DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS
1 – About the Sage Portal and Sacred Portal: GS II – Government Policies and Interventions
Context:
- The minister of state for the ministry of social justice and empowerment briefed the Rajya Sabha on the portals.
In relation to the Portals:
SAGE’ Portal:
- The SAGE (Seniorcare Ageing Growth Engine) programme and SAGE portal are geared towards older adults.
- The platform would promote participation in the “silver economy” among entrepreneurs and business owners, fostering market innovation.
- It will provide “one-stop access” to senior care products and services from recognised start-ups.
Sacred Portal:
- With the launch of the Senior Able Citizens for Re-Employment in Dignity (SACRED) Portal, people over 60 can now register and look for jobs and employment opportunities.
- By providing older people with a platform to engage with commercial enterprises for particular roles, it will therefore bring people together through the virtual preference matching process.
Senior citizens from India:
- There are 10.38 crore senior citizens in the country, or 8.6% of the total population, according to the Census Report for 2011.
Source The Hindu
2 – Details of the Mission Vatsalya Scheme: GS II – Government Policies and Interventions
Context:
- The Minister of Women and Child Development presented the Vatsalya Scheme to the Rajya Sabha.
Regarding the strategy:
- The Mission Vatsalya Scheme is a roadmap for accomplishing development and child protection priorities that are in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- With the tagline “leave no child behind,” it puts a focus on improving the juvenile justice care and protection system as well as children’s rights, advocacy, and awareness.
- The programme is operated under central sponsorship.
Funding:
- According to the requirements and needs stated by the States/UTs, the Mission Vatsalya Scheme disburses funding.
- The states and union territories and the centre split 60:40 of the total funds allocated to the legislature.
- The ratio of money between the Centre and the State for the North-Eastern States is 90:10.
- Union Territories receive all of the central share even without a legislature.
- The Mission Vatsalya programme provides non-institutional care for children through private assisted sponsorship, allowing interested sponsors to assist suffering children.
Source The Hindu
3 – About the Holocaust: GS II – International Issues
Context:
- There has been debate about a recent film that incorrectly used the Holocaust as a metaphor for an unhealthy relationship.
In relation to the Holocaust:
- Approximately six million European Jews were subjected to systematic state-sponsored persecution during the Holocaust, which occurred between 1933 and 1945 under the Nazi dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.
- The Greek phrase holokauston, which means a sacrifice that is burned up, is where the word “holocaust” originates.
About Jews:
- Jews made up a tiny minority in Germany with less than 1% of the population, but despite this, they were more affluent than other Germans.
- Hitler’s ideology held that Jews were to blame for all of Germany’s misfortunes, including its defeat in World War I and the 1930s’ economic difficulties for the nation.
- He passed a number of laws that restricted Jews’ civil and political rights and gave Nazi party thugs permission to terrorise Jewish districts.
- In 1938, Hitler invaded Austria, and in 1939, he carried out the horrifying Kristallnacht, in which Nazi thugs murdered and brutally assaulted hundreds of Jews throughout Germany. Additionally, they demolished countless synagogues and Jewish structures.
- This was the result of Hitler’s expansionist policy of providing “living space” for the Germanic races.
The Complete Response:
- This was a plan to round up and kill all the millions of Jews.
- After Jews were initially increasingly confined in ghettos, forced deportations followed.
- Millions of individuals were sent to concentration camps, where they endured appalling living circumstances and were required to engage in forced labour.
- In some of these concentration camps, mass executions of Jews and other “undesirable” racial and ethnic groups took place in high-tech gas chambers.
- The largest and most infamous of these camps was Auschwitz, which was situated in occupied Poland.
- The camp was successfully freed by the Red Army in 1945.
- This day has been recognised as International Holocaust Remembrance Day since 2005.
Source The Hindu
4 – Details of the Yamuna floodplains: GS I – Indian Geography
Context:
- Water levels in the Yamuna River rose to a 60-year high, and for the first time in 50 years, waters started to migrate in the direction of the Taj Mahal.
About floodplains:
In relation to the River and its significance:
- It originates in Uttarakhand’s Yamunotri Glacier, which is situated on the western side of the Lower Himalayan Bandarpunch peaks.
- It meets the Ganges at the Triveni Sangam in Allahabad.
- At this location, a yearly Hindu festival known as the Kumbh Mela is held.
- The Yamuna is essential to the existence of five States, and its floodplains provide energy.
- As a part of river systems, floodplains reduce runoff during floods, recharge the groundwater, and store excess water, all of which help to replenish the city’s water supply.
- Extra water that has been stored in the floodplain is released back into the river during the dry season when the flow is slow.
- In Delhi, similar severe floods struck in 1978, 1988, and 1995, inundating floodplains and endangering the health of locals.
Inhabitants of these floodplains:
- The first large non-agricultural settlements appeared when refugees from Western Punjab arrived in Delhi following Independence.
- The planning phase, which also saw the hiring of people to unload coal from trains and clean fly ash, resulted in the construction of the first thermal power plant, the Ring Road, and Rajghat Samadhi in the 1950s and 1960s.
- For the 1982 Asian Games, more than a million migrant workers from nearby States came.
- Workers eventually moved to the expansive plain close to the western embankment after the Games.
- The Yamuna became more polluted as a result of Delhi’s inability to build an efficient sewage system to keep up with population growth.
- A ruling ordering the demolition of shantytowns and the expulsion of more than two lakh people from “unauthorised” settlements on floodplains was issued by the Delhi High Court in 2004.
Delhi’s master plan’s general outline:
- The Central Ground Water Authority designated the floodplains as “protected” for groundwater management in 2000.
- The planned Master Plan for Delhi 2041, which divides Delhi into 18 zonal districts, designates the Yamuna’s floodplains as “Zone O” and divides them into two halves.
River’s dynamic floodplain:
- (Where permissible, regulated building) riverfront.
- Construction of the Commonwealth Village and Akshardham Temple has taken place in the latter.
Various Warnings:
- The division of the floodplain, encouragement of encroachments, and disposal of construction and demolition trash into the riverbed and floodplains are all caused by the building of new guiding bunds and embankments.
- The Riverfront Development Scheme in Delhi was the subject of an expert committee’s investigation in 2012, and they strongly discouraged any construction on floodplains.
- The areas covered under the Yamuna Riverfront Development (YRDF) plan, which calls for parks dedicated to biodiversity and “recreational” pursuits, were located in an active floodplain.
- It could alter the topography, increase pollution levels, and lessen the ability to carry floodwater.
Encroachments’ consequences:
Impact on groundwater recharge:
- Construction in recharge zones results in groundwater loss.
- The layers of silt in the floodplains create aquifers that help the river’s path, which in turn replenishes the groundwater.
- However, intrusions end this two-way dialogue.
- In order to save the riverine ecology during monsoons, the river is unable to moisten the soil, deposit dirt along its banks, or carry flood waters downstream.
Less effective flood protection:
- Floodplains can provide protection from severe flash floods by allowing extra water to disperse and be stored.
- Any major increase in precipitation enlarges the river, which increases in height rather than width before finally bursting with catastrophic force (India received 26% more rain than expected in July).
- Climate change has led to an increase in rainfall frequency and severity, as evidenced by the Yamuna floods, which saw runoff water arrive as a vast gushing flow in a brief period of time.
Moving forward:
- A drafting of a law outlining floodplains and zoning was made accessible in 1975.
- There are now only four States that have written the National Floodplains Zoning Policy.
- It is simplistic to say that floodplains are a place where environment and development collide.
- Instead, efforts may be focused on creating infrastructure that is resistant to changing climates, clearing drains, creating green spaces, and improving drainage systems.
- The floodplains should be completely off limits according to the Yamuna rejuvenation’s logic.
- All suggested ideas should also be swiftly reviewed again.
- By freeing the floodplains, the demand for radical urban reforms towards sustainability and eco-friendly lifestyles can be met.
Source The Hindu
5 – About the Scheme for financial assistance to veteran artists: GS I – Indian Culture
Context:
- Artists who are struggling financia lly due to old age are supported financially by the Ministry of Culture.
Important details:
- The Ministry of Culture oversees an initiative named “Scheme for Financial Assistance for Veteran Artists”.
- This is for senior artists, 60 years of age and above, who have significantly contributed to their various performing arts and cultural disciplines yet struggle to make ends meet due to their elderly age.
- In order to be eligible for the program’s monthly financial aid of Rs. 6000/-, the chosen artists must be 60 years of age or older.
- Their annual income cannot be greater than Rs 48,000 after acquiring an annual Digital Life Certificate and an annual income certificate every five years.
- Because it is a central sector programme, participants get money from the federal government without going via any states or union territories.
Source The Hindu
