Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon – November 13, 2018

India’s First National Rail and Transportation University will be setup at Vadodara, Gujarat. The University will be set up as a Deemed University. This university will set Indian Railways on the path of modernization and help India become a global leader in transport sector by enhancing productivity and promoting ‘Make in India’. It will create a resource pool of skilled manpower and leverage state-of-the-art technology to provide better safety, speed and service in Indian Railways. It will support ‘Startup India’ and ‘Skill India’ by channeling technology and delivering knowhow, and foster entrepreneurship, generating large scale employment opportunities.

SRISTI (Sustainable Rooftop Implementation for Solar Transfiguration of India) scheme is related to solar power production technology. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has proposed this scheme. This scheme aims to achieve a national solar rooftop target of 40 GW till 2021-2022. It is proposed that a Central Financial Assistance will be provided only for installation of rooftop solar plants in residential sectors. The scheme will integrate discoms as an implementing agency in Phase-II of rooftop solar scheme, the statement added.

External Commercial Borrowings comes under the capital account transactions. The capital account includes all international asset transactions (FDI, FPI etc.). The current account includes all the transactions related to export and import of goods and services, investment income, and unilateral transfers (remittances, gifts, grants etc.).

Both the statements are correct. The “North East Special Infrastructure Development Scheme” (NESIDS) will broadly cover creation of infrastructure under following sectors:

a) Physical infrastructure relating to water supply, power, connectivity and specially the projects promoting tourism;

b) Infrastructure of social sectors of education and health. NESIDS is a Central Sector Scheme with 100% funding from the Central Government to fill up the gaps in creation of infrastructure in specified sectors till March, 2020.

Statement 1 is incorrect. International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons or ICAN is a global civil society coalition of 468 partner organizations from 101 countries. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland.

Statement 2 is correct. International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons or ICAN aims to promote adherence to and full implementation of Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It is a leading civil society actor which has taken efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons.

Statement 1 is incorrect. NISAR is a dual frequency (L & S Band) Radar Imaging Satellite jointly being developed by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA.

Statement 2 is correct. The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), or NISAR, Mission will make global integrated measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes. NISAR will provide a means of resolving highly spatial and temporally complex processes ranging from ecosystem disturbances, to ice sheet collapse and natural hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and landslides. NISAR’s unprecedented coverage in space and time will reveal forces acting within the Earth and on its surface, biomass variability, and response of ice masses far more comprehensively than any other measurement method.

The term ‘Quantitative Easing’ is used to refer the introduction of new money into the money supply by a central bank. Central banks usually stimulate a slowing economy by cutting interest rates, which encourage people to spend by borrowing more or discouraging them to save. But with interest rates in the developed world already close to zero, that option is no longer available. In such situations, the central banks resort to pumping money directly into the economy, a process known as quantitative easing. It is done by buying bonds – usually government paper but can also be private bonds – from banks and financial institutions. The developed countries used quantitative easing to spur growth in recent years.