10 PM Current Affairs Quiz : February 15, 2019

Odisha Chief Minister has laid the foundation stone for the Subarnarekha Port. The port will be developed at Subarnarekha River’s mouth at Chaumukh, Balasore district, Odisha. It will be developed as an all-weather, deep-draft seaport to host large and heavily loaded ships

The proposed port will be developed by Tata Steel and Creative Port Development Pvt. Ltd.

The benefits of the port are: a) help accelerate industrialisation in Odisha and boost its economic growth, b) will serve industries in Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and trans-border countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and others in South East Asia and c) generate employment opportunities.

An Expert Committee on Determining the Methodology for Fixation of the National Minimum Wage, headed by Anoop Satpathy, has recommended setting the minimum wage at Rs 375 a day or Rs. 9,750 per month. The minimum wage has been fixed irrespective of sectors, skills, occupations and rural-urban locations for a family.

The National Commission for Minorities has constituted a new sub-committee. The committee is entrusted with the task of preparing a report to provide a) comprehensive definition of minority and b) criteria for determining minority status of a community. The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) is a statutory body established under the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992. It functions to safeguard the rights and interests of minority communities in India.

The constitution of the sub-committee comes in the backdrop of recent Supreme Court direction to NCM on defining minority in the context of state-wise population of a community.

The direction came over a plea seeking minority status for Hindus in 7 states and 1 UT. According to 2011 census, the Hindus are minority in Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and Punjab.

At present, minority status is granted to Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis and Jains.

Wholesale Price Index is computed by Office of the Economic Advisor(OEA), Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Consumer price index (Rural and Urban) is released by Central Statistical Organisation

According to government data, wholesale inflation declined to 2.76% in January 2019. The decline has been attributed to cheaper fuel prices.

The 5th International Dam Safety Conference–2019 is being held in Bhubaneswar as a joint initiative of the Government of India, Government of Odisha and the World Bank under aegis of the ongoing World Bank assisted Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP) as a part of institutional strengthening.

Globally India ranks third after China and the USA in terms of the number of large dams with 5264 large dams in operation and 437 large dams under construction.

The Pradhan Mantri KisanSamman Nidhi Yojana (PM-KISAN) will be formally launched on 24th February in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. The scheme was announced in the interim Budget 2019-20.

Under the scheme, a direct income support of Rs 6,000/annum will be provided to small and marginalised farmers. The financial assistance will be directly transferred to the bank accounts of the beneficiary in 3 equal instalments

The government has defined a small and marginal landholder family as the one comprising of husband, wife and minor children up to 18 years of age, who collectively own cultivable land up to 2 hectare as per the land records of the concerned states