Education/GSII
Government approves ' New India Literacy Programme, a new scheme of Adult Education for FYs 2022-27"

What's the NEWS

• Government approved a new scheme "New India Literacy Programme for the period FYs 2022-2027 to cover all the aspects of Adult Education to align with National Education Policy 2020 and Budget Announcements 2021-22.
• The National Education Policy 2020 has recommendations for Adult Education and Lifelong Learning.
• The Union Budget 2021-22, announcement had been made to enable increased access of resources, online modules covering the entire gamut of adult education will be introduced.

New India Literacy Programme
The objectives of the scheme is to impart not only foundational literacy and numeracy but also to cover other components which are necessary for a citizen of 21st century such as

1. critical life skills (including financial literacy, digital literacy, commercial skills, health care and awareness, child care and education, and family welfare)
2. vocational skills development (with a view towards obtaining local employment)
3. basic education (including preparatory, middle, and secondary stage equivalency)
4. continuing education (including engaging holistic adult education courses in arts, sciences, technology, culture, sports, and recreation, as well as other topics of interest or use to local learners, such as more advanced material on critical life skills).

• The scheme will be implemented through volunteerism through online mode.
• The training, orientation, workshops of volunteers, may be organized through face-to-face mode.
• All material and resources shall be provided digitally for easy access to registered volunteers through easily accessible digital modes, viz, TV, radio, cell phone-based free/open-source Apps/portals, etc.
• The scheme will cover non-literates of the age of 15 years and above in all state/UTs in the country.
• The target for Foundational Literacy and Numeracy for FYs 2022-27 is 5 (five) crore learners @ 1.00 crore per year by using "Online Teaching, Learning and Assessment System (OTLAS)" in collaboration with National Informatics Centre, NCERT and NIOS in which a learner may register him/herself with essential information like name, date of birth, gender, Aadhaar number, mobile number etc.
• The estimated total outlay of "New India Literacy Programme" is Rs.1037.90 crore which includes Central share of Rs.700 crore and State share of Rs.337.90 crore respectively for the FYs 2022 -27.

Salient Features of the scheme

1. School will be Unit for implementation of the scheme.
2. Schools to be used for conducting survey of beneficiaries and Voluntary Teachers (VTs).
3. Different strategies are to be adopted for different age cohorts.
4. Foundational Literacy and Numeracy will be imparted through Critical Life Skills to all non-literates in the age group of 15 years and above.
5. Use of Technologies to impart Adult Education for wider coverage of the scheme.
6. Performance Grading Index (PGI) for State/UT and district level will show the performance of States and UTs to implement the scheme and achievements on yearly basis by weighing both the physical and financial progress through UDISE portal.
7. CSR/Philanthropic Support may be received by hosting ICT support, providing volunteer support, opening facilitation centres for learners and for providing IT access to economically weak learners in the form of cell phones, etc
8. Priority and Saturation in Literacy- The age cohort of 15-35 will be saturated first followed by ages 35 and above. Priority will be given in terms of categories to the Girls and women, SC/ST/OBC/Minorities, Persons with Special Needs (Divyangjans), Marginalized/ Nomadic/ construction workers/ laborers/etc. In terms of location/area, the focus shall be on all aspirational districts of NITI Aayog, districts with literacy rates less than the National/State average, districts with female literacy rates less than 60% as per the 2011 Census, Districts/ Blocks with large SC/ST/ Minority population, Educationally Backward Blocks, Left Wing Extremism Affected districts.
9. Convergence with Ministries and Departments for effective implementation of NILP: MeitY: Digital Literacy, DFS/MoF: Financial Literacy, MoSDE: Skilling, DoJ/MoLJ: Legal Literacy, MoD: Involvement of NCC Volunteer and Ex- Servicemen, MoYAS: Involvement of NYKS, NSS, MoRD: NRLM and DDU-GKY, MoC: Involvement of Cooperative Societies, MoHFW: Health and Hygiene Literacy, NDMA/MHA: Disaster Management, MoMA: for implementing among Minorities, DoHE: Continuing Edn, Min of Culture: Libraries, Cultural Literacy, MoPR: For Panchayat support, Rural Libraries, MWCD: Involvement of Anganwadi Workers, and MoTA: Implementing in Tribal areas etc.
10. NILP as Janandolan:

• The three crores students/children of around 7 lakh schools registered under UDISE along with about 50 lakh teachers of Government, Aided and Private schools will participate as volunteer.
• Support will be garnered from PRIs, Anganwadi workers, ASHA workers and an estimated 50 lakhs NYSK, NSS and NCC volunteers.
• There will be involvement of community, participation of philanthropic/CSR organizations through volunteerism and through Vidyanjali portal.

11. Central Portal to be developed by NIC for aggregated data capturing equipped with Mobile App, Online Survey Module, Physical & Financial Modules and Monitoring Framework, etc.
12. Assessment of Literacy will be conducted using scientific format to capture the real-life learnings and skills for functional literacy.

Adult Education is now ‘Education for All' in the country:

• As a progressive step, it has also been decided that from now onwards that the term "Education For All" will be used in place of "Adult Education" by the Ministry in view of the fact that the terminology "Adult Education" is not incorporating appropriately all non-literates of 15 years and above age group.
• As per Census 2011, the absolute number of non-literates of the country in 15 years and above age group is 25.76 crore (Male 9.08 crore, Female 16.68 crore).
• In consideration of the progress of persons certified as literates being to the tune of 7.64 crore under the Saakshar Bharat programme implemented during 2009-10 to 2017-18, it is estimated that currently around 18.12 crore adults are still non-literate in India.

NITI Aayog
NITI Aayog in association with PhonePe launches the Fintech Open Hackathon


What's the NEWS

• As a part of the Fintech Open Month, NITI Aayog in association with PhonePe will be hosting the first-ever open-to-all Hackathon event for ideating and coming up with the most creative solutions for the FinTech space.

Know! about the Hackathon

• The Hackathon will provide an opportunity for innovators, digital creators and developers from all over India to think, ideate and code
• Participants at the hackathon need to use any open-data APIs like PhonePe Pulse along with frameworks such as Account Aggregator as a foundation to power the following use cases:

1. Alternate risk models for Lending, Insurance or Investments with focus on financial Inclusion
2. Innovative Products that use the power data signals for various demographics and Geos for broader adoption of financial services
3. Improved Visualisation and Derived intelligence based on the Digital payments data
4. The final app that participants come up with must incorporate one of the above.

Bilateral Relations/GSII
Work Plan 2022 signed between India and Germany

What's the NEWS

• The 8^th Annual Meeting of the Indo-German Working Group on Quality Infrastructure, led by the Indian Ministry for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy was held virtually
• The Working Group meets annually since 2013, and identifies areas of cooperation to support and strengthen quality infrastructure in country taking into account needs and requirements of relevant stakeholders from diverse technology areas so as to support bilateral trade.

Highlights

• The German side shared their initiatives at International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and requested support for the German candidate for the position of Director Standards at ITU.
• Outcome of the Global Quality Infrastructure Index (GQII) study conducted by the German side was also shared.
• As per the GQII report, India is placed at 7th position on standardization aspect, 9th for Accreditation activities and 19th for the Metrology related activities.
• India scored 95.6 out of 100 and is ranked at 10th place in the world for overall quality infrastructure environment in the country.
• In the Panel discussion, the experts discussed on the relevance of Quality Infrastructure for digital and green transformation, its effects on the QI and how QI can support the industry especially SMEs.
• A Work Plan for the Year 2022 was agreed upon and signed by both sides which include collaboration in mobility, energy, circular economy, smart farming/ agriculture, medical devices, digitalization (AI, Industry 4.0 and other new technology areas), machinery safety, medical devices and equipment and market surveillance.

Education/GSII
Pramarsh 2022

What's the NEWS

• The Minister of State for Culture & Parliamentary Affairs Shri launched the career counselling workshop 'Pramarsh 2022' for the students of the Bikaner District region.

Know! about the workshop

• In this workshop one lakh students participated from more than thousands schools of Bikaner district mainly from rural area.
• Workshop conducted with the support of The National Institute of Career Services (NICS) which comes under the Ministry of Labour & Employment and educational start-up Edumilestones.
• Directorate of Education, Rajasthan also extended the support and facilitation for this workshop.
• More than one Lakh students mainly from rural areas participated in the event
• The students from the private & government school from the remote area solicited guidance from the domain experts from Business, Policy planning, Industries Associations, Art, Culture, Media, Medical, Architecture, Biotechnology, and Finance and Marketing sectors.
• Pramarsh2022 workshop was an extension of the efforts to bridge the industry academia gap and impart the knowledge about various choices available to the student.
• The ongoing workshop is not limited to training of teachers and career workshop for students, but it is also proposed that an offline and online career assessment and service of Edumilestones digital career library will be facilitated to all students.

Space Awareness/GSII
Atmospheric pressure on surface of Pluto is more than 80,000 times less than Earth

What's the NEWS

• A team of scientists, including Indian and International collaborators, have derived the accurate value of Pluto's atmospheric pressure at its surface.
• It is more than 80,000 times less than the atmospheric pressure at mean sea level on Earth.
• The pressure was calculated from data obtained by observation of stellar occultation by Pluto on 6 June 2020 using 3.6-m Devasthal optical telescope (DOT) (India's largest optical telescope) and 1.3-m Devasthal Fast Optical Telescope (DFOT) telescopes located at Devasthal, Nainital.

Know! about the findings

• In astronomy, an occultation happens when a celestial object gets hidden from the view of the observer due to another celestial object passing in between them.
• A compilation of twelve stellar occultations by Pluto observed between 1988 and 2016 showed a three-fold monotonic increase of atmospheric pressure during this period.
• An international team of scientists, including members from Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), used signal-to-noise ratio light curves obtained from the sophisticated instruments used in the observations to derive an accurate value of Pluto's atmospheric pressure at its surface.
• It was found to be 12.23 μbar -- 80,000 times less than the atmospheric pressure at mean sea level on Earth.
• They also found that the pressure at the surface is close to the seasonal peak of Pluto.
• The study also confirms earlier findings that Pluto suffers intense seasonal episodes because of large depression on Pluto, known as Sputnik Planitia.
• Pluto's poles remain, for decades, in permanent sunlight or darkness over its 248-year long orbital period leading to strong effects on its Nitrogen (N2) atmosphere that is mainly controlled by vapour pressure equilibrium with the surface N2 ice.
• Moreover, as Pluto is now moving away from the Galactic plane as seen from Earth, stellar occultations by the dwarf planet are becoming increasingly rare, making this event a decisive one.

Social Justice & Empowerment/GSII
Scheme for Economic Empowerment of DNTs (SEED)

What's the NEWS

• Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment launches the Scheme for Economic Empowerment of DNTs (SEED) for the welfare of De-notified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic Communities.

Various efforts were undertaken for bringing these communities in the main stream.

• The first commission was set up in October 2003 during the first NDA Government to look into the problems of these communities.
• The Renke Commission was set up in 2008.
• The National Commission was constituted in 2015 under the chairmanship of Shri Bhiku Ramji Idate.
• This commission was tasked among others to identify and proper listing of these communities in different states, to evaluate the progress of development of these communities in the states
• Based on the recommendation of this commission, the Government of India set up the Development and Welfare Board for DNTs, SNTs &NTs (DWBDNCs) in 2019.
• The Government also decided to create an umbrella scheme for empowerment of these communities and accordingly, the Scheme for Economic Empowerment of DNTs, SNTs &NTs (SEED) has been formulated with four components that affect their livelihood.

The four component of the SEED scheme are:

1. Educational empowerment- Free coaching to students from these communities for Civil Services, entry to professional courses like medicine, engineering, MBA, etc.
2. Health Insurance through PMJAY of National Health Authority.
3. Livelihoods to support income generation, and
4. Housing (through PMAY/IAY)

• The scheme will ensure expenditure of Rs.200 crore to be spent over five years beginning 2021-22.
• The DWBDNCs has been tasked with the implementation of this scheme.
• One important feature of this scheme is the online portal which has been developed by the Department.
• This portal will ensure seamless registration and will also act as a repository of the data on these communities.
• The portal is very user friendly and easily accessible on mobile phone with its mobile application.
• It will provide real time status of the application to the applicant. The payment to the beneficiaries will be made directly in to their accounts.

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