Daily Quiz #73 UPSC Prelims Marathon – January 28, 2020

Explanation: The Service Area Approach (SAA) introduced in April 1989 for planned and orderly development of rural and semi-urban areas was applicable to all scheduled commercial banks including Regional Rural Banks. Under SAA, each bank branch in rural and semi-urban area was designated to serve an area of 15 to 25 villages and the branch was responsible for meeting the needs of bank credit of its service area. The primary objective of SAA was to increase productive lending and forge effective linkages between bank credit, production, productivity and increase in income levels. The SAA scheme was reviewed from time to time and appropriate changes were made in the scheme to make it more effective.

Explanation: The scheme is applicable for all citizens of India (age group of 18-60 years) in the unorganized sector, person will be deemed to belong to the unorganised sector if that person is not in regular employment of the Central or a state government, or an autonomous body/ public sector undertaking of the Central or state government having employer assisted retirement benefit scheme. The scheme will be applicable to all persons in the unorganised sector subject to the condition that the benefit of Central Government contribution will be available only to those persons whose contribution to NPS is minimum Rs.1,000 and maximum Rs. 12,000 per annum.

Explanation: International Debt Statistics (IDS) is the World Bank’s database on the external debt and financial flows (debt and equity) of 128 countries in the World Bank’s debtor reporting system. More than 200 indicators are available. Data is from 1970 to 2019. The database combines observations from ‘Quarterly External Debt Statistics’ and ‘Quarterly Public Sector Debt’ published by the World Bank. (IDS were formerly known as ‘Global Development Finance.’)

Explanation: Hard Currency is the international currency in which the highest faith is shown and is needed by every economy. The strongest currency of the world is one which has a high level of liquidity. Basically, the economy with the highest as well as highly diversified exports that are compulsive imports for other countries (as of high-level technology, defense products, life saving medicines and petroleum products) will also create high demand for its currency in the world and become the hard currency. It is always scarce. Up to the Second World War, the best hard currency was the Pound Sterling (£) of the UK, but soon it was replaced by the US Dollar. Some of the best hard currencies of the world today are the US Dollar, the Euro (€), Japanese Yen (¥) and the UK Sterling Pound (£). Meanwhile, by late 2015, the IMF allowed the SDR to be denominated in the chinese ‘Yaan’–paving the way for a new hard currency to be implemented in 2016.

Explanation: Bhutan, a small Himalayan kingdom and an economic non-entity, developed a new concept of assessing development in the early 1970s—the Gross National Happiness (GNH). Without rejecting the idea of human development propounded by UNDP, the kingdom has been officially following the targets set by the GNH. Bhutan has been following the GNH since 1972 which has the following parameters to attain happiness/development:
•Higher real per capita income
•Good governance
•Environmental protection
•Cultural promotion (i.e., inculcation of ethical and spiritual values in life without which, it says, progress may become a curse rather than a blessing).