Current Affairs 2nd December 2017

Current Affairs 2nd December 2017 - Important Points 

• Passengers can now book Rail Tickets from counters through UPI/BHIM App Payment System on - 30th November 2017
•  USAID announces USD 1 million support for Ending Tuberculosis Epidemic in India on - 29th November 2017
• Setting up of National Nutrition Mission approved by - Union Cabinet 

Current Affairs 2nd December 2017 - Details

Passengers can now book Rail Tickets from counters through UPI/BHIM App Payment System on - 30th November 2017

With an objective to boost cashless transactions and passenger friendly measures, Railways Ministry on 30th November 2017 initiated the facility for booking railway tickets from railway counters through payment systems like UPI and BHIM App.
This provision will allow passengers to book reserved tickets from Passenger Reservation System (PRS) counters and book Season Tickets from Unreserved Ticketing System worktops.
The provision of payment through UPI/BHIM for booking of e-tickets online on IRCTC Website has already been executed earlier. This facility now is increased to the tickets being booked from railway worktops.

Highlights of the new facility

• Passengers can avail this facility with effect from 1st December 2017.
• Currently, no transaction charges will be charged for this facility for a period of 3 months from users.
• It will be executed all over Indian Railways on all PRS counters and UTS counters.
• This provision is an addition to the digital payment options already accessible to railway passengers.
• It is safe to use due to no need of sharing bank account or credit/debit card number.
• It is easy to use and supports payment through different banks on real time basis.
• It will decrease hassles of cash handling and reconciliation and settlement will be clarified.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI)

• UPI integrates various bank accounts into a single mobile application by incorporating several banking features, enabling seamless fund routing & merchant payments at one place.
• It caters to the "Peer to Peer" collect request which can be arranged and paid as per requirement and satisfaction.
• For satisfaction of the users, a UPI App called BHIM has been formed.

BHIM App

• Mobile App BHIM has been formed by National Payments Corporation of India, based on the Unified Payment Interface.
• BHIM is inter-operable with other Unified Payment Interface program and bank accounts.

 USAID announces USD 1 million support for Ending Tuberculosis Epidemic in India on - 29th November 2017

The US Agency for International Development on 29th November 2017 declared USD 1 million aids for Ending Tuberculosis Epidemic in India and to spread TB awareness to help India in its fight against TB.
Through this aid, the agency projects to hold up to PM Modi's goal of securing a TB-free India by 2025.

Tuberculosis in India

• India has the world's highest cases of Tuberculosis with 2.8 million cases per year, and accounts for more than a quarter of the global TB burden.
• India also has the largest liability of Multi-Drug-Resistant TB among all nations with almost 150000 incedents every year.
• TB takes over 435000 lives in India each year, which places TB among the top 10 reasons of death in the Nation.
• TB disproportionately affects females as women, identified with TB, report that their families, employers and communities differentiate against them.

USAID/India's TB program

• USAID has been helping the TB program of the Union Government since 1998.
• It has spent more than USD 140 million to strengthen the ability of national, State, and District-level TB programs.
• It launched new tools and approaches to reach, heal, and prevent TB in India successfully.
• The USAID/India TB program focuses to strengthen the identification and treatment of TB; assist the government in planning evidence-based interventions to get a TB-Free India and improve patient-centered TB facilities.
• Under USAID/India's TB program, quick diagnostic tool GeneXpert has been formed to diagnose TB in children along with the foundation of bedaquiline, the 1st new drug to treat TB in people over 40 years age.
• The program has partnered with the 'Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation' and the 'India Knowledge Park' to upgrade obedient treatment in patients.

More about US Agency for International Development (USAID)

• USAID is a prime United States entity for international TB program.
• It is the huge bilateral funder of TB efforts worldwide.
• It also works to stop new TB infections through a patient-centered approach focused at saving lives.

Setting up of National Nutrition Mission approved by - Union Cabinet 

The Union Cabinet led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 30th November 2017 passed the setting up of National Nutrition Mission with a 3 year budget of Rs.9046.17 crore starting from 2017-18.
The mission will be initiating in 3 phases from 2017-18 to 2019-20. It mainly focuses to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anemia among young children, women and adolescent girls and decrease low birth weight.
To ensure this, it will track, supervise, fix targets and guide the nutrition-related involvement across Ministries.

Its other duties include:

• Mapping of various Schemes helping towards describing malnutrition
• Initiation a very robust convergence mechanism
• ICT based Real Time Tracking system
• Incentivizing States/UTs for completing the targets
• Initiate measurement of height of children at the Anganwadi Centers
• Managing Social Audits.
• Building Nutrition Resource Centers involve masses through Jan Andolan for their involvement on nutrition through different activities.

Important Highlights

• The program through its targets will strive to decrease the level of stunting, under-nutrition, anemia and low birth weight children.
  It will form synergy, ensure better monitoring, issue alerts for time-bound action and encourage the states/ UTs to perform, guide and supervise the line of Ministries to complete the targeted goals.
  Benefits
• More than 10 crore people will be profited from this program.
• It will take all the states and districts in a periodic manner, for instance, 315 districts in 2017-18, 235 districts in 2018-19 and remaining districts in 2019-20.

Funding-

• The budget of the program has been allocate at Rs 9046.17 crore for a period of 3 years.
• Some part will be aided by Government Budgetary Support (50%) and the remaining 50% by IBRD or other MDB.
• The ratio of the government budget support would be 60:40 between Centre and States/UTs in routine cases, 90: 10 in case of North-eastern and Himalayan regions and 100% for UTs that do not have a legislature.