Context:
Almost 500 years after saint-reformer Srimanta Sankardeva experimented with the literary language of Brajavali, Assam’s Bhaona has now reached foreign shores in an English avatar.
Bhaono:
Why Brajavali?
How English Boano evolved?
Issues:
Satrriya dance:
Source: The Hindu
CONTEXT:
Expressing concern over the functioning of parliamentary institutions in the country and decline of pubflic trust in them, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu has come out with a 15-point reform charter.
This is the new political normal to enable effective functioning of the Parliament and State Legislatures.
The 15-point charter :
• Political Parties has to ensure attendance of at least 50% of their legislators to all sessions.
• Review of anti-defection law.
• Review of the whip system which is restricting reasonable dissent even.
• Set up special courts for time-bound adjudication of criminal complaints against legislators.
• Pre and post legislative impact assessment.
• Address problem of rising number of legislators with criminal background.
• Governments should be responsive to opposition and opposition to be responsible and constructive while resorting to available parliamentary instruments
• Consensus on the proposal for simultaneous elections.
• Steps should be taken for the effective functioning of the Parliamentary Committees.
• The representation of women in legislatures needs to be raised.
Why is 15 point reform charter is necessary?
The present pitfalls of our parliamentary democracy are too well known to be elaborated. Briefly, these include:
Declining number of sittings of legislatures.
Persistent disruptions.
Declining quality btof legislatures with criminal record.
High degree of absenteeism.
Inadequate representation of women.
Rising money and muscle power in elections.zt47w
Lack of inner democracy in functioning of the political parties.
Poor knowledge, low argumentative power of the masses, negative influences of poverty and economic disparities.
Faulty ‘First Pass the Post (FPTP) election system.
Society’s perpetual habit of accepting all permeable state to control public and private affairs.
Way forward:
As an institution, Parliament is central to the very idea of democracy and was assigned a pivotal role in our Constitution by the founding fathers of the republic.
Yet, so many decades later, it has neither evolved nor matured as it could, might or should have. If anything, slowly but surely, it has diminished in stature and significance.
Source: PIB
Context:
The government has released National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB) which aims to create National Digital Health Eco-System, in public domain. Health Ministry has sought inputs from various stakeholders on its vision.
Findings of the National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB):
It lays out the ‘building blocks’ for the implementation of the National Health Stack (NHS), which aims to deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) in leveraging health records.
Keeping true to the government’s larger agenda, of ‘data as a public good’, the blueprint proposes the linking of multiple databases to generate greater and granular data that can be leveraged by the public as well as private sector – including insurance companies, hospitals, apps and researchers.
The blueprint proposes a National Digital Health Mission “as a purely government organisation with complete functional autonomy adopting some features of some of the existing National Information Utilities like UIDAI and GSTN.”
The policy document essentially lays the implementation plan and defines the ‘building blocks’ of the NHS. In doing so, it lays down the following objectives:
To establish national and regional registries to create single source of truth in respect of Clinical Establishments, Healthcare Professionals, Health Workers and Pharmacies.
Creating a system of Personal Health Records accessible to the citizens and to the service providers based on citizen-consent.
Promoting the adoption of open standards by all the actors in the National Digital Health Ecosystem.
Promoting Health Data Analyticsand Medical Research.
Concerns:
This National Blueprint illustrates yet another example of the Centre moving forward with a major digitisation program involving the data of millions of citizens without a data protection law in place.
Data security is a prerequisite for any data movement. Currently, data privacy in health is a gray area.
Data researchers and activists have expressed concerns about the development of this policy, which proposes a health data set-up on a foundation of India Stack – a bouquet of privately-owned proprietary software applications.
Source: PIB
Context:
The Supreme Court’s recent judgement in the Jose Paulo Coutinho v. Maria Luiza Valentina Pereira case has revived the need for a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in India.
Constitutional provisions:
What is the Uniform Civil Code?
Historical Background:
Judgements:
Why Uniform Civil Code?
Issues:
Way forward:
Source: The Hindu
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