1)Government to promote AYUSH and National AYUSH Mission:-
- Behavior Change Communication (BCC) has been included as a strategy of Mass Media Communication incorporating AYUSH strengths in early prevention of diseases through promotion of healthy diet and life style to be adopted by the community which will be advocated by the states.
- Public Health Outreach activity has been included to focus on increasing awareness about AYUSH’s strength in solving community health problems resulting from nutritional deficiencies, epidemics and vector-borne diseases, Maternal and Child Health Care
- AYUSH Gram is a concept wherein one village per block is selected for adoption of method and practice of AYUSH way of life and interventions of health care.
- In AYUSH village AYUSH based lifestyles are promoted through behavioral change communication, training of village health workers towards identification and use of local medicinal herbs and provision of AYUSH health services.
National AYUSH Mission:-
Vision:-
a. To provide cost-effective and equitable AYUSH health care throughout the country by improving access to the services.
b.To revitalize and strengthen the AYUSH systems making them as prominent medical streams in addressing the health care of the society.
c.To improve educational institutions capable of imparting quality AYUSH AYUSH education
d.To promote the adoption of Quality standards of AYUSH drugs and making available the sustained supply of AYUSH raw-materials.
Objectives:
a.To provide cost-effective AYUSH Services, with a universal access through upgrading AYUSH Hospitals and Dispensaries, co-location of AYUSH facilities at Primary Health Centres (PHCs), Community Health Centres (CHCs) and District Hospitals (DHs).
b.To strengthen institutional capacity at the state level through upgrading AYUSH educational institutions, State Govt. ASU&H Pharmacies, Drug Testing Laboratories and ASU & H enforcement mechanism.
c.Support cultivation of medicinal plants by adopting Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) so as to provide sustained supply of quality raw-materials and support certification mechanism for quality standards, Good Agricultural/Collection/Storage Practices.
d.Support setting up of clusters through convergence of cultivation, warehousing, value addition and marketing and development of infrastructure for entrepreneurs.
Mandatory Components of the Mission:-
a. AYUSH Services
b. AYUSH Educational Institutions
c. Quality Control of ASU &H Drugs
d. Medicinal Plants
Flexible Components:-
- AYUSH Wellness Centres including Yoga & Naturopathy
- Tele-medicine
- Sports Medicine through AYUSH
- Innovations in AYUSH including Public Private Partnership
- Interest subsidy component for Private AYUSH educational Institutions
- Reimbursement of Testing charges
- IEC activities
- Research & Development in areas related to Medicinal Plants
- Voluntary certification scheme: Project based.
- Market Promotion, Market intelligence & buy back interventions
- Crop Insurance for Medicinal Plants
Expected Outcome:
a.Improvement in AYUSH education through enhanced number of AYUSH Educational Institutions upgraded.
b.Better access to AYUSH services through increased number of AYUSH Hospital and Dispensaries coverage, availability of drugs and manpower.
c. Sustained availability of quality raw-materials for AYUSH Systems of Medicine.
d.Improved availability of quality ASU &H drugs through increase in the number of quality Pharmacies and Drug Laboratories and enforcement mechanism of ASU&H drugs.
There are three autonomous organizations under Ministry of AYUSH namely, CentralCouncil for Research in Yoga & Naturopathy (CCRYN), Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga (MDNY) & National Institute of Naturopathy(NIN), Pune.
These are engaged in various activities relating to Yoga & Naturopathy, including treatment of patients through these systems. The treatment includes Hydrotherapy, Mud therapy, Massage & Manipulative Therapy,Counseling diet & fasting, Acupuncture, acupressure, solar/chromo therapy, magneto therapy, physiotherapy& various Yoga techniques/ asanas.
2)National Crop Insurance Programme:-
News:- Due to lack of awareness among farmers , they are unable to avail this facility , hence Govt. is planning to promote through various platforms of advertisement and asked the states to do so.
‘National Crop Insurance Programme’ (NCIP) has been introduced by merging Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS), Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS) and Coconut Palm Insurance Scheme (CPIS) throughout the country
NCIP has been introduced to provide financial support to the farmers for losses in their crop yield, to help in maintaining flow of agricultural credit, to encourage farmers to adopt progressive farming practices and higher technology in Agriculture and thereby, to help in maintaining production, employment & economic growth.
Besides, farmers are also benefited due to: –
- coverage of indemnity for prevented sowing/planting risk and post harvest losses (due to cyclone in coastal areas),
- higher level of indemnity and more proficient basis for calculation of threshold yield,
- faster settlement of claims due to provision for making 50% advance of likely claims under MNAIS component (Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme) for immediate relief to the farmers, etc.
- To encourage the State Governments to implement the scheme at village/ village panchayat level, a provision to reimburse 50% of incremental expenses on Crop Cutting Experiments has been made in the scheme.
3)The Two KayaKalps:-
- Kayakalp –Award to Public Health facilities has been launched on 15th May 2015, as a national initiative to promote cleanliness, hygiene and infection control practices in public health facilities. Under this initiative public healthcare facilities shall be appraised and such public healthcare facilities that show exemplary performance meeting standards of protocols of cleanliness, hygiene and infection control will receive awards and commendation.
- Kayakalp:- Another Kayakalp is the Innovation Council of Railway , which looks after and recommends on improving the railway infrastructure and services..Currently it is headed by Ratan Tata.
4)National Mission for Electric Mobility :-
Government of India approved the National Mission on Electric Mobility in 2011 and subsequently National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020 was unveiled in 2013
As part of the mission, Department of Heavy Industries has formulated a scheme namely FAME – India (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India).
The scheme will provide a major push for creation of a viable ecosystem of both hybrid and electric technologies vehicles in the country
Analysis:-
Electric Mobility is a great mission and many see it as a powerful initiative towards “GREEN INDIA” , however the question that we often don’t ask is – how GREEN is the so-called “GREEN AUTOMOBILES/ELECTRIC AUTOMOBILES” ?
One buys an electric car thinking that it will contribute less towards to pollution – will it ?
To answer that 2 important understanding we have to reach :-
- Electric automobile are powered by electricity – but what powers the electricity ?– In India, majority of our electricity is thermal/Coal. That means , if you buy an electric car then chances are that ,you are as polluting as other .It is just that the pollution is done somewhere else – at the thermal plant region.
- Electric cars are powered by Lithium batteries , and Lithium is quite hazardous to environment if not disposed properly. So to say, electric cars can cause damage to environment through lithium poisoning and exposure to lithium is quite damaging to human health too.
So from the above two facts , it is clear that , unless we change our energy mix altogether , electric automobile won’t bring any substantial change to the pollution we cause.
Then – Why Government is promoting it as a Mission ?
The answer to that lies in the below fact :-
Pure electric vehicle produces around 35%~45% lower CO2 as compared to equivalent gasoline vehicle in India based on the fact that most of electricity produced is obtained predominantly from coal, natural gas and oil (75%~85%). In future in view of more and more renewable energy based electricity production in the country, electric vehicles are going to emit lesser CO2 on a Well-to-Wheel basis.
But , then there is Lithium Poisoning, which has to be addressed , if we really want to go “GREEN”
5)Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) – ‘Nishant’
- Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has developed Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) – ‘Nishant’ and the same has been inducted in Army. Also, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) has initiated activities for the design, development and manufacture of UAVs.
- UAV are the most advanced systems for obtaining the real-time imagery of the ground and is useful in the internal security scenario. Presently, CRPF has a holding of 10 Micro-UAVs (NETRA) which have been deployed in LWE affected states, including Chhattisgarh
Questions to be answered (150-200 words)
- Do you think carrying out airstrikes/UAV bombings to fight terrorism and counter-insurgency is ethical (Sending a machine to kill a man) ?
- What is your view on the so-called “GREEN ELECTRIC VEHICLES” ? Should it be promoted?
- Do you think Crop insurance can really help the farmer ? Can it help contain ‘farmer suicide’?What are bottlenecks of National Crop Insurance Policy?
- What is AYUSH ? Do you think it can help the public health profile of India?
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.