[Mission 2023] INSIGHTS DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS + PIB SUMMARY 14 October 2022

GS Paper 2

Syllabus: Role of Civil Services

Source: Indian Express

Context: It is an Editorial article and gives good insights into the features and some good examples of Mission Karmyogi. You may note it down.

“Mission Karmayogi”- National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB)

It aims to transition civil services from ‘Rules based’ to ‘Roles based’ Human Resource (HR) Management by aligning work allocation of civil servants by matching their competencies to the requirements of the post, thereby leading to “an effective citizen-centric civil service”

Its features are:

• ‘On-site learning’ to complement the ‘off-site’ learning: will ensure a citizen-centric approach to governance.
  • g. Under the Mission, nearly 95,000 railway staff, including all ticket conductors, reservation and freight clerks and station masters are being trained in better service delivery.
• Create an ecosystem of shared training infrastructure e.g. learning materials, institutions, and personnel.
• Setting up an Integrated Government Online Training-iGOT Karmayogi Platform: to provide curated digital e-learning material for capacity building.
  • Using the “70-20-10” formula: Seventy per cent of adult learning comes from job experience, 20 per cent is a result of peer-to-peer sharing, and only 10 per cent comes from classroom teaching.
• Creating a Dashboard view of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) at the iGOT portal for appropriate monitoring and evaluation of civil servants
• Accountability and Transparency in Governance: through real-time evaluation and constant training
• PM’s Public Human Resources (HR) Council: will provide direction to the task of Civil Services Reform and capacity building
• Collaborative and common ecosystem: will end the culture of working in silos, reduce duplication of efforts and bring out a new work culture that will focus on the individual as well as institutional capacity building.
• Capacity Building Commission: will assist the PM Public Human Resources Council in approving the Annual Capacity Building Plans
  • g. Cross immersive learning for the ministry staff in the Civil Aviation Ministry’s Annual Capacity Building Plan. Public officials were sent to private airlines/airports to observe their managerial practices.
• Ensuring efficient service delivery: work will be assigned as per specific role competencies (right man for the right job)
• Bridging the gap between generalization and specialization: which exists due to a lack of mid-level training at all levels.
• Efficient, effective and empathetic civil services: For instance, Inspector Inian, an SHO from Puducherry, after undergoing soft skills training under mission karmyogi, said that after receiving a mother’s complaint, he used his professional skills to find her lost child.
  • This, he remarked. gave him far more joy compared to promotions or salary hikes.
• Mission Karmyogi is different in emphasising the democratisation of learning across all levels of civil services (all the class)
• “Whole Government” approach: Training resources are being shared across departments and silos are being broken.

Conclusion:

Mahatma Gandhi likened public service to being a trustee of public resources. Civil servants are uniquely positioned to play a role in lifting more than 170 million out of poverty into prosperity. What is needed is professional bureaucracy i.e. bureaucratic in form and structure and non-bureaucratic in attitude and spirit.

Insta links:

Mission Karmayogi

Mains Link:

Q. Mission Karmayogi aims at making Indian Civil Servants innovative, proactive and technology-enabled while making them empowered with specific role competencies and high efficiency. Discuss.

GS Paper 2

Syllabus: Governance

Source: PIB

Context: The Vice President stressed that human rights are quintessential for the flourishing of democracy and urged every citizen to work for the protection and promotion of the human rights of others at 30th Foundation Day celebration of the National Human Rights Commission

Human rights are moral principles or norms for certain standards of human behaviour and are regularly protected in municipal and international law.

Promotion and protection of human rights:

• Article 51 A (g): Every citizen to protect and improve the natural environment and have compassion for living creatures.
• Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993(as amended in 2019) provided for the constitution of a National Human Rights Commission at the Union level, which steers the State Human Rights Commission in States and Human Rights Courts.
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights: It is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). It establishes the rights and freedoms of all members of the human race.
• Human Rights Dayis celebrated on 10th December all around the world.
• Freedom in the World 2021report released earlier this year downgraded India’s status from ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free’.
• Human Rights Council: The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights.
• Amnesty International: An international organisation of volunteers who campaign for human rights.

Steps taken for the preservation of human rights:

• Governance systemic reforms and affirmative initiatives: particularly in the Health and Economic sectors.
• Inclusive growth: It is also antidotal to violation of human rights.
• Banking network: 400 million getting into banking networks and over 200 million families benefiting out of free cooking gas connections.

Challenges to human rights:

• Conflicting definition of what forms human rights:g. while the world has condemned Chinese persecution of the Uighur community for human rights violations, China sees it as anti-terror/ anti-separatist measures.
• Silence: Silent and voiceless existence of the majority of our citizens
• Corruption: Human rights get compromised in the face of corruption.

Importance of Human rights:

• Flourishing of Democracy: Human rights are quintessential for flourishing democracy.
• Democratic values: They are of no significance in the absence of human rights.
• Dignity: Nurturing human rights is the nectar of dignity and dignified human existence.
• Positive ecosystem: Flourishing human rights generates a positive ecosystem that facilitates optimal utilisation of human talent.
• Development: It brings about holistic development.
• Indian culture: The pro-human rights foundational spirit of Indian culture, is reflected in Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad.

Insta Links:

NHRC

Mains Links:

Q. Critically examine the roles and responsibilities of the National Human Rights Commission. (10M)

GS paper 2

Syllabus: Issues related to the development of the social sector, Government policies and interventions for the development of various sectors etc

Source: The Hindu

Context:

The United Nations published data to show that India would surpass China as the world’s most populous country by 2023.

• According to the 2018-19 Economic Survey, India’s demographic dividend will peak around 2041.

Do we need a population policy? Yes.

• The previous Population policy was designed way back in 2000.
• Include Ageing: There is a need to tweak and add ageing to our population policy focus.
• Focus on Reproductive health: Focusing on other challenges that go along with enhancing reproductive health.
• Policy that enhances population as resources: For India’s development, and ensures that the population is happy, healthy, and productive.
• Move away from the two-child norm: Need to move away from the focus on the two-child norm.

Steps that need to be taken amid rising population:

• Family welfare: Move from a family planning approach to a family welfare approach.
• Empowering men and women: Being able to make informed choices about their fertility, health and well-being.
• Skilling: Learning new skills.
• Economic planning: that ensures good jobs, agricultural productivity, etc.
• Public policy: Making sharp changes in public policy to manage the population.
• Focus not on the fertility rate but on creating a situation in which slow changes in the family size take place in the context of a growing economy.
• Planning for equal consideration: Every fifth Indian by 2050 will be over the age of 65.
  • So planning for this segment merits equal consideration.
• Invest: In adolescent well-being to reap the benefits
• Improve employment opportunities: For young women and increase the female employment rate.
• Social support: Elderly women need economic and social support networks.

Insta Links:

India to surpass China as the most populous country in a year

Mains Links:

Q. Despite Consistent experience of high growth, India still goes with the lowest indicators of human development. Examine the issues that make balanced and inclusive development elusive. (UPSC 2021)

Prelims Links:

• United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
• UNGA
• Automation
• Ageing
• Fertility rate

GS Paper 3

Syllabus: Biodiversity and Environment.

Source: DTE, Indian Express

Directions: This Article has been taken from the Down to Earth and Indian Express. Go through it once, you can use it for value addition.

Context:  Recently WWF released its biennial Living Planet report 2022 showing trends in global biodiversity and the health of the planet.

Key highlights of the report:

• Population decline in wildlife: There has been a 69 per cent decline in the wildlife populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, across the globe in the last 50 years.
  • Freshwater species populations globally were reduced by 83 per cent.
  • Cycads — an ancient group of seed plants — are the most threatened species, while corals are declining the fastest, followed by amphibians.
• Region-specific Assessment: The highest decline (94 per cent) was in the Latin America and the Caribbean region.
  • Africa recorded a 66 per cent fall in its wildlife populations from 1970-2018.
• Mangroove: it continues to be lost to aquaculture, agriculture and coastal development at a rate of 13 per cent per year.
  • Mangrove loss represents a loss of habitat for biodiversity and the loss of ecosystem services for coastal communities.
• Corals: About 50% of warm water corals have already been lost and warming of 5 degrees Celsius will lead to a loss of 70-90% of warm water corals.
• Sharks: The global abundance of 18 of 31 oceanic sharks has declined by 71% over the last 50 years.
  • By 2020 three-quarters of sharks and rays were threatened with extinction.
• Other highlights:
  • Rivers: Only 37% of rivers that are over 1,000 km long remain free-flowing in their natural state.

India-specific highlights:

• The Himalayan region and the Western Ghats are the most vulnerable regions in the country in terms of biodiversity loss.
• Sundarbans: 137 km of the Sundarbans mangrove forest have been eroded since 1985, reducing land and ecosystem services for people living there.
• The country has seen a decline in the population of the likes of honeybees and 17 species of freshwater turtles in this period.

Challenges cited by Report:

• Habitat loss and barriers to migration routes
• Six Key threats to Biodiversity loss – are habitat degradation and loss, exploitation, the introduction of invasive species, pollution, climate change and disease.
• Land-use change is still the biggest current threat to nature.
• Overexploitation and pollution: Many mangroves are also degraded by overexploitation and pollution, alongside natural stressors such as storms and coastal erosion.
• Climate change will impact key areas, such as water resources, agriculture, natural ecosystems, health and the food chain.
• Agriculture is the most prevalent threat to amphibians whereas hunting and trapping are most likely to threaten birds and mammals.

What needs to be done?

• Interlinkage: biodiversity loss and climate crisis should be dealt with as one instead of two different issues as they are intertwined.
• All-inclusive collective approach: so as to put us on a more sustainable path and ensures that the costs and benefits from our actions are socially just and equitably shared.
• A nature-positive future needs transformative, game-changing shifts in how we produce, how we consume, how we govern and what we finance.

What is the Living Planet Report?

Published by the international non-profit World Wide Fund for Nature every 2 years. Prepared in collaboration between WWF International and the Zoological Society of London. ZSL was founded in 1826 and is an international conservation charity.

Prelims link

• Living planet report is released by?
• About WWF International.
• Highlights of the 2022 report.
• What is an ecological footprint?
• About Global Footprint Network.

Mains Links:

Write a note of the key findings of Living Planet Report 2022.