Search Previous Year Questions

The correct answer is Education Ministry 

Key PointsYUVA 2.0 scheme.

• The second edition of the Young, Upcoming and Versatile Authors (YUVA) scheme was launched by the Union Ministry of Education as part of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav or India @75 project.
• The scheme is a mentoring programme for young and budding authors below the age of 30.
• Its objective is to promote the culture of reading and writing across India and showcase Indian writing at the international level.
• It aims to bring the perspective of the Indian youth on the theme “Democracy (institutions, events, people, constitutional values past, present and future)”.
• It will benefit budding authors capable of writing on a wide-range of subjects focused on the promotion of Indian culture, heritage and knowledge across the globe.
• The launch of the latest edition of YUVA scheme comes after the first edition witnessed a huge participation from young authors in 22 different regional languages as well as in English.
• The theme for the inaugural edition was ‘National Movement of India’, with the focus on “Unsung Heroes”, “Role of Unknown Places in Freedom Movement” and other subjects.

The correct answer is 576.

Key Points

Mother Tongue Survey of India

• The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has completed the Mother Tongue Survey of India (MTSI) with field videography of the country’s 576 languages.
• According to the annual report of the home ministry for 2021-22, it has been planned to set up a web archive at the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to preserve and analyze the original flavor of each indigenous mother tongue.
• The home ministry said the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is a regular research activity in the country since the 6^th Five Year Plan.

About The Mother Tongue Survey :

• The Mother Tongue Survey of India (MTSI) project is implemented by the Central Government to conduct surveys of mother tongues that are returned consistently across 2 or more Census decades. It also records the linguistic features of select languages.
• According to the 2011 linguistic census data released in 2018, more than 19,500 languages or dialects are spoken as mother tongues in India. These were grouped into 121 mother tongues after the census data underwent linguistic scrutiny, editing, and rationalization. “Mother tongue” is a designation provided by the survey’s respondent. It need not be identical to the actual linguistic medium.
• 43.6 percent of the population (52.8 crore people) declared Hindi to be their mother tongue, making it the most widely spoken mother tongue in India. The second-highest-spoken mother tongue is Bengali. 9.7 crore people or 8 percent of the population speak the language.... Read more at: https://currentaffairs.adda247.com/mother-tongue-survey-of-india-is-ready/

The correct answer is Kirit Parikh Committee.

Key Points

Kirit Parikh Committee:

• The Kirit Parikh panel recently submitted a report on gas pricing, recommending complete pricing freedom from January 1, 2026. Hence, option 3 is correct.
• The committee recommended that India should have completely free and market-determined pricing of natural gas extracted from legacy fields, which account for over 70 per cent of the total natural gas produced in India.
• The panel recommended linking the price of gas produced from legacy fields to imported crude oil prices rather than benchmarking them to gas rates in global markets. The arrived rates will be subject to a floor and ceiling.
• A fixed band of pricing will create predictable pricing for producers and moderate pricing of CNG and piped cooking gas.
• It recommended market-determined pricing for gas produced from legacy fields by January 1, 2027.
• The panel recommended including natural gas in the GST regime by subsuming excise duty charged by the Centre and the VAT levied by the states.
• To address states’ concerns of revenue loss, the panel recommended setting up a mechanism similar to the 5-year compensation cess regime that buffered the loss incurred by the states while giving up their right to levy VAT and other taxes on goods and services.
• The panel also recommended moderation in the excise duty rate.

Additional Information

The correct answer is option 5.

Key Points

Swachh Survekshan, 2022:

• Swachh Survekshan has been conducted since 2016 and is the world’s largest urban sanitation and cleanliness survey.
• It has been instrumental in fostering a spirit of healthy competition among towns and cities to improve their service delivery to citizens and towards creating cleaner cities.
• It is conducted under the ambit of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban).

Swachh Survekshan Awards 2022:

• More than 1 lakh Population: Indore, the city of lakes and palaces, walked away with the Cleanest City title, while Surat was adjudged the second cleanest city, for the second time in a row, Navi Mumbai bagged the third spot.
• Less than 1 lakh Population: Panchgani and Karad from Maharashtra bagged the first and third positions respectively, while Patan from Chhattisgarh bagged the second position.
• Best Ganga Town: Haridwar in Uttarakhand received the award for the best Ganga town in more than one lakh population cities.
• Fast Mover City Award: Shivamogga in Karnataka.
• The title of 5-star Garbage Free city was conferred to
• Surat,
• Bhopal,
• Mysuru,
• Vishakhapatnam,
• Navi Mumbai and
• Tirupati. Hence, option 5 is correct.

The correct answer is Itanagar 

Key PointsDonyi Polo Airport

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the first Greenfield airport at the Donyi Polo Airport at Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh.

Donyi Polo Airport

• With Donyi Polo Airport, all eight northeastern state capitals will now have airports. This will be the third operational airport in Arunachal Pradesh.
• The name of the airport reflects the traditions and rich cultural heritage of Arunachal Pradesh and its age-old indigenous reverence for the Sun (Donyi) and Moon (Polo).
• This is the seventh airport to have been built in the Northeast in the last eight years. This rapid development of airports in the region is in keeping with the government's emphasis on increasing connectivity.
• This is also the first greenfield project in northeast India.

The correct answer is Himalayan yak.

Key Points

• The Himalayan yak has been accepted as a food animal by the scientific panel of the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI), after a recommendation from the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (DAHD).
• After this, it will be finally notified in the gazette after approval of the competent authority.
• The categorisation is expected to help check the decline in the population of the high-altitude bovine animal by making it a part of the conventional milk and meat industry.
• The yak plays a multidimensional socio-cultural-economic role for the pastoral nomads who rear it mainly for earning their nutritional and livelihood security due to the lack of other agricultural activity in the higher reaches of the Himalayan region where it is difficult for animals except the yak to survive.
• Yaks are traditionally reared under a transhumance system which is primitive, unorganised and full of hardship.
• But the yak population in the country has been decreasing at an alarming rate.
• According to a census carried out in 2019, India has some 58,000 yaks – a drop of about 25% from the last livestock census conducted in 2012.
• Apart from the government and the local users, the drastic drop in the yak’s number has become a major cause of concern for animal genetic diversity conservationists.

The correct answer is Srinagar.

Key Points

• India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) conducted India’s First Floating Financial Literacy Camp with an initiative called ‘Niveshak Didi’ to promote Financial Literacy ‘By the women, for the women’, in Srinagar, J&K.

Niveshak Didi Initiative

• It is based on the ideology of women for women, in rural areas, women feel more comfortable sharing their queries with a female herself.
• It is launched by IPPB, in collaboration with the Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA) under the aegis of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA).
• The session covered topics ranging from banking and financial products, the importance of joining the mainstream financial services offered by regulated entities & protection against various types of risks involved with investments, and measures of fraud prevention.

Additional InformationIndia Post Payments Bank (IPPB)

• It has been established under the Department of Posts, Ministry of Communication with 100% equity owned by the Government of India.
• The bank has been set up with the vision to build the most accessible, affordable, and trusted bank for the common man in India.
• The fundamental mandate of IPPB is to remove barriers for the unbanked and under-banked and reach the last mile by leveraging a network comprising 160,000 post offices (145,000 in rural areas) and 400,000 postal employees.

The correct answer is Guwahati.

Key Points

Param-Kamrupa 

• President Draupadi Murmu along with many government schemes and welfare projects launched India’s latest supercomputer Param-Kamrupa.
• Param-Kamrupa was set up at IIT Guwahati under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) a joint initiative of the Ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST). There were 15 such supercomputers that were deployed across the country.
• The supercomputer’s software, design, and all parts were built in the country making it a successful project of ‘make in India’ indigenous technology.
• It will be of great benefit to IIT Guwahati to carry out research activities in various scientific domains including forecasting weather and climate, bioinformatics, computational chemistry, molecular dynamics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and especially data science, etc

The supercomputing facility has been equipped with advanced facilities to cater to the computing needs of various scientific and engineering applications.

• Param-Kamrupa has 838 teraflops. A teraflop is a measure of a computer’s speed and can be expressed as a trillion floating point operations per second. An average gaming PC has a processing power of around 3-4 teraflops.

The correct answer is Sukhna Lake, Chandigarh.

Key Points

• The 90^th anniversary of the Indian Air Force (IAF) was celebrated on October 8, 2022.
• It is being organized in Chandigarh, with an hour-long air display of 80 aircraft over the Sukhna Lake.
• During the event, a new combat uniform was unveiled and the creation of a new operational branch of the IAF called the Weapon System Branch was announced.
• The day commemorates the official induction of the IAF as the supporting force of the UK’s Royal Air Force in 1932.
• The event involves the participation of the Indian Air Force Chief and other senior officers.
• The focus of this year’s celebration is “Atmanirbharata” or indigenization. Several Made-in-India platforms will be showcased during the event.
• The recently inducted Prachand Light Combat Helicopters, light combat aircraft Tejas and radars like Arudhra and Aslesha were featured in this event.
• The event will also include the demonstration of high-speed dismantling and reassembly by the mechanical transport team and the performance of air warrior drill team.

The correct answer is September 

Key Points

Rashtriya Poshan Maah or National Nutrition Month 

• The month of September every year is celebrated as the Rashtriya Poshan Maah or the National Nutrition Month across the country. The Ministry of Rural Development (M/oRD) is leveraging this occasion to intensively disseminate key messages to all intended beneficiaries on positive nutritional behaviours and practices.
• The activities during the month will be centred on key themes like Mahila and Swasthya, Bachcha and Shiksha – Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi, gender-sensitive water conservation and management, and traditional food for women and children in tribal areas.
• Poshan Abhiyaan aims to improve the nutritional status of women, pregnant and lactating mothers, children and adolescents, etc., and people’s participation (Jan Andolan) and community mobilization are essential components of this endeavour

Additional Information

• National Nutrition Week is observed every year from September 1-7 to raise awareness regarding proper eating habits and Nutrition.
• Aim: to educate people on the importance of nutrition, a healthy lifestyle & a balanced diet.
• The Indian govt first introduced this week-long campaign in 1982.
• As per the Global Hunger Index Report 2021, India ranks 101 among 116 countries.
• World Water Week is an annual conference held in the last week of August every year.
• In 2022, the event was held from August 23 to September 1.
• It aims to draw the attention of the world to the water crisis and the sustainable use of water.
• It is organised by the Stockholm International Water Institute.
• It was first held in 1991.
• 2022 theme: 'Seeing the Unseen: The Value of Water'.