Daily Current Affairs for Competitive Examinations: January 04, 2023

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Motivation++

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose” 

— Dr Seuss

Current Affairs: Economy

Launch of Utkarsh 2.0 – Reserve Bank of India’s Medium-term Strategy Framework

• The Reserve Bank of India’s Medium-term Strategy Framework for the period 2023-2025 – ‘Utkarsh 2.0’ was launched recently by Shri Shaktikanta Das, Governor, RBI.
• The first strategy framework (Utkarsh 2022) covering the period 2019-2022 was launched in July 2019. 
• It became a medium-term strategy document guiding the Bank’s progress towards the realisation of the identified milestones.
• It will be based on AI and Machine learning driven tools for data analysis and information creation.

What is Utkarsh 2.0?

• Utkarsh 2.0 harnesses the strengths of Utkarsh 2022 by retaining the six Vision statements as well as Core Purpose, Values, and Mission statements. 
• Collectively, they create a strategic guiding path. 
• The Vision in Utkarsh 2.0 that will guide the Reserve Bank of India over the period 2023-25 are
  • Excellence in the performance of its functions
  • The strengthened trust of citizens and Institutions in the RBI
  • Enhanced relevance and significance in national and global roles
  • Transparent, accountable and ethics-driven internal governance
  • Best-in-class and environment-friendly digital and physical infrastructure and
  • Innovative, dynamic and skilled human resources

Vision:

• The strategy framework will also make the Bank a listening-oriented, transparent organisation equipped with best-in-class and environment-friendly digital and physical infrastructure. 
• Utkarsh 2.0, the Strategy Framework being put in place for the period 2023-25, sets out the priorities, activities, and desired outcomes under each of the objectives of the Bank for the period between 2023 and 2025.

Question:

Recently ‘Utkarsh 2.0’ the Reserve Bank of India’s Medium-term Strategy Framework, was launched for the period of

A. 2023-2025

B. 2023-2027

C. 2025-2027

D. 2023-2030

Answer: A

Current Affairs: Inclusive Democracy and Polity

Remote Electronic Voting Machine

• The Election Commission (EC) has developed a prototype of a remote electronic voting machine (RVM) for domestic migrant voters. The move is aimed at increasing voters’ participation.
• Political parties have been invited to witness the demonstration of the RVM on January 16. The new RVM prototype will enable a voter, who is listed in constituencies, to exercise voting rights from a single machine.
• The remote e-voting machine will be a standalone device that doesn’t need connectivity to operate.

How Does This RVM Work?

• The RVMs will have the same security system and voting experience as the EVM, with the modification of an electronic ballot display with candidates and symbols instead of a fixed ballot paper sheet.
• When the voter scans his/her constituency card in the presence of the Presiding Officer at the station, their respective constituency and candidate list will appear on the RVM display.
• As for counting the votes, the electronic system will also count and store the votes for each candidate in a constituency.

Why RVM?

• According to the EC, the voters’ inability to vote due to internal migration is a vital issue that needs to be addressed. 
• This invention would improve voter turnout and ensure the participation of migrants in elections. If implemented correctly, migrant voters need not travel to their home district to exercise their voting rights.

Fact:

• There was only a 67.4 per cent of voter turnout in the general elections in 2019, and over 30 crore electors did not exercise their voting rights.
• This machine can lead to ensure participative elections and Inclusive Democracy.

Question: 

Consider the following statements about the Election Commission’s recently developed prototype of a remote electronic voting machine

1. The remote e-voting machine will be a standalone device which doesn’t need connectivity to operate
2. The voter will have to register only in online mode for a remote voting facility
3. In the general elections of 2019, over 30 crore electors did not exercise their voting rights

Which of the above statements is/are correct

A. Only 1

B. Only 1 and 2

C. Only 3

D. Only 1 and 3

Answer: D

Check out the Highlights of the Economic Survey 2022-23 by clicking on the link given below:
Economic Survey 2022-23

Current Affairs: Polity and Governance

Election Commission’s ‘Mission-929’ to Take Voter Turnout in Tripura to Over 90%

• The Election Commission (EC) is focusing on 929 polling booths across Tripura, setting a target of 92 per cent voter turnout in the assembly elections due early this year. 
• These booths recorded a voter turnout of less than 89 per cent, which was the average across 3,328 booths in the 2018 assembly poll.
• To turnaround the relatively low voting percentage in these booths, the EC has launched ‘Mission-929’. Apart from an awareness campaign, poll officials will visit senior citizens and persons with disability and appeal to them to cast their votes.

Facts:

• The Election commission plans to launch an awareness campaign, and poll officials will visit senior citizens and persons with disability and appeal to them to cast their votes.
• The ECI will make requisite arrangements such as ramps and wheelchairs, and separate queues will be arranged at every polling station to felicitate senior citizens and persons with disability.
• The ECI is also working on Mission ‘Zero Poll Violence’ to make the assembly elections peaceful. This will also ensure that voters can cast their votes peacefully in the assembly elections to be held in 2023. 

Question: 

Election Commission’s ‘Mission-929’ to take voter turnout to over 90% was launched in which of the following states/UT?

A. Tripura

B. Jammu and Kashmir

C. Pondicherry 

D. Sikkim

Answer: A

Current Affairs: Economy

Unemployment Rate in India Reached a 16-month High of 8.3%

• The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) recently stated that the unemployment rate in India rose to 8.30% in December, the highest level in 16 months, from 8.00% in November. 

Data:

• The urban unemployment rate @10.09%
• Rural unemployment rate @7.44%

Five states with the highest unemployment rates in December:

1. Haryana: 37.4%
2. Rajasthan: 28.5%
3. Delhi: 20.8%
4. Bihar: 19.1%
5. Jharkhand: 18%

Five States with the lowest Unemployment Rates in December:

1. Odisha: 0.9%
2. Gujarat: 2.3%
3. Karnataka: 2.5%
4. Meghalaya: 2.7%
5. Maharashtra: 3.1%

What Is CMIE?

• CMIE, or Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, is a leading business information company.
• It was established in 1976 initially as an independent think tank.
• CMIE is a privately owned and professionally managed company headquartered in Mumbai.
• Mahesh Vyas, Managing Director of CMIE, came alongside a significant increase in the labour participation rate, which reached 40.48% in December, the highest in 12 months. 

Question: 

Recently, which of the following organisations reported that the unemployment rate in India reached a 16-month high of 8.3%?

A. National Statistical Office (NSO)

B. National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO)

C. Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)

D. Reserve bank of India (RBI)

Answer: C

Current Affairs: Economy

Blockchain to Be Used to Push Farm Exports

• India’s natural farming could soon get a technological push through blockchain, as the government plans to use the technology across all export-driven crops to increase the country’s food shipments and incentivise farmers to take up chemical-processes.
• The Niti Aayog has launched a pilot project in collaboration with the Himachal Pradesh government on apple farming to ensure quality products while also monitoring the produce across the entire storage and supply chain.

How Will This Technology Work?

• Blockchain is a distributed or decentralised ledger technology. 
• It consists of a series of blocks, where each block contains details of transactions executed over the network, hash (address) of the previous block, timestamp, etc. 
• Data and transactions stored in blocks are secured against tampering using cryptography and validated and verified through consensus across Blockchain network nodes.

Rationale:

• Blockchain will help remove redundant processes, ensuring quality control and monitoring produce across the entire storage and supply chain. 
• IoT sensors will be used to generate crop data and its storage, distribution of grown crops to food processing companies, and supply of processed food to wholesalers and retailers and its storage.

Fact:

• India ranks second in fruits and vegetable production in the world, after China, but its share in the global fruits and vegetable market is just 1%.

Question:

The Niti Aayog has recently launched a pilot project in collaboration with which of the following states/UT on apple farming?

A. Himachal Pradesh

B. Jammu and Kashmir

C. Uttarakhand

D. Sikkim

Answer: A

Current Affairs: Awards and Recognitions

Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award

• Guyana’s President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, US-based businessman Darshan Singh Dhaliwal, and DSB Group CEO Piyush Gupta are among 21 recipients of the 17th Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (PBSA), announced recently.
• Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award is the highest honour conferred on overseas Indians during the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention, which will be held between January 8 and 10 in Indore.

About PSBA:

• According to a statement issued by the MEA on Monday, the PSBA is conferred by the President of India as part of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention on Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) or organisations established and run by NRIs or PIOs in recognition of their outstanding achievements — both in India and abroad.

Some Important Recipients of the Award this Year:

• Guyana’s President, Mohamed Irfaan Ali
• US-based businessman Darshan Singh Dhaliwal
• DSB Group CEO Piyush Gupta
• Poland-based businessman Amit Kailash Chandra Lath
• FedEx Corporation CEO Rajesh Subramaniam
• Indian-Australian economist Chennupati Jagadish
• Kannam Ambalam, associate professor at Ethiopia-based Wollega University
• Reena Vinod Pushkarna, an Israel-based chef

Question: 

Who among the following is not a recipient of the 17th Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (PBSA), announced recently?

A. Radha Iyengar Plumb

B. Mohamed Irfaan Ali

C. Darshan Singh Dhaliwal

D. Amit Kailash Chandra Lath

Answer: A

Check out the Highlights of Union Budget 2023 by clicking on the link given below:
Union Budget 2023-24

Current Affairs: Environment and Ecology

SAIME Initiative for Mangrove Restoration in Sundarbans

• A new initiative of sustainable shrimp cultivation provides hope for mangrove restoration in Sundarbans. For several years, environmentalists and experts have expressed concerns over unsustainable aquaculture, particularly shrimp collection, after cleaning large tracts of mangrove forests in Sunderbans.

What Is the SAIME Initiative?

• Under the Sustainable Aquaculture In Mangrove Ecosystem (SAIME) initiative, farmers have taken up the cultivation of shrimp at 30 hectares in West Bengal.
• Additionally, they are restoring mangroves.
• The mangrove ecosystem is integrated with shrimp cultivation, but the mangrove ecosystem was excluded when fisheries were expanded inwards.

About Sundarbans Delta:

• The Sundarbans hosts the largest mangrove forests in the world, lying on the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers on the Bay of Bengal.
• The mangrove ecosystem is a very specialised environment occurring between the land and the sea in the tropical and subtropical regions.
• It is home to many rare and globally threatened wildlife species, such as estuarine crocodiles, water monitor lizards, Gangetic dolphins and olive ridley turtles.
• 40% of Sundarbans lies in India and the rest in Bangladesh. Sundarbans was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987 (India) and 1997 (Bangladesh).
• Sundarbans Wetland, India, was recognised as the ‘Wetland of International Importance’ under the Ramsar Convention in January 2019.

Question: 

The recently launched SAIME Initiative of sustainable shrimp cultivation provides hope for restoring which of the following?

A. Olive Ridley Turtles

B. Mangroves

C. Corals

D. Gangetic dolphins

Answer: B

FactBook – 03rd January 2023

Koustav Chatterjee becomes India’s 78th Grandmaster

• Koustav Chatterjee became India’s 78th Grandmaster in MPL 59th National Senior Chess Championship in New Delhi recently.
• Koustav hailing from Kolkata, becomes West Bengal’s tenth Grandmaster. 
• Koustav earned his first GM norm in October 2021 at a Grandmasters’ chess tournament in Bangladesh.
• GrandMaster is the highest title apart from World Champion awarded to Chess players by the International Chess Federation FIDE. India’s 1st Chess GrandMaster was won by Viswanathan Anand at the age of 14 in 1988.

BARC veteran Dinesh Kumar Shukla takes over as AERB chairman

• Dinesh Kumar Shukla, an internationally-acclaimed expert in the field of nuclear safety and former Executive Director of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), has taken over as the Chairman of the body.
• He will have a tenure of three years.
• The mission of the AERB is to ensure the use of ionising radiation and nuclear energy in India does not cause undue risk to the health of people and the environment.
• The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board was constituted on 15 November 1983.

Hyderabad will be the first city with 100% sewerage facilities by May

• Minister of Municipal Administration and Urban Development, IT and Industries of Telangana, K. T. Rama Rao, recently said that Hyderabad would be the first city in India to have hundred per cent sewerage facilities by next April-May.
• Thirty-one new Sewage treatment plants (STPs) are being built in the city with an investment of ₹3,866 crores.

DEXA-BCCI’s New Selection Criteria For Indian Men’s Team

• The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has decided to make Dexa and the Yo-Yo Test mandatory for selection in the national team. 
• DEXA, or Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry, is an imaging technique used to measure bone density. 
• The test is used to assess whether a fracture in the bone is possible. 
• There are two sorts of beams produced by the scan: high energy and low energy. Bone density is determined by counting the number of X-rays released after each beam passes through the bone. 
• If Indian cricketers want to pass the Yo-Yo Test, they must run 2 kilometres in 8 minutes and 30 seconds. For fast bowlers, the requirement is even stricter – 2 kilometres in 8 minutes and 15 seconds. 

Government launches ‘Prahari’ app for BSF Jawans

• The government launched the Border Security Force (BSF) mobile app ‘Prahari’. This app is a great example of proactive governance.
• With the app, BSF soldiers can get personal and service-related information, housing, Ayushman-CAPF and leave-related information on their mobiles.
• Soldiers can also get information on various welfare schemes through this app.

UP Government Signs an MOU of ₹18,590 crores with UAE-Based Company

• The Uttar Pradesh government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) worth ₹18,590 crores (approximately $2.5 billion) with a United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based company.
• The MoU, which was signed during a recent visit by a delegation from the UAE to Uttar Pradesh, aims to bring investments and new technologies to the state. 
• The specific details of the agreement, including the name of the UAE company and the sectors in which the investments will be made, have not been disclosed.
• The MOU is expected to create new job opportunities and boost economic growth in the state. Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, said that the agreement would help the state “leapfrog into a new era of development and prosperity”.

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