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Subject: Governance

Important aspects of Society

  • What is the National Health ID System?

    In his address to the nation on Independence Day, the PM has launched the National Digital Health Mission which rolls out a national health ID for every Indian.

    Try this question for mains:

    Q.What is the National Health ID System? How will it benefit transforming healthcare facilities in India?

    National Health ID System

    • This system finds its roots in a 2018 NITI Aayog proposal to create a centralised mechanism to uniquely identify every participating user in the National Health Stack.
    • It will be a repository of all health-related information of a person.
    • According to the National Health Authority (NHA), every patient who wishes to have their health records available digitally must start by creating a Health ID.
    • Each Health ID will be linked to a health data consent manager — such as National Digital Health Mission (NDHM).
    • The Health ID is created by using a person’s basic details and mobile number or Aadhaar number.
    • This will make it unique to the person, who will have the option to link all of their health records to this ID.

    What was the original proposal for the health ID?

    • The National Health Policy 2017 had envisaged creation of a digital health technology eco-system aiming at developing an integrated health information system.
    • In the context of this, the central government’s think-tank NITI Aayog, in June 2018, floated a consultation of a digital backbone for India’s health system — National Health Stack.
    • As part of its consultation, NITI Aayog proposed a Digital Health ID to greatly reduce the risk of preventable medical errors and significantly increase the quality of care.

    Stakeholders in the national health ID

    • As envisaged, various healthcare providers — such as hospitals, laboratories, insurance companies, online pharmacies, telemedicine firms — will be expected to participate in the health ID system.

    Back2Basics:

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/national-digital-health-mission-ndhm/

  • Census 2021 and the long-pending reforms

    • In all likelihood, the February 2021 Census will have to be rescheduled to ensure comparability with earlier censuses.
    • This will also affect the National Sample Surveys and others that use the census as the sampling frame.
    • The delay can, however, be used to introduce much-needed reforms to this gigantic exercise whose roots go back to the late 19th century.

    Try this question for mains:

    Q.The Census of India needs a basic overhaul beyond its procedural digitization. Critically analyse.

    Background: Census of India

    • The decennial Census of India has been conducted 15 times, as of 2011.
    • While it has been undertaken every 10 years, beginning in 1872 under British Viceroy Lord Mayo, the first complete census was taken in 1881.
    • Post-1949, it has been conducted by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
    • All the censuses since 1951 were conducted under the 1948 Census of India Act.
    • The last census was held in 2011, whilst the next will be held in 2021.

    Census 2021

    • The Census 2021 will be conducted in 18 languages out of the 22 scheduled languages (under 8th schedule) and English, while Census 2011 was in 16 of the 22 scheduled languages declared at that time.
    • It also will introduce a code directory to streamline the process
    • The option of “Other” under the gender category will be changed to “Third Gender”.
    • There were roughly 5 lakh people under “other” category in 2011.
    • For the first time in the 140 year history of the census in India, data is proposed to be collected through a mobile app by enumerators and they will receive an additional payment as an incentive.
    • The Census data would be available by the year 2024-25 as the entire process would be conducted digitally and data crunching would be quicker.

    Issues with the Census

    (1) Data quality issues

    • The past four decades have seen a decline in the quality of data and growing delays in its release despite technological innovations.
    • The use of census data in delimitation and federal redistribution has been questioned on grounds of poor quality, while the Covid-19 pandemic revealed the obsolete and poor quality of data on internal migration.

    (2) No major reforms

    • The legal foundation of the census has remained largely unchanged since newly independent India enacted permanent census legislation in 1948.
    • Despite sustained problems, the census has not seen any major reform after 1994 when both the Census Act, 1948 and Census Rules, 1990 were amended.

    (3) Old methods and questionnaire

    • The methodological core – extended de facto (synchronous) canvasser-based enumeration – too has remained intact even though the length and layout of schedules changed quite a bit.
    • The Household Schedule, for instance, grew with the footprint of the state, from 14 questions in 1951 to 29 questions in 2011.

    (4) Workforce issues

    • Data collection has not kept pace with improvements in data processing technology due to the lack of motivated and adequately trained enumerators.
    • Given the high salaries of school teachers, the modest honorarium paid for census work does not cover the opportunity cost of conducting the door-to-door enumeration.

    Understand the ‘purpose’ of the census

    Reforms should begin with the design of schedules based on a clear understanding of two essential functions of the census:

    (a) Resource allocations

    • First, census facilitates the rule-based distribution of power and resources through constitutionally mandated redistribution of taxes, delimitation of electoral constituencies and affirmative action policies.
    • It is also used in routine policy-making across tiers of government.

    (b) Population projections

    • Second, census serves as the sampling frame for surveys and is also the basis of population projections.
    • Other routine policies require distribution of the headcount by households, marital status, age, sex, literacy, migrant status, and mother tongue.
    • Put together, these variables are sufficient for choosing representative samples for surveys.

    What can be done?

    1.Cut the questions

    • Nearly half of the ‘Houselisting and Housing Schedule’ of the census is devoted to questions on household amenities and assets.
    • These questions can be dropped because the information can be more appropriately collected through sample surveys and administrative statistics.

    Why put fewer questions?

    • Cutting down the length of unwieldy schedules has several advantages.
    • First, it will improve data quality by reducing the workload of enumerators.
    • Second, it will also free up senior census officials and help revive the earlier tradition of producing detailed administrative and other reports crucial for understanding the context of data.
    • Third, shorter schedules will seem less invasive and assure respondents uncomfortable with sharing too many details.
    • Fourth, it will cut down processing time and help in reducing delays in the release of data.

    2.Dealing with data manipulation

    • There is poor accounting of migrants that distorts estimates of urbanisation as well as the inter-state distribution of the population.
    • There exists grassroots manipulation of data-driven by political and economic considerations.
    • There is a need to demystify census operations and build trust in the impartiality of the exercise, better scrutiny of electoral records and welfare schemes to weed out bogus beneficiaries.

    Conclusion

    • These reforms are essential to ensure that the census exercise is able to fulfil its constitutional, policy and statistical obligations and also clear the ground for debates on the future of census in the digital era.

  • Making sense of population growth of India

    The article analyses and explains the declining trend in India’s total fertility rate. The aspirational revolution in the parents explains such decline. 

    What the projections say

    • A new study was published in The Lancet, and prepared by the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
    • It argues that while India is destined to be the largest country in the world, its population will peak by mid-century.
    • And as the 21st century closes, its ultimate population will be far smaller than anyone could have anticipated, about 1.09 billion instead of approximately 1.35 billion today.
    • It could even be as low as 724 million, the study projects.
    • Until 2050, the IHME projections are almost identical to widely-used United Nations projections.
    •  It is only in the second half of the century that the two projections diverge with the UN predicting a population of 1.45 billion by 2100, and the IHME, 1.09 billion.

    Present trends in India’s fertility rate

    •  In the 1950s, India’s Total fertility rate (TFR) was nearly six children per woman; today it is 2.2.
    •  Between 1992 and 2015, it had fallen by 35% from 3.4 to 2.2.
    • It is even below the replacement rate in 18 States and Union Territories.

    What explains the trends

    • One might attribute it to the success of the family planning programme.
    • But family planning has long lost its primacy in the Indian policy discourse.
    • Punitive policies include denial of maternity leave for third and subsequent births, limiting benefits of maternity schemes and ineligibility to contest in local body elections for individuals with large families.
    • However, these policies are mostly ignored in practice.

    Aspirational revolution

    •  It seems highly probable that the socioeconomic transformation of India since the 1990s has played an important role.
    • Over the years parents began to rethink their family-building strategies.
    • Smaller families when compared with a bigger family with same income level, invest more money in their children by sending them to private schools and coaching classes.
    • It is not aspirations for self but that for children that seems to drive fertility decline.

    Consider the question “Examine the factors responsible for the declining trends in the total fertility rate for India. What are its implications for country?”

    Conclusion

    Demographic data suggest that the aspirational revolution is already under way. What we need to hasten the fertility decline is to ensure that the health and family welfare system is up to this challenge and provides contraception and sexual and reproductive health services that allow individuals to have only as many children as they want.

  • [pib] E-Sanjeevani Tele-Medicine Platform

    1.5 lakh teleconsultations were recently completed on the “eSanjeevani” and “eSanjeevani OPD” tele-medicine.

    Why Telemedicine?

    Telemedicine can increase the efficiency of care delivery, reduce expenses of caring for patients or transporting to another location, and can even keep patients out of the hospital.  

    E-Sanjeevani Platform

    • E-Sanjeevani is a platform-independent, browser-based application facilitating both doctor-to-doctor and patient-to-doctor tele-consultations.
    • It provides the ease of accessing the health records at the comforts of one’s home.
    • The application is based on invite-system which restricts it to the actual beneficiaries of the application.
    • It has a user-friendly interface which facilitates both tech-savvy and novice doctors/users in the rural and urban environment to access the application.
    • This eSanjeevani platform has enabled two types of telemedicine services viz. Doctor-to-Doctor (eSanjeevani) and Patient-to-Doctor (eSanjeevani OPD) Tele-consultations.
    • The former is being implemented under the Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centre (AB-HWCs) programme.

    Services included:

    The telemedicine platform hosts speciality OPDs which include:

    • Gynaecology, Psychiatry, Dermatology, ENT, Ophthalmology, antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the AIDS/HIV patients, Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) etc

    With inputs from:

    https://www.cdac.in/index.aspx?id=hi_pr_eSanjeevani

  • Digital realities of India

    Context

    • Google has recently announced a decision to invest $10 billion in India.
    • To put that sum in context, it is over 10 times the money set aside for 100 smart cities and almost 20 times that for Digital India.
    • Purpose of that investment is stated to be digitising India.

    Digital realities of India Google must consider:

    1) Contradictions

    •  India recognises the internet as a human right, and yet, has led the world in internet shutdowns.
    • Its internet speeds can be slow and variable, but its uptake of smartphones is the world’s fastest.
    • It is second only to China in internet users, app downloads and social media users.

    2) Lack of access to internet

    • Only 21 per cent of women are mobile internet users, while the percentage for men is twice that number.
    • There are many societal factors that make it difficult for women and girls to enjoy full digital freedoms.
    • In rural India, where two-thirds of the country lives, just about a quarter of the population has internet access.
    • Differences in digital access mean differences in the quality of education.
    • The gaps are both digital and societal.

    3) Lack of access to banks

    •  India’s workforce is mostly informal.
    • Only 22 per cent of recipients of migrant remittances have access to banks within one km, according to a report by the Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion.
    • A push from Google and its competitors could make payments and financial access more inclusive.

    4) Need for special products for India

    • you mention new products for India’s unique needs, of which there are many.
    • Consider the needs in the agricultural sector alone.
    • Impac of predictive data analytics and basic artificial intelligence into Indian agriculture using readily available technologies would be huge.
    • Precision farming to improve the timing and quantity of seeding, irrigation and fertiliser usage.
    • Helping farmers get credit at lower costs and helping predict commodity prices can create $33 billion in new value annually in Indian agriculture.

    5) Lack of data governance and issues with it

    • Nandan Nilekani has said, India will be data rich before it is “economically rich”.
    • With 650 million internet users, there is a lot of data richness already.
    • But this data richness exists without a forward-looking and inclusive data governance policy.
    • The experience with Aarogya Setu, provided a perfect case study on the discomfort within India because of the absence of such governance.

    6) Prevalence of misinformation

    • It is essential to get a handle on the “infodemic” problem in India.
    • The situation was made far worse by the pandemic, where many of the prejudices, fears have converged.
    • Google-owned YouTube is a critical medium for spreading information, fact and fiction.
    • To its credit, YouTube removed over 8,20,000 videos in India in the first quarter of 2020.
    • This is a great start, but the bad guys will only find ways around it and Google must make deeper investments in both human and machine intelligence to stay ahead.

    7) Geopolitical context

    • India is inching closer to the US corner in the tech Cold War between the US and China.
    • India-China relationship has cooled this year as a fallout from the political tensions between New Delhi and Beijing.
    • India acted against Chinese ByteDance-owned video streaming app TikTok, along with 59 mobile apps.
    • Google’s role will be important as a bargaining chip against China and the partnership with Jio.
    • This important role may help Google get some domestic leverage with Indian regulators.

    8) Job creation

    • Digital technologies can create jobs.
    • For this to happen India must streamline the regulations to enhancing the country’s digital and physical foundations.
    • There is also need for developing more progressive data accessibility laws.
    • To translate into productive work, the government must invest in skill-building and education at all levels.

    Consider the question “Digitising India could accelerate its progress toward development but there are certain factors which must be addressed before India could reap benefits of digitising. Examine such factors and suggest the ways to deal with the issues in digitising the country.”

    Conclusion

    There is a lot Google can take while working on the task of digitising India. But the above-mentioned factors will help Google chart out its journey well.

    Original articles:

    https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/sundar-pichai-google-education-digital-india-6544793/

  • [pib] Sahakar Cooptube NCDC Channel

    Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare has launched the Sahakar Cooptube NCDC Channel, a new initiative by National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC).

    Note: Article 19 states that the Right to form co-operative societies is a Fundamental Right and DPSP Article 43-B provides for the promotion of co-operative societies.

    Sahakar Cooptube

    • The Sahakar Cooptube Channel aims to facilitate the involvement of the youth in the cooperative movement.
    • Cooperatives lend strength to farmers to minimize risks in agriculture and allied sectors and act as a shield against exploitation.
    • The channel will give a boost to Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan under which the government has announced a series of transformative measures and sector-specific financial packages to help agriculture.
    • The initiatives are steps towards One Nation One Market with the objective for India to become a food factory of the world.

    Back2Basics: NCDC

    • The NCDC is a statutory Corporation set up under an Act of Parliament on 13 March 1963.
    • The objectives of NCDC are:

    planning and promoting programmes for production, processing, marketing, storage, export and import of agricultural produce, foodstuffs, industrial goods, livestock and certain other notified commodities and services on cooperative principles and for matters concerned therewith or incidental thereto

    • NCDC Act has been further amended which will broad-base the area of operation of the Corporation to assist different types of cooperatives and to expand its financial base.
    • NCDC will now be able to finance projects in the rural industrial cooperative sectors and for certain notified services in rural areas like water conservation, irrigation and micro-irrigation, agri-insurance, agro-credit, rural sanitation, animal health, etc.

  • What is Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP)?

    Haryana CM Manohar Khattar has distributed ‘Parivar Pehchan Patra’ to the eligible families and announced that welfare schemes of all departments would be linked with the PPP within the next three months.

    Practice question for mains:

    Q.What is Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP) recently rolled out by Haryana Govt.? How it is beneficial compared to the Aadhaar?

    What is Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP)?

    • It is an 8-digit Unique Identity Card number meant for each family to enable smooth and automatic delivery of several citizen-centric services.
    • The government will establish the scheme-wise eligibility of a particular family using this 8-digit code according to the information available in the PPP of the family.
    • The benefits, according to the schemes, shall automatically be transferred to the family using the same code.
    • PPP will ensure that not a single beneficiary is left out from the government benefits that they are entitled to.

    How is PPP different from the Aadhaar card?

    • The PPP, mathematically, is an integral number of Aadhaar.
    • While Aadhaar represents an individual as a unit, a PPP represents a family as a unit. Most of our government schemes are structured around the family.
    • It is not structured around an individual.
    • For example, ration eligibility is there for the family but the family can split it into various members as long as they are above 18 years and say they are separating entitlements for all individuals.

    Will it be mandatory for every family of Haryana to get PPP?

    • No, it will not be mandatory for every family of the state to obtain a PPP.
    • But, PPP is mandatory for families availing benefits under government schemes.
    • Also, whenever a family wants to avail any government scheme, it will have to first get a PPP to be eligible.

    The logic behind

    • Haryana officials said although there is a union government’s Aadhaar card, it contains individual’s details and does not cater to the entire family as a unit.
    • In certain circumstances, it may not be possible for a state government to keep track of all the families residing in the state.
    • Although the ration card system is there, it is not updated and does not contain adequate family records.
    • With the PPP, it will be easier for the state government to maintain a complete database of all the state dwellers.

    How would it work?

    • To begin with, the government has already linked PPP with three social security schemes – old age Samman allowance, divyang pension, and the widow and destitute women pension scheme.
    • For instance, when a family member turns 60, they will automatically get a message through the software and will automatically start getting benefits of the old-age pension if they meet the required criteria.
    • Similarly, the teenagers will get messages on turning 18 years old and shall become eligible for various government schemes that will be notified to them through the software.

  • Who are the Bru Tribals?

    Non-Brus of Tripura has proposed six places for settling the displaced Brus from Mizoram and set a limit for the number of families to be accommodated in two subdivisions that have borne the brunt of the 23-year-old refugee crisis.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q. With reference to ‘Changpa’ community of India, consider the following statement:

    1. They live mainly in the State of Uttarakhand.
    2. They rear the Pashmina goats that yield fine wool.
    3. They are kept in the category of Scheduled Tribes.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct? (CSP 2014)

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 and 3 only

    (c) 3 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

    Who are the Brus?

    • Reangs or Brus are the second largest ethnic group in Mizoram.
    • Their exodus in 1997 was spurred by violent clashes in Mamith subdivision, a Reang-dominated area when they demanded the creation of an autonomous council that was vehemently opposed by Mizo groups.
    • Around 34,000 people were forced to live in sub-human conditions in tents in Tripura. No solution could be reached all these years.
    • These people were housed in temporary camps at Kanchanpur, in North Tripura.

    Read the complete thread here:

    [Burning Issue] Bru– Reang Repatriation Agreement

  • National Education Policy and current status of education

    The article contrasts the targets set in the National Education Polity with the present state of education in the country.

    Key recommendations

    • Redesigning the school curriculum to accommodate early childhood care and education.
    • Ensuring universal access to education.
    • Increasing gross enrolment in higher education to 50% by 2035.
    • Improving research in higher education institutes by setting up a Research Foundation.

    Let’s take stock of the current situation on the above-suggested parameters.

    1) Universal Access to Education

    • Despite the Right to Education Act-2009 retaining children remains a challenge for the schooling system.
    • As of 2015-16, Gross Enrolment Ratio was 56.2% at senior secondary level as compared to 99.2% at primary level.
    • Data for all groups indicates a decline in GER as we move from primary to senior secondary for all groups.
    • This decline is particularly high in case of Scheduled Tribes.

    NEP 2020 recommendations

    • The NEP recommends strengthening of existing schemes and policies which are targeted for such socio-economically disadvantaged groups.
    • Further, it recommends setting up special education zones in areas with a significant proportion of such disadvantaged groups.
    • A gender inclusion fund should also be setup to assist female and transgender students in getting access to education.

    2) GER to 50% in higher education

    • The NEP aims to increase the GER in higher education to 50% by 2035.  
    • As of 2018-19, the GER in higher education in the country stood at 26.3%.
    • The annual growth rate of GER in higher education in the last few years has been around 2%.

    NEP 2020 recommendations

    • The NEP recommends increasing capacity of existing higher education institutes by restructuring and expanding existing institutes.
    • It recommends that all institutes should aim to be large multidisciplinary institutes, and there should be one such institution in or near every district by 2030.
    • Further, institutions should have the option to run open distance learning and online programmes to improve access to higher education.

    3) Restructuring of Higher Education Institutes

    • The NEP notes that the higher education ecosystem in the country is severely fragmented.
    • At present, there is complex nomenclature of higher education institutes (HEIs) in the country such as ‘deemed to be university’, ‘affiliating university’, ‘affiliating technical university’, ‘unitary university’.
    • These shall be replaced simply by ‘university’.

    NEP 2020 recommendations

    • The NEP recommends that all HEIs should be restructured into three categories:
    • 1)  research universities focusing equally on research and teaching.
    • 2)  teaching universities focusing primarily on teaching.
    • 3) degree-granting colleges primarily focused on undergraduate teaching.
    •  All such institutions will gradually move towards full autonomy – academic, administrative, and financial.

    4) National research foundation to boost research

    • The NEP states that investment on research and innovation in India, at only 0.69% of GDP, lags behind several other countries.
    • The total investment on R&D in India as a proportion of GDP has been stagnant at around 0.7% of GDP.
    • Of which 58% of expenditure was by government, and the remaining 42% was by private industry.

    NEP 2020 recommendation

    • To boost research, the NEP recommends setting up an independent National Research Foundation (NRF).
    • The Foundation will act as a liaison between researchers and relevant branches of government as well as industry.
    • Specialised institutions which currently fund research, such as the Department of Science and Technology, and the Indian Council of Medical Research, will continue to fund independent projects.
    • The Foundation will collaborate with such agencies to avoid duplication.

    5) Digital Education

    • The NEP states that alternative modes of quality education should be developed when in-person education is not possible.
    • But let’s look into the accessibility of such mode.
    • As of 2017-18, only 4.4% of rural households have access to a computer (excludes smartphones).
    • Nearly 15% have access to internet facility.  Amongst urban households, 42% have access to the internet.

    NEP 2020 recommendations

    • Several interventions are recommended-
    • (i) developing two-way audio and video interfaces for holding online classes.
    • (ii) use of other channels such as television, radio, mass media in multiple languages to ensure the reach of digital content where digital infrastructure is lacking.

    6) Increasing public spending on education to 6% of GDP

    • Public spending of 6% of GDP was first made by the National Policy on Education 1968 and reiterated by the 1986 Policy.
    • NEP 2020 reaffirms the recommendation of increasing public spending on education to 6% of GDP.
    •  In 2017-18, the public spending on education-includes spending by centre and states-was budgeted at 4.43% of GDP.
    •  In 2020-21, states in India have allocated 15.7% of their budgeted expenditure towards education.
    • States such as Delhi, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra have allocated more than 18% of their expenditure on Education for the year 2020-21.
    • On the other hand, Telangana (7.4%), Andhra Pradesh (12.1%) and Punjab (12.3%) lack in spending on education, as compared to the average of states.

    Consider the question “Examine the provision with regard to increasing research in the country in the National Education Policy 2020.”

    Conclusion

    The National Education Policy is an ambitious document with the potential to transform. What is required is the zeal to implement and assess the progress by analysing the outcomes.

    Source-

    https://www.prsindia.org/theprsblog/national-education-policy-recommendations-and-current-scenario

  • Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA)

    The JNU has got approval for a fund from the Higher Education Funding Agency (HEFA) for the construction of new infrastructure.

    Try this PYQ:

    What is the aim of the programme ‘Unnat Bharat Abhiyan’? (CSP 2017)

    (a) Achieving 100% literacy by promoting collaboration between voluntary organizations and government’s education system and local communities.

    (b) Connecting institutions of higher education with local communities to address development challenges through appropriate technologies.

    (c) Strengthening India’s scientific research institutions in order to make India a scientific and technological power.

    (d) Developing human capital by allocating special funds for health care and education of rural and urban poor, and organizing skill development programmes and vocational training for them.

    About HEFA

    • HEFA is a joint venture company of Canara Bank and Ministry of Human Resource Development.
    • It provides financial assistance for the creation of educational infrastructure and R&D in India’s premier educational institutions.
    • All the Centrally Funded Higher Educational Institutions will be eligible to join as members of the HEFA.
    • For joining as members, the educational institution must agree to escrow a specific amount from their internal accruals for a period of 10 years to the HEFA.

    Funding pattern of HEFA

    • HEFA will have an authorized capital of 2,000 crore rupees and the government equity would be 1,000 crore
    • It also mobilizes CSR funds from Corporates/PSUs which will, in turn, be released for promoting research and innovation in these institutions on a grant basis.
    • The principal portion of the loan will be repaid through the ‘internal accruals’ of the institutions earned through the fee receipts, research earnings etc.