SwachhSurvekshan Awards

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE -

Context :

     ★ The President of India, Shri Ram NathKovind, presented the SwachhSurvekshan Awards 2019, an initiative of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India

SwachhSurvekshan Awards 2019 :

     ★ SwachhSurvekshan 2019 covered all urban local bodies in the country, making it the largest such cleanliness survey in the world.

     ★ Indore was declared the cleanest city in India for the third straight year in the Central government's cleanliness survey

     ★ The second and third positions in the category were grabbed by Ambikapur in Chhattisgarh and Mysuru in Karnataka.

     ★ While the New Delhi Municipal Council area was given the 'Cleanest Small City' award, Uttarakhand'sGauchar was adjudged the 'Best Ganga Town' in the central government survey.

     ★ The 'Cleanest Big City' award has been bagged by Ahmedabad, while Raipur is the 'Fastest Moving Big City'.

     ★ Ujjain has been the adjudged the 'Cleanest Medium City' and Mathura-Vrindavan bagged the tag of the 'Fastest Moving Medium Cities'.

                                                                                                                                                Source :- PIB

JanaushadhiDiwas

GS PAPER  - 02 GOVERNANCE - Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

Context :

     ★ Union Minister of State for Chemicals & Fertilizers, Road Transport & Highways, and Shipping on March 6, 2019 announced March 7, 2019 will be observed as the ‘JanaushadhiDiwas’ across the country.

Objective :

     ★ The JanaushadhiDiwas aims to provide further impetus and create awareness about the use of generic medicines.

     ★ The day also highlights the initiatives undertaken by Government in the direction of making quality healthcare affordable for all, like Ayushman Bharat, PMBJP, etc.

     ★ The Government launched the PradhanMantriBhartiyaJanaushadhiPariyojana to make affordable and quality generic medicines popular among the people.

     ★ The Government aims to have atleast 1 PMBJP Kendra in each block of the country by 2020.

                                                                                                                            Source :- PIB

Quality Assurance Scheme for Basic Composite Medical Laboratories

GS PAPER -02 GOVERNANCE - Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Context :

     ★ NABL has launched another voluntary scheme called Quality Assurance Scheme (QAS) for Basic Composite (BC) Medical Laboratories.

Key Features :

     ★ The scheme requires minimal documentation and a nominal fee has been prescribed for availing the scheme.

     ★ Components of competence assessment have been added for assuring quality and validity of test results.

     ★ Successful laboratories will be issued a certificate of compliance to QAS BC scheme by NABL and they will be allowed to use a distinct symbol on the test reports as a mark of endorsement to the basic standard for a defined time frame before which they will have to transition to full accreditation as per ISO 15189.

     ★ Through this scheme, patients availing services of small labs in primary health centers, community health centers, doctor’s clinic, standalone small labs, labs in small nursing homes will also have access to quality lab results.

Eligibility :

     ★ The laboratories performing only basic routine tests like blood glucose, blood counts, rapid tests for common infections, liver & kidney function tests and routine tests of urine will be eligible to apply under this scheme.

Significance :

     ★ The scheme will help to bring quality at the grass root level of India’s health system where laboratories follow the imperatives of quality in all their processes.

    ★ This will inculcate the habit of quality and facilitate the laboratories to achieve benchmark accreditation of ISO 15189 over a period of time.

                                                                                                                                   Source :- PIB

Amendment in Hazardous Waste (Management &Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2016

GS PAPER -02 GOVERNANCE - Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Context :

     ★ In order to strengthen the implementation of environmentally sound management of hazardous waste in the country, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has amended the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management &Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2016

     ★ The amendment has been done keeping into consideration the “Ease of Doing Business” and boosting “Make in India” initiative by simplifying the procedures under the Rules, while at the same time upholding the principles of sustainable development and ensuring minimal impact on the environment.

Salient Features of the Scheme :

     ★ Solid plastic waste has been prohibited from import into the country including in Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and by Export Oriented Units (EOU).

     ★ Exporters of silk waste have now been given exemption from requiring permission from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

     ★ Electrical and electronic assemblies and components manufactured in and exported from India, if found defective can now be imported back into the country, within a year of export, without obtaining permission from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

     ★ Industries which do not require consent under Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 and Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981, are now exempted from requiring authorization also under the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management &Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2016, provided that hazardous and other wastes generated by such industries are handed over to the authorized actual users, waste collectors or disposal facilities.

Why such move?

     ★ In spite of having a significant plastic pollution load of its own, and a ban on plastic waste imports, imported PET bottles from abroad for processing SEZ.

     ★ The influx of PET bottles was quadrupled from 2017 to 2018.

     ★ Indian firms are importing plastic scrap from China, Italy, Japan and Malawi for recycling.

     ★ India consumes about 13 million tonnes of plastic and recycles only about 4 million tonnes.

                                                                                                                                                     Source :- PIB ; The Hindu

'Web Wonder Women'

GS PAPER  - 02 GOVERNANCE - Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes;

Context :

     ★ The Ministry of Women and Child Development hosted a felicitation event for Web Wonder Women, a campaign organised to celebrate the exceptional achievements of women, who have been driving social reforms via social media.

Web Wonder Women :

     ★ Web Wonder Women was a campaign to recognise, honour and encourage such voices that have in their own capacity driven a positive impact on social media platforms

     ★ The women were selected from over 240 nominations received under the categories media, awareness, legal, health, governmental, food, environment, development, business and art.

     ★ Web Wonder Women' is the third leg of the ‘Women Achievers’ campaign of the Ministry.

                                                                                                                                       Source :- PIB

Poorest of poor and uneducated women left behind in ICDS

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes;

 Context :

     ★ A paper published in a WHO bulletin has revealed that the services under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) have an inadequate reach among the poorest of the poor and uneducated mothers.

Key findings :

    ★ The study analyses the findings of the National Family Health Survey 2005-2006 and 2015-2016 to compare the coverage of ICDS over a 10-year period.

    ★ During this time, the average respondents benefiting from these services increased from 9.6% to 37.9% for supplementary food, 3.2% to 21% for health and nutrition education, 4.5% to 28% for health check-ups and 10.4% to 24.2% for child-specific services over a period of 10 years.

    ★ At the same time, the poorest of the poor or quintile 1, who were the largest beneficiaries in 2006, got left behind quintile 2 and quintile 3 by 2016 for all four indicators such as supplementary food, counselling on nutrition, health check-ups and early childhood services

                                                                                                                                      Source :- The HIndu

ISRO, French agency seal agreement on maritime security

GS PAPER - 02 international relations -- Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India's interests

Context :

     ★ The French space agency, National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), has signed an agreement with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to set up a maritime surveillance centre in India

     ★ The two nations will explore putting up a constellation of low-Earth orbiting satellites.

Highlights of the agreement :

     ★ These will identify and track movement of ships globally – and in particular those moving in the Indian Ocean region where France has its Reunion Islands.

     ★ Before that, they will initially share data from their present space systems and develop new algorithms to analyse them, according to the Paris based National Centre for Space Studies.

     ★ They work together for the design and development of joint products and techniques, including those involving Automatic Identification System (AIS), to monitor and protect the assets in land and sea.

Other Collaboration:

     ★ The next phase of the programme will be based on orbital infrastructure to be jointly operated by two countries.

     ★ The two agencies have already put up two climate and ocean weather monitoring satellites Megha-Tropiques (of 2011) and SARAL-AltiKa (2013).

     ★ These satellites will be supplemented with the launch of Oceansat-3-Argos mission in 2020 and a future joint infrared Earth-observation satellite.

                                                                                                                                                               Source :- The Hindu

Guard against misuse, social media platforms told

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability, e-governance- applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential; citizens charters, transparency & accountability and institutional and other measures.

Context :

     ★ The Parliamentary Panel on Information and Technology has directed the social media platforms — Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram — to ensure that their platforms are not used to incite violence or to meddle in the LokSabha election.

Need of Regulations :

     ★ These platforms are used by millions of users in India. They should not be misused by hatemongers or fake news peddlers.

     ★ They should not be misused by hatemongers or fake news peddlers. Importantly, we told them to ensure that there should not be any foreign interference in our election

     ★ Fake news is the deliberate creation of factually incorrect content to mislead people for some gain.It is becoming an increasingly serious problem.Fake news is viewed as a serious threat to the democratic process.

                                                                                                                                                            Source :- The Hindu

Wind energy capacity expansion to slow in next five years: Crisil

GS PAPER 02 GOVERNANCE - Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Context :

     ★ A recent report by CRISIL has projected that the wind energy sector in India will record a slow growth in next five years (2019-2023).

Key findings :

     ★ According to CRISIL, the shift to competitive bidding mechanism has slowed wind energy sector growth due to a significant fall in tariffs.

     ★ Previously, in the wind energy sector, feed-in tariffs method was followed. Under this method, a fixed price was ensured for power producers.

     ★ This has consequently resulted in a decline in bid response and profitability of for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

     ★ CRISIL has further advocated that the low tariffs are economically unviable for the entire value chain and would lead to low capacity addition in the wind energy sector.

                                                                                                                                     Source :- The Hindu

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