Current Affairs Questions & Answers - Apr 23, 2017

ANSWER: Totally voluntary

Explanation:
Ministry of Food and Consumer Affairs has approved the ‘Guidelines on Fair Trade Practices Related to Charging of Service Charge from Consumers by Hotels and Restaurants’.

As a part of the guidelines which has been issued in public interest to protect the rights of consumers, Service charge on hotel and restaurant bills is “totally voluntary”, adding that mandatory levy of service charge amounts to unfair trade practice.

As per the guidelines, Hotels and restaurants cannot decide on service charge and the column of service charge will be left blank in the bill for the customers to fill up before making payment.

The guidelines have also stated that in a case of mandatory levy of service charge, customers can file a complaint in the Consumer Court.

However, at present, stringent action cannot be taken against the erring hotels as the current Consumer Protection Act, 1986 does not empower the ministry to do so.

But, under the new Consumer Protection Bill, an authority is expected to be set up with powers to take such actions.

The Department of Consumer Affairs has justified the guidelines in view of complaints received by it from consumers that some hotels are insisting payment of service charge in the range of 5-20 per cent and many people are paying it believing that it is part of taxes.

As per the guidelines, a component of service is already inherent in the provision of food and beverages ordered by a customer.

Hence, the price of food and beverages is expected to cover both goods and service components. HRAWI’s Response

The Hotel and Restaurant Association of Western India (HRAWI) has not welcomed the guidelines by saying that levying of service charge is a global practice and a legitimate tax, adding that it has been in India for more than half a century.

ANSWER: South Korea

Explanation:
A MoU has been signed between India and South Korea for defence industry cooperation in shipbuilding.

Under the MoU, the two countries would recommend the organisations for collaborating in the implementation of specific projects.

The MoUs signed will be valid for a time period of 5 years and are automatically extendable for further successive five years at a time.

While South Korea is yet to name its recommended organisation, India has nominated Hindustan Shipyard Ltd (HSL), Visakhapatnam for the collaboration.

HSL and the nominated shipyard by South Korea will find and develop indigenous sources for the supply of majority of the material and equipment for the construction of the warship.

HSL has already teamed with Hyundai Heavy Industries to build five fleet support ships and two strategic operating vessels.

In addition to the above project, Kangnam Corporation of South Korea is slated to provide consultancy, design and technological assistance to India’s state-owned Goa Shipyard Limited in building 12 mine countermeasures vessels.

The cooperation is part of the ‘Make in India’ policy.

ANSWER: 22

Explanation:
World Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22.

It was first celebrated in 1970, and since then it is celebrated in more than 193 countries by over a billion people every year.

Earth Day celebrations are coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network. Earth Day 2017’s Campaign is Environmental & Climate Literacy.

Environmental and climate literacy was chosen as it is important for creating green voters and advancing environmental and climate laws and policies across the globe as well as to accelerate green technologies and jobs.

Every year Earth Day is being observed on the 22nd April to build support for environmental protection around the world.

The concept of observing Earth Day was formally proposed by John McConnell at a UNESCO conference on Environment in 1969.

Later in 1971, a proclamation was signed to observe international Earth Day annually on the Vernal Equinox by UN Secretary-General U Thant.

On Earth Day 2016, historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change was signed. The agreement is legally binding on signatory countries to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

ANSWER: 70

Explanation:
Minister of State (IC) for Labour & Employment Bandaru Dattatreya awarded NSCI Safety Awards 2016 to 70 Organisations at a function held in New Delhi.

In addition, 12 client organizations from Construction Sector were also awarded.

The Award was granted to the organisations under four categories: SarvaShreshtha Suraksha Puraskar, Shreshtha Suraksha Puraskar, Suraksha Puraskar PrashansaPatra.

In Manufacturing Sector, Indian Oil’s Digboi refinery, National Fertilizers, Panipat, and NPCIL, Kaiga Generating Station 3 and 4, Karnataka, are the winners.

In Construction Sector, Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co. Ltd. And L&T Ltd., Rawatbhata, Chittorgarh has been selected for its works on NPCIL Atomic Power Project, Rajasthan.

In MSME Sector, Electricals & Electronics, Thane, has won SarvaShreshtha Suraksha Puraskar for the year 2016.

National Fertilizers Ltd. Panipat has achieved a massive 49.67 million accident-free man-hours spread over 11 years and 5 months.

The Government framed the National Policy on Occupational Safety, Health and Environment in 2009.

As many changes have taken place in national as well as international arena, the government has constituted an Inter-Ministerial Committee to review the national policy.

National Safety Council: Know More

• It is a self-supporting non- profit autonomous society coming under the purview of Ministry of Labour and Employment.
• It has been conducting award schemes for three sectors- Manufacturing Sector since 1998; Construction Sector from 2005 and Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises from 2009.
• The main objective of the NSCI award scheme is to recognise organisations that have made meritorious performance in achieving occupational safety and health (OSH) and implemented effective OSH management systems, practices and procedures.

ANSWER: PV Sindhu

Explanation:
Top shuttler PV Sindhu has been ranked No. 3 in the latest BWF ranking.

Sindhu who was at No.5 climbed up two places on the basis of making the quarter-finals of the recently-concluded Singapore Open Super Series.

Sindhu’s career best is when she reached World No. 2 two weeks ago.

As per the latest BWF ranking, London Olympics bronze medallist Saina Nehwal has been ranked eighth.

Kidambi Srikanth and B Sai Praneeth have been placed at 21st and 22nd positions respectively.

PV Sindhu: Know More

• PV Sindhu received international attention after getting listed on the Top 20 list of Badminton World Federation rankings in 2012.
• In 2013, she created history by becoming first Indian women’s singles badminton player to win a medal at the 2013 World Championships.
• Sindhu grabbed Silver medal in Rio Olympics.
• With that, she became the second Indian female shuttler to win an Olympic medal after Saina Nehwal (2012 London Olympics).
• Sindhu has been awarded Padma Shri in 2015, which is India’s fourth-highest civilian honour.

ANSWER: Rashtriya Janata Party

Explanation:
Five prominent Madhesi parties in Nepal have united to form a new united party named the Rashtriya Janata Party, which will be the fifth largest party in Nepal’s Parliament.

Interestingly the word “Madhes” has not been included in the new party’s name.

This announcement of unification has come ahead of elections to local government bodies scheduled on May 14.

The five parties that have united are Mahantha Thakur‘s Tarai Madhes Loktantrik Party, Rajendra Mahato‘s Sadbhawana Party, Sharat Singh Bhandari‘s Rastriya Madhes Samajbadi Party, Mahendra Yadav‘s Tarai Madhes Sadbhawana Party and Rajkishor Yadav‘s Madhesi Janadhikar Forum- Ganatantrik.

It has been announced that leaders of the five parties will lead the Rashtriya Janata Party by rotation.

As per the provisions, most of the key constitutional posts have been reserved for only citizens by descent. Madhesi parties object to this criterion as huge numbers of Madhesis have acquired citizenship by birth or naturalization.

This criteria makes them ineligible to hold the office of President, Vice-President, Prime Minister, Chief Justice, Speaker of Parliament, Chairperson of National Assembly etc.

Madhesis want representation in terms of proportion. The Nepali constitution has given equal representation on the basis of “geographical area”.

ANSWER: Chennai

Explanation:
According to EEPC India, Russia coming forward as the Partner Country in this event is a testimony to the stature achieved by IESS. India has a long standing partnership with Russia in engineering sector.

A large 120 member delegation from Russia is exhibiting their technology and products at the IESS 2017.

As many as 400 top global exhibitors and over 500 foreign delegates are participating in this flagship engineering event which is built around the theme – “Smart Tech for Smart Engineering”.

Besides Russia, delegates from USA, UK, Germany, UAE, Brazil, South Africa, Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Uganda, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Nepal are also visiting IESS, which has emerged as one of the most prestigious engineering sourcing shows in the country.

This edition of IESS has exclusive Technology and Innovation Pavilions with representations from BARC, IIT Mumbai, IIT Madras, FCRI (Fluid Control Research Institute), ARCI (International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials), CMTI (Central Manufacturing Technology Institute) and MSME Tools Room.

IESS, across its five previous editions, has left an indelible footprint of success.

India's engineering exports are likely to reach USD 60+ billion in the fiscal 2016-17, on the back of revival of demand in the USA and for select products like iron.

For the April-January period of ten months of the current fiscal, the engineering exports have touched a figure of USD 50.87 billion, exceeding the total shipments of USD 49 billion in the entire financial year of 2015-16.

For January, 2017 engineering exports aggregated USD 5.29 billion, showing an increase of over 12 % over the same month last fiscal.

ANSWER: Made in India

Explanation:
With rapid expansion of metro rail projects in the country, Ministry of Urban Development has taken several far reaching decisions to promote Make in India campaign.

These include stipulating certain mandatory conditions to be incorporated in Tender Documents of metro companies for procurement of metro cars and related critical equipment and sub-systems, procurement of only Made in India signalling equipment besides standardizing technical parameters for rolling stock (metro coaches) and signalling equipment.

The new mandatory Tender Conditions and standardized norms for a wide range of equipment, approved by the Minister of Urban Development Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu have been circulated to all the metro companies making them effective immediately.

These initiatives will incentivize setting up manufacturing facilities in the country by increasing the volumes of procurement of rolling stock and all kinds of equipment by removing variations in the present technical norms for rolling stock and signalling equipment.

This will in turn result in reduction of cost through economies of scale.

The Ministry has stipulated the following mandatory conditions to be incorporated in Tender Documents:

1. Minimum 75% of the tendered quantity of metro cars shall be manufactured indigenously with progressive indigenization of content, for which the contractor may either establish independent manufacturing facility in India or partner with Indian manufacturers, if the procurement is more than 100 cars;

2. To facilitate ease in maintenance through easy availability of spares beyond the warranty period, an identified list of critical equipment and sub-systems shall be included in the Tender Document for ensuring indigenous manufacturing of a minimum of 25% of such equipment, either by Original Equipment Manufacturers themselves by establishing a wholly owned subsidiary in India or through Indian manufacturers;

3. Requirement of metro cars at State level shall be clubbed to enable applicability of local procurement norms; and

4. To develop in-house expertise on long term basis, metro companies with large size fleet to undertake in-house maintenance.
Source: PIB

A total number of 1,912 metro coaches are currently operational in the country with another 1,420 under procurement.

Over the next three years more than 1,600 metro cars would be required. Each metro coach is estimated to cost about INR .10 cr.

The long pending standardisation of norms for rolling stock and signalling equipment applicable to over 90% of the present imports.

Further, to promote indigenous manufacturing, the Ministry has stipulated procurement of 9 types of signalling equipment from within the country.

Metro companies have also been directed to develop maximum possible local competence so that knowhow and technical support is available within the country.

Indian companies have to be associated with production of a wide range of signalling and train control project equipment.

Homogenization of several metro functions has also been prescribed.

Presently, metros are operating in 7 cities of Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Jaipur, Gurgaon, Bengaluru and Chennai with a total route length of 326 kms.

Metro projects with a total route length of 546 kms are under construction in 11 cities and projects with a total route length of 903 kms in 13 cities are under consideration.

ANSWER: C-DOT Common Service Platform

Explanation:
Government of India’s announcement of Smart Cities project in mission mode has generated a lot of interest.

The concept of smart cities is incomplete without intervention of communication and Information Technology.

C-DOT has developed CCSP(C-DOT Common Service Platform), the oneM2M standards compliant common service platform which can be deployed on any off-the-shelf generic server platforms or cloud infrastructure.

The business application providers can deploy their oneM2M compliant applications in either co-located infrastructure or on any public or private cloud.

Using the CCSP platform from C-DOT, the smart cities can reap all the benefits of using a standards compliant horizontal service layer and thus be more efficient, economical and future proof.

Along with the CCSP C-DOT has also developed various oneM2M indigenously designed hardware nodes like AND (Application Dedicated Node), ASN (Application Service Node) and MN(Middle node).

To effectively showcase the strength of the platform, C-DOT has also developed various applications like Smart Living, Smart Street Light, Carbon Footprint Monitoring Application and Power Monitoring which are fully oneM2M compliant.

C-DOT has also participated in two international interoperability events where the CCSP and the ADN were tested for interoperability with many other oneM2M compliant nodes from various international organisations like Interdigital, Herit, Huawei, HPE, NTT, KETI, LAAS-CNRS etc. C-DOT also participated in the conformance testing with ETSI.

Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI), the Indian telecom Standards Development Organisation (SDO) and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI have joined hands to unroll a collaboration project on ICT Standardisation.

Recognising C-DOT’s R&D strengths, an India - European Union project called ‘India-EU Cooperation on ICT-Related Standardisation, Policy and Legislation’ is organising a workshop on “Future proof smart cities with a common service layer: a standards driven approach”.

The workshop aims to provide a platform where foreign and Indian experts from IoT and M2M forums, academia, R&D, industry and senior officials from Ministries of Communications, Urban Development and Electronics and Information Technology and cities named in Indian Smart Cities project can interact to share knowledge and experience

PDO: Know More

• C-DOT PDO is ready to bring yet another revolution by taking internet connectivity to every nook and corner of the country like it did in the 1980s when PCOs changed the Indian telecom scene in by taking telephones to rural India.
• C-DOT hopes that PDOs would bring next telecom revolution by taking internet connectivity to the masses.
• Like PCOs, the PDOs would enable small shop owners increase their income by selling data vouchers. This will also encourage village-level entrepreneurship and provide strong employment opportunities, especially in rural and semi urban areas.

ANSWER: INR 14953

Explanation:
Ministry of Tourism estimates monthly Foreign Exchange Earnings (FEEs) through Tourism in India, both in rupee and dollar terms. Based on the credit data of Travel Head from Balance of Payments of RBI.

The highlights of the estimates of FEEs from Tourism in India for March 2017 are as below:

FEEs during the month of March 2017 were INR.14, 953 crore as compared to INR 13,115 crore in March 2016 and `11,133 crore in March 2015.

The growth rate in FEEs in rupee terms in March 2017 over March 2016 was 14.0% compared to positive growth of 17.8% in March 2016 over March 2015.

FEEs during the period January- March 2017 were Rs. 46,310 crore with a growth of 14.6%, as compared to the FEE of Rs. 40,411 crore with a growth of 15.9% in January- March 2016 over January- March 2015.

FEEs in USD terms during the month of March 2017 were USD 2.268 billion as compared to FEEs of USD 1.958 billion during the month of March 2016 and USD 1.783 billion in March 2015.

The growth rate in FEEs in US$ terms in March 2017 over March 2016 was 15.8% compared to a positive growth of 9.8% in March 2016 over March 2015.

FEEs during the period January-March 2017 were USD 6.907 billion with a growth of 15.4% as compared to the FEE of USD 5.986 billion with a growth of 6.8% in January- March 2016 over January- March 2015.

Ministry of Tourism: FTAs

• Ministry of Tourism compiles monthly estimates of Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) & FTAs on e- Tourist Visa on the basis of Nationality-wise, Port-wise data received from Bureau of Immigration (BOI).
• The number of FTAs in March, 2017 were 9.05 lakh as compared to FTAs of 8.17 lakh in March, 2016 and 7.29 lakh in March, 2015.
• The growth rate in FTAs in March, 2017 over March, 2016 is 10.7% compared to 12.1% in March, 2016 over March, 2015.
• FTAs during the period January- March 2017 were 28.45 lakh with a growth of 13.4%, as compared to the FTAs of 25.08 lakh with a growth of 10.0% in January- March 2015 over January- March 2014.
• The percentage share of Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) in India during March 2017 among the top 15 source countries was highest from Bangladesh followed b y USA, UK, Russian Fed., Malaysia, Canada Germany , Sri Lanka, China, France, Australia, Japan, Afghanistan, Singapore and Iran.