1) Zero TB Cities project:-
- Chennai has been chosen as one of two cities in the world where the Zero TB Cities project will try to create an “island of elimination”; Lima in Peru is the other city.
- The project will be implemented by the Municipal Corporation of Chennai with the Chennai-based REACH and the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT) assisting it
- In India, there is evidence that transmission of TB is much higher in cities, and cities are often the source of infection for rural communities. So, getting to zero in cities will eliminate important reservoirs of TB
2)Rising oil, auto, power demand point to strong revival: report
- Good growth in oil, power and auto demand for the past two months points to a reviving economic momentum,” Swiss brockerage Credit Suisse has said in a report
- Given the government focus on bottom-up growth rather than top-down, it believes the first signs of recovery are likely to come from broad-based indicators. Good growth in oil, power and auto demand for the past two months points to a reviving economic momentum,
- Demand growth in oil, which hit an 11-year high in September and October, coupled with rising consumption of power and auto sales point to a strong economic revival that was missing for many years
- Demand for plastics has hit a 10-year high at 54 per cent against a 4 per cent fall in the past two years.
- A 54 per cent rise in bitumen consumption points to road construction doing well. Demand growth supports restart and ramp-up of Haldia Petrochemicals and explains some of the naphtha growth and strong plastics demand, the report has said.
3)Regenerating bones through nanoparticles:-
- A recent study by scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru suggests that ‘3D scaffolds’ of graphene composites can be used for bone tissue regeneration as they mimic the environment of the bone
- The researchers from the department of Materials Engineering went about ‘strengthening’ Polycaprolactone (PCL) — a biodegradable polymer — by adding graphene, a two-dimensional hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms.
- Though PCL is biodegradable, it is considered too soft to be used as a bone template. However, graphene has a strength that is more than 200 times that of steel.
- The addition of graphene dioxide was found to have increased the strength of PCL by 22 per cent and its capacity to resist deformation by 44 per cent — enough to sustain bone growth, while also being biodegradable
- Arrangement of cells in 3D scaffolds is similar to what is seen inside bone tissue.The purpose of the scaffold is to provide only a temporary home for the regenerating cells. The scaffold should degrade slowly over time allowing for healthy tissue to eventually replace the scaffold
4)East Asia Summit :-
- The East Asia Summit (EAS) is a forum held annually by leaders of, initially, 16 countries in the East Asian and South East Asian region. Membership expanded to 18 countries including the United States and Russia at the Sixth EAS in 2011. EAS meetings are held after annual ASEAN leaders’ meetings. The first summit was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 14 December 2005.
- PM attends East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, unveils Statue of Swami Vivekananda, addresses Indian Community.PM at East Asia Summit: The shadow of terrorism stretches across our societies and our world
- Areas of Engagement :-
- Environment and Energy Cooperation
- Education Cooperation
- Finance Cooperation
- Cooperation on Global Health Issues and Pandemic Diseases
- Cooperation on Natural Disaster Management
- Cooperation on ASEAN Connectivity
- Food Security Cooperation
- Institutional and Financial Arrangements for the Implementation of this Plan of Action:-
- The initiatives mentioned in this Plan of Action will be implemented through existing regional frameworks and mechanisms of ASEAN, in close consultation with and support from EAS participating countries, and with appropriate support and from relevant regional and international organizations, including Asian Development Bank (ADB), United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), World Bank, and Economic Research Institute of ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
5)India revives its eastern-most airfield at Teju:-
- Teju is part of the six strategic airfields that were planned for Arunachal Pradesh. Five more airports are underway at Tawang, Daparizo, Anini, Koloriang and Hollangi. But the Teju airfield which will increase air connectivity with the region is unique as it is the easternmost landing strip in the country.
6)Public Heath Infrastructure – Lesson from Odisha:-
- It has been two months since news and reports of the deaths of 40 infants at Shishubhawan, the largest paediatric care centre in eastern India, broke. The facility is for critically-ill children from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. By the end of September, 56 deaths were reported in a span on 12 days.
- The bad news first: it is not the hospital’s fault. It was not medical negligence. Nor was it due to a sudden outbreak of infection. What happened at the hospital is symptomatic of how deep the rot is in India’s crumbling public health infrastructure.
- This was a worst case scenario at an ill-equipped hospital with overworked doctors making a bad case a bit worse. And everyone agrees. Yes, the hospital needs more hands. Yes, the laboratory closed too soon. Yes, the children were brought in too late. Yes, the media parachuted in, misread the situation and began screaming cold-blooded murder.
- Shishubhawan, officially known as the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Post Graduate Institute of Paediatrics, does not deserve the bad press. The centre is an extramural hospital, which means that every baby admitted was born elsewhere but referred there after complications.
- Unlike private hospitals that refer dying patients to government hospitals and keep their mortality rates clean, Shishubhawan cannot refer the patients anywhere, hence mortality is obviously high.Many of the babies reach too late to the hospital.
- As things stand, Odisha has one doctor per 9,729 population as against the national average which by itself is bad.
- With a population of around 4 cr the State has only 19,188 registered doctors, allopathic and AYUSH [Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy] practitioners included. It is a sign of desperation that a State struggling to find doctors, has fired such a large number of doctors en-masse to cleanse the system from bad doctors.
- The shortage of anaesthesiologists in Odisha is so severe that the State is giving our general practitioners a crash course to allow caesarean section operations. And yet, these 408 doctors had to be fired. All these doctors were on leave for years and were within the system, so we could not hire more doctors for these posts, as they were technically not vacant.
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- In the Large States category (overall), Chhattisgarh ranks 1st, followed by Odisha and Telangana, whereas, towards the bottom are Maharashtra at 16th, Assam at 17th and Gujarat at 18th. Gujarat is one State that has seen startling performance ranking 5th in the PAI 2021 Index outperforming traditionally good performing States like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, but ranks last in terms of Delta
- In the Small States category (overall), Nagaland tops, followed by Mizoram and Tripura. Towards the tail end of the overall Delta ranking is Uttarakhand (9th), Arunachal Pradesh (10th) and Meghalaya (11th). Nagaland despite being a poor performer in the PAI 2021 Index has come out to be the top performer in Delta, similarly, Mizoram’s performance in Delta is also reflected in it’s ranking in the PAI 2021 Index
- In terms of Equity, in the Large States category, Chhattisgarh has the best Delta rate on Equity indicators, this is also reflected in the performance of Chhattisgarh in the Equity Pillar where it ranks 4th. Following Chhattisgarh is Odisha ranking 2nd in Delta-Equity ranking, but ranks 17th in the Equity Pillar of PAI 2021. Telangana ranks 3rd in Delta-Equity ranking even though it is not a top performer in this Pillar in the overall PAI 2021 Index. Jharkhand (16th), Uttar Pradesh (17th) and Assam (18th) rank at the bottom with Uttar Pradesh’s performance in line with the PAI 2021 Index
- Odisha and Nagaland have shown the best year-on-year improvement under 12 Key Development indicators.
- In the 60:40 division States, the top three performers are Kerala, Goa and Tamil Nadu and, the bottom three performers are Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar.
- In the 90:10 division States, the top three performers were Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Mizoram; and, the bottom three performers are Manipur, Assam and Meghalaya.
- Among the 60:40 division States, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are the top three performers and Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Delhi appear as the bottom three performers.
- Among the 90:10 division States, the top three performers are Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland; and, the bottom three performers are Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh
- Among the 60:40 division States, Goa, West Bengal and Delhi appear as the top three performers and Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Bihar appear as the bottom three performers.
- Among the 90:10 division States, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh and Tripura were the top three performers and Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh were the bottom three performers
- West Bengal, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were the top three States amongst the 60:40 division States; while Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan appeared as the bottom three performers
- In the case of 90:10 division States, Mizoram, Assam and Tripura were the top three performers and Nagaland, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand featured as the bottom three
- Among the 60:40 division States, the top three performers are Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and the bottom three performers are Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Goa
- In the 90:10 division States, the top three performers are Mizoram, Sikkim and Nagaland and the bottom three performers are Manipur and Assam
In a diverse country like India, where each State is socially, culturally, economically, and politically distinct, measuring Governance becomes increasingly tricky. The Public Affairs Index (PAI 2021) is a scientifically rigorous, data-based framework that measures the quality of governance at the Sub-national level and ranks the States and Union Territories (UTs) of India on a Composite Index (CI).
States are classified into two categories – Large and Small – using population as the criteria.
In PAI 2021, PAC defined three significant pillars that embody Governance – Growth, Equity, and Sustainability. Each of the three Pillars is circumscribed by five governance praxis Themes.
The themes include – Voice and Accountability, Government Effectiveness, Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality and Control of Corruption.
At the bottom of the pyramid, 43 component indicators are mapped to 14 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are relevant to the States and UTs.
This forms the foundation of the conceptual framework of PAI 2021. The choice of the 43 indicators that go into the calculation of the CI were dictated by the objective of uncovering the complexity and multidimensional character of development governance
The Equity Principle
The Equity Pillar of the PAI 2021 Index analyses the inclusiveness impact at the Sub-national level in the country; inclusiveness in terms of the welfare of a society that depends primarily on establishing that all people feel that they have a say in the governance and are not excluded from the mainstream policy framework.
This requires all individuals and communities, but particularly the most vulnerable, to have an opportunity to improve or maintain their wellbeing. This chapter of PAI 2021 reflects the performance of States and UTs during the pandemic and questions the governance infrastructure in the country, analysing the effectiveness of schemes and the general livelihood of the people in terms of Equity.
Growth and its Discontents
Growth in its multidimensional form encompasses the essence of access to and the availability and optimal utilisation of resources. By resources, PAI 2021 refer to human resources, infrastructure and the budgetary allocations. Capacity building of an economy cannot take place if all the key players of growth do not drive development. The multiplier effects of better health care, improved educational outcomes, increased capital accumulation and lower unemployment levels contribute magnificently in the growth and development of the States.
The Pursuit Of Sustainability
The Sustainability Pillar analyses the access to and usage of resources that has an impact on environment, economy and humankind. The Pillar subsumes two themes and uses seven indicators to measure the effectiveness of government efforts with regards to Sustainability.
The Curious Case Of The Delta
The Delta Analysis presents the results on the State performance on year-on-year improvement. The rankings are measured as the Delta value over the last five to 10 years of data available for 12 Key Development Indicators (KDI). In PAI 2021, 12 indicators across the three Pillars of Equity (five indicators), Growth (five indicators) and Sustainability (two indicators). These KDIs are the outcome indicators crucial to assess Human Development. The Performance in the Delta Analysis is then compared to the Overall PAI 2021 Index.
Key Findings:-
In the Scheme of Things
The Scheme Analysis adds an additional dimension to ranking of the States on their governance. It attempts to complement the Governance Model by trying to understand the developmental activities undertaken by State Governments in the form of schemes. It also tries to understand whether better performance of States in schemes reflect in better governance.
The Centrally Sponsored schemes that were analysed are National Health Mission (NHM), Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services scheme (ICDS), Mahatma Gandh National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SmSA) and MidDay Meal Scheme (MDMS).
National Health Mission (NHM)
INTEGRATED CHILD DEVELOPMENT SERVICES (ICDS)
MID- DAY MEAL SCHEME (MDMS)
SAMAGRA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN (SMSA)
MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE SCHEME (MGNREGS)