Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: NMMSS
Mains level: Policy measures to curb school dropouts
The NMMSS has helped to reduce the drop-out rate at the secondary and senior secondary classes, informed Union HRD Minister.
National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship Scheme
- The Centrally Sponsored Scheme NMMSS was launched in May, 2008.
- The objective of the scheme is to award scholarships to meritorious students of economically weaker sections to arrest their drop out at class VIII and encourage them to continue the study at secondary stage.
- Under the Scheme one lakh fresh scholarships @ of Rs.12000/- per annum per student are awarded to selected students of class IX every year and their continuation/renewal in classes X to XII for study in a State Government, Government-aided and Local body schools.
- The selection of students for award of scholarships under the scheme is made through an examination conducted by the States/UTs Governments.
Progress of the scheme
- As on date approx 16.93 lakh scholarships have been sanctioned to the Students across the country.
- Heads of all the institutions disclosed that the NMMS Scheme has reduced the drop-out rate at the secondary and senior secondary classes, particularly from Classes VIII to XII.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Forest Fire Prevention and Management scheme
Mains level: Forest fires in India
The Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has informed that area covering 93,273 hectares was affected by forest fires in 2019. Most of the fires have been “ground fires” burning ground vegetation.
Measures to curb Forest fires:
1) National Action Plan on Forest Fires
- The MoEFCC has prepared a National Action Plan on Forest Fires in 2018 after several rounds of consultation with all states and UTs.
- The objective of this plan is to minimize forest fires by informing, enabling and empowering forest fringe communities and incentivizing them to work in tandem with the State Forest Departments.
- The plan also intends to substantially reduce the vulnerability of forests across diverse forest ecosystems in the country against fire hazards, enhance capabilities of forest personnel and institutions in fighting fires and swift recovery subsequent to fire incidents.
2) Forest Fire Prevention and Management scheme
- The MoEFCC provides forest fire prevention and management measures under the Centrally Sponsored Forest Fire Prevention and Management (FPM) scheme.
- The FPM is the only centrally funded program specifically dedicated to assist the states in dealing with forest fires.
- The FPM replaced the Intensification of Forest Management Scheme (IFMS) in 2017. By revamping the IFMS, the FPM has increased the amount dedicated for forest fire work.
- Funds allocated under the FPM are according to the 90:10 ratio of central to state funding in the Northeast and Western Himalayan regions and 60:40 ratio for all other states.
- Nodal officers for forest fire prevention and control have been appointed in each state.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: SATHI Scheme
Mains level: Read the attached story
The Department of Science & Technology has launched a unique scheme called “Sophisticated Analytical & Technical Help Institutes(SATHI)”.
SATHI
- SATHI aims to address the need for building shared, professionally managed and strong S&T infrastructure in the country which is readily accessible to academia, start-ups, manufacturing, industry and R&D labs etc.
- These Centres are expected to house major analytical instruments to provide common services of high-end analytical testing, thus avoiding duplication and reduced dependency on foreign sources.
- These would be operated with a transparent, open access policy.
- DST has already set up three such centres in the country, one each at IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi and BHU.
Objectives of the Scheme
- SATHI will address the problems of accessibility, maintenance, redundancy and duplication of expensive equipment in the institutions.
- This will also foster a strong culture of collaboration between institutions and across disciplines to take advantage of developments, innovations and expertise in diverse areas.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: ICDS and its components
Mains level: Forms of malnutrition in urban areas and their preventive measures
Centre seeks to revamp the ICDS scheme in urban areas. For this NITI Aayog will develop draft policy, which will be circulated to the Ministries for consultations.
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)
- The ICDS is a government programme in India which provides food, preschool education, primary healthcare, immunization, health check-up and referral services to children under 6 years of age and their mothers.
- The scheme was launched in 1975, discontinued in 1978 by the government of Morarji Desai, and then relaunched by the Tenth Five Year Plan.
- Tenth FYP also linked ICDS to Anganwadi centres established mainly in rural areas and staffed with frontline workers.
- The ICDS provide for anganwadis or day-care centres which deliver a package of six services including:
- Immunization
- Supplementary nutrition
- Health checkup
- Referral services
- Pre-school education(Non-Formal)
- Nutrition and Health information
Implementation
- For nutritional purposes ICDS provides 500 kilocalories (with 12-15 grams of protein) every day to every child below 6 years of age.
- For adolescent girls it is up to 500 kilo calories with up to 25 grams of protein every day.
- The services of Immunisation, Health Check-up and Referral Services delivered through Public Health Infrastructure under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Revamp for Urban Areas
- Health and ICDS models that work in rural areas may not work in urban areas because of higher population density, transportation challenges and migration.
- Children in urban areas were overweight and obese as indicated by subscapular skinfold thickness (SSFT) for their age.
- The first-ever pan-India survey on the nutrition status of children, highlighted that malnutrition among children in urban India.
- It found a higher prevalence of obesity because of relative prosperity and lifestyle patterns, along with iron and Vitamin D deficiency.
- According to government data from 2018, of the 14 lakh anganwadis across the country there are only 1.38 lakh anganwadis in urban areas.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: National E-Mobility Mission Plan, 2020
Mains level: FAME Scheme and its progress
The Supreme Court has sought the response of the government on a petition that alleges the non-implementation of the National E-Mobility Mission Plan, 2020 (NEMMP), which came out in 2012.
National Electric Mobility Mission Plan (NEMMP) 2020
- The plan was launched by the Government of India in 2013 with the objective of achieving national fuel security by promoting electric and hybrid vehicles.
- It had set a target of achieving a sale of seven million EVs by 2020 and thereby aimed to cut total carbon dioxide emissions by three per cent from the ‘do nothing’ scenario.
- The government would provide fiscal and monetary incentives for this industry.
- The plan had made several recommendations for the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), including electric-powered government fleets and public transportation and subsidies for those who opt for EVs.
What was the petition about?
- The petition contended that the governmental apathy has violated the fundamental rights of citizens to health and clean environment guaranteed under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.
- The government had failed in its obligation to mitigate the impact of climate change and air pollution partly attributable to emissions from vehicles that burn fossil fuels.
- Government’s failure to suitably implement these recommendations is the direct cause of air pollution levels that have turned our cities into virtual ‘gas chambers’.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Rare Diseases
Mains level: Highlights of the saif policy for ‘Rare Diseases’
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has published a national policy for the treatment of 450 ‘rare diseases’.
About the Policy
- The Centre first prepared such a policy in 2017 and appointed a committee in 2018 to review it.
- It was created on the direction of the Delhi High Court to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
- This was in response to writ petitions for free treatment of such diseases, due to their “prohibitively” high cost of treatment.
- Hence, a policy was deemed necessary to devise a “multipronged” and “multisectoral” approach to build India’s capacity for tackling such ailments.
Why need such a policy?
- As per the policy, out of all rare diseases in the world, less than five per cent have therapies available to treat them.
- In India, roughly 450 rare diseases have been recorded from tertiary hospitals, of which the most common are Haemophilia, Thalassemia, Sickle-cell anemia, auto-immune diseases, Gaucher’s disease, and cystic fibrosis.
Features of the policy
- While the policy has not yet put down a detailed roadmap of how rare diseases will be treated.
- It has mentioned some measures, which include creating a patient registry for rare diseases, arriving at a definition for rare diseases that is suited to India, taking legal and other measures to control the prices of their drugs etc.
- It intends to kickstart a registry of rare diseases, which will be maintained by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
- Under the policy, there are three categories of rare diseases — requiring one-time curative treatment, diseases that require long-term treatment but where the cost is low, and those needing long-term treatments with high cost.
- Some of the diseases in the first category include osteopetrosis and immune deficiency disorders, among others.
- As per the policy, the assistance of Rs 15 lakh will be provided to patients suffering from rare diseases that require a one-time curative treatment under the Rashtriya Arogya Nidhi scheme.
- The treatment will be limited to the beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana.
What are rare diseases?
- Broadly, a ‘rare disease’ is defined as a health condition of low prevalence that affects a small number of people when compared with other prevalent diseases in the general population. Many cases of rare diseases may be serious, chronic and life-threatening.
- While a majority of rare diseases are believed to be genetic, many — such as some rare cancers and some autoimmune diseases — are not inherited, as per the NIH.
- According to the policy, rare diseases include genetic diseases, rare cancers, infectious tropical diseases, and degenerative diseases.
Definition
- India does not have a definition of rare diseases because there is a lack of epidemiological data on its incidence and prevalence.
- While there is no universally accepted definition of rare diseases, countries typically arrive at their own descriptions, taking into consideration disease prevalence, its severity and the existence of alternative therapeutic options.
- In the US, for instance, a rare disease is defined as a condition that affects fewer than 200,000 people.
- The same definition is used by the National Organisation for Rare Disorders (NORD) in India.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Green Credit Scheme, CAMPA
Mains level: CAMPA
The Forest Advisory Committee has approved a scheme that could allow “forests” to be traded as a commodity. FAC is an apex body tasked with adjudicating requests by the industry to raze forest land for commercial ends.
Green Credit Scheme
- The proposed ‘Green Credit Scheme’, as it is called, allows agencies — they could be private companies, village forest communities — to identify land and begin growing plantations.
- After three years, they would be eligible to be considered as compensatory forest land if they met the Forest Department’s criteria.
- An industry needing forest land could then approach the agency and pay it for parcels of such forested land, and this would then be transferred to the Forest Department and be recorded as forest land.
- The participating agency will be free to trade its asset, that is plantation, in parcels, with project proponents who need forest land.
- This is not the first time that such a scheme has been mooted.
- In 2015, a ‘Green Credit Scheme’ for degraded forest land with public-private participation was recommended, but it was not approved by the Union Environment Minister, the final authority.
Impact
- In the current system, industry needs to make good the loss of forest by finding appropriate non-forest land — equal to that which would be razed.
- It also must pay the State Forest Department the current economic equivalent — called Net Present Value — of the forest land.
- It’s then the Forest Department’s responsibility to grow appropriate vegetation that, over time, would grow into forests.
- Industries have often complained that they find it hard to acquire appropriate non-forest land, which has to be contiguous to existing forest.
- If implemented it allows the Forest Department to outsource one of its responsibilities of reforesting to non-government agencies.
Individuals outside
- One of India’s prongs to combat climate change is the Green India Mission that aims to sequester 2.523 billion tonnes of carbon by 2020-30, and this involves adding 30 million hectares in addition to existing forest.
- Critics held that it does not solve the core problems of compensatory afforestation.
- It creates problems of privatizing multi-use forest areas as monoculture plantation plots. Forests are treated as a mere commodity without any social or ecological character.
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