Daily Current Affairs Quiz – Day 88

Answer (c)

Located between Oman and Iran, the Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.

It is the world’s most important oil shipping route because of the large volumes of oil that flow through the Strait.

The Strait of Hormuz has been in the news after two separate attacks on oil tankers recently.

Answer (b)

Data localization is the act of storing data on any device that is physically present within the borders of a specific country where the data was generated. Recommendations by the RBI, the committee of experts led by Justice BN Srikrishna, the draft ecommerce policy and the draft report of the cloud policy panel show signs of data localisation.

Answer: (a)

The Leader of the Opposition is the politician who leads the official opposition in either House of the Parliament of India. To claim the status of “official opposition” in either house a party has to secure 55 seats (10%) of the seats in the Lok Sabha and likewise 25 (10%) of the seats in the Rajya Sabha. It received statutory recognition through the Salary and Allowances of Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Act, 1977 which defines the term “Leader of the Opposition” as that member of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha who, for the time being, is the Leader of that House of the Party in Opposition to the Government having the greatest numerical strength and recognised, as such, by the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha or the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. As per the Salary and Allowances of Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Act, 1977 by which the post has got official and statutory status, the majority required is decided by the heads of the houses, that is speaker and chairman as the case may be.

Answer (a)

PUNCH primary science goal is to fully discern the cross-scale physical processes – from microscale turbulence to the evolution of global-scale structures – that unify the solar corona and heliosphere.

PUNCH, which stands for “Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere,” is focused on understanding the transition of particles from the Sun’s outer corona to the solar wind that fills interplanetary space.

PUNCH will consist of a ‘constellation’ of four suitcase-sized microsats that will orbit the Earth in formation and study how the corona, which is the atmosphere of the Sun, connects with the interplanetary medium. The mission is expected to be launched in 2022.

The mission will be launched by NASA.

PUNCH mission is a landmark mission that will image regions beyond the Sun’s outer corona. Dipankar Banerjee, solar physicist from Indian Institute of Astrophysics is a Co-Investigator of the PUNCH mission.

Answer: (a)

The Chhattisgarh government is processing habitat rights for Abujh Marias, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), who live in the Abujhmarh forest in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. Abujmarh stands for the unknown hills (“Abuj” means “unknown” and “Marh” means “hill) in the Gondi language native to the region.

Keeping in view the differential vulnerability of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PTGs) among the forest dwellers, the FRA has a provision according to which the District Level Committee should play a pro-active role in ensuring that all PTGs receive habitat rights in consultation with the concerned PTGs’ traditional institutions of these groups, after filing claims before the gram sabha.

Habitat is defined under the act as, the area comprising the customary habitat and such other habitats in reserved forests and protected forests of primitive tribal groups and pre-agricultural communities and other forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes.

Tribal communities are often identified by some specific signs such as primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness to contact with the community at large and backwardness.

Along with these, some tribal groups have some specific features which qualify them as PVTGs. The criteria for determination of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) are:

• A pre-agriculture level of technology
• A stagnant or declining population
• Extremely low literacy and
• A subsistence level of economy.

In 1973, Dhebar Commission created Primitive Tribal Groups (PTGs) as a separate category, who are less developed among the tribal groups. In 2006, the Government renamed the PTGs as PVTGs.

PVTGs have some basic characteristics -they are mostly homogenous, with a small population, relatively physically isolated, social institutes cast in a simple mould, absence of written language, relatively simple technology & a slower rate of change etc.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs implements the Scheme of Development of PVTGs exclusively for them. Under the scheme, Conservation-cum-Development (CCD)/Annual Plans are to be prepared by each State/UT for their PVTGs based on their need assessment, which are then appraised and approved by the Project Appraisal Committee of the Ministry.

Among the 75 listed PVTG’s the highest number are found in Odisha (13), followed by Andhra Pradesh (12), Bihar including Jharkhand (9) Madhya Pradesh including Chhattisgarh (7) Tamil Nadu (6) Kerala and Gujarat having five groups each.