STATE OF THE WORLD’S NURSING REPORT 2020
Context :
During the ‘Year of the Nurse and Midwife,’ WHO has released the first ever State of the world’s nursing report. It has been developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with the International Council of Nurses and the global Nursing Now campaign.
Report highlights :
- Nursing is the largest occupational group in the health sector, accounting for approximately 59% of the health professions.
- The 27.9 million global nursing personnel include 19.3 million (69%) professional nurses, 6.0 million (22%) associate professional nurses and 2.6 million (9%) who are not classified either way.
- The global shortage of nurses is estimated to be 5.9 million nurses in 2018. The report calls for creating at least 6 million new nursing jobs by 2030, primarily in low- and middle-income countries.
- The countries accounting for the largest shortages (in numerical terms) in 2018 included Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Atal Pension Yojana completes five years
Context :
Atal Pension Yojana (APY) completed five years of its implementation on 9 May 2020. The scheme has achieved the milestone of 2.23 subscribers so far.
Atal Pension Yojana :
- Atal Pension Yojana is the government’s flagship social security scheme.
- APY was launched on 9 May 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The aim of the scheme is to deliver old age income security, particularly to the workers in the unorganized sector.
- The scheme still remains relevant for addressing the challenges of the rapidly increasing aging population of India.
- The scheme provides the guarantee of minimum pension after 60 years of age.
- The scheme covers all the states and Union Territories (UTs) with male to female subscription ratio of 57:43.
- APY can be subscribed by any Indian citizen in the age group of 18-40 years having a bank account.
- The scheme provides a minimum guaranteed pension ranging from Rs.1,000 to Rs.5,000 on attaining 60 years of age. The amount of pension is guaranteed for a lifetime to the spouse on the death of the subscriber. In the event of the death of both the subscriber and the spouse, the entire pension corpus is paid to the nominee.
Ordinance to Check APMCs : Gujarat
Context :
Recently, Gujarat’s state government has cleared the Gujarat Agricultural Produce Markets (Amendment) Ordinance 2020.
It has ended the monopoly of state-run Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) and has allowed private entities to set up their own market committees or sub-market yards.
Highlights of the Ordinance :
- Restrictions on Jurisdiction: The ordinance restricts the jurisdiction of APMCs to the physical boundaries of their respective marketing yards and they can levy cess only on those transactions, happening within the boundary walls of their marketing yard.
- Earlier, an APMC had jurisdiction over an entire or more than one taluka.
- Farmers and traders of a particular taluka had to compulsorily sell their produce to their respective APMCs.
- Apart from that, APMCs levied a cess on any transaction that happened within the marketing yard of the APMC or outside it.
- Opportunity to Private Markets: The ordinance permits for setting up of private markets.
- Privately-owned old storages or warehouses can be converted into a sub-market yard or a private market that can compete with the APMCs.
- Farmers can also set up private markets themselves.
- To save the smaller APMCs from the negative competition from private markets and a fair play, the state government plans to bring a rule that will not allow the setting up of a private market within a five-kilometre radius of an existing APMC.
- Also to protect them, the government will collect 20% cess from private players and reroute 14% of it back to the APMCs.
- Unified Single Trading Licence: The ordinance provides traders with one unified single trading licence through which they can participate in trading activities anywhere in the state.
- It will allow multiple traders to attract the farmers depending on the quality of their produce and offer competitive prices without the restriction of place and area jurisdiction.
- For that, amendments allow setting up of portals for e-markets.
- Expansion in Grievance Redressal: The director of an APMC and the Gujarat State Agriculture marketing board will also start taking care of the grievance redressal which was solely managed by the APMC till now.
- Expected Benefits to the Farmers: Permission to private entities will lead to competition and will offer the best possible remuneration to farmers for their produce.
- Till now, APMCs used to form a cartel and decide on what prices to offer to farmers.
- Farmers will not be bound to sell only to one particular APMC and can choose the one with the best deal in their favour.
- Viewpoint of APMCs
- APMCs have not welcomed the decision because it ends their monopoly and allows private players to enter.
- The ordinance will also affect revenues because no cess will be collected on transactions outside the physical boundaries of marketing yards.
- For example, last year, of the ₹2.5 crore earned as market fees, ₹1.5 crore came from transactions that were conducted outside the marketing yard. With the new ordinance in place, this revenue will be lost.
TODA Embroidery
Context :
Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the indigenous Toda artisans from the Nilgiris are producing thousands of masks with exquisite embroidery for local residents, police, and sanitary workers.
Highlights :
- Toda people are a Dravidian ethnic group who live in the Nilgiri Mountains of Tamil Nadu.
- During the 20th century, the Toda population has hovered in the range 700 to 900.
- The Toda traditionally live in settlements called Mund, consisting of three to seven small thatched houses. The Toda huts, called dogles, are of an oval, pent-shaped construction built of bamboo.
- Their economy was pastoral, based on the buffalo, whose dairy products they traded with neighbouring peoples of the Nilgiri Hills.
- Fraternal polyandry – a practice in which a woman marries all the brothers of a family – in traditional Toda society was fairly common; however, this practice has now been totally abandoned, as has female infanticide.
- Since the early 21st century, Toda society and culture have been the focus of an international effort at culturally sensitive environmental restoration.
- The Toda lands are now a part of The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO-designated International Biosphere Reserve; their territory is declared UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale
Context :
The Prime Minister paid tribute to Gopal Krishna Gokhale on his 154th birth anniversary.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale was a great social reformer and educationist who provided exemplary leadership to India’s freedom movement.
About Gopal Krishna Gokhale :
Birth: Gopal Krishna Gokhale was born on 9 May 1866 in Kotluk village in present-day Maharashtra (then part of the Bombay Presidency) in a Brahmin family.
Ideology : Gokhale worked towards social empowerment, expansion of education , struggle for freedom in India for three decades and rejected the use of reactionary or revolutionary ways.
Role in Colonial Legislatures :
Between 1899 and 1902, he was a member of the Bombay Legislative Council followed by work at the Imperial Legislative Council from 1902 till his death (1915). At the Imperial legislature, Gokhale played a key role in framing the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909.
Role in INC : He was associated with the Moderate Group of Indian National Congress (joined in 1889). He became president of INC in 1905 in Banaras session.
This was the time when bitter differences had arisen between his group of ‘Moderates’ and the ‘Extremists’ led by Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak among others. The two factions split at the Surat session of 1907.
Despite the ideological difference, in 1907, he intensely campaigned for the release of Lala Lajpat Rai, who was imprisoned that year by the British at Mandalay in present-day Myanmar.
Related Societies and Other Works :
He established the Servants of India Society in 1905 for the expansion of Indian education. He was also associated with the Sarvajanik sabha journal started by Govind Ranade. In 1908, Gokhale founded the Ranade Institute of Economics. He started english weekly newspaper, The Hitavada (The people’s paper).