(Current Affairs) National Events | September: 2015

National Events

Modi’s Ambitious Skill India Mission

  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious Skill India mission is expected to be a mass campaign involving the youth to encourage them to take up skilling and vocational training to improve their employability.

  • The mission, which will be launched on Wednesday by the Prime Minister, is likely to see a large turnout of Union ministers including the finance minister, railway minister as well as chief ministers.

  • “Nearly 18 ministers including Union ministers as well as chief ministers would be attending the event,” said a senior government official, adding that a large number of private skill trainers would also attend.

  • Invitees from the private sector include Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry, Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra, chiefs of industry associations as well as Teamlease Services chairman Manish Sabharwal and Romesh Wadhwani of the Wadhwani Foundation.

  • The Skill India mission, which is being launched on the World Youth Skills Day, will also be simultaneously launched by state governments.

  • “While a number of chief ministers will be in New Delhi, each of the states too will launch the Mission to create awareness amongst youth about the need for skilling,” said the official.

  • Data from the Census 2011 and 68th round of the National Sample Survey revealed than an estimated 10.4 crore fresh workers would enter the labour market and require skill training by 2022, and 29.8 crore of the existing workforce will require additional skill training over the same time period.

  • Accordingly, the government now plans to skill 40.2 crore workers by 2022 and a number of schemes including the new National Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana and the skill loan scheme will be launched.

  • The Prime Minister will also unveil a new logo and slogan for the Skill India mission and give out letters of employment to some of the students who have successfully undergone skill training.

Antrix site was outsourced

  • More than a day after the website re-routing went public, the home page of ISRO’s Antrix Corporation was not yet up.
  • There was no official update or information on what action was being taken.
  • For those looking for information on antrix.gov.in, the message until 9 p.m. on Monday was, “ This site is under construction. Come back soon .”
  • The “redirecting” of Antrix’s homepage to jdcentwine.org - or American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a large Jewish humanitarian aid body — went public on Sunday afternoon.
  • According to a couple of sources who spoke about the incident, the Antrix site shows the latest date as 13 July 2015. Before that, it does not appear to have been updated after January 20, 2015 — almost seven months back. One source said he had visited it over five weeks back.
  • Although ISRO does not call it a hacking act, any unauthorised web entry and changing of its content amounts to it said Mirza Faizan, Co-Founder of the Global Cyber Security Response Team.
  • Sites related to sensitive agencies of the Departments of Space, Defence R&D and Atomic Energy are obvious targets.
  • The Antrix site was being hosted by an external contractor based in Bengaluru. Interestingly, this host’s site also showed that it was under construction, Mr. Faizan said. Did the compromise happen there?
  • The obvious question is: Should the hosting of the website of a strategic agency be outsourced?

India stands second on trust in national government, says survey

  • India has secured second position amongst 40 countries in a survey of trust in national governments for 2014 conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Switzerland has emerged at the top with Norway coming in third.

  • An impressive 73 per cent of Indians polled in the survey answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you have confidence in the national government?’

  • For the purpose of the survey, trust represents the confidence of citizens and businesses in government to do what is right and perceived as fair, according to the OECD ‘Government at a Glance 2015’ report.

  • However, the survey findings could also be an indicator of the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – as also reflected in his decisive electoral victory during 2014 – relative to the leaders in other countries as the report mentions that there is preliminary evidence to suggest that citizens’ trust in government reflects primarily their approval of their country’s leadership.

  • The report goes on to say that evidence also shows that trust in government is negatively correlated with the perceived levels of corruption in Government.

  • This is the only survey that collects data on the issue of trust in governments. It is a sampling survey of 1,000 citizens in each country conducted by World Poll, which has been doing it since 2005.

  • Between the two selected survey years of 2007 — the year before the financial and economic crisis started — and 2014, trust levels in India dropped by 9 percentage points.

  • The average confidence in national governments across OECD countries between the two years declined by 3.3 percentage points. It was 41.8 per cent in 2014 compared with 45.2 per cent in 2007.

  • The steepest declines took place in Slovenia (30 percentage points), Finland (29 percentage points) and Spain (27 percentage points).

  • Changes in trust levels could be affected by many factors, including the economic outlook, political changes such as elections or other major events such as disasters or major scandals including corruption cases. Moreover, expectations of citizens could grow at a faster pace than government responses.

  • However, India scored less than the OECD average and came 24th out of 35 countries in the comparison on protection of fundamental rights.

India’s population crosses 127-crore mark

  • On the World Population Day on Saturday, India recorded a population of 127,42,39,769, which is growing at a rate of 1.6 per cent a year, and could make the country the most populous in the world by 2050.
  • At 5 p.m. on Saturday, the number of Indians hit 127,42,39,769, and is 17.25 per cent of the global population, as per Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh or National Population Stabilisation Fund (NPSF), an autonomous body under the Union Health Ministry which has raised concerns about over-population related problems, if the rate persists.
  • Noting that India’s population was growing at a faster rate than China, which is now the world’s most populous country at around 1.39 billion, an official of the Fund said that the country could become the most populated one by 2050.
  • At a function on Saturday, Health Minister J.P. Nadda stressed on the involvement of development partners and NGOs in assisting government to achieve population stabilisation goals.

Indian women’s team for Volvo International

  • After an impressive outing with the senior side during the recent Hockey World League semifinals, prolific striker Rani Rampal will lead the Indian junior women’s team at the Volvo International six-nation tournament at Breda, the Netherlands.
  • The squad for the under-21 tournament, to be played from July 18 to 26, was named by Hockey India on Saturday. Besides Rani, six other players in the 18-member squad were also part of the senior side that finished fifth at Antwerp.

Decline in fertility rate

  • According to data from NPSF, the total fertility rate (TFR) in India has seen a decline and stood at 2.3 in 2013 although the decline is not consistent.
  • The data suggests that a high percentage of female (21-26 per cent) are married below 18 years of age in States like Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Bihar.
  • The population of India, at 1.21 billion as per the 2011 Census, is almost equal to the combined population of the U.S., Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan put together.
  • The population of several States match, and in some cases, exceed that of several large countries. For example, the population of U.P. is almost that of Brazil, the fifth most populous country in the world.

Vyapam under CBI investigation

  • Noting that it will not allow even one more death, the Supreme Court on Thursday transferred all criminal and death cases linked to the Vyapam scam to the Central Bureau of Investigation for a “fair and impartial” probe.
  • The CBI will effectively be in charge of the investigations from Monday.
  • A Bench of Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu, Justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy said the question whether the probe should be monitored by the apex court can be decided later in consultation with the premier investigation agency.
  • Slamming the Madhya Pradesh High Court for deferring an application made by the State government for a CBI probe, Chief Justice Dattu said it seemed the High Court merely “wanted to wash its hands of the responsibility and lobbed the ball into the Supreme Court.”
  • The apex court made it clear that with the CBI on the case now, the High Court will not “touch” the Vyapam cases.
  • The Special Task Force, supervised by the High Court-monitored Special Investigation Team, has lodged a number of FIRs relating to illegal admissions/recruitment totalling 55 cases, of which 45 related to admissions in professional courses and 10 to recruitment in government services on the recommendation of high-profile persons.
  • The court scheduled the next hearing for July 24 even as senior advocate Kapil Sibal sought an early date, saying every day, people related to the scam were being found dead.

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