Comprehensive Current affairs 23 November 2020

Virtual court and e-challan project.

The Assam government recently launched Virtual Court (traffic) and e-Challan project.

E-challan solution is an initiative of the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) whereas the software has been developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC).

It will replace the present concept of manual challan with an electronically generated digital challan.

Virtual court:

Virtual court is an initiative of E-Commitee of Supreme Court along with Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India.

Virtual Court is an online court being managed by Virtual Judge (which is not a person but an algorithm) whose jurisdiction can be extended to entire state and working hours may be 24X7.

 Salient features of the court:

There is no brick and mortar building of the court.

In a trial by Virtual Court, neither litigant shall come to the court nor will Judge have to sit physically in the court to adjudicate the case.

The communication may only be in electronic form and the sentencing and further payment of fine or compensation will also be online.

Only single process is allowed and there can be no argument. It may be proactive admission of guilt by the accused or proactive compliance of the cause by defendant on receipt of the summons in electronic form.

On payment of Fine, such matters may be treated as disposed off. Citizen neither have to wait in lines in courts nor have to confront Traffic Police man.

It will increase productivity of citizen as well as judicial officers.

It will promote greater accountability and less corruption in Traffic Police Department thus bettering life of people.

National Newborn Week 2020.

Indian Health Minister chaired an event to mark the National Newborn Week 2020.

It is being observed from 15th to 21st November.

Key highlights:

It aims to reinforce the importance of newborn health as a key priority area of the health sector and to reiterate the commitment at the highest level.

This year, the theme of National Newborn Week is ‘Quality, Equity, Dignity for every newborn at every health facility and everywhere.

 The country is now at newborn mortality of 23 per 1000 live births as per Sample Registration System 2018 and United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation estimates.

Five Eyes alliance.

The Five Eyes (FVEY)— Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States— along with India, objected to the use of a phrase “shared vision of a common future”, which is associated with China.

The Five Eyes (FVEY) network is an intelligence sharing alliance between these five countries.

The ‘silence’ process was broken at the request of the U.K’s Ambassador to the UN, who wrote a letter on behalf of the six countries to the President of the 74th General Assembly, suggesting alternative wording.

Silence process is a procedure by which a resolution passes if no formal objections are raised within a stipulated time.

However, China, on behalf of itself and Russia, Syria and Pakistan raised objections to the silence being broken.

The current impasse comes at a time when China’s relationships with a number of countries, including India, Australia and the U.S.A, are strained.

Given the impasse, the UN General Assembly President has suggested an alternatively phrased declaration, which he has placed under the silence procedure.

75th United Nations Day.

The United Nations (UN) will celebrate its 75th anniversary on 24 October 2020.

To mark its 75th anniversary in 2020, the UN is igniting a people’s debate: UN75.

Through UN75, the UN will encourage people to put their opinions together to define how enhanced international cooperation can help realize a better world by 2045.

 Each year on 24th October, the UN celebrates its anniversary. UN Day marks the anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Charter and the founding of the Organization in 1945.

The name "United Nations" was coined by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The main organs of the UN are:

the General Assembly,

the Security Council,

the Economic and Social Council,

the Trusteeship Council,

the International Court of Justice,

the UN Secretariat.

Demand of Reforms at United Nations:

Security Council Reforms: In UNSC, the permanent member countries (P5) have made the UN defunct in maintaining peace and order. Therefore, veto powers of P5 and composition of UNSC must be made more representative of the current world order.

The P5 countries include China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Multilateralism: International relations today are characterized by the power relationships of the United States, China, Russia, India and Europe.

A new model of the UN must be formulated, as current world order has changed from bipolar to unipolar to multi polar today.

Democratization of UN:

Developing countries like India are proposing reforms that seek to democratize the UN, such as UNSC reforms, UN peacekeeping reforms.

 Financial Reforms: This holds the key to the future of the UN. Without sufficient resources, the UN's activities and role would suffer.

India ranks 77 in global bribery risk matrix.

India is at 77th position with a score of 45 in a global list that measures business bribery risks of 2020.

About:

It is released by TRACE, world leading anti-bribery standard setting organization.

India ranked 77th among 194 countries. India has performed better than China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

North Korea presents the highest commercial bribery risk, while Denmark the lowest.

Score is calculated based on four parameters. These are

Government and civil service transparency.

Business interactions with government.

Capacity for civil society oversight.

Anti-bribery deterrents and enforcement.

Antimalaria drug resistance.

Malaria killed 405,000 people in 2018 and affected 218 million people. However, the fight against this killer is becoming difficult due to the growing resistance against malarial drugs.

The report, released as part of the ongoing World Antimicrobial Awareness week, was prepared on the basis of studies conducted from 2010-2019. Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the first and second line of treatment for malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum (P falciparum). This parasite causes a majority of malarial cases in the WHO’s African and South-East Asian regions, the hubs of the disease.

 A global database containing data from 1,046 studies conducted from 2010-2019 and involving 65,749 patients was analysed for the section of the report on P falciparum.

ACTs are combined with other drugs. The role of the artemisinin compound is to reduce the number of parasites during the first three days of treatment (i.e reduce parasite biomass).

The role of the partner drug is to eliminate the remaining parasites (i.e cure the infection). Six ACT combinations are usually prescribed.

According to the new WHO report, ACTs remain efficacious across the world, by and large. Wherever treatment failures were observed, policy changes were introduced.

Anakkayam Small Hydro Electric Project.

Recently, various green collectives and environmental organisations have come together to protest against the Anakkayam Small Hydro Electric Project in Kerala.

Highlights:

• It will come up in the buffer zone of the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve (PTR) and will also create a 5.617-km-long tunnel within the forest.

• Around 20 hectares of forest land will have to be cleared out and around 1900 large trees and a larger number of small trees will be cut.

• This area is ecologically fragile, as seen in the massive landslide followed by minor landslides at the project site in 2018, and the consequences will extend to loss of precious flora and fauna species.

• It was granted approval without obtaining permission from the local Kadar tribe which holds the right of Community Forest Resources (CFR) as per the Forest Rights Act, 2006.

• The hydel project comes within the 400 sq kms of forest land that were given as CFR to the Kadar tribe which has the responsibility to protect and conserve the habitat.

• This project is not far from the Athirapally Hydel Electric Project

 Athirapally Hydel Electric Project:

• The Kerala government approved the Athirapally Hydro Electric Project (AHEP) on the Chalakudy river in Thrissur district of Kerala.

• The Chalakudy River originates in the Anamalai region of Tamil Nadu and is joined by its major tributaries Parambikulam, Kuriyarkutti, Sholayar, Karapara and Anakayam in Kerala. It flows through Palakkad, Thrissur and Ernakulam districts of Kerala.

• It has also been facing opposition and protests due to its adverse effects on the fragile river ecosystem at Athirappilly and the other related Environmental Threats.

Getting MGNREGS Wages harder than labour

Prelims Syllabus: Schemes

Mains Syllabus: GS-III Indian Economy and Issues Relating to Planning, Mobilization of Resources,

Growth, Development and Employment.

Why in News?

• According to a study by LibTech India released recently, many Rural Workers dependent on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), their labour does not end at the work site and are forced to make multiple trips to the bank, adding travel costs and income losses, and face repeated rejections of payment, biometric errors and wrong information, just to get their hands on their wages.

What is the Issue?

• For example, a worker in Jharkhand who puts in a week of hard labour to earn `1,026 which the government credits directly into his/her bank account. The study found that almost 40% of the workers must make multiple trips to the bank branch to withdraw their money.

 • It costs an average of `53 a trip, and as the branch is usually at the block headquarters a significant distance from her home village, and the time spent at the bank is three to four hours, a worker will also lose the day’s wages while she attempts to withdraw his/her money.

• Paying `100 for travel for two trips, plus `342 for lost wages, plus about `25 for food, the worker may spend `392, effectively shelling out a third of her weekly wage just to withdraw it.

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation is exacerbated as transport becomes harder, and there is no question of physical distancing at a rural bank.

• There has been little change in the number of bank branches per capita in rural areas, so most of these challenges remain that there is only one branch per 20 gram panchayats.

Other Major Problems:

• The study found that only one in 10 workers get an SMS message that their wages have been credited. A third of workers must visit the bank branch just to find out whether their wages have been credited. Another quarter of respondents said despite being informed that their wages had been credited, they found that the money was not in the accounts.

• 40% of workers reported facing biometric authentication failures at least once in their last five transactions at such agencies, and 7% reported that all five of their last transactions had failed due to biometric authentication issues.

• Almost 13% of workers had rejected payments, which are transactions that are stuck due to technical errors of the payment system, bank account problems or data entry errors.

• About 77% of them had no idea why their payments had been rejected, which means that rectification is not possible and all future MGNREGS payments to these individuals will also be rejected.

What are the Key Features of MGNREGA?

• MGNREGA is one of the largest work guarantee programmes in the world.

 • The primary objective of the scheme is to guarantee 100 days of employment in every financial year to adult members of any rural household willing to do public work-related unskilled manual work.

• Unlike earlier employment guarantee schemes, the act aims at addressing the causes of chronic poverty through a rights-based framework.

• At least one-third of beneficiaries have to be women.

• Wages must be paid according to the statutory minimum wages specified for agricultural labourers in the state under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.

• The most important part of MGNREGA’s design is its legally-backed guarantee for any rural adult to get work within 15 days of demanding it, failing which an ‘unemployment allowance’ must be given.

• This demand-driven scheme enables the self-selection of workers.

• There is an emphasis on strengthening the process of decentralisation by giving a significant role in Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in planning and implementing these works.

• The act mandates Gram Sabhas to recommend the works that are to be undertaken and at least 50% of the works must be executed by them.