Daily Current Affairs : 24/1/2024

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Roof top Solar Plan
2. Bharat Ratna
3. Gender Equity in education
4. Facts for Prelims

1 . Roof top Solar Plan

Context: Prime Minister announced the launch of a new programme to install rooftop solar systems on 1 crore houses.  

Ongoing Programme

• The government had set a target of installing 100 GW of solar power in the country by 2022. This was a five-fold jump from the existing target at that time. Forty per cent of this capacity , i.e., 40 GW was supposed to come from grid-connected solar rooftop systems. 
• While the installed solar power capacity in the country has risen rapidly over the past decade, the 100 GW target for 2022 has been missed by a long margin, and so has the target for rooftop installations. At the end of last year, the total solar installed capacity in the country had reached only 73.3 GW, of which grid-connected rooftop solar contributed just about 11 GW. 
• Part of the reason why the country fell behind the target was the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. But even before that, the growth trajectory of solar power was not sufficiently steep. The 40 GW target for rooftop solar systems is now supposed to be achieved by 2026. 

The Suryodaya Yojana 

• The details of the new programme have not been released yet, but its focus is slightly different in that it is targeting a certain number of households instead of installed capacity. From this perspective, this latest initiative is similar to the ones that have been launched in some other countries in the past. 
• In the late 1990s for example, the United States had unveiled plans to put rooftop solar systems on 1 million houses, a target that took about 20 years to achieve. A few countries in Europe too have had similar programmes. 
• The new programme announced by the PM is aimed primarily at individual households that have remained largely untapped by the ongoing schemes on rooftop solar. As a recent report by the public policy think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) showed, the residential sector currently accounts for just 20% of the installations of rooftop solar capacity. The bulk of the current installations have happened in the commercial and industrial sectors. 
• Residential buildings, therefore, offer a vast, untapped potential. The same CEEW report showed that the nearly 25 crore households across the country have the potential to deploy 637 GW of solar energy on rooftops, and just a third of this is enough to meet India’s entire demand for electricity from the residential sector. 
• All of this might not be feasible, but there is nonetheless tremendous scope for growth in India’s rooftop solar power capacity. The CEEW report says about one-fifth of this potential, or about 118 GW, is certainly doable. 
• Potential for rooftop solar is available uniformly across all states and regions, unlike concentrated generation of electricity through large solar parks that require big corporate investments, open tracts of land, and powerful transmission lines. 

Energy access and security

• Whether targeting installed capacity or number of households, the overall objectives of such programmes are the same: ensuring energy security, effecting a transition to non-fossil sources of energy, and increasing energy access. 
• India has an international commitment to ensure that by 2030 about 50% of its installed capacity of electricity generation comes from non-fossil fuel-based energy sources. This share has already reached 43%, with renewables like wind, solar, biogas, contributing about 30% of the total installed capacity. 
• But with India’s electricity demand expected to rise sharply, and other non-fossil fuel sources like nuclear or hydro unlikely to show a major surge, renewable energy, particularly solar, needs to grow at a very rapid pace to fulfil the demand. 
• However, potential alone is not enough, as the experience with the ongoing programmes has shown. The government will have to incentivise the installation of rooftop solar on individual households and using just financial mechanisms for it will not suffice. financial incentives are available even for the ongoing programme, and they are essential as well.  
• But many other measures need to be taken to create an enabling environment for greater penetration. Experts say the learnings from the ongoing exercise would help the government in designing the right model that ensures greater success for the Suryodaya Yojana. 
• One of the key interventions needed in this direction is to enable and empower the distribution companies, especially ones that do not put an additional financial burden on them.  
• Most of the electricity distribution companies are already bleeding, and improving their financial health is a prerequisite for the success of the new programme. 

2 . Bharat Ratna

Context: On eve of birth centenary, Karpoori Thakur named for Bharat Ratna honour.  

Bharat Ratna

• The Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award of the Republic of India. 
• Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is conferred in recognition of “exceptional service/performance of the highest order”, without distinction of race, occupation, position, or sex. 
• It was originally limited to achievements in the arts, literature, science, and public services, but the government expanded the criteria to include “any field of human endeavour” in 2011. 
• The recommendations for the Bharat Ratna are made by the Prime Minister to the President, with a maximum of three nominees being awarded per year.  
• The recipients receive a Sanad (certificate) signed by the President and a peepal leaf-shaped medallion.  
• There is no monetary grant associated with the award.  
• Bharat Ratna recipients rank seventh in the Indian order of precedence. 

Recipients

• The first recipients of the Bharat Ratna were: the last Governor-General of the Dominion of India and the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu – C. Rajagopalachari, second President and the first Vice President of India – Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Nobel Prize Laureate and Physicist C. V. Raman; who were honoured in 1954. 
• Though usually conferred on India-born citizens, the Bharat Ratna has been awarded to one naturalised citizen, Mother Teresa, and to two non-Indians, Pakistan national Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and former South African President Nelson Mandela.

Suspension

• The Bharat Ratna, along with other personal civil honours, was briefly suspended from July 1977 to January 1980, during the change in the national government; and for a second time from August 1992 to December 1995, when several public-interest litigations challenged the constitutional validity of the awards. 
• Bharat Ratna can not be used as a prefix or suffix, however recipients may identify themselves as “Awarded Bharat Ratna by the President” or “Recipient of Bharat Ratna Award”. 

Benefits 

• The award does not carry any monetary benefits, however there are several special entitlements which include: 
• The medallion and miniature 
• A Sanad (certificate) signed by the President of India. 
• Treatment as a state guest by state governments when traveling within a state. 
• Indian missions abroad requested to facilitate recipients when requested. 
• Entitlement to a diplomatic passport. 
• Lifetime free executive class travel on Air India. 
• Placed seventh in the Indian order of precedence. 

3 . Gender Equity in education

Context: The latest Annual Status of Education Report shows that while girls and boys from rural India equally aspire to become doctors or engineers, when it comes to choosing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses, it is boys who take up STEM courses more than girls. 

Gender gap in educational attainment

• A comparison focused exclusively on learning outcomes reveals gender equity. Data from one of the largest competency-based sample surveys in school education, the National Achievement Survey (2017), covering over 22 lakh students, shows parity in learning levels between boys and girls in elementary and secondary classes across the country. However, an analysis of this kind tends to eclipse the prevalent gender discrimination in education. 
• Though girls in India today are more educated than they have ever been, the gap in educational attainment, as reflected in the mean years of schooling, has worsened over time. Over the past two decades, the mean years of schooling for girls has almost tripled from just 1.7 years in 1990 to 4.7 in 2018. Boys are also getting more education. The same period also witnessed a doubling in the average educational attainment for males from 4.1 to 8.2 years. Despite the higher rate of improvement in the mean years of schooling for girls, the gender gap, measured as the simple difference between male and female attainment, has actually increased with time from 2.4 years to 3.5 years. Interestingly, this marks India’s divergence from global trends, where most countries across the world have actually recorded equal improvements for both genders. Countries in West Asia and North Africa like Kuwait, Libya and even Saudi Arabia have shown declines in the gender gap in attainment. 
• the gender gap widens with progressive levels of education owing to greater barriers to schooling that girls face due to social norms and deeply ingrained gender stereotypes correlated with biological factors such as adolescence. While the dropout rate for boys in Class 1 is marginally higher at 6.88 (6.38 for girls), this trend radically reverses by Class 8, when almost twice the number of girls are dropping out of the schooling system. 
• The roots of gender discrimination emerge at the earliest stages of education. The latest Annual Status of Education Report “Early Years” is proof of this. More boys than girls tend to be enrolled in private institutions, where parents incur out-of-pocket expenditure. The preferred choice for girls’ enrolment is the free government school, highlighting societal gender biases in exercising school choice. Even at the age of four, there exists a five percentage point gender difference in total enrolment. Once again, this differential is correlated with age and time, and crosses eight percentage points by the age of eight. Research shows that in cultures in which a higher value is placed on education of male children, more girls are likely to be taken out of school. 

Way Forward

• it is time the focus shifted to early childhood education (ECE), stemming the roots of the gender gap in education. Early childhood is where the seeds of gender norms are ingrained and where children develop an understanding of identities, behaviours and stereotypes. Typically between the ages of three and seven, children can acquire strong biases about the nature of jobs men and women should do. 
• The lack of a regulatory framework, inadequate funding, poor quality and no legislation for universal access to early childhood education continue to serve as bottlenecks in India. These challenges must be addressed urgently. 
• Longitudinal studies estimate that every dollar invested in ECE yields over a thousand dollars in return, proving that benefits outweigh costs by an incredible margin. 
•  The foundations for a right education must be established, not just by ensuring universal enrolment in early childhood education but by also focusing on how preschools impart an education that eliminates gender stereotypes and therefore, erases the gender gap. 
• with increased funding and an actionable roadmap, the Prime Minister’s flagship Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao could be the ideal launch pad to kick start the campaign for universal early childhood education across the country. The Draft National Education Policy also accords due weight to ECE and this should be implemented at the earliest in mission mode. 
• To consistently augment the social capital for the one gender which is responsible for creating a new future. 
   

4 . Facts for Prelims

Vaibhav Scheme

• The VAIBHAV Fellowship is a scheme of Department of Science which aims at improving the research ecosystem of India’s Higher Educational and Scientific Institutions by facilitating academic and research collaborations between Indian Institutions and the best institutions in the world through mobility of faculty/researcher from overseas institutions to India. 
• Eligibility: (for Scientists): The applicant should be Non-Resident Indian (NRI), Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) and Overseas Citizen of India (OCI), currently living abroad. 
• The applicant must have obtained Ph.D/M.D/M.S degree from a recognized University. 
• Applicant must be a researcher engaged in an overseas academic / research / industrial organization with proven track record of research & development working in the top-500 QS World University Ranking. 
• Plan to pursue research work for minimum of 1 month to a maximum of 2 months a year in a research institution / academic institution in India, spread over 3 years. 
• Applicants can submit their proposal only once in a calendar year. 
• Eligibility: (for Institutions): Higher Educational Institutions / University ranked in top 200 in NIRF overall rankings and having NAAC ‘A” grade (3.0 and above) and scientific institutes. 

CEPI

• CEPI — Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations — is an innovative global partnership working to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats. 
• The Serum Institute of India (SII) will join a growing CEPI network of vaccine producers in the Global South to support more rapid, agile, and equitable responses to future public health disease outbreaks. 
• CEPI’s aspirational goal: vaccines should be ready for initial authorisation and manufacturing at scale within 100 days of recognition of a pandemic pathogen, when appropriate. 

French Foreign Legion  

• The French Foreign Legion is an elite military corps open to foreigners to serve in the French Army with certain conditions. 
• At present, it has almost 9,500 officers and legionnaires, comprising around 140 nationalities. 
• The French marching contingent in the Republic Day Parade will be accompanied by a 33-member French military band. 

Gini coefficient 

• The Gini coefficient, or Gini index, is the most commonly used measure of inequality. 
•  It was developed by Italian statistician Corrado Gini (1884–1965) and is named after him. 
• It is typically used as a measure of income inequality, but it can be used to measure the inequality of any distribution – such as the distribution of wealth, or even life expectancy.  
• It measures inequality on a scale from 0 to 1, where higher values indicate higher inequality. This can sometimes be shown as a percentage from 0 to 100%, this is then called the ‘Gini Index’. 
• A value of 0 indicates perfect equality – where everyone has the same income. A value of 1 indicates perfect inequality – where one person receives all the income, and everyone else receives nothing.