will be utilised to part finance the capital expenditure of NTPC.

Notes:
Nirmala Sitharaman, the former minister of state for the commerce and industry ministry, has become the new Defence Minister of India on September 3, 2017 after latest Union cabinet reshuffle. She succeeded Arun Jaitley. With this, she has become the India’s first woman Defence Minister after Indira Gandhi. Currently, she is Member of Parliament (MP) in Rajya Sabha representing the state of Karnataka. Now, Suresh Prabhu has become the new Union Minister of Commerce and Industry.

Notes:
Divya Deshmukh (11) has won gold in the girls’ Under-12 category at the World Cadets Chess Championship at Pocos de Caldas, Brazil. She scored a total of 9.5 points to give India its only medal in the championship this year. It is Divya’s second world title after her victory in the under-10 World Youth Chess Championship-2014 in Durban.

Notes:
Ahmedabad, the commercial capital of Gujarat, has been formally accorded the status of India’s first World Heritage City (WHC) by UNESCO. Irina Bokova, the Director General of UNESCO, has handed over the certificate declaring Ahmedabad as a ‘World Heritage City’ to Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani in Gandhinagar on September 1, 2017. The 606-year-old walled city of Ahmedabad was founded by Sultan Ahmed Shah on the eastern bank of the Sabarmati River, presents a rich architectural heritage. It has 28 Archaeological Survey of India’s centrally protected monuments. The city was also the center for India’s non-violent freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi. In July 2017, the UN agency had inscribed Ahmedabad as India’s first World Heritage City (WHC) at the 41st session of UNESCO’s world heritage committee at Krakow in Poland.

Notes:
Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, has been promoted as Cabinet Minister and got additional charge of Union Ministry of Skill Development after latest Union cabinet reshuffle on September 3, 2017. In the latest reshuffle, four Union ministers were promoted to Cabinet rank and nine new Ministers of state were inducted in the Union Council of Ministers. Excerpts are as follows: Nirmala Sitharaman has been appointed as new Union Defence Minister while Piyush Goyal is the new Rail Minister in addition to Coal. Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has been elevated to the Cabinet rank. Suresh Prabhu is now new Commerce Minister, while Nitin Gadkari has been given additional charge of Water resources.

Notes:
Nepal has recently signed a $635 million United Nations (UN) assistance package for 2018-2022 to lay out the country’s development strategy for the next five years. The package involving 26 individual UN agencies, spans interventions aimed at assisting in four broad areas: inclusive economic growth, social development, resilience, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, and governance, rule of law and human rights. The National Planning Commission, apex advisory body of the Government of Nepal, and the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) in Nepal signed the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF). The UNDAF will lay out the development strategy for the UN Country Team for the next five years.

Notes:
Sultan Ahmed (64), the Trinamool Congress MP and former Union Central Minister passed away in Kolkata, West Bengal on September 4, 2017. He was elected to the 15th Lok Sabha from Uluberia (Lok Sabha constituency) on a Trinamool Congress ticket in 2014. Previously, he was a two-time MLA from Entally. Ahmad also served as a Minister of State for Tourism in Manmohan Singh government.