PIB Summary- 23rd September, 2021 | PIB (Press Information Bureau) Summary - UPSC PDF Download

One-Horned Rhinos

Context: PM lauded Team Assam for efforts for well-being of single-horned Rhinos.

About the Indian Rhinoceros

• The Indian Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) is a rhinoceros species native to the Indian Subcontinent.
• It is distinguished from the other rhinoceros species by the presence of a single horn.
• Its IUCN status is ‘Vulnerable’.

Characteristics of the Indian Rhinoceros

The Indian Rhino is grey-brown in colour and has one horn on its snout. This one horn is its most distinguishing feature. Aside from its eyelashes, ear fringes and tail brush it is largely hairless.
Its single horn is found in males and females although not in newborn calves. The horn is made of keratin, similar to what’s found in human fingernails. The horns started to show after six years. The length of the horn is about 25 cm but horns upto 36 cm have also been measured. Further characteristics of the Indian Rhino is given in the table below:

Characteristics of the Indian Rhinoceros

Behaviour of the Indian Rhino
Adult male rhinos are solitary in nature. Usually Indian rhinos form groups consisting of females with calves that gather at wallows and grazing areas. They are active in early morning, late afternoons and at night. Excellent swimmers, they can also run at the speed of 55 km/h
Indian rhinos have few natural predators as their size and thick skin make them difficult targets, but unguarded calves are particularly vulnerable to the Bengal Tiger, Indian Leopard etc.
Indian rhinos are herbivores, primarily grazers whose diet consists mainly of grasses but also eat leave, branches, shrubs and fruits
Females are largely solitary when they are without calves. Mothers will stay close to their calves for up to four years after their birth.

Conservation of the Indian Rhino
The IUCN Red List lists the Indian Rhino as vulnerable with its population range being severely limited. As per the World Wide Fund for Nature –India (WWF-India), the population of India rhinos is beyond 3600 as of 2020.
The most important habitats of the rhino being the alluvial Terai-Duar savanna and riverine forests are on decline due to human encroachment
Kaziranga National Park and the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary in Assam are one of the most well-known Indian Rhino sanctuaries in the country. The Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary has the highest density of Indian rhino with 84 individuals in an area of 14.98 sq mi.
The main threats for the Rhino population are as follows:
Habitat degradation
Due to human activities and natural disasters like floods, the habitat of the Indian rhinos is deteriorating causing large number of deaths
Lack of habitat diversity
Since the population range of the Indian rhino is limited, with 70% of population occurring at a single site – Kaziranga National Park – an unexpected catastrophic event such as disease, natural disaster or habitat loss will have a severe impact on the Indian rhino’s status.
To ensure the survival of rhinos in case of epidemics, animals were translocated annually from Chitwan to Bardia National Park and Shuklaphanta National Park since 1986.
Poaching
As rhino horns are an invaluable ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine, they are at an immediate threat from poachers. Almost 100 rhinos were poached in India between 2013 and 2018.
Although it was difficult to breed Indian rhinos in captivity, but Indian zoos became adept at the task in the late 20th century. They have also been bred in foregn zoos such as the Zoo Basel in Switzerland whose breeding program has been met with significant success.
Other conservation efforts by the Indian government have been largely successful in preserving the remaining populations of the Indian rhino, but poaching still remains a constant threat to this day despite efforts to control it.

Ayushman Bharat PMJAY

Context: Ayushman Bharat PMJAY completed three years.

Ayushman Bharat Programme

The Ayushman Bharat programme was launched in 2018 to address health issues at all levels – primary, secondary, and tertiary. It has two components:

• Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), earlier known as the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS)
• Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs)

Ayushman Bharat is an integrated approach comprising health insurance and primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare. The HWCs are aimed at improving access to cheap and quality healthcare services at the primary level. PM-JAY will cover the financial protection for availing healthcare services at the secondary and tertiary levels.
Ayushman Bharat is the largest government-funded healthcare programme in the world with over 50 crore beneficiaries. It has been dubbed ‘Modicare’.

• Need for Ayushman Bharat
  The 71st round of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) revealed many grim numbers about the country’s healthcare system.
  • About 86% of rural households and 82% of urban households do not have access to healthcare insurance.
  • Over 17% of the country’s population spend a minimum of 1/10th of their household budgets on availing health services.
  • Unexpected and serious healthcare problems often lead families to debt.
  • Over 19% and over 24% of the urban and rural households respectively meet their healthcare financial needs through borrowings.
• To address these grave concerns, the government, under the National Health Policy 2017, launched the Ayushman Bharat programme along with its two sub-missions, PMJAY and HWCs.

Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY)

PMJAY is one of India’s most ambitious health sector schemes.

• It was launched as the National Health Protection Mission and renamed later.
• It is the largest government-funded health insurance scheme in the world.
• The scheme offers eligible families an insurance cover of Rs. 5 lakh per annum per family.
• This amount is intended to cover all secondary and most tertiary care expenditures incurred.
• There is no cap on family size and age under the scheme, to ensure that nobody is left behind.
• The cover will include pre and post-hospitalization expenses. It will also cover all pre-existing conditions.
  • 3 days of pre-hospitalization and 15 days of post-hospitalization like medicines and diagnostics are covered.
• Components of treatment covered under the scheme:
  • Medical examination, consultation, and treatment
  • Medical consumables and medicines
  • Intensive and non-intensive care services
  • Medical implant services
  • Lab and diagnostic investigations
  • Complications arising out of treatment
  • Accommodation benefits and food services
• The beneficiary will also receive a defined transport allowance per hospital.
• The beneficiaries can take cashless treatment from any empanelled hospital anywhere in the country. This includes both public and private hospitals. By default, all government hospitals in the states that are implementing the scheme will be empanelled.

PM-JAY Eligibility Criteria
PM-JAY is an entitlement-based scheme. The eligible families are fixed based on the deprivation criterion in the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) database.

The detailed categories in both urban and rural areas are given below:

1. Families with only 1 room with kutcha roof and walls.
2. Families with no adult members between the ages of 16 and 59.
3. Households headed by females with no male adult members between the ages of 16 and 59.
4. Families with disabled members and no adult able-bodied members.
5. SC/ST households.
6. Landless households that derive a major chunk of their income from manual casual labour.
7. Rural area families with anyone of the following:
   • Households with no shelter
   • Destitutes
   • Living on alms
   • Manual scavenging
   • Primitive tribal groups
   • Legally released bonded labourer
8. In the urban areas, 11 occupational categories are eligible for the scheme:
   • Beggar/Ragpicker/Domestic worker
   • Street vendor/hawker/cobbler/Other service provider working on the streets
   • Construction worker/Plumber/Mason/Labourer
   • Painter/Welder/Security guard
   • Coolie and other head-load worker
   • Sweeper/sanitation worker
   • Mali/home-based worker
   • Artisan/handicrafts worker/Tailor 
   • Transport worker/driver/conductor/helper to driver and conductor/Cart puller/rikshaw puller
   • Shop worker/assistant/Peon in small establishment/Helper/delivery assistant/Attendant/waiter
   • Electrician/Mechanic/assembler/repair worker/Washerman/Chowkidar
   • According to the data in the SECC 2011, certain beneficiaries are excluded. They include households with a motorized vehicle, fishing boat, that pay income tax/professional tax, with a refrigerator, landline phone, an earning member who earns more than Rs.10000 per month, owns land above a certain limit, government servants, etc.

PM-JAY Benefits
PM-JAY is a visionary scheme that aims at the fulfilment of the concept of Universal Health Coverage (UHC). It offers many benefits, which are discussed below.

• It will reduce medical expenditure for many families, which is currently, mostly out-of-the-pocket expense. Eligible families can avail of quality medical services without getting into debt.
• The insurance cover provided by this scheme includes items that are generally excluded from standard medi-claims (for example, pre-existing conditions, internal congenital diseases, and mental health conditions).
• The scheme requires hospitals to maintain a certain minimum standard.
• Insurers and third-party administrators will have access to the large new market that opens up because of the scheme.
• The scheme has the potential to initiate wide reforms in India’s healthcare system.
• After one year of the scheme’s beginning, beneficiary families are said to have saved over Rs.13000 crores.
• Over 60% of the treatments have been done by private hospitals. The private sector has played an active role in this scheme and they have also benefitted from it. In many tier II and III cities, private hospitals have observed increased footfall. 
• Economically weaker sections of society can have access to quality healthcare services without financial hardships.
• The scheme has also resulted in the creation of more jobs. In 2018, it generated more than 50000 jobs. This number is expected to increase as the government is planning to build 1.5 lakh HWCs by 2022.
  • 90% of the jobs are in the health sector and the remaining in allied sectors like insurance.
• The scheme is supported by a robust IT framework.
  • IT supports beneficiary identification, maintaining treatment records, processes claims, addresses grievances, etc.
  • There is fraud detection, prevention, and control system at both the central and state levels, which is critical for preventing fraud.

PM-JAY Criticisms
There are certain criticisms and challenges in the implementation of PM-JAY. They are briefly described below.

• There has been a criticism that while the allocation of funds for PM-JAY has increased exponentially, the fund for the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) has gone up only by 2%. So, the scheme has been eating into the funds for NRHM.
• Under this scheme, the private sector has been given a large role in offering primary health care to the people. This has been protested by many people in various states, as regulation of the private sector is marginal.
• There is a shortfall of healthcare professionals and personnel needed to implement a vast scheme as this.
• There is also a problem of infrastructure as many primary healthcare centres run without even the basic facilities such as electricity, regular water supply, etc.
• The scheme excludes those economically weaker sections that fall under the organized sector and have no access to health insurance.

Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs)

HWCs are being created by converting the existing primary health centres and subcentres. They provide comprehensive primary health care (CPHC) including a child and maternal health services, non-communicable diseases, and also diagnostic services, and free essential drugs.

Services offered by HWCs:

1. Care in pregnancy and child-birth. 
2. Neonatal and infant health care services. 
3. Childhood and adolescent health care services. 
4. Family planning, Contraceptive services and other Reproductive Health Care services. 
5. Management of Communicable diseases including National Health Programmes. 
6. Management of Common Communicable Diseases and Outpatient care for acute simple Illnesses and minor ailments. 
7. Screening, Prevention, Control and Management of Non-Communicable diseases. 
8. Care for Common Ophthalmic and ENT problems. 
9. Basic Oral health care. 
10. Elderly and Palliative health care services. 
11. Emergency Medical Services. 
12. Screening and Basic management of Mental health ailments. 

HWCs are important because they offer CPHC that is critical to enhancing health outcomes. Primary healthcare plays a vital role in preventing many disease conditions. Providing CPHC decreases morbidity and mortality at a lower cost and greatly reduces the requirement for secondary and tertiary care.

India-Australia Joint Working Group (JWG) on “Coal and Mines”

Context: First India-Australia Joint Working Group (JWG) on “Coal and Mines” held virtually.

Details 

• The first Joint Working Group (JWG) meeting on “Coal and Mines” between India and Australia was held as a precursor to the upcoming India-Australia Energy Dialogue scheduled to be held in October 2021.
• The discussions focused on Indian coal resources in the present and future scenario, critical and strategic minerals demand and supply scenario & engagements with Australian counterparts, India – Australia collaboration on Clean Coal Technology, Surface Coal Gasification, Coal Bed Methane, sharing of Technology deployed for fire quenching, Coal Based Hydrogen, Carbon Capture Utilization & Storage (CCUS).
• Avenues for Business to Business collaboration on coal technology, transfer of technology, cooperation on skill development and training, issues related to coking coal import from Australia were also discussed.

Government e-Marketplace

Context: Government e-Marketplace bags prestigious CIPS Award.

Details

• Government e-Marketplace (GeM) was announced as the winner in the “Best Use of Digital Technology” category at the CIPS Excellence in Procurement Awards 2021 (CIPS Awards).
• GeM is a 100% Government owned Section 8 Company setup under the aegis of Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry for procurement of goods and services by Central and State Government organizations.

What is Government e-Marketplace?

The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) is a dedicated online platform where goods and services can be procured by various organizations and departments under the Government of India, and by the PSUs also.

• GeM is aimed at enhancing the efficiency, speed and transparency in public procurement of goods and services. It also serves the objective of eliminating corruption.
• It is administered by the Ministry of Commerce and Industries under the Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D).
• It is a completely paperless, cashless and system-driven e-marketplace that enables the procurement of common use goods and services with a minimal human interface.
• It is an online marketplace for government officers and others for procurement.

GeM 4.0
GeM 4.0 is the latest version of the e-marketplace. It adds on to the features that were already in place in the third edition of GeM. Some of the new features include the following:

1. Sellers will get timely payment.
2. Natural Language Processing (NLP) based advanced search engine.
3. Demand aggregation wherein buyers can collate several orders of the same product for different consignees across many organisations within one ministry.
4. The user interface has been revamped and made more user-friendly.
5. Staggered or flexible delivery is allowed.
6. The bidding module has been redesigned and now consignee-wise and item-wise bidding is permitted.
7. Advanced analytics, machine learning, deep learning and AI are integrated into the portal.
8. The grievance redressal mechanism has been improved.
9. Cataloguing has been made simpler for sellers by introducing price variance.
10. Ease of Payment options with integration with many banks and ERPs.
11. Seller rating is now introduced making it easier for buyers to make their decisions, and also incentivising sellers to upgrade.
12. Many new services and categories have been included.
13. Now, sellers and buyers can interact with each other thus offering scope for improvement and a better understanding of the market.
14. This version has dedicated pages for CPSUs (central PSUs).

GeM 3.0
The third version of the marketplace, GeM 3.0 has been envisaged as the National Procurement Portal of India by the Government. In August 2016, the earlier version of GeM 3.0, GeM 2.0 was launched as a pilot project.

• GeM 3.0 offers advanced Management Information System (MIS), user rating, e-Performance Bank Guarantee (e-PBG), e-Earnest Money Deposit (e-EMD), demand aggregation, template-based bidding and RA creation, powerful search engine and standardized and enriched catalogue management, analytics and more. 
• It has a powerful search engine and price comparison tool using third party sites which are real-time and multisource. 
• Online vendor assessment and Performance-based User Rating are also available. It has market based-bundling and bunching of products and services. 
• It offers more services, RA Facility & with a bid, and at the same time has Multi-Cart Functionality.

Benefits of GeM 3.0 
GeM 3.0 offers many benefits like the following:

• Providing transparent transactions for all ranges.
• Market-based generic requirements across all government agencies.
• Open and dynamic marketplace.
• Rating based on the performance of users on the website.
• Generic standards are established through universal service levels.
• Cost comparison enabled.
• Standardisation of specifications of both products and services enabling empirical price comparability.

The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has signed an MoU with Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) to benefit MSMEs, women entrepreneurs, Self Help Groups (SHGs), Women Self Help Groups and various loan beneficiaries under MUDRA and Stand-up India scheme.

Details

• This will enable the promotion of special initiatives of GeM like Womaniya and Start-up Runway with SIDBI stakeholders.
• Both parties will take steps to ensure payments within a guaranteed timeframe to sellers, enhance working capital availability through bill discounting and control NPAs through control of end-use.

Start-up Runway
This scheme was launched in February 2019.

• It was initiated by GeM to promote entrepreneurship through innovation.
• It is an opportunity for agile and lean Startups to reach out to the universe of Government Buyers by offering products and services that are unique in concept, design, process and functionality through the StartUp Runway corner.
• This scheme will help startups to:
  • Introduce their unique innovations to government and PSU buyers.
  • Assess utility and market acceptability of startup products/services.
  • Spur hyper-local job-creation and wealth generation to achieve inclusive growth by way of helping startups.

Womaniya
It is an initiative to enable women entrepreneurs and women self-help groups (WSHGs) to sell handicrafts and handloom, accessories, jute and coir products, home décor and office furnishings, directly to various Government ministries, departments and institutions.

• The initiative seeks to develop women entrepreneurship on the margins of society to achieve gender-inclusive economic growth.