VisionIAS
06:37
Insights IAS Prelims 2020 Thematic Test 03 PDF
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Saturday, August 29, 2020
Insights IAS Prelims 2020 Thematic Test 02 PDF
VisionIAS
06:35
Insights IAS Prelims 2020 Thematic Test 02 PDF
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Insights IAS Prelims 2020 Thematic Test 01 PDF
VisionIAS
06:34
Insights IAS Prelims 2020 Thematic Test 01 PDF
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Friday, August 28, 2020
How India’s boundaries evolved since 1947
VisionIAS
17:02
Mapped: How India’s boundaries evolved since 1947
Through wars, conquests, and accessions, India’s external boundaries continued to change in the first few decades following independence
A defence ministry document noting Chinese ‘transgressions’ in eastern Ladakh that was hurriedly disowned last week has reignited the debate on the extent of territory that India may have lost to China. Chinese incursions in the region have revived memories of the bloody 1962 war, and brought the world’s two largest armies face-to-face in a tense stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) separating the two countries.
Sub-categorisation of SCs and STs
VisionIAS
16:55
Why in news?
The Supreme Court reopened the debate on sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for reservations.
What is the story behind?
- Punjab’s law applies a creamy layer for SCs, STs by giving preference to Balmikis and Mazhabi Sikhs.
- This is the case that reopened the debate.
- The Supreme Court ruled in favour of giving preferential treatment to certain SCs over others to ensure equal representation of all SCs.
- The case has been referred to a larger Bench to decide.
- This is because, in 2005, the Court ruled that state governments had no power to create sub-categories of SCs for reservation.
- The larger Bench will reconsider both judgments.
What is sub-categorisation of SCs?
Daily Current Affairs, 28th August 2020
VisionIAS
16:50
1) Piyush Goyal e-launches “National GIS-enabled Land Bank system”
•National GIS-enabled Land Bank system has been developed by integration of Industrial Information System (IIS) with State GIS Systems. Initially, the system has been launched in the six states. The system will be improved further to make it an effective, transparent mechanism of land identification as well as procurement.
•About Industrial Information System (IIS) portal: It is a GIS-enabled database of industrial areas/clusters across the states and about 3,300 industrial parks across 31 States/UTs have been mapped on the System. It contains information about forest, drainage, raw material heat maps; multiple layers of connectivity.
2) Uttar Pradesh government launches NRI unified portal
•The state government will also create a database of the state’s migrant workers employed in different countries of the world and will help offer assistance during any emergency.The portal will also offer an opportunity to those who want to go abroad.
3) Delhi Govt launched ‘Healthy Body, Healthy Mind’ fitness campaign
4) BPR&D celebrates its Golden Jubilee Anniversary on 28th August, 2020
•Initially, the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) was comprising two Divisions namely: Research, Publication & Statistics Division, and Development Division. The other two divisions namely the Training Division and the Correctional Division were added in 1973 and 1995 respectively. The National Police Mission was added while the Development Division was restructured as Modernization Division in year 2008.
5) IIT Alumni Council signs MOU with Russia for building Quantum Computers
•The objective of the agreement is to use technology in the areas of healthcare, agriculture, transport and logistics, pollution and weather forecast to achieve the mission of Atma Nirbhar Bharat. As a part of the agreement, the Russian state-owned companies, which are key Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) owners, will transfer critical modules in cryogenics, cryptography and modularised cloud management technology to IIT Alumni Council.
6) Army Chief releases book on National Security
7) NCPUL organises “World Urdu Conference” in New Delhi
•NCPUL has organised the conference to celebrate the quintessential spirit of Urdu, its inclusive ethos and creative character.
8) Ms. Sudha Painuli selected for National Award to Teachers 2020
•Ms. Sudha Painuli is the first NAT Awardee from the Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS) established under Ministry of Tribal Affairs. She is serving as the Vice Principal of EMRS-Kalsi, Dehradun, Uttarakhand since its establishment. She has been selected for her innovative experiments namely Eklavya Birthday Garden, Theatre in Education, Eklavya Tribal Museum, Skill Development Workshops etc.
9) Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld wins International Booker Prize 2020
•The book was first published in Dutch in 2018 and eventually translated into English by Michele Hutchison. The £50,000 prize ($66,000) will be split equally between the author and translator to give equal recognition to both.
10) India plans to host BRICS Games in 2021
•BRICS Games 2021 will be held during the same time and at the same venues as of Khelo India Games 2021 so that our players from various parts of the country who will gather for Khelo India Games will have the benefit of witnessing BRICS Games from close quarters.
The HINDU Notes – 28th August 2020
VisionIAS
13:45
📰 Can a digital ID aid India’s primary health ecosystem?
Without strong health infrastructure, it could amount to putting the cart before the horse
•Following a recent announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the creation of a digital health ID for every Indian, there has been a renewed debate on the need for a new digital identifier that centralises a citizen’s health records. Two public health experts, Dr. Abhay Shukla and Dr. Suresh Munuswamy, discuss the issue in a conversation moderated by G. Ananthakrishnan . Edited excerpts:
What can a digital health ID do for people?
•Dr. Abhay Shukla (AS):A digital health system can be built only on the basis of a well-functioning health system and integration of data. Integrated management of health data must be based on a larger reorganisation and integration of the health system. Otherwise, it is like putting the cart before the horse. We need to regulate the private healthcare sector, strengthen basic data collection from the primary healthcare level in the public health system, and ensure that this data is used in a manner that is respectful of the citizens’ privacy. Having something like the Data Protection Act in place is essential. In the absence of these preconditions, a digital health ID will be of limited use. And, it definitely cannot substitute for the much wider health system changes required urgently.
What does our experience with digital systems tell about this ID plan?
•Dr. Suresh Munuswamy (SM):As an idea it is great. All the issues are in the execution. You already have an ID, Aadhaar, and several other IDs — PAN card, bank cards, etc. Do they actually serve the purpose? Only with real-time authentication can that be achieved. That is a challenge with Aadhaar also. So, if I take this ID and go to a pharmacy, will it be authenticating me in real time? Is that even a possibility? So, we are just adding another ID.
•There is also an ecosystem. If I again go to a pharmacy, buy medicines, is there a barcode on the medicine? How am I going to even connect the medicine that I’m getting to the centralised database; am I going to manually enter all the data? If I go to a doctor, is the doctor’s data present? Imagine all the prescriptions going to the database. Is the prescription digitally readable or machine-readable? Do we have an e-prescription? These are the challenges.
We want to move towards universal health coverage. With a digital ID as a tool, what is the sequence to achieve that?
•AS:We need at least two or three important elements for building both a robust health system and an effective digital e-health system. The first is certain foundational policies which relate to the larger health system. The second is enabling strategies, which support an integrated information-based system. And then there are the actual e-health applications. So, a foundational change is on the public health Management Information System. We already have an MIS, but it is not functioning adequately. And there is a limited variety of data being received, but a lot of data, especially from the primary healthcare level, is inadequate.
•The second is reporting by the private healthcare sector. There is gross under-reporting of any kind of notifiable disease. In areas like malaria, cases are something like 20 times higher than what is reported by the official system. If you want to have a robust digital e-health system, then we need private practitioners, smaller hospitals, larger private hospitals regularly reporting about their cases.
•And that is linked to the regulation of the private sector. Information is not going to come in isolation. It has to be part of the Clinical Establishments Act and a regulatory framework. Without these, there is no meaning to the e-health platform. Perhaps it will just be limited to secondary and tertiary care and insurance companies. That is the sense that we are getting, that this digital e-health platform is mainly pushed by the providers rather than being pulled by the system.
What potential is there to use the idea for preventive services in primary care?
•SM:If you really want to even pinpoint a specific area where the challenge is, it is in data collection or in writing and reporting. India has a population 10 times or 20 times that of a developed country. We have a shortage of healthcare facilities, shortage of staff.
•Something as simple as identifying a house does not exist on the ground. If you ask the government, there are varying reports on how many houses are there even within a village without very clear data. We don’t have a clear database on nutritional status. Every time I want to dispense medicine or give nutritional advice, I have to weigh a person, measure their height, and arrive at the BMI. These skills are not even existent on the ground.
•You need to have radical new technologies for nutrition, come up with a solution where you could make a simple image to give your height, weight and BMI automatically. Now, that way, you will be able to identify if a person is undernourished or normal. But these are experimental solutions.
Do we have any pilots conducted so far?
•SM:In certain cases, small pilots are fairly successful. But the challenge is in interoperability or integration. Simply because I have one digital thermometer, I cannot transform healthcare. I need to have dozens of devices working in a rural environment, all trying to generate data in a meaningful, rapid way. And then I need to have a back-end platform to collect all the data, make sense of it.
•I need a digital dentistry platform, digital blood screening platform, a digital stethoscope.
If this ID is going to be used to profile health status and the commercial risk that individuals carry and that is used to discriminate, would you say legal changes must precede anything else?
•AS:Yes, that is a big concern, because health data is very sensitive. And you see that the Aadhaar data has been hacked into. The NITI Aayog said that they will be making available some of the data, and even to private players. That is the front door, and the back door can be hacked into. So, imagine if this data becomes available to employers. That the following person has diabetes, they will not employ her. Or to insurers. They will either charge a much higher premium or on some pretext they will not insure. If a person has HIV, which is confidential, and that data becomes available to colleagues or people in the immediate environment, he may be stigmatised. We don’t have a Data Protection Act yet in this country.
•The other issue is about regulation. Today, we don’t even know how many private hospitals are there in a particular city. There is no reliable source of information on how many beds are available. The government is actually struggling in the COVID-19 epidemic to find out. We don’t even have a comprehensive list of private practitioners. From that level, we’re saying that we will digitise all the data. Regulation includes mandatory information, which needs to be accessed from private providers. Many States still don’t have an effective Clinical Establishment Act.
Will the private tertiary care segment be happy with the idea of a digital ID?
•AS:Definitely. It is my hunch that it is the insurance industry, along with segments of the IT industry, which are pushing this whole idea. The insurance industry wants to know the background, the previous illnesses and previous procedures, to improve its own business.
•And, of course, private hospitals will also benefit to some extent. But, for patients, it has to be linked with an assurance that the care being provided through such an integrated system is more rational, more standardised, and rate-regulated.
•Similarly, rates. You’ve seen in the COVID-19 epidemic how patients have been grossly overcharged in certain private hospitals. So, you know, if it leads to standardisation, of quality of care or rationality of care, and regulation of rates, then that kind of digital health platform will be of some use to the patient. Whatever I have read about the digital health stack, which is a kind of precursor to this digital [move], these aspects do not seem to be very much fore-fronted. With a public health expenditure of 1.2% of the GDP, there is no way you can have a robust universal health system. So, just thinking about a digital platform is not really going to help.
Can some elements of personal identity be masked and health advice given to individuals using an ID?
•AS:Anonymised data for public health surveillance may be of some use for certain kinds of illnesses, especially non-communicable diseases. Especially blood glucose levels and lipid profiles for population-based public health decision-making. But a large proportion of illnesses are communicable diseases, perinatal and maternal health conditions, where laboratory investigations are of limited value and a lot of clinical interaction is still required. What we need to do is strengthen front-line and primary health care workers.
A report on universal health coverage by the erstwhile Planning Commission said a small percentage of GDP can provide all citizens with free essential medicines. Can that be a demand with the digital ID?
•AS:We already have the technology, we don’t need a new ID for that. The Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation model, which has been replicated in Kerala and Rajasthan, has shown that essential medicines can be made available across the State in each healthcare facility, provided there is a demand-driven supply and a willingness to make the procurement and distribution system transparent, accountable and free of corruption. Of course, some more technology will help.
Should not a digital ID confer a right to medicines for all?
•AS:It is not going to make a big difference. What we need first is an expansion of primary health services in the public sector through health centres. Then we need to engage local private practitioners and bring them into the system. Then, digital health will help strengthen it, make information available, and deliver medicines. In chronic illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis and cardiac ailments, digital health platforms could make available regular, low cost, quality medicines, especially for elderly patients who cannot go to a health centre, in a regulated system.
•SM:What the T.N. model said was, when you centralise purchases a lot of things can be taken care of. You have this efficient way of delivering medicines up to the primary health centre level. Again, the challenge is, you are only tracking the secondary packages. You don’t know if the person is getting the medicines. You need to have the real time authentication of the person.
📰 Impartial, aloof and sober as a judge
