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GS Paper: GS2-13.Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

  • SARTHAQ Plan

    Union Education Minister has launched ‘Students’ and Teachers’ Holistic Advancement through Quality Education (SARTHAQ), the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 implementation plan for school education.

    SARTHAQ

    • SARTHAQ keeps in mind the concurrent nature of education and adheres to the spirit of federalism.
    • The plan delineates the roadmap for the implementation of NEP 2020 for the next 10 years.
    • States and Union Territories have been given the flexibility to adapt the plan with “local contextualization”.
    • They have been allowed to modify the plan as per their needs and requirements.

    Envisaged outcomes

    • Increase in Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), Net Enrolment Ratio (NER), transition rate and retention rate at all levels and reduction in dropouts and out of school children.
    • Access to quality ECCE and Universal Acquisition of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy by Grade 3.
    • Improvement in Learning Outcomes at all stages with an emphasis on teaching and learning through mother tongue/local/regional languages in the early years.
    • Integration of vocational education, sports, arts, knowledge of India, 21st-century skills, values of citizenship, awareness of environment conservation, etc. in the curriculum at all stages.
    • Introduction of Experiential learning at all stages and adoption of innovative pedagogies by teachers in classroom transaction.
    • Integration of technology in educational planning and governance and availability of ICT and quality e-content in classrooms.

  • [pib]  ‘Anamaya’ Initiative

    Anamaya, the Tribal Health Collaborative was recently launched.

    Simply keep in mind, the name and purpose.

    ‘Anamaya’ Initiative

    • The Collaborative is a multi-stakeholder initiative of the Tribal Affairs Ministry supported by Piramal Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
    • It aims to build a sustainable, high-performing health eco-system to address the key health challenges faced by the tribal population of India.
    • It will converge efforts of various Government agencies and organisations to enhance the health and nutrition status of the tribal communities of India.
    • This collaborative is a unique initiative bringing together governments, philanthropists, national and international foundations, NGOs/CBOs to end all preventable deaths among the tribal communities of India.

    Terms of references

    • It will begin its operations with 50 tribal, Aspirational Districts (with more than 20% ST population) across 6 high tribal population states.
    • Over a 10-year period, the work of the THC will be extended to 177 tribal Districts as recognised by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

  • Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP)

    The Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare has launched the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP).

    About IHIP

    • The new version of IHIP will house the data entry and management for India’s disease surveillance program.
    • In addition to tracking 33 diseases now as compared to the earlier 18 diseases, it shall ensure near-real-time data in digital mode, having done away with the paper mode of working.

    Various functions

    • IHIP will provide a health information system developed for real-time, case-based information, integrated analytics, advanced visualization capability.
    • It will provide analyzed reports on mobile or other electronic devices. In addition, outbreak investigation activities can be initiated and monitored electronically.
    • It can easily be integrated with another ongoing surveillance program while having the feature of the addition of special surveillance modules.

    Unique features

    • This is the world’s biggest online disease surveillance platform.
    • It is in sync with the National Digital Health Mission and fully compatible with the other digital information systems presently being used in India.
    • The refined IHIP with automated -data will help in a big way in real-time data collection, aggregation & further analysis of data that will aid and enable evidence-based policymaking.
    • With IHIP, the collection of authentic data will become easy as it comes directly from the village/block level; the last mile from the country.
    • With its implementation, we are fast marching towards AtmaNirbhar Bharat in healthcare through the use of technology.

    Also read:

    [Burning Issue] Rolling-out of National Digital Health Mission

  • Global Gender Gap Report, 2021

    India has slipped 28 places to rank 140th among 156 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021, becoming the third-worst performer in South Asia.

    For the 12th time, Iceland is the most gender-equal country in the world. The top 10 most gender-equal countries include Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Rwanda, Sweden, Ireland and Switzerland.

    Global Gender Gap Index

    • The report is annually published by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
    • It benchmarks countries on their progress towards gender parity in four dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment.
    • The report aims to serve “as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men on health, education, economy and politics”.

    Highlights of the 2021 report

    Indian prospects

    According to the report, India has closed 62.5% of its gender gap to date.

    • Economic participation: India’s gender gap on this dimension widened by 3% this year, leading to a 32.6% gap closed to date.
    • Political empowerment: India regressed 13.5 percentage points, with a significant decline in the number of women ministers.
    • Income: Further, the estimated earned income of women in India is only one-fifth of men’s, which puts the country among the bottom 10 globally on this indicator.
    • Health: Discrimination against women is also reflected in the health and survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex.
    • Violence: Wide gaps in sex ratio at birth are due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. In addition, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime, the report said.

    India’s neighbourhood

    • In South Asia, only Pakistan and Afghanistan ranked below India.
    • Among India’s neighbours, Bangladesh ranked 65, Nepal 106, Pakistan 153, Afghanistan 156, Bhutan 130 and Sri Lanka 116.
    • Among regions, South Asia is the second-lowest performer on the index, with 62.3% of its overall gender gap closed.
    • Within the region, a wide gulf separates the best-performing country, Bangladesh, which has closed 71.9% of its gender gap so far, from Afghanistan, which has only closed 44.4% of its gap.
    • Because of its large population, India’s performance has a substantial impact on the region’s overall performance.

  • Time to undo the RTE bias against private non-minority institutions

    The article highlights the issues with the exemption of aided and non-aided minority institutions from the Right to Education Act.

    Is RTE enforceable against individuals?

    • Most fundamental rights are enforceable against the state, not against private individuals.
    • Certain rights, however, are horizontally enforceable too, that is, they can be enforced against individuals.
    • The Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act or RTE falls in the latter category.
    • The right to education was initially mentioned in Article 45 as a part of the Directive Principles.

    Evolution of Article 21A

    • The Supreme Court in 1992 held in Mohini Jain v. State of Karnataka that the right to education was a part of the right to life recognised in Article 21.
    • The next year, the court in Unnikrishnan JP v. State of Andhra Pradesh held that the state was duty-bound to provide education to children up to the age of 14 within its economic capacity.
    • The court also acknowledged that private educational institutions, including minority institutions, would have to play a role alongside government schools.
    • The right to education was finally given the status of a fundamental right by the 86th constitutional amendment in the year 2002 by the addition of Article 21A in the Constitution.
    • The Supreme Court held in P. A. Inamdar case that there shall be no reservation in private institutions and that minority and non-minority institutions would not be treated differently.

    Impact of 93rd amendment

    • In 2005, the Constitution was amended by the 93rd amendment to include Clause(5) to Article 15 which dealt with the fundamental right against discrimination.
    • The clause permitted the state to provide for advancement of “backward” classes by ensuring their admission in institutions, including private institutions.
    • The clause, however, excluded both aided and unaided minority educational institutions thus overruling the Supreme Court’s judgment in P.A. Inamdar case.

    Discrimination in RTE

    • When the RTE Act was subsequently enacted in 2009, it did not directly discriminate between students studying in minority and non-minority institutions.
    • Subsequently, the provision of 25 per cent reservation in private institutions was however challenged in Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan v. Union of India where the court upheld the validity of the legislation exempting only unaided minority schools from its purview.
    • In response to the judgment, the RTE Act was amended in 2012 to mention that its provisions were subject to Articles 29 and 30 which protect the administrative rights of minority educational institutions.
    • So, the onus on private unaided schools was much higher than that on government schools, while even aided minority schools were exempt.
    • But the constitutional provision enabling the RTE Act, that is, Article 21, does not make any discrimination between minority and non-minority institutions.

    Issues

    • The above provisions of RTE made it violative of Article 14 and also economically unviable for many private schools.
    •  Not only has RTE unreasonably differentiated between minority and non-minority schools without any explicable basis, there is also no rational nexus between the object of universal education sought to be achieved by this act and the step of excluding minority schools from its purview.
    • Given the doctrine of harmonious construction of fundamental rights, it is unclear why the court granted complete immunity to minority institutions when several provisions of RTE would not interfere with their administrative rights.
    • RTE has provisions such as prevention of physical/mental cruelty towards students as well as quality checks on pedagogical and teacher standards which children studying in minority institutions should not be deprived of and to that extent be discriminated against.

    Way forward

    • The Kerala High Court held in Sobha George v. State of Kerala that Section 16 of RTE, which forbids non-promotion till the completion of elementary education, will be applicable to minority schools as well. 
    • The bench said that the courts must examine whether provisions such as Section 16 of RTE are statutory rights or fundamental rights expressed in a statutory form.
    • If the latter, then the Pramati case judgement will not be fully available to minority institutions.
    • The Supreme Court should take inspiration from the prudent decision delivered by the Kerala High Court and overrule its own judgment delivered in the Pramati Educational Society.

    Consider the question “What are the issues with the exemption of aided and non-aided minority institution from the RTE Act.”

    Conclusion

    RTE as legislation may be well-intentioned, but the time has come to relook at the discriminatory nature of RTE against private non-minority institutions, and to that extent, undo the damage done by 93rd Amendment and the subsequent SC judgments.

  • What is Happiness Curriculum?

    The Delhi Deputy CM has said that during the pandemic, the Happiness Curriculum immensely helped them to apply life skills to deal with stressful situations.

    Try this question:

    Q.What is Happiness Curriculum? Discuss the scope of introducing happiness curriculum supplementary to the regular curriculum across the country.

    What is Delhi’s ‘happiness curriculum’?

    • The curriculum calls for schools in India to promote development in cognition, language, literacy, numeracy and the arts along with addressing the well-being and happiness of students.
    • It further says that future citizens need to be “mindful, aware, awakened, empathetic, firmly rooted in their identity…” based on the premise that education has a larger purpose, which cannot be in isolation from the “dire needs” of today’s society.
    • For the evaluation, no examinations are conducted, neither will marks be awarded.
    • The assessment under this curriculum is qualitative, focusing on the “process rather than the outcome” and noting that each student’s journey is unique and different.

    Objectives of the curriculum

    The objectives of this curriculum include:

    • developing self-awareness and mindfulness,
    • inculcating skills of critical thinking and inquiry,
    • enabling learners to communicate effectively and
    • helping learners to apply life skills to deal with stressful and conflicting situations around them

    Learning outcomes of this curriculum

    The learning outcomes of this curriculum are spread across four categories:

    • becoming mindful and attentive (developing increased levels of self-awareness, developing active listening, remaining in the present);
    • developing critical thinking and reflection (developing strong abilities to reflect on one’s own thoughts and behaviours, thinking beyond stereotypes and assumptions);
    • developing social-emotional skills (demonstrating empathy, coping with anxiety and stress, developing better communication skills) and
    • developing a confident and pleasant personality (developing a balanced outlook on daily life reflecting self-confidence, becoming responsible and reflecting awareness towards cleanliness, health and hygiene).

    How is the curriculum implemented?

    • The curriculum is designed for students of classes nursery through the eighth standard.
    • Group 1 consists of students in nursery and KG, who have bi-weekly classes (45 minutes each for one session, which is supervised by a teacher) involving mindfulness activities and exercise.
    • Children between classes 1-2 attend classes on weekdays, which involves mindfulness activities and exercises along with taking up reflective questions.
    • The second group comprises students from classes 3-5 and the third group is comprised of students from classes 6-8 who apart from the aforementioned activities, take part in self-expression and reflect on their behavioural changes.

  • N K Singh bats for moving Health Sector to Concurrent List

    Health should be shifted to the Concurrent list under the Constitution, and a developmental finance institution (DFI) dedicated to healthcare investments set up, Fifteenth Finance Commission Chairman N.K. Singh has said.

    Other key recommendations

    • Bringing health into the Concurrent list would give the Centre greater flexibility to enact regulatory changes and reinforce the obligation of all stakeholders towards providing better healthcare.
    • He has urged the government spending to enhance expenditure on health to 2.5% of GDP by 2025.
    • He said primary healthcare should be a fundamental commitment of all States in particular and should be allocated at least two-thirds of such spending.

    The Concurrent List or List-III (of Seventh Schedule) is a list of 52 items (though the last subjects are numbered 47) given in the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India.

    What is the Seventh Schedule?

    • This Schedule of the Indian Constitution deals with the division of powers between the Union government and State governments.
    • It defines and specifies the allocation of powers and functions between Union & States. It contains three lists; i.e. 1) Union List, 2) State List and 3) Concurrent List.

    The Union List

    • It is a list of 98 (Originally 97) numbered items as provided in the Seventh Schedule.
    • The Union Government or Parliament of India has exclusive power to legislate on matters relating to these items.

    The State List

    • It is a list of 59 (Originally 66) items.
    • The respective state governments have exclusive power to legislate on matters relating to these items.

    The Concurrent List

    • There are 52 (Originally 47) items currently in the list.
    • This includes items which are under the joint domain of the Union as well as the respective States.

    Must read

    [Burning Issue] India’s Ailing Health Sector and Coronavirus

    Healthcare in India

    • The Indian Constitution has incorporated the responsibility of the state in ensuring basic nutrition, basic standard of living, public health, protection of workers, special provisions for disabled persons, and other health standards, which were described under Articles 39, 41, 42, and 47 in the DPSP.
    • Article 21 of the Constitution of India provides for the right to life and personal liberty and is a fundamental right.
    • Public Health comes under the state list.
    • India’s expenditure on healthcare has shot up substantially in the past few years; it is still very low in comparison to the peer nations (at approx. 1.28% of GDP).

  • How to grow better colleges

    The article highlights the important role students can play in improving the quality of colleges and institution in India.

    Improving the colleges

    • The global QS ranking is out and India has 12 universities and institutions in the top-100 in particular subjects.
    • We have many colleges offering higher education but typically they are not very good.
    • Today, with a huge number of students going to college, education is tied strongly to career prospects.
    • If studying and thinking harder do not lead to even a decent chance of career improvement, it is natural for most students to lose academic ambition.

    Career prospects in various colleges

    • For admission in IIT, many work extremely hard to secure admission, but then lose motivation and drift towards near-certain graduation.
    • IIT admission is a value signal to future employers who do not see much relevance in the actual syllabus.
    • The entry wall is high, the exit wall is low, and the four-year syllabus is an obstacle course between the student and an employer with whom eye contact was made from atop the entry wall itself.
    • Students of varied subjects thus remain uninterested in their core syllabi.
    • Lower-ranked colleges may attract a slightly different mix of employment prospects, some in core areas.
    • In many colleges, both good and bad ones, high grades correlate only loosely with career outcomes. 

    Improving the college

    • Very few jobs actually require the highest quality education — the best academic and research jobs.
    • In such a system, it may not be worthwhile or even practical for a mediocre college to unilaterally improve itself.
    • Having improved, it remains to convince society that it deserves to displace the pre-eminent colleges at the top.
    • For lower-ranking colleges to improve itself, its students must first see useful value in a better education.
    • That requires system-wide growth in opportunity.

    How to achieve system-wide growth in opportunity

    • Such growth cannot be legislated from above. It must occur organically, from below.
    • There are several stakeholders involved in such transition.
    • 1) At the top are policymakers.
    • Policymakers are trying and have achieved many things.
    • In recent years, however, our demographics have caught up with us.
    • We have more than 650 million people under age 25.
    • No other country is close. We need more than policies.
    • 2) Next is industry. It faces a learning curve for technology.
    • Countries that wish to lead must develop their own technology, even at high cost.
    • Indian industry can often choose between importing slightly older technology from outside or developing things in-house.
    • A slow growth in the latter has begun and may pull our college system upward over time.
    • 3) Our next stakeholders are college teachers.
    • For a college to flourish, it needs many students who compete to enroll.
    • Our entrance exams for good engineering colleges are hard.
    • Our nationally renowned degree colleges which admit based on board marks are frequently forced to set very high cutoffs.
    • The need for more engineering colleges, for many students who are clearly good enough, has led to the creation of several private colleges that teach well in large volumes.
    • Quality of teachers’ is improving.
    • College teachers improve as their employers aim higher, and as their students bring more into the classroom.
    • 4) Finally, we have students. If students demand better instruction, colleges will sooner or later supply it.

    Way forward for students

    • Students must aim to relate their learning to society.
    • They must see their learning not as an obstacle course but as an initiation into a process that yields tangible long-term value.
    • Indian society does not merely have people looking for work.
    • It also has work looking for people: Work in food, health, design, manufacturing, transport, safety, garbage, water, energy, farming, and a hundred other things that we can do better.
    • Room for improvement is plentiful, though the market models may not be efficient or mature yet.
    • The walls between our classrooms and our lives must be broken, if our colleges are to flourish.
    • In recent decades, India has also attracted much work from overseas. Growth in that direction may well be sustained.

    Consider the question “India has many colleges and institutions offering higher education but few could get the spot in the list of top global institutes. Examine the factors responsible for this. Suggest the measures to deal with this issue.”

    Conclusion

    Such change, driven by student aspirations, will be organic, bottom-up, and unstoppable.

  • What we must consider before digitising India’s healthcare

    As India seeks to create digital health infrastructure, it must consider several issues.

    Integrated digital health infrastructure

    • The National Digital Health Mission aims to develop the backbone needed for the integrated digital health infrastructure of India.
    • This can help not only with diagnostics and management of health episodes, but also with broader public health monitoring, socio-economic studies, epidemiology, research, prioritising resource allocation and policy interventions. 
    • However, before we start designing databases and APIs and drafting laws, we must be mindful of certain considerations for design choices and policies to achieve the desired social objectives.

    Factors to be considered

    1) Carefully developing pathway to public good

    • There must be a careful examination of how exactly digitisation may facilitate better diagnosis and management, and an understanding of the data structures required for effective epidemiology.
    • We must articulate how we may use digitisation and data to understand and alleviate health problems such as malnutrition and child stunting.
    • We need the precise data we require to better understand crucial maternal- and childcare-related problems.

    2) Balancing between public good and individual rights

    • The potential tensions between public good and individual rights must be examined, as must the suitable ways to navigate them.
    • Moreover, for the balancing to be sound and for determining the level of due diligence required, it is imperative to clearly define the operational standards for privacy management.
    • Conflating privacy with security, as is typical in careless approaches, will invariably lead to problematic solutions.
    • In fact, most attempts at building health data infrastructures worldwide — including in the UK, Sweden, Australia, the US and several other countries — have led to serious privacy-related controversies and have not yet been completely successful.

    3) Managing the sector specific identities

    • Even if we define and use a sector-specific identity, the question of when and how to link it with that of other sectors remains.
    • For example, with banking or insurance for financial transactions, or with welfare and education for transactions and analytics.
    • Indiscriminate linking may break silos and create a digital panopticon, whereas not linking at all will result in not realising the full powers of data analytics and inference.

    4) Working out the operational requirement of data infrastructure

    • We need to work out the operational requirements of the data infrastructure in ways that are informed by, and consonant with, the previous points.
    • In other words, the design of the operationalisation elements must follow the deliberations on above points, and not run ahead of them.
    • This requires identifying the diverse data sources and their complexity — which may include immunisation records, birth and death records, informal health care workers, dispensaries etc.
    • It also requires an understanding of their frequency of generation, error models, access rights, interoperability, sharing and other operational requirements.
    • There also are the complex issues of research and non-profit uses of data, and of data economics for private sector medical research.

    5) Issue of due process

    • Finally, “due process” has always been a weak point in India, particularly for technological interventions.
    • Building an effective system that can engender people’s trust not only requires managing the floor of the Parliament and passing a just and proportional law, but also building a transparent process of design and refinement through openness and public consultations.
    • In particular, technologists and technocrats should take care to not define “public good” as what they can conveniently deliver, and instead understand what is actually required.
    • While we can understand the urge to move forward quickly, given the urgent need to improve health outcomes in the country, deliberate care is needed.

    Consider the question “While seeking to develop digital health infrastructure through the National Digital Health Mission, we should be mindful of certain considerations for design choices and policies to achieve the desired social objectives. Comment.”

    Conclusion

    Developing a comprehensive understanding of the considerations related to health data infrastructure may also inform the general concerns of e-governance and administrative digitisation in India, which have not been all smooth sailing.

  • Clustering educational institutes and research centres

    National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) envisions establishing large multidisciplinary universities to promote research directed to solve contemporary national problems, and provides the option of setting up clusters of higher education institutes.

    Q. Discuss the salient features of Cluster Universities as propounded by the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP).

    What are Education Clusters?

    • This new concept is dedicated to students who want to discover & learn new things regardless of the field/branch/discipline they’re in.
    • Currently, higher educational institutions (HEIs) follow the structure of single-stream education.
    • Generally, what happens is that a student who has taken a major is allowed to study relevant subjects. He/she can’t opt for subjects from other majors.
    • This may restrict students to widen their thinking & learning capability.
    • With the introduction of Cluster University, the single-stream approach of teaching-learning will be ruled out.
    • All the institutions including the ones that are offering professional degrees will be transformed into a rationalized architecture that is popularly being referred to as- multidisciplinary clusters.

    What are the Key Benefits of Cluster Universities?

    More Space for Student-Teacher Collaboration

    • With HEIs getting merged to form a large unit, there would be more space for better student-teacher collaboration.
    • Students that are genuinely interested in learning a particular course would come together helping faculties to achieve better student learning outcomes.

    Inculcating Leadership Qualities in Students

    • Students would be more confident as they pursue their choice of subjects. They would get an open field to polish their skills and also develop new ones.
    • Thus, the process would ultimately lead to the inculcation of leadership qualities in students.

    Accelerate Institutional Networking

    • Since the Cluster University concept of the new education policy speaks of merging multidisciplinary HEIs, institutional networking would obviously go uphill.

    Fewer Resources & More Expertise

    • Many students would be able to learn under a single entity. It is bound to increase the outcomes with comparatively fewer resources.
    • Such universities would increase faculty strength, both in terms of numbers and diversity of disciplines, and facilitate the conduct of research on real-life problems.

    Way forward

    • For moving away from single-discipline institutions to multi-disciplinary universities, clustering is a promising model to achieve a critical mass in a university to invigorate research.
    • Many industry associations have established research centres and more could be encouraged to do.
    • India needs to earnestly pursue this model.