PERIYAR IAS ACADEMY Current Affairs, 30 Aug 2017

PERIYAR IAS ACADEMY Current Affairs, 30 Aug 2017

Topic: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

 YUVA – a skill development programme

The YUVA – a skill development programme and an initiative by Delhi Police under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana was recently launched.

About the YUVA initiative:
The ‘YUVA’ initiative by Delhi Police aims to connect with youth by upgrading their skill as per their competencies. It will help them to get a gainful employment under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna under the Ministry of Skill Development.
Delhi Police has tied up with National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for providing mass job linked skill training for the selected youth.
National Skill Development Corporation shall be providing skill training to the youth under ‘Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna’ (PMKVY) and CII will provide job linked training through its Sector Skill Councils who are connected to industry and thereby provide job guarantee.

Significance of this move:

The youth coming for skill training in a police station building will be a huge step in building up their confidence and faith in police organization and will go a long way in building a positive image of police in the long run.

PMKVY:

Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) is the flagship outcome-based skill training scheme of the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE). The objective of this skill certification and reward scheme is to enable and mobilize a large number of Indian youth to take up outcome based skill training and become employable and earn their livelihood. Under the scheme, monetary reward would be provided to trainees who are successfully trained, assessed and certified in skill courses run by affiliated training providers.

Sources: pib.

Topic: Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability, e-governance- applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential; citizens charters, transparency & accountability and institutional and other measures.

                 Judicial performance index for lower courts

The NITI Aayog has suggested far-reaching reforms to expedite the justice delivery system, particularly the lower courts where nearly three crore cases have been pending for years. The recommendation comes against the backdrop of pendency of nearly 2.7 crore cases in subordinate courts, which also face a shortfall of nearly 5,000 judicial officers.

Important recommendations made by the NITI Aayog:

• Establish a judicial performance index to help the high courts and its chief justices to keep track of the performance and process improvement at district courts and subordinate levels for reducing delay.
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• The index can also include certain progress on process steps that have already been approved by high courts, like burden of day-to-day activity being removed from judges and given to administrative officials.
• The process would require fixing non-mandatory time frames for different types of cases. Using existing infrastructure and data, indicators could be created to see how long cases have been pending, what percentage of cases have been delayed and how many cases were disposed in the last year compared to the year before.
• Create a separate administrative cadre in the judicial system to reduce the workload on judges. This cadre should report to the Chief Justice in each high court to maintain judicial independence.
• High priority should be given to court process automation and information and communication technology enablement for electronic court and case management, including electronic management of court schedules and migration of all courts to the unified national court application software.
• Steps may also be taken for ensuring availability of online real time judicial statistics for determining the adequacy of judicial manpower and infrastructure to deal with work load of cases, which will enable priority appointment of judges at the lower judiciary levels keeping in mind a scientific approach to assessing the number of judges needed to tackle the pendency problem.
• Government may have a look at internationally developed measures such as ‘global measures of court performance’, created jointly by the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration, the Federal Judicial Center (US), the National Center for State Courts (US) and the Subordinate Courts of Singapore.
  
  

Sources: et.

Topic: Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability, e-governance- applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential; citizens charters, transparency & accountability and institutional and other measures.

                   Privacy safeguards can make Aadhaar a global model

The Supreme Court judgement on the right to privacy comes at a critical moment in India’s and the world’s transformation to a digital economy. This decision will also have a major impact on identification technology and policy across the globe. The SC judgement gives the opportunity to provide a strong privacy foundation to Aadhaar.

What can be done to address the privacy concerns?

Multi-factor authentication: Aadhaar can provide this option to people by issuing a physical card with the biometric information stored within it protected by access and authentication identifiers that will address privacy concerns to a large extent.

Data sharing concerns: The concern of data sharing across different uses can be addressed by a system where a single, unique individual can be identified in different ways for different purposes. In Austria, cryptography enables users to access multiple services using a single e-ID while ensuring that records cannot be matched across the different databases using a common number.

Lessons from other countries:

Globally, 120 countries have data privacy laws which can be a useful guide to any future legislation. India would do well to learn from experiences of countries like Estonia and Austria. Both these countries have unique identification systems similar to India but that provide greater control to individuals at the point of authentication and in the way their data is shared across sectors. If Aadhaar adopted lessons from abroad, it will address the privacy concerns raised by its critics.

Way ahead:

The SC judgement could not have come at a more appropriate time. Aadhaar is the world’s largest unique individual database, with one in seven persons in the world enrolled. Many countries are closely following Aadhaar’s biometric standards, data safety protocols and authentication capability as they roll out their own identity systems.

Aadhaar is changing the way ordinary people interact with the state but is also asking people to trust the Unique ID Authority of India (UIDAI) to keep private information safe in an increasingly interconnected world. Resolving the issue of individual privacy and data security is therefore of utmost importance.

Conclusion:

If Aadhaar strengthens its data protection as prescribed by the decision, it has the potential to be an example for the world, and will define the global discourse on how both state and non-state actors collect, protect and use personal information. By addressing the genuine concerns of individual privacy and data protection, Aadhaar will be ready to move ahead and lead by example as it has already done on the technological side.

Sources: et.

                                                                       

Paper 3:

Topic: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life Achievements of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.

                                            

                                 IIT team makes ‘implantable pancreas’

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati have successfully created an implantable bioartificial pancreas model grown within a 3D silk scaffold. The pancreas encapsulates insulin-producing cells and is capable of naturally producing insulin in a sustained manner.

How was it created?

Scientists coated the scaffold containing beta cells with a semi-permeable membrane barrier. The membrane allows insulin produced to be released into the blood stream but does not allow the immune cells to cross the membrane and kill the islet cells.

• To ensure that the implant is not rejected by the body’s immune system, drugs that suppress the immune system were embedded in the scaffold.
• Studies carried in the lab showed that the beta cells in the scaffold were able to produce adequate amount of insulin in response to different glucose levels within a few seconds.

Way ahead:

If successful in animal and human trials, it can be used for treating people with type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes arises when the body’s immune system kills the insulin-producing beta cells. Since type 1 diabetes patients do not have insulin-producing beta cells, the researchers have turned to stem cells to produce beta cells.

Sources: the hindu.