Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

Daily Current Affair - UPSC/KAS Exams - 29th Dec 2021

NEWS

The Karnataka government's e-Governance department has partnered with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and State Bank of India (SBI) for enabling and implementing 'e-RUPI'

WHAT IS E-RUPI

• Electronic voucher based digital payment system “e-RUPI”.
• Developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the National Health Authority
• Person-specific and purpose-specific payments system

How will it work

• Cashless and contactless digital payments medium
• Delivered to mobile phones of beneficiaries in form of an SMS-string or a QR code.
• Essentially be like a prepaid gift-voucher that will be redeemable at specific accepting centres without any credit or debit card, a mobile app or internet banking.
• Connect the sponsors of the services with the beneficiaries and service providers in a digital manner without any physical interface.
• Built by NPCI on its UPI platform has onboarded banks that will be the issuing entities.

ABOUT

• Launched in 1995
• Under the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP)
• Meant to help the survivors in various circumstances.
• Provides emergency assistance

ISSUES

• Covers only those below the poverty line (BPL families).
• Provides only 20,000 INR as emergency assistance to the beneficiaries
• Formalities are often daunting for the applicants.
• Centre’s contribution to old age pensions has stagnated at a meagre sum of 200 INR/ month for some 15 years.
• Scheme’s budget has been stagnating– making it difficult to increase the benefits or the coverage
• Decline in central expenditure on this scheme between 2014-15 (862 crore INR) and 2020-21 (623 crore INR) according to budget estimates. This shows that the scheme is being phased out gradually.
• Undermined in order to promote contributory schemes like APY (Atal Pension Yojana). Such schemes require the beneficiaries to be able to save up, comprehend formalities and trust their money with the government.
• Contributory schemes don’t suit the conditions and requirements of the poorest who have little literacy and low earnings.

MIHIR SHAH TASK FORCE

• Submitted a report on NSAP in 2013
• Included many recommendations for improving the NFBS.
• Some have even influenced the 2014 revised guidelines for NSAP. Eg: the eligibility for assistance under NFBS was extended to cases where an adult woman (18-60 year old), who works at home, dies
• No corresponding financial provision was made. The main recommendations on coverage and benefits were ignored.

HOW CAN THE SCHEME BE REVIVED

• Substantial increase in the amount given out as emergency assistance is long overdue. Benefits should be increased to nearly 1 lakh INR. Even this amount isn’t sufficient for a poor family to survive with dignity, but it would atleast help.
• Restriction of the scheme’s applicability to BPL households should be removed. This is because BPL lists are unreliable, outdated and bear exclusion errors in most of the states. In the past 2 decades, most social security programs have shifted away from the use of BPL targeting-
  • School meal programs are universal
  • MGNREGS is self-targeted
• In some states, PDS is based on ‘exclusion approach’– i.e., privileged households are excluded from the beneficiary list based on simple criteria and leaves all the rest eligible for the benefits by default.
• The formalities under the scheme are in dire need of transparency, simplification and people-friendliness.
• Currently, the identification of beneficiary families is the responsibility of the municipalities or the Gram Panchayats. Though this isn’t a bad thing, the applications are moved through the block level and district level bureaucracy for months. Meanwhile, the applicants are left without any means of tracking the applications or of demanding a timely response.
• Better facilities must be put in place to enable access to information and assistance for completing formalities, tracking applications, submitting complaints and grievance redressal.
• Timely disbursal of the scheme’s benefits could be achieved if compensations are given to the beneficiaries in case of delays.
• Significantly increasing the scheme’s budget is a major requirement. For starter, the coverage could be doubled to 7.2 lakh families/ year and the benefits could be enhanced to 1 lakh INR/ family. In this case, the annual cost would come to 7,200 crore INR– 10 times more than the current budget for NFBS. However, the sum is still modest given the importance of such a national scheme for social security.

CONCLUSION

For a poor household, losing a breadwinner is a serious contingency. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is a situation being faced by many poor households. A revamped NFBS could have helped many of these families tide through such a critical period. Revival of this scheme could help address the gap in our social security system- especially in the absence of an appropriate life insurance for poor households.

PRIME MINISTER EMPLOYMENT GENERATION PROGRAM

NEWS

Success of PMEGP was discussed recently

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

• Central sector scheme
• Administered by the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MoMSME).
• Launched in 2008-09
• Credit-linked subsidy scheme
• Promotes self-employment through setting up of micro-enterprises, where subsidy up to 35% is provided by the Government through Ministry of MSME for loans up to ₹25 lakhs in manufacturing and ₹10 lakhs in the service sector.
• Implementation:
  • National Level- Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) as the nodal agency.
  • State Level- State KVIC Directorates, State Khadi and Village Industries Boards (KVIBs), District Industries Centres (DICs) and banks.
• Eligibility:
  • Any individual above 18 years of age, Self Help Groups, Institutions registered under Societies Registration Act 1860, Production Co-operative Societies and Charitable Trusts are eligible.
  • Existing Units and the units that have already availed Government Subsidy under any other scheme of Government of India or State Government are not eligible.
  • Only new projects are considered for sanction under PMEGP.

NEWS

Stock markets regulator SEBI recently approved a ceiling on the Initial Public Offering (IPO) proceeds to be used to make unspecified acquisitions.

DETAILS

Initial Public Offering

• Is a process by which a privately held company becomes a publicly-traded company by offering its shares to the public for the first time.
• Is a money-making exercise.
• Raise money to expand, to improve business, to better the infrastructure, to repay loans, etc.
• A private company, that has a handful of shareholders, shares the ownership by going public by trading its shares.
• Company gets its name listed on the stock exchange.

WHAT

Digital public goods are public goods in the form of software, data sets, AI models, standards or content that are generally free cultural works and contribute to sustainable national and international digital development.

SCENARIO IN INDIA

• India is pioneering the concept of digital public goods that enhance the ease, transparency and speed with which individuals, markets and governments interact with each other.
• Built on the foundation of Aadhaar and India Stack, modular applications, big and small, are transforming the way we make payments, withdraw our PF, get our passport and driving licence and check land records, to name just a few activities.
• Children have access to QR-coded textbooks across state boards and languages, the economically disadvantaged have access to the public distribution system and beneficiaries of government schemes have money transferred directly into their bank accounts.

BENEFITS

• Less cost of setting up an open source-based high school online educational infrastructure
• Investments required for transporting digital public goods are minuscule in comparison and there is no chance of a debt trap.
• Short gestation periods and immediate, and visible impact and benefits.
• Plugs leaks
• Eliminates ghost beneficiaries of government services, removes touts collecting rent, creates an audit trail, makes the individual-government-market interface transparent and provides efficiencies that help recoup the investments quickly.
• Processes get streamlined and wait times for any service come down dramatically. Issuances of passports, PAN cards and driving licences are such examples.
• Productivity goes up and services can be scaled quickly.
• Benefits can be rapidly extended to cover a much larger portion of the population.
• Digital public goods infrastructure compounds while physical infrastructure depreciates. Compounding happens for three reasons.
  • Growth of technology itself. Chips keep becoming faster, engines more powerful, and gene-editing technology keeps improving
  • Network effect. As more and more people use the same technology, the number of “transactions” using that technology increase exponentially — be it Facebook posts or UPI transactions.
  • Rapid creation of new layers of technology. For example, the hypertext protocol created the worldwide web. Then the browser was built on top of it, which made the worldwide web easier to navigate and more popular. Thousands of new layers were added to make it what it is today. To give an example, consider the surge in UPI-based payments in India.
• This kind of growth doesn’t happen with a few entitled and privileged people using UPI more and more; it happens with more and more people using UPI more and more.
• The use of Diksha, the school education platform built on the open-source platform Sunbird, has followed the same trajectory — today close to 500 million schoolchildren are using it. Taken together, compounding ensures that the digital divide gets bridged.
• Emerging economies are characterised by gross inefficiencies in the delivery of government services and a consequent trust deficit.
• Digital public goods spread speed, transparency, ease and productivity across the individual-government-market ecosystem and enhance inclusivity, equity and development at scale.
• India’s digital diplomacy
  • Will be beneficial to and welcomed by, all emerging economies
  • Will take made-in-India digital public goods across the world and boost India’s brand positioning as a leading technology player in the digital age.
  • Enable quick, visible and compounding benefits for India’s partner countries and earn India immense goodwill.
  • Will create a strong foothold for India globally to counter the extravagantly expensive, brick-and-mortar led Belt and Road Initiative of China.

DEFENCE

NEWS

Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) handed over technology for indigenous extreme cold weather clothing system (ECWS) to 05 Indian companies

DETAILS

• Designed by DRDO
• Ergonomically designed modular technical clothing with improved thermal insulation and physiological comfort
• Required by Indian Army for its sustained operations in glacier and Himalayan peaks.
• The Army, till recently has been importing extreme cold weather clothing and several Special Clothing and Mountaineering Equipment (SCME) items for the troops deployed in high altitude regions.
• Embodies physiological concepts related to reduction in respiratory heat and water loss, unhindered range of motions and rapid absorption of sweat while providing water proof, wind proof features with adequate breathability and enhanced insulation as well as strength features required for high altitude operations.
• The three layered ECWCS is designed to suitably provide thermal insulation over a temperature range of +15 to -50° Celsius with different combinations of the layers and intensity of physical work.
• Considering the widely fluctuating weather conditions in the Himalayan peaks, the clothing provides an advantage of fewer combinations to meet the required insulation or IREQ for the prevailing climatic conditions, thereby providing a viable import alternative for the Indian Army.

MAHITI FOR PRELIMS

TECHNICAL TEXTILES

• Textile material and products manufactured primarily for their Technical performance and functional properties rather than aesthetic and decorative characteristics.
• Include textiles for automotive applications, medical textiles (e.g., implants), geotextiles (reinforcement of embankments), agrotextiles (textiles for crop protection), and protective clothing (e.g., heat and radiation protection for fire fighter clothing, molten metal protection for welders, stab protection and bulletproof vests, and spacesuits).

SNIPPETS

• Karnataka has designed a new technology platform that will not only allow online applications for welfare schemes, but also score citizens to determine who needs a benefit the most, a move that will come in handy when there are too many applicants. The platform is named Suvidha, functions directly under Chief Minister
• In a move that will help thousands of families living in protected forest areas that are not declared as tiger reserves, the Forest Department of Karnataka has proposed to enhance the relocation package per family from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 15 lakh. As per the guidelines issued by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), families choosing to move out of a core area can opt for a financial package or accept the rehabilitation arranged by the Forest department. This is to avoid Man-animal conflict
• Senior journalist Prem Shankar Jha and Reuters’ photojournalist Danish Siddiqui, who died while reporting in Afghanistan in July, will be awarded with the top two RedInk Awards by the Mumbai Press Club