GK & Current Affairs Quiz: June 28, 2017

Notes:
Former India hockey captain Dhanraj Pillay will be conferred with the East Bengal football club’s highest honour “Bharat Gaurav” on their foundation day. The ceremony will be held on August 1, 2017. Pillay has played a huge role in reviving the Indian team and performed brilliantly during his 15-year career, representing the country in four Olympics, World Cups, Champions Trophy and Asian Games. He played total 339 matches for India, scoring 170 goals. He led India to Asian Games glory in 1998 and also won the Asia Cup in 2003. Pillay also received the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award for his remarkable performance in 1999-2000 and was later awarded the Padma Shri and civilian award in 2000.

Notes:
India has been ranked 93rd out of 128 countries in the 2017 Social Progress Index (SPI). The list is topped by Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The SPI is an aggregate index of social and environmental indicators that capture three dimensions of social progress: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunity. The 2017 SPI includes data from 128 countries on 50 indicators. The index is published by the nonprofit Social Progress Imperative, and is based on the writings of Amartya Sen, Douglass North, and Joseph Stiglitz.

Notes:
The International Trade Centre (ITC) has celebrated the first-ever International MSME Day on June 27, 2017 with theme ‘Small business – big impact’. The purpose of the day is to raise public awareness about the importance of MSMEs to economic growth and international development. The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Day highlights the strong contribution of MSMEs worldwide to livelihoods, communities and economies and the need to support MSMEs towards their success. The ITC is the joint agency of the UN and the WTO supporting SMEs in developing countries and transition economies for sustainable and inclusive trade.

Notes:
The Uttar Pradesh Government has signed an agreement with Asian Development Bank (ADB) for a loan of Rs 1950 crore for strengthening of roads in different district. As per the agreement, 70% finances amounting to Rs 1,950 crore will be provided by the ADB as loan, while the state government will bear 30% cost of the project which comes to Rs 832 crore. The project, which will start from 2017 and end in 2024, will cover over 430 km roads in 12 districts.

Notes:
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has constituted a special 7-member committee to study contentious issues in implementing Lodha panel reforms which are being opposed by the state units. The committee’s mandate is to identify the few critical points in respect of the said judgement for the General Body of the BCCI to consider before its submission to the Hon’ble Supreme Court. The other members of the committee include former India captain Sourav Ganguly, T.C. Mathew (Kerala Cricket), Naba Bhattacharjee (North East representative), Jay Shah (Gujarat Cricket Association), BCCI Treasurer Anirudh Chaudhary and BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary. The four contentious Lodha panel recommendations that are delaying the implementation process are one-state, one vote, age cap of 70 for office-bearers, cooling-off period for office-bearers and size of the national selection panel.

Notes:
Kaushik Basu, an Indian economist, has taken over as new President of the International Economic Association (IEA) on June 23, 2017 and will serve the post for 3-years. The IEA is a leading organization founded in 1950 for professional economists that seeks to shape global economic policy and research. He has also served as senior vice-president and chief economist at the World Bank from 2012 to 2016 and as the chief economic adviser to the government of India from 2009 to 2012. Currently, Basu is the C. Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University.

Notes:
O N Dhar (89), the veteran figure and former bureaucrat, has passed away in New Delhi. During the Quit Kashmir movement, he was detained for 13 months following the arrest of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah in 1946-47. Dhar had worked with Sheikh Abdullah, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed and Mir Sadiq when they were prime ministers of Jammu and Kashmir till 1965. Till 1967, the elected head of government in Jammu and Kashmir was called prime minister before the nomenclature was changed to chief minister. Dhar had also held key secretarial-level posts in the state subsequently.

Notes:
Sharjah, the city of United Arab Emirates (UAE), has been designated as the UNESCO World Book Capital 2019 by Irina Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO, at the Headquarters of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) at La Haye. The honour is in recognition of the Emirate’s pioneering role in supporting and expanding the local and regional publishing industries, promoting reading to become an intrinsic cultural practice, as well as embracing inter-cultural, knowledge-based dialogue. Sharjah was the first emirate in UAE to establish a formal school and a library. It was also the first emirate to house many cultural institutions like the Emirates Publishers Association and the Emirates’ writers Union. Sharjah is the 19th city to become World Book Capital. It is preceded by Conakry in 2017 and Athens in 2018.

Notes:
The Maharashtra government has constituted an 11-member committee to scrutinize and recommend names from Maharashtra for the Padma Awards 2018 to the Government of India (GoI). The committee will be headed by Ram Shinde, the Minister for Water Conservation. The Padma awards seek to recognise work of distinction and exceptional achievements in different fields and disciplines such as art, literature and education, sports, medicine, social work, science and engineering, public affairs, civil service, trade and industry.

Notes:
The Dudhwa National Park is located in the Terai of Uttar Pradesh and covers an area of 490.3 km2, with a buffer zone of 190 km2 (73 sq mi). It is home to swamp deer, sambar deer, barking deer, spotted deer, hog deer, tiger, Indian rhinoceros, sloth bear, ratel, jackal, civets, jungle cat, fishing cat, etc. The park is home to one of the finest forests in India, some of these trees are more than 150 years old and over 70 ft tall.