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  • Jagrati Awasthi (AIR 2) recommends the rich quality of Civilsdaily content for UPSC | Watch the interview | Speak directly with our mentor now

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  • Important Schemes related to depressed classes/SC/ST and Women

    04th Oct 2021

     

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    Nai Manzil Scheme

    OBJECTIVES –

    • To address the educational and livelihood needs of minority communities lagging behind in terms of educational attainments.
    • It aims to provide educational intervention by giving the bridge courses to the trainees and getting them Certificates for Class XII and X from distance medium educational system.
    • It seeks to provide trade basis skill training in four courses at the same time of formal education, in field of (i) Manufacturing (ii) Engineering (iii) Services (iv) Soft skills. It intends to cover people in between 17 to 35 age group from all minority communities as well as Madrasa students.
    • Nodal Ministry –The Union Ministry of Minority Affairs

    Nai Roshni

    OBJECTIVES –

    • Empower and install confidence in women of minority communities by equipping them with knowledge, tools and techniques to interact with government systems, banks and intermediaries
    • Nodal Ministry –The Union Ministry of Minority Affairs

    USTAAD Scheme

    OBJECTIVES –

    • The scheme aims at preserving and promoting the rich heritage of the traditional arts & crafts of the Minority communities. 2.In the light of globalisation & competitive market, these crafts have gradually lost their employability. 3.It also envisages at boosting the skill of craftsmen, weavers and artisans who are already engaged in the traditional ancestral work.
    • Nodal Ministry –The Union Ministry of Minority Affairs

    Hunar Haat

    OBJECTIVES –

    • It is aimed at promoting and supporting artisans from Minority communities and providing them domestic as well as international market for display and sell their products.
    • The Hunar Haat exhibition has been organised by the National Minorities Development & Finance Corporation (NMDFC) under “USTTAD” scheme In it about 184 master artisans from across the country are showcasing their traditional art and skills at about 100 stalls at the international platform.
    • It seeks to provide an excellent platform to artisans belonging to Minority communities from across nation to display their art and skills before domestic and international visitors.
    • Nodal Ministry –The Union Ministry of Minority Affairs

    Stanapan Suraksha Scheme

    OBJECTIVES –

    • To promote breastfeeding and keep a tab on “inappropriate” promotion of baby food items. Stanpan Suraksha is first-of-its-kind app deveopled for promoting breastfeeding and baby food promotion reporting mechanism.
    • Using it any person can click a photograph of inappropriate baby food promotion around them and related equipment and send it to BPNI.
    • The app also has a city-wise database of trained breastfeeding counsellor to educate and provide assistance to mothers during antenatal and postnatal period. It has sign up option for mothers who wish to become a breastfeeding counsellor, pledging for petition and donation.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Tribal Affairs

    Eklavya Model Residential Schools

    • Eklavya Model Residential School Scheme was started in 1998
    • First school was started in the year 2000 in Maharashtra.
    • EMRSs have been functioning as institutions of excellence for tribal students.
    • In order to further educational opportunities for more ST children, Government has sought to extend the facility of EMRSs in all the 672 Blocks where ST population is more than 50% of the total population in a span of next five years.
    • Funds for establishing the school are arranged by both Centre and State government together.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Tribal Affairs

    Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme

    OBJECTIVES –

    • To decrease the dropout rate in the transition from elementary to the secondary stage. Given for Class 9th and 10th.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    Babu Jagjivan Ram Chhatrawas Yojana

    OBJECTIVES –

    • Educational empowerment of Scheduled castes.
    • Central assistance is provided to the implementing agencies viz. State Governments/UT Administrations/ Central and State Universities/ Non-Governmental Organisations/Deemed Universities in the private sector, for construction of fresh hostels/expansion of existing hostel facilities for Scheduled Castes students.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    National Overseas Scholarship Scheme.

    OBJECTIVES –

    • Financial support to SC and ST students pursuing Master’s level courses and PhD/Post-Doctoral courses abroad.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    Scheme for up-gradation of merit of SC students.

    OBJECTIVES –

    • Upgrade the merit of SC students by providing them remedial and special coaching in classes IX to XII.
    • Income Ceiling: Rs. 3.00 Lakh per annum .
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    Self Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS)

    OBJECTIVES –

    • To rehabilitate all the remaining manual scavengers and their dependents in alternative occupations.The main features of the Scheme include one-time cash assistance, training with stipend and concessional loans with subsidy for taking up alternative occupations.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    Sugmay Bharat Abhiyaan

    OBJECTIVES –

    • The target of this scheme is to make at least fifty government buildings disabled-friendly under the campaign in each of the state till the end of 2016 and make 25 per cent of the public transport vehicles under the government as disabled-friendly till mid-2017.
    • A remarkable feature of the scheme is that a website will also be made where the people can put their views on the accessibility of any building.
    • The international airports in the country and railway stations which come under A1, A and B categories will be made fully disabled-friendly.
    • Special set-top boxes will be made available to make watching TV more convenient for the visually impaired. In the next 5 years, almost 200 persons will be trained to speak in sign languages on government TV channels. Government websites will also be made friendlier by using text to speech option.
    • Under the scheme, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment will give free motorized tricycles to persons with 70-90% disability.
    • A Sugamya Bharat mobile app which can provide information on disabled-friendly public facilities in a city, will be launched under the scheme.
    • For awareness, a team of experts will conduct workshops for sensitizing the main parties including builders and activists.
    • Nodal Ministry – Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    Disha

    OBJECTIVES –

    • Early Intervention and School Readiness Scheme.
    • This is an early intervention and school readiness scheme for children upto 10 years with the disabilities covered under the National Trust Act.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    VIKAASDay Care

    OBJECTIVES –

    • A day care scheme for persons with autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and multiple disabilities, above 10 years for enhancing interpersonal and vocational skills.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    SAMARTH Respite Care

    OBJECTIVES –

    • A scheme to provide respite home for orphans, families in crisis, Persons with Disabilities (PwD) from BPL, LIG families with at least one of the four disabilities covered under the National Trust Act.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    GHARAUNDA

    OBJECTIVES –

    • Group Home for Adults.
    • This scheme provides housing and care services throughout the life of the person with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    NIRMAYA Health Insurance Scheme.

    OBJECTIVES –

    • This scheme is to provide affordable Health Insurance to persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    SAHYOGI Caregiver training scheme

    OBJECTIVES –

    • A scheme to set up Caregiver Cells (CGCs) for training and creating skilled workforce of caregivers to care for Person with Disabilities (PwD) and their families.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    GYAN PRABHA Educational support

    OBJECTIVES –

    • Scheme to encourage people with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities for pursuing educational/ vocational courses.
    • Nodal Ministry –Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment.

    PRERNA Marketing Assistance.

    OBJECTIVES –

    • A marketing scheme to create viable & widespread channels for the sale of products and services produced by persons with autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and multiple disabilities
    • Nodal Ministry – Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment

    Schemes and Policies for Women

           SCHEME      OBJECTIVES             SALIENT                                   FEATURESMINISTRY
    Nirbhaya Fund -Nirbhaya Fund is an Indian rupee 10 billion corpus announced by the Government of India in its 2013 Union Budget.
    -According to the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, this fund is expected to support initiatives by the government and NGOs working towards protecting the dignity and ensuring the safety of women in India.
    -Nirbhaya (fearless) was the pseudonym given to the 2012 Delhi gang-rape victim to hide her actual identity.    		Earlier Ministry of Home Ministry, Now Ministry of Women & Child
    ICDS-To prevent and reduce young child under-nutrition
    (% underweight children 0- 3 years) by 10 percentage
    points,
    -Enhance early development and learning outcomes in
    all children 0-6 years of age,
    -improve the care and nutrition of girls and women and
    reduce anaemia prevalence in young children, girls and
    women by one fifth by the end of the 12th five-year plan.    		-It is a centrally sponsored scheme
    -The engagement of the Anganwadi worker and helper from the same village
    -It is a universal and self-selecting scheme i.e. anyone can visit the Aanganwadi centre and
    enrol these services.
    -Package of six services i.e.
    o SNP – supplementary nutrition programme
    o Pre-school education
    o Health and nutrition education,
    o Immunization,
    o Health check-up and
    o Referral services to the beneficiaries
    AEC-cum-crèche, AWC-cum counsellor.    		Ministry of Women & Child
    Mahila Police Volunteer It envisages the creation of a link between the police authorities and the local communities in villages through police volunteers who will be women specially trained for this purpose. Under this scheme, it is expected to have at least one such volunteer in every village whose primary job will be to keep an eye on situations where women in the village are harassed or their rights and entitlements are denied or their development is prevented. Joint initiative b/w Min. of WCD and Home Min.Ministry of Women & Child and Home Ministry
    UJJAWALA Yojana A comprehensive scheme for prevention of trafficking and rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration of victims of trafficking and commercial sexual exploitationMinistry of Women & Child
    One-Stop centre scheme1. To provide integrated support and assistance to women affected by violence, both in private and public spaces under one roof.
    2. To facilitate immediate, emergency and non-emergency access to a range of … support under one roof to fight against any forms of violence against women    		1. These centres will provide immediate access to a range of services including medical, legal, psychological and counselling support to the victims.
    2. The OSC will support all women including girls below 18 years of age affected by violence, also for girls below 18 years of age, institutions and authorities established under Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 will be linked with the OSC.
    3. In addition to this, a single uniform number –181 will provide 24-hour emergency response to all women affected by violence, through referral (linking with appropriate authorities such as Police, OSC or hospital); funding thru’ Nirbhaya fund    		Ministry of Women & Child
    Swadhar Grehs Homes for relief and rehabilitation of women in difficult circumstances including survivors of rape/assault etc.
    Provision for food clothing, counselling. training, clinical and legal aid; long term    		Ministry of Women & Child
    She-Box Online complaint Management System for women working in both public and private organizations to ensure effective implementation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace ActMinistry of Women & Child
    Universalization of Women Helpline  Ministry of Women & Child
    The mission for Protection and Empowerment for Women: To achieve holistic empowerment of women through
    the convergence of schemes/programmes of different Ministries/
    Department of Government of India as well as State
    Governments    		-It aimed at improving the declining Child Sex Ratio; ensuring survival. & protection
    of the girl child; ensuring her education, and empowering her to fulfil her potentials social sector welfare schemes for care, protection and development of
    women.
    -It will provide an interface for rural women to approach the government for availing their entitlements and for empowering them through training and capacity building.    		Ministry of Women & Child
    Mahila Shakti Kendra -Mahila Shakti Kendras will converge all Govt. Schemes for women at National, State, District and Block level
    Skill Development, Employment, Digital Literacy, Health and Nutrition.
    -Through this scheme, the government plans to reach 115 most backward districts in the country with 920 Mahila Shakti Kendra…    		Ministry of Women & Child
    PRIYADARSHINI SCHEME(discontinued in 2016) Women’s Empowerment and Livelihoods Programme in the Mid Gangetic PlainsMinistry of Women & Child
    Sabla-Enable the adolescent girls for self-development and
    empowerment
    -Improve their nutrition and health status.
    -Promote awareness about health, hygiene, nutrition, adolescent
    reproductive and sexual health (ARSH) and family and child care.
    -To educate, skill and make them ready for life’s challenges    		Nutrition provision
    – Iron and folic acid (IFA) supplementation
    – Health check-up and referral services
    – Nutrition & health education (NHE)
    -Counselling/guidance on family welfare, ARSH, child
    care practices and home management.
    -Upgrade home-based skills, life skills and integrate
    with the national skill development program (NSDP)
    for vocational skills.
    -Mainstream out of school adolescent girls into
    formal/non-formal education.
    -Provide information/guidance about existing public
    services such as PHC, CHC, post office, bank, police
    the station, etc.    		Ministry of Women & Child
    Saksham  Ministry of Women & Child
    Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana-Empower women in agriculture by making systematic investments to enhance their participation and productivity,
    -Create and sustain agriculture-based livelihoods of rural women.    		-a sub-component of the Deendayal Antodaya Yojana-NRLM (DAY-NRLM)
    – Under the Pariyojana, projects are conceived in such a manner that the skill base of the women in agriculture is enhanced to enable them to pursue their livelihoods on a sustainable basis.
    -Under MKSP sustainable agriculture, 58 projects from 14 States have been sanctioned which will benefit 24.5 lakhs Mahila Kisans during the period.    		Ministry of Rural Development
    Beti Bachao Beti Padhao 1.Prevent Female infanticide
    2.Ensure Every Girl Child is Protected
    3.Ensure every Girl Child is educated
    Enforcement of PC & PNDT Act, nation-wide awareness and advocacy campaign and multi-sectoral action in select 100 districts (low on Child Sex Ratio) in the first phase.
    -Under this scheme, there is a strong emphasis on mindset change through training, sensitization, awareness-raising and community mobilization on ground.    		It is a tri-ministerial effort of Ministries of Women and Child Development, Health & Family Welfare and Human Resource Development.
    Sukanya samriddhi yojana 1.(Minor) bank account for girl child below the age of 10.
    2.She can withdraw 50% of the money after reaching the age of 18 e.g. for higher education. 18 years deadline will also help to prevent child-marriages.
    For initial account opening, minimum deposit Rs.1000 required.
    Later, any amount in multiples of 100 can be deposited, but maximum Rs. 1.5 lakh per year.
    Interest rate: 9.1% compounded annually.    		Ministry of Women & Child
    Pocso-e Box 1, POCSO e-box is a unique endeavour by NCPCR for receiving an online complaint of Child Sexual Abuse directly from the victim.
    2. Through a well-defined procedure, complaints are directly followed up by a team which counsels the victim, providing further guidance for required legal action. Through a short animation film embedded in the e-box, it assures the victim not to feel bad, helpless or confused as it’s not her fault. With the e-box, it is easy to register a complaint through a step-by-step guided process.    		The Ministry of Women & Child
    It is an initiative of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), for Direct online Reporting of Child Sexual Abuse.
    NARI Due to scattered information on various women-centric schemes/legislations, there is a lack of awareness
    among people regarding the same. To address this problem the government launched NARI portal as a single
    window access to information and services    		Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology
    e-samvaad Portal It is a platform for NGOs and civil society to interact with the Ministry of Women and Child Development
    (MWCD) by providing their feedback, suggestions, put up grievances, share best practices etc.
    • This will help in the formulation of effective policies and measures for the welfare of women and children.    		Ministry of Women & Child
    Stree Swabhiman -It aims to create a sustainable model for providing adolescent girls and women access to affordable sanitary products in rural areas.
    -Under this project, sanitary napkin micro manufacturing units (semi-automatic and manual process
    production unit) are being set up at CSCs across India, particularly those operated by women entrepreneurs.
    -The product will be sold under the local brand name and marketed by village-level entrepreneurs.
    -Each facility will employ 8-10 women and educate women of their society to overcome this social taboo.
    -It also has a menstrual hygiene related awareness generation component and is also expected to reduce
    drop-out rates in girls on reaching puberty.    		Ministry of
    Electronics and Information
    technology (MeITY)
    PROGRAM TO TRAIN ELECTED WOMEN REPRESENTATIVES OF
    PANCHAYATI RAJ INSTITUTIONS    		 -The program aimed at capacity building of EWRs is being organized by the National Institute of Public Cooperation and
    Child Development (NIPCCD) of the MoWCD.
    -It is the first-ever initiative which will train approximately twenty thousand EWRs covering nearly 50 EWRs
    from each district (by March 2018) who will go out and administer the villages professionally.
    – It will help in creating model villages, ensure their effective participation in the governance process and help
    preparing women as political leaders of the future.    		Ministry of women and Child
    Support to Training and Employment
    Programme for Women (STEP)    		 -To provide competencies and skill that enable women to become self-employed/entrepreneurs.
    -The scheme is intended to benefit women who are in the age group of 16 years and above across the country.    		Ministry of women and Child
    Rashtriya Mahila Kosh -RMK is a national credit fund for women under the aegis of the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
    -It was established in 1993 for socio-economic empowerment of women.
    -It aims to provide financial services with backward and forward linkages for women in the unorganized sector through Intermediary Micro Finance Organizations (IMOs) and Women Self Help Groups (SHGs) and to augment their capacities through multi-pronged efforts.
    -RMK also extends micro-credit to the women in the informal sector through a client-friendly, without collateral and in a hassle-free manner for income generation activities    		Ministry of women and child

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  • Pandora Papers on Offshore Financial Trusts

    There are at least 380 persons of Indian nationality in the Pandora Papers.

    What are the Pandora Papers?

    • The Pandora papers are the largest trove of leaked data exposing tax haven secrecy in history.
    • They provide a rare window into the hidden world of offshore finance, casting light on the financial secrets of some of the world’s richest people.
    • It includes over 11.9 million leaked files from 14 global corporate services firms which set up about 29,000 off-the-shelf companies and private trusts in not just obscure tax jurisdictions.
    • These documents relate to the ultimate ownership of assets ‘settled’ (or placed) in private offshore trusts and the investments including cash, shareholding, and real estate properties, held by the offshore entities.

    Indians included in these

    • There are at least 380 persons of Indian nationality in the Pandora Papers.
    • There are almost 60 prominent individuals and companies including the most decorated cricketer of India.

    What do these papers reveal?

    • They reveal how the rich, the famous and the notorious, many of whom were already on the radar of investigative agencies, set up complex multi-layered trust structures for estate planning.
    • This is particularly in jurisdictions that are loosely regulated for tax purposes, but characterized by air-tight secrecy laws.
    • The purposes for which trusts are set up are many, and some genuine too.

    But a scrutiny of the papers also shows how the objective of many is two-fold:

    1. Tax Avoidance: to hide their real identities and distance themselves from the offshore entities so that it becomes near impossible for the tax authorities to reach them and,
    2. Tax Evasion: to safeguard investments — cash, shareholdings, real estate, art, aircraft, and yachts — from creditors and law enforcers.

    How is Pandora different from the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers?

    • The Panama and Paradise Papers dealt largely with offshore entities set up by individuals and corporates respectively.
    • The Pandora Papers investigation shows how businesses disguised as Trusts have created a new normal with rising concerns of money laundering, terrorism funding, and tax evasion.

    What is a Trust?

    • A trust can be described as a fiduciary arrangement where a third party, referred to as the trustee, holds assets on behalf of individuals or organizations that are to benefit from it.
    • It is generally used for estate planning purposes and succession planning.
    • It helps large business families to consolidate their assets — financial investments, shareholding, and real estate property.

    A trust comprises three key parties:

    1. Settlor — one who sets up, creates, or authors a trust;
    2. Trustee — one who holds the assets for the benefit of a set of people named by the ‘settlor’; and
    3. Beneficiaries — to whom the benefits of the assets are bequeathed.
    • A trust is not a separate legal entity, but its legal nature comes from the ‘trustee’.
    • At times, the ‘settlor’ appoints a ‘protector’, who has the powers to supervise the trustee, and even remove the trustee and appoint a new one.

    Is setting up a trust in India, or one offshore/ outside the country, illegal?

    • The Indian Trusts Act, 1882, gives legal basis to the concept of trusts.
    • While Indian laws do not see trusts as a legal person/ entity, they do recognise the trust as an obligation of the trustee to manage and use the assets settled in the trust for the benefit of ‘beneficiaries’.
    • India also recognises offshore trusts i.e., trusts set up in other tax jurisdictions.

    If it’s legal, what’s the investigation about?

    • There are legitimate reasons for setting up trusts — and many set them up for genuine estate planning.
    • A businessperson can set conditions for ‘beneficiaries’ to draw income being distributed by the trustee or inherit assets after her/ his demise.
    • For instance, while allotting shares in the company to say, four siblings, the father promoter set conditions that a sibling can get the dividend from the shares and claim ownership of the shares.
    • This could be to ensure ownership of the enterprise within the family.
    • But trusts are also used by some as secret vehicles to park ill-gotten money, hide incomes to evade taxes, protect wealth from law enforcers.

    Why are trusts set up overseas?

    Overseas trusts offer remarkable secrecy because of stringent privacy laws in the jurisdiction they operate in.  From the investigation, some key tacit reasons why people set up trusts are:

    Maintain a degree of separation: Businesspersons set up private offshore trusts to project a degree of separation from their personal assets.

    Hunt for enhanced secrecy: Offshore trusts offer enhanced secrecy to businesspersons, given their complex structures. The Income-Tax Department can get information only with the financial investigation agency or international tax authority.

    Avoid tax in the guise of planning: Businesspersons avoid their NRI children being taxed on income from their assets by transferring all the assets to a trust. Further, the tax rates in overseas jurisdictions are much lower than the 30% personal I-T rate in India plus surcharges, including those on the super-rich (those with annual income over Rs 1 crore).

    Prepare for estate duty eventuality: There is pervasive fear that estate duty, which was abolished back in 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi was PM, will likely be re-introduced soon. Setting up trusts in advance, business families have been advised, will protect the next generation from paying the death/ inheritance tax, which was as high as 85 per cent.

    Flexibility in a capital-controlled economy: India is a capital-controlled economy. Individuals can invest only $250,000 a year under the Reserve Bank of India’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS). To get over this, businesspersons have turned NRIs, and under FEMA, NRIs can remit $1 million a year in addition to their current annual income, outside India.

    The NRI angle: Offshore trusts, as noted earlier, are recognised under Indian laws, but legally, it is the trustees — not the ‘settlor’ or the ‘beneficiaries’ — who are the owners of the properties and income of the trust. An NRI trustee or offshore trustee taking instructions from another overseas ‘protector’ ensures they are taxed in India only on their total income from India.

    Can offshore Trusts be seen as resident Indian for tax purposes?

    • There are certain grey areas of taxation where the Income-Tax Department is in contestation with offshore trusts.
    • After The Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015, came into existence, resident Indians — if they are ‘settlors’, ‘trustees’, or ‘beneficiaries’ — have to report their foreign financial interests and assets.
    • NRIs are not required to do so — even though, as mentioned above, the I-T Department has been sending notices to NRIs in certain cases.

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  • Panel set up to implement Assam Accord

    The Assam government on Saturday set up an eight-member sub-committee to examine and prepare a framework for the implementation of all clauses of the Assam Accord of 1985.

    What is Assam Accord?

    • The Assam Accord was a Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) signed the Government of India and the leaders of the Assam Movement.
    • It the movement demanded the identification and deportation of all illegal foreigners – predominantly Bangladeshi immigrants.
    • They feared that past and continuing large scale migration was overwhelming the native population, impacting their political rights, culture, language and land rights.
    • The Assam Movement caused the estimated death of over 855 people.
    • It ended with the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985.

    What are the major clauses of Assam Accord?

    • Clause 5: Foreigners Issue
    • Clause 6: Constitutional, Legislative & Administrative safeguards
    • Clause 7: Economic Development
    • Clause 9 : Security of International Border
    • Clause 10: Prevention of Encroachment of Government lands
    • Clause 11: Restricting acquisition of immovable property by foreigners
    • Clause 12: Registration of births and deaths

    Which clauses are being discussed?

    • A sub-committee has been tasked to examine and prepare a framework for implementation of all clauses of Assam Accord in general with special emphasis on Clause 6, Clause 7, Clause 9 and Clause 10.

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  • What are the concerns of digital health mission?

    The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), was recently launched by the PM.

    About Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission

    • The pilot project of the National Digital Health Mission was announced by PM Modi during his Independence Day speech from the Red Fort on August 15, 2020.
    • The mission will enable access and exchange of longitudinal health records of citizens with their consent.
    • This will ensure ease of doing business for doctors and hospitals and healthcare service providers.

    The key components of the project include

    • Health ID for every citizen that will also work as their health account, to which personal health records can be linked and viewed with the help of a mobile application,
    • Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR)
    • Healthcare Facilities Registries (HFR) that will act as a repository of all healthcare providers across both modern and traditional systems of medicine

    How will it work?

    • In order to be a part of the ABDM, citizens will have to create a unique health ID – a randomly generated 14-digit identification number.
    • The ID will give the user unique identification, authentication and will be a repository of all health records of a person.
    • The ID can also be made by self-registration on the portal, downloading the ABMD Health Records app on one’s mobile or at a participating health facility.
    • The beneficiary will also set up a Personal Health Records (PHR) address for the issue of consent, and for future sharing of health records.

    Major privacy issues involved

    • Informed Consent: The citizen’s consent is vital for all access. A beneficiary’s consent is vital to ensure that information is released.
    • Data leakages issue: Personalised data collected at multiple levels are a “sitting gold mine” for insurance companies, international researchers, and pharma companies.
    • Digital divide: Other experts add that lack of access to technology, poverty, and lack of understanding of the language in a vast and diverse country like India are problems that need to be looked into.
    • Data Migration: The data migration and inter-State transfer are still faced with multiple errors and shortcomings in addition to concerns of data security.

    Other challenges

    • Existing digitalization is yet incomplete: India has been unable to standardise the coverage and quality of the existing digital cards like One Nation One Ration card, PM-JAY card, Aadhaar card, etc., for accessibility of services and entitlements.
    • Lack of healthcare facilities: The defence of data security by expressed informed consent doesn’t work in a country that is plagued by the acute shortage of healthcare professionals to inform the client fully.
    • Lack of finance: With the minuscule spending of 1.3% of the GDP on the healthcare sector, India will be unable to ensure the quality and uniform access to healthcare that it hoped to bring about.

  • Election Symbols after Party Split

    The Election Commission of India (ECI) has frozen an election symbol of a political party in Bihar to which a cabinet minister belonged.

    What are the Election Commission’s powers in a dispute over the election symbol when a party splits?

    • The question of a split in a political party outside the legislature is dealt by Para 15 of the Symbols Order, 1968.
    • It states that the ECI may take into account all the available facts and circumstances and undertake a test of majority.
    • The decision of the ECI shall be binding on all such rival sections or groups emerged after the split.
    • This applies to disputes in recognised national and state parties.
    • For splits in registered but unrecognised parties, the EC usually advises the warring factions to resolve their differences internally or to approach the court.

    How did the EC deal with such matters before the Symbols Order came into effect?

    • Before 1968, the EC issued notifications and executive orders under the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961.
    • The most high-profile split of a party before 1968 was that of the CPI in 1964.
    • A breakaway group approached the ECI in December 1964 urging it to recognise them as CPI(Marxist). They provided a list of MPs and MLAs of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and West Bengal who supported them.
    • The ECI recognised the faction as CPI(M) after it found that the votes secured by the MPs and MLAs supporting the breakaway group added up to more than 4% in the 3 states.

    What was the first case decided under Para 15 of the 1968 Order?

    • It was the first split in the Indian National Congress in 1969.
    • Indira Gandhi’s tensions with a rival group within the party came to a head with the death of President Dr Zakir Hussain on May 3, 1969.

    Is there a way other than the test of majority to resolve a dispute over election symbols?

    • In almost all disputes decided by the EC so far, a clear majority of party delegates/office bearers, MPs and MLAs have supported one of the factions.
    • Whenever the EC could not test the strength of rival groups based on support within the party organisation (because of disputes regarding the list of office bearers), it fell back on testing the majority only among elected MPs and MLAs.

    What happens to the group that doesn’t get the parent party’s symbol?

    • The EC in 1997 did not recognise the new parties as either state or national parties.
    • It felt that merely having MPs and MLAs is not enough, as the elected representatives had fought and won polls on tickets of their parent (undivided) parties.
    • The EC introduced a new rule under which the splinter group of the party — other than the group that got the party symbol — had to register itself as a separate party.
    • It could lay claim to national or state party status only on the basis of its performance in state or central elections after registration.

     

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  • IAO Hanle: A promising astronomical observatory

    A new study shows that the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) located in Hanle is one of the emerging sites for infrared and optical astronomy studies.

    About IAO Hanle

    • The IAO, located in Hanle at Mount Saraswati near Leh in Ladakh, has one of the world’s highest located sites for optical, infrared and gamma-ray telescopes.
    • It was established in 2001 and is operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore.
    • It is currently the ninth highest optical telescope in the world, situated at an elevation of 4,500 meters.

    Note: University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO) located in the Atacama desert of Chile is the highest at an elevation of 5,640 m.

    Major telescopes at Hanle include:

    1. Himalayan Chandra Telescope (An optical-infrared telescope named after India-born Nobel laureate Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar)
    2. GROWTH-India Telescope (A robotic optical telescope)
    3. High Altitude Gamma Ray Telescope

    Distinct factors of IAO Hanle

    • IAO Hanle offers a clear view of space among all observatories globally.
    • This is due to its advantages of more clear nights, minimal light pollution, background aerosol concentration, extremely dry atmospheric condition and uninterrupted monsoon.
    • Hanle site is as dry as Atacama Desert in Chile and much drier than Devasthal and has around 270 clear nights in a year and is also one of the emerging sites for infrared and submillimetre optical astronomy.
    • This is because water vapor absorbs electromagnetic signals and reduces their strength.

     

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  • Langa-Manganiyar Folk Music

    Considered the repository of the Thar region’s rich history and traditional knowledge, the ballads, folklore and songs of the Langa-Manganiyar artistes are being preserved through an initiative for documentation and digitisation.

    Who are the Langa-Manganiyar?

    • The Langas and Manganiyars are hereditary communities of Muslim musicians residing mostly in western Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer and Barmer districts and in Pakistan’s Tharparkar and Sanghar districts in Sindh.
    • The music of the two marginalised communities, who were supported by wealthy landlords and merchants before Independence, forms a vital part of Thar desert’s cultural landscape.
    • The performances are in multiple languages and dialects including Marwari, Sindhi, Saraiki, Dhatti and Thareli.
    • The romantic tales revolving around legendary lovers such as Umar-Marvi, Heer-Ranjha, Sohni-Mahiwal, Moomal-Rana and Sorath-Rao Khangar have traditionally captivated audiences.

    Instruments used

    • The Langa’s main traditional instrument is the sindhi sarangi; Manganiyar’s is the kamaicha.
    • Both are bowed stringed instruments with skin membrane sounding boards and many sympathetic strings.
    • Both Langas and Manganiyars sing and play the dholak (double-headed barrel drum), the kartal(wooded clappers), the morchan (jaws harp), and the ubiquitous harmonium.

    Try answering this PYQ:

    Q. Consider the following pairs:

    Tradition: State

    1. Chapchar Kut: festival Mizoram
    2. Khongjom Parba ballad: Manipur
    3. Thang Ta dance: Sikkim

    Which of the pairs given above is/are correct?

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 1 and 2

    (c) 3 only

    (d) 2 and 3

     

    Post your answers here.

     

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  • Chola inscriptions on qualifications for civic officials

    In the Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu, some Chola-era inscriptions on Kanthaleeswarar Temple bear testimony to the qualifications required for members of the village administrative council.

    Inscription details: Kudavolai System

    • The Kudavolai system was very vital and unique feature of administration of villages of Cholas.
    • In the system one representative is elected from each ward and every village had 30 wards.
    • The village administrative committee was called as variyam.
    • The election was unique as names of contestants were written on palm leaf and put in a pot.

    Taxation details

    • The rulers were considerate while taxing agricultural produce.
    • For areca nuts, only 50% tax would be collected for the first 10 years after cultivation. Farmers would pay full tax only after the trees started yielding fruits.
    • Similarly, 50% tax was imposed on banana crops until the yield.

    Though a tough one, but try answering this PYQ:

    Q.In the context of the history of India, consider the following pairs:

    Term: Description

    1. Eripatti: Land revenue from which was set apart for the maintenance of the village tank
    2. Taniyurs: Villages donated to a single Brahmin or a group of Brahmins
    3. Ghatikas: Colleges generally attached to the temples

    Which of the pairs given above is/are correctly matched?

    (a) 1 and 2

    (b) 3 only

    (c) 2 and 3

    (d) 1 and 3

     

    Post your answers here.

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  • 4th October 2021 | Prelims Daily with Previous Year Questions

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  • Jagrati Awasthi (AIR 2) recommends the rich quality of Civildaily content for UPSC | Watch the interview | Speak directly with our mentor now

    Jagrati Awasthi (AIR 2) recommends the rich quality of Civildaily content for UPSC | Watch the interview | Speak directly with our mentor now

    We, at Civilsdaily, dedicate our work to our students, and we work hard every day to make sure our students get the best guidance and study material possible. Our efforts feel magical when our students succeed and share their views.

    Jagrati Awasthi, AIR 2, had an interview with a television channel about her success. And in that interview, she recommended Civilsdaily for preparation. She said that the content on Civilsdaily is rich and high quality. It helped her prepare better for Mains and succeed!

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  • Divyanshu Nigam, AIR 44, UPSC 2020 | I didn’t have any plan B and I trusted the process || UNHERD: Civilsdaily’s Toppers Talk Series (Link inside)

    Divyanshu Nigam, AIR 44, UPSC 2020 | I didn’t have any plan B and I trusted the process || UNHERD: Civilsdaily’s Toppers Talk Series (Link inside)

    Talk to Divyanshu’s UPSC Mentors- https://bit.ly/Free_One_to_One_Mentorship


    Divyanshu Nigam, Rank 44 in CSE, 2020. Did his B.Tech from BITS Pilani in Chemical Engineering. A thorough reader and interested in Reflective journalism. Let’s see some of the key points of this interaction and how Civilsdaily helped Divyanshu in his journey.

    Let’s hear more from the winner himself in the video.

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  • Over 80 Civilsdaily students became RANKERS in UPSC civil services 2020(30 in top 100)| YOU can be NEXT| New batch of Foundation 2022 Starting Oct 16th| Schedule your free mentorship call

    Over 80 Civilsdaily students became RANKERS in UPSC civil services 2020(30 in top 100)| YOU can be NEXT| New batch of Foundation 2022 Starting Oct 16th| Schedule your free mentorship call

    Civilsdaily helped over 80 aspirants become Rankers in the UPSC exam 2020!

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    1. It is a complete program for IAS 2022 which includes:
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    2. Priority-wise Coverage of subjects

    We are starting with the most important subjects from the exam perspective first. These are very predictable + have a very high return on investment. They need to be mastered if one has to have a shot at the exam. Polity, Modern History, and Economics. The lower priority ones follow afterward.

    3. Logical Division of Topics

    Subjects have been divided into topics that logically fit together. Eg. for Polity we ask you to prepare in 2 parts – first, till Central Government and second, from State Government and beyond. This division is not ad-hoc and does not break the flow of your studies.

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    We have divided the sources into 2 parts, Base Sources, and Advanced Sources. Base sources are those which you have to master. You should come to advanced sources only when you are thorough with the Base Sources.

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  • Join us on Live Webinar | Zoom Link Inside | How does an aspirant become a Topper? Sajal sir after mentoring 80+ rankers will reveal the secret

    Join us on Live Webinar | Zoom Link Inside | How does an aspirant become a Topper? Sajal sir after mentoring 80+ rankers will reveal the secret

    UPSC Results are out and I am very proud of working closely with more than 80 Rankers this year. 

    One thing I can surely say is that Every Topper is different. There cannot be any 1 single perfect strategy for cracking this exam. Every Topper followed a unique strategy to crack the exam. But all of them had something in common. They avoided certain fundamental mistakes which made their journey smoother and easier.

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    Register here for Sajal sir’s free webinar

    I will be conducting a webinar on Saturday 2nd October. Here are the things that you will learn after attending this webinar:

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  • Global Space Missions and Telescopes in News

    02th Oct 2021

     

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    NASA’s ICESat-2 maps Antarctic ice sheet melting

    ICESat-2 

    • NASA’s ICESat-2 launched less than three months ago has mapped melting ice sheets in Antarctica and the resulting sea level rise across the globe, which could help improve climate forecasts.
    • The ICESat-2 stands for Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 .
    • It is measuring the height of sea ice to within an inch, tracing the terrain of previously unmapped Antarctic valleys, surveying remote ice sheets, and peering through forest canopies and shallow coastal waters.
    • With each pass of the ICESat-2 satellite, the mission is adding to datasets tracking Earth’s rapidly changing ice.
    • As ICESat-2 orbits over the Antarctic Ice Sheet, the photon returns reflect from the surface and show high ice plateaus, crevasses in the ice 20 metres deep, and the sharp edges of ice shelves dropping into the ocean.

    Unified Geologic Map of the Moon

    • The first-ever digital, unified, global, geological map of the moon was released virtually by the  United States Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute.
    • The UGM will serve as a blueprint for future human missions and a source of research and analysis for the educators and the general public interested in lunar geology.
    • The map is a ‘seamless, globally consistent, 1:5,000,000-scale geologic map’.
    • The mapped surface features of the moon included crater rim crests, buried crater rim crests, fissures, grabens, scarps, mare wrinkle ridges, faults, troughs, rilles, and lineaments.

    Its’ significance

    • The moon’s South Pole is especially interesting because the area is much larger than the North Pole and there could be a possibility of the presence of water in these permanently shadowed areas.
    • Further, the South Pole region also contains the fossil record of the early Solar System.
    • These present and future moon missions’ success can be further helped by the digital map of the moon.
    • The Chandrayaan 2, an active mission also targets the Lunar South Pole for exploration

    GRACE-FO Mission

    • The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission is a partnership between NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ).
    • GRACE-FO is a successor to the original GRACE mission, which orbited Earth from 2002-2017.
    • It carries on the extremely successful work of its predecessor while testing a new technology designed to dramatically improve the already remarkable precision of its measurement system.

    Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs)

    • FRBs are super intense, millisecond-long bursts of radio waves produced by unidentified sources in the space.
    • Their discovery in 2007 by American astronomer Duncan Lorimer led to the term ‘Lorimer Bursts’.
    • Since then, just a few dozen similar events have been observed in data collected by radio telescopes around the world, building evidence that points to a variety of potential causes.
    • Only a handful of emissions have been traced to specific areas of the sky, indicating sources in other galaxies.
    • The flash of radio waves is incredibly bright if distant, comparable to the power released by hundreds of millions of suns in just a few milliseconds.
    • This intensity suggests powerful objects like black holes and neutron stars could be involved.
    • The events were once considered to be largely transient – they seemed to happen once, without obvious signs of a repeat emission. However, a number of such bursts have been identified since then.

    Why are they significant?

    • First noticed in 2018 by the Canadian observatory the waves have created ripples across the globe for one reason — they arrive in a pattern.
    • This gave birth to theories that they could be from an alien civilization.
    • Initially, it was believed that the collision of black holes or neutron stars triggers them.
    • But the discovery of repeating FRBs debunked the theory of colliding objects.

    NASA’s new Mars rover: Perseverance

    • The Perseverance rover weighs less than 2,300 pounds and is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.
    • The rover’s mission will be to search for signs of past microbial life. It will also collect samples of Martian rocks and dust, according to the release.
    • The rover will also be tasked with studying the red planet’s geology and climate.
    • All of NASA’s previous Mars rovers — including the Sojourner (1997), Spirit and Opportunity (2004) and Curiosity (exploring Mars since 2012) — were named in this way.

    2020 CD3

    • The mini-moon was discovered by some astronomers at NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) in Arizona.
    • It is actually an asteroid, about the size of a car; its diameter is about 1.9-3.5 m.
    • And unlike our permanent Moon, the mini-moon is temporary; it will eventually break free of Earth’s orbit and go off on its own way.
    • Orbit integrations indicate that this object is temporarily bound to the Earth.
    • 2020 CD3 was captured into Earth’s orbit over three years ago.
    • For CSS, it is only the second such discovery. It previously discovered 2006 RH120, which orbited Earth for some time that year, before it escaped in 2007.

    NASA’s InSight Mission

    • The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars.
    • It is the first mission dedicated to looking deep beneath the Martian surface.
    • Among its science tools are a seismometer for detecting quakes, sensors for gauging wind and air pressure, a magnetometer, and a heat flow probe designed to take the planet’s temperature.
    • The InSight mission is part of NASA’s Discovery Program.
    • It is being supported by a number of European partners, which include France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA).

    Habitable-zone Planet Finder

    • NASA’s Kepler mission observed a dip in the host star’s light, suggesting that the planet was crossing in front of the star during its orbit.
    • To confirm, researchers turned to an instrument called Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF). It has confirmed that there is indeed an exoplanet.
    • HPF is an astronomical spectrograph, built by Penn State University scientists, and recently installed on the 10m Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas.
    • The instrument is designed to detect and characterize planets in the habitable zone — the region around the star where a planet could sustain liquid water on its surface — around nearby low-mass stars.
    • The newly confirmed planet, called G 9-40b, is the first one validated by HPF. It is about twice the size of Earth and orbits its star once every six Earth-days.

     Betelgeuse

    • Using the European Space Organization’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have noticed the unprecedented dimming of Betelgeuse.
    • It is a red supergiant star (over 20 times bigger than the Sun) in the constellation Orion.
    • Along with the dimming, the star’s shape has been changing as well, as per recent photographs of the star taken using the VISIR instrument on the VLT.
    • Instead of appearing round, the star now appears to be “squashed into an ova”.

    NASA announced it has selected four Discovery Program investigations to develop concept studies for possible new missions.

    What are the new missions?

    • Two proposals are for trips to Venus, and one each is for Jupiter’s moon Io and Neptune’s moon Triton.
    • After the concept studies are completed in nine months, some missions ultimately may not be chosen to move forward.

    DAVINCI+

    • DAVINCI+ stands for Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus.
    • This will analyse Venus’s atmosphere to understand how it was formed and evolved, and if it ever had an ocean.
    • This will advance understanding of the formation of terrestrial planets.

    IVO

    • Io Volcano Observer is a proposal to explore Jupiter’s moon Io, which is extremely volcanically active.
    • This will try to find out how tidal forces shape planetary bodies.
    • The findings could further knowledge about the formation and evolution of rocky, terrestrial bodies and icy ocean worlds in the Solar System.

    TRIDENT

    This aims to explore Neptune’s icy moon, Triton, so that scientists can understand the development of habitable worlds in the Solar System.

    VERITAS

    Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy will aim to map Venus’s surface to find out why Venus developed so differently from Earth.

    Pale Blue Dot

    • The ‘Pale Blue Dot’ is one of the most iconic images in the history of astronomy.
    • It shows Earth as a single bright blue pixel in empty space within a strand of sun rays, some of which are scattering from and enlightening the planet.
    • The original image was taken by the Voyager 1 mission spacecraft on February 14, 1990 when it was just beyond Saturn.
    • At the behest of astronomer Carl Sagan, the cameras were turned towards Earth one final time to capture the image.
    • After this, the cameras and other instruments on the craft were turned off to ensure its longevity.

    About Voyager 1

    • Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977.
    • Having operated for more than 42 years, the spacecraft still communicates with the Deep Space Network to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth.
    • At a distance of 148.67 AU (22.2 billion km) from Earth as of January 19, 2020 it is the most distant man-made object from Earth.
    • The probe’s objectives included flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

    The Family Portrait of the Solar System

    • The Pale blue dot image was a part of a series of 60 images designed to produce what the mission called the ‘Family Portrait of the Solar System’.
    • This sequence of camera-pointing commands returned images of six of the solar system’s planets, as well as the Sun.

    Solar Orbiter (SolO) Probe

    • The Solar Orbiter, a collaborative mission between the European Space Agency and NASA to study the Sun, took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
    • Carrying four in situ instruments and six remote-sensing imagers, the Solar Orbiter (called SolO) will face the sun at approximately 42 million kilometres from its surface.
    • Before SolO, all solar imaging instruments have been within the ecliptic plane, in which all planets orbit and which is aligned with the sun’s equator.
    • The new spacecraft will use the gravity of Venus and Earth to swing itself out of the ecliptic plane, passing inside the orbit of Mercury, and will be able to get a bird’s eye view of the sun’s poles for the first time.

    Spitzer Space Telescope

    • The Spitzer Space Telescope is a space-borne observatory, one of the elements of NASA’s Great Observatories that include the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray.
    • Using different infrared wavelengths, Spitzer was able to see and reveal features of the universe including objects that were too cold to emit visible light.
    • Apart from enabling researchers to see distant cold objects, Spitzer could also see through large amounts of gas using infrared wavelengths to find objects that may otherwise have been invisible to human beings.
    • These included exoplanets, brown dwarfs and cold matter found in the space between stars.
    • Spitzer was originally built to last for a minimum of 2.5 years, but it lasted in the “cold” phase for over 5.5 years. On May 15, 2009 the coolant was finally depleted and the “warm mission” began.

    Thirty Metre Telescope

    • The TMT is a proposed astronomical observatory with an extremely large telescope (ELT) that has become the source of controversy over its planned location on Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii in the US state of Hawaii.
    • It is being built by an international collaboration of government organisations and educational institutions, at a cost of $1.4 billion.
    • “Thirty Metre” refers to the 30-metre diameter of the mirror, with 492 segments of glass pieced together, which makes it three times as wide as the world’s largest existing visible-light telescope.
    • The larger the mirror, the more light a telescope can collect, which means, in turn, that it can “see” farther, fainter objects.
    • It would be more than 200 times more sensitive than current telescopes and would be able to resolve objects 12 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope.

    Artemis Mission

    • In 2011, NASA began the ARTEMIS (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence, and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun) mission using a pair of repurposed spacecraft and in 2012 the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft studied the Moon’s gravity.
    • For the program, NASA’s new rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) will send astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft a quarter of a million miles away from Earth to the lunar orbit.
    • The astronauts going for the Artemis program will wear newly designed spacesuits, called Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU.
    • These spacesuits feature advanced mobility and communications and interchangeable parts that can be configured for spacewalks in microgravity or on a planetary surface.

    Bhibha Constellation and Santamasa Planet

    Bhibha

    • The star has been named in honour of a pioneering Indian woman scientist Bibha Choudhury, who discovered subatomic particle, pi-meson.
    • ‘Bhibha’ also means “a bright beam of light” in Bengali.
    • It is located in the constellation of Sextans. It is as hot as the sun, with a surface temperature of about 6,000 degrees Kelvin. It is 1.55 times bigger, 1.21 times massive, and 1.75 times brighter.
    • It is so far away that light from it takes 310.93 years to reach Earth and hence it is visible only with a telescope.

    Santamasa

    • The planet has been named S’antamasa’ to reflect the cloudy nature of its atmosphere. ‘Santamasa’ is the Sanskrit term for ‘clouded’.
    • ‘Santamasa’, which is its only planet, is estimated to have a mass of 1.5 times that of Jupiter, going around the central star in a nearly circular orbit just in 2.1375 days.
    • Revolving so near the host star, the planet is expected to be very hot.

    Arrokoth

    • The International Astronomical Union and Minor Planets Center, the global body for naming Kuiper Belt objects have given this name.
    • It was discovered in 2014 with the Hubble Space Telescope, which is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
    • Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by the snowman figured ice mass in December 2018, some 1.6 billion kilometres beyond Pluto.
    • The New Horizons team of NASA proposed the name to the International Astronomical Union and Minor Planets Center.
    • For the New Horizons team it took some months to finalise this name. In the language of the Powhatan tribe, Arrokoth means “sky”.
    • The team got the approval from the elders of the Powhatan tribe to assign it to their newfound “baby”.

    About New Horizons mission

    • NASA launched the New Horizons mission in January 2006.
    • After crossing by Pluto in 2015, in 2019 it flew by Arrokoth. This remains the “farthest flyby ever conducted.”

    Maxwell

    • The Maxwell is the latest in a line of experimental aircraft the NASA.
    • It has been developed over many decades for many purposes, including the bullet-shaped Bell X-1 that first broke the sound barrier and the X-15 rocket plane flown by Neil Armstrong before he joined the Apollo moon team.
    • The two largest of 14 electric motors that will ultimately propel the plane are powered by specially designed lithium ion batteries.
    • The Maxwell will be the agency’s first crewed X-plane to be developed in two decades.
    • The lift propellers will be activated for take-off and landings, but retract during the flight’s cruise phase.

    Voyager 2

    • Voyager 2 was launched in 1977, 16 days before Voyager 1, and both have travelled well beyond their original destinations.
    • The spacecraft were built to last five years and conduct close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn.
    • As the spacecraft flew across the solar system, remote-control reprogramming was used to endow the Voyagers with greater capabilities than they possessed when they left Earth.
    • It carries a working instrument that will provide first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space.
    • It is slightly more than 18 billion kilometres from Earth. Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012.
    • Their five-year lifespans have stretched to 41 years, making Voyager 2 NASA’s longest-running mission.

    Ionospheric Connection Explorer

    • NASA has launched a satellite to explore the mysterious, dynamic region where air meets space.
    • The satellite — called ICON, short for Ionospheric Connection Explorer — rocketed into orbit following a two-year delay.
    • The refrigerator-size ICON satellite will study the airglow formed from gases in the ionosphere and also measure the charged environment right around the spacecraft which is at a level of 580 kilometres above the Earth’s surface.
    • The ionosphere is the charged part of the upper atmosphere extending several hundred miles (kilometres) up.
    • It’s in constant flux as space weather bombards it from above and Earth weather from below, sometimes disrupting radio communications.

    Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)

    • The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite missions began on June 18, 2009.
    • It is a robotic spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon.
    • It studies the Moon’s surface, clicks pictures, and collects data that help in figuring out the presence and possibility of water ice and other resources on the Moon, as well as plan future missions to it.
    • The primary mission of the LRO, managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, located in Greenbelt, Maryland, was to measure the entire lunar surface to create a high-resolution 3-D map of the Moon.
    • The map with ~50-centimeter resolution images would aid in the planning of future robotic and crewed missions.
    • In addition, LRO would map the Polar Regions and search for the presence of water ice

    K2-18b

    • About 110 light years from Earth, an exoplanet eight times the mass of Earth orbits a star. Called K2-18b, it was discovered in 2015 by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.
    • The researchers used 2016-17 data from the Hubble Space Telescope and developed algorithms to analyse the starlight filtered through K2-18b’s atmosphere.
    • The results revealed the molecular signature of water vapour, also indicating the presence of hydrogen and helium in the planet’s atmosphere.
    • It resides in a habitable zone — the region around a star in which liquid water could potentially pool on the surface of a rocky planet.
    • Scientists have found signatures of water vapour in the atmosphere of K2-18b. The discovery of water vapour is not the final word on the possibility of life.
    • That makes it the only planet orbiting a star outside the Solar System that is known to have both water and temperatures that could support life.

    Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment (AIDA)

    • It is an ambitious double-spacecraft mission to deflect an asteroid in space, to prove the technique as a viable method of planetary defence.
    • The mission, which includes NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), is known as the Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment (AIDA).
    • The target is the smaller of two bodies in the “double Didymos asteroids” that are in orbit between Earth and Mars.
    • Didymos is a near-Earth asteroid system. Its main body measures about 780 m across; the smaller body is a “moonlet” about 160 m in diameter.
    • The project aims to deflect the orbit of the smaller body through an impact by one spacecraft.
    • Then a second spacecraft will survey the crash site and gather the maximum possible data on the effect of this collision.

    Parker Solar Probe

    • It is part of NASA’s “Living with a Star” programme that explores different aspects of the Sun-Earth system.
    • The probe seeks to gather information about the Sun’s atmosphere and NASA says that it “will revolutionise our understanding of the Sun”.
    • It is also the closest a human-made object has ever gone to the Sun.
    • During the spacecraft’s first two solar encounters, the instruments were turned on when Parker was about 0.25 AU from the Sun and powered off again at the same distance on the outbound side of the orbit.
    • For this third solar encounter, the mission team turned on the instruments when the spacecraft was around 0.45 AU from the Sun on the inbound side of its orbit.
    • It will turn them off when the spacecraft is about 0.5 AU from the Sun on the outbound side.

    TOI 270

    • It is the name of the dwarf star and the planetary system recently discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
    • TOI 270 is about 73 light years away from Earth, and is located in the constellation Pictor.
    • Its members include the dwarf star, which is 40 per cent smaller than the Sun in size and mass, and the three planets or exoplanets (planets outside the solar system) that have been named TOI 270 b, TOI 270 c, and TOI 270 d.
    • These three planets orbit the star every 3.4 days, 5.7 days, and 11.4 days respectively. In this system, TOI 270 b is the innermost planet.

    About Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

    • TESS is NASA’s latest satellite to search for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.
    • The mission will spend the next two years monitoring the nearest and brightest stars for periodic dips in their light.
    • TESS is expected to transmit its first series of science data back to Earth in August, and thereafter periodically every 13.5 days, once per orbit, as the spacecraft makes it closest approach to Earth.
    • These events, called transits, suggest that a planet may be passing in front of its star.
    • TESS is expected to find thousands of planets using this method, some of which could potentially support life.

    Tiangong-2

    • Tiangong means “Heavenly Palace”. It was 10.4 metres long and 3.35 metres wide at its widest point, and weighed 8.6 metric tonnes.
    • It was launched on September 15, 2016 and, in late 2016, hosted two Chinese astronauts for 30 days in what was China’s longest manned space mission so far.
    • The recently decommissioned space lab followed the Tiangong-1, China’s first space station, which crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean on April 1, 2018 after Chinese scientists lost control of the spacecraft.
    • China had launched Tiangong-1 in 2011 as proof-of-concept of technologies for future stations. The lab was visited by two teams of Chinese astronauts for 11 days and 13 days respectively.

    About Hayabusa2

    • Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which successfully made its second touchdown on asteroid Ryugu has become the first ever space probe to gather material from beneath the surface of an asteroid.
    • Launched in December 2014, the probe is a follow-up of Hayabusa, which explored the asteroid Itokawa in 2005.
    • Hayabusa was the first mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth.
    • The asteroid mission first reached Ryugu — a kilometre-wide asteroid, with a relatively dark surface and almost zero gravity — in June 2018 and made its first touchdown on the surface in February 2019.
    • A month later the spacecraft hit the surface of Ryugu with a pellet and created a 10-metre-wide crater.
    • It also exposed the materials under the asteroid’s surface that were so far protected from the harsh effects of cosmic rays and charged particles of solar wind blasting through space.

    About PUNCH Mission

    • NASA has selected an US-based Indian researcher to lead its PUNCH mission which will image the Sun.
    • PUNCH stands for “Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere,” is focused on understanding the transition of particles from the Sun’s outer corona to the solar wind that fills interplanetary space.
    • It will consist of a constellation of four microsatellites that through continuous 3D deep-field imaging, will observe the corona and heliosphere as elements of a single, connected system.
    • This is a landmark mission will image regions beyond the Sun’s outer corona.
    • The Sun and the solar wind are one interconnected system, but these have until recently been studied using entirely different technologies and scientific approaches.

    Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) Telescope

    • The telescope will be launched into space on a Russian-built Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in June 2019.
    • The four-year mission will survey the entire sky eight times and track the evolution of the universe and dark energy, a mysterious repulsive force that is accelerating its expansion.
    • Besides, it also aims to detect up to three million supermassive black holes — many of which are unknown — and X-rays from as many as 700,000 stars in the Milky Way.
    • The telescope is the first to be sensitive to high-energy ‘hard’ X-rays and map the entire sky.
    • The SRG will also find how dark matter — the main engine of galaxy formation — is spread in the universe.
    • X-ray sky surveys have also been conducted by previous missions, but they were not able to map the entire sky, the report said.

    MeerLICTH Optical Telescope

    • Scientists in South Africa have launched the world’s first optical telescope linked to a radio telescope, combining “eyes and ears” to try to unravel the secrets of the universe.
    • The latest move combines the new optical telescope MeerLITCH — Dutch for ‘more light’ — with the recently-completed 64-dish MeerKAT radio telescope, located 200 kilometres away.
    • This is the eye, with the MeerKAT being the ears as a radio telescope.
    • The MeerLITCH uses a main mirror just 65 cm in diameter and a single 100 megapixel detector measuring 10 cm x 10 cm.
    • Astronomers have previously had to wait for a cosmic incident to be picked up by a radio telescope and then carry out optic observations afterwards.
    • The project has been six years in the making by a joint-team of South African, Dutch and British scientists.

    Ultima Thule

    • NASA has found evidence for a unique mixture of methanol, water ice, and organic molecules on Ultima Thule’s surface — the farthest world ever explored by mankind.
    • Ultima Thule is a contact binary, with two distinctly differently shaped lobes.
    • At about 36 kilometres long, it consists of a large, strangely flat lobe — nicknamed “Ultima” — connected to a smaller, somewhat rounder lobe — dubbed “Thule” — at a juncture.
    • Officially named (486958) 2014 MU69, it earned the nickname Ultima Thule following a public contest in 2018.
    • It is located in the Kuiper Belt, a disc in the outer Solar System (beyond Neptune) that consists of small bodies including Pluto.
    • 2014 MU69 was discovered in June 2014 by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope but is so distant that many of its characteristics remain to be understood.

    About the mission

    • New Horizons, a space probe that was launched in 2006, became the first mission to visit Pluto in 2015.
    • Travelling farther into the Kuiper Belt, the nuclear-powered space probe has come within 3,500 km of Ultima Thule.
    • Images taken revealed that the object may have a shape similar to a bowling pin, or a “snowman”, or a peanut spinning end over end, or could be two objects orbiting each other.
    • Flyby data showed that Ultima Thule is spinning like a propeller with the axis pointing approximately toward New Horizons.
    • NASA released a composite of two images taken by New Horizons’ high-resolution Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager.

    Chang’e-4

    • In January, the Chinese spacecraft Chang’e-4 — named after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology — became the first ever craft to touch down on the far side of the lunar surface.
    • The team landed its probe in the Von Karmen Crater in the Aitken Basin at the Moon’s south pole — home to one of the largest impact craters known in the solar system.
    • Scientists have said they could be a step closer to solving the riddle behind the Moon’s formation, unveiling the most detailed survey yet of the far side of Earth’s satellite.

    Cassini Mission

    • Launched in 1997, the Cassini mission is a cooperation between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
    • It has sent back thousands of stunning images and made numerous discoveries about the ringed planet and its moons.
    • Cassini–Huygens is an unmanned spacecraft sent to the planet Saturn.
    • Cassini is the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter orbit. Its design includes a Saturn orbiter and a lander for the moon Titan.
    • The lander, called Huygens, landed on Titan in 2005.

    China’s BeiDou navigation satellite, a rival to US GPS, starts global services

    • China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), touted as a rival to the widely-used American GPS, has started providing global services.

    BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS)

    • Named after the Chinese term for the ‘Big Dipper’, the BeiDou system started serving China in 2000 and the Asia-Pacific region in 2012.
    • It will be the fourth global satellite navigation system after the US GPS, Russia’s GLONASS and the European Union’s Galileo.
    • The positioning accuracy of the system has reached 10 metres globally and five metres in the Asia-Pacific region.
    • Its velocity accuracy is 0.2 metres per second, while its timing accuracy stands at 20 nanoseconds, he said.
    • Pakistan has become the first country to use the BeiDou system ending its reliance on the Global Positioning System (GPS).

    GRAPES-3 Experiment

    • For the first time in the world, researchers at the GRAPES-3 muon telescope facility in Ooty have measured the electrical potential, size and height of a thundercloud that passed overhead on December 1, 2014.
    • GRAPES-3 (Gamma Ray Astronomy PeV EnergieS phase-3) is designed to study cosmic rays with an array of air shower detectors and a large area muon detector.
    • It aims to probe acceleration of cosmic rays in the following four astrophysical settings.
    • It is located at Ooty in India and started as a collaboration of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India and the Osaka City University, Osaka, Japan.

    Asteroid ‘99942 Apophis’

    • On April 13, 2019, a near-Earth asteroid will cruise by Earth, about 31,000 km above the surface.
    • The asteroid, called 99942 Apophis, is 340 m wide.
    • At one point, it will travel more than the width of the full Moon within a minute and it will get as bright as the stars in the Little Dipper, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
    • It is rare for an asteroid this size to pass by Earth so close.
    • Although scientists have spotted small asteroids, on the order of 5-10 metres, flying by Earth at a similar distance, asteroids the size of Apophis are far fewer in number and so do not pass this close to Earth as often.
    • Among potential lessons from Apophis, scientists are hoping they can use its flyby to learn about an asteroid’s interior.
    • Apophis is one of about 2,000 currently known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, and scientists also hope their observations might help gain important scientific knowledge that could one day be used for planetary defence.

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  • Khadi industry in India

    Context

    The Prime Minister has repeatedly stressed his support for khadi, cottage industries, crafts and handlooms.

    About Khadi

    • Genuine khadi or khaddar is woven from short-stapled organically grown cotton.
    • The beauty is in its uneven texture and colours, as cotton bolls are not all pure white in every region.
    • Fabrics being made today in the name of khadi are modified spin-offs that look more like handloom fabric, with mill-produced yarn, screen printed and often mixed with mill-made polyester.

    Issues

    • Restriction of scope: According to the Khadi Mark Regulations (KMR) of 2013, no textile can be sold or otherwise traded by any person or institution as khadi or a khadi product in any form if the khadi mark tag issued by KVIC is missing.
    • This restricts the scope of trade to a few approved entities, thereby creating recognisable barriers to enter the market for khadi.
    • Restrictive certification process: The certification process described in Chapter V (Clause 20 (a)) of the KMR requires accredited agencies to perform an on-site verification of hand-spinning and hand-weaving processes.”
    • Yarn must be procured only from KVIC depots or the Cotton Corporation of India, descriptions of mechanisation and electrification are ambiguous.
    • There are so many restrictions that most producers have no incentive and many small bodies are unable to pay Rs 50,000 for certification.
    • Multiple authorities: Hand-spinning and weaving are also part of craft skills. Only the hand-spun part is additional in khadi.
    • But today KVIC, on its website and in its catalogue, has visibly non-hand-spun silk-printed saris, polyester fabrics and others that seem clearly machine-printed.
    • The KVIC online catalogue has products like industrially-made suitcases, bags and wallets which are under MSME, but with a “khadi” label.
    • This points to the need for bringing khadi and all handicrafts together in one ministry.

    Conclusion

    Gandhi did not intend to create a police state for the khadi sector, full of acts and rules that put production in a straitjacket. Perhaps, some courageous producers can try circumventing all this by using the word “khaddar” on their labels instead.

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  • Final Call | Registrations to Close in 2 Hrs | Journey from an Aspirant to a Topper | Sajal sir sharing secret after mentoring 80+ rankers | Join the Webinar Today at 7 PM

    Final Call | Registrations to Close in 2 Hrs | Journey from an Aspirant to a Topper | Sajal sir sharing secret after mentoring 80+ rankers | Join the Webinar Today at 7 PM

    UPSC Results are out and I am very proud of working closely with more than 80 Rankers this year. 

    One thing I can surely say is that Every Topper is different. There cannot be any 1 single perfect strategy for cracking this exam. Every Topper followed a unique strategy to crack the exam. But all of them had something in common. They avoided certain fundamental mistakes which made their journey smoother and easier.

    Every Topper will tell their own Story and Strategy but that particular strategy might work for someone and may not work for someone else. Having closely worked with more than 200 rankers in the last 4 years, I have identified certain common qualities which are shown by almost every ranker I have worked with. These Qualities are not guaranteeing success but certainly, they would improve your chances of cracking the UPSC exam.

    Register here for Sajal sir’s free webinar

    I will be conducting a webinar on Saturday 2nd October. Here are the things that you will learn after attending this webinar:

    1. Mistakes that have been avoided by the toppers

    2. Case Study of various toppers (How did they improve over time )

    3. Thorough analysis of Toppers copy 

    4. How to utilize the last 240 remaining for the 2022 exam effectively

    5. When to begin your prelims preparation?

    6. How much time needs to be spent on Optionals and Answer writing

    7. Importance of Structure and Presentation in getting high marks in UPSC GS mains

    8. Open Q&A session with Participants

    Date – 2/10/2021 (Saturday)

    Time – 7 p.m.

    REGISTER HERE FOR SAJAL SIR’S FREE WEBINAR

    About Sajal Sir

    He is the Core Faculty at CD. An economics Post-Graduate, He had scored the highest marks in GS Mains in the 2017 UPSC exam, and under his guidance, more than 80 students cracked the UPSC exam in 2020.

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  • Do we need to count caste in census?

    • A continuous and unabated push towards including caste in the forthcoming census enumeration has finally ended with the Union government position into the Supreme Court.
    • The Centre had decided as a matter of policy not to enumerate caste-wise population other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

    Must read:

    Complex count: On caste census

    Existing issue: Delay in the Census itself

    • That a decadal exercise has faced discontinuation with the pandemic is damaging enough, which will require reconstruction for the year 2021.
    • We are also not sure how the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, who could not conduct the census on time, will be able to add any other additional questions including enumeration of caste.
    • The Election Commission did its job in conducting elections during Covid-19 but not the Census Commissioner.

    Why caste cannot be included at this hour?

    • In the midst of an uncertain environment, conducting a census is unavoidable since it is not an overnight exercise.
    • Imposing the collection of caste information may dilute the exercise at the very least and send wrong signals regarding its purpose.

    Why we should let the Census go its way?

    There need to be sincere efforts towards putting systems in place in context to the Census.

    (a) Population Enumeration

    • There is a need conduct the population enumeration at the earliest and providing an update of India’s population dynamics in comparable terms to be read against the past.
    • The absence of population enumeration and its discontinuation can have implications for gauging the evolving changes as well as its prospects.

    (b) Age-sex composition

    • Census offer some tentative clues towards the age-sex composition of the population under varying sets of assumptions.
    • Besides, it offers more detailed information — on households, assets, marital status, education, migration etc since the last census of 2011.
    • Moreover it would provide accurate data about India’s large chunk of population which is ageing.

    (c) Impact of the Pandemic

    • A decade of rapid fertility declines and rising mobility needs serious assessment in terms of its impact on the population dynamics.
    • In the absence of any clue regarding population, together with a pandemic with its devastating course of fatalities, the need for a population enumeration is all the more urgent.
    • Estimated and projected numbers can serve as approximations to the extent of the assumptions being realistic and accurate.

    (d) Planning for the next FYP

    • A 14th five-year plan being in the offing makes it a crucial year to have the real numbers towards making the planning exercise effective.
    • Preparing our human capital of quality and adaptability to the emerging labour market is the need of the hour, and at the same time.

    Impediments created by including Caste

    An attribute like caste being obtained in a census exercise makes matters complex on multiple grounds such as:

    • Caste within Caste: Given the differences in caste hierarchies across various regions of the country, a comparative reading along with generating a common hierarchy may be a challenge.
    • Caste over occupation linked predicaments: Further, caste linked deprivation or adversity may not be as common as occupation linked predicaments, which become easier to compare across states/regions.
    • Anonymity and bias: An intimate and personalised attribute like caste may have its differential exposition between urban and rural residents. Urban residents’ need for anonymity can always bias the reporting on caste.
    • Identity crisis: Above all, recognition and adherence to caste identity is to a large extent shaped by progressive ideals, cosmopolitanism and education, which has its own regional divide in the country between the north and the south.

    Other concerns

    • Accuracy of reporting: With such complexities associated with divulging caste identity, one cannot be sure of its accuracy in reporting on the one hand and the possible bias linked to other attributes on the other.
    • Existing status-quo: The attributes obtained in the census like age, sex, residence, occupation and religion in themselves have not received adequate exploration to add to the understanding of differential population dynamics.
    • Non-intervention: Considering caste with its wide-ranging count as another fresh attribute may not be of worth as neither will it offer sensible outcome differences nor facilitate identification for intervention.

    Way forward

    • The census enumeration should be a priority and the proposed digital enumeration should become more effective in generating required data of quality and accuracy.
    • The upcoming census is certain to reveal interesting realities of population dynamics that go beyond the narrow and regressive outlook of the caste count to help gauge the transformation in human capital.

    Conclusion

    • In fact, attributes like caste and religion that are not modifiable should be less important compared to modifiable attributes like education, occupation and other endowment linked attributes.
    • Hence, the moral lies in rising above ascribed attributes in defining outcomes to that of achieved ones.
    • Such an approach has a dual advantage of gauging distribution across attributes as well as their response to outcomes.

     

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  • 2nd phase of SBM-U and AMRUT Mission

    The PM has launched the second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation.

    What are the missions?

    [A] Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0

    The Mission will focus on ensuring complete access to sanitation facilities to serve additional populations migrating from rural to urban areas in search of employment and better opportunities over the next 5 years.

    • Complete liquid waste management in cities in less than 1 lakh population to ensure that all wastewater is safely contained, collected, transported, and treated so that no wastewater pollutes our water bodies.
    • Source segregation- Under Sustainable Solid Waste Management, greater emphasis will be on source segregation.
    • Material Recovery Facilities and waste processing facilities will be set up, with a focus on phasing out single-use plastic.
    • Construction & demolition waste processing facilities will be set up.
    • Mechanical sweepers deployed in National Clean Air Programme cities and in cities with more than 5 lakh population.
    • Remediation of all legacy dumpsites will be another key component of the Mission.

    [B] AMRUT 2.0

    • Water management: It will build upon the progress of AMRUT to address water needs, rejuvenate water bodies, better manage aquifers, reuse treated wastewater, thereby promoting circular economy of water.
    • Water supply: It would provide100% coverage of water supply to all households in around 4,700 ULBs.
    • Sewerage: It will provide 100% coverage of sewerage and septage in 500 AMRUT cities.
    • Rejuvenation of water bodies and urban aquifer management: It will be undertaken to augment sustainable fresh water supply.
    • Recycle and reuse of treated wastewater: It is expected to cater to 20% of total water needs of the cities and 40% of industrial demand.
    • Pey Jal Survekshan: It will be conducted in cities to ascertain equitable distribution of water, reuse of wastewater and mapping of water bodies.

    Back2Basics:

    All about the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

     

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  • GST collections hit 5-month high

    India’s gross Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenues crossed ₹1.17 lakh crore in September, hitting a five-month high.

    Take a look towards the share of GST in government earnings for the previous fiscal:

    UPSC can ask about the majority component of the Revenue Receipts of the govt. See how Corporate tax is nearing the GST revenues.

    Do you think it will surpass GST revenue when the economy is fully recovered?

    What is the news?

    • September’s revenues were 23% higher than a year ago and 27.3% more than collections in the pre-pandemic month of September 2019.
    • Revenues from import of goods were 30% higher while indirect tax collected on domestic transactions, including the import of services, were 20% higher in September, compared to the same month in 2020.
    • Among the major States, GST revenues grew 29% in Karnataka, 28% in Gujarat, followed by 22% in Maharashtra and 21% each in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
    • Telangana recorded a 25% surge in revenues, while Odisha saw a sharper 40% rise.

    Significance

    • This clearly indicates that the economy is recovering at a fast pace.
    • Coupled with economic growth, anti-evasion activities, especially action against fake billers have also been contributing to the enhanced GST collections.
    • It is expected that the positive trend in the revenues will continue and the second half of the year will post higher revenues.

    Issues underlying

    • Though GST revenues are picking up pace after the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, revenue buoyancy under GST is being seen as a concern.
    • This is especially after the legally mandated compensation to states for revenue shortfall from the GST implementation comes to an end in June 2022.

    Back2Basics: Goods and Services Tax

    • The GST is a value-added tax levied on most goods and services sold for domestic consumption.
    • It was launched into operation on the midnight of 1st July 2017.
    • It subsumed almost all domestic indirect taxes (petroleum, alcoholic beverages, and stamp duty are the major exceptions) under one head.
    • The GST is paid by consumers, but it is remitted to the government by the businesses selling the goods and services.
    • GST is levied at four rates viz. 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%. The schedule or list of items that would fall under these multiple slabs is worked out by the GST council.

    Types

    • The GST to be levied by the Centre is called Central GST (CGST) and that to be levied by the States is called State GST (SGST).
    • Import of goods or services would be treated as inter-state supplies and would be subject to Integrated Goods & Services Tax (IGST) in addition to the applicable customs duties.

    The GST Council

    • It is a constitutional body (Article 279A) for making recommendations to the Union and State Government on issues related to GST.
    • The GST Council is chaired by the Union Finance Minister and other members are the Union State Minister of Revenue or Finance and Ministers in charge of Finance or Taxation of all the States.
    • It is considered as a federal body where both the centre and the states get due representation.

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