IASbaba Press Information Bureau 4th Feb to 17th Feb, 2018

ARCHIVES

GS-2

Efforts of the Government towards Affordable Housing

(Topic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation)

• Government has granted infrastructure status to affordable housing which will enable these projects to avail the associated benefits such as lower borrowing rates, tax concessions and increased flow of foreign and private capital.
• Provision has been made to include rural areas falling within the notified   Planning/Development areas, under ambit of PMAY (U). It would leverage availability of additional land at cheaper cost for construction of affordable houses.
• Responding to the demand and supply gap in affordable housing the Government of India launched Pradhan MantriAwas Yojana (PMAY)-Urban in 2015. The larger goal is to fulfill the housing need of homeless urban poor and enable them to own decent pucca houses with basic infrastructure facilities by 2022.

Based on demand assessment at the state level, the nation has the mammoth task of constructing about 12 million houses under EWS/LIG segment of the society in order to achieve the goal of Housing for All

Steps that are going to be effective in spurring the housing and construction activities, providing huge relief to real estate developers. Also, these would attract private and foreign investments in the housing sector, having a positive multiplier effect on GDP and labor market.

• Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA)
• Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
• Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act 2016
• Higher tax breaks on home loans
• Goods and Services Tax (GST)
• Land related reforms
• Optimizing development control rules
• Rationalizing of the stamp duty and registration charges
• Digitalization

Digital Gender Atlas

(Topic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation)

Digital Gender Atlas has been developed to identify the low performing geographic pockets for girls, particularly from marginalised groups such as scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and Muslim minorities, on specific gender related education indicators.

The Atlas is designed around the two broad areas of performance of girls’ education and vulnerabilities visualized in the following five sections:

• Comparative Composite Index based Quartile Ranking grouped under categories of access, infrastructure, teachers and outcome indicators and based on 25 indicators pertaining to primary, upper primary and secondary level which can be visualized at State, district and block level.
• A Trend Analysis of the performance status of 25 individual indicators can be visualised at State, district and block levels over three years viz 2011-12, 2012-13 & 2013-14.
• Spatial Distribution of Special Focus Districts. These are districts with a population of 25% and above of people belonging to Schedule Tribes (109 districts), Schedule Castes (61 districts), Muslims  (88 districts with a muslim population of more than 20%), minority community (121 districts as identified by Ministry of Minority Affairs under PM’s 15 PPP), Left Wing Extremist affected districts (88 districts identified by Ministry of Home Affairs), Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) districts (161 districts) and Educationally Backward Blocks (3479 blocks).
• Vulnerability status of an area based on a composite index of 3 broad indicators (i) rural female literacy (ii) percentage girls/boys married below the legal age of marriage and (iii) working children can be visualized. Separate visualisations are given for working children for the following sub-indicators: disaggregation by gender and age for the 5-9 years, 10-14 years and 15-19 years age groups as well as for marriage below the legal age. These maps are available up to the district level.
• Children with Disabilities: The performance status of six individual indicators can be visualized at state and district level across three years i.e. 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14.This Digital Gender Atlas can be accessed at website www.rmsaindia.gov.in® Gender Atlas.

All the states have been mapped in the Digital Gender Atlas. The states have been using it as a planning tool to come up with strategies for inputs for the state SSA and RMSA annual plans.

Launch of Startupindia Ranking Framework

(Topic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation)

The Ranking Framework will measure the impact of each step initiated at the local level for building a strong Startup ecosystem. The Ranking Framework will also enable continuous learning through the dissemination of good practices.

Aim: To act as catalysts to help the Startup India initiative to drive India’s economic growth and to encourage States and UTs to take proactive steps towards strengthening the Startup ecosystems at the local level.

The tools are:

• State and Union Territory Startup Ranking Framework

• Compendium of Good Practices for Promoting Startups in India
• Startup India Kit

New Consumer Protection Bill

(Topic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation)

Establishment of an executive agency to be known as the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) to promote, protect and enforce the rights of the consumers and will be empowered to investigate, recall, refund and impose penalties

• Provision for product liability action in cases of personal injury, death, or property damage caused by or resulting from any product
• Provision for mediation as an Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) making the process of dispute adjudication simpler and quicker and simplification of the process of adjudication by the Consumer Fora.

GS-3

World Sustainable Development Summit 2018

(Topic: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment)

Theme: Partnerships for a Resilient Planet

Aim: Seeks to create action frameworks to resolve some of the most urgent challenges facing developing economies in the backdrop of climate change – combating land degradation, effective waste management mechanisms to make cities free of landfills free, combat air pollution effectively, measures to increase resource and energy efficiency, facilitate transition to clean energy and create financial mechanisms to enable effective climate change mitigation

About: WSDS is the flagship forum of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and seeks to bring together on a common platform, global leaders and thinkers in the fields of sustainable development, energy and environment sectors.

Please Note:

1. Police + Prisons + Public Order: State subjects
2. The Health Index (Healthy States, Progressive India): First attempt to establish an annual systematic tool to measure and understand the heterogeneity and complexity of the nation’s performance in Health. It is a weighted composite Index, which for the larger States, is based on indicators in three domains:

• Health Outcomes (70%)
• Governance and Information (12%)
• Key Inputs and Processes (18%), with each domain assigned a weight based on its importance.

3. Making school education qualitative:

• • Shagun portal: To create a repository of best practices in school education and to monitor the implementation of SSA
  • Swachh Vidyalaya Campaign: For the provisions of separate toilets for girls and boys in every school
  • Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat: To ensure that students of classes I & II are able to read with comprehension as well as basic numeracy skills;
  • Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan: To motivate children of the age- group of 6-18 years in study of Science, Mathematics and technology;
  • The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act has been amended to include reference on class-wise, subject-wise Learning Outcomes to ensure that all children acquire appropriate learning level;
  • E-pathshala webportal: To disseminate e-resources including e-books developed by NCERT, SCERT/ SIEs, State boards etc
  • Shaala Siddhi: A comprehensive instrument for school evaluation leading to school improvement
  • Automated Monitoring System at the school level under Mid Day Meal Scheme has been introduced for real time monitoring of the scheme

4. ISRO sets up 473 Village Resource Centres for rural development through satellite technology: To demonstrate the potential of satellite technology for development of rural areas; VRCs have provided various space technology enabled services such as tele-healthcare, tele-education, natural resources information, advisories related to agriculture, career guidance to rural students, skill development and vocational training etc.

5. E-prisons project: Supplements the Prisoner Information Management system (PIMS), developed by National Informatics Centre, which provides a centralized approach for recording and managing prisoner information and generating different kinds of reports. The PIMS records Prisoner’s Basic Details, Family Details, Biometrics (fingerprint), Photograph, Medical Details, Prisoner Case History, Prisoner Movements, Punishment details etc. The availability of these details on an electronic platform will be useful to track the status of prisoners and smooth functioning of the prison system.

6. Multi-pronged approach for security arrangements at the Indo-Pakistan Border (IPB) and Indo-Bangladesh Border (IBB):

• Deployment of Border Security Force (BSF)
• Construction of border fence
• Construction of border roads
• Installation of floodlights
• Construction of border out posts (BOPs)
• Introduction of Hi-Tech surveillance equipments
• Providing weapons and Specialised Vehicles to Security Forces

7. River Sal: At Navelim town in Goa

8. Intensified Mission Indradhanush: To increase the full immunization coverage to 90%

9. Public Health & Hospitals: State subject

10. India State of Forest Report 2017:

• India is ranked 10th in the world, with 24.4% of land area under forest and tree cover, even though it accounts for 2.4 % of the world surface area and sustains the needs of 17 % of human and 18 % livestock population
• Andhra Pradesh (2141 sq km), followed by Karnataka (1101 sq km) and Kerala (1043 sq km) have shown the maximum increase in forest cover
• Madhya Pradesh has the largest forest cover of 77,414 sq km in the country in terms of area, followed by Arunachal Pradesh with 66,964 sq km and Chhattisgarh (55,547 sq km).
• In terms of percentage of forest cover with respect to the total geographical area, Lakshadweep with (90.33 per cent) has the highest forest cover, followed by Mizoram (86.27 per cent) and Andaman & Nicobar Island (81.73 per cent)

11. Chandrayaan-2 is the country’s second mission to the moon.

12. National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change:

• To support concrete adaptation activities which mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.

• National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is the National Implementing Entity (NIE)
• The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy under its scheme “Development of Solar Cities” has approved/sanctioned 60 Cities including 13 Pilot and 5 Model Cities up to 12th Five-year Plan period.

13. All-India Tiger Estimation 2018:

• The Tiger Estimation exercise is the world’s largest wildlife survey effort in terms of coverage, intensity of sampling and quantum of camera trapping.
• India conducts the All India Tiger Estimation every four years. The current assessment uses Android phone-based application and desktop version of M-STrIPES (Monitoring System for Tigers-Intensive Protection and Ecological Status) for collecting, archiving and analyzing data.  The phone application automatically records the track log of surveys and line transects, as well as authenticates the recorded data on signs and animal sightings with geo-tagged photographs.
• With increased camera trap density and the use of android technology, estimates arrived at are likely to be more robust – both in terms of accuracy and precision.

14. Defence Sector:

• Reform Measures: Based on the recommendations of the Shekatkar Committee, the Government has decided to restructure posts of different corps of Army. This will free up approximately 57,000 positions of Officers/JCO’s/OR’s and civilians which will be redeployed to improve the “teeth to tail” ratio of the Indian Army in future.
• Policy initiatives in respect of Defence Production: ‘Make in India’ in defence sector is primarily driven by providing preference to procurement from Indian vendors under the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), promoting indigenous design, development and manufacture of defence equipment, and other policy measures such as liberalization of the licensing regime & FDI policy by raising the cap on FDI in the defence sector, simplification of export procedure, streamlining of defence offset guidelines etc.

15. New Weapons Procurement Policy: The new Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) – 2016 has been implemented by the Government.  DPP-2016, inter alia, focuses on institutionalizing, streamlining, and simplifying procedure to give a boost to the ‘Make in India’ initiative of the Government of India, through Indigenous design, development and manufacturing of defence equipment, platforms & systems.  The ‘Make’ procedure has been simplified to ensure increased participation of the Indian industry. In order to promote indigenous design and development of defence equipment, DPP-2016 has introduced a new category for capital procurement viz. ‘Buy (Indian-IDDM)’ (Indigenously Designed Developed and Manufactured).  While categorising a case, this category is accorded highest priority by the Buyer.

16. Scheme for Pension and Medical Aid to Artistes:

• To improve financial and socio-economic status of the old aged artistes and scholars who have contributed significantly in their specialized fields of arts, letters etc. in their active age or are still contributing in the field of arts, letters etc. but leading a miserable life or are in penury condition.
• The Scheme has also provision to provide medical aid facility to such Artistes and his/her spouse by covering them under a convenient and affordable Health Insurance Scheme of the Government.

17. Address by the hon’ble President of India Shri Ram Nath Kovind on the occasion of inauguration of the Nobel Laureates Seminar

1. Three things are needed for success. First, our scientists, from PhD students to senior technologists, must have a shared sense of purpose. They must address quality capacity building, participate in national missions, and take on frontier research. Fragmented, individual-driven approaches must move to building teams of the highest quality.  
2. Second, our research institutes and universities must cooperate with intelligence and harmony to form research hubs. These hubs can set new standards of excellence not only for India but also for the world. The tech hub in Bengaluru is a case in point. We need many more.
3. And third, because the world is constantly changing and ideas flow from every side, our scientists must be connected to the latest advances in research and technology. Science is nothing if not a global enterprise. It is this last point which is our focus today. How do we build world class institutions and universities and how do these connect to our society – both within our national boundaries and beyond?

A quote to quote: India, which is a largest democracy in the world, is moving ahead with the formula of Reform, Perform and Transform with an able and stable government.