EPFO

Context:

• Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) added 8.74 lakh new members in November

News:

• The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation enrolled around 8.74 lakh new members in November 2024, registering an 18.8% rise from the figure recorded in the corresponding period in 2023, the Union Labour Ministry said.

More info:

• “This surge in new memberships can be attributed to growing employment opportunities, increased awareness of employee benefits, and EPFO’s successful outreach programmes,” the Ministry claimed in a release.
• The Ministry said a noticeable aspect of the payroll data for November 2024 was the dominance of young new members (18-25 age group).
• The EPFO added 4.81 lakh new members in the 18-25 age group constituting 54.97% of the total new members added in November 2024.

About EPFO:

• EPFO ranks among the globe’s premier Social Security Organizations, distinguished by its vast clientele and the magnitude of financial transactions it manages.
• At present it maintains 29.88 crore accounts (Annual Report 2022-23) pertaining to its members.
• The inception of the Employees’ Provident Fund dates back to the enactment of the Employees’ Provident Funds Ordinance in 1951, which was subsequently replaced by the Employees’ Provident Funds Act of 1952.
• This legislative journey began with the introduction of the Employees’ Provident Funds Bill in Parliament on Number 15 of 1952, aimed at establishing provident funds for employees across factories and other establishments.
• Over time, this legislation evolved into the Employees’ Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Provisions Act of 1952, applicable nationwide in India.
• The administration of this Act and its associated schemes falls under the purview of a tripartite body known as the Central Board of Trustees (CBT), Employees’ Provident Fund.
• The CBT comprises representatives from various sectors, including the government (both central and state), employers, and employees.
• The CBT administers three schemes – Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) Scheme 1952, Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS) 1995 and Employees’ Deposit Linked Insurance (EDLI) Scheme 1976 for the workforce engaged in the organized sector in India.
• The Board is assisted by the Employees’ PF Organization (EPFO), consisting 147 offices across the country.
• The EPFO is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Labour & Employment, Government of India.

Mission:

• To meet the evolving needs of comprehensive social security in a transparent, contactless, faceless and paperless manner.
• To ensure services with multi-locational and auto claim settlement process for disaster proofing EPFO.
• To ensure ease of living for members and pensioners, and ease of doing business for employers by leveraging Government of India’s technology platforms for reaching out to millions.

National Health Mission

Context:

• National Health Mission has enhanced workforce, curbed several public health concerns: Centre’s report to Cabinet

More info:

• The National Health Mission (NHM) has significantly contributed to improving India’s public health, including lowering of the maternal mortality rate, incidence of tuberculosis (TB), and sickle cell anaemia.
• It has also contributed to expanding human resources in the field while fostering an integrated response to health emergencies, the Central Government said in its assessment report (2021-24) presented to the Union Cabinet.
• Listing out the key achievements of the NHM in the past three years, the Central government noted that there had been a significant increase in human resources within the healthcare sector.
• In FY 2021-22, NHM facilitated the engagement of 2.69 lakh additional healthcare workers, including general duty medical officers, specialists, staff nurses, AYUSH doctors, allied healthcare workers, and public health managers.
• Additionally, 90,740 community health officers (CHOs) were engaged.
• This number grew in subsequent years, with 4.21 lakh additional healthcare professionals engaged in FY 2022-23, including 1.29 lakh CHOs, and 5.23 lakh workers engaged in FY 2023-24, which included 1.38 lakh CHOs.
• These efforts have contributed significantly to improving healthcare delivery, especially at the grassroots level, the report stated.
• It further noted that under NHM, the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) has declined by 83% since 1990, which is higher than the global decline of 45%.
• Similarly, the Under-5 Mortality Rate (U5MR) has decreased from 45 per 1,000 live births in 2014 to 32 in 2020, which demonstrates a higher decline of 75% in the reduction of mortality when compared with the global reduction of 60% since 1990.
• Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) has fallen from 39 per 1,000 live births in 2014 to 28 in 2020.
• Moreover, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) decreased from 2.3 in 2015 to 2.0 in 2020, according to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5).
• These improvements indicate that India is on track to meet its U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets for maternal, child, and infant mortality well ahead of 2030.
• The NHM has also been instrumental in the elimination and control of various diseases, including the incidence of TB (which has reduced from 237 per 1,00,000 population in 2015 to 195 in 2023, and the mortality rate has decreased from 28 to 22 in the same period), malaria (in 2021, cases and deaths declined by 13.28% and 3.22%, respectively, when compared with 2020).
• Additionally, efforts to eliminate kala-azar have been successful, with 100% of endemic blocks achieving the target of less than one case per 10,000 population by the end of 2023.
• The Measles-Rubella Elimination Campaign under the Intensified Mission Indradhanush 5.0 vaccinated over 34.77 crore children, achieving 97.98% coverage, the release said.

About National Health Mission:

• The National Health Policy, 2017 envisages- “the attainment of the highest possible level of health and wellbeing for all at all ages, through a preventive and promotive health care orientation in all developmental policies, and universal access to good quality health care services without anyone having to face financial hardship as a consequence”.
• The aim of NHM is to ensure progress towards the goals and targets set out in the National Health Policy, 2017 for ensuring “universal access to equitable, affordable and quality health care services, accountable and responsive to people’s needs”.
• This would also enable the country to advance towards meeting Sustainable Development Goal3, i.e. “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”, including Universal Health Coverage.
• The main programmatic components of NHM include Health System Strengthening, Reproductive-Maternal- Neonatal-Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCH+A), and Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases.
• The National Health Mission (NHM) encompasses its two Sub-Missions, The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and The National Urban Health Mission (NUHM).

National Rural Health Mission (NRHM):

• The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched to provide accessible, affordable and quality health care to the rural population, especially the vulnerable groups.
• The key features in order to achieve the goals of the Mission include making the public health delivery system fully functional and accountable to the community, human resources management, community involvement, decentralization, rigorous monitoring & evaluation against standards, the convergence of health and related programmes from village level upwards, innovations and flexible financing and also interventions for improving the health indicators.

National Urban Health Mission (NUHM):

• NUHM envisages to meet health care needs of the urban population with the focus on urban poor, by making available to them essential primary health care services and reducing their out of pocket expenses for treatment.
• This will be achieved by strengthening the existing health care service delivery system, targeting the people living in slums and converging with various schemes relating to wider determinants of health like drinking water, sanitation, school education, etc. implemented by the Ministries of Urban Development, Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation, Human Resource Development and Women & Child Development.

UPSC Mains PYQ:

• “Besides being a moral imperative of a Welfare State, primary health structure is a necessary precondition for sustainable development.” Analyse. (2021)

Why are fertility levels declining in India?

What has a global study shown about the total fertility rate in India? Why are the southern States worried?

Introduction:

• A comprehensive demographic analysis of global fertility in 204 countries and territories from 1950-2021 has found that fertility is declining globally and that future fertility rates will continue to decline worldwide, remaining low even under successful implementations of pro-natal policies.

What has it noted about India?

• The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021, noted that India has moved from a fertility rate of 6.18 in the 1950s to a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 1.9 in 2021.
• This, it pointed out, was below the replacement fertility level of 2.1 (which is the average number of children a woman should have to replace herself and her generation, for population stability).
• The GBD study projected that the TFR could fall further to 1.04 – barely one child per woman – by 2100.
• The steep fall in fertility levels has triggered concerns about the political and socio-economic fallout, especially in the southern States, which fear the loss of parliamentary seats post the delimitation exercise in 2026.

Why is fertility falling?

• Even though the country has had one of the oldest birth control/family planning programmes, increased female literacy, workforce participation of women, women’s empowerment and improved aspirations could have contributed more to the steady drop in fertility rates over the decades than the faithful adoption of family planning initiatives.
• The decline in fertility rate has also a lot to do with changing societal attitudes towards marriage and reproduction, with women increasingly exercising their choice.
• They often prefer to marry late or not at all, often choosing career and financial independence over motherhood.
• Rising rates of infertility in both men and women and abortions are important factors which could be contributing to this decline in fertility though no absolute data is available.
• With an increasing number of young men and women opting to go abroad for higher studies and jobs and choosing to settle down and raise their families there, migration is another key factor that could be in play when one considers the decline in fertility levels.

What are the implications?

• Declining fertility rates have resulted in a rapid demographic transition in many southern States.
• The consequences of this – an ageing population, a declining young workforce and increased demands on healthcare and social security measures for the care of an increasing population of the elderly – are being acutely felt in States such as Kerala.
• Migration of youngsters in search of better prospects is also an issue.

What is happening in the southern States?

• There is concern over the irreversible fertility decline across the country, but more so in the southern States, where fertility rates had dropped below the replacement levels much earlier than the rest of India.
• Kerala led the demographic transition in the South, achieving the replacement level fertility rate in 1988, with the other four States achieving this by mid-2000.
• Along with education and women’s empowerment and development in the social and health sectors, which were the hallmark of Kerala’s high human development index, the State has also seen low economic investments and growth.
• Educated youth are leaving the State; the proportion of the aged population is expected to surpass that of children (23% in 2036).
• Changed attitudes towards marriage and motherhood are beginning to reflect in the health of women, leading to an increasing proportion of older mothers and pregnancy-related morbidities.
• Kerala’s high labour wages and high quality of life index are attracting internal migration from other States to supplant a shrinking workforce.
• The State Planning Board reckons that by 2030, the proportion of migrant labour could be close to 60 lakh, about one-sixth of the State’s population.

Way forward:

• Fertility decline is almost always irreversible and the graph, once it starts going down, may never bounce back.
• Countries like South Korea, which tried to stem the demographic crisis by pumping in millions have failed and the fertility rate plunged from 0.78 in 2022 to 0.73 in 2023.
• Demographers suggest that socio-economic policies that propel the growth of the economy, improve job prospects for the youth and tap the potential of a growing population of senior citizens, can help in reducing the impact of a long spell of low, sub-replacement level fertility rates on countries.

UPSC Mains PYQ:

• Discuss the main objectives of Population Education and point out the measures to achieve them in India in detail. (2021)