PERIYAR IAS CURRENT AFFAIRS 19-JUNE-2018
Paper 2:
Topic: Statutory, regulatory and various
quasi-judicial bodies.
Banks Board Bureau
Context: The
Banks Board Bureau (BBB) has recommended 22 general managers to be elevated as
executive directors at various public sector banks. These recommendations are
based on interactions held by the Banks Board Bureau with eligible candidates
from PSBs towards appointment against vacancies in PSBs for the period 2018-19.
§ The
Appointments Committee of Cabinet headed by Prime Minister will take the final
decision in this regard. There are already some vacancies at executive director
level and more would be created during the course of the year.
About Banks Board Bureau (BBB):
§ It was set
up in February 2016 as an autonomous body– based on
the recommendations of the RBI-appointed Nayak Committee. It was
the part of Indradhanush Plan of government.
§ Its broad
agenda was to improve governance at state-owned lenders. Its mandate also
involved advising the government on top-level bank appointments and assisting
banks with capital-raising plans as well as strategies to deal with bad loans.
What’s important?
§ For
Prelims: Mandate, objectives and composition.
§ For Mains:
Indradhanush plan, recommendations of Nayak Committee.
Sources: the hindu.
Topic: Government policies and interventions
for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and
implementation.
India BPO promotion scheme
Context: The
Union government is planning to expand its BPO promotion scheme under the
Digital India initiative. The government has proposed to more than double the
number of seats under the scheme.
About India BPO Promotion scheme (IBPS):
§ The India
BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS), envisaged under Digital India Programme, seeks to
incentivize establishment of 48,300 seats in respect of BPO/ITES operations
across the country.
§ It is
distributed among each State in proportion of State’s population with an outlay
of Rs. 493 Crore. This would help in capacity building in smaller cities in
terms of infra & manpower and would become basis for next wave of IT/ITES
led growth.
Salient Features:
§ Financial
Support: Up to 50% of expenditure incurred on BPO/ITES operations towards
capital expenditure (CAPEX) and/or operational expenditure (OPEX) on admissible
items, subject to an upper ceiling of Rs. 1 Lakh/Seat.
§ Special
incentives toward employment of women & specially enabled persons.
§ Incentive
for generating employment beyond target & wider dispersal within state
including rural areas.
§ Encouragement
for local entrepreneurs.
§ Special
consideration for Hilly states of HP, J&K and UK.
Significance of the scheme:
This scheme has potential to create
employment opportunities of around 1.5 lakh direct jobs considering three shift
operations. It may also create good number of indirect jobs.
Background:
BPO / ITES Industry is one of the fastest
growing segments under the Information Technology sector in the country. It has
immense potential to grow and expand further because of its readiness to
deliver at par with global standards and inherent cost advantage.
Currently, most revenue by this sector is
generated from, in and around, the metropolitan areas of Bengaluru, Chennai,
Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune. Other parts of the country,
having availability of talent pool and infrastructure, are yet to reap the
benefits of this global boom.
What’s important?
§ For
Prelims: IBPS scheme- objectives and features.
§ For Mains:
BPO industry- development in the country, challenges and significance.
Sources: the hindu.
Topic: e-governance- applications, models,
successes, limitations, and potential.
National Data Centre
Context: The
Centre will set up the country’s biggest data centre in
Bhopal with a capacity to host five lakh virtual servers. It will be set up by
the National Informatics Centre (NIC), under the Ministry of Electronics and
Information Technology (MeitY).
Facts for Prelims:
This will be the fifth National Data Centre after
the ones at Bhubaneswar, Delhi, Hyderabad and Pune.
NIC and NIC Data Centres:
NIC, under the Department of Information
Technology of the Government of India, is a premier Science and Technology
Organization, at the forefront of the active promotion
and implementation of Information and Communication Technology(ICT) solutions
in the government. The NIC is a part of the Indian Ministry of Electronics and
Information Technology’s Department of Electronics & Information
Technology.
§ With the
increased expectations from citizens for online services and the number of
e-Governance Projects being launched by the Government, the Data Centre
requirements are growing exponentially. There is a need to set up strategic
infrastructure that facilitates high availability, quick scalability, efficient
management & optimized utilization of resources.
§ To fulfil this requirement, NIC has
set up state-of-the-art National Data Centres to provide services to the
Government at all levels. These Data Centres combine round-the-clock
operations and management of systems with onsite skilled personnel. The National
Data Centres host Government websites, services and apps.
What’s important?
§ For
Prelims: NIC and NDC- features and objectives.
§ For Mains:
ICT and its development in the country.
Sources: the hindu.
Topic: Issues related to health.
International Classification of
Diseases (ICD-11)
Context: The
World Health Organization (WHO) has released its new International
Classification of Diseases (ICD-11).
What is ICD?
The ICD is the global health information
standard for mortality and morbidity statistics.
§ ICD is
increasingly used in clinical care and research to define diseases and study
disease patterns, as well as manage health care, monitor outcomes and allocate
resources. ICD has been translated into 43 languages.
§ More than
100 countries use the system to report mortality data, a primary indicator of
health status. This system helps to monitor death and disease rates worldwide
and measure progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.
§ About 70%
of the world’s health expenditures (USD $ 3.5 billion) are allocated using ICD
for reimbursement and resource allocation.
Highlights of ICD- 11:
§ ICD-11
identifies health trends and statistics worldwide, and contains around 55,000
unique codes for injuries, diseases and causes of death.
§ ICD-11,
which has been over a decade in the making, provides significant improvements
on previous versions.
§ Also for
the first time, it is completely electronic and has a much more user-friendly
format. And there has been unprecedented involvement of health care workers who
have joined collaborative meetings and submitted proposals.
§ The new
ICD-11 also reflects progress in medicine and advances in scientific
understanding. For example, the codes relating to antimicrobial resistance are
more closely in line with the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance
System (GLASS).
§ ICD-11 is
also able to better capture data regarding safety in health care, which means
that unnecessary events that may harm health – such as unsafe workflows in
hospitals can be identified and reduced.
§ The new
ICD also includes new chapters- one on traditional medicine and another new
chapter on sexual health.
§ Gaming
disorder has been added to the section on addictive disorders.
ICD purpose and uses:
§ The ICD is
the foundation for the identification of health trends and statistics globally.
It is the international standard for defining and reporting diseases and health
conditions. It allows the world to compare and share health information using a
common language.
§ The ICD
defines the universe of diseases, disorders, injuries and other related health
conditions. These entities are listed in a comprehensive way so that everything
is covered. It organizes information into standard groupings of diseases, which
allows for:
§ Easy
storage, retrieval and analysis of health information for evidenced-based
decision-making;
§ Sharing
and comparing health information between hospitals, regions, settings and
countries; and
§ Data
comparisons in the same location across different time periods.
Background:
The first international classification
edition, known as the International List of Causes of Death, was adopted by the
International Statistical Institute in 1893. WHO was entrusted with the ICD at
its creation in 1948. The ICD is revised periodically and is currently in its
10th revision.
What’s important?
For Prelims and Mains: ICD- what is it, uses
and significance.
Sources: the hindu.
Paper 3:
Topic: Indian Economy and issues relating to
planning, mobilization of resources, growth, development and employment.
RBI alters ‘relative’ definition
Context: Concerned
over funds sent abroad under the ‘maintenance of close relative’ category of
the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has
narrowed the definition of relatives to check the flow of funds.
The new definition:
RBI has aligned the definition of ‘relative’
with the definition given in Companies Act, 2013 instead of Companies Act,
1956. Hence, funds under the ‘maintenance of close relative’ category can be
sent only to immediate relatives such as parents, spouses, children and their
spouses.
What necessitated this move?
Outward remittances under maintenance of
close relatives shot up to almost $3 billion in 2017-18 from a mere $174
million in 2013-14. In fact, funds sent under this category have more than
doubled since 2015-16. Overall outward remittances under LRS went up to $11
billion from $1 billion in the same period.
About Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS):
Under LRS, all resident individuals can
freely remit $250,000 overseas every financial year for a permissible set of
current or capital account transactions.
Permitted: Remittances
are permitted for overseas education, travel, medical treatment and purchase of
shares and property, apart from maintenance of relatives living abroad, gifting
and donations. Individuals can also open, maintain and hold foreign currency
accounts with overseas banks for carrying out transactions.
Not permitted: However,
the rules do not allow remittances for trading on the foreign exchange markets,
margin or margin calls to overseas exchanges and counterparties and the
purchase of Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds issued by Indian companies
abroad. Sending money to certain countries and entities is also barred. Under
LRS, people can’t send money to countries identified as ‘non cooperative’ by
the Financial Action Task Force. Remittances are also prohibited to entities
identified as posing terrorist risks.
What’s important?
§ For
Prelims: Liberalised remittance scheme.
§ For Mains:
Need for control of foreign exchange movements.
Sources: the hindu.
Topic: Disaster management.
Google for flood forecasting
Context: Central
Water Commission (CWC), India’s apex technical organization in the field of
Water Resources, has entered into a Collaboration Agreement with Google for
flood forecasting. This initiative is likely to help crisis management agencies
to deal extreme hydrological events in a better manner.
Under this Agreement:
CWC and Google will share technical expertise
in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, geospatial mapping
and analysis of hydrological observation data to collaborate on:
§ Improving
flood prediction systems, which will help provide location-targeted, actionable
flood warnings.
§ High
priority research project utilizing Google Earth Engine to help visualize and
improve flood management.
§ A cultural
project to build online exhibitions on the Rivers of India.
Benefits of the agreement:
§ The
collaborative arrangement is likely to result in saving of crore of rupees
which otherwise would have to be spent by the government on acquiring high resolution
DEM, high end computational resources and developing dissemination platforms
widely used by the masses.
§ This would
enable the Government as well as disaster management organisations to identify
well in advance the locations and population, which are at risk from floods and
require warnings and information.
§ This
collaborative initiative is expected to be a milestone in flood management and
in mitigating the flood losses.
About Central Water Commission:
§ Central
Water Commission is a premier Technical Organization of India in the field of
Water Resources and is presently functioning as an attached office of the
Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation,
Government of India.
§ The
Commission is entrusted with the general responsibilities of initiating,
coordinating and furthering in consultation of the State Governments concerned,
schemes for control, conservation and utilization of water resources throughout
the country, for purpose of Flood Control, Irrigation, Navigation, Drinking
Water Supply and Water Power Development. It also undertakes the
investigations, construction and execution of any such schemes as required.
What’s important?
§ For
Prelims: CWC, agreement between CWC and Google for flood forecasting.
§ For Mains:
Water crisis in India- causes, effects, challenges and solutions, flood
management in the country.
Sources: pib.
Topic: Challenges to internal security through
communication networks, role of media and social networking sites in internal
security challenges, basics of cyber security.
‘Cop Connect’
WHAT is it? It
is a mobile application developed by Telangana police for their internal
communication purpose. It has been developed on the lines of WhatsApp. Police
have developed this app keeping in view the safety of their information besides
having hassle free communication.
Features:
§ The app is
a secure communication channel, with no limit on the number of members in any
individual group (unlike the regular WhatsApp which has a restriction of 256
numbers) and has all the features of WhatsApp.
§ Other
features of the Cop-Connect app are chatting, group chats, file sharing (image,
audio, video and documents) and location sharing. A unique feature, iMeeting,
can help in creating and scheduling department meetings in an easy way.
Benefits:
§ The app
will help in connecting 60,000 plus police force, spanning over 31 revenue
districts across the state.
§ COP
Connect’s has end-to-end encryption with server being with Police Department
and it ensures absolute security and confidentiality of internal police
communication.
Sources: the hindu.
Facts for Prelims:
Year of Disabled Soldiers:
WHAT is it? To honour soldiers who have been
disabled in line of duty, while serving the Nation and to celebrate the undying
spirit of ‘Soldiering’, Indian Army is observing the year 2018 as the ‘Year of
Disabled Soldiers in Line of Duty’.
WHY? The primary focus is towards alleviating
the sufferings of these soldiers, who have done their duty with utmost
dedication to the Nation and have been disabled for the life.
HOW? The endeavour this year is to provide a
onetime financial assistance to disabled soldiers who have been boarded out
from service on medical grounds and are rendered non-employable due to their
medical or physical conditions.
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