Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE
Topics Covered
- MTP Bill
- Biomethanation
- Budget Summary
1 . MTP Bill
Context : A panel of doctors to decide on termination of pregnancy beyond 24 weeks as proposed in the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Amendment Bill, 2020, is “unfeasible” as 82% of these posts are lying vacant in the country, finds a new study. The MTP Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha in March 2020, and is likely to be brought before the Rajya Sabha during the Budget Session.
About the Issue
- The Bill proposes several amendments, including the constitution of a medical Board in every State and Union Territory, which will decide on pregnancies beyond 24 weeks in cases of foetal abnormalities. Each Board will have a gynaecologist, a radiologist or sonologist, a paediatrician, and other members prescribed by the governments.
- The report analysed district-wise availability of specialists, including surgeons, obstetricians and gynaecologists, physicians and paediatricians.
- It found that for each of the years between 2015 and 2019, the shortfall in these posts hovered between 71% and 81.8%. For 2019, for a total of 21,296 vacancies in the country, only 3,880 were filled, that is, there was a shortfall of 81.8%.
About Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Amendment Act
- The MTP Act regulates the conditions under which a pregnancy may be aborted. The amendment increases the time period within which abortion may be carried out.
- Currently, abortion requires the opinion of one doctor if it is done within 12 weeks of conception and two doctors if it is done between 12 and 20 weeks. The amendment allows abortion to be done on the advice of one doctor up to 20 weeks, and two doctors in the case of certain categories of women between 20 and 24 weeks.
- The amendment sets up state level Medical Boards to decide if a pregnancy may be terminated after 24 weeks in cases of substantial foetal abnormalities.
Key Features of Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Amendment Bill, 2020
The Bill amends the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971.
- Time limit and grounds for terminating a pregnancy: The Act specifies the grounds for terminating a pregnancy and specifies the time limit for terminating a pregnancy. The Bill amends these provisions. The provisions of the Act and Bill are explained in Table 1 below.
| Time since conception | Requirement for terminating pregnancy | |
| MTP Act , 1971 | MTP (Amendment) Bill, 2020 | |
| Up to 12 weeks | Advice of one doctor | Advice of one doctor |
| 12 to 20 weeks | Advice of two doctors | Advice of one doctor |
| 20 to 24 weeks | Not allowed | Two doctors for some categories of pregnant women |
| More than 24 weeks | Not allowed | Medical Board in case of substantial foetal abnormality |
| Any time during the pregnancy | One doctor, if immediately necessary to save pregnant woman’s life |
- Termination due to failure of contraceptive method or device: Under the original Act a pregnancy may be terminated up to 20 weeks by a married woman in the case of failure of contraceptive method or device. The amendment allows unmarried women to also terminate a pregnancy for this reason.
- Medical Boards: All state and union territory governments will constitute a Medical Board. The Board will decide if a pregnancy may be terminated after 24 weeks due to substantial foetal abnormalities. Each Board will have a gynaecologist, paediatrician, radiologist/sonologist, and other members notified by the state government.
- Privacy: A registered medical practitioner may only reveal the details of a woman whose pregnancy has been terminated to a person authorised by law. Violation is punishable with imprisonment up to a year, a fine, or both.
2 . Biomethanation
Context : Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his first Mann Ki Baat address for the year, made a mention of the garbage-to-power plant being commissioned inside the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Agriculture Market in Bowenpally. Vegetable and fruit waste is used to generate power to the extent of 500 units a day and 30 kilos of green manure at the plant.
About Biomethanation
- Biomethanation is the process of combining organic waste materials into biogas and manure.
- This is done through the use of microorganisms under anaerobic that decompose such biodegradable wastes in the absence of oxygen.
Uses
- Biomethanation provides an excellent urban waste management solution as it results in several end products that can be used for a wide range of applications. Some of the major advantages of using Biomethanation for managing urban waste products
Benefits
- Generation of biogas, the prime advantage of using this method. Biogas is a gaseous fuel that can be easily used for energy generation and production of heat.
- Biogas, energy of organic waste captured through anaerobic digestion, can also be burned to produce electricity and heat
- Biomethanation plants do not require significant investments and can be deployed on small scales.
- Unlike other kinds of waste treatment processes, this process is completely self-sufficient and doesn’t require an external power source.
- The system is completely sealed and enclosed and collects every bit of the gas for utilization. This includes a whole host of harmful greenhouse gases.
- Biomethanation results in the elimination of foul odor, stopping the growth of rodents and pests and any kind of visible pollution or social issues due to garbage.
- The waste product that is left behind after the production of biogas is an excellent form of manure and can be used to treat soil.
The process of Biomethanation
- There are three basic groups of microorganisms that are used in for Biomethanation, fermenting bacteria, organic acid oxidizing bacteria, and methanogenic archaea.
- These various microorganisms continuously decompose organic matter and break it down into methane and carbon dioxide.
- There is a syntrophic relationship between the hydrogen-producing agents (known as antogens) and the hydrogen scavengers or consumers (homoactogens, hydrogenotrophic methanogens, and others) which is vital for the production of bio-methane.
3 . Budget Summary
The Budget proposals for 2021-22 rest on 6 pillars.
- Health and Wellbeing
- Physical & Financial Capital, and Infrastructure
- Inclusive Development for Aspirational India
- Reinvigorating Human Capital
- Innovation and R&D
- Minimum Government and Maximum Governance
Health and Wellbeing
- There is substantial increase in investment in Health Infrastructure
- A new centrally sponsored scheme, PM AatmaNirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana, will be launched. This will develop capacities of primary, secondary, and tertiary care Health Systems, strengthen existing national institutions, and create new institutions, to cater to detection and cure of new and emerging diseases. This will be in addition to the National Health Mission. The main interventions under the scheme are:
- Support for 17,788 rural and 11,024 urban Health and Wellness Centers
- Setting up integrated public health labs in all districts and 3382 block public health units in 11 states;
- Establishing critical care hospital blocks in 602 districts and 12 central institutions;
- Strengthening of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), its 5 regional branches and 20 metropolitan health surveillance units;
- Expansion of the Integrated Health Information Portal to all States/UTs to connect all public health labs;
- Operationalisation of 17 new Public Health Units and strengthening of 33 existing Public Health Units at Points of Entry, that is at 32 Airports, 11 Seaports and 7 land crossings;
- Setting up of 15 Health Emergency Operation Centers and 2 mobile hospitals; and
- Setting up of a national institution for One Health, a Regional Research Platform for WHO South East Asia Region, 9 Bio-Safety Level III laboratories and 4 regional National Institutes for Virology.
- Vaccines : The Pneumococcal Vaccine, a Made in India product, presently limited to only 5 states, will be rolled out across the country aimed at averting 50,000 child deaths annually.
Nutrition
- To strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach, and outcome, Government will merge the Supplementary Nutrition Programme and the PoshanAbhiyan and launch the Mission Poshan 2.0. Government will adopt an intensified strategy to improve nutritional outcomes across 112 Aspirational Districts.
- Universal Coverage of Water Supply and Swachch Bharat Mission : The Finance Minister announced that the Jal Jeevan Mission (Urban), will be launched for universal water supply in all 4,378 Urban Local Bodies with 2.86 crore household tap connections, as well as liquid waste management in 500 AMRUT cities. It will be implemented over 5 years
- A voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and unfit vehicles was also announced. Fitness tests have been proposed in automated fitness centres after 20 years in case of personal vehicles, and after 15 years in case of commercial vehicles
Physical and Financial Capital and Infrastructure
- AatmaNirbhar Bharat-Production Linked Incentive Scheme : PLI schemes to create manufacturing global champions for an AatmaNirbhar Bharat have been announced for 13 sectors.
- Textiles : To enable the textile industry to become globally competitive, attract large investments and boost employment generation, a scheme of Mega Investment Textiles Parks (MITRA) will be launched in addition to the PLI scheme. This will create world class infrastructure with plug and play facilities to enable create global champions in exports. 7 Textile Parks will be established over 3 years.
Infrastructure
- Infrastructure financing – Development Financial Institution (DFI) : Infrastructure needs long term debt financing. A professionally managed Development Financial Institution is necessary to act as a provider, enabler and catalyst for infrastructure financing. Accordingly, a Bill to set up a DFI will be introduced.
- Asset Monetisation : Monetizing operating public infrastructure assets is a very important financing option for new infrastructure construction. A “National Monetization Pipeline” of potential Brownfield infrastructure assets will be launched. An Asset Monetization dashboard will also be created for tracking the progress and to provide visibility to investors. Some important measures in the direction of monetisation are:
- National Highways Authority of India and PGCIL each have sponsored one InvIT that will attract international and domestic institutional investors. Five operational roads with an estimated enterprise value of Rs 5,000 crore are being transferred to the NHAIInvIT. Similarily, transmission assets of a value of Rs 7,000 crore will be transferred to the PGCIL InvIT.
- Railways will monetize Dedicated Freight Corridor assets for operations and maintenance, after commissioning.
- The next lot of Airports will be monetised for operations and management concession.
- Other core infrastructure assets that will be rolled out under the Asset Monetization Programme are: (i) NHAI Operational Toll Roads (ii) Transmission Assets of PGCIL (iii) Oil and Gas Pipelines of GAIL, IOCL and HPCL (iv) AAI Airports in Tier II and III cities, (v) Other Railway Infrastructure Assets (vi) Warehousing Assets of CPSEs such as Central Warehousing Corporation and NAFED among others and (vii) Sports Stadiums.
- Urban Infrastructure : Government will work towards raising the share of public transport in urban areas through expansion of metro rail network and augmentation of city bus service. A new scheme will be launched at a cost of Rs. 18,000 crore to support augmentation of public bus transport services. Two new technologies i.e., ‘MetroLite’ and ‘MetroNeo’ will be deployed to provide metro rail systems at much lesser cost with same experience, convenience and safety in Tier-2 cities and peripheral areas of Tier-1 cities.
- Power Infrastructure : Expressing a serious concern over the viability of Distribution Companies, the Finance Minister proposed to launch a revamped reforms-based result-linked power distribution sector scheme. The scheme will provide assistance to DISCOMS for Infrastructure creation including pre-paid smart metering and feeder separation, upgradation of systems, etc., tied to financial improvements.
- Ports, Shipping, Waterways : Major Ports will be moving from managing their operational services on their own to a model where a private partner will manage it for them.
- Petroleum & Natural Gas : The following key initiatives are being announced:
- Ujjwala Scheme which has benefited 8 crore households will be extended to cover 1 crore more beneficiaries.
- Government will add 100 more districts in next 3 years to the City Gas Distribution network.
- A gas pipeline project will be taken up in Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir.
- An independent Gas Transport System Operator will be set up for facilitation and coordination of booking of common carrier capacity in all-natural gas pipelines on a non-discriminatory open access basis.
Financial Capital
- The Finance Minister proposed to consolidate the provisions of SEBI Act, 1992, Depositories Act, 1996, Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956 and Government Securities Act, 2007 into a rationalized single Securities Markets Code. The Government would support the development of a world class Fin-Tech hub at the GIFT-IFSC.
- Increasing FDI in Insurance Sector: Increase the permissible FDI limit from 49% to 74% and allow foreign ownership and control with safeguards. Under the new structure, the majority of Directors on the Board and key management persons would be resident Indians, with at least 50% of Directors being Independent Directors, and specified percentage of profits being retained as general reserve.
- Disinvestment and Strategic Sale :A number of transactions namely BPCL, Air India, Shipping Corporation of India, Container Corporation of India, IDBI Bank, BEML, Pawan Hans, NeelachalIspat Nigam limited among others would be completed in 2021-22. Other than IDBI Bank, Government propose to take up the privatization of two Public Sector Banks and one General Insurance company in the year 2021-22. In 2021-22, Government would also bring the IPO of LIC for which the requisite amendments will be made in this Session itself.
- A policy of strategic disinvestment of public sector enterprises provides a clear roadmap for disinvestment in all non-strategic and strategic sectors. Government has kept four areas that are strategic where bare minimum CPSEs will be maintained and rest privatized. In the non-strategic sectors, CPSEs will be privatised, otherwise shall be closed. She said that to fast forward the disinvestment policy, NITI Aayog will work out on the next list of Central Public Sector companies that would be taken up for strategic disinvestment.
Agriculture
- MSP procurement has also continued to increase at a steady pace. This has resulted in increase in payment to farmers substantially.
- Early this year, Prime Minister had launched SWAMITVA Scheme. Under this, a record of rights is being given to property owners in villages. Up till now, about 1.80 lakh property-owners in 1,241 villages have been provided cards and the Finance Minister proposed during FY21-22 to extend this to cover all states/UTs.
- To boost value addition in agriculture and allied products and their exports, the scope of ‘Operation Green Scheme’ that is presently applicable to tomatoes, onions, and potatoes, will be enlarged to include 22 perishable products.
- Around 1.68 crore farmers are registered and Rs. 1.14 lakh crore of trade value has been carried out through e-NAMs. Keeping in view the transparency and competitiveness that e-NAM has brought into the agricultural market, 1,000 more mandis will be integrated with e-NAM. The Agriculture Infrastructure Funds would be made available to APMCs for augmenting their infrastructure facilities.
- Fisheries : Finance Minister proposed substantial investments in the development of modern fishing harbours and fish landing centres. To start with, 5 major fishing harbours – Kochi, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Paradip, and Petuaghat – will be developed as hubs of economic activity.
Reinvigorating Human Capital
- Proposed to set up a Higher Education Commission of India, as an umbrella body having 4 separate vehicles for standard-setting, accreditation, regulation, and funding. For accessible higher education in Ladakh, Government proposed to set up a Central University in Leh.
- Innovation and R&D : Government will undertake a new initiative – National Language Translation Mission (NTLM). This will enable the wealth of governance-and-policy related knowledge on the Internet being made available in major Indian languages.
Deficit
- Pandemic’s impact on the economy resulted in a weak revenue inflow.
- As a result, against an original BE expenditure of Rs. 30.42 lakh crore for 2020-2021, RE estimates are Rs. 34.50 lakh crore and quality of expenditure was maintained.
- The capital expenditure, estimated in RE is Rs. 4.39 lakh crore in 2020-2021 as against Rs. 4.12 lakh crore in BE 2020-21.
- Fiscal deficit in RE 2020-21 is pegged at 9.5% of GDP and it has been funded through Government borrowings, multilateral borrowings, Small Saving Funds and short term borrowings.
- The fiscal deficit in BE 2021-2022 is estimated to be 6.8% of GDP. The gross borrowing from the market for the next year would be around 12 lakh crore.
- Government plan to continue the path of fiscal consolidation, and intend to reach a fiscal deficit level below 4.5% of GDP by 2025-2026 with a fairly steady decline over the period. “
- In accordance with the views of the 15th Finance Commission, Government is allowing a normal ceiling of net borrowing for the states at 4% of GSDP for the year 2021-2022.
- The FRBM Act mandates fiscal deficit of 3% of GDP to be achieved by 31st March 2020-2021. The effect of this year’s unforeseen and unprecedented circumstances has necessitated the submission of a deviation statement under Sections 4 (5) and 7 (3) (b) of the FRBM Act which the Finance Minister laid on the Table of the House as part of the FRBM Documents.
DIRECT TAX PROPOSALS
- The Finance Minister provided relief to senior citizens in filing of income tax returns, reduced time limit for income tax proceedings announced setting up of the Dispute Resolution Committee, faceless ITAT, relaxation to NRIs, increase in exemption limit from audit and relief for dividend income.
- Announced steps to attract foreign investment into infrastructure, relief to affordable housing and rental housing, tax incentives to IFSC, relief to small charitable trusts, and steps for incentivizing Start-ups in the country.
- In order to reduce compliance burden, the Budget provides reduction in the time-limit for reopening of income tax proceeding for three years from the present six years. In serious tax evasion cases, where there is evidence of concealment of income of Rs. 50 lakh or more in a year, the assessment can be reopened upto 10 years but only after the approval of the Principal Chief Commissioner.