AICTE in association with various organisations carries out an employability Skill Test of pre-final and final year graduate students of AICTE approved institutions annually.
The results have indicated that there has been a constant rise in employability of engineering graduates in India over the last 5-years.To increase the employability of graduates in the country, Ministry of Human Resource Development is working along with Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) under National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to undertake Apprenticeship/Internship embedded degree programmes with core focus on development of knowledge, skills, aptitude and on-job training.
Some of the sectors like Logistics & Retail have commenced Degree Apprenticeship programmes in 15 institutions. Further, 52 MoUs have been signed between Media & Entertainment Skills Council (MESC) and Colleges/Universities for offering specialized courses for students in Media & Entertainment Sector. Also, the Logistics Sector Council is in the process of aligning with 50 colleges for further running courses in Agri supply- chain & Aviation, apart from the PG Diploma in Data Science (Logistics) and BBA (Logistics). Ministry is also working with other sector skill Councils under the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship.
In addition, to boost the vocational education in the country, 3 schemes are being implemented by University Grants Commission (UGC) under National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) which are Community Colleges (since 2013-14), B.Voc Degree Programme (since 2014-15) and Deen Dayal Upadhayay (DDU) Kaushal Kendra (since 2015-16). There are 188 Community Colleges, 289 Institutions offering B.Voc Degree Programmes and 68 DDU Kaushal Kendras in which 68,663 students are enrolled in various skill programmes.
Also, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has introduced the Vocational Degree/Diploma Programs under NSQF for AICTE approved Institutions. In the year 2019, AICTE has given approval to 473 institutions to run vocational courses with intake of 35,450 students.
Also, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship is implementing a flagship scheme known as Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) 2016-20 with an objective to provide skilling to one crore people under Short Term Training (STT) and Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) across the country for four years i.e. 2016-2020 with an outlay of 12,000 crore. Also, a committee was constituted in 2018 for preparing short term and medium term perspective plan, with a view to improve employability of Engineering graduates in India.
Government of India is implementing schemes for scholarship/grant for Indian students travelling abroad for higher studies which are as follows: -
1. National Overseas Scholarship for Scheduled Caste Students: The scheme is implemented by the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment under which financial assistance is provided to the meritorious Scheduled Caste students for pursuing Master level courses and Ph.D. in foreign universities/institution accredited by the concerned country.
2. National Overseas Scholarship for Scheduled Tribe Students: The scheme is implemented by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs where in financial assistance is provided to the meritorious Scheduled Tribe students for pursing Master level courses, Ph.D. and Post Doctoral programme in foreign Universities in the field of engineering, technology and science. The family income ceiling for availing is 6 lac per annum.
3. Overseas Doctoral Fellowship Programme: The Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), a Statutory body of the Department of Science and Technology launched an Overseas Doctoral Fellowship Program with specific Universities to build national capacity where the talent supply of researchers in areas of interest to the country is sub-critical. Fellowship of US $24,000/- per annum is provided for a period of 4 year to selected fellows for undertaking doctoral studies. In addition, one-time Contingency/Preparatory allowance of Rs. 60,000/- and return Airfare (Economy) is given to the fellows.
4. All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in collaboration with ‘Mathematics of Information Technology and Computer Systems (MITACS)’ provides a platform from 2018 to the students of AICTE approved institutions to undergo Internship in Canadian Universities through its scheme ‘Sending Students Abroad for Research Internships’.
5. University Grants Commission (UGC) has informed that as per the Education Exchange Programme between India and Hungary, the Hungarian Govt. offers 200 scholarships to Indian students for pursuing Higher education in Hungarian Higher education institutions.
6. Under the Cultural and Educational exchange programme, countries namely, Italy, Mexico, Israel, China, South Korea, Hungary, Commonwealth Scholarship (New Zealand) and Commonwealth Scholarship (UK) are offering scholarship in their respective countries for the Indian students for higher education. Ministry of Human Resource Development facilitates the nomination process for these scholarships.
In order to facilitate the students for foreign scholarship wide publicity is given through website/newspaper. Applications are received through online portal.
The information was given by the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.
Background: Last year, the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly had passed the Andhra Pradesh Disha Bill, 2019 (Andhra Pradesh Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2019).
Key features of the Bill: It envisages the completion of investigation in seven days and trial in 14 working days,where there is adequate conclusive evidence, and reducing the total judgment time to 21 days from the existing four months. It prescribes life imprisonment for other sexual offences against children and includes Section 354 F and 354 G in IPC.
In cases of harassment of women through social or digital media, the Act states two years imprisonment for the first conviction and four years for second and subsequent convictions.For this, a new Section 354 E will be added in IPC, 1860.
As per the Bill, the Andhra Pradesh government will establish, operate and maintain a register in electronic form, to be called the ‘Women & Children Offenders Registry’.This registry will be made public and will be available to law enforcement agencies.
The government will establish exclusive special courts in each district to ensure speedy trial.These courts will exclusively deal with cases of offences against women and children including rape, acid attacks, stalking, voyeurism, social media harassment of women, sexual harassment and all cases under the POCSO Act.
The government will constitute special police teams at the district level to be called District Special Police Team to be headed by DSP for investigation of offences related to women and children. The government will also appoint a special public prosecutor for each exclusive special court.
Tackling_Crime Need for special law: Crimes against women constitute murder, rape, dowry death, suicide abetment, acid attack, cruelty against women and kidnapping.
‘Cruelty by husband or his relatives’ accounts for 27.9 per cent of the crimes against women. A total of 3,59,849 cases were reported against women in 2017. (2016, 3.38 lakh, 3.2 lakh cases 2015) The number of cases reported has increased.
Uttar Pradesh has again topped the list with 56,011 cases of crime against women, followed by Maharashtra with 31,979 cases and West Bengal at 30,002. ‘Assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty’ comprise 21.7 per cent, followed by ‘kidnapping and abduction of women’ with 20.5 per cent and ‘rape’ with 7.0 per cent of reported cases.
Composition and functions: A police officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police is likely to head the Vigilance Wing.
The Vigilance Wing will detect private practice by medical education service doctors, the crackdown on quackery and unearth ethically dubious financial relationships between State doctors and diagnostic clinics, pharmacies and health care firms in the private sector.
It will also monitor healthcare advertising and flag false claims aired by healthcare companies to mass-market pharmaceutical and Ayurveda drugs without doctor’s prescription as off-the-shelf cures for a wide range of ailments.
The wing will also prosecute self-styled healers who exploit their influence in the social media to fuel unhealthy scepticism about government’s vaccination programmes and offer resistance against the State’s efforts to prevent the spread of global viral outbreaks such as the Corona pandemic.
Need: There were complaints against doctors regarding the violation of private practice ban and matters involving medico-legal issues. Concerns: Many in the medical community have objected to intrusive vigilance inspections.
Background: West Bengal has a high concentration of arsenic in groundwater, with 83 blocks across seven districts having higher arsenic levels than permissible limits.
Arsenic- Key facts: Arsenic is naturally present at high levels in the groundwater of a number of countries. It is also present in rocks and soils. Arsenic is highly toxic in its inorganic form.
Permissible limit: World Health Organization’s provisional guideline value for arsenic in drinking water is 0.01 mg/l (10 μg/l). The permissible limit of arsenic in India in the absence of an alternative source is 0.05 mg/l (50 μg/l).
Harmful effects: Contaminated water used for drinking, food preparation and irrigation of food crops poses the greatest threat to public health from arsenic. Long-term exposure to arsenic from drinking-water and food can cause cancer and skin lesions.
It has also been associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes. In utero and early childhood exposure has been linked to negative impacts on cognitive development and increased deaths in young adults.
What’s the difference between organic arsenic and inorganic arsenic? Atoms of arsenic bond with other elements to form molecules — if carbon is one of these elements, then the arsenic compound is an organic compound. If there is no carbon present, then the arsenic compound is in an inorganic compound. Inorganic arsenic is a known human carcinogen — it is this form of arsenic that is linked with increased risks of cancer and other health effects.
A 12-year old Mumbai student, Kaamya Karthikeyan has set a record of becoming the youngest in the world to summit Mt. Aconcagua.
About Mt. Aconcagua: It is the highest peak of the Andes Mountains in Argentina, South America.
It is the highest mountain outside of Asia, with a summit elevation of 6,960.8 metres. The mountain is one of the so-called Seven Summits of the seven continents.
Pangolins could be responsible for the spread of the deadly coronavirus in China, scientists have said after they found the genome sequence separated from the endangered mammals 99 per cent identical to that from infected people.
Background: Birds and animals are in the centre of the debate about how the virus originated. In the beginning, snakes were blamed for the virus.
Chinese health experts later contended that the virus originated from bats, but whether there are more intermediate carriers between bats and humans requires further investigation. The virus was believed to have been spread from Wuhan’s Hunan seafood wholesale market.
About Pangolin: It is the only scaly mammal on the planet. According to Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), it is also the most illegally traded vertebrate within its class (Mammalia).
Protection Status: Chinese pangolin has been listed as “critically endangered” by UN affiliated International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List. Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) has been listed as “endangered” in IUCN Red List. It is also a Schedule I category protected animal, under the Wildlife Protection Act (1972).
Background: The probe has reportedly been acting in an unexpected manner as it failed to carry out a maneuver as planned on January 25. Moreover, the glitch in the probe was detected by the spacecraft’s fault detection software which was relayed to NASA.
Accomplishments so far: Voyager 2 is the only probe ever to study Neptune and Uranus during planetary flybys.
It is the second man-made object to leave our planet. Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited all four gas giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — and discovered 16 moons, as well as phenomena like Neptune’s mysteriously transient Great Dark Spot, the cracks in Europa’s ice shell, and ring features at every planet.
What is Interstellar space? Scientists use the heliopause to mark where interstellar space begins, although depending on how you define our solar system it can stretch all the way to the Oort Cloud, which begins 1,000 times farther away from the sun than Earth’s orbit.
The Heliosphere: The heliosphere is a bubble around the sun created by the outward flow of the solar wind from the sun and the opposing inward flow of the interstellar wind. That heliosphere is the region influenced by the dynamic properties of the sun that are carried in the solar wind–such as magnetic fields, energetic particles and solar wind plasma. The heliopause marks the end of the heliosphere and the beginning of interstellar space.
About Voyager mission: Launched in the 1970’s, and the probes sent by NASA were only meant to explore the outer planets – but they just kept on going. Voyager 1 departed Earth on 5 September 1977, a few days after Voyager 2 and left our solar system in 2013.
The mission objective of the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM) is to extend the NASA exploration of the solar system beyond the neighborhood of the outer planets to the outer limits of the Sun’s sphere of influence, and possibly beyond.
The Voyager spacecraft are the third and fourth human spacecraft to fly beyond all the planets in our solar system. Pioneers 10 and 11 preceded Voyager in outstripping the gravitational attraction of the Sun but on February 17, 1998, Voyager 1 passed Pioneer 10 to become the most distant human-made object in space.
Overview of Genome India Project: The Rs 238-crore Genome India Project will involve 20 leading institutions including the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru and a few IITs.
The first stage of the project will look at samples of “10,000 persons from all over the country” to form a “grid” that will enable the development of a “reference genome”. The IISc’s Centre for Brain Research, an autonomous institute, will serve as the nodal point of the project.
Significance: The project is said to be among the most significant of its kind in the world because of its scale and the diversity it would bring to genetic studies.
The data generated would be accessible to researchers anywhere for analysis. As the genetic landscape differs across the world, it is necessary that genetic data is shared in order to derive greater knowledge from information and serve the purpose of enabling better treatment outcomes.
The initiative will pave the way for identifying genes and genetic variations for common diseases, treating Mendelian disorders, enabling the transformation of the Precision Medicine landscape in India, and thus improving the healthcare of the general population in our country. Need for genome sequencing:
Mapping the diversity of India’s genetic pool will lay the bedrock of personalised medicine and put it on the global map. Considering the diversity of population in our country, and the disease burden of complex disorders, including diabetes, mental health, etc., once we have a genetic basis, it may be possible to take action before the onset of a disease.
What is genome sequencing? A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes. Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of science focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. Genomics also involves the sequencing and analysis of genomes through uses of high throughput DNA sequencing. Advances in genomics have triggered a revolution in discovery-based research and systems biology to facilitate understanding of even the most complex biological systems such as the brain.
This is in line with the government project of ‘Filament-free Kerala’ envisaged in 2018 as part of the state’s Urja Kerala mission.
What is filament-free Kerala project? It will be implemented by the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) and the Energy Management Centre, Consumers in the state can place orders for LED bulbs on the KSEB website in exchange for existing filament bulbs.
Nine-watt LED bulbs are being sold at reduced prices by the government to encourage usage. Last year, Peelikode in Kasaragod district became the first panchayat in the country to be completely filament-free. The project is also part of the long-term sustainable energy policy to reduce the dependence on conventional energy sources and instead maximise potential on renewable sources like solar and hydel power.
Key differences between LED and CFL: The major difference between the CFL and LED is that in CFL the emission of light is because of the ionisation of mercury vapour. The mercury vapour when ionise produces ultraviolet rays. These rays when collides with phosphorous coating tube generates visible light.
Whereas in the LED it is because of the PN junction diode. When the forward current applies across the diode, the recombination of the charge carrier takes place. This charge carrier gives energy in the form of the heat and light.
Rationale behind the ban: The CFL uses mercury vapour which is dangerous for the environment and living beings. Also, it requires additional components like ballast, tungsten tube coated with barium, etc., which increases their cost.
The destruction of the LED is easier than the CFL because LED does not have any harmful metal which pollutes the environment. The brightness of LED is more as compared to CFL because LED emits light only in one direction.
Why LED? The LED is better than the CFL in every aspect. The LED saves up to 80 percent of the electricity bill even though their cost is very less. It is recyclable, and their brightness remains same even after using it for a long time. Sources: Indian Express.