Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon – March 17, 2020

FERA was mainly formulated to deal with deep crunch of foreign exchange post world war II and hence was a rigid piece of legislation which have left all the businesspeople and Indian citizens at the mercy of Enforcement Directorate as violence of FERA was considered a criminal act and there were major penalties associated with it. FEMA or Foreign Exchange Management Act was introduced in the year 1999 to replace FERA (Foreign Exchange Regulations Act). FEMA came into act on 1st of June 2000. The Scope and Objective of FEMA was mainly to amend the laws related to foreign exchange to facilitate external trade and payments and to develop the foreign exchange market in India. FEMA was a liberal from of its prior version (FERA). It extends to whole of the country. It introduced resident ship in place of citizenship. FEMA is more human and natural in nature and removed all kinds of restrictions on withdrawal of foreign exchange. FEMA also introduced RFC (Resident foreign currency account). It specifically deals with possession and retention of foreign currency and includes all kinds of foreign securities and immovable property.

National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) is a network project of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) launched in February, 2011. The project aims to enhance resilience of Indian agriculture to climate change and climate vulnerability through strategic research and technology demonstration. The research on adaptation and mitigation covers crops, livestock, fisheries and natural resource management. The project consists of four components viz. Strategic Research, Technology Demonstration, Capacity Building and Sponsored/Competitive Grants.

Objectives:

With this background, the ICAR has launched a major Project entitled, National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) during 2010-11 with an outlay of Rs.350 crores for the XI Plan with the following objectives.

• To enhance the resilience of Indian agriculture covering crops, livestock and fisheries to climatic variability and climate change through development and application of improved production and risk management technologies
• To demonstrate site-specific technology packages on farmers’ fields for adapting to current climate risks
• To enhance the capacity building of scientists and other stakeholders in climate-resilient agricultural research and its application.

Central Government launched the Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme (AIBP) in the year 1996-97 to provide Central Assistance to major/medium irrigation projects in the country, with the objective to accelerate implementation of such projects which were beyond resource capability of the States or were in advanced stage of completion. Priority was given to those projects which were started in Pre-Fifth and Fifth Plan period and also to those which were benefiting Tribal and Drought Prone Areas. After launch of PMKSY in 2015-16, AIBP became a part of PMKSY. Since its inception, 297 Irrigation / Multi-Purpose Projects have been included for funding under AIBP. Out of this 143 projects have been completed and 5 projects were foreclosed.

The Basel Accords/Norms (i.e., Basel I, II and now III) are a set of agreements set by the Basel Committee on Bank Supervision (BCBS), which provides recommendations on banking regulations in regards to capital risk, market risk and operational risk. The purpose of the accords is to ensure that financial institutions have enough capital on account to meet obligations and absorb unexpected losses. They are of paramount importance to the banking world and are presently implemented by over 100 countries across the world.

In recent times, India has become more conscious towards protecting its agricultural trade interests at the international platforms. At the 10th Ministerial Conference of the WTO (Nairobi, December 2015), the Government of India adopted the following approach towards agri-trade policy:

• A Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) for developing countries.
• Public stockholding food for security purposes,
• A commitment to abolish export subsidies for farm exports, and
• Measures related to cotton.