UPSC Quiz – 2020 : IASbaba’s Daily Current Affairs Quiz 9th Dec 2020

Solution (d)

• Mahaparinirvan Diwas is observed every year on 6th December to commemorate the death anniversary of Dr. B R Ambedkar.

Major facts with respect to Dr. B R Ambedkar

• He established a fortnightly newspaper “Mooknayak” in 1920 which laid the foundations of an assertive and organised Dalit politics.
• He founded Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha (1923), devoted to spreading education and culture amongst the downtrodden.
• He was appointed by the Bombay Presidency Committee to work in the Simon Commission in 1925.
• He led the Mahad Satyagraha in March 1927 to challenge the regressive customs of the Hindus.
• The Kalaram Temple Movement of 1930 formed a pivotal role in the Dalit movement in India in which Ambedkar led a protest outside the Kalaram temple which did not allow Dalits to enter the temple premises.
• He participated in all three round-table conferences.
• In 1932, he signed the Poona pact with Mahatma Gandhi, which abandoned the idea of separate electorates for the depressed classes (Communal Award).

Solution (c)

Theravada Buddhism

• It is strongest in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. It is sometimes called ‘Southern Buddhism’.
• The name means ‘the doctrine of the elders’ – the elders being the senior Buddhist monks.
• This school of Buddhism believes that it has remained closest to the original teachings of the Buddha. However, it does not over-emphasise the status of these teachings in a fundamentalist way – they are seen as tools to help people understand the truth, and not as having merit of their own.
• It emphasises attaining self-liberation through one’s own efforts. The follower is expected to “abstain from all kinds of evil, to accumulate all that is good and to purify their mind”.
• The ideal of Theravada Buddhism is the arhat, or perfected saint, who attains enlightenment as a result of his own efforts.
• Meditation is one of the main tools by which a Theravada Buddhist transforms themselves, and so a monk spends a great deal of time in meditation.
• The Pāli Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language. It is the most complete extant early Buddhist canon. It derives mainly from the Tamrashatiya school.

Solution (d)

• Narmada is the largest west flowing river of the peninsular region flowing through a rift valley between the Vindhya Range on the north and the Satpura Range on the south.
• It rises from Maikala range near Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh.
• It drains a large area in Madhya Pradesh besides some areas in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.
• The river near Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh) forms the DhuanDhar Falls.
• There are several islands in the estuary of the Narmada of which Aliabet is the largest.
• Major Tributaries: Hiran, Orsang, the Barna and the Kolar.
• The major Hydro Power Projects in the basin are Indira Sagar, Sardar Sarovar etc.

Solution (a)

Global Wage Report 2020

• It was published by the International Labour Organization (ILO).
• It found that the average wages in two-third countries fell or grew more slowly in the first six months of 2020 due to Covid-19 pandemic.
• In the remaining one-third countries – including Brazil, France, Italy and the US – an increase in average wages was the result of a large numbers of low-paid workers losing their jobs or leaving the labour market.
• It found that those workers in lower-skilled occupations lost more working hours than higher-paying managerial and professional jobs.
• The impact on women was worse than that on men.
• The growth in inequality created by the pandemic threatens a legacy of poverty and social and economic instability that would be devastating.
• Adequate and balanced wage policies, arrived at through inclusive social dialogue, are needed to support economic recovery.

Solution (a)

• The Feluda is a paper strip test that detects the coronavirus in an hour.
• Feluda is an acronym for FNCAS9 Editor Linked Uniform Detection.
• It is expected to help to fulfil an urgent need of the rapid testing in India.
• It is the first such indigenous test kit to be developed in India based on Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology.
  • CRISPR is a gene editing technology, which replicates natural defence mechanisms in bacteria to fight virus attacks, using a special protein called Cas9.
  • CRISPR-Cas9 technology behaves like a cut-and-paste mechanism on DNA strands that contain genetic information. The specific location of the genetic codes that need to be changed, or edited, is identified on the DNA strand, and then, using the Cas9 protein, which acts like a pair of scissors, that location is cut off from the strand.
  • A DNA strand, when broken, has a natural tendency to repair itself. Scientists intervene during this auto-repair process, supplying the desired sequence of genetic codes that binds itself with the broken DNA strand.

Comparison to the RT-PCR Test:

• Working Principle: The Feluda test uses the gene-editing tool-Crispr-Cas9 to target and identify genomic sequences of the novel coronavirus in suspected individual samples.
  • RT-PCR test (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) detects the virus genetic material, which is the Ribonucleic acid (RNA) .
• Cost: The Feluda test will cost less than Rs.500 compared to Rs. 4500 for the real-time PCR test which is currently being used for Covid-19 diagnosis in India.
• Required Medical Machinery: The Feluda test also does not rely on expensive real-time PCR machines for RNA isolation, DNA conversion, and amplification which are already in limited supply in the country.