Current Affair 1:

Mission कर्मयोगी (Karmayogi) and Capacity Building Commission

 

Introduction:

Government officials are critical to the delivery of a range of public services and core governance related functions. Constant challenges emanating from disruptions like the Covid-19 pandemic and the need to ensure socio-economic development, necessitates government officials to be well equipped for performing their tasks.

To address this, Mission Karmayogi was launched by the Union Cabinet in 2020. The Mission aims to create a competent and future-ready civil service working towards effective public service delivery and an Aatmanirbhar Bharat.

Mission Karmayogi is aimed at improving state execution capacity by enabling:

1. Government officials to learn and grow continuously
2. Government officials to collaborate across departments and regions, breaking down silos and empowering officials with access to information
3. Government leaders to execute their mandate with high fidelity
4. Assessment of progress of each ministry/department & thereby overall success of capacity building efforts through institutions such as the Capacity Building Commission and the Special Purpose Vehicle

In line with the National Training Policy (2012), Mission Karmayogi introduces a competency framework for the capacity building of the civil services that will govern training, capacity building, as well as HR Management, including promotions and posting of government officials.

Mission Karmayogi proposes the 70:20:10 model of life-long learning. The 70-20-10 model is based on the principle that: 70% of learning comes from on-the-job experiences and reflections, 20% is derived from working with others; and 10% comes from planned training.

Under Mission Karmayogi, there will be objective, fair and independent assessments to determine performance.

Governance of Mission:

Now,

Capacity Building Commission (CBC)

The Capacity Building Commission was constituted through the Gazette of India on 1 April 2021. As the custodian of the civil services capacity building ecosystem, the commission is mandated to perform the following functions:

It is conceived as an independent body with full executive power. It is a three-member Commission, supported by an internal Secretariat headed by a secretary. Members have been appointed from diverse backgrounds such as private sector, academia, public sector, and civil society. The Commission’s focus is on driving stand harmonisation across public sector learning and development landscape.

As part of its mandate, an accreditation framework, 'National Standards for Civil Service Training Institutions (NSCSTI)'' is developed by the CBC to harmonize standards for the civil service training landscape.

NSCSTI has three main objectives:

Create a baseline of Central Training Institutions (CTIs): The framework will baseline CTIs in their existing capacities. The NSCSTI is based on a maturity model wherein the levels of maturity in processes/procedures at a CTI on a 5-staged rating scale is captured.

Elevate capacities of CTIs: The accreditation framework can be used by a CTI as a planning and guiding tool to elevate its capacity and quality of training delivery.

Standardise training delivery at CTIs: The National Standards will harmonize and standardise civil service training delivery in the country by defining standard processes and procedures of a civil services training institute.

Current Affair 2:

International Biology Olympiad

 

News:

The "International Biology Olympiad (IBO) is the association that organizes the world's premier biology competition for secondary school students.

India topped the medals tally at the 34th International Biology Olympiad (IBO) 2023 held in Al Ain, UAE from 3 July to 11 July 2023, by virtue of every student winning a gold medal!

India is a regular member of this Olympiad. India hosted 19th IBO in 2008.

2023 IBO was held in UAE.

Current Affair 3:

Interstate river water disputes (ISWD)

 

Understand the basic first:

The context

To understand the prolonged and complicated nature of ISWDs in India, it is important to first discuss the shortcomings of the existing discourse on the issue. There are three fundamental structural ambiguities that currently affect the system: federal-jurisdictional, historic-geographical, and institutional. These ambiguities are interrelated and have shaped the constitutional design, institutional response, and political interaction on ISWDs in India.

Before independence, the Indian subcontinent comprised British India and several semi-sovereign princely states under its paramountcy. Governmental power was highly centralised, the Secretary of State being empowered under the purview of the Government of India Act, 1919 and the subsequent Government of India Act, 1935. For any dispute between the provinces, the decision of the Secretary of State was final and binding. In the context of water utilisation, the provinces had little authority to make decisions, with the exception of some autonomy regarding irrigation, under the 1919 Act.

In independent India, legislative powers concerning water were distributed between the Centre and the states to ensure optimum utilisation while balancing the interests of the states.

Schedule 7: It gives the Union Parliament the power to formulate laws and mechanisms for regulating interstate rivers (Union List: Entry 56, List 1), while the states retain autonomy regarding water utilisation for purposes such as water supply, irrigation and canals, drainage and embankments, water storage and water power (State List: Entry 17 of List 2), subject to the provisions of Entry 56, List 1. This approach towards the evolution of the legislative and constitutional mechanism regarding ISWDs has resulted in creating federal-jurisdictional ambiguity.

In this background, the Union government enacted two other important acts in the same year to create a framework for governing and managing interstate rivers: the Interstate (River) Water Disputes Act, 1956 (ISRWDA) and the River Boards Act, 1956.

What is the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956?

The Interstate River Water Disputes Act, 1956 was enacted under Article 262 of the Constitution of India. to resolve the water disputes that would arise in the use, control and distribution of an interstate river or river valley.

Dispute resolution is a layered process, as mandated by the ISWD Act. After receiving a complaint from a state, the Union government first tries to mediate. It is only when negotiations fail that the Centre is required to form a tribunal to adjudicate the dispute. However, the states can question the award of the tribunal under Section 5(3) of the ISWD Act.

Currently, 5 water disputes Tribunals are active:

Current Affair 4:

Carbon Capture Technologies:

 

Carbon capture technologies rely mainly on two basic principles, chemical absorption and physical separation. Both constitute the basis of technologies that are well-known in the oil and gas industry for natural gas processing such as amine solvents and solid adsorbents.

The technologies focusing on CO2 removal before combustion are classified as Precombustion capture technologies, the most advanced ones, present in the Oil and Gas industry.

Post-combustion capture technologies, on the other hand, focus on CO2 removal from flue gas, where the concentration of CO2 is lower, a challenge that recent technology developments have been focusing on to overcome in an increasingly efficient manner.

Lastly, oxyfuel combustion focuses on modifying the combustion process so that the flue gas has a high concentration of CO2 to enable an easier separation. These technologies can be further sub-divided depending on the applied separation mechanism:

 

 

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