Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE
Topics Covered
- Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management & Transboundary Movement) Amendment Rules, 2019.
- Swachh Survekshan Awards 2019
- Joint Maritime Surveillance System
- Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)
1 . Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management & Transboundary Movement) Amendment Rules, 2019.
Context : The government has plugged a loophole that allowed the import of plastic waste into India for processing.
Background
- India consumes about 13 million tonnes of plastic and recycles only about 4 million tonnes. To incentivise domestic plastic recycling units, the government had banned the import of plastic waste, particularly PET bottles, in 2015. In 2016, an amendment allowed such imports as long as they were carried out by agencies situated in SEZs.
Salient features of the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management& Transboundary Movement) Amendment Rules, 2019
- Solid plastic waste has been prohibited from import into the country including in Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and by Export Oriented Units (EOU).
- Exporters of silk waste have now been given exemption from requiring permission from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
- Electrical and electronic assemblies and components manufactured in and exported from India, if found defective can now be imported back into the country, within a year of export, without obtaining permission from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
- Industries which do not require consent under Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 and Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981, are now exempted from requiring authorization also under the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management & Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2016, provided that hazardous and other wastes generated by such industries are handed over to the authorized actual users, waste collectors or disposal facilities.
2 . Swachh Survekshan Awards 2019
Context : Indore was adjudged India’s cleanest city for the third year in a row in the Centre’s ‘Cleanliness Survey’ announced on Wednesday. The second and third positions were bagged by Ambikapur in Chhattisgarh and Mysuru in Karnataka.
About Swachh Survekshan
- Swachh Survekshan is a ranking exercise taken up by the Government of India to assess rural and urban areas for their levels of cleanliness and active implementation of Swachhata mission initiatives in a timely and innovative manner.
- The objective of the survey is to encourage large scale citizen participation and create awareness amongst all sections of society about the importance of working together towards making towns and cities a better place to live in. Additionally, the survey also intends to foster a spirit of healthy competition among towns and cities to improve their service delivery to citizens, towards creating cleaner cities and towns.
- The Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India takes up the Swachh Survekshan in urban areas and the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation in rural areas. The Quality Council of India (QCI) has been commissioned the responsibility of carrying out the assessment.
2019 Result
- Swachh Survekshan 2019 covered 4,237 cities in a record time of 28 days, in a completely paperless, digital format for data collection. Moreover, in this short span of time, assessors managed to visit nearly 73,000 wards, 21,000 commercial areas, 69,000 residential areas, 75,000 community/public toilets, and more than 3100 waste to compost plants across the country.
- Indore has been awarded the cleanest city in the country in the Swachh Survekshan 2019 (SS 2019) awards while Bhopal has been declared as the cleanest capital. Ujjain has bagged the award for being the cleanest city in the population category of 3 lakh to 10 lakh.
- Ambikapur in Chattisgarh got the second prize overall and has become a role model for other towns in the state. Chhattisgarh has also emerged India’s top performer among states, followed by Jharkhand and Maharashtra.
- New Delhi Municipal Council was given award for the ‘Cleanest Small City’ award, Uttarakhand’s Gauchar bagged the ‘Best Ganga Town’. The ‘Cleanest Big City’ award has been bagged by Ahmedabad, while Raipur is the ‘Fastest Moving Big City’.
- Ujjain has been the adjudged the ‘Cleanest Medium City’ and Mathura-Vrindavan bagged the tag of the ‘Fastest Moving Medium Cities’
3 . Joint Maritime Surveillance System
Context : National space agency ISRO and its French counterpart CNES on Wednesday sealed an agreement to set up a joint maritime surveillance system in the country in May.
About Joint Maritime Surveillance System
- Countries will initially share data from their present space systems and develop new algorithms to analyse them, according to the Paris based National Centre for Space Studies.
- Both the nations will explore putting up a constellation of low-Earth orbiting satellites that will identify and track movement of ships globally – and in particular those moving in the Indian Ocean region where France has its Reunion Islands.
- The agreement comes a year after the broad collaboration plan the two governments initiated during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit in March last 2018.
- The two agencies have put up two climate and ocean weather monitoring satellites Megha-Tropiques (of 2011) and SARAL-AltiKa (2013)
4 . Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)
Context : Anganwadi services have a poor reach among key beneficiaries – the poorest of the poor and uneducated mothers – according to a paper published in a WHO bulletin recently.
About the Findings
- The study analyses the findings of the National Family Health Survey 2005-2006 and 2015-2016 to compare the coverage of ICDS over a 10-year period.
- During this time, the average respondents benefiting from these services increased from 9.6% to 37.9% for supplementary food, 3.2% to 21% for health and nutrition education, 4.5% to 28% for health check-ups and 10.4% to 24.2% for child-specific services over a period of 10 years.
- At the same time, the poorest of the poor or quintile 1, who were the largest beneficiaries in 2006, got left behind quintile 2 and quintile 3 by 2016 for all four indicators such as supplementary food, counselling on nutrition, health check-ups and early childhood services
- For example, supply of food supplements in 2006 was the highest for the poorest quintile (11.7%). However, by 2016, they accounted for 34.8% of the respondents, behind quintile 2 (41.7%), 3 (45.5%) and 4 (39.7%).
- The study also said that mothers without any schooling were the lowest beneficiaries as compared to those with primary and secondary schooling in 2006, and they continued to be so in 2016.
About ICDS
- Launched on 2nd October, 1975, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme is one of the flagship programmes of the Government of India and represents one of the world’s largest and unique programmes for early childhood care and development.
- The beneficiaries under the Scheme are children in the age group of 0-6 years, pregnant women and lactating mothers.
Objectives of the Scheme
- Improve the nutritional and health status of children in the age-group 0-6 years
- To lay the foundation for proper psychological, physical and social development of the child
- To reduce the incidence of mortality, morbidity, malnutrition and school dropout
- To achieve effective co-ordination of policy and implementation amongst the various departments to promote child development
- To enhance the capability of the mother to look after the normal health and nutritional needs of the child through proper nutrition and health education.
Services under ICDS
The ICDS Scheme offers a package of six services,
- Supplementary Nutrition
- Pre-school non-formal education
- Nutrition & health education
- Immunization
- Health check-up
- Referral services
The last three services are related to health and are provided by Ministry/Department of Health and Family Welfare through NRHM & Health system.