PIB Summary- 15th July, 2021 | PIB (Press Information Bureau) Summary - UPSC PDF Download

World Youth Skills Day

About World Youth Skills Day

• In 2014, the United Nations General Assembly declared 15 July as World Youth Skills Day, to celebrate the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship.
• The day was marked to achieve the Incheon Declaration: Education 2030, which is a part of Sustainable Development Goal 4 that urges to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
• The day is dedicated to the importance of equipping young people around the world with essential skills for employment, work, and entrepreneurship.
• The World Youth Skills Day also promotes the elimination of gender inequality and ensured access of resources to the vulnerable.
• World Youth Skills Day 2021 Theme – “Reimagining Youth Skills Post-Pandemic”.

K. Kamaraj

K Kamaraj Biography

• Born to Kumaraswamy Nadar and Sivagami Ammal in a town called Virudhunagar in Tamil Nadu, Kamaraj had only a few years of schooling. From the age of twelve, he started working as a shop assistant to support his family. He was fifteen when the Jallianwala Bagh massacre happened.
• That was a turning point in his life. In 1920, aged eighteen, he joined the Indian National Congress to fight foreign rule and liberate the country.
• He organized public meetings of the INC at Virudhunagar for the Congress party. He met Mahatma Gandhi for the first time on 21st September 1921 during Gandhi’s public meeting.
• Kamaraj became an enthusiastic worker for the Congress Party and became a great organizer.
• He took part in the Non-Cooperation Movement, Nagpur Flag Satyagraha and other important events.
• He was imprisoned for two years in 1930 for participating in the Salt Satyagraha at Vedaranyam led by C Rajagopalachari.
• He was again arrested for a year in 1932. In the 1937 provincial elections, he stood for elections and won from the Sattur constituency.
• He was arrested again in 1940 and was elected as the Municipal Councillor of Virudhunagar from jail. He later resigned because of his belief in the principle, “One should not accept any post to which one could not do full justice.”
• In 1942, he was once again arrested for participating in the Quit India Movement. After India became independent, he was in the Congress Working Committee from 1947 to 1969.
• He was a member of the Constituent Assembly of India and then a Member of Parliament in 1952.
• In 1954, he became the Chief Minister of Madras State (now Tamil Nadu). His administration was considered good and efficient. He introduced the brilliant concept of mid-day meals in schools to provide free meals to school children hailing from economically backward families. His government is credited with increasing the number of schools in Tamil Nadu.
• Kamaraj became the CM for two more consecutive terms until 1963. That year, he resigned and asked many top Congress leaders to resign from their ministerial posts because there was a need to remove the lure of power in the minds of Congressmen. This came to be called the Kamaraj Plan.
• Kamaraj was elected the President of the INC in 1963.
• After Jawaharlal Nehru’s death, he was instrumental in bringing Lal Bahadur Shastri to the post of the country’s Prime Minister. He also played a big part in bringing Indira Gandhi to the same post.
• Kamaraj died on 2nd October 1975 aged 72 in Chennai.
• He was posthumously honoured with the Bharat Ratna in 1976. He is also called ‘Kalvi Thanthai’, a phrase in Tamil that translates to ‘Father of Education’.

PRASHAD Scheme

About PRASHAD Scheme

• PRASHAD is an acronym for ‘National Mission on Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual, Heritage Augmentation Drive’.
• It is a Central Sector Scheme fully financed by the Government of India launched by the Ministry of Tourism in the year 2014-15.
• It is aimed at the integrated development of identified pilgrimage and heritage destinations.
• The scheme is aimed at infrastructure development such as entry points (Road, Rail and Water Transport), last mile connectivity, basic tourism facilities like Information/Interpretation Centres, ATM/Money exchange, eco-friendly modes of transport, area lighting and illumination with renewable sources of energy, parking, drinking water, toilets, cloak room, waiting rooms, first aid centres, craft bazars/haats/souvenir shops/cafeteria, rain shelters, telecom facilities, internet connectivity, etc.

Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs (CBIC)

Details

• The CRP has been put in place for the efficient and expeditious release of temperature-sensitive vaccines that are a critical requirement in the fight against the covid pandemic.
• The CRP provides for the setting up of a COVID-19 Vaccine Response Team (CVRT) at each Air Cargo/Courier Terminal.
• The CVRT will function as a single point of contact for all the clearance related to COVID-19 vaccine shipments and coordinate among the concerned stakeholders to ensure that vaccines are given instant delivery upon arrival.
• For this, the CVRT will develop an SoP (covering Customs, local PGA and other stakeholders) and sensitize traders on the requirements for instant release of vaccines.
• Additionally, CBIC has enabled the import/export of vaccines in relation to COVID-19 through Courier, by issuing the Courier Imports and Exports (Electronic Declaration and Processing) Amendment Regulations, 2020.
  • The Courier Regulations earlier had certain limits on the value of goods that could be brought in through courier, whereas the amended regulations allow the import and export of COVID vaccines through courier without any value limit.
• CBIC would closely monitor the vaccine logistics to ensure their seamless movement at the borders and address any challenges that may arise in this regard.

Raksha Mantri launched Artificial Intelligence powered grievance management application

What’s in the news?

• The Defence Minister has launched an AI-powered grievance management application.

Who developed the application?

• Defence Ministry with the help of IIT-Kanpur.

Details of the Application

• This is the first AI based system developed to improve grievance redressal in the Government.
• The AI tool developed as part of the initiative has the capability to understand the content of the complaint based on the contents therein.
• As a result, it can identify repeat complaints or spam automatically.
• Based on the meaning of the complaint, it can categorise complaints of different categories even when keywords normally used for such search are not present in the complaint.
• It enables geographical analysis of complaints in a category including analysis of whether the complaint was adequately addressed or not by the concerned office.
• Easy user-friendly search enables user to formulate his own queries/categories depending on management requirements and seek performance results based on the query.

Benefits of the application

• Given that lakhs of complaints are received on CPGRAMS portal of DARPG, this application will have great use in understanding the nature of complaints, geographies from where they emanate and policy changes which can be introduced to create systemic improvements to address these grievances.
• It can reduce human intervention, save time and bring more transparency in disposal of complaints.