INSIGHTS DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS + PIB SUMMARY- 16 DECEMBER 2019

Table of contents:

GS Paper 2:

2. Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY).

1. Government Instant Messaging System (GIMS)

3. Sustainable Development Cell for Environmental Mitigation Measures.

Facts for Prelims:

1. Crystal award.

GS Paper : 2

Topics Covered:

Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes; mechanisms, laws, institutions and bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of these vulnerable sections.

PIB- Breast Milk Banks

What to study?

For Prelims: What are Breast Milk Banks?

For Mains: Need for significance.

For Prelims:

What are Breast Milk Banks?

They are known as Comprehensive Lactation Management Centres (CLMC) and Lactation Management Unit (LMU), depending on the level of health facilities where these units are established.

Established under “National Guidelines on Establishment of Lactation Management Centres in Public Health Facilities” by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Value addition for Mains:

Need for Milk Banks:

It is universally accepted that breast milk is the optimum exclusive source of nutrition for the first six months of life, and may remain part of the healthy infant diet for the first two years of life and beyond.

Unicef India mentions mothers, both in high- and low-income countries, face challenges such as poor healthcare and nutrition. Sometimes, families end up giving babies honey or sugared water as their first oral feed, referred to as prelacteal feed.
Milk banks have a dedicated set of counsellors to answer such queries about lactation management and convince new mothers about the benefits of donating milk.

Initiatives by India:

MAA – “Mothers Absolute Affection”: A nationwide programme of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to promote breastfeeding.

Vatsalya – Maatri Amrit Kosh: Established in collaboration with the Norwegian government.

Sources: pib.

Topics Covered:

Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes; mechanisms, laws, institutions and bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of these vulnerable sections.

Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY)

What to study?

For Prelims and mains: Key Highlights of the PMMVY, funding and beneficiaries, challenges present and ways to address them.

Context: Concerns have been expressed over the implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY).

What are the issues?

Three years after it was first announced, the chorus on its many exclusions is growing louder leading to a demand for a scheme that is truly universal.
Besides, lengthy documentation work is seen as a deterrent to illiterate sections.
Women have to pay a hefty bribe during the application process.

For Prelims:

About PMMVY:

Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) is a maternity benefit rechristened from erstwhile Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY). The IGMSY was launched in 2010.

The scheme is a conditional cash transfer scheme for pregnant and lactating women.
It provides a partial wage compensation to women for wage-loss during childbirth and childcare and to provide conditions for safe delivery and good nutrition and feeding practices.
They receive a cash benefit of Rs. 5,000 in three installments on fulfilling the respective conditionality, early registration of pregnancy, ante-natal check-up and registration of the birth of the child and completion of first cycle of vaccination for the first living child of the family.
The eligible beneficiaries also receive cash incentive under Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY). Thus, on an average, a woman gets Rs. 6,000.

Exceptions: The maternity benefits are available to all Pregnant Women & Lactating Mothers (PW&LM) except those in regular employment with the Central Government or State Government or Public Sector Undertaking or those who are in receipt of similar benefits under any law for the time being in force.

Funding: The scheme is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme under which cost sharing ratio between the Centre and the States & UTs with Legislature is 60:40 while for North-Eastern States & three Himalayan States; it is 90:10. It is 100% Central assistance for Union Territories without Legislature.

Value addition for Mains:

Need for special attention:

Under-nutrition continues to adversely affect majority of women in India. In India, every third woman is undernourished and every second woman is anaemic.

An undernourished mother almost inevitably gives birth to a low birth weight baby. When poor nutrition starts in-utero, it extends throughout the life cycle since the changes are largely irreversible.

Owing to economic and social distress many women continue to work to earn a living for their family right up to the last days of their pregnancy.

They resume working soon after childbirth, even though their bodies might not permit it, thus preventing their bodies from fully recovering on one hand, and also impeding their ability to exclusively breastfeed their young infant in the first six months.

Performance of the scheme:

Key concerns:

The scheme has failed to reach at least 49% of all mothers who would have delivered their first child (an estimated total of 123 lakh for 2017 according to the researchers).
Given the stipulated conditions, the scheme brings under its ambit 23% of all births and pays full benefits to a mere 14% of all births, which was at 270.5 lakh for 2017.
Only 66% of pregnant women and 69% of nursing women knew about the scheme. Only 8% of pregnant women and 23% of nursing mothers received some benefits.

Sources: the Hindu.

Topics Covered:

Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes; mechanisms, laws, institutions and bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of these vulnerable sections.

Odisha- JAGA mission

What to study?

For Prelims: Key features of the mission, about Jaga mission.

For Mains: Significance and the need for the mission.

Context: Odisha has won the ‘World Habitat Award’, global recognition for its ambitious initiative — Jaga Mission.

Recently, this project was also awarded the ‘India Geospatial Excellence Award’ for technological innovation in transforming the lives of urban poor.

For Prelims:

About Jaga mission:

What is it? Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission “JAGA” is a society under Housing & Urban Development Department, Government of Odisha.

Composition: Headed by the Chief Secretary, Odisha as Chairman and Principal Secretary, H&UD as Member Secretary.

Aims:

Transform the slums into liveable habitat with all necessary civic infrastructure and services at par with the better off areas within the same urban local body (ULB).
Continuously improve the standard of the infrastructure and services and access to livelihood opportunities.
Leverage and converge various schemes/ programs/ funding opportunities by strengthening collaboration among various Departments and other Stakeholders.
Provide advisory support to Government of Odisha to examine options for policy reforms required for the sustainable transformation of lives of urban poor.

What is World Habitat Award?

This award is given by World Habitat, a UK-based organization, in partnership with United Nation (UN)-Habitat, every year, in recognition of innovative, outstanding, and revolutionary ideas, projects, and programmes from across the world.

Value addition for Mains:

Why land rights for slums matter?

More often than not, slums are seen as encroachments and slum dwellers, even if they stay in slums for decades, are not provided with any legal rights over the land. This illegality further condemns slums — which are an urban reality in Indian cities — to unsanitary conditions. Formal recognition of land rights allows for cleaner cities and better living conditions for slum dwellers.

Sources: the Hindu.

GS Paper : 3

Topics Covered:

Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology and issues relating to intellectual property rights.

Government Instant Messaging System (GIMS)

What to study?

For Prelims: Features of GIMS.

For Mains: Need for and significance of the platform.

Context: Government testing GIMs, its secure messaging App.

For Prelims:

About Government Instant Messaging System (GIMS):

Designed and developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC).

It is being packaged for employees of Central and state government departments and organisations for intra and inter organisation communications.

It is an Indian equivalent of popular messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, for secure internal use.

It is being developed as a secure Indian alternative without the security concerns attached with apps hosted abroad or those owned by foreign entities.

Like WhatsApp, GIMS employs end-to-end encryption for one-to-one messaging.

Value addition for Mains:

Need for and significance:

The launch of the new app comes amid the recent controversy over the WhatsApp breach. Some Indian users’ mobile devices were targeted through a spyware called Pegasus recently.

GIMS is being touted as a safer bet as the platform has been developed in India, the server hosting it is installed within the country and the information stored would be in government-based cloud — NIC-operated data centres that are only meant for captive use by the government and its departments.

Sources: the Hindu.

Topics Covered:

Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.

Namami Gange

What to study?

For Prelims: Key features of the project, About Namami Gange Programme, NGC.

For Mains: Significance of the project and issues associated with the cleaning of river Ganga.

Context: Review meeting of the National Ganga Council was recently held.

For Prelims:

About Namami Gange Programme:

It is an umbrella programme which integrates previous and currently ongoing initiatives by enhancing efficiency, extracting synergies and supplementing them with more comprehensive & better coordinated interventions.

Implemented by the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), and its state counterparts—State Programme Management Groups.

National Ganga Council (NGC):

Created in October 2016 under the River Ganga (Rejuvenation, Protection and Management) Authorities Order, 2016, dissolving the National Ganga River Basin Authority.

Headed by the Prime Minister.

It replaced the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA).

NGC would have on board the chief ministers of five Ganga basin states—Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal—besides several Union ministers and it was supposed to meet once every year.

Main Pillars of the Namami Gange Programme are:

Sewerage Treatment Infrastructure
River-Surface Cleaning
Afforestation
Industrial Effluent Monitoring
River-Front Development
Bio-Diversity
Public Awareness
Ganga Gram

Value addition for Mains:

Why we need “Namami Gange” programme?

River Ganga has significant economic, environmental and cultural value in India.
Rising in the Himalayas and flowing to the Bay of Bengal, the river traverses a course of more than 2,500 km through the plains of north and eastern India.
The Ganga basin – which also extends into parts of Nepal, China and Bangladesh – accounts for 26 per cent of India’s landmass.
The Ganga also serves as one of India’s holiest rivers whose cultural and spiritual significance transcends the boundaries of the basin.

If we are able to clean it, it will be a huge help for the 40 per cent population of the country.

What are the pollution threats to Ganga?

Rapidly increasing population, rising standards of living and exponential growth of industrialization and urbanization have exposed water resources to various forms of degradation.
The deterioration in the water quality of Ganga impacts the people immediately.
Ganga has become unfit even for bathing during lean seasons.
The impacts of infrastructural projects in the upper reaches of the river Ganga raise issues.

Challenges ahead:

Sewage treatment.
Restoring the flow.
Sludge control.
Cost overruns.
Governance glitches.

Sources: the hindu.

Topics Covered:

Conservation related issues.

Sustainable Development Cell for Environmental Mitigation Measures

What to study?

For Prelims: Composition and objectives of the cell.

For Mains: Implications and significance of the establishment of the cell.

Context: The Ministry of Coal has decided to establish a ‘Sustainable Development Cell’.

For Prelims:

About the cell:

Objective: To promote environmentally sustainable coal mining in the country and address environmental concerns during the decommissioning or closure of mines.

Roles and functions:

Advise, mentor, plan and monitor the mitigation measures taken by the coal companies for maximising the utilisation of available resources in a sustainable way.
Act as nodal point at Ministry of Coal level in this matter. Formulate the future policy framework for the environmental mitigation measures including the Mine closure Fund.

For mains:

Implications:

This move gains significance as the new private entities are now going to form a significant part of the future, a set of guidelines for proper rehabilitation of mines need to be evolved in tune with global best practices.

Sources: pib

Facts for prelims:

Crystal award:

Awarded by the World Economic Forum (WEF)
Hosted by World Economic Forum’s World Arts Forum.
The Award recognises as well as celebrates the achievements of leading artists and cultural figures whose leadership inspires inclusive and sustainable change.

Why in News? 26th Annual Crystal Award for the year 2020 have been announced.

INSIGHTS DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS + PIB SUMMARY- 16 DECEMBER 2019