UPSC Quiz – 2021 : IASbaba’s Daily Current Affairs Quiz 30th JULY 2021

Solution (b)

The ancient city of Dholavira, the southern centre of the Harappan Civilization, is sited on the arid island of Khadir in the State of Gujarat.

Features of Dholavira:

• It is one of the best preserved urban settlements from the period in Southeast Asia, comprises a fortified city and a cemetery.
• Two seasonal streams provided water, a scarce resource in the region, to the walled city which comprises a heavily fortified castle and ceremonial ground as well as streets and houses of different proportion quality which testify to a stratified social order.
• A sophisticated water management system demonstrates the ingenuity of the Dholavira people in their struggle to survive and thrive in a harsh environment.
• The site includes a large cemetery with cenotaphs of six types testifying to the Harappan’s unique view of death. 
• Bead processing workshops and artifacts of various kinds such as copper, shell, stone, jewellery of semi-precious stones, terracotta, gold, ivory and other materials have been found during archaeological excavations of the site, exhibiting the culture’s artistic and technological achievements. 
• Evidence for inter-regional trade with other Harappan cities, as well as with cities in the Mesopotamia region and the Oman peninsula has also been discovered.

Harappan Site of Kalibangan is distinguished by its unique fire altars and “world’s earliest attested ploughed field”. It is around 2900 BC that the region of Kalibangan developed into what can be considered a planned city.

Article Link: What UNESCO heritage site Dholavira tells us about the Indus Valley Civilisation

Solution (b)

Ramappa Temple is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the state of Telangana.

An inscription in the temple dates it to the year 1213 CE and says it was built by a Kakatiya General Recharla Rudra, during the period of the Kakatiya ruler Ganapati Deva.

The temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva and worshiped by devotees. The presiding deity is Ramalingeswara Swamy.

Marco Polo, during his visit to the Kakatiya Empire, allegedly called the temple “the brightest star in the galaxy of temples”.

The main structure is in reddish sandstone, but the columns round the outside have large brackets of black basalt which is rich in iron, magnesium and silica.

These are carved as mythical animals or female dancers or musicians, and are “the masterpieces of Kakatiya art, notable for their delicate carving, sensuous postures and elongated bodies and heads”.

Article Link: How Ramappa temple in Telangana made it to UNESCO’s World Heritage List

Solution (d)

The Government has taken a number of steps to facilitate digital banking, doorstep banking services and digital lending platforms. These include:

• Initiation of digital lending has been made contactless through PSBloansin59 minutes.com, using triangulation of credit bureau, income-tax and goods and services tax (GST) data, to provide online in principle approval for MSME loans.
• Online bill discounting for MSMES has been enabled on a competitive basis through Public Sector Banks (PSBs) onboarding onto the Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS) platform and the proportion of online discounted bills has grown rapidly.

(Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS) is the institutional mechanism for facilitating the financing of trade receivables of MSMEs from corporate and other buyers, including Government Departments and Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), through multiple financiers.)

• Government’s Jeevan Pramaan’ initiative for pensioners has enabled senior citizen pensioners the facility to update their annual life certificate online.
• End-to-end automated digital lending has been introduced in larger PSBs for unsecured personal loans (in five PSBs), loans to micro-enterprises (“Shishu Mudra”, in five PSBs) and renewals of loans to micro, small and medium enterprises (in three PSBs).

Article Link: Measures taken to facilitate digital banking

Solution (c)

World Economic Outlook is the flagship report of International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In a recently released report, IMF has sharply scaled down India’s economic growth projection by 300 basis points to 9.5 per cent for the current financial year from 12.5 per cent estimated earlier in April.

According to the report in countries with high vaccination coverage, such as the United Kingdom and Canada, the economic impact would be mild; meanwhile countries lagging in vaccination, such as India and Indonesia, would suffer the most among G20 economies.

The growth prospects for emerging market and developing economies have been marked down for 2021, especially for emerging Asia. By contrast, the forecast for advanced economies has been revised upwards.

IMF has kept the global economy projection of 6.0 percent unchanged in 2021. It has also projected global economy to grow by 4.9 per cent in 2022, up from the previous forecast of 4.4 per cent. The world output contracted 3.3 per cent in 2020.

Article Link: IMF slashes India’s economic growth forecast for FY22 to 9.5%

Solution (a)

Ganymede is one of the moons of Jupiter. It is the largest moon in our solar system and the only moon with its own magnetic field.

The magnetic field causes auroras, which are ribbons of glowing, electrified gas, in regions circling the moon’s north and south poles. When Jupiter’s magnetic field changes, the aurora on Ganymede also change, “rocking” back and forth.

Recently, Hubble Space Telescope found the first evidence of water vapour in the atmosphere of Ganymede.

This new evidence for a water atmosphere on Ganymede is crucial in our search for extraterrestrial life and habitable worlds.

Article Link: Hubble finds evidence of water vapour on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede