• Prime Minister inaugurated the Rashtriya Swachhata Kendra - an interactive experience centre on the Swachh Bharat Mission
• A tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, the Rashtriya Swachhata Kendra (RSK) was first announced by the Prime Minister on 10th April 2017, on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of Gandhiji's Champaran Satyagraha.

• The RSK has a balanced mix of digital and outdoor installations tracking India's transformation from having over 50 crore people defecating in the open in 2014 to becoming open defecation free in 2019.
• RSK will narrate India's Swachhata Story - a journey into the largest behaviour change campaign in the history of the world, the Swachh Bharat Mission.
• The Prime Minister launched ‘Gandagi Mukt Bharat', a special week long campaign for swachhata in the run up to Independence Day, during which each day till 15th August will have special swachhata initiatives in urban and rural India to re-enforce the jan andolan for swachhata.
• The Swachh Bharat Mission has transformed rural sanitation in the country and has changed the behaviour of over 55 crore people from open defecation to using a toilet.
• The mission is now in its second phase, aiming to take India's villages from Open Defecation Free (ODF) to ODF Plus, with a strong focus on sustaining ODF status and ensuring solid and liquid waste management for all.

• To accelerate the efforts to achieve universal sanitation coverage and to put the focus on sanitation, the Prime Minister of India had launched the Swachh Bharat Mission on 2nd October 2014.
• Under the mission, all villages, Gram Panchayats, Districts, States and Union Territories in India declared themselves "open-defecation free" (ODF) by 2 October 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, by constructing over 100 million toilets in rural India.
• It was a country-wide campaign from 2014 to 2019, to eliminate open defecation and improve solid waste management (SWM) in urban and rural areas in India.
• The objectives of the mission also included eradication of manual scavenging, generating awareness and bringing about a behavior change regarding sanitation practices, and augmentation of capacity at the local level.

• In rural areas "SBM - Gramin" was financed and monitored through the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation; whereas "SBM - urban" was overseen by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
• As part of the campaign, volunteers, known as Swachhagrahis, or "Ambassadors of cleanliness", promoted indoor plumbing and community approaches to sanitation (CAS) at the village level.
• The Mission is moving towards the next Phase II of SBMG i.e ODF-Plus.
• ODF Plus activities under Phase II of Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) will reinforce ODF behaviours and focus on providing interventions for the safe management of solid and liquid waste in villages.

• Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U) - Achieved its target of creating Urban India Open Defecation Free (ODF)
• Swachh Bharat Mission (G) Phase-I - The rural sanitation coverage in the country has increased from 38.7% to 100%.
• More than 10 crore individual toilets have been constructed since the launch of the mission.
• All rural areas in all the States have declared themselves ODF as on 2nd October, 2019.

• Prime Minister launched the financing facility of Rs. 1 lakh crore under the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund
• Prime Minister also released the sixth instalment of funds of Rs. 17,000 crore to 8.5 crore farmers under the PM-KISAN scheme.

• The Union Cabinet has approved the Central Sector Scheme of financing facility under "Agriculture Infrastructure Fund" of Rs. 1 Lakh Crore.
• The Fund will catalyze the creation of post-harvest management infrastructure and community farming assets such as cold storage, collection centres, processing units, etc.
• These assets will enable farmers to get greater value for their produce, as they will be able to store and sell at higher prices, reduce wastage, and increase processing and value addition.
• Rs. 1 Lakh Crore will be sanctioned under the financing facility in partnership with multiple lending institutions
• The beneficiaries of the scheme will include farmers, PACS, Marketing Cooperative Societies, FPOs, SHGs, Joint Liability Groups (JLG), Multipurpose Cooperative Societies, Agri-entrepreneurs, Startups, and Central/State agency or Local Body sponsored Public-Private Partnership Projects.

• The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojna (PM-KISAN) scheme, launched on 01 December 2018, has provided a direct cash benefit of overRs. 75,000 Crore to more than 9.9 Crore farmers.
• This has enabled them to fulfil their agricultural requirements and support their families.

• PM Kisan is a Central Sector scheme with 100% funding from Government of India.
• It has become operational from 1.12.2018.
• Under the scheme an income support of 6,000/- per year in three equal installments will be provided to small and marginal farmer families having combined land holding/ownership of upto 2 hectares.
• Definition of family for the scheme is husband, wife and minor children.
• State Government and UT administration will identify the farmer families which are eligible for support as per scheme guidelines.
• The fund will be directly transferred to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.

• All Institutional Land holders.
• Farmer families which belong to one or more of the following categories:.
• Former and present holders of constitutional posts
• Former and present Ministers/ State Ministers and former/present Members of LokSabha/ RajyaSabha/ State Legislative Assemblies/ State Legislative Councils,former and present Mayors of Municipal Corporations, former and present Chairpersons of District Panchayats.
• All serving or retired officers and employees of Central/ State Government Ministries /Offices/Departments and its field units Central or State PSEs and Attached offices /Autonomous Institutions under Government as well as regular employees of the Local Bodies
• All superannuated/retired pensioners whose monthly pension is Rs.10,000/-or more
• All Persons who paid Income Tax in last assessment year
• Professionals like Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers, Chartered Accountants, and Architects registered with Professional bodies and carrying out profession by undertaking practices.

• SpaceX has resumed launching batches of dozens of satellites in its gambit to blanket Earth with high-speed internet access.
• The satellites are a new "VisorSat" variety to make them less shiny to the ground and especially to astronomers' telescopes.

• Starlink is the name of a satellite network that the private spaceflight company SpaceX is developing to provide low-cost internet to remote locations.
• While SpaceX eventually hopes to have as many as 12,000 satellites in this so-called megaconstellation, the size and scale of the project have flustered astronomers and amateur skywatchers, who fear that the bright, orbiting objects will interfere with observations of the universe.

• SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, plans to surround Earth with Starlink satellites and provide global high-speed, low-latency internet service from orbit.
• Thw new batch of Starlink internet-beaming satellites equipped with visors to block sun glare.
• The new "VisorSats" should make the fleet of satellites less visible in the night sky.
• The visors will probably make the satellites less bright, but it won't stop them from interfering with astronomy
• Starlink internet project deploy tens of thousands of the broadband internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit.
• The first batch of 60 high-speed Starlink internet satellites, each weighing about 500 pounds, flat-packed into a stack prior to their launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on May 23, 2019.
• SpaceX isn't the only company building a massive fleet of satellites. Companies like Amazon and OneWeb have similar aspirations to establish their own fleets

Health and Family Welfare
eSanjeevani and eSanjeevaniOPD


Relevance IN - Prelims (about eSanjeevani" and "eSanjeevaniOPD" platforms) + Mains GS II Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

What's the NEWS

• Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, presided over a review meeting with States/UTs on the "eSanjeevani" and "eSanjeevaniOPD" platforms as1.5 lakh tele-consultations were completed on the tele-medicine service platforms of the Health Ministry.
• In a short span of time since November 2019, tele-consultation by eSanjeevani and eSanjeevani OPD have been implemented by 23 States (which covers 75% of the population) and other States are in the process of rolling it out.
• The national telemedicine service has completed more than 1,50,000 tele-consultations enabling patient to doctor consultations from the confines of their home, as well as doctor to doctor consultations.

Know! about eSanjeevani" and "eSanjeevaniOPD

• The eSanjeevani platform has enabled two types of telemedicine services viz. Doctor-to-Doctor (eSanjeevani) and Patient-to-Doctor (eSanjeevani OPD) Tele-consultations.
• The former is being implemented under the Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centre (AB-HWCs) programme.
• It is planned to implement tele-consultation in all the 1.5 lakh Health and Wellness Centres (as spokes) in a ‘Hub and Spoke' model, by December 2022.
• States have identified and set up dedicated ‘Hubs' in Medical Colleges and District hospitals to provide tele-consultation services to ‘Spokes', i.e SHCs and PHCs.
• As on date, 12,000 users comprising Community Health Officers and Doctors have been trained to make use of this national e-platform.
• Presently, telemedicine is being provided through more than 3,000 HWCs in 10 States.
• Owing to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Health Ministry launched the second tele-consultation service enabling patient-to-doctor telemedicine through ‘eSanjeevaniOPD'.

Defence
Import embargo on 101 defence items to boost indigenisation of defence
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about the import embargo and about negative list ) + Mains ( GS III Achievements of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.
What's the NEWS

• Defence Minister announced a list of 101 items that the Defence Ministry will stop importing.
• It means that the Armed Forces-Army, Navy and Air Force-will only procure all of these 101 items from domestic manufacturers.
• The manufacturers could be private sector players or defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs).

Know! about the import embargo on 101 items

• The Department of Military Affairs (DMA), Ministry of Defence (MoD) has prepared a list of 101 items for which there would be an embargo on the import beyond the timeline indicated against them
• The list is prepared by MoD after several rounds of consultations with all stakeholders, including Army, Air Force, Navy, DRDO, Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs), Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) and private industry to assess current and future capabilities of the Indian industry for manufacturing various ammunition/weapons/platforms/equipment within India.
• The list of weapons banned for import will be reviewed every year and more items will be added to it after discussions with the department of military affairs (DMA).
• With latest embargo on import of 101 items, it is estimated that contracts worth almost Rs four lakh crore will be placed upon the domestic industry within the next five to seven years.
• The embargo on imports is planned to be progressively implemented between 2020 to 2024.
• It offers a great opportunity to the Indian defence industry to rise to the occasion to manufacture the items in the negative list by using their own design and development capabilities or adopting the technologies designed and developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to meet the requirements of the Armed Forces in the coming years.
• The MoD has adopted many progressive measures to encourage and facilitate ‘Ease of Doing Business' by the defence Production entities.
• All necessary steps would be taken to ensure that timelines for production of equipment as per the Negative Import List are met
• The Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) to ensure that no item in the negative list is processed for import in the future.

Other initiatives to boost defence sector

• In another relevant step, the MoD has bifurcated the capital procurement budget for 2020-21 between domestic and foreign capital procurement routes.
• A separate budget head has been created with an outlay of nearly Rs 52,000 crore for domestic capital procurement in the current financial year.
• The other things Finance Minister had mentioned in May for the defence sector included raising the Foreign Direct Investment in defence manufacturing from 49 per cent to 74 per cent under the automatic route, improving the autonomy and accountability of the Ordnance Factory Board

• As per Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks defence exports and imports globally, India has been the second largest importer between 2014 and 2019 with US$ 16.75 billion worth of imports
• India was the third-biggest military spender in the world last year after the United States and China, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) said in a report released in April.

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