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GS Paper: GS2

  • What are Question Hour and Zero Hour?

    The Lok Sabha Secretariat officially released the schedule for the monsoon Parliament session with Question Hour being dropped. Zero Hour will also be restricted in both Houses.

    This newscard is very narrative in its form and scope.

    Q.Discuss the various instruments of Parliamentary Control in India.

    What is Question Hour, and what is its significance?

    • Question Hour is the liveliest hour in Parliament. It is during this one hour that MPs ask questions of ministers and hold them accountable for the functioning of their ministries.
    • Prior to Independence, the first question asked of government was in 1893. It was on the burden cast on village shopkeepers who had to provide supplies to touring government officers.
    • The questions that MPs ask are designed to elicit information and trigger suitable action by ministries.
    • Over the last 70 years, MPs have successfully used this parliamentary device to shine a light on government functioning.
    • Their questions have exposed financial irregularities and brought data and information regarding government functioning to the public domain.
    • With the broadcasting since 1991, Question Hour has become one of the most visible aspects of parliamentary functioning.

    And what is Zero Hour?

    • While Question Hour is strictly regulated, Zero Hour is an Indian innovation. The phrase does not find mention in the rules of procedure.
    • The concept of Zero Hour started organically in the first decade of Indian Parliament when MPs felt the need for raising important constituency and national issues.
    • During the initial days, Parliament used to break for lunch at 1 pm.
    • Therefore, the opportunity for MPs to raise national issues without an advance notice became available at 12 pm and could last for an hour until the House adjourned for lunch.
    • This led to the hour being popularly referred to as Zero Hour and the issues being raised during this time as Zero Hour submissions.
    • Its importance can be gauged from the support it receives from citizens, media, MPs and presiding officers despite not being part of the rulebook.

    How is Question Hour regulated?

    • Parliament has comprehensive rules for dealing with every aspect of Question Hour.
    • And the presiding officers of the two houses are the final authority with respect to the conduct of Question Hour.
    • For example, usually, Question Hour is the first hour of a parliamentary sitting.

    What kinds of questions are asked?

    • Parliamentary rules provide guidelines on the kind of questions that can be asked by MPs.
    • Questions have to be limited to 150 words. They have to be precise and not too general.
    • The question should also be related to an area of responsibility of the GoI.
    • Questions should not seek information about matters that are secret or are under adjudication before courts.
    • It is the presiding officers of the two Houses who finally decide whether a question raised by an MP will be admitted for answering by the government.

    How frequently is Question Hour held?

    • The process of asking and answering questions starts with identifying the days on which Question Hour will be held.
    • At the beginning of Parliament in 1952, Lok Sabha rules provided for Question Hour to be held every day. Rajya Sabha, on the other hand, had a provision for Question Hour for two days a week.
    • A few months later, this was changed to four days a week. Then from 1964, Question Hour was taking place in Rajya Sabha on every day of the session.
    • Now, Question Hour in both Houses is held on all days of the session.
    • But there are two days when an exception is made. There is no Question Hour on the day the President addresses MPs from both Houses in the Central Hall.
    • Question Hour is not scheduled either on the day the Finance Minister presents the Budget.

    How does Parliament manage to get so many questions answered?

    • To streamline the answering of questions raised by MPs, the ministries are put into five groups. Each group answers questions on the day allocated to it.
    • For example, in the last session, on Thursday the Ministries of Civil Aviation, Labour, Housing, and Youth Affairs and Sports were answering questions posed by Lok Sabha MPs.
    • MPs can specify whether they want an oral or written response to their questions.
    • They can put an asterisk against their question signifying that they want the minister to answer that question on the floor. These are referred to as starred questions.
    • After the minister’s response, the MP who asked the question and other MPs can also ask a follow-up question.
    • This is the visible part of Question Hour, where you see MPs trying to corner ministers on the functioning of their ministries on live television.

    How do ministers prepare their answers?

    • Ministries receive the questions 15 days in advance so that they can prepare their ministers for Question Hour.
    • They also have to prepare for sharp follow-up questions they can expect to be asked in the House.
    • Governments’ officers are close at hand in a gallery so that they can pass notes or relevant documents to support the minister in answering a question.
    • When MPs are trying to gather data and information about government functioning, they prefer the responses to such queries in writing.
    • These questions are referred to as unstarred questions. The responses to these questions are placed on the table of Parliament.

    Are the questions only for ministers?

    • MPs usually ask questions to hold ministers accountable. But the rules also provide them with a mechanism for asking their colleagues a question.
    • Such a question should be limited to the role of an MP relating to a Bill or a resolution being piloted by them or any other matter connected with the functioning of the House for which they are responsible.
    • Should the presiding officer so allow, MPs can also ask a question to a minister at a notice period shorter than 15 days.

    Is there a limit to the number of questions that can be asked?

    • Rules on the number of questions that can be asked in a day have changed over the years.
    • In Lok Sabha, until the late 1960s, there was no limit on the number of unstarred questions that could be asked in a day.
    • Now, Parliament rules limit the number of starred and unstarred questions an MP can ask in a day.
    • The total numbers of questions asked by MPs in the starred and unstarred categories are then put in a random ballot.
    • From the ballot in Lok Sabha, 20 starred questions are picked for answering during Question Hour and 230 are picked for written answers.
    • Last year, a record was set when on a single day, after a gap of 47 years, all 20 starred questions were answered in Lok Sabha.

    Have there been previous sessions without Question Hour?

    • Parliamentary records show that during the Chinese aggression in 1962, the Winter Session was advanced.
    • The sitting of the House started at 12 pm and there was no Question Hour held. Before the session, changes were made limiting the number of questions.
    • Thereafter, following an agreement between the ruling and the Opposition parties, it was decided to suspend Question Hour.

  • Mission Karmayogi for Civil Services Capacity Building

    The Union Cabinet gave its approval for Mission Karmayogi, a new national capacity building and performance evaluation programme for civil servants.

    Try this MCQ:

    Q.The Mission Karmayogi recently seen in news is related to:

    a) EPFO reforms

    b) Labour laws reforms

    c) Civil Services reforms

    d) Artisans and Handicrafts

    Mission Karmayogi

    • The mission is established under the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB).
    • It is aimed at building a future-ready civil service with the right attitude, skills and knowledge, aligned to the vision of New India.
    • It is meant to be a comprehensive post-recruitment reform of the Centre’s human resource development, in much the same way as the National Recruitment Agency approved last week is pre-recruitment reform.

    Why such a mission?

    • The capacity of Civil Services plays a vital role in rendering a wide variety of services, implementing welfare programs and performing core governance functions.

    Major undertakings of the scheme

    • The scheme will cover 46 lakh, Central government employees, at all levels, and involve an outlay of ₹510 crores over a five-year period, according to an official statement.
    • The programme will support a transition from “rules-based to roles-based” HR management so that work allocations can be done by matching an official’s competencies to the requirements of the post.
    • Apart from domain knowledge training, the scheme will focus on “functional and behavioural competencies” as well, and also includes a monitoring framework for performance evaluations.
    • Eventually, service matters such as confirmation after probation period, deployment, work assignments and notification of vacancies will all be integrated into the proposed framework.
    • The capacity building will be delivered through iGOT Karmayogi digital platform, with content drawn from global best practices rooted in Indian national ethos.

    Apex bodies under the mission

    • The Prime Minister’s Public Human Resource Council will be set up as the apex body to direct the reforms.
    • There will be an autonomous Capacity Building Commission to be established to manage the reformed system and harmonize training standards across the country so that there is a common understanding of India’s aspirations and development goals.
    • A wholly government-owned, not-for-profit special purpose vehicle will be set up to own and operate the digital platform and its content.

  • Economics of education

    The article delineates the challenges academic institutions in India faces in the wake of Covid disruption and suggests some measures to deal with the challenges.

    Context

    Disruption in the wake of pandemic raised the spectre of educational institutions shuttering their doors completely or taking unprecedented steps that have invariably affected jobs and livelihoods.

    Economics of the academics

    • Economics has always been a part of academics; it is only in the present circumstances that it has become all the more apparent.
    • Management in private institutions, is going to meet demands on the one hand and availability of resources on the other.
    • One may call this new phenomenon “acadonomics”.
    • “Acadonomics” would imply a careful allocation of resources keeping in mind the transient nature of the issue of how long it is going to take to come back to the steady state of affairs that it once was.
    • ‘Acadonomics’ will also involve seeing the economics of moving on to an online mode of the teaching-learning process.

    Comparison with the West

    • The academic choices are not the same for all countries across the world.
    • In the United States the elite private and state subsidised universities have endowments that can be used for a range of academic activities.
    • Top 10 of the U.S. have a cushion of anywhere between $10 billion to $40 billion.
    • By contrast, private academic institutions in India do not have any such buffers.
    • None of the institutions in India possesses big corpuses from alumni or industry.
    • Their survival, for the most part, is on the annual income that comes from tuition and the assortment of other fees collected.

    Private education in India

    • Private institutions in India are hardly in a position to meet an eventuality such as COVID-19.
    •  In an educational set-up in India, nothing can be reduced — the norms cannot be lowered nor can the infrastructure be dismantled.
    •  For the most part, the fixed and operational costs remain the same, and infrastructure once created cannot be shrunk.
    • The downside to self-financed institutions is that in the time of the pandemic and loss of jobs, students plead inability to pay the requisite fee.
    • Which places additional burden on the management which feels already stretched because of existing commitments.

    Dual mode of learning and issues

    • 1) Cost for persisting with a dual mode of the teaching-learning process is going to be quite prohibitive for the next few years.
    • The scaling of operations that would include the dual modes of online and offline is going to be expensive.
    • 2) The online teaching mode brings with it increased costs of IT infrastructure such as network bandwidth, servers, cloud resources and software licensing fees.
    • 3) Online teaching means new hiring in the IT sector and increased costs due to engagements with Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, and other online platforms.
    • 4) Online teaching means setting up multiple studios and educational technology centres which translate into investments in high technology.
    • 5) Creation of virtual laboratories across all domains of studies and examination centres, etc. would add to the woes in terms of already depleted finances.
    • 6) Additional funds have to be allocated to train faculty for online teaching.

    Way forward

    • The Centre and State governments should provide soft loans to students to stay with the educational course.
    • Students looking at online instruction would be disinclined to pay the same fee charged for offline instruction.
    • It would seem prudent for the government and regulatory bodies to not interfere in the fee structure, and, for the future, even consider a measure of higher degree of financial autonomy.
    • It is high time institutions in India are allowed to create coffers or corpuses for a rainy day.
    • Educational institutions could come to be treated like any other corporate body, with an allowable small margin of profit.

    Consider the question “What are the challenges faced by the education system in the aftermath of the pandemic. Suggest ways to mitigate the impact.”

    Conclusion

    ‘Acadonomics’ of the future will not only decide the fate of the academic sector in India but also its quality, ranking, research, innovation potential and its collective impact on our country’s economy.

  • India needs an internationalism that is rooted in realism

    The article analyses India’s approach towards regional integration in Asian unity and internationalism and its consequences.

    Clash between internationalism and nationalism

    • Three current developments reveal the clash between grandiose internationalism and the intractable nationalism.
    • 1) India pulled out of the military exercise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which was to herald a new era of Eurasian unity.
    • Sharpening contradictions between India and China comes in the way of uniting such a large geopolitical space.
    • 2) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s claim to leadership of the Muslim world that has run into resistance from a large section of the Arab rulers.
    • 3) The tension between the globalism of the US foreign policy establishment and Donald Trump’s “America First” nationalism.

    Internationalism and threats to it

    • Western liberalism has had more power than anyone else to promote internationalism.
    • But the liberal internationalist effort at constructing supra-national institutions now faces big setbacks.
    • The greatest resistance to the liberal internationalist vision has not come within the US.
    • Trump channelled the American resentments against the globalist excesses of the Wall Street, Washington and the Silicon Valley.

    India’s nationalism

    • Indian nationalism was inevitably influenced by liberal internationalism, socialism, communism, pan-Islamism, pan-Asianism and Third-Worldism to name a few.
    • Both the Asian Relations Conference (Delhi 1947) and the Afro-Asian Conference (Bandung 1955) showed up the deep differences among the Asian elites.
    • India then turned its back on Asianism to claim the leadership of the broader Non-Aligned Movement.
    • After the Cold War, India re-embraced Asianism in the 1990s when it unveiled the Look East Policy.
    • India also joined the Asian regional institutions led by the Association of South-East Asian Nations.

    RCEP joining issue

    • Few could have anticipated that Delhi would walk out of one of the most consequential agreements negotiated by the ASEAN — the RCEP — that sought Asia-wide economic integration.
    • Delhi believed that the contradiction between India’s domestic commercial interests and a China-led Asian economic regionalism was irreconcilable.

    India’s approach toward Asian regionalism

    • Eurasian regionalism led by Moscow and Beijing is also facing tensions and there is deepening conflict between Indian and Chinese interests.
    • India’s diplomatic finesse on the SCO has become increasingly unsustainable after Chinese aggression in eastern Ladakh.
    • India underestimated the economic and political consequences of China’s rapid rise while seeking economic regionalism in East Asia and the multi-polar world with Russia and China.
    • India took a benign view of Chinese power and has been shocked to discover otherwise in 1962 and in 2020.

    Conclusion

    India today needs more internationalism, than less, in dealing with the Chinese power. But it must be an internationalism that is rooted in realism and tethered to India’s economic and national security priorities.

  • Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI)

    With COVID-19 and trade tensions between China and the US threatening supply chains or actually causing bottlenecks, Japan has mooted the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) as a trilateral approach to trade, with India and Australia as the other two partners.

    Q.Discuss the efficacy of the idea of Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) initiaited by Japan.

    What is Supply Chain Resilience (SCR)?

    • In the context of international trade, SCR is an approach that helps a country to ensure that it has diversified its supply risk across a clutch of supplying nations instead of being dependent on just one or a few.
    • Unanticipated events whether natural or man-made that disrupt supplies from a particular country or even intentional halts to trade, could adversely impact economic activity in the destination country.

    What is Japan proposing?

    • The pandemic has brought into sharp focus the assembly lines which are heavily dependent on supplies from one country.
    • While Japan exported $135 billion worth of goods to China in 2019, it also imported $169 billion worth from the world’s second-largest economy, accounting for 24% of its total imports.
    • So, any halt to supplies could potentially impair economic activity in Japan.
    • In addition, the U.S.-China trade tensions have caused alarm in Japanese trade circles for a while now.
    • If the world’s two largest economies do not resolve their differences, it could threaten globalisation as a whole and have a major impact on Japan.
    • It is heavily reliant on international trade both for markets for its exports and for supplies of a range of primary goods from oil to iron ore.

    Japan eyeing India as a partner for the SCRI

    • Japan is the fourth-largest investor in India with cumulative FDIs touching $33.5 billion in the 2000-2020 periods.
    • It accounts for 7.2% of inflows in that period, according to quasi-government agency India Invest.
    • Imports from Japan into India more than doubled over 12 years to $12.8 billion in FY19. Exports from India to the world’s third-largest economy stood at $4.9 billion that year, data from the agency showed.
    • It is a clear reflection that the two countries are unlikely to allow individual cases to cloud an otherwise long-standing and deepening trade relationship.

    Where does Australia stand?

    • Australia, Japan and India are already part of another informal grouping, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad, which includes the U.S.
    • Media reports indicate that China has been Australia’s largest trading partner and that it counts for 32.6% of Australia’s exports, with iron ore, coal and gas dominating the products shipped to Asia’s largest economy.
    • But relations including trade ties between the two have been deteriorating for a while now.
    • China banned beef imports from four Australian firms in May and levied import tariffs on Australian barley.

    India’s stand to gain or lose

    • Following the border tensions, partners such as Japan have sensed that India may be ready for dialogue on alternative supply chains.
    • Earlier, India would have done little to overtly antagonize China. But an internal push to suddenly cut links with China would be impractical.
    • China’s share of imports into India in 2018 stood at 14.5%. It supplies dominate segments of the Indian economy.
    • Sectors that have been impacted by supply chain issues arising out of the pandemic include pharmaceuticals, automotive parts, electronics, shipping, chemicals and textiles.
    • Over time, if India enhances self-reliance or works with exporting nations other than China, it could build resilience into the economy’s supply networks.

  • UN’s guidelines on Access to Social Justice for People with Disabilities

    The United Nations has released it’s first-ever guidelines on access to social justice for people with disabilities to make it easier for them to access justice systems around the world.

    Note: These guidelines can be used in mains answer while substantiating their rights.

    Defining a person with a disability

    • The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted in 2007 as the first major instrument of human rights in the 21st century.
    • It defines persons with disabilities as those “who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”.

    Highlights of the Guidelines

    The guidelines outline a set of 10 principles and detail the steps for implementation. The 10 principles are:

    • Principle 1: All persons with disabilities have the legal capacity and, therefore, no one shall be denied access to justice on the basis of disability.
    • Principle 2: Facilities and services must be universally accessible to ensure equal access to justice without discrimination of persons with disabilities.
    • Principle 3: PWDS including children with disabilities, have the right to appropriate procedural accommodations.
    • Principle 4: PWDS have the right to access legal notices and information in a timely and accessible manner on an equal basis with others.
    • Principle 5: PWDS are entitled to all substantive and procedural safeguards recognized in international law on an equal basis with others, and States must provide the necessary accommodations to guarantee due process.
    • Principle 6: PWDS have the right to free or affordable legal assistance.
    • Principle 7: PWDS have the right to participate in the administration of justice on an equal basis with others.
    • Principle 8: PWDS have the rights to report complaints and initiate legal proceedings concerning human rights violations and crimes, have their complaints investigated and be afforded effective remedies.
    • Principle 9: Effective and robust monitoring mechanisms play a critical role in supporting access to justice for persons with disabilities.
    • Principle 10: All those working in the justice system must be provided with awareness-raising and training programmes addressing the rights of persons with disabilities, in particular in the context of access to justice.

    Significance for India

    • As per statistics maintained by the UN, in India 2.4 per cent of males are disabled and two per cent of females from all age groups are disabled.
    • Disabilities include psychological impairment, intellectual impairment, speaking, multiple impairments, hearing, seeing among others.
    • In comparison, the disability prevalence in the US is 12.9 per cent among females and 12.7 per cent among males.
    • Disability prevalence in the UK is at 22.7 per cent among females and 18.7 per cent among males.

  • Need for a Common Electoral Roll

    The Prime Minister’s Office earlier this month held a meeting with representatives of the Election Commission and the Law Ministry to discuss the possibility of having a common electoral roll for elections to the panchayat, municipality, state assembly and the Lok Sabha.

    Try this question:

    Q.Discuss how a common electoral roll and simultaneous elections are ways to save the enormous amount of effort and expenditure on Elections in India.

    Electoral Rolls in India

    • In many states, the voters’ list for the panchayat and municipality elections is different from the one used for Parliament and Assembly elections.
    • The distinction stems from the fact that the supervision and conduct of elections in our country are entrusted with two constitutional authorities — the Election Commission (EC) of India and the State ECs.
    • Set up in 1950, the EC is charged with the responsibility of conducting polls to the offices of the President and Vice-President of India, and to Parliament, the state assemblies and the legislative councils.
    • The SECs, on the other hand, supervise municipal and panchayat elections. They are free to prepare their own electoral rolls for local body elections, and this exercise does not have to be coordinated with the EC.

    So do all states have a separate voters list for their local body elections?

    • Each SEC is governed by a separate state Act. Some state laws allow the SEC to borrow and use the EC’s voter’s rolls in toto for the local body elections.
    • In others, the state commission uses the EC’s voters list as the basis for the preparation and revision of rolls for municipality and panchayat elections.
    • Currently, all states, except UP, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Assam, MP, Kerala, Odisha, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and the UT of Jammu and Kashmir, adopt EC’s rolls for local body polls.

    Why need a common electoral roll?

    • First, the common electoral roll is among the promises made by the govt. in its manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections last year.
    • It ties in with the party’s commitment to hold elections simultaneously to the Lok Sabha, state assemblies and local bodies, which is also mentioned in the manifesto.
    • The incumbent government has pitched a common electoral roll and simultaneous elections as a way to save an enormous amount of effort and expenditure.
    • It has argued that the preparation of a separate voters list causes duplication of essentially the same task between two different agencies, thereby duplicating the effort and the expenditure.
    • The pitch for a single voters list is not new. The Law Commission recommended it in its 255th report in 2015. The EC too adopted a similar stance in 1999 and 2004.

    How it can be implemented?

    • In the meeting called by the PMO, two options were discussed.
    • First, a constitutional amendment to Articles 243K and 243ZA that gives the power of superintendence, direction and control of preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of local body elections to the SECs.
    • The amendment would make it mandatory to have a single electoral roll for all elections in the country.
    • Second, to persuade the state governments to tweak their respective laws and adopt the Election Commission’s (EC) voters list for municipal and panchayat polls.

  • New rules for Transaction of Business of the Govt. of UT of J&K Rules, 2019

    The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has notified new rules for administration in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir that specify the functions of the Lieutenant Governor (LG) and the Council of Ministers.

    Tap to read more about: Reorganization of J&K

    New Rules for J&K

    • The new rules have been defined under Section 55 of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act, 2019.

    What are they?

    (1)Executive functions of the L-G

    • According to the rules the “police, public order, All India Services and anti-corruption” will fall under the executive functions of the L-G.
    • Chief Minister or the Council of Ministers will have no say in their functioning.

    (2)Minority Community interests

    • The proposals or matters which affect or are likely to affect peace and tranquillity or the interest of any minority community, the SCs, the STs and the Backward Classes shall essentially be submitted to the LG through the Chief Secretary, under intimation to the CM, before issuing any orders.

    (3)Service Matters

    • The Council of Ministers, led by the CM, will decide service matters of non-All India Services officers, proposal to impose a new tax, land revenue, sale grant or lease of government property, reconstituting departments or offices and draft legislation.

    (4)Difference of Opinion

    • In case of difference of opinion between the L-G and a Minister when no agreement could be reached even after a month, the “decision of the Lieutenant Governor shall be deemed to have been accepted by the Council of Ministers”.

    (5)Relation with the Centre

    • According to the rules, “any matter which is likely to bring the Government of the UT into controversy with the Central Government or with any State Government” shall be brought to the notice of the L-G and the CM by the Secretary concerned through the Chief Secretary.
    • All communications received from the Centre, including those from the PM and other Ministers, shall be submitted by the Secretary to the Chief Secretary, the Minister in charge, the CM and the L-G for information after their receipt.

    (6)Various departments

    • Under the rules, there will be 39 departments in the UT, such as school education, agriculture, higher education, horticulture, election, general administration, home, mining, power, Public Works Department, tribal affairs and transport.

  • Striving for amicable relations with Pakistan

    The article pitches for the resumption of India-Pakistan relations. But there are obstacles on both the side which come in the way of such resumption.

    Pakistan and relations over Kashmir issue

    •  In July, the Turkish president had assured Pakistan’s parliament of his country’s support for Islamabad’s Kashmir stand.
    • More recently, Malaysia’s former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, has reiterated his backing for that stand.
    • Iran’s current negotiations with China do not necessarily mean alignment with the latter’s Kashmir policy.
    • Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries invited official criticism in Pakistan first time for their refusal to back Pakistan in its disputes with New Delhi.
    • Pakistan’s foreign minister had made a remark against Saudi Arabia over its reluctance to convene the meeting of IOC.
    • Given the long history of Saudi-Pakistani relations, such remarks suggest a high degree of frustration.

    India’s vulnerabilities and relations with Pakistan

    • An excess of confidence and an unwillingness to think things through may be India’s vulnerabilities.
    • Army’s chief of staff made the statement this year, “If Parliament wants that area [PoK] should be ours at some stage, and if we get such orders, we will definitely act on those directions.”
    • Prime Minister made the statement regarding time of a week to 10 days to defeat the neighbouring country in case of war.

    Picturing resumption of relations with Pakistan

    • In case of war, aware of the total devastation to follow, neither side in an India-Pakistan conflict will press the nuclear button.
    • On the other hand, it is also possible, before any war, to imagine negotiations that lead, not necessarily in that order, to a resumption of trade, travel and normal relations, the renunciation of terrorism, and the restoration of the democratic rights of the people of Kashmir.
    • While no realistic person today expects such talks, it is not a crime to picture them.

    Conclusion

    Amicable relations with Pakistan may seem remote but they are worth striving for.

  • Changing India’s health delivery landscape through NDHM

    The National Digital Health Mission promises to transform the Indian healthcare system with the aid of technology. The article highlights the key aspects of the mission.

    Building integrated digital health infrastructure through NDHM

    • NDHM is based on the principles of health for all, inclusivity, accessibility, affordability, education, empowerment, wellness, portability, privacy and security by design.
    • NDHM will build the backbone necessary to create an integrated digital health infrastructure.
    • With its key building blocks HealthID, DigiDoctor, Health Facility Registry, Personal Health Records, Telemedicine, and e-Pharmacy, the mission will bring together disparate stakeholders and radically strengthen and, thus change India’s healthcare delivery landscape.
    • NDHM is also a purposeful step towards the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal of Universal Health Coverage.

    Importance of digital intervention in health service

    • Digital interventions significantly enhance the outcomes of every health service delivery programme.
    • Importance of digital intervention is demonstrated in the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana scheme.
    • Under PM-JAY, 1.2 crore cashless secondary and tertiary care treatments have been provided using an indigenously developed state-of-the-art IT platform.
    • The Arogya Setu mobile app deploys ICT innovations for contract tracing.

    Principal highlight of NDHM

    1) Voluntary in nature

    • HealthID is entirely voluntary for citizens.
    • Its absence will not mean denial of healthcare to a citizen.
    • They can choose to generate their Health Account or ID using their Aadhaar card or digitally authenticable mobile number and by using their basic address-related details and email ID.
    • The use of Aadhaar, therefore, is not mandatory.

    2) Data sharing based on consent

    • Providing access to and sharing of personal health records is a prerogative of the HealthID holder.
    • The consent of the health data owner is required to access this information or a part of it.The consent can be withdrawn anytime.
    • The personal health record will enable citizens to store and access their health data, provide them with more comprehensive information and empower them with control over their private health records.

    3) Compliance with laws and fundamental rights

    • NDHM has been built within a universe of fundamental rights and legislation such as the Aadhaar Act and the IT Act 2008 as well as the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019.
    • This project is also informed by the entire gamut of Supreme Court judgments and core democratic principles of cooperative federalism.
    • The Mission gets its strategic and technical foundation from the National Digital Health Blueprint, the architectural framework of which keeps the overall vision of NHP 2017 at its core and ensures security and privacy by design.

    4) Reaching out to the unconnected population

    •  NHDM is a digital mission led by technology powered by the internet.
    • So, to reach out to and empower the large number of “unconnected” masses specialised systems are being built and off-line modules that will be designed to reach out to the “unconnected”.

    5) Partnership with all key stakeholders

    • The design of NDHM has been built on the principle of partnership with all key stakeholders — doctors, health service providers, technology solution providers and above all citizens.
    • Without their belief, trust, adoption, and stewardship, this mission will not achieve its desired result.

    Consider the question “Examine the key aspects of the National Digital Heath Mission and how it could help transform the Indian healthcare landscape?”

    Conclusion

    NDHM is a mission whose time has come because health is the first step towards self-reliance and only a healthy nation can become Atma Nirbhar.