10 PM Current Affairs Quiz: January 20 2021

The India Innovation index is released by the NITI Aayog. It has released the second edition of the India Innovation Index 2020 today.
The India Innovation Index 2020 seeks to rank the states and union territories based on their relative performance of supporting innovation, and to empower them to improve their innovation polices by highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.
The ranking methodology is designed in a way that states can draw lessons from the national leaders in innovation. Hopefully, this will lead to a healthy competition among the states and union territories, thereby fostering competitive federalism

Statement 1 is correct. The Central Government last year notified the National Startup Advisory Council to advise the Government on measures needed to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation and startups in the country to drive sustainable economic growth and generate large scale employment opportunities.
Statement 2 is incorrect. The National Startup Advisory Council will be chaired by Minster for Commerce & Industry. The Council will consist of the non-official members, to be nominated by Central Government, from various categories like founders of successful startups, veterans who have grown and scaled companies in India, persons capable of representing interests of investors into startups, persons capable of representing interests of incubators and accelerators and representatives of associations of stakeholders of startups and representatives of industry associations.
# Recently non-official members on the National Startup Advisory Council have been nominated by the government.

Government of India has decided to celebrate the 125th Birth Anniversary year of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in a befitting manner at national and international level, beginning from 23rd January 2021. A High Level Committee, headed by the Prime Minister, has been constituted for deciding the programs, and to supervise and guide the commemoration.
In order to honour and remember Netaji’s indomitable spirit and selfless service to the nation, Government of India has decided to celebrate his birthday on the 23rd day of January every year as “PARAKRAM DIWAS”.
# Gazette Notification for declaring 23rd January as “ParakramDiwas” has been published.

Statement 1 is incorrect. The North Eastern Council is the nodal agency for the economic and social development of the North Eastern Region which consists of the eight States of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. The North Eastern Council was constituted in 1971 by an Act of Parliament.
# Other zonal councils are set up under the States Re-organisation Act, 1956.
Statement 2 is correct. The Union Home Minister is ex-officio Chairman and the MoS(IC) Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) is the ex-officio Vice-Chairman of the NEC.

: Indian Air Force and French Air and Space Force (Armée de l’Air et de l’Espace) will conduct a bilateral Air exercise, Ex Desert Knight-21 at Air Force Station Jodhpur from 20 to 24 Jan 21.
As part of Indo-French defence cooperation, Indian Air Force and French Air and Space Force have held six editions of Air Exercises named ‘Garuda’, the latest being in 2019 at Air Force Base Mont-de-Marsan, France.

The fifth edition of the Adaptation Gap Report, released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) looks at progress in planning for, financing and implementing adaptation – with a focus on nature-based solutions.
The UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2020 finds that while nations have advanced in planning, huge gaps remain in finance for developing countries and bringing adaptation projects to the stage where they bring real protection against climate impacts such as droughts, floods and sea-level rise.
Nature-based solutions – locally appropriate actions that address societal challenges, such as climate change, and provide human well-being and biodiversity benefits by protecting, sustainably managing and restoring natural or modified ecosystems – must also become a priority.

Both statements are correct.
COVAX is the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator. The ACT Accelerator is a ground-breaking global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.
Gavi is coordinating the development and implementation of the COVAX Facility, the global procurement mechanism of COVAX. At the Global Vaccine Summit last year, Gavi launched the COVID-19 Vaccines Advance Market Commitment (COVAX AMC) as the first building block of the COVAX Facility.
The Gavi COVAX AMC is the innovative financing instrument that will support the participation of 92 low- and middle-income economies in the COVAX Facility – enabling access to donor-funded doses of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines.

: The Government of India has received several requests for the supply of Indian manufactured vaccines from neighbouring and key partner countries. In response to these requests, and in keeping with India’s stated commitment to use India’s vaccine production and delivery capacity to help all of humanity fight the Covid pandemic, supplies under grant assistance to Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and Seychelles will begin from 20 January 2021.
In respect of Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Mauritius, we are awaiting their confirmation of necessary regulatory clearances.

The Nagi Dam and Nakti Dam are two sanctuaries close to each other Jamui district of south Bihar. These sanctuaries are a home to wide variety of indigenous species and migratory birds that turn up during the winters from places like Eurasia, Central Asia, the Arctic Circle, Russia and Northern China.
About 1,600 Bar-headed Goose (Anser indicus) have been recorded from this site. According to Wetlands International (2002), 1% threshold of this species is 560; accordingly, about 3% of the population is found at this important bird area site. This site could also attract more than 20,000 birds, if fishing and other disturbances are curtailed during winter when most of the migrants are found in India.
# ‘Kalrav’, Bihar’s 1st state–level festival started at the Nagi-Nakti bird sanctuaries in the Jamui district, Bihar.

The State Bank of India, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank are the domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs) or banks that are considered as “too big to fail”.
The Reserve Bank had issued the Framework for dealing with Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs) on July 22, 2014. The D-SIB framework requires the Reserve Bank to disclose the names of banks designated as D-SIBs starting from 2015 and place these banks in appropriate buckets depending upon their Systemic Importance Scores (SISs). Based on the bucket in which a D-SIB is placed, an additional common equity requirement has to be applied to it.