Current Affairs Questions & Answers - May 17, 2017

ANSWER: Subrahmanyan Ramaswamy

Explanation:
Former Puducherry Chief Minister Subrahmanyan Ramaswamy passed away on 15 May 2017 in Puducherry following a brief illness.

He was 80. He is survived by wife and three sons.

Ramaswamy began his political career in Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) during student days. He was Home Minister in the DMK-CPI coalition ministry from 1969 to 1973.

In 1973, he shifted his allegiance to the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).

He became Chief Minister of AIADMK in 1974 heading the AIADMK-CPI coalition ministry for a brief period.

He was also the Chief Minister in the AIADMK government in 1977, which lasted in office for a little over one year.

He successfully contested as Independent from Karaikal in 1985 and 1990. He joined Congress in 1992.

Puducherry: Know More

• Area: 496 km^²
• Population: 1.244 million (2011)
• Official state fauna symbol: Indian palm squirrel
• Languages: Tamil language, Telugu language, Malayalam

ANSWER: Coir

Explanation:
The Indian Coir sector’s revenue from exports touched an all time high of INR 2282 Cr by value and 9.57 Metric Tonnes in quantity in the 2016-17 financial year.

The Coir Board Chairman is C P Radhakrishnan.

The coir sector had fetched export revenue of Rs 1630 Cr in the financial year 2015-16 against INR 1,476 Cr achieved in fiscal year 2014-15.

Indian coir sector has tremendous potential to grow and provide employment to a large number of people.

Coir Board is going ahead with a project to fabricate a versatile spinning machine capable of producing yarn with uniform thickness in large quantity.

The government is considering to introduce a scheme that would extend financial support upto INR 2.50 Cr to the sector in order to promote larger investments by entrepreneurs.

ANSWER: Mumbai Chattrapati Shivaji International airport

Explanation:
The Mumbai airport, Chhatrapati Shivaji International, has become the world’s busiest single-runway airport with 837 flights a day or one flight in 65 seconds on an average in the 2016-17 fiscal year.

The airport has even overtaken London’s Gatwick airport that had 757 flights a day.

The city also tops in terms of the number of passengers with almost 45.2 million people flying in and out in fiscal 2017 as against 44 million at Gatwick airport.

No other large city in the world is served by one airport that too with a single-runway.

All the leading cities in the world including New York, London, Dubai, and Singapore have more than one airport with multiple runways. The New Delhi airport also has in use three parallel runways at any given time.

In comparison, Mumbai works with just a single runway for both passenger and cargo aircraft and when it is shut for repairs, it uses the secondary runway.

The airport operates to about 95 domestic and international destinations.

The air traffic controller has to manage two arrivals every 130 seconds and one departure in between these two arrivals so, there is one take-off or touch-down every 65 seconds from the main runway.

The airport also witnesses days when the total number of flight operations cross 900.

The city has proposed for a second airport in Navi Mumbai, which is yet to come up.

The Gatwick airport, which is the second-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the United Kingdom after London Heathrow, had held the position of being the busiest Mumbai airport with single - runway operations until March 2017 when it was overtaken by the Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.

ANSWER: Chile

Explanation:
The expanded Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) between India and Chile will come into effect on 16 May 2017.

According to Union Ministry of Commerce & Industry, the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) between India and Chile was first signed on 8 March 2006, which came into force from August 2007.

The original PTA had a limited number of tariff lines wherein the two nations extended Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) on 8 March 2006 which came into force with effect from August 2007.

India’s offer list to Chile consisted of only 178 tariff lines whereas Chile’s offer list to India contained 296 tariff lines at the 8-digit level.

Later, India and Chile signed an agreement on the expansion of the India-Chile PTA on 6 September 2016, which will be implemented from 16 May 2017.

This expanded PTA was approved by the Union Cabinet in April 2016. Under this trade agreement, both the countries have offered to lower or eliminate duties on a number of items traded with each other.

Chile has offered duty concessions on about 1798 goods including agri-items, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, textiles, iron and steel items, to Indian exporters as compared to 178 items earlier.

The tariff lines with Margin of Preference (MoP) offered by Chile will range from 30 per cent -100 per cent.

India has offered concessions to Chile on 1031 products including vegetable oil, processed food, pharma, plastic and pearls as against 296 earlier. Around 96 per cent of the total bilateral trade has now been covered by this agreement.

The expanded PTA would immensely benefit both sides as a wide array of concessions has been offered by the two countries on a number of products which will facilitate more trade.

The tariff lines with Margin of Preference (MoP) offered by India will range from 10 per cent-100 per cent.

These tariff lines were based on HS 2012 when the negotiations had been concluded.

With the implementation of the HS 2017 Nomenclature with effect from 1 January 2017, both sides have aligned their Annexes on India’s Schedule of Tariff Concessions, Chile’s Schedule of Tariff Concessions and the Schedule on Rules of Origin as per HS 2017 Nomenclature for the issue of Notification.

This would facilitate exporters of both sides to take the advantage of tariff concessions as per the expanded PTA immediately which covers around 96 per cent of bilateral trade.

ANSWER: None of the above

Explanation:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the river conservation project ‘Narmada Seva Mission’ on 15 May 2017 in Madhya Pradesh.

The project is a road-map for steps to be taken for the conservation of the Narmada River in the state. S

The PM released a road map for the conservation of Narmada, to ensure it is pollution free.

The roadmap is a result of wide range of consultations with various stakeholders including river conservation experts, environmentalists and others directly associated with the river.

The programme marks the conclusion of ‘Namami Devi Narmade Sewa Yatra’, which was launched on 11 December 2016 by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan at Amarkantak.

The five-month Narmada river conservation project awareness campaign was concluded after covering a distance of 3,344 km and passing through over 1,100 villages and towns.

It was hailed as an excellent mass movement by the Prime Minister who also said that it conveyed a larger message of saving the environment.

Several eminent personalities including BJP President Amit Shah, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama and Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Uma Bharti, Anil Madhav Dave and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took part in the yatra at its different stages.

Besides launching the Narmada Seva Mission, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also took part in Narmada Pujan. Elaborate security arrangements had been made for the same.

The Narmada, also known as Rewa, is one of only three major rivers in the country that flows from east to west.

The other two are Tapti and Mahi.

ANSWER: Indian navy

Explanation:
The Indian Navy and the Space Application Centre has signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Data Sharing and Scientific cooperation in the field of Meteorology and Oceanology.

As per the MoU, the scientific advancements and expertise achieved by SAC would be synergised into the Indian Naval efforts in order to keep the Indian Navy abreast with rapid developments that has taken place in the field of Environment Sciences and Satellite Data acquisition technology.

The MoU has further enhanced the already established collaboration between the two organisations.

The broad areas of cooperation under the MoU are:

• Sharing of non-confidential observational data for pre-launch sensor calibration and post launch satellite data validation,
• Operational use of SAC generated weather products,
  provisioning expertise for installation of various satellite data processing modules at Naval METOC organisations,
• Performing calibration and validation for ocean models,
• Transfer of technology to produce weather information, training on latest technology and sharing of subject matter experts between the organisations facilitating effective knowledge transfer.

SAC: Know More

• Space Applications Centre (SAC) is one of the major centres of ISRO.
• It was established in the year 1972.
• It primarily focuses on the design of space-borne instruments for ISRO missions.
• It also develops applications of space technology and is headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat

ANSWER: None of the above

Explanation:
As per the PFRDA-CRISIL report titled, Financial security for India’s elderly - The imperatives, India will begin ageing gradually and transform from ‘young’ to a ‘greying’ with every 5^th Indian to be in 60s in contrast to every 12th person at present.

By 2050, persons above the age of 60 would increase from the present 8.9% of the population to 19.4 %.

Also, by 2050, the population of people above 80 is likely to increase from 0.9% to 2.8%.

As of 2015, almost 90% of the population was below the age of 60 years and the proportion of working age population stood at 44% .

The report has stated that the continuously declining inter-generational support within families necessitates the development of well-developed, self- sustaining pension system in the country.

The report calls for including personal finance and retirement planning as a part of formal education curriculum as they promote the overall objective of financial literacy.

The promotion of pension system is vital as it helps in achieving twin objectives of providing income security to a vast number of ageing population.

It also assists in garnering long-term funds for critical, growth-driving sectors of the economy as also the capital market.

The report has called for sufficient incentivisation of intermediaries to increase penetration of pension system in the country.

In India, which is an under-penetrated financial market has most of the investors preferring to invest in fixed deposits (FDs), which account for more than 44% of the financial savings as opposed to the provident and pension funds which accounts to just 14% of the savings that are primarily fed by the organised section of the society.

The report has observed that in India, increasing the penetration of pension products via voluntary pension schemes is the biggest hurdle in developing the pension system.

ANSWER: India

Explanation:
India and Palestine have signed five agreements during the 4 day visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to India.

This is Abbas’s fifth visit to India and the third state visit after his earlier visits in 2008 and 2012.

These 5 MoUs signed were on visa exemption for diplomatic passport holder, agriculture cooperation, cooperation in field of IT & Electronics, health sector and cooperation in the field of youth affairs and sports.

India has called for early resumption of talks between Palestine and Israel and hoped to see a sovereign, independent, united and viable Palestine, co-existing peacefully with Israel.

Palestine for its part has thanked India for supporting it in various international forums. Palestine also hopes that India can play a vital role in Middle East Peace process.

The Palestinian President also condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and called for regional and international efforts to fight the menace.

India is assisting developmental projects in Palestine.

It has been contributing to material & technical assistance and is building a techno Park in Ramallah at the cost of $12 million.

Both the countries also called for enhancing cultural exchanges between the two sides. India has sought Palestine’s participation in the International Yoga Day to be observed next month.

Indo-Palestine Relations

• India and Palestine enjoy a long standing friendship.
• In 1947, India registered its vote against he partition of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly.
• In 1974, India became the first Non-Arab State to recognize PLO as sole and legitimate representative of the people of Palestine.
• In 2012, India co-sponsored a resolution that resulted in up-gradation of the status of Palestine to a “non-member state”.
• In 2014, India voted in favour of Palestine at the UN Human Rights Council. In 2015, India supported installation of Palestinian flag at the UN Premises similar to the flags of the member states.