Current Affairs Questions

Explanation :

• Recently, the government has operationalized the first Mega Food Park (MFP) of Mizoram i.e. Zoram Mega Food Park.
• It has been set up under the ‘Mega Food Park Scheme’.
• It is located in Khamrang village in Kolasib District, Mizoram.

Benefits

• It will boost the North-East Region’s potential to become an organic destination of the world due to its rich agricultural and horticultural produce.

Explanation :

• Also known as Mithila painting due to its origins in the Mithila region of India and Nepal, Madhubani is a traditional Indian folk art made on canvas, cloth or cow dung washed hand paper.
• This painting is done with a variety of tools, including fingers, twigs, brushes, nib-pens, and matchsticks and using natural dyes and pigments.
• The paintings were traditionally done on freshly plastered mud walls and floors of huts, but now they are also done on cloth, handmade paper and canvas.
• Madhubani paintings are made from the paste of powdered rice.

Style

• Madhubani art has five distinctive styles: Bharni, Kachni, Tantrik, Godna and Kohbar. In the 1960s Bharni, Kachni and Tantrik styles were mainly done by Brahman and Kayasth women.

Color

• The colors are derived mostly from plants.

Themes

• The themes of these paintings are chiefly nature and mythological events.It revolves around Hindu deities like Krishna, Shiva, Lakshmi, Durga, Rama, and Saraswati.
• The nature-related themes revolve around the Sun, the Moon, and sacred plants such as basil. There are some paintings with themes based on court scenes and social events.
• If any unfilled space is left after painting the central theme, it is filled up with the motifs of animals, birds, flowers or geometric patterns.

Explanation :

• Plea bargaining refers to a person charged with a criminal offence negotiating with the prosecution for a lesser punishment than what is provided in law by pleading guilty to a less serious offence.
• It primarily involves pre-trial negotiations between the accused and the prosecutor. It may involve bargaining on the charge or in the quantum of sentence.
• The Justice Malimath Committee2000) on reforms of the criminal justice system endorsed the various recommendations of the Law Commission with regard to plea bargaining.
• It was introduced in 2006 as part of a set of amendments to the CrPC as Chapter XXI-A, containing Sections 265A to 265L.

Circumstances in which it is allowed

• Cases for which the practice is allowed are limited.
• Only someone who has been charge-sheeted for an offence that does not attract the death sentence, life sentence or a prison term above seven years can make use of the scheme under Chapter XXI-A.
• It is also applicable to private complaints of which a criminal court has taken cognizance.
• Other categories of cases that cannot be disposed of through plea bargaining are those that involve offences affecting the “socio-economic conditions” of the country or committed against a woman or a child below 14.

Benefits

• Prolonged incarceration of undertrials without any progress and overcrowding of prisons were also other factors that may be cited in support of reducing pendency of cases and decongesting prisons.
• Moreover, it may help offenders make a fresh start in life.

Explanation :

• Dibru-Saikhowa is a National Park as well as a Biosphere Reserve situated in the south bank of the river Brahmaputra in the extreme east of Assam.
• The forest type of Dibru-Saikhowa comprises of semi-evergreen forests, deciduous forests, littoral and swamp forests and patches of wet evergreen forests.
• A modern feral horse population (Janghalighura) is found in the National Park.
• It has herd of approximately 79 bright coloured wild horses in India.

Explanation :

• On 20th July, 2020, Chhattisgarh government launched GodhanNyayYojana.
• The scheme aims to put money in the pockets of people living in rural areas and also solve the problem of stray cattle.

Details

• Under the scheme, the Chhattisgarh government will purchase cow dung at the rate of Rs 2 per kg.
• This scheme will turn cow dung into a profitable commodity.
• The scheme also aims to make cow rearing economically profitable and to prevent open grazing in the state, as well as help with the problem of stray animals on roads and in urban areas.

Benefits

• The scheme will generate additional income and increase employment opportunities.
• The government will procure cow dung and prepare vermicompost in order to move towards organic farming.
• Distribution of vermicompost fertilizer to farmers will be done as a commodity loan by cooperative societies, banks.

Explanation :

• Founded in 2002, the Global Fund is a partnership designed to accelerate the end of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as epidemic.
• Microsoft founder Bill Gates was one of the first private foundations among many bilateral donors to provide seed money for the partnership.
• Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the Global Fund is the world's largest financier of AIDS, TB, and malaria prevention, treatment, and care programs.
• The Global Fund is a financing mechanism rather than an implementing agency.
• Programs are implemented by in-country partners such as ministries of health, while the Global Fund secretariat, whose staff only have an office in Geneva, monitor the programs.

Explanation :

• Article 72 and Article 161 empowers the President and the Governors respectively, the power to grant pardons, reprieves, respites or remissions of punishment or to suspend, remit or commute the sentence of any person convicted of any offence.
• Remission: It implies reducing the period of the sentence without changing its character. For example, a sentence of rigorous imprisonment for five years may be remitted to rigorous imprisonment for one year.
• Respite: It denotes awarding a lesser sentence in place of one originally awarded due to some special fact, such as the physical disability of a convict or the pregnancy of a woman offender.
• Reprieve: It implies a stay of the execution of a sentence (especially that of death) for a temporary period. Its purpose is to enable the convict to have time to seek pardon or commutation from the President.

Explanation :

P-waves

• These are the first waves detected by seismographs (instruments used to detect and record earthquakes).
• These are longitudinal waves which means they vibrate along the same direction as they travel.
• Examples of longitudinal waves include sound waves and waves in a stretched spring.

S-waves

• These waves arrive at the detector after primary waves.
• These are transverse waves which means they vibrate at a right angle to the direction in which they travel.
• Examples of transverse waves include light waves and water waves.

Difference

• Both types of seismic waves can be detected near the earthquake centre but only P-waves can be detected on the other side of the Earth.
• P-waves can travel through solids and liquids (since they are longitudinal waves) whereas S-waves can only travel through solids (as they are transverse waves).
• This means the liquid part of the core blocks the passage of S-waves.

Explanation :

• National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) is India’s first infrastructure specific investment fund that was set up by the Government of India in February 2015.
• The objective behind creating this fund was to maximize economic impact mainly through infrastructure investment in commercially viable projects, both Greenfield and Brownfield.

Funds

Master Fund

• The Master Fund is an infrastructure fund with the objective of primarily investing in operating assets in the core infrastructure sectors such as roads, ports, airports, power etc.

Fund of Funds

• The Fund of Funds anchor and/or invest in funds managed by fund managers who have good track records in infrastructure and associated sectors in India.
• Some of the sectors of focus include Green Infrastructure, Mid-Income & Affordable Housing, Infrastructure services and allied sectors.

Strategic Investment Fund

• Strategic Investment Fund is registered as an Alternative Investment Fund II under SEBI in India.
• The objective of National Investment and Infrastructure Fund II (“Strategic Fund”) is to invest largely in equity and equity-linked instruments.
• The Strategic Fund focuses on green field and brown field investments in the core infrastructure sectors.

Explanation :

• Tangam is an endangered Sino-Tibetan language of the Tani subgroup spoken in Arunachal Pradesh state in North-East India.
• It has been marked ‘critically endangered’ by the UNESCO World Atlas of Endangered Languages (2009).

Tangam People

• It is a little-known community within the larger Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh which resides in the hamlet of Kugging in Upper Siang district’s Paindem circle.