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Daily Current Affairs | 3rd June 2020
90 years of Deccan Queen: Pune-Mumbai travel time may reduce
The historic Deccan Queen train between Mumbai and Pune completed 90 years on June 1. This train holds many a record, including that of being India’s first superfast train, first long-distance electric-hauled train, first vestibuled train, the first train to have a ‘women-only’ car, and the first train to feature a dining car.
Deccan Queen
- The Deccan Queen was introduced between Mumbai and Pune on June 1, 1930 by the Great Indian Peninsula Railway (GIPR), the forerunner of the Central Railway.
- This was the first deluxe train introduced to serve the two important cities of the region, and was named after Pune – also known as the “Queen of Deccan’’ (“Dakkhan ki Rani’’ in Hindi).
- The Deccan Queen in its starting years operated only over the weekends, and became a daily train between the two cities in the 1940s.
- It is among the rare Indian trains that has never been hauled using steam traction, and was always electric-powered; on rare instances running on diesel. The train became popular as a faster alternative to the Poona Mail, which required 6 hours to complete the Mumbai-Pune journey.
- The GIPR in the 1940s would run Race Special trains for Mumbai’s horse racing enthusiasts who would come to Pune on weekends and race days.
- In March this year, the Central Railway decided to give the train a makeover by upgrading its coaches to German-made LHB coaches, which have better safety features, better suspension system and better riding comfort.
- CII is a non-government, not-for-profit, industry-led and industry-managed organisation.
- Founded in 1895, it has over 9,000 members, from the private as well as public sectors, including SMEs and MNCs, and an indirect membership of over 300,000 enterprises from around 265 national and regional sectoral industry bodies.
- CII works with the Government on policy issues. It played a very important role during economic liberalisation in 1991 which knocked down the high walls of protection between Indian industry and the rest of the world.
- CII serves as a reference point for Indian industry and the international business community.
- It has 65 offices, including 9 Centres of Excellence, in India, and 11 overseas offices in Australia, Bahrain, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Iran, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States.
- Cyclones formed in the Bay of Bengal side of the north Indian Ocean are more frequent and stronger than those on the Arabian Sea side. Meteorologists suggest the relatively cold waters of the Arabian Sea discourage the kind of very strong cyclones that are formed on the Bay of Bengal side; Odisha and Andhra Pradesh face the brunt of these cyclones every year.
- 2019 was slightly unusual as the Arabian Sea saw the most frequent and intense cyclonic activity in more than 100 years, according to India Meteorological Department. Five cyclones originated in the area in 2019 — Vayu, Hikka, Kyarr, Maha and Pavan – when normally only one or two are formed.
- It is an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India.
- It is an initiative of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.
- It has been incorporated as a “Not for Profit” Company under the provisions of Section 25 of Companies Act 1956 (now Section 8 of Companies Act 2013).
- The ten core promoter banks are State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank and HSBC.
- In 2016 the shareholding was broad-based to 56 member banks to include more banks representing all sectors.
- Launched in April 2016, UPI is a payment system that allows money transfer between any two bank accounts by using a smartphone.
- UPI allows a customer to pay directly from a bank account to different merchants, both online and offline, without the hassle of typing credit card details, IFSC code, or net banking/wallet passwords.
- It also caters to the “Peer to Peer” collect request which can be scheduled and paid as per requirement and convenience.
- Founded in the year 1958, NPC is an autonomous organisation of Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).
- The organisation has been rendering expert services in the areas of Consultancy and Capacity Building in the domains of Energy, Environment, Business process and Productivity improvement.
- NPC is a constituent of the Tokyo-based Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an Intergovernmental Body, of which the Government of India is a founder member.
- Weak implementation of economic reforms since 2017.
- Relatively low economic growth over a sustained period.
- A significant deterioration in the fiscal position of governments (central and state).
- And the rising stress in India’s financial sector.
- The negative outlook reflects dominant, mutually-reinforcing, downside risks from deeper stresses in the economy and financial system that could lead to a more severe and prolonged erosion in fiscal strength than Moody’s currently projects.
- In particular, Moody’s has highlighted persistent structural challenges to fast economic growth such as “weak infrastructure, rigidities in labor, land and product markets, and rising financial sector risks”.
- In other words, a “negative” implies India could be rated down further.
- A rating downgrade means that bonds issued by the Indian governments are now “riskier” than before, because weaker economic growth and worsening fiscal health undermine a government’s ability to pay back.
- Lower risk is better because it allows governments and companies of that country to raise debts at a lower rate of interest.
- When India’s sovereign rating is downgraded, it becomes costlier for the Indian government as well as all Indian companies to raise funds because now the world sees such debt as a riskier proposition.
- However, it will make it attractive for investors to invest in India’s sovereign debt instruments as the Government of India will be willing to pay more interest to raise debt.
- Mass extinction refers to a substantial increase in the degree of extinction or when the Earth loses more than three-quarters of its species in a geologically short period of time. So far, during the entire history of the Earth, there have been five mass extinctions.
- The sixth, which is ongoing, is referred to as the Anthropocene extinction. The five mass extinctions that took place in the last 450 million years have led to the destruction of 70-95 per cent of the species of plants, animals and microorganisms that existed earlier.
- These extinctions were caused by “catastrophic alterations” to the environment, such as massive volcanic eruptions, depletion of oceanic oxygen or collision with an asteroid.
- After each of these extinctions, it took millions of years to regain species comparable to those that existed before the event.
- The research claims that this extinction is human-caused and is more immediate than climate destruction.
- The study says that even though only an estimated 2% of all of the species that ever lived are alive today, the absolute number of species is greater now than ever before. It was into such a biologically diverse world that we humans evolved, and such a world that we are destroying.
- Researchers have described it as the “most serious environmental problem” since the loss of species will be permanent.
- The study analysed 29,400 species of terrestrial vertebrates and determined which of these are on the brink of extinction because they have fewer than 1,000 individuals.
- Out of the studied species, they concluded that over 515 of them are near extinction, and that the current loss of species, which is based on the disappearance of their component populations, has been occurring since the 1800s.
- Most of these 515 species are from South America (30 per cent), followed by Oceania (21 per cent), Asia (21 percent) and Africa (16 percent) among others.
- Ordovician-silurian Extinction: 440 million years ago.
- Devonian Extinction: 365 million years ago.
- Permian-triassic Extinction: 250 million years ago.
- Triassic-jurassic Extinction: 210 million years ago.
- Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction: 65 Million Years Ago.
POSTED ON 03-06-2020 BY ADMIN
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