Daily Mains Newsletter for UPSC 22 Jun 2022

Daily Mains Newsletter For
UPSC | RaghukulCS

22 June 2022 -Wednesday

Index

Table of Contents

8th International Yoga Day

Why in the news?

The eighth International Day of Yoga (June 21, 2022) is being observed around the world.

‘Yoga for Humanity’ is the theme for 2022.

What is the historical context and significance?

Background:
  • India proposed the International Day of Yoga (IDY) during the start of the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2014.
  • In December 2014, the UN passed a resolution designating June 21st as International Day of Yoga.
  • The first Yoga Day festivities in New Delhi in 2015 set two Guinness World Records.
  • With 35,985 participants, it was the world’s largest yoga session.
  • It was attended by 84 different nations.
  • The Importance of Yoga: Yoga is an ancient physical, mental, and spiritual discipline that originated in India.
  • Yoga is originated from Sanskrit and means “to connect or merge,” symbolising the integration of body and consciousness.
  • It is now performed in various forms all around the world and is growing in popularity.
  • Yoga is used to help Covid-19 patients in quarantine and isolation with their psychosocial treatment and recovery.
  • The World Health Organization (WHO) has also encouraged its member countries to practise Yoga and has included it in its 2018-30 Global Action Plan for Physical Activity.

What is the Day’s Importance?

  • International Yoga Day is celebrated to raise awareness about yoga and its holistic approach to physical and mental well-being.
  • The International Day of Yoga seeks to instil the practise of meditation in order to achieve the serenity of mind and self-awareness required to thrive in a stress-free environment.

What are the Initiatives Involved?

  • The Prime Minister unveiled the M-Yoga App, which would aid in the achievement of ‘One World, One Health.’
  • The app is a partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Government of India’s Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy (Ministry of AYUSH).
New International Day of Yoga (IDY) website:
  • This website contains all current and important information on International Day of Yoga.
  • It has a social wall where all of the social media interactive platforms are available for visitors to keep track of and engage in the debates.
  • The portal also includes links to significant websites such as Swachh Bharat, Make in India, and others.
Yoga is recognised as a sports discipline:
  • In September 2015, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports recognised Yoga as a sports discipline and placed it in the ‘Priority’ category after evaluating the categorization of various sports disciplines.
  • The Ministry of AYUSH has listed Yama, Niyama, Asana, and other prominent yoga’sadhanas’ in its ‘Common Yoga Protocol.’
  • Yoga Vocational Education Courses: The Beauty & Wellness Sector Skill Council (B&WSSC) offers Yoga vocational education courses for CBSE schools.
  • B&WSSC is a non-profit organisation founded under the auspices of the National Skill Development Corporation, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.
  • Thousands of individuals have been trained as yoga instructors and trainers through various skilling schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY).
  • PMKVY is the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship’s flagship scheme.
  • Yoga is also a component of the Fit India Movement.
  • Fit India Movement is a national initiative that encourages individuals to incorporate physical activity and sports into their daily lives.

National Initiative to Promote Nirman Employee Upskilling (NIPUN)

Why in the news?

  • NIPUN, or the National Initiative for Promoting Upskilling of Nirman Employees, was recently created as an innovative concept for skill training of construction workers.
  • NIPUN is training future construction workers, which will drive innovation and large-scale development in the country.
  • Construction is on course to become the largest employer by 2022, and it will need 45 million more qualified workers over the next ten years.

What exactly is Project NIPUN?

About:
  • The project’s main goal is to train over 1 lakh construction employees through new skilling and upskilling programmes.
  • The NIPUN project is a Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs initiative (MoHUA).
  • This project is part of the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission’s flagship programme (DAY-NULM)
  • The transformational impact of the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) has reduced the vulnerability of urban poor households by providing urban people, particularly youth, with upskilling and employment possibilities.
  • National Skill Development Corporation is in charge of implementation (NSDC).
  • The NSDC is the nodal agency for the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE).
  • NSDC will be in charge of overseeing training, monitoring, and candidate tracking.

How will the NIPUN Project be carried out?

The project is being implemented in three stages:
  • Construction sites provide training through Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL).
  • RPL certification, co-branded with MoHUA, will deliver on-site skill training to about 80,000 construction workers through industry groups.
  • Plumbing and Infrastructure Sector Skill Council provides training through Fresh Skilling (SSC).
  • Approximately 14,000 individuals will obtain new skills through the plumbing and infrastructure Sector Skill Council (SSC) in trades with high placement potential.
  • International placement via industries/builders/contractors
  • The courses follow the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF).
  • It will only be taught at certified and linked training facilities.
  • It is also planned for NSDC to place roughly 12,000 employees in overseas nations such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other GCC countries.

What are the advantages of Project NIPUN?

  • Access to New Possibilities: Through the NIPUN Project, construction employees will be able to seek better career opportunities, raise their earnings, and even pursue abroad placements.
  • Entrepreneurial spirit: It has been developed and maintained by providing urban workers with self-employment and skilled wage employment options.
  • This project will help Nirman employees become more proficient and skilled.
  • Skill Advancement: Nirman employees can acquire advanced talents while keeping future construction industry trends in mind by updating their capabilities and diversifying their skill sets.
  • The Ministry also took on technological obstacles, which resulted in the completion of six Light House Projects in record time, in which technology and local materials were employed to produce sustainable green structures.
  • Economic Growth: 
  • Because the construction industry contributes significantly to the nation’s GDP, this programme will catalyse GDP growth.
  • Social Security:
  • It would offer trainees ‘Kaushal Bima,’ a three-year accidental insurance policy with a coverage of INR 2 lakhs, as well as digital capabilities such as cashless transactions and EPF and BOCW services.\

Note

Bharat Mission of NIPUN
  • The Ministry of Education has created the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat) to ensure that by the end of Grade 3, every child in the country has achieved foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN).
  • It was introduced in 2021 as part of the 2020 National Education Policy (NEP).

What are our current understandings of DAY-NRLM?

  • DAY-NULM is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme that has been in place since 2014-15.
  • Its goal is to eliminate poverty and vulnerability among urban poor households in the country by providing them with options for self-employment and skilled wage jobs.
  • In 2011, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) of the Government of India announced the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM).
Aim: 

The Mission aspires to create efficient and effective rural poor institutional platforms that will enable them to boost household income through sustainable livelihood and improved access to financial services.

  • DAY-NRLM focuses specifically on the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable populations, as well as their financial inclusion.
  • Under the NRETP, innovative projects will be launched to explore alternate pathways of financial inclusion, create value chains around rural products, introduce innovative models of livelihood promotion and access to finance, and scale-up activities on digital finance and livelihood interventions.
  • DAY-NRLM fosters mutually beneficial working relationships and formal dialogue venues for Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and Community Based Organizations (CBOs).
  • The NRLM has also created an activity map to allow convergence in several areas of intervention where NRLM institutions and PRIs can collaborate, which has been sent to all state Rural Livelihood Missions.

Infrastructure for Critical Information

Why in the news?

Recently, the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) designated ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) IT (Information Technology) resources as ‘vital information infrastructure.’

What exactly is Critical Information Infrastructure (CII)?

  • The Information Technology Act of 2000 defines Critical Information Infrastructure as a computer resource whose incapacity or destruction would have a crippling effect on national security, the economy, public health, or safety.
  • Under the IT Act of 2000, the government has the authority to declare any data, database, IT network, or communications infrastructure as CII in order to protect that digital asset.
  • Anyone who secures or attempts to secure access to a protected system in contravention of the law faces up to ten years in prison.

What is the need for CII classification and protection?

  • Global Application: 
  • Governments all across the world have been working feverishly to safeguard their key information infrastructure.
  • IT resources are the backbone of innumerable vital functions in a country’s infrastructure, and interruptions can have a cascading effect across sectors due to their interconnection.
  • IT failure cripples other industries: A power grid information technology failure might cause long-term disruptions in other areas such as healthcare and banking.
  • In Estonia, for example, there has been a wave of denial-of-service attacks. A series of denial-of-service assaults, purportedly from Russian IP addresses, struck major Estonian banks, government organisations – ministries and parliament – and media sites in 2007. It was unprecedented cyber aggression in the history of the world. For nearly three weeks, the attacks wreaked havoc in one of the world’s most networked countries.
  • A Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack is an attempt to bring a machine or network to a halt, rendering it unreachable to its intended users. DoS attacks achieve this by flooding the target with traffic or transmitting information that causes it to crash.
  • In October 2020, while India battled the pandemic, the electric grid supply to Mumbai abruptly failed, affecting the megacity’s hospitals, railroads, and businesses.
  • Later, a study conducted by a US business claimed that the power outage was caused by a cyber-attack on critical infrastructure, purportedly by a China-linked gang. However, the government was quick to deny any cyber-attack in Mumbai.
  • However, the incident highlighted the risk of hostile state and non-state actors investigating internet-dependent critical systems in other countries, as well as the need to fortify such assets.

In India, how are CIIs protected?

Nodal Agency: NCIIPC
  • The National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), established in January 2014, is the nodal entity in charge of protecting the nation’s critical information infrastructure.
  • NCIIPC’s mandate is to protect CIIs from illegal access, modification, usage, disclosure, disruption, incapacity, or distraction.
  • It will track and forecast national-level threats to CII in order to provide policy guidance, expertise sharing, and situational awareness for early warning or alarms.
  • In the event of a critical information infrastructure threat, the NCIIPC may request information and provide guidance to critical sectors or individuals serving or having a critical influence on critical information infrastructure.
  • The agency running the CII system bears the primary responsibility for protecting the CII system.

Typhoid with Drug Resistance

Why in the news?

  • According to a study published in The Lancet Microbe journal, bacteria that cause typhoid fever are growing increasingly resistant to some of the most commonly used medications.
  • Typhoid fever infects 11 million people each year and kills over 100,000 people. South Asia is responsible for 70% of the world’s illness load.
Describe typhoid.
  • The bacteria Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, sometimes known as Salmonella Typhi, is the only known animal carrier of the potentially fatal systemic infection known as typhoid fever.
  • Typhoid fever is spread by the faecal-oral route, which involves consuming infected food or water.
  • One in twenty people who recover from typhoid become “carriers” if they don’t receive treatment. They have bacteria in their urine and faeces despite not showing any signs of sickness, and they can infect others for roughly three months while doing so (sometimes up to one year).
  • In many areas where typhoid is endemic, travellers are at a significant risk of contracting the disease. This encompasses portions of Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Middle East, and sections of Asia (particularly India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh).
  • Typhoid symptoms and indicators can range from mild to severe, linger for approximately a month without treatment, and include things like fever, exhaustion or fatigue, malaise (a general feeling of being poorly), a sore throat, a persistent cough, and headaches.
Prevention:
  • Typhoid vaccines are provided as one-time injections or oral medications:
  • This live, attenuated vaccination is intended for adults and children older than 6 years old. Capsule
  • Shot: This is an inactivated vaccine that needs to be received two weeks prior to travel by adults and children over the age of two.
  • Only 50–80% of people respond favourably to the typhoid vaccine.
  • Antibiotics must be administered right away for the treatment of typhoid fever.
  • Drug Resistance: 
  • The rise of drug-resistant bacteria threatens the efficacy of antibiotics for treating typhoid fever.
  • Since antibiotics and other medications intended to kill bacteria no longer work against resistant forms, they can spread quickly and endanger public health.
  • Multi-drug-resistant (MDR) typhoid has steadily decreased in Bangladesh and India since 2000, stayed low in Nepal, and marginally risen in Pakistan.
  • According to a study done by academics from Stanford University, Christian Medical College Vellore, and other institutions, they are being replaced by strains that are resistant to other antibiotics.
  • Lack of susceptibility to at least one agent in three or more chemical families of antibiotics is referred to as multi-drug resistance (MDR).
  • Ampicillin, chloramphenicol, and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole resistance genes were used to classify strains as MDR.
  • The strains known as XDR typhoid exhibit a novel kind of drug resistance. Zithromycin-resistant strains have been discovered in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and India.
  • A strain of typhoid that is responsible for extensive drug resistance (XDR) is resistant to at least five of the antibiotic classes that are advised for the treatment of typhoid fever.

Way ahead

  • For the prevention, control, and eradication of typhoid fever, an integrative strategy and thorough policy framework are necessary.
  • The national immunisation programme in India may soon receive new typhoid conjugate vaccines, according to the health ministry. India has produced two WHO-prequalified vaccinations (by Bharat Biotech and Biological E).

Ration Card for One Nation

In News, why?

  • Assam has implemented the One Nation One Ration Card, making it the 36th State/UT to do so (ONORC).
  • As a result, the ONORC programme has been successfully implemented across the nation’s states and Union Territories, bringing food security to every region.
  • To make the most of the ONORC plan, the government has also released the “MERA RATION” smartphone application. The smartphone app, which is available in 13 languages, offers the users a wealth of practical real-time information.
  • ONORC strategy has greatly helped in ensuring that subsidised foodgrains are provided to National Food Security Act (NFSA) beneficiaries, particularly migrant households, over the last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Describe ONORC.

  • Under the National Food Security Act, the ONORC programme is being implemented (NFSA).
  • Through the use of an existing ration card with biometric/Aadhaar identification, this method enables all NFSA beneficiaries, in particular migrant recipients, to claim full or partial foodgrains from any Fair Price Shop (FPS) in the nation.
  • If they have any relatives back home, the system also enables them to claim the remaining food grains on the same ration card.
  • ONORC’s implementation started in August 2019.
  • The mobility of their current ration cards will enable all NFSA beneficiaries to become AtmaNirbhars for their food security anywhere in the nation.
  • can smoothly remove (in part or in full) their entitled subsidised foodgrains from any Fair Price Shop of their choosing.
  • to make it possible for family members to withdraw the needed amount of food from the FPS of their choosing at home or anywhere else using the same ration card and balance.
What ONORC Means and Why It Matters:
  • Enabling Right to Food: Prior to the National Food Security Act, ration card members could only obtain their entitlement to food grains at a reduced price from the designated Fair Price Shop (FPS) in the relevant state.
  • A beneficiary must, however, apply for a new ration card in the new state if they move to a different state.
  • ONORC intends to enable the right to food and remove the spatial barrier to social justice.
  • Supporting 1/3 of the Population Migrant labourers make up around 37% of the population. Anyone who plans to transfer from one location to another should consequently consider using the plan.
  • Leakage Reduction:
  • The ONORC can reduce leakages because deduplication is a crucial component of this system.
  • By doing this, it will be prevented that the same person receives benefits in two distinct parts of the nation.
  • Additionally, the system is connected to Aadhaar and biometrics, which eliminates the majority of corruption-related possibilities.
  • Reducing Social Discrimination: Given that social identity (caste, class, and gender) and other contextual factors (including power relations) create a powerful backdrop in accessing PDS, ONORC will be especially useful for women and other disadvantaged groups (Public Distribution System).

What are the Associated Challenges?

  • Exclusion Error: 
  • In an effort to stop leaks, the PDS procedure has been pushed toward digitization via Aadhaar-linked ration cards and smart cards. Exclusion errors have increased in post-Aadhaar seeding, nevertheless.
  • Many societal groups continue to lack Aadhar cards, depriving them of access to food security.
  • Plans for the social sector based on domicile: Not just PDS, but the majority of anti-poverty, rural employment, welfare, and food security programmes previously relied on domicile-based access, which barred people from claiming government social security, welfare, and food benefits where they were born.
  • Supply disruptions At FPS, each FPS is given a rigorous monthly quota of products based on the personnel assigned to it.
  • When the ONORC is completely functioning, this technique would be disrupted because some FPSs could have to accommodate more cards while accommodating less due to population migration.
  • Supply disruptions At FPS, each FPS is given a rigorous monthly quota of products based on the personnel assigned to it.
  • When fully operational, the ONORC would end this practise because some FPSs might have to accommodate more cards while others accommodate fewer as a result of population mobility.

How well has the plan performed thus far?

  • This unique citizen-centered programme, which was started in August 2019 and is promptly implemented in a short period of time to benefit around 80 Crore individuals, is the first of its type in the nation.
  • Since 2019, around 71 crore portable transactions have been completed, supplying foodgrains worth roughly Rs 40,000 crore in food subsidies.
  • The participants of the free PMGKAY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana) and NFSA (National Food Security Act) foodgrain programmes are currently receiving an average of 3 crore portable transactions per month.

Way ahead

  • Alternate distribution methods for distributing food grains to vulnerable individuals might be considered if emergencies continue to hinder uptake at ration shops.
  • The concept of nutritional security should be used to frame discussions on food security. The mobility of Integrated Child Development Services, Mid-Day Meals, immunisation, health care, and other facilities must therefore be permitted by ONORC.
  • In the long run, a secure food coupon system or direct benefit transfer might take the place of the PDS system.
  • a family living below the poverty line can purchase rice, pulses, sugar, and oil from any Kirana store at the going rate by paying in full with the coupon or with cash.
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