11 August 2022

DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS

1 – Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojna (Urban): GS II – Government Policies and Interventions

Context:

• By August 15, 2022, the program’s goal is to have built over 112 crore dwellings in metropolitan areas. It was introduced in 2015. For the sake of finishing the residences that have already been sanctioned, the Cabinet agreed an extension until December 31, 2024.

About:

• Housing for All by 2022, a government initiative being carried out by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, includes Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) (MoHUA).
• By offering a rebate on the Interest Rate of a Home Loan during Repayment via EMI, it makes Home Loans Affordable for the Urban Poor (Equated Monthly Installments).

Beneficiaries:

• The Mission targets the lack of urban housing for people in the EWS/LIG and MIG categories, including people who live in slums.
• EWS (Economically Weaker Section):A family’s annual income is limited to Rs. 3,00,00.
• Low Income Group (LIG): (families earning no more than Rs. 6,00,000 annually) and
• The maximum annual family income for the Middle-Income Groups(MIG I & II) is Rs. 18,00,000.
• A beneficiary family will consist of a husband, wife, and any unmarried daughters or sons.

Four PMAY-U Verticals:

Slum redevelopment in situ (ISSR):

• In order to provide houses to qualified slum dwellers, this vertical would be executed with the idea of “Land as a Resource” with private sector participation.
• Slum: A densely populated area with at least 300 people, or roughly 60 to 70 houses, that is poorly built, congested, and located in an unclean environment without adequate sanitary or drinking water amenities.

Credit Linked Subsidy (CLSS) for Affordable Housing:

• The following interest subsidies are available to EWS, LIG, and MIG (I & II) beneficiaries who apply for housing loans from banks, housing finance companies, or other similar organizations for the purpose of purchasing, building, or improving homes:
• 5 percent on loans up to Rs. 6 lakh
• On loans up to Rs. 9 lakh, 4%
• On loans up to Rs. 12 lakh, 3%

Partnership for Affordable Housing (AHP):

• A project for affordable housing may include a mix of homes in various categories, but it will only be qualified for Central Assistance if at least 35% of the project’s homes fall under the EWS category.

Individual house construction led by beneficiaries (BLC):

• Eligible households from EWS categories are given central assistance up to Rs. 1.5 lakh per EWS dwelling for home building or improvement.

Demand-driven Methodology:

• The PMAY-U takes a demand-driven approach, strengthening the principles of cooperative federalism; the States and Union Territories determine whether there is a housing shortage (UTs).
• Except for the CLSS vertical of the PMAY-U, which is being implemented as a Central Sector Scheme, the Mission is carried out as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS).
• The Central Government machinery is responsible for implementing and funding all Central Sector Schemes.
• State governments implement the Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS), with a portion of the financing coming from the States.

Geotagging:

• The method of geotagging involves adding location information to various media, such as photography.
• According to the PMAY-U regulations, the state government is required to make sure that every house constructed under the program is geotagged to the Bhuvan HFA (housing for all) application.
• The Indian Space Research Organization created the Indian Geo Platform known as Bhuvan (ISRO).
• It is a web-based tool that gives customers access to multiple mapping services.

Women’s Equality:

• By allowing female members or joint members to own homes, the Mission supports the empowerment of women.
• Women (with a top priority for widows and unmarried women), people from Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes/Other Backward Classes, minorities, people with impairments, and transgender people are also given preference.

Projects funded by PMAY-U:

Complexes of Affordable Rental Housing (ARHCs):

• This will make it easier for urban migrants and the poor to access decent, cheap rental accommodation close to their places of employment in the industrial sector as well as in non-formal urban economies.

Technology Challenge in Housing:

• It intends to find and mainstream a variety of cutting-edge, environmentally friendly, and disaster-resistant construction technologies for the housing construction industry.

CLSS Awas Portal:

• All stakeholders, including the MoHUA, central nodal agencies, primary lending institutions, beneficiaries, and citizens, are integrated on this single platform in a live setting.
• The platform streamlines application processing and enables beneficiaries to monitor the status of their subsidies.

Source The Indian Express

2 – NATO: GS II – International Relations

Details of NATO:

• The North Atlantic Treaty, often known as the Washington Treaty, was signed in April 1949 by the United States, Canada, and a number of Western European countries in order to ensure collective protection against the Soviet Union.
• Currently, there are 30 member states.
• Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States made up the group’s original members.
• Greece and Turkey (1952), West Germany (1955, renamed Germany in 1990), Spain (1982), the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017), and North Macedonia (1999) joined the original signatories (2020).
• Although it continued to be a member of NATO, France left its seat in the organization’s integrated military command in 1966. In 2009, it returned.
• Headquarters: Belgium’s Brussels.
• Belgium’s Mons is home to the Allied Command Operations headquarters.

What aims does NATO seek to achieve?

• The fundamental and permanent goal of NATO is to protect each member state’s freedom and security via political and military action.
• Political goals: NATO encourages the values of democracy and provides members with the opportunity to consult and work together on defense and security-related matters in order to solve disputes, foster trust, and, in the long run, prevent conflict.
• Military Goals: NATO is dedicated to settling problems through peaceful means. It possesses the military might to conduct crisis-management operations if diplomatic efforts are unsuccessful.
• These are carried out on their own or in collaboration with other nations and international organizations in accordance with a United Nations mandate or the collective defense provision of NATO’s founding treaty, Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.
• NATO has only ever used Article 5 once, on September 12, 2001, in response to the 9/11 attacks on the US World Trade Center.

Source The Indian Express

3 – Linkage of Voter ID Cards with Aadhar Card: GS II – Election-Related Issues

The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021:

Important Details:

• It enables the connection of electoral register data with the Aadhaar ecosystem by amending section 23 of the Representation of People’s Act, 1950.
• This tries to reduce the risk of enrolling the same person more than once in several locations.
• Spouses will now be used in place of “wives of service voters” when registering voters.
• The bill suggests four qualifying dates (the first day of the months of January, April, July, and October) as opposed to the former single date for updating the voting records to include people who have become 18 years old (1st January).
• Importance: The ability to vote remotely thanks to the planting of Aadhar data with voter identities may aid migratory voters.
• It is thought that Aadhar linkage aids in preventing fraudulent and counterfeit ballots.
• The legislation will become more “gender-neutral” if the word “wife” is changed to “spouse.”

Concerns Related To The Bill:

• Government Has Final Say: In cases when a person is “unable” to provide their Aadhaar, the Central government has the discretion to specify the terms under which they would be allowed to enter or remain on the electoral rolls.
• Therefore, the Central Government will choose what justifications are deemed appropriate for a voter to continue to be listed as a voter.
• Burden Transfer: The responsibility for defending one’s continued inclusion on the electoral rolls now falls on those who may be unable or unwilling to link their Aadhaar, as opposed to the Government actively securing registration on the electoral rolls to achieve universal adult franchise.
• Furthermore, because the law at this time does not guarantee a right to a hearing prior to such deletion, it will result in the deletion from the voter rolls without any procedural safeguards.
• Election data is now kept by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in its own database, which is separate from other government databases, raising privacy concerns.
• The ECI and UIDAI will have access to the election database thanks to the proposed linkage between Aadhaar and it. This might result in invasions of people’s privacy.
• The legal voters will lose their right to vote simply because they are unable or unable to provide their Aadhaar information.
• Beneficiary Voters’ Identification: The amendment will lead to political profiling. It is considerably simpler for the government to follow any voter who has used their Aadhaar to get social benefits and subsidies thanks to the linking of electoral IDs with Aadhaar numbers.
• Political parties may utilize this to selectively target their messages to particular voters using data that is not generally accessible.

Steps to Take Ahead:

• Reforms to Legislative Procedures: Before enacting any new laws, the government must seek public input and permit more thorough parliamentary review.
• In a Parliamentary democracy like India, it is crucial to ensure that elected officials and regular citizens alike are not denied access to opportunities and privileges.
• To identify and address any problems that a new law may raise, a fruitful discussion of those concerns and the importance of the proposal is necessary.
• Alternative Methods for Removing De-Duplication: While there are concerns with voters being registered in more than one constituency or with non-citizens enrolling, these can be resolved by using different identification procedures.
• In fact, because Aadhaar is an identification system for residents rather than citizens, it could not be useful to confirming voter identity.
• Need for Broad-Reaching Laws: A free and fair election is impossible without an error-free electoral roll. The Government should present a thorough bill so that the Parliament can have a proper discussion.
• The bill should also outline how much data would be shared between the two databases, how consent will be gained, and whether permission to link the databases may be withdrawn.
• Protecting Citizens’ Privacy: The government must first work on passing the Personal Data Protection (PDP) law before moving forward with the Aadhaar-voter ID integration.
• Government organizations must comply with the PDP regime and seek the express agreement of a person before sharing personal data with other government institutions.

Source The Hindu

4 – Corbevax: Prelims Specific Topic

Context:

• The Central Government on August 10 approved Biological E’s CorbeVax as a precaution dose for persons over 18 years old who have had their full course of either Covishield or Covaxin vaccinations while still awaiting the World Health Organization’s emergency use listing (EUL).

About:

• The Covid-19 vaccine, which is native to India, is presently undergoing Phase 3 clinical testing.

Working:

• It is a vaccine made of “recombinant protein sub-units.”
• It indicates that it contains a particular SARS-CoV-2 component, the spike protein on the virus’s surface.
• The spike protein enables the virus to penetrate the body’s cells where it can reproduce and harm people.
• However, because the rest of the virus is missing when this protein is administered to the body, it is not anticipated to be detrimental.
• It is anticipated that the immune system will react negatively to the injected spike protein.
• Consequently, the body will already be prepared for an immune reaction when the actual virus tries to infect it, making it unlikely that the individual will become really ill.

Corbevax and Other Covid-19 Vaccines Differ in the Following Ways:

• They are either inactivated vaccines (Covaxin, Sinovac-CoronaVac, and Sinopharm’s Vero Cell), viral vector vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna), or mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna).
• In order to get our cells to produce the spike proteins that the body needs to develop immunity against, viral vector and mRNA vaccines employ a coding.
• Protein itself is given in the instance of Corbevax.
• Messenger RNA (mRNA), the molecule that effectively carries out DNA instructions, is the mechanism by which mRNA vaccinations function. MRNA serves as a blueprint for the construction of proteins inside of cells.
• Viral vector vaccines transmit crucial instructions to human cells via a modified version of a distinct virus (the vector).
• To attack the full viral structure, inactivated vaccines contain dead fragments of the entire SARS-CoV-2 virus.
• Similar to the mRNA and viral vector Covid-19 vaccines, Corbevax uses a distinct strategy to target only the spike protein.

Source The Hindu