TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Capacity Building for Service Providers Scheme (CBSP)
2. Impact of Russia-Ukraine Conflict on Shipping sector
3. Steps taken to tackle Antimicrobial Resistance

1. Capacity Building for Service Providers Scheme (CBSP)

Context: In order to provide skill training to the tourism service providers, the Ministry of Tourism has implemented the Capacity Building for Service Providers Scheme.

The need for the scheme:

• The tourism industry includes a large segment of workers who belong to both organised and unorganised sectors. 
• The Food Craft Institutes and the Institute of Hotel Management are engaged in training people for the hospitality industry which mainly cater to the organised sector like hotels and restaurants. 
• On the other hand, there is a group of people associated with small hotels, dhabas, ticketing/travel agencies and these groups also come in contact with the tourists.
• The necessity of upgrading the skills of unorganised tourism service providers was recognised and this led to the formulation of the CBSP scheme.

Who are the service providers?

• Individuals engaged in providing services to a tourist are considered the service providers in the tourism sector in accordance with the CBSP scheme. 
• These individuals include persons working in hotels, restaurants, eating joints like cooks, servers, waiters, helpers, front office staff, food kiosks, dhaba staff. 
• Persons engaged in handling tourists for example immigration staff, airport staff, centre and state tourism departments, security staff, police departments, guides, monuments staff, and people engaged in ecotourism are also included under the category of service providers. 

Major Objectives of the Scheme:

• To train and upgrade the workers at every stratum associated with the tourism sector.
• Capitalise on the vast tourism potential of the country.
• Provide professional expertise to the local population along with the creation of employment opportunities in the tourism sector in both rural and urban areas. 

Training programmes under the scheme:

• Skill Development in general for fresh candidates.
• Specialised skill development programmes including language courses for fresh as well as existing service providers.
• Training of teachers, administrators and planners.
• Basic skill up-gradation for existing service providers.
• Training of trainers programmes.
• Awareness of tourism benefits/knowledge in rural areas. 

Minimum age of the trainees: 18 years or above

Administrative cost of the training programmes:

• The cost of training for the implementing agencies shall be met by the Ministry of Tourism to the extent of 5% of the total estimated sanctioned training cost for training confined to one city and 10% of the cost for training involved in more than one city. 
• Once the implementation agency sends the training proposal to the Ministry of Tourism, the funds are then released by the Ministry after approval. 

Who are the implementing agencies?

• The CBSP scheme will be implemented by the Ministry of Tourism, India Tourism Offices, Institutes of Hotel Management and Food Craft Institutes and institutes that are approved by the AICTE, entities in the private sector engaged in providing training in the hospitality and tourism sector. 
• Other stakeholders for the implementation of the scheme involve the tourism departments of states and union territories, State Tourism Development Corporations, and India Tourism Development Corporations. 

Also read about the PRASAD scheme in the linked article.

2. Impact of Russia-Ukraine Conflict on Shipping sector

Syllabus: GS II, Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests

Mains: Assessing the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on international trade

Context: The Russia-Ukraine conflict has created major difficulties for the shipping sector.

Listing the major difficulties:

• Shipping activities in the Northern Black Sea are closed.
• Insurance cover has been withdrawn by the Protection & Indemnity Club (Maritime insurance provider). 
• Containers bound for Ukraine and Russia are stagnated at different transhipment ports. 
• Payments were affected due to the blockage of SWIFT in Russia, which acts as the international payment gateway. The blockage is due to the cutting of a number of Russian banks by the US and the European Union. 
• There has been extreme congestion at neighbouring ports and transhipment ports. 
• The trade to Russia and CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) has been affected as the shipping lines are not accepting goods for Russian ports. 

Steps taken by India:

• To protect the interests of Indian shipping companies, the Government of India took active steps by meeting the stakeholders at regular intervals to review the situation. 
• Shipping lines have been instructed to ascertain alternative routes for the Commonwealth of Independent States and Russian cargo. 
• The EXIM traders have been informed that MS-ONE Shipping and Logistics Private Limited is carrying the containers to Vladivostok. 

Read about the Russia-Ukraine Conflict in the linked article

Image Source: mapsofindia.com

3. Steps taken to tackle Antimicrobial Resistance

Syllabus: GS III, Science and Technology- developments and their applications in everyday life

Prelims: About Antimicrobial Resistance 

Mains: Challenges posed by antimicrobial resistance on efficient drug response. 

Context: The multifaceted problem of antimicrobial resistance has been acting as an impediment towards effective drug response against various pathogens like bacteria, fungi, viruses and so on.

Delving deeper:

• The Indian Council of Medical Research had established an antimicrobial resistance surveillance and research network in 2013 to monitor the data on the trends and patterns of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) of clinically important bacteria and fungi limited to human health from 30 tertiary hospitals. 
• The National AMR Surveillance reports for 2019 and 2020 have been published under the National Programme on AMR Containment and have determined no significant difference in AMR trends. 
• As an intervening step by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the National Treatment Guidelines for antimicrobial use in infectious diseases have been developed. 
• The Ministry had also launched the National Action Plan for containment of AMR (NAP AMR). 

Get a comprehensive view of Antimicrobial Resistance in the linked article

Image Source: nap.nationalacademies.org

Read previous PIB here.

April 01st, 2022, PIB:- Download PDF Here