Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2020

Notes:
New Development Bank (NDB) was established by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries in 2014. Its headquarters is Shangai and is headed by veteran Indian K V Kamath.
BRICS’ New Development Bank was seen in news recently, as it has provided $1 billion loan to India to fight COVID-19. The complete emergency funds have been disbursed by the development institution, to help India in containing the human and economic losses due to Covid-19.

Notes:
Recently, the Geographical Indication (GI) tag has been provided to Jharkhand’s Sohrai Khovar painting and Telangana’s Telia Rumal handloom cloth.
The painting is a traditional art that is created by tribal women with locally available soils of different colours. It is predominantly done in Hazaribagh district of Jharkhand. Telia Rumal cloth has intricate handmade work with cotton loom, with designs in red, black and white colours. Thanjavur Netti (pith) works that uses Aeschynomene aspera plant and Arumbavur Wood Carving also got G.I tag from Tamil Nadu.

Notes:
Recently, Haryana submitted its action plan to the Department of Drinking Water & Sanitation and committed to provide tap water connection to all rural households by December, 2022 under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM). Haryana plans to provide tap connections in 7 lakh households by 2020-21.
The UT of Jammu and Kashmir also has planned to provide tap water connection to all rural households by December, 2022 under JJM. The national target under the scheme is to reach all households by 2024-25.

Notes:
The Union Minister announced ₹90,000 crore one-time liquidity injection for fund-starved DISCOMs. This will be used to pay the central public sector power generation companies, transmission companies, independent power producers and renewable energy generators.
PSUs Power Finance Corporation (PFC) and Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) will infuse the liquidity by raising an amount of about ₹90,000 crore from the market against the receivables of DISCOMs. The state governments are expected to provide a guarantee for the fund.

Notes:
Ecowrap is the research report of India’s largest lender State Bank of India. Recently, SBI released its latest Ecowrap report.
It has revised the baseline fiscal deficit to 7.9 per cent of the revised GDP in FY21, which is more than double to its previous estimate. The report had earlier estimated the fiscal deficit as 3.5 % of GDP. The reason for the revision is due to the lower revenues and higher expenditure against the backdrop of Covid-19 pandemic.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Maharashtra Uddhav Thackeray and eight other candidates were recently declared to be elected unopposed to the State Legislative Council.
Uddhav Thackeray, who was sworn in as the Chief Minister on November 28 last year, required to become a member of either Houses of the state legislature before May 27, 2020. The eight other candidates also include Council Deputy Chairperson Dr Neelam Gorhe among others. They would be officially sworn-in after the official notification is released.

Notes:
Ministry of Human and Resource Development has developed an e-Governance platform, SAMARTH- Enterprises Resource Planning (ERP).
The platform has been developed under National Mission of Education in Information and Communication Technology Scheme (NMEICT). SAMARTH is an open source automation engine for Universities and Higher Educational Institutions. It has been launched at National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, to automate the processes of the Institute.

Notes:
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh digitally commissioned a ship and two interceptor boats of the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) in Goa.
Indigenously built Indian Coast Guard Ship ‘Sachet’ is the first in the series of five offshore patrol vessels, that has been designed and built by Goa Shipyard Ltd (GSL). The interceptor boats C-450 and C- 451 are indigenously designed and built by L&T Shipyard, Hazira (Gujarat). The Indian Coast Guard has reached a landmark of 150 ships and boats and 62 aircraft.

Notes:
Veteran Bengali author Debesh Roy passed away recently at the age of 84, after he suffered from a massive cardiac arrest.
The author was actively writing articles in several Bengali dailies and had participated in protests against the attack on liberals. He had won several awards during his five-decade long writing career. He was conferred the Sahitya Akademi award for his novel ‘Teesta Parer Brittanto’. His other famous works are ‘Borisaler Jogen Mondal’, ‘Manush Khun Kore Keno’ and ‘Samay Asamayer Brittanto’.

Notes:
In the economic stimulus package, the Finance Minister proposed an ‘Agriculture Infrastructure Fund’, which will be created immediately with an outlay of Rs. 1 lakh crore.
The fund aims to address the lack of adequate cold chain and Post-Harvest Management infrastructure. Financial assistance will be provided for funding Agriculture Infrastructure Projects at farm-gate and aggregation points including Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS), Farmers Producer Organisations (FPO), Agriculture entrepreneurs, Start-ups, etc.