DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS
1 – Ker Puja: GS I – Indian Culture
Context:
- The Prime Minister of India has sent his wishes to the people of Tripura on the occasion of Ker Puja.
In relation to Ker Puja:
- The Ker Puja festival is held in the state of Tripura.
- The Vastu Devata’s protective god, Ker, is honoured throughout the ritual.
- It includes offerings, sacrifices, and a defined border to shield the populace from calamities and hostile outside forces.
- The puja was initiated by the Tripura rajas.
- Participation in the puja from the Halam tribe is necessary.
In relation to the Halam Tribe:
- The Halam community is made up of a number of tribes from the state of Tripura.
- The name Halam was created by the Tipra Maharaja.
- They gave themselves the name “Riam,” which in their oral tradition denotes “Human being”.
- The Kuki-Chin tribes in Tripura include the Halam populations, who are of Tibeto-Burmese ancestry.
- Halams live in conventional “Tong Ghar” buildings built of bamboo and Changrass (thatch).
- They continue to cultivate plain land and engage in Jhum farming, depending on both of these endeavours in addition to other substitute labour.
- The hi-hook dance is the Halam tribe’s most well-known dance.
- The Rai Balmani event is another one that the tribe keeps track of.
Source The Hindu
2 – SAMARTH scheme: GS II – Government Policies and Interventions
Context:
- An empowered meeting was held by the SAMARTH Empowered Committee for the Scheme for Capacity Building in the Textiles Sector.
Important details:
- As part of the comprehensive skilling policy framework recommended by the M/o Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, the Ministry of Textiles established SAMARTH, an umbrella initiative for skill development that is demand-driven and placement-focused.
Aim:
- to promote and aid industry initiatives aimed at increasing employment in the organised textile industry and related sectors.
- to offer 10 lakh young people upskilling programmes that are suited to the demands of the labour market and the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF)—9 lakh in the organised sector and 1 lakh in the unorganised sector.
- to promote the growth of new talents in traditional sectors like as jute, handlooms, etc.
- to provide income or provide opportunities for self-employment in order to raise the level of living in all facets of India.
Eligibility:
- Indian nationals are required for all Samarth Scheme applicants.
- Preference would be given to SC/ST, women, minorities, those with disabilities, those in the BPL category, and districts with high expectations.
Source The Hindu
3 – Palliative care: GS II – Social Issues
Context:
- According to the National Programme for Prevention & Control of Non-Communicable Diseases’ new operating guidelines, only cancer patients are eligible for palliative care; all other chronic and debilitating disorders are not covered.
Important details:
- India is home to about 20% of the world’s population, two-thirds of whom reside in rural areas.
- In addition to a burgeoning population, India has seen a rapid rise in the burden of non-communicable diseases linked to lifestyle.
- Each year, over 1.4 million people in India are given a cancer diagnosis, and the prevalence of respiratory ailments, diabetes, and hypertension is also increasing.
- All of these conditions require palliative care at some point in their progression.
In relation to palliative care:
- The goal of palliative care, a branch of medicine, is to improve patients with terminal illnesses’ quality of life and lessen their pain.
- Identifying patients who face the risk of having their medical needs satisfied at the price of their quality of life and the financial burden on their families is the aim of this programme.
- It is widely used as part of hospice treatment.
- To improve the quality of life for people with life-limiting illnesses including cancer, heart failure, kidney failure, certain neurological problems, or cardiac failure, palliative care, on the other hand, focuses on the physical, emotional, spiritual, and social elements of a person’s health.
Indian System of Palliative Care:
- In India, palliative care is offered in the majority of tertiary medical facilities in urban areas.
- Due to unequal service availability, just 1% to 2% of the estimated 7 to 10 million individuals in the country who require it can get it.
- In India, health-related expenses push 55 million people into poverty every year.
- Over-medicalization has a substantial impact on this financial burden.
- The NPCDCS is:
- The National Programme for Prevention & Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (NP-NCD) includes the chronic diseases with the highest treatment expenses.
- In a best-case scenario, when some diseases reach that stage, palliative care should take the place of curative medicine.
- In 2010, it made its premiere.
- The objective was to lessen the rising burden of non-communicable diseases on the country.
- Challenges:
A clearer description:
- Palliative care is only referenced in relation to cancer in the new NP-NCD operational guidelines.
- This is a step back from the previous operating guideline, which incorporated palliative care for chronic and incapacitating illnesses.
Insufficient information and resources:
- The guidelines indicate the connection of 11 projects in order to promote the convergence of services focusing on the treatment of non-communicable diseases.
- One of them is the National Programme for Palliative Care (NPPC).
- NPPC was founded in 2012, but since then, the lack of a specified budget has prevented it from being carried out.
- The existence of such a programme is unknown to a large portion of the medical staff in basic health centres.
Inaccessibility:
- Despite various government initiatives that have it as one of their aims, access to palliative care remains appalling.
Less focus on children:
- The guidelines also lost an opportunity to draw attention to the suffering of kids with chronic conditions.
- 98% of children who die in moderate to severe pain are believed to reside in low-income and middle-income countries, including India.
Narrow analysis:
- The availability of palliative care will be assessed by measuring the usage of strong opioid analgesics with morphine equivalent per cancer death (apart from methadone).
- An indicator that only takes cancer patients into account could produce an inaccurate assessment of service coverage.
Conclusion:
- The 67th World Health Assembly, convened in 2014, recommended that palliative care be integrated into health systems at all levels.
- The reality is very different from ideal, despite local demands and requests from other nations to provide palliative care in addition to curative therapy.
- It is past time that we recognised the ongoing pandemic of non-communicable diseases in India and enhanced our palliative care services.
Source The Hindu
4 – Majorana: GS III – Science and Technology
Context:
- Microsoft researchers have discovered an unusual type of particle known as Majorana zero modes, which has the potential to revolutionise quantum computing.
About Majorana:
- Majorana fermions or Majorana particles are fermions that are also their own antiparticles.
- All the subatomic elements that make up matter are collectively referred to as “fermions.”
- This assumption about them was made by Ettore Majorana in 1937.
- It can also be used as a comparison to a Dirac fermion, a form of fermion that doesn’t have an antiparticle of its own.
- Only neutrinos exhibit Majorana fermionic behaviour at low energies; all other fermions in the Standard Model are known to exhibit Dirac fermionic behaviour.
- Neutrinos may turn out to be Majorana or Dirac fermions; their nature is still uncertain.
Information on the Majorana Zero mode:
- Most of the principles that apply to one fermion also apply to two fermions, or bound states.
- When these bound states are their own antiparticles—that is, when they collide and destroy one another—they are Majorana fermions.
- These constrained Majorana zero modes states.
Benefits of quantum computation:
- Majorana zero modes enable the powerful form of computation known as topological quantum computing.
- Today, a single electron can serve as a qubit in a quantum computer.
- The qubit is its fundamental unit of information.
- Degeneracy in quantum physics refers to a system that has several states with the same energy.
- Topological systems exhibit a variety of states at the lowest energy level, or the ground state.
- Topology is the study of the properties of matter that do not change whether they are ruptured or adhered to one another, despite being stretched, folded, twisted, etc.
Source The Hindu
5 – Telangana Eunuchs Act: GS II – Government Policies and Interventions
Context:
- The Telangana High Court recently quashed the Telangana Eunuchs Act of 1919 on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, violated the privacy of transgender individuals, and was an affront to their dignity.
About:
- Its previous name was the Andhra Pradesh (Telangana Area) Eunuchs Act.
- In the Hyderabad Nizam’s dominions, it was first implemented for “eunuchs” in 1919.
- According to this definition, all males who admit to having impotence or who clearly display an impotent condition upon medical evaluation are eunuchs.
- According to the Act, all eunuchs had to register with the government.
- The Act made it possible to detain transgender people for up to two years in prison and to arrest them without a warrant if they were seen singing, dancing, or otherwise entertaining the public on the street or in a public place, or if they were seen with a boy under the age of sixteen.
Source The Hindu
