Solution: c
● A bilateral investment treaty (BIT) is an agreement establishing the terms and conditions for private investment by nationals and companies of one state in another state. This type of investment is called foreign direct investment (FDI).
● BITs are established through trade pacts. The distinctive feature of many BITs is that they allow for an alternative dispute resolution mechanism, whereby an investor whose rights under the BIT have been violated could have recourse to international arbitration, often under the auspices of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), rather than suing the host State in its own courts. This process is called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS).
● The world’s first BIT was signed on November 25, 1959 between Pakistan and Germany.
● There are currently more than 2500 BITs in force, involving most countries in the world. NGOs have spoken against the use of BITs, stating that they are essentially designed to protect foreign investors and do not take into account obligations and standards to protect the environment, labour rights, social provisions or natural resources.

Solution: d
● States, per the Goods and Services (Compensation to States) Act, 2017, are guaranteed to get compensation for the loss on account of the introduction of the GST for five years from the date of implementation — that is, July 2017 to July 2022, using a cess levied on sin and luxury goods.
● If the Union Government falls short in the collection of compensation cess, it cannot tap the funds from the Consolidated Fund of India

Solution: c
● Eight Core Industries are Electricity, steel, refinery products, crude oil, coal, cement, natural gas and fertilizers
● These comprise 40.27% of the weight of items included in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP).
● The eight core sector industries in decreasing order of their weightage: Refinery Products> Electricity> Steel> Coal> Crude Oil> Natural Gas> Cement> Fertilizers.

Solution: d
• The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded with one half jointly to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and the other half to Giorgio Parisi. This is the first-time climate scientists (Manabe and Hasselmann) have been awarded the Physics Nobel.
• The IPCC had won the Peace Nobel in 2007, an acknowledgement of its efforts in creating awareness for the fight against climate change,
• The following Indians (or individuals of Indian origin) have been honored with the Nobel: o Rabindranath Tagore (Literature, 1913), C V Raman (Physics, 1930), Hargobind Khorana (Medicine, 1968), Mother Teresa (Peace, 1979), Subramanian Chandrashekhar (Physics, 1983), the Dalai Lama (Peace, 1989), Amartya Sen (Economics, 1998), Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Chemistry, 2009), and Kailash Satyarthi (Peace, 2014), Abhijit Banerjee (Economics, 2019).

Solution: c
● The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has released proposed revisions to the Forest Conservation Act of 1980, facilitating forest diversion and exempting some types of development from the need for Ministry approval.
● It has only been changed once before, in 1988.
● According to ministry officials, the present definition of forest has enslaved land across the country, preventing even private landowners from using their land for non-forestry activities. Any diversion of forest property for any purpose, including lease assignment, requires prior clearance from the Centre under the Act.
● The Supreme Court enlarged the definition and extent of forest land in T N Godavarman Thirumulpad v Union of India in 1996, finding that forest land includes any places listed as forest in any official record, regardless of ownership, recognition, or categorization.
● Previously, the Act only applied to national parks and reserve forests.
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