The Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment (Chairperson: Ramesh Bais) submitted its report on ‘Educational Schemes for Tribals’ on January 3, 2018.
Performance of existing schemes: The Committee noted that despite many educational schemes for tribals in the country, the literacy rate of tribals (59%) is far below the national literacy rate (74%). Reasons highlighted for it include: (i) poor economic conditions of Scheduled Tribes (ST), (ii) considerable distance between home and school (especially for secondary education and above), and (iii) lack of awareness about the long-term value of formal education.
The Committee observed that efforts made by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs through Ashram Schools, Pre-Matric Scholarships, and Post-Matric Scholarships for ST students have not yielded the desired results in improving their education status. It noted that the schemes being implemented lack conviction and supervision. The Committee recommended a more committed approach by the Ministry for the implementation of the schemes.
Development of bilingual primers: Bilingual primers are meant to contain text in regional and tribal languages to facilitate learning (reading and writing) in schools in tribal areas. The Committee observed the slow development of bilingual primers and recommended that the Ministry must pursue the matter with the states.
Status of hostels: The Committee observed that there are 1,470 functional hostels in the country for ST students. Such hostels seek to provide accommodation to ST students who would otherwise have been unable to continue their education due to economic reasons. The Committee noted that hostels have poor building structure and sub-standard quality of food. The Committee also noted that since substantial amount of Ministry's money has gone into building these hostels and other infrastructure, they must be properly monitored for them to run well.
Performance of specific schemes (i) Scheme for the establishment of Ashram schools: The Scheme for the establishment of Ashram schools in tribal sub-plan areas is a centrally sponsored scheme for construction of all girls' Ashram Schools and boys' Ashram Schools in certain extremism affected areas. States are responsible for the operation and maintenance of these schools. According to the Committee, this delegation of maintenance of ashram schools to state governments has resulted in the poor condition of these schools. The Committee recommended putting in place a mechanism to ensure that the schools adhere to the laid down parameters and have regular monitoring by the states.
(ii) The Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme: The Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme provides financial assistance to ST students pursuing post-matric courses in recognised institutions. The Committee noted that most of the state governments are reluctant to bear their share of liabilities related to the funds of the scheme. This leads to difficulties for ST students in continuing their education.
(iii) The Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme: The Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme is for tribal students studying in classes 9 and 10. The Committee noted that from 2014-15 to 2017-18, funds have not been released to certain states under the scheme. The Committee observed that the lack of determination on the part of the Ministry has led to such negligence in disbursal of grants.
(iv) Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS): EMRS are set up with a capacity of 480 students per school to provide quality middle and high level education to ST students. Establishment of EMRS is demand driven based on the proposals received from states. The funding of such schools is from the state governments. The Committee noted that most of the EMRS are not running well, have poor infrastructure, and inadequate teaching staff. The Committee recommended that the Ministry must devise a mechanism that will help uplift the standard of these schools and make them properly functional.
(v) National Overseas Scholarship Scheme: The National Overseas Scholarship Scheme provides financial assistance to 20 students selected for pursuing higher studies abroad for Ph.D. and post-doctoral studies. The Committee observed that over the years, the number of students receiving this scholarship has been declining. It stated that this might be due to the lack of awareness about the scheme among students. In this context, the Committee stated that proper guidance and publicity are key for any scheme to be successful.
Organized by: NITI Aayog and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with the support of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Organized under the Sustainable Growth Pillar of the India-U.S. Strategic Energy Partnership.
About IEMF: IEMF has been envisaged as a pan-stakeholder platform for debating ideas, scenario-planning & discussing the India’s energy future. It seeks to provide a platform for leading experts and policy makers to study important energy and environmental issues and ensure induction of modelling and analysis in informed decision making process.
The Forum aims to improve cooperation and coordination between modeling teams, the Government of India, knowledge partners and think-tanks, build capacity of Indian institutions, and identify issues for joint modeling activities and future areas of research.
About WNW: West Nile Virus (WNV) is a member of the flavivirus genus and belongs to the Japanese encephalitis antigenic complex of the family Flaviviridae. West Nile Virus (WNV) can cause neurological disease and death in people. WNV is commonly found in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, North America and West Asia.
WNV is maintained in nature in a cycle involving transmission between birds and mosquitoes. Humans, horses and other mammals can be infected.
Transmission: Human infection is most often the result of bites from infected mosquitoes. Mosquitoes become infected when they feed on infected birds, which circulate the virus in their blood for a few days. The virus eventually gets into the mosquito’s salivary glands. During later blood meals (when mosquitoes bite), the virus may be injected into humans and animals, where it can multiply and possibly cause illness.
The virus may also be transmitted through contact with other infected animals, their blood, or other tissues. A very small proportion of human infections have occurred through organ transplant, blood transfusions and breast milk. There is one reported case of transplacental (mother-to-child) WNV transmission.
Horses, just like humans, are “dead-end” hosts, meaning that while they become infected, they do not spread the infection. Symptomatic infections in horses are also rare and generally mild, but can cause neurologic disease, including fatal encephalomyelitis.
Signs and symptoms: Infection with WNV is either asymptomatic (no symptoms) in around 80% of infected people, or can lead to West Nile fever or severe West Nile disease.
About 20% of people who become infected with WNV will develop West Nile fever. Symptoms include fever, headache, tiredness, and body aches, nausea, vomiting, occasionally with a skin rash (on the trunk of the body) and swollen lymph glands.
The symptoms of severe disease (also called neuroinvasive disease, such as West Nile encephalitis or meningitis or West Nile poliomyelitis) include headache, high fever, neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, and paralysis.
Treatment and vaccine: Treatment is supportive for patients with neuro-invasive West Nile virus, often involving hospitalization, intravenous fluids, respiratory support, and prevention of secondary infections. No vaccine is available for humans.
About MPATGM: MPATGM is third-generation anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) indigenously developed by DRDO.
It has strike range of 2.5 km. It weighs around 14.5 kg to maintain man portability. It is capable of being fired from shoulder and can be used during day and night. It has minimum lateral centre and gravity offset.
It works on fire and forget principle and is known for its top attack capabilities. It is effective against both stationary and moving targets. It will be deployed in infantry and parachute battalions of Indian Army.
Significance of the day: It is an opportunity to promote the basic rights of all consumers, for demanding that those rights are respected and protected, and for protesting the market abuses and social injustices which undermine them. Theme: Trusted Smart Products.
Key facts: WCRD was first observed on 15 March 1983, and has since become an important occasion for mobilising citizen action.
Consumers International (CI), which was founded in 1960 organises WCRD. It is the only independent and authoritative global voice for consumers and has over 220 member organisations in 115 countries around the world. Consumer Rights Day — India December 24th. On this day the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 had received the assent of the President.
Consumer protection act: India adopted the Consumer Protection Act, later in 1986, thus providing a legal face to the Indian consumers. One of the strongest campaigns for protection of consumer rights in India, is “Jago Grahak Jago” which literally translates into, “wake up consumers”! This multimedia campaign from Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Government of India is aimed at creating an aware consumer.
Significance: The strategy document describes a plain framework and implementation strategy to establish a clear linkage between energy supply-demand scenarios and energy efficiency opportunities. The document offers a comprehensive roadmap to address India’s environmental and climate change mitigation action through energy efficiency measures.
About BEE: The BEE is a statutory body under the Ministry of Power, Government of India.
Functions: It assists in developing policies and strategies with the primary objective of reducing the energy intensity of the Indian economy. It coordinates with designated consumers, designated agencies, and other organizations to identify and utilize the existing resources and infrastructure, in performing the functions assigned to it under the Energy Conservation Act.
About Festival of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (FINE): FINE is an initiative being organised by Rashtrapati Bhavan in association with the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and the National Innovation Foundation-India.
It will recognise, respect, showcase, reward innovations and to foster a supportive ecosystem for innovators. FINE will provide a platform for innovators for building linkages with potential stakeholders to develop their ideas into implementable projects for the larger social good.
It will provide a window to showcase creative and innovative solutions for social development through innovation emerging from grassroots, student ideas and other technologies.
What Factors Determine Quality of Living? These factors are evaluated in Mercer’s Quality of Living Reports, which offer city-to-city comparisons for nearly 500 global assignment destinations.
Recreation Public services and transport. Socio-cultural environment. School and education. Medical and health considerations. Political and social environment. Natural environment. Housing Economic environment. Consumer goods availability.
Highlights of the report: Globally, Vienna tops the ranking for the 10th year running, closely followed by Zurich, the runner-up. This year, Mercer provides a separate ranking on personal safety. Western Europe dominates the ranking, with Luxembourg named as the safest city in the world.
London has been named the UK’s best city to live in. Indian cities: Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu is ranked at 105 in Mercer’s Quality Of Living Index and is the number one city from India. Bengaluru was the second best with the ranking of 149.
Key observations: Trade tensions and populist undercurrents continue to dominate the global economic climate. Combined with the spectre of monetary policy tightening and volatility looming over markets, international businesses are under more pressure than ever to get their overseas operations right.
The survey shows that many cities around the world still offer attractive environments in which to do business, and the best understand that the quality of living is an essential component of a city’s attractiveness for businesses and mobile talent.
Many cities had seen an improvement, but terror attacks in the last ten years have caused cities including Athens, Madrid and Paris to slide down the table.
The assessment has been done jointly by experts from Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) at Guwahati and Mandi, in collaboration with Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore with support from the Department of Science and Technology and the Swiss Development Corporation (SDC) which is implementing the Indian Himalayas Climate Adaptation Program (IHCAP).
Key findings: The assessment shows that the vulnerability index is the highest for Assam (0.72) and Mizoram (0.71). Sikkim is the least vulnerable state with the index being 0.42. Districts within a state face different degrees of vulnerability based on difference in geographic, climatic, socio-economic and demographic conditions.
Assam is highly vulnerable to climate change because of factors like low per capita income, deforestation, large number of marginal farmers, least area under irrigation, lack of alternative sources of income and high rates of poverty.
Significance and the need for vulnerability map: Receding apple lines, changing cropping patterns, more disasters like landslides and floods, drying springs in hills, spread of vector-borne diseases etc — are being felt all over the Himalayan region, which is one of the most sensitive climate zones globally. However, the vulnerability to climate change varies from state to state and even district to district within a state. It also depends on various socio-economic factors.
Climate adaptation is a collaborative effort between appropriate use of technology, vision that produces policies, change at ground level and engagement of local communities. These vulnerability maps will play a crucial role in this effort.
The vulnerability assessments will be useful for officials, decision makers, funding agencies and experts to have a common understanding on vulnerability and enable them to plan for adaptation.
What’s the issue? A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking to strike down the ‘Electoral Bond Scheme 2018’ and amendments in the Finance Act, 2017, which allow for “unlimited donations from individuals and foreign companies to political parties without any record of the sources of funding.”
How govt defends its move? Electoral bonds have been introduced to promote transparency in funding and donation received by political parties. The scheme envisages building a transparent system of acquiring bonds with validated KYC and an audit trail. A limited window and a very short maturity period would make misuse improbable.
The electoral bonds will prompt donors to take the banking route to donate, with their identity captured by the issuing authority. This will ensure transparency and accountability and is a big step towards electoral reform.
About Electoral bonds: What are electoral bonds? Electoral bonds will allow donors to pay political parties using banks as an intermediary.
Key features: Although called a bond, the banking instrument resembling promissory notes will not carry any interest. The electoral bond, which will be a bearer instrument, will not carry the name of the payee and can be bought for any value, in multiples of Rs 1,000, Rs 10,000, Rs 1 lakh, Rs 10 lakh or Rs 1 crore.
Eligibility: As per provisions of the Scheme, electoral bonds may be purchased by a citizen of India, or entities incorporated or established in India. A person being an individual can buy electoral bonds, either singly or jointly with other individuals. Only the registered Political Parties which have secured not less than one per cent of the votes polled in the last Lok Sabha elections or the State Legislative Assembly are eligible to receive the Electoral Bonds.
Need: The electoral bonds are aimed at rooting out the current system of largely anonymous cash donations made to political parties which lead to the generation of black money in the economy.
How will the Bonds help? The previous system of cash donations from anonymous sources is wholly non-transparent. The donor, the donee, the quantum of donations and the nature of expenditure are all undisclosed.
According to government the system of Bonds will encourage political donations of clean money from individuals, companies, HUF, religious groups, charities, etc. After purchasing the bonds, these entities can hand them to political parties of their choice, which must redeem them within the prescribed time.
Some element of transparency would be introduced in as much as all donors declare in their accounts the amount of bonds that they have purchased and all parties declare the quantum of bonds that they have received.
Concerns expressed: The move could be misused, given the lack of disclosure requirements for individuals purchasing electoral bonds. Electoral bonds make electoral funding even more opaque. It will bring more and more black money into the political system.
With electoral bonds there can be a legal channel for companies to round-trip their tax haven cash to a political party. If this could be arranged, then a businessman could lobby for a change in policy, and legally funnel a part of the profits accruing from this policy change to the politician or party that brought it about.
Electoral bonds eliminate the 7.5% cap on company donations which means even loss-making companies can make unlimited donations. Companies no longer need to declare the names of the parties to which they have donated so shareholders won’t know where their money has gone.
They have potential to load the dice heavily in favour of the ruling party as the donor bank and the receiver bank know the identity of the person. But both the banks report to the RBI which, in turn, is subject to the Central government’s will to know.
What is it? It is a Joint Field Training Exercise between the Indian Army and 16 African nations. The 2019 edition will be conducted in Pune from March 18 to 27.
AFINDEX-19 aims to train the participating contingents in Humanitarian Mine Assistance (HMA) and Peace Keeping Operations (PKO) under the United Nations Charter through practical and comprehensive discussions and tactical exercises.
Contingents from Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, South Africa, Tanzania, Namibia, Mozambique, Uganda, Niger & Zambia are part of the joint exercise together with officers from Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar as Observers.
The joint exercise will also focus on achieving interoperability, learning each other’s methodologies and tactics through synchronised operational level planning and tactical level training.
Context: The government expects to meet its disinvestment target of Rs. 80,000 crore even though it has achieved only Rs. 56,473.42 crore so far with only 15 days left for the end of the financial year.
Background: So far, the government has collected a total of Rs. 56,473.42 crore from disinvestments and stake sales. It retained the target of Rs. 80,000 crore for the current financial year and set a target of Rs. 90,000 crore for the next year. In 2017-18, the government earned Rs. 1,00,056.91 crore from disinvestment against a target of Rs. 72,500 crore.
What is Disinvestment? Disinvestment, or divestment, refers to the act of a business or government selling or liquidating an asset or subsidiary or the process of dilution of a government’s stake in a PSU (Public Sector Undertaking).
Disinvestment policy in India- salient features of the Policy: Public Sector Undertakings are the wealth of the Nation and to ensure this wealth rests in the hands of the people, promote public ownership of CPSEs While pursuing disinvestment through minority stake sale in listed CPSEs, the Government will retain majority shareholding, i.e. at least 51 per cent of the shareholding and management control of the Public Sector Undertakings
Strategic disinvestment by way of sale of substantial portion of Government shareholding in identified CPSEs upto 50 per cent or more, along with transfer of management control.
Why disinvestment is necessary ? Allows the transferring of the Indian government’s enormous public debt of its PSU’s to the Indian private sector. By transferring the debt the Indian government’s overall debt becomes greatly reduced. Eliminates the taxpayer’s exposure to the monetary risk of PSU’s by transferring the exposure to the private sector where private stakeholders are willing step in and assume the monetary risk.
Enables the Indian government to raise funds for so that the government can invest in improving its current physical and social infrastructure. Allows the reallocation of PSU resources such as manpower, real estate, technological, and operational infrastructure to critical governmental sectors that require urgent assistance.
Forces financially sick PSU companies, through privatization, to either become healthy (profitable) enterprises or close down as a unhealthy business due to pressure from competing companies in the private sector. It would bring more competition into various private sectors thus dramatically improving the quality of service for the customer through the PSU having to compete in a competitive private market.
Helps to promote broader share ownership for the citizens of India and also helps in the development of the capital market in India.. Allows government assets allocated for profit-making ventures to instead be reallocated for use in non profit activities or social causes thus helping to strengthen both the non profit activities and social causes. Reduces financial burden on the Government. Improves public finances.
Why there is a need to relook at the policy of disinvestment? Government has mostly used disinvestment for fiscal reasons rather than growth objectives. Process of disinvestment is not favoured socially as it is against the interests of socially disadvantaged people.
Loss making units don’t attract investment so easily. Over the years the policy of divestment has increasingly become a tool to raise resources to cover the fiscal deficit with little focus on market discipline or strategic objective. Sometimes with the emergence of private monopolies consumer welfare will be reduced.
Mere change of ownership from public to private does not ensure higher efficiency and productivity. It may lead to retrenchment of workers who will be deprived of the means of their livelihood. Private sector governed as they are by profit motive has a tendency to use capital intensive techniques which will worsen unemployment problem in India.