UPSC/STATE PSC

The Hindu & Indian Express

News 1: Eurozone to coordinate fiscal, monetary policy on inflation

Background:

• Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Friday to act together to protect households and companies from soaring energy prices, coordinating their support policies with the European Central Bank to avoid adding to inflationary pressures.

About Eurozone:

• The eurozone, officially known as the euro area, is a geographic and economic region that consists of all the European Union countries that have fully incorporated the euro as their national currency.
• As of 2022, the eurozone consists of 19 countries in the European Union (EU)
• Members: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

About European Union:

• The European Union (EU) is a political and economic alliance of 27 countries.
• In recent years, the EU has expanded to include many of the countries that had been Soviet Socialist States before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
• In the 2016 referendum known as Brexit, the U.K. voted to leave the EU. It officially left in 2020.
• The Maastricht Treaty took effect in 1993, replacing the European Community with the European Union (EU).
• Members: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden

News 2: N. Korea makes nuclear programme ‘irreversible’

Background:

• North Korea has passed a law declaring its readiness to launch preventive nuclear strikes, including in the face of conventional attacks, state media said on Friday.
• The move effectively eliminates the possibility of denuclearization talks, with leader Kim Jong Un saying the country’s status as a nuclear state was now “irreversible”.

Treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons: 

• The NPT is a landmark international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. 
• The Treaty represents the only binding commitment in a multilateral treaty to the goal of disarmament by the nuclear-weapon States.
• States who are not a party to this treaty: India, Pakistan, Israel, South Sudan, North Korea

News 3: Make anti-TB campaign a mass movement: President

Background:

• President Droupadi Murmu virtually launched the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan on Friday. Speaking on the occasion, the President said it was the duty of all citizens to give high priority to the anti-tuberculosis campaign and make it a mass movement.

Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan:

• Objectives:
  • Provide additional patient support to improve treatment outcomes of TB patients
  • Augment community involvement in meeting India’s commitment to end TB by 2025
  • Leverage Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities
• Expected outcome of this mission:
  • This initiative will increase the active involvement of society in the fight against tuberculosis.
  • This activity aims at increasing awareness among the public regarding tuberculosis, and involvement of community will reduce stigma
  • Provision of additional support to the TB patient shall also result in the reduction of the out-of-pocket expenditure for the family of the TB patient, better nutritional outcomes will result in better treatment.
• Ni-kshay Mitra:
  • The President also launched the Ni-kshay Mitra initiative to ensure additional diagnostic, nutritional, and vocational support to those on TB treatment, and encouraged elected representatives, corporates, NGOs, and individuals to come forward as donors to help the patients complete their journey towards recovery.
  • The Ni-kshay 2.0 portal will facilitate in providing additional patient support to improve treatment outcome of TB patients, augmenting community involvement in meeting India’s commitment to end TB by 2025 and leveraging Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) opportunities.

National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP):

• The National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP), aims to strategically reduce TB burden in India by 2025, five years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goals.
• The National Strategic Plan for TB Elimination was launched to achieve the target of ending TB by 2025 in a mission mode. It is a multi-pronged approach which aims to detect all TB patients with an emphasis on reaching TB patients seeking care from private providers and undiagnosed TB in high-risk populations.
• A range of forward-looking policies have been implemented including critical schemes such as Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana (NPY), which helped meet the nutritional requirements of TB patients, especially the underserved.
• Over 1,50,000 Ayushman Bharat – Health and Wellness Centres will be established by December 2022 to decentralize comprehensive primary healthcare including TB care services at the grassroots level.

About Tuberculosis:

• TB is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and it most often affects the lungs. TB is spread through the air when people cough, sneeze or spit. A person needs to inhale only a few germs to become infected.
• Tuberculosis caused the largest number of deaths among all other infectious diseases in the country.
• India has a little less than 20% of the world’s population but has more than 25% of the total TB patients of the world.

BCG vaccine:

• The BCG vaccine is one of the most widely used of all current vaccines in the world and since 2004, about 10 crore children are vaccinated with BCG each year.
• It decreases mortality and provides protection against different forms of TB disease.
• BCG’s efficacy is more variable in adolescents and adults ranging from 0 to 80% depending on various criteria.

Sustainable development Goal (SDG 3: Good health and well-being):

• According to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, all nations have set the goal of eradicating TB by the year 2030.

News 4: National Education Policy

National Education Policy:

• The NEP is the first in 21st century which is built on the foundational pillars of Access, Equity, Quality, Affordability and Accountability, this policy is aligned to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and aims to transform India into a vibrant knowledge society and global knowledge superpower by making both school and college education more holistic, flexible, multidisciplinary, suited to 21st century needs and aimed at bringing out the unique capabilities of each student.
• The National Education Policy, 2022, which advocates for a three-language formula where two of the languages are native to India, says the medium of instruction till at least Class 5 or preferably till Class 8 should be in the mother tongue, after which it can be taught as a language.

About NIPUN:

• The government has launched NIPUN (National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy) as a national mission to enable all children at the end of Class 3, in the age group of 3 to 9 years to attain foundational skills by the year 2026-27 and these benchmarks will provide a baseline for subsequent surveys.

Outcomes of implementing NIPUN Bharat programme:

• Foundational skills enable to keep children in class thereby reducing the dropouts and improve transition rate from primary to upper primary and secondary stages.
• Activity based learning and a conducive learning environment will improve the quality of education.
• Innovative pedagogies such as toy-based and experiential learning will be used in classroom transactions thereby making learning a joyful and engaging activity.
• Intensive capacity building of teachers will make them empowered and provide greater autonomy for choosing the pedagogy.

News 5: Campaign to expand SHG footprint

Background:

• In a bid to increase the coverage of self-help groups, the Ministry of Rural Development on Friday announced a nationwide campaign to expedite the inclusion of women who are left out of the umbrella of Self Help Groups (SHGs) under the Deen Dayal Upadhyay National Rural Livelihood Mission.

Deen Dayal Upadhyay National Rural Livelihood Mission:

• Ministry: Ministry of Rural Development
• Launched: 2011
• Objective: The Mission aims at creating efficient and effective institutional platforms for the rural poor enabling them to increase household income through sustainable livelihood enhancements and improved access to financial services.

News 6: PMGK Anna Yojana

Background:

• Several states are seeking an extension of the free food grains scheme (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana) beyond September 30.

Pradhan Mantri Graib Kalyan Ann Yojana:

• Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY) is a scheme as part of Atmanirbhar Bharat to supply free food grains to migrants and poor. Currently, phase VI of the programme has started from April 2022 which will end in September 2022.
• Under this scheme, the center provides 5kg of free food grains per month to the poor. This is in addition to the subsidized (Rs 2-3 per kg) ration provided under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) to families covered under the Public Distribution System (PDS).
• PMGKAY caters free food grain, either rice or wheat, to over 80 crore beneficiaries of NSFA.
• The scheme which can be availed through the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) plan was first introduced from April to June 2020 during the stringent lockdown in India and has been extended six times ever since.

Positive outcome:

• Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, has been critical in preventing any increase in extreme poverty levels in India and the doubling of food entitlements worked substantially in terms of absorbing the induced Covid-19 pandemic economic shocks, as per the IMF report (Pandemic, Poverty, and Inequality: Evidence from India)

News 7: Indo-China Dispute

Background: Issue persists in disengagement of LAC at Gogra Hot Springs.

Timeline of Indo-China Disputes