Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE
Topics Covered
- Anti TB Campaign
- Places of Worship Act
- Facts for Prelims
1 . Anti TB Campaign
Context: Indian President virtually launched the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan.
Key highlights
- Tuberculosis caused the largest number of deaths among all other infectious diseases in the country.
- India has a little less than 20% of the world’s population but has more than 25% of the total TB patients of the world.
- Most of the TB-affected people came from poor sections of society.
- According to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, all nations have set the goal of eradicating TB by the year 2030.
- But the Government of India has set the target of eradicating TB by the year 2025 and efforts are being made at every level to fulfil this resolution.
- To make the campaign a mass movement, awareness of TB should be created among the people.
- They must be informed that prevention of this disease is possible.
- Its treatment is effective and accessible, and the government provides free-of-cost facilities for prevention and treatment of this disease.
- The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) is implementing an ambitious National Strategic Plan with the goal to achieve SDG End TB targets by 2025. The challenge of tuberculosis requires a multi-sectoral response to address the social determinants like nutritional support, living and working conditions, and an increase in access to diagnostic and treatment services.
Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan
- The Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan has been envisioned to bring together all community stakeholders to support those on TB treatment and accelerate the country’s progress towards TB elimination.
- Ni-kshay Mitra (Donor) for this program include co-operative societies, corporates, elected representatives, individuals, institutions, non-governmental organizations, political parties and partners who can support by adopting health facilities (for individual donor), blocks/urban wards/districts/states for accelerating response against TB to complement government efforts, as per the district-specific requirements in coordination with the district administration.
- The State and district administration will support Ni-kshay Mitras in prioritizing districts and provide guidance on critical gap analysis and district-specific needs.
- The support provided to the patient under this initiative is in addition to the free diagnostics, free drugs and Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana provided by National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) to all TB patients notified from both public and private sector.
Objectives of The Initiative:
- Provide additional patient support to improve treatment outcomes of TB patients
- Augment community involvement in meeting India’s commitment to end TB by 2025
- Leverage Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities
About the Anti-TB campaign
- It is a community support programme under which tuberculosis patients can be adopted and cared for by an individual, elected representatives or institutions as part of the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyan.
- More than 66 per cent of the TB patients presently on treatment in the country have given their consent to be adopted under the campaign.
- The people and institutions coming forward to take care of the patients would be called “Ni-kshay Mitra”.
- They can adopt blocks, districts or even an individual patient and provide nutritional and treatment support to help them recover.
- Ni-kshay 2.0 portal: It gives a platform to the donors to provide various forms of support to those undergoing TB treatment.
- The governors and lieutenant governors of the states and Union territories, along with state officials, will also be urged to take the campaign forward.
- The four-pronged support includes nutritional, additional diagnostic, additional nutritional supplements and vocational support.
- The donors could be a wide range of stakeholders from elected representatives, political parties to corporates, NGOs, institutions and individuals.
- Under the programme, a monthly food basket comprising three kg of rice, 1.5 kg of pulses, 250 grams of vegetable cooking oil and one kg of milk powder or six litres of milk or one kg of groundnut has been recommended for each tuberculosis patient. Thirty eggs can also be added to the basket.
- In addition to nutritional support, the donor organisation or individual may also provide vocational support, additional diagnostic help or nutritional supplements containing B complex vitamins, vitamin C and minerals,”.
- The minimum period of commitment for providing additional support to a TB patient shall be one year, however, there are options of a support programme for two and three years.
- This is a voluntary initiative.
Conclusion
- The involvement of the community in supporting the treatment cascade shall help in the reduction of stigma and lead to increased awareness among the public regarding tuberculosis.
- The improved nutrition for the TB patients shall result in better treatment outcomes.
- It will also lead to a reduction of the out-of-pocket expenditure for the families of the TB patients
2 . Places of Worship Act
Context: The Supreme Court set the ball rolling on a series of petitions challenging the validity of the Places of Worship Act of 1991, a parliamentary law that protects the identity and character of religious places as on August 15, 1947.
Places of worship Act has been explained in detail in the following link – Places of Worship Act
3 . Facts for Prelims
Uses of broken rice
- Broken rice is fragments of rice grains, broken in the field, during drying, during transport, or during milling. Mechanical separators are used to separate the broken grains from the whole grains and sort them by size.
- Broken rice is fragmented, not defective; so, there is nothing wrong with it. It is as nutritious as the equivalent quantity of unbroken rice (if all the germ and bran remain, it is as nutritious as brown rice; if none remains, it is only as nutritious as white rice)
- Broken rice is used in India for ethanol production and as fodder for livestock. India will need 11,000 million litres of ethanol by 2025. The target cannot be met by sugarcane alone.
- Broken rice and maize are majorly used for the production of ethanol. Sending broken rice to ethanol units instead of exporting it will ease the pressure on FCI’s stocks.
Vande Bharat Express
- The Vande Bharat train is an indigenously designed and manufactured semi high speed, self-propelled train that is touted as the next major leap for the Indian Railways in terms of speed and passenger convenience since the introduction of Rajdhani trains.
- These trains, dubbed as Train 18 during the development phase, operate without a locomotive and are based on a propulsion system called distributed traction power technology, by which each car of the train set is powered.
- The Vande Bharat coaches incorporate passenger amenities including on-board WiFi entertainment, GPS-based passenger information system, CCTVs, automatic doors in all coaches, rotating chairs and bio-vacuum type toilets like in aircraft.
- The first Vande Bharat was manufactured by the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai, in about 18 months as part of the ‘Make in India’ programme, at a cost of about ₹100 crore.
- The current version of the train has 16 coaches with 14 ordinary chair cars and two executive class chair cars.
- The train has a passenger carrying capacity of more than 1,100 people. It can achieve a maximum speed of 160 kmph due to faster acceleration and deceleration, reducing journey time by 25% to 45%. It also has an intelligent braking system with power regeneration for better energy efficiency thereby making it cost, energy and environment efficient.
- The Vande Bharat was India’s first attempt at adaptation of the train set technology compared with conventional systems of passenger coaches hauled by separate locomotives. The train set configuration though complex is faster, easier to maintain, consumes less energy, and has greater flexibility in train operation, according to the Indian Railways.
Sig saur rifle & LMG
- Latest Sig Saur rifles, Negev Light Machine Guns (LMG), Carl Gustaf-Mk3 84 mm rocket launchers, digital spotter scopes, fuel cell chargers for patrols, all-terrain vehicles and satellite terminals are some of the new inductions for the infantry soldiers in the Rest of Arunachal Pradesh (RALP), beyond the Tawang sector. This along with helipads at forward posts, M777 Ultra-Light Howitzers backed by Chinook heavy lift helicopters are part of the overall capability enhancement in the region.
- The Army has procured 72,400 SIG 716 assault rifles from Sig Saur of the U.S. under a deal signed in February 2019 and they have since been inducted with frontline infantry soldiers deployed in operational areas. The SIG-716 weighing 3.82 kgs, has an effective range of 600m and employs the heavier calibre 7.62 mm ammunition.
- Army contracted 16,497 Negev Light Machine Guns (LMG) from Israel in March 2020 under fast-track procurement and they have since been inducted on the Line of Control (LoC). They started coming in in RALP early this year, according to officials on the ground.