Daily GK Update: 15th April For All The Upcoming Exams

Odd-even part 2 begins with public appeals, ‘zero’ peak time traffic

Swaraj Abhiyan to start pilot run of its electoral plunge with MCD polls

i.On the first anniversary of its formation after breaking away from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan–led Swaraj Abhiyan decided to ‘experiment’ in electoral politics, beginning with a ‘pilot project’ in one ward during the upcoming by-elections to the Delhi Municipal Corporation.

ii.“Swaraj Abhiyan is not a political party but the upcoming by-election in MCD is an occasion to create a model of how it may intervene in electoral politics in the future,” the party said , as it took its first step to being a full-fledged political party.

Odisha CM inaugurates cheap meal centres

i.Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik inaugurated opening of 100 more Aahar centres across the State as part of Government’s cheap meal programme for the poor.

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ii.Patnaik dedicated the 100 Aahar centres to the public at the Netaji Indoor Stadium in Cittack city. “Now the Aahar programme is extended to all the districts of the State.

iii.Above 60,000 people visiting urban pockets of the State will get cheap meals,” Patnaik said The CM asked the officials to ensure hygienic food and sanitation at the centres.

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IGNCA board reconstituted, Ram Bahadur Rai appointed as chairman

i.  After Nehru Memorial Society, the Modi government reconstituted the management of Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) bringing in veteran Hindi journalist Ram Bahadur Rai as its head in place of Chinmaya Gharekhan, a former diplomat.

ii.  Appointment of Rai, a former news editor of Hindi daily Jansatta, as the President of the 20-member Board of Trustees of IGNCA, was announced by the Culture Ministry.

iii.  IGNCA, considered a Congress legacy, was established in 1987 when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister as a centre for research, academic pursuit and dissemination in the field of the arts. Gharekhan was appointed during the UPA-I rule.

iii.The reconstituted trust of IGNCA, an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Culture, will be functional with immediate effect. Besides Rai, the Board comprises 19 other members including classical dancers Sonal Mansingh and Padma Subrahmaniam, lyricist Prasoon Joshi and artist Vasudeo Kamath.

Narendra Modi launches village self-governance campaign

i. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Gramodaya se Bharatodaya Abhiyan (village self-governance) campaign on the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar. The main aim of the Campaigned is to spread awareness about the various schemes that the Centre has launched keeping rural India in mind.

ii. The campaign include a ‘social harmony programme’ from 14 to 16 April under which villagers would pay tribute to Ambedkar and resolve to strengthen social harmony. Besides, ‘Village Farmer Assemblies’ would also be organised from 17-20 April to promote agriculture by providing information to farmers about various schemes of the government such as Fasal Bima Yojana and Soil Health Card scheme. 

iii. On 19 April, a national meeting focusing on Panchayat and tribal development will be held at Vijaywada, while gram sabha meetings will be held from 21-24 April across the country. PM modi said While addressing a gathering at Ambedkar’s birthplace Mhow in Madhya Pradesh. 

iv.Prime minister also announced that 18,000 villages that do not have access to power will be electrified in 1,000 days, or even earlier. He also noted that optical fibre lines were being put in place in 2.5 lakh villages to ensure digital connectivity, and that the government has resolved to double farmers’ income by 2022.

India was world’s largest remittance recipient in 2015 

i. India remained the world’s largest recipient of remittances from abroad in 2015, despite a $1 billion drop from the previous year, the first such decline since 2009. 

ii. According to world bank report India retained its top spot in 2015, attracting about $69 billion in remittances, down from $70 billion in 2014, the World Bank said in its annual report ‘Migration and Development Brief’. Other large remittance recipients in 2015 were China ($64 billion), the Philippines ($28 billion), Mexico ($25 billion) and Nigeria ($21 billion).

iii. According to the report, the growth of remittances in 2015 slowed from eight per cent in 2014 to 2.5 per cent for Bangladesh, from 16.7 per cent to 12.8 per cent for Pakistan, and from 9.6 per cent to 0.5 per cent for Sri Lanka. 

World Bank and AIIB Sign First Co-Financing Framework Agreement

i. World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank President Jin Liqun signed the first co-financing framework agreement between the two institutions.

ii. Some 1.2 billion people in the world lack access to electricity and 2.4 billion people don’t have access to basic sanitation services. The World Bank Group invested $18.8 billion in infrastructure in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2015. The institution will leverage even more private finance through new partnerships, such as the Global, Infrastructure Facility, and the growing portfolios of the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.

iii. The agreement outlines the co-financing parameters of World Bank-AIIB investment projects, and paves the way for the two institutions to jointly develop projects this year. In 2016, the AIIB expects to approve about $1.2 billion in financing, with World Bank joint projects anticipated to account for a sizeable share.  Under the agreement, the World Bank will prepare and supervise the co-financed projects in accordance with its policies and procedures in areas like procurement, environment and social safeguards.

Barack Obama appoints MasterCard CEO Banga to key administration post

i. The White House released a list of names President Barack Obama will appoint to his new Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. The panel, established this year as part of Obama’s $19 billion proposal to tighten defenses against hacking threats, seeks to tap industry experts outside the government for cybersecurity recommendations for both the public and private sectors.

ii. Among the names included are: General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency from 2005 to 2014; Uber chief security officer Joe Sullivan; MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga; and Peter Lee, corporate vice president for Microsoft Research. “I have charged the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity with the critically-important task of identifying the steps that our nation must take to ensure our cybersecurity in an increasingly digital world.

Flipkart Chief Product Officer Punit Soni Quits

i. Punit Soni, the chief product officer of Flipkart has quit his post at the startup a year after joining the company, according to three sources familiar with the development. 

ii. Soni, a former Google executive with expertise in mobile technology, was the most high-profile recruitment made by the Bengaluru-based company. He helped build products such as Ping, a chat application on the mobile app, and relaunch its mobile website, Flipkart Lite. Along with Soni, his chief of staff Niket Des.Soni’s recruitment in early 2015 was followed by other top hires, including chief technology officer Peeyush Ranjan and consumer experience head Surojit Chatterjee, both former Google executives from Silicon Valley.

iii. Last year Flipkart and its fashion unit Myntra also launched a mobile application, only strategy based, on the need to cater to a fast-growing customer segment that was transacting on their phones.

Mary Kom named AIBA ambassador for Women’s World Championship

i. Indian woman boxer M C Mary Kom added another honour to her list of accolades as she was named one of the eight ambassadors for the upcoming World Championships by the International Boxing Association (AIBA). An elated Mary Kom (51kg), who has five World Championship gold medals to her credit.

ii. The Manipuri is a tournament legend and AIBA had dubbed her ‘Magnificent Mary’ for her unprecedented gold medal count in it. The 33-year-old, who missed out on an Olympic berth in last month’s Asian Qualifiers, is currently training for the world event trials slated here on April 18 and 19.

iii. The AIBA-appointed ambassadors for the World Championship also include Nicola Adams of Great Britain, Team USA’s light flyweight Marlen Esparza, Adriana Arauja from the host country of this year’s Olympic Games Brazil, Bulgaria’s Stanimira Petrova and Morocco’s Khadija Mardi. The female officials chosen to be ambassadors are Algerian Kheira Siki Yakoub and Canada’s Jennifer Huggins.

Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma to head IAMAI’s Payments Banks Group

i. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma will chair the newly formed Payments Banks Group at industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India​ (IAMAI).

ii. Vodafone India business head (M-Pesa) Suresh Sethi will be the Vice-Chairman of the Group, At present, six out of 10 payments banks’ primary licenses are IAMAI members. IAMAI has more than 50 companies representing PPIs, wallets, aggregators, business correspondents, PoS Operators, among others as members. 

iii. The Reserve Bank of India had granted payment licences in August last year, to companies including Paytm, Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone. The business potential from serving millions of unbanked Indians to further the financial inclusion initiative of the government and the Reserve Bank had attracted most of the top business houses.

Susmita Pande appointed as chairperson of National Monument Authority

i. Union Government appointed Susmita Pande as the new chairperson of the National Monument Authority (NMA). She is professor a professor at Ujjain’s Vikram University.

ii. She would succeed Himanshu Prabha Ray, the professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University whose term ended in September 2015. The position was lying vacant for five months after his demission from office.

iii. At the time of appointment, she was the head of the School of Studies in Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology in Vikram University of Madhya Pradesh.

Delhi bans chewable tobacco for a year

i.Delhi bans chewable tobacco for a yeari. The Delhi government has banned for one year the sale, purchase and storage of all forms of chewable tobacco, including “guthka, pan masala, khaini and zarda”, in the Capital.

ii. The Department of Food Safety on Thursday issued a notification in this regard on Wednesday.According to the notification,The manufacture, storage, distribution, or sale of tobacco which is either flavoured, scented or mixed… and whether going by the name or form of guthka, pan, masala, flavoured/scented tobacco, kharra, or otherwise… whether packaged or unpackaged and/or sold as one product, or though packaged as separate products, sold or distributed in such manner so as to easily facilitate mixing by the consumer is prohibited for a period of one year.”

Water levels in 91 major reservoirs alarmingly low

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i.Water levels in major reservoirs of the country are alarmingly low, weekly data released by Central Water Commission (CWC) shows.CWC, a technical organisation under the aegis of Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, monitors live storage status of 91 major reservoirs in the country.

ii.Live storage capacity of these reservoirs is 157.799 BCM (Billion Cubic Meters), which is 62 per cent of the live storage capacity that is estimated to have been created in India.

iii. Live storage available in these reservoirs is 35.839 BCM, which is 23 per cent of the total live storage capacity of these reservoirs.The report states that current storage is 67 per cent of the storage of corresponding period of last year and 77 per cent of storage of average of last ten years

Online trading platform for farm goods launched

i. Online trading platform for farm goods launchedi. Prime Minister Narendra sowed the seeds for a farming revolution, with the launch of e-NAM, an online portal for trading in agriculture produce, which promises to liberate farmers from the clutches of middle-men and realise fair market value for their yields.

ii. “Farmers in India will now call the shots,” Modi said as he launched the National Agriculture Market portal (e-NAM). Terming it a ‘turning point’ for the country’s agriculture, Modi called upon all the States to come on board to help farmers reap the benefits of the trading platform.

iii. The e-NAM marketplace will initially enable farmers in eight States — Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Telangana, Rajasthan and Haryana — to sell 25 commodities in 21 wholesale mandis.