UPSC 2017: Comprehensive News Analysis - May 24

Context:

• The draft “Three Year Action Agenda” of the NITI Aayog has been circulated recently to its governing council
• This draft will be finalised after considering suggestions from the State Governments

Five-Year Plan

• After(Union Government) allowing for the 12th five-year plan to phase itself out, the transition is now complete
• Five-year plans are reminiscent of centrally planned economies; most such countries, like the Soviet Union, China and Romania, had similar planning horizons

Other documents:

• The seven-year policy strategy
• The 15-year long-term vision

Objective of Three Year Action Agenda:

• It seeks to embark on “a path to achieve all-round development of India and its people” through concerted action.

What are the advantages of a three-year timeline?

• Electoral cycles do not synchronise with (earlier)five-year plans; quite often, this entailed outcome accountability to rest with a successor government.
• But a “Three Year Action Agenda” makes the government in office more directly accountable for the implementation of its plans
• Augmenting the “Three Year Action Agenda” with a seven-year implementable policy strategy and a 15-year vision enables us to look into the future, particularly at evolving technology, demography and ecology, and accordingly align our policies
• The 15-year vision is also somewhat coterminous with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN). The new format thus combines domestic aspiration with global aims.

In news:

• Six hundred more Primary Health Centres (PHCs) in Rajasthan will shortly be converted into model units
• Model units:
• Doctors and para-medical staff at the PHCs will take special care to maintain health and nutritional status of women, children and old age patients.
• Additional services provided: allopathy and Ayurveda physicians available to patients.
• They are functioning as “wellness centres” with a significant increase in patient registration and institutional deliveries.
• Model PHCs would provide free medicines and conduct as many as 15 diagnostic tests free of cost.

In news:

In News:

• Scientists have created the world’s thinnest hologram that can be seen without 3D goggles and may be integrated into everyday electronics such as smartphones, computers and TVs
• It is simple to make and is 1,000 times thinner than a human hair
• Integrating holography into everyday electronics would make screen size irrelevant
• A pop-up 3D hologram can display a wealth of data that does not neatly fit on a phone or watch

Context:

• Japan and China successfully extracted the material from the sea floor off their coastlines
• Commercial development of the globe’s huge reserves of a frozen fossil fuel known as “combustible ice” has moved closer to reality
• The fuel was successfully mined by a drilling rig operating in the South China Sea

What is combustible ice?

• Combustible ice is a frozen mixture of water and concentrated natural gas
• Technically known as methane hydrate, it can be lit on fire in its frozen state
• It is believed to comprise one of the world’s most abundant fossil fuels

Issues:

• Experts suggest large-scale production remains many years away
• If extraction is not done properly, it could flood the atmosphere with climate-changing greenhouse gases

Advantages of methane hydrate:

• For Japan, methane hydrate offers the chance to reduce its heavy reliance of imported fuels if it can tap into reserves off its coastline
• In China, it could serve as a cleaner substitute for coal-burning power plants and steel factories
• These factories have polluted much of the country with lung-damaging smog

Location of methane hydrate:

• Methane hydrate has been found beneath seafloors and buried inside Arctic permafrost and beneath Antarctic ice
• It is present in abundance in the world
• This means methane hydrate reserves could meet global gas demands for 80 to 800 years at current consumption rates

Environmental concerns:

• If methane hydrate leaks during the extraction process, it can increase greenhouse gas emissions
• The fuel also could displace renewables such as solar and wind power.