National Current Affairs – UPSC/IAS Exams- 6th June 2019

Cabinet Committees

Topic: Polity and Governance

In News: To address the twin problems of sluggish economic growth and rising unemployment, the government has constituted two Cabinet committees to be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

More on the Topic

• Committee on Investment and Growth: The five-member Committee on Investment and Growth consists of Home Minister Amit Shah, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister for Road Transport and Highways and MSME Nitin Gadkari and Railways Minister Piyush Goyal.
• This committee will be a focussed group to take measures to bring investments and spur growth in the critical sectors including infrastructure, manufacturing and agriculture, as the economy is passing through a highly volatile period.
• With the GDP falling to 5.8% in the last quarter of 2018-19, lowest in last five years, the committee will prepare a road map to bring the economy back on growth trajectory. The GDP growth for 2018-19 was 6.8 %, against the target of 7.2 %.
• The fall in growth is result of dip in the performance of the core sectors of the economy, as the eight core sectors recorded a growth of just 2.6 % in April, compared with 4.6% in the same month last year.
• Cabinet Committee on Employment and Skill Development: 10-member Cabinet Committee on Employment and Skill Development has also been formed.

About Cabinet Committees:

• Under the Government of India Transaction of Business Rules (TBR), 1961 executive arm of government is assigned task of conducting the business of it in an effective and convenient manner.
• The Cabinet Committees are constituted under these rules.
• They are extra-constitutional in nature and are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution.
• They are instrumental in reducing the workload of the Government.

The Reconstituted Committees of the Cabinet are:

• Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC): It is responsible for all appointments of higher ranks in the Central Secretariat, Public Enterprises, Public Enterprises and Financial Institutions.
• Cabinet Committee on Accommodation (CCA): It is responsible for the allotment of accommodation for various top positions in the Government of India.
• Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA): It deals with the activities pertaining to the economics of the country.
• Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA): It looks into the matters related to the progress of government business in the Parliament of India. It is headed by Union Home Minister.
• Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA): It is responsible for all issues related to domestic and foreign affairs. It is most powerful cabinet committee and is described as Super Cabinet.
• Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS): It is one of the most important committees in India, it looks into the matters of defece expenditures and National Security.
• All Committees of Cabinet except Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA) is chaired/headed by Prime Minister. CCPA is headed by Union Home Minister.

Model Mains Question: Do you think the Union Cabinet and the Prime Minister’s Office are evolving into more powerful offices than the Parliament? Critically comment.

Source: The Hindu

The phase 2 of sanitation mission

Topic: Government Schemes

In News: With the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan scheduled to officially complete its mission of an open defecation free India by October 2 this year, there is uncertainty on what lies ahead for the Centre’s flagship sanitation scheme.

More on the Topic:

• Since its launch by the Prime Minister in 2014, the rural component of the mission alone has attracted government spending of about ₹1 lakh crore, split between the Centre and States in a 60:40 ratio.
• While government officials and funding agencies alike stress the importance of a second phase past October, with continued behaviour change and solid and liquid waste management programmes required to maintain the scheme’s gains, it is unclear if funding and attention could be sustained at levels matching those of the high-profile first phase.
• A UNICEF study showing that groundwater is 12.7 times less likely to be contaminated in ODF villages than non-ODF villages. Noting that the sanitation mission had affected all aspects of environment as well as people’s health and dignity.

Out Side Funding:

• With respect to outside funding, a World Bank grant would continue till January 2021.
• Representatives of UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which have both funded Swacch Bharat projects, said they were working on faecal sludge management projects for phase two, but expected that greater attention and government funding may now be focussed on a new piped water scheme.

Nalse Jal Scheme:

• The yet-to-be formally initiated Nal se Jal scheme would aim to provide piped drinking water to every rural home by 2024, in response to studies showing that 84% of rural homes have no access to piped water while more than 70% of the country’s water is contaminated.
• A second phase of Swachh Bharat may also be key to reducing contamination, as the UNICEF study suggests.

Source: The Hindu

H-1B visa

Topic: International Relations

In News: There was a sharp 10% decline in the approval of H-1B visas by the U.S. in the fiscal year 2018, which experts attributed to the “aggressive” policies of the Trump administration to clamp down on the use of the work visa programme, popular among highly skilled Indian IT professionals.

More on the topic:

• The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.
• Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries such as India and China.
• The H1-B visa has an annual numerical limit cap of 65,000 each fiscal year, as mandated by the Congress.
• The first 20,000 petitions filed on behalf of beneficiaries with a US master’s degree or higher are exempt from the cap.
• According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), between 2007 and 2017, it received the maximum number of 2.2 million H-1B petitions from high-skilled Indians.
• India was followed by China with 301,000 H-1B petitions during the same period.

H-4 Visas:

• H-4 visas are issued to the spouses of H-1B foreign workers. A staggering 93% of the total H-4 visa holders in the US having work authorisation are from India.
• Work permits for H-4 visa holders were issued under a special order by the previous Obama administration in 2015.
• Two powerful Democratic women Senators Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand had urged the Trump administration not to go ahead with its decision to revoke authorisation to immigrants those on H-4 visas as such a move would have an impact on about 100,000 women.

Source: The Hindu

Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY).

Topic: Government Schemes

In News: Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Harsh Vardhan has urged the Chief Ministers of Delhi, Odisha, Telangana and West Bengal to join the Centre’s flagship health protection scheme, Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY).

More on the Topic:

• Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme having central sector component under Ayushman Bharat Mission anchored in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
• It is an umbrella of two major health initiatives, namely Health and wellness Centres and National  Health Protection Scheme.

Health and Wellness Centres

• Under this 5 lakh existing sub centres will bring health care system closer to the homes of people in the form of Health and wellness centres.
• These centres will provide comprehensive health care, including for non-communicable diseases and maternal and child health services.

National Health Protection Mission (AB-PMJAY)

• AB-PMJAY provides a defined benefit cover of Rs. 5 lakh per family per year. This cover will take care of almost all secondary care and most of tertiary care procedures.
• To ensure that nobody is left out (especially women, children and elderly) there will be no cap on family size and age in the scheme.
• The benefit cover will also include pre and post-hospitalisation expenses. All pre-existing conditions will be covered from day one of the policy. A defined transport allowance per hospitalization will also be paid to the beneficiary.
• Benefits of the scheme are portable across the country and a beneficiary covered under the scheme will be allowed to take cashless benefits from any public/private empanelled hospitals across the country.
• To control costs, the payments for treatment will be done on package rate (to be defined by the Government in advance) basis.
• The package rates will include all the costs associated with treatment. For beneficiaries, it will be a cashless, paper less transaction. Keeping in view the State specific requirements, States/ UTs will have the flexibility to modify these rates within a limited bandwidth.

Source: The Hindu

Need for a solar manufacturing strategy

Topic: Economy

In News: Despite making significant progress in solar power generation, India still relies on China for equipment. There is need for specific manufacturing policy for Solar equipments.

More on the Topic:

• Despite the new policy focus on solar plant installation, India is still not a solar panel manufacturer.
• The solar power potential offers a manufacturing opportunity. The government is a near monopsonistic buyer.
• India is regarded by the global solar industry as one of the most promising markets, but low-cost Chinese imports have undercut its ambitions to develop its own solar technology suppliers.
• Imports, mostly from China, accounted for 90% of 2017 sales, up from 86% in 2014.

Lessons from China:

• China’s cost advantage derives from capabilities on three fronts. The first is core competence.
• The six largest Chinese manufacturers had core technical competence in semiconductors before they turned to manufacturing solar cells at the turn of the century.
• Indian companies had no learning background in semiconductors when the solar industry in India began to grow from 2011.
• State governments need to support semiconductor production as part of a determined industrial policy to develop this capacity for the future.
• The second source of cost advantage for China comes from government policy.
• The Chinese government has subsidised land acquisition, raw material, labour and export, among others. None of this is matched by the Indian government.
• The third is the cost of capital. The cost of debt in India (11%) is highest in the Asia-Pacific region, while in China it is about 5%.

Way Forward:

• While the safeguard duty now puts locally made panels on par with imported ones in terms of cost, the domestic sector needs to do a lot more to be effective.
• For instance, it will have to go down the supply chain and make the input components locally instead of importing them and putting the modules together here.
• Public procurement is the way forward.
• The government is still free to call out bids for solar power plants with the requirement that these be made fully in India.
• This will not violate any World Trade Organization commitment. However, no bids will be received as manufacturing facilities for these do not exist in the country.
• If the bids were large enough with supplies spread over years, which gives enough time for a green field investment to be made for manufacturing in India, then bidders will emerge and local manufacturing can begin.
• India needs a solar manufacturing strategy, perhaps like the Automotive Mission Plan (2006-2016), which is credited with making India one of the largest manufacturers of two-wheelers, three-wheelers, four-wheelers and lorries in the world. This would also be a jobs-generating strategy for an increasingly better educated youth, both rural and urban.

Source: The Hindu

Gestational Diabetes

Topic: Health Related Issues

In News: It has become imperative that every pregnant woman be screened for high blood glucose even if no symptoms are exhibited, a recent paper published in the Journal of the Association of Physicians of India has posited.

More on the Topic:

• Arguing that primordial prevention or, in this case, at the earliest stage of development of the foetus, is essential to prevent children from becoming predisposed to diabetes or other non-communicable diseases (NCD).
• The aim should be to target keeping the new born’s birth weight appropriate for the gestational age (2.5-3.5 kg) to prevent the offspring developing NCD in the future.
• While several reasons have been ascribed for the rising trend of NCD, the concept of intrauterine programming has not received adequate attention. The body’s susceptibility to lifestyle diseases was programmed in the intra-uterine period.
• Higher glucose transfer to the foetus, when the mother has high blood sugar, stimulates the foetal pancreatic cells to start secreting insulin earlier and in higher quantities.Once initiated, it becomes self perpetuating.
• In addition, when the maternal glucose reading is over 110 mg/dl, the amniotic fluid becomes glucose enriched, and after 20 weeks, when the foetus begins to swallow the amniotic fluid, which further stimulates production of insulin.

National Guidelines:

• The Ministry of Health has developed national guidelines for testing, diagnosis and management of hyperglycaemia in pregnancy, and they recommend early testing at the time of contact (during the first trimester) and if the test is negative, yet another test should be done between 24-28 weeks.

Source: The Hindu

Jan Shikshan Sansthans (JSS)

Topic: Government Schemes

In News: The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has decided to waive off fee for SC/ST candidates who join vocational training under Jan Shikshan Sansthans (JSS).

More on the Topic:

• This decision follows the recent comprehensive reforms brought in January 2019 for Directorate of Jan Shikshan Sansthan (DJSS), which was formerly under the Ministry of Human Resources Development and transferred to the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship in 2018.
• These decisions aim to further strengthen the skill ecosystem benefiting those in the underprivileged sections of society.
• Jan Shikshan Sansthan (formerly known as Shramik Vidyapeeth) have a challenging mandate of providing vocational skills to non-literate, neo-literates as well as school drop-outs by identifying skills that have a market in the region of their establishment.

 The scope of work of Jan Shikshan Sansthans (JSSs) includes the following:

• Develop/Source appropriate curriculum and training modules covering vocational elements general awareness and life enrichment components.
• Wherever possible, JSSs are encouraged to undertake training equivalent to courses designed by the Directorate of Adult Education, National Institute of Open Schooling and Director General, Employment & Training.
• Provide training to a pool of resource persons and master trainers for conducting training as also availability of infrastructure and training – specific equipment.
• Administer simple tests and award certificates.

Source: The Hindu