Daily Prelims Notes 25 September 2020

September 25, 2020
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN

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Table Of Contents

1. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana

Subject: Schemes

Context:

25th September, 2014 was declared the ‘AntyodayaDiwas’ in honour of PanditDeenDayalUpadhyaya’s 98th Birth Anniversary.
It was the same day when the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) revamped it’s existing skill development program called Aajeevika Skills as DeenDayalUpadhyayaGrameenKaushalyaYojana (DDU-GKY)

Concept:

The Ministry of Rural Development implements DDU-GKY to drive this national agenda for inclusive growth, by developing skills and productive capacity of the rural youth from poor families.

Features:

Demand led skill training at no cost to the rural poor
Mandatory coverage of socially disadvantaged groups (SC/ST 50%; Minority 15%; Women 33%)
Pioneers in providing incentives for job retention, career progression and foreign placements
Post-placement support, migration support and alumni network
Guaranteed Placement for at least 75% trained candidates
Nurturing new training service providers and developing their skills
Greater emphasis on projects for poor rural youth in Jammu and Kashmir (HIMAYAT), The North-East region and 27 Left-Wing Extremist (LWE) districts (ROSHINI)
DDU-GKY follows a 3-tier implementation model. The DDU-GKY National Unit at MoRD functions as the policy-making, technical support and facilitation agency. The DDU-GKY State Missions provide implementation support; and the Project Implementing Agencies (PIAs) implement the programme through skilling and placement projects.

2. National Biopharma Mission

Subject: Schemes

Context:

National Biopharma Mission is supporting small and medium enterprises for biopharmaceutical product development, enhancing industry academia inter linkages and providing opportunities to translate knowledge into products/technologies for vaccines, biotherapeutics, devices and diagnostics informed by minister in Loksabha.

Concept:

The National Biopharma Mission (NBM) is an industry-Academia Collaborative Mission for accelerating biopharmaceutical development in the country.
Under this Mission the Government has launched Innovate in India (i3) programme to create an enabling ecosystem to promote entrepreneurship and indigenous manufacturing in the sector.
The mission will be implemented by Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC).
The mission was approved in 2017 at a total cost of Rs 1500 crore and is 50% co-funded by World Bank loan.
It is managed through a dedicated Program Management Unit (PMU) at BIRAC. Together with National and International experts, the most promising projects are selected in response to open Request for Applications issued by the PMU.
The oversight to the mission activities is provided by the inter-ministerial Steering Committee chaired by the Secretary-DBT.
The program is promoting entrepreneurship by supporting small and medium enterprises for indigenous product development (Novel Cell lines, indigenously developed Biologics, devices and Raw materials for Biologics manufacturing) and through establishment of shared facilities and Technology Transfer Offices.
Innovation is being promoted in India for inclusiveness. This scientifically driven enterprise aims at developing an ecosystem for affordable product development and is focused on the following 4 verticals:
- Development of product leads for Vaccines ,Biosimilars and Medical Devices that are relevant to the public health need by focussing on managed partnerships.
- Upgradation of shared infrastructure facilities and establishing them as centres of product discovery/discovery validations and manufacturing.
- Develop human capital by providing specific trainings to address the critical skills gap among the nascent biotech companies across the product development value chain in areas such as Product development, intellectual property registration, technology transfer and regulatory standards.
- Technology Transfer Offices: To help enhance industry academia inter-linkages and provide increased opportunities for academia, innovators and entrepreneurs to translate knowledge into products and technologies, 5 Technology Transfer Offices are being considered for funding under NBM.

3. National Service Scheme (NSS)

Subject: Schemes

Context:

The President of India Shri Ram NathKovind conferred National Service Scheme Awards 2017-18 in a ceremony held at RashtrapatiBhawan

Concept:

The National Service Scheme (NSS) is a Central Sector Scheme.
It provides opportunity to the student youth of 11th & 12th Class of schools at +2 Board level and student youth of Technical Institution, Graduate & Post Graduate at colleges and University level of India to take part in various government led community service activities &programmes.
The sole aim of the NSS is to provide hands on experience to young students in delivering community service.
Since inception of the NSS in the year 1969, the number of students strength increased from 40,000 to over 3.8 million up to the end of March 2018 students in various universities, colleges and Institutions of higher learning have volunteered to take part in various community service programmes.

4. Jnanpith award

Subject: Arts and culture

Context:

Renowned Malayalam poet AkkithamAchuthanNamboothiri was conferred the Jnanpith award

Concept:

Jnanpith Award is an Indian literary award presented annually by the BharatiyaJnanpith to an author for their “outstanding contribution towards literature”.
Instituted in 1961, the award is bestowed only on Indian writers writing in Indian languages included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India and English, with no posthumous conferral.

5. R Value

Subject: Science and tech

Context:

Reproduction number(R) has fallen below 1 for the first time since the pandemic began in India in the first week of March and for the sixth consecutive day number of people recovering from the disease, as reported in government data, exceeded the detection of new infections.

Concept:

R-value is a measure of the number of people who are being infected on average by an already infected person.
A value less than 1 means fewer people are getting the infection than those who are carrying the disease right now.
The current R-value in India as a whole, as calculated by a team of researchers led by Sitabhra Sinha at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) in Chennai, is 0.93. This means that on average, 100 infected people are passing on the disease to only 93 others.

6. Drain of wealth

Subject: History

Context:

British charity organisation National Trust released a report on September 22 stating that many historical properties it manages have a colonial past and links to slavery.The report states that when the employees returned, they also flooded Britain with “associated objects, furnishing its homes, forging fashions, identities and cultural change”.

Concept:

DadabhaiNaoroji was among the key proponents of the ‘Drain Theory’, disseminating it in his 1901 book ‘Poverty and Un-British Rule in India’.
Naoroji argued that imperial Britain was draining away India’s wealth to itself through exploitative economic policies, including
- India’s rule by foreigners
- the heavy financial burden of the British civil and military apparatus in India
- the exploitation of the country due to free trade
- non-Indians taking away the money that they earned in India
- the interest that India paid on its public debt held in Britain.

7. MSP

Subject: Economy

Context:

Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomarhas assured farmers that MSP will be continued at a time when farmers are concerned about the MSP after the newly passed farm bills

Concept:

The National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA) provides a legal basis for the public distribution system (PDS) that earlier operated only as a regular government scheme.The NFSA made access to the PDS a right, entitling every person belonging to a “priority household” to receive 5 kg of foodgrains per month at a subsidised price not exceeding Rs 2/kg for wheat and Rs 3/kg for rice. Priority households were further defined so as to cover up to 75% of the country’s rural population and 50% in urban areas.
MSP, by contrast, is devoid of any legal backing. Access to it, unlike subsidised grains through the PDS, isn’t an entitlement for farmers. They cannot demand it as a matter of right.
It is only a government policy that is part of administrative decision-making. The government declares MSPs for crops, but there’s no law mandating their implementation.
The Centre currently fixes MSPs for 23 farm commodities — 7 cereals (paddy, wheat, maize, bajra, jowar, ragi and barley), 5 pulses (chana, arhar/tur, urad, moong and masur), 7 oilseeds (rapeseed-mustard, groundnut, soyabean, sunflower, sesamum, safflower and nigerseed) and 4 commercial crops (cotton, sugarcane, copra and raw jute) — based on the CACP’s recommendations.
The only crop where MSP payment has some statutory element is sugarcane. This is due to its pricing being governed by the Sugarcane (Control) Order, 1966 issued under the Essential Commodities Act.

Minimum support price

MSP is the minimum price paid to the farmer for procuring food crops.
It offers an assurance to farmers that their realisation for the agricultural produce will not fall below the stated price.
The government uses the MSP as a market intervention tool to incentivise production of a specific food crop which is in short supply.
It also protects farmers from any sharp fall in the market price of a commodity.
MSPs are usually announced at the beginning of the sowing season and this helps farmers make informed decisions on the crops they must plant.
MSP is computed on the basis of the recommendations made by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP).
It considers factors such as the cost of production, change in input prices, market price trends, demand and supply, and a reasonable margin for farmers.
The Centre has increased the MSP of kharif crops for 2020-21 crop year in line with the principle of fixing MSPs at a level which is at 1.5 times the cost of production that was announced in Union Budget 2018-19.
Concerted efforts were made over the last few years to realign the MSPs in favour of oilseeds, pulses and coarse cereals to encourage farmers shift to larger area under these crops and adopt best technologies and farm practices, to correct demand – supply imbalance.
The added focus on nutri-rich nutri-cereals is to incentivize its production in the areas where rice-wheat cannot be grown without long term adverse implications for groundwater table.
Crops covered under MSP: Paddy, Jowar, Bajra, Ragi, Maize, Tur, Moong, Urad, groundnut, sunflower seed, soyabean, nigerseed, Cotton and sesamum
Besides, the Umbrella Scheme “Pradhan MantriAnnadataAaySanraksHanAbhiyan” (PM-AASHA) announced by the government in 2018 will aid in providing remunerative return to farmers for their produce.
The Umbrella Scheme consists of three sub-schemes i.e.
- Price Support Scheme (PSS)
- Price Deficiency Payment Scheme (PDPS)
- Private Procurement &Stockist Scheme (PPSS) on a pilot basis.

Fair and remunerative price (FRP)

Fair and remunerative price (FRP) is the minimum price at which rate sugarcane is to be purchased by sugar mills from farmers.
The FRP is fixed by Union government on the basis of recommendations of Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP). The ‘FRP’ of sugarcane is determined under Sugarcane (Control) Order, 1966.
Recommended FRP is arrived at by taking into account various factors such as cost of production, demand-supply situation, domestic & international prices, inter-crop price parity etc.
This will be uniformly applicable all over the country.
Besides FRP, some states such as Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, UP and TN announce a State Advised Price, which is generally higher than the FRP.
The price fixed by the central government is the ‘minimum price’ and the one fixed by state government is the ‘advised price’ which is always higher than the ‘minimum price’ fixed by the center

8. Inflation and fixed deposit

Subject: Economy

Context:

In a situation of high inflation and declining interest rates, fixed deposits (FDs) with banks will have to take the backseat in an investor’s asset allocation, especially for those in the highest marginal tax bracket.

Concept:

A fixed deposit (FD) is a financial instrument provided by banks or NBFCs which provides investors a higher rate of interest than a regular savings account, until the given maturity date.
Any financial instrument must serve the purpose of growing your money — so, the first thing one must see before putting money in an FD is whether it provides real growth to the investment (net of inflation). If adjusted for inflation, fixed deposits actually generate negative returns. Consider this example:
For an investor falling in the highest tax bracket, a 10-year investment of Rs 10 lakh in a bank FD offering 5.4 per cent, will generate a post-tax return of close to Rs 4.4 lakh. This means the investment of Rs 10 lakh would grow to Rs 14.4 lakh after 10 years. However, if inflation is 5% in the same period — which will be actually around 7% taking into account lifestyle and education inflation — the investor will actually lose money. This is because the investor’s Rs 10 lakh needed to have grown to Rs 16.28 lakh in 10 years just to cover for the 5% inflation. Since the FD grows to only Rs 14.4 lakh, in real terms the investor would be poorer by close to Rs 1.9 lakh.

9. Artemis program

Subject: Science and tech

Context:

NASA published the outline for its Artemis program, which plans to send the next man and first woman to the lunar surface by the year 2024. The last time NASA sent humans to the Moon was in 1972, during the Apollo lunar mission

Concept:

With the Artemis program, NASA wishes to demonstrate new technologies, capabilities and business approaches that will ultimately be needed for the future exploration of Mars.
The program is divided into three parts,
- Artemis I is most likely to be launched next year and involves an uncrewed flight to test the SLS and Orion spacecraft.
- Artemis II will be the first crewed flight test and is targetted for 2023.
- Artemis III will land astronauts on the Moon’s South Pole in 2024.
For NASA, going to the moon involves various elements – such as the exploration ground systems (the structures on the ground that are required to support the launch), the Space Launch System (SLS), Orion (the spacecraft for lunar missions), Gateway (the lunar outpost around the Moon), lunar landers (modern human landing systems) and the Artemis generation spacesuits.
NASA’s new rocket called SLS will send astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft a quarter of a million miles away from Earth to the lunar orbit.
Once the astronauts dock Orion at the Gateway which is a small spaceship in orbit around the moon they will be able to live and work around the Moon, and from the spaceship, will take expeditions to the surface of the Moon.

10. CAG

Subject: Polity

Context:

Finance Minister told Parliament last week that there was no provision in the law to compensate states for loss of GST revenue out of the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI).
However, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has found that the government itself violated the law by retaining Rs 47,272 crore of GST compensation cess in the CFI during 2017-18 and 2018-19, and used the money for other purposes, which led to overstatement of revenue receipts and understatement of fiscal deficit for the year

Concept:

As per the provisions of the GST Compensation Cess Act, the entire cess collected during a year is required to be credited to a non-lapsable fund (GST compensation cess fund) which is part of the Public Account, and is meant to be used specifically to compensate states for loss of revenue.
However, the government, instead of transferring the entire GST cess amount to the GST compensation fund, retained it in the CFI, and used it for other purposes.
The amount by which the cess was short credited was also retained in the CFI and became available for use for purposes other than what was provided in the act
Apart from the GST compensation cess, the CAG has also mentioned instances of non-transfer of entire amounts of other cesses to their respective Reserve Funds, including the Road and Infrastructure Cess, Cess on Crude Oil, Universal Service Levy, and National Mineral Trust Levy.