National Current Affairs – UPSC/IAS Exams- 5th December 2019

by Mentors4ias · December 5, 2019

Personal Data Protection Bill

Topic: Polity and Governance

In News: The Union Cabinet approved the introduction of the Personal Data Protection Bill in Parliament.

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The draft bill, the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018, was prepared by a high-level expert committee headed by former Supreme Court judge B.N. Srikrishna. The Bill deals with the broad guidelines on the collection, storage, and processing of personal data, the consent of individuals, penalties and compensation, and a code of conduct.
The draft bill notes that “the right to privacy is a fundamental right”. It takes into account three aspects in terms of data – the citizens, the state and the industry. It thus makes it necessary to protect personal data as an essential facet of informational privacy.
Data Localisation: Critical personal data of Indian citizens should be processed in centres located within the country. Central government will notify categories of personal data that will be considered as critical.
Other personal data may be transferred outside the territory of India with some conditions. However, at least one copy of the data will need to be stored in India.
For data processors not present in India, the Act will apply to those carrying on business in India. It may also include other activities such as profiling which could cause privacy harms to data principals in India.
Violation and Penalty: The draft also provides for penalties and compensation for violations of the data protection law. The penalty would be Rs.15 crore or 4% of the total worldwide turnover of any data collection/processing entity, for violating provisions. Failure to take prompt action on a data security breach can attract up to Rs.5 crore or 2% of turnover as a penalty.
Consent: Processing of sensitive personal data should be on the basis of “explicit consent” of the data principal (who provides the data). The consent should be given before the commencement of the processing. The law will not have retrospective application.
Anonymised Data: Anonymisation is the irreversible process of transforming personal data to a form in which a data principal cannot be identified. Notably, the provisions of the draft shall not apply to processing of anonymised data. However, anonymisation should meet the standards specified by the Authority.
Right to be forgotten: The data principal will have the right to restrict or prevent continuing disclosure of personal data by a data processor. But the bill does not allow for a right of total erasure as the European Union does. Also, it gives a data processor considerable space in deciding on this ‘right to be forgotten.’ The data holder may charge a reasonable fee to be paid for complying with such requests.
Implementation: The law will come into force in a structured and phased manner. The draft has recommended setting up a Data Protection Authority to prevent misuse of personal information. The draft Bill also provides for setting up an Appellate Tribunal.

Source: Hindu & PRS

The Line of Actual Control (LAC)

Topic: International Relations

In News: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told the Lok Sabha that there are “perceptional differences” between India and China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on the border issues but the two countries have a mechanism that prevents any escalation of conflict.

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LAC is a 4,057-km porous border running through glaciers, snow deserts, mountains and rivers separate India and China.
The LAC traverses three areas — Western (Ladakh, Kashmir), middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal) and eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal).
China illegally occupies 38,000sqkm of land in Jammu & Kashmir. It also holds 5,180km of Indian territory in PoK under the Sino-Pak agreement of 1963.
At the heart of boundary dispute is the issue of Arunachal (90,000sqkm), which China describes as ‘Southern Tibet’. Beijing is reported to be demanding that at least the Tawang Tract of Arunachal Pradesh, if not the whole of it, should be transferred to China.
Despite these confusing ground realities, the last ever violent clash recorded was in 1975, when an Assam Rifles patrol was ambushed and killed.
But notably, besides minor clashes between patrols, tense border standoffs have occurred in “Sumdorong Chu in 1987, Depsang in 2013, Chumar in 2014 and Doklam in 2017”.

Bilateral Mechanisms in place:

In 1993, India and China signed an accord to reduce tensions along their border and respect the LAC. Three years later in 1996 the two countries agreed to delimit the LAC and institute confidence building measures.
In January 2012, the two sides signed a Joint Boundary mechanism to remove misunderstanding on a real time basis in case of any transgression along the LAC.
In October 2013, the two sides signed the Boundary Defence Cooperation Agreement to prevent any flare up along the un-demarcated border. This encompasses both military level and diplomat level dialogue mechanism.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping during informal summit meeting at Wuhan decided that peace and tranquillity will be maintained at the border.
The same was re assured during recent informal summit at Mahabalipuram as well.

Source: Hindu, IDSA

Structural flaws of India’s higher education system

Topic: Education/HR Development

In News: The furore surrounding fee hikes at the Jawaharlal Nehru University has spurred deeper questions about the quality of university education.

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India’s higher education system is structurally flawed and underfunded. This crisis will affect innovation and human capital, the two pillars of labour productivity and GDP growth, while cheating India’s largest demographic of its potential.

Problems Associated with India’s higher education system:

Faculty: Faculty vacancies at government institutions are at 50% on average. A Deloitte gathering of 63 Deans of top-tier institutions revealed that 80% of those listed lack of quality faculty as their biggest concern.
The problem lies in increased demand, and stagnant supply. The number of institutions has surged in India since the 2000s, while the number of students doing PhD has remained constant.
Meanwhile, there are over a 1,00,000 India-born PhDs in universities around the world, kept away by paltry salaries and poor funding. China solved this problem by attracting Chinese-origin PhDs back home with dollar salaries and monetary incentives for published research.
Lack of Research Facilities: Indian universities persist in separating research and teaching activities, depriving students of exposure to cutting-edge ideas. Monetary incentives for academia are practically non-existent, and Indian R&D expenditure at 0.62% of GDP is one of the lowest in emerging economies.
Indian universities rank low in both research and teaching. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, at rank 155, was our highest in the Scimago Institutions Rankings (SIR) for research while six Chinese institutes figured in the top 50.

Following are the finding and recommendations of The Standing Committee on Human Resource Development’s (Chair: Dr. Satyanarayan Jatiya) report on ‘Issues and challenges before higher educational sector in India’ on February 8, 2017.

Lack of employable skills: Lack of employable skills in students of technical education has been observed. Identification of skill gaps in different sectors and offering courses for enhancing employability in them has been recommended.
Some strategies in this regard can include: (i) Industry Institute Student Training Support, (ii) Industrial Challenge Open Forum, (iii) Long Term Student Industry Placement Scheme, and (iv) Industrial Finishing Schools.
Shortage of resources: Bulk of the enrolment in higher education is handled by state universities and their affiliated colleges. However, these state universities receive very small amounts of grants in comparison.
Nearly 65% of the University Grants Commission (UGC) budget is utilised by the central universities and their colleges while state universities and their affiliated colleges get only the remaining 35%. The Committee recommends that the mobilisation of funds in state universities should be explored through other means such as endowments, contributions from industry, alumni, etc.
Accountability and performance of teachers: At present, there is no mechanism for ensuring the accountability and performance of professors in universities and colleges. This is unlike foreign universities where the performance of college faculty is evaluated by their peers and students.
In this context, a system of performance audit of professors based on the feedback given by their students and colleagues should be set up. Other inputs like research papers, publications by teachers should be added in the performance audit in due course of time.
Accreditation of institutions: The Committee notes that accreditation of higher educational institutions needs to be at core of the regulatory arrangement in higher education.
Further, quality assurance agencies should guarantee basic minimum standards of technical education to meet the industry demand for quality manpower. The National Board of Accreditation should act as a catalyst towards quality enhancement and quality assurance of higher technical education.

Model Mains Question: India’s higher education system is structurally flawed. Comment

Source: Hindu

PM-AASHA scheme

Topic: Government Schemes

In News: Agriculture Ministry data shows that only Less than 3% of this season’s sanctioned amount of pulses and oilseeds have actually been procured so far under the PM-AASHA scheme.

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Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan, was announced in September 2018, as an effort to ensure that farmers growing pulses, oilseeds and copra actually get the minimum support prices they are promised for their crops each year.
Apart from initiatives to allow cash payment to farmers or procurement by private traders, PM-AASHA’s main feature was a price support scheme whereby Central agencies would procure pulses and oilseeds directly from farmers.

Source: Hindu

Madhu App-Odisha

Topic: e Governance

In News: Odisha government has launched Madhu smart learning app for the school children.

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The mobile app is aimed at helping the school students in the state to learn their lessons via videos and tutorials available on the app. The courses have been prepared in a way to make the video lectures more interesting and self-explanatory with the help of high-quality teaching-learning material.
The students will be able to download the Odisha Madhu App from Google Play Store which will contain video lectures and exercises in Odia. Along with this the app also contains an interactive question-answer session along with e-learning exercises for maths and science subjects.

Source: Hindu

Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana

Topic: Government Schemes

In News: A total number of 84 Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP) projects has so far been sanctioned for implementation in 24 states with a target of coverage of 33.81 lakhs mahila kisans.

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Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana is a sub component of the Deendayal Antodaya Yojana-NRLM (DAY-NRLM).
It seeks to improve the present status of women in Agriculture, and to enhance the opportunities available to empower her.
MKSP recognizes the identity of “Mahila” as “Kisan” and strives to build the capacity of women in the domain of agro-ecologically sustainable practices.

Objectives and significance:

The focus of MKSP is on capacitating smallholders to adopt sustainable climate resilient agro-ecology and eventually create a pool of skilled community professionals.
Its objective is to strengthen smallholder agriculture through promotion of sustainable agriculture practices such as Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA), Non Pesticide Management (NPM), Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), Pashu-Sakhi model for doorstep animal care services, Sustainable regeneration and harvesting of Non-Timber Forest Produce.

Significance:

More than 80% of rural women are engaged in agriculture activities for their livelihoods.
About 20 per cent of farm livelihoods are female headed due to widowhood, desertion, or male emigration.
Agriculture support system in India strengthens the exclusion of women from their entitlements as agriculture workers and cultivators.
Most of the women-headed households are not able to access extension services, farmers support institutions and production assets like seed, water, credit, subsidy etc. As agricultural workers, women are paid lower wage than men.
Gravity of these problems will be reduced and women farmers will be empowered through MKSP scheme.

Source: PIB

World Soil Day

Topic: Environment and Ecology

In News: World Soil Day (WSD) is held annually on 5 December to highlight the importance of healthy soil and to advocate for the sustainable management of soil resources. The theme for WSD 2019 is ‘Stop Soil Erosion, Save Our Future’.

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World Soil Day was recommended by the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) in 2002. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has supported the formal establishment of WSD as a global awareness-raising platform under the leadership of the Kingdom of Thailand within the framework of the Global Soil Partnership.
World Soil Day also highlight the growing problem due to population expansion. Therefore, it is necessary to take a step to reduce the erosion of soil, to maintain fertility so that food safety can be ensured.
Techniques and methods to conserve soil include Contour Ploughing, Terrace farming, Windbreaks, Crop Rotation, No-till farming, Green Manures, Salinity Management etc.

Source: Hindu