IASbaba Press Information Bureau 29th Jan to 3rd Feb, 2018

ARCHIVES

GS-2

Launch of GeM 3.0 – National Procurement Portal of India

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

The GeM 2.0 was launched as a pilot in August 2016 and its success led to this massive transformation program – GeM 3.0 which would offer standardised and enriched catalogue management, powerful search engine, real time price comparison, template-based Bid and RA creation, demand aggregation, e-EMD, e-PBG, user rating, advanced MIS and analytics and more.

GeM 3.0 has undergone a digital transformation with superior technology and ability to scale from the previous version. This will bring together many sellers and service providers for products and services across the country under one roof, truly making it a digital tool of empowerment and entrepreneurship. This initiative gives a huge uplift for growth of MSME’s, manufacturers & service providers. As Digital India aims to bring in maximum transparency by minimising Government’s human transactional interface, the launch of the Sellers On-boarding Campaign will streamline the procurement of goods and services making it an easy, go-to portal for sellers and service providers

Notable enhancements in the 3.0 version:

• Market Based generic requirements across all government agencies
• Standardization of specifications of both products and services enabling empirical price comparability
• Completely transparent transactions across all ranges
• Generic standards established through universal service levels and cost comparison enabled
• Open and dynamic market place with rating based on performance of user on website

GoI and World Bank sign $100 Million Project to Boost Rural Economy of Tamil Nadu

(Topic: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests)

Purpose:

• To promote rural enterprises
• Facilitate their access to finance
• Create employment opportunities for youth, particularly women, in selected blocks of Tamil Nadu across 26 districts, directly benefitting over 400,000 people.

The Tamil Nadu Rural Transformation Project will create an enabling environment for producer organizations and enterprises to promote businesses across select value chains. Based on the analysis, communities will identify commodities and subsectors in the value chain for preparing business plans. The Project will enable producer organizations and enterprises especially women entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu, build businesses that will help them access finance, markets and networks and generate employment.

​It will also specifically support eligible households from socially and culturally disadvantaged groups harness their existing assets, skills, and resources; break their entry barriers to value-added economic activities; enhance their ability to access finance, markets, technology, and related support services; help them graduate to value-added economic activities with higher returns such as garment manufacturing and food processing units, eco-tourism ventures, and businesses around creative industries.

Selected innovations and start-up ideas will also be tested or scaled up under a newly created platform known as the Tamil Nadu Rural Transformation Marketplace. This platform will identify, showcase and celebrate innovative solutions related to themes that have the potential to impact rural economic growth in the state. Innovative ideas related to promoting rural artisans, local nutritious food systems and traditional health practices will be considered.

Please Note:

India’s first Rail and Transportation University: Vadodara, Gujarat

“Operation Greens” launched: To address price fluctuations in potato, tomato and onion for benefit of farmers and consumers.

Launch of Gobar-Dhan Scheme: to make the villages open defecation free and improving the lives of villagers; manage and convert cattle dung and solid waste in farms to compost, bio-gas and  bio-CNG.

Dynamic Façade lighting system:

• Energy efficient as well as cost effective; this LED fixtures has around 1 lakh burning hour whereas earlier light fixtures were around 10,000 burning hour.
• New lighting system has computerized control having unified power and data cable for easy installation and maintenance with automation in selection of colour combination scheme using opti-bin technology, selection of timing, facility of dimming, switching on/off facility, individual/combined control of light fittings etc. through Ethernet based controller.
• Has features to produce multi-colour combinations.

Guru Ravidasji

• A North Indian mystic poet-sant of the bhakti movement during the 15th to 16th century CE.
• Considered as the founder of 21st-century Ravidassia religion, by a group who previously were associated with Sikhism.
• Tradition and medieval era texts state Ravidas was one of the disciples of the Brahmin bhakti saint-poet Ramananda (a 14th-century Vaishnava devotional poet sant, his disciples included later Bhakti movement poet-sants such as Kabir, Ravidas, Bhagat Pipa and others)
• taught removal of social divisions of caste and gender, and promoted unity in the pursuit of personal spiritual freedoms

Economic Survey 2017-18

Economic Survey for 2017-18 estimates a real GDP growth rate of 6.75 per cent for the full year, based on a 7.5 per cent real growth for the second half of the year. For 2018-19 it projects a real GDP growth between 7 – 7.5 per cent.

India jumped 30 places to break into the top 100 for the first time in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report (EODB), 2018.

India leaped 53 and 33 spots in the taxation and insolvency indices, respectively, on the back of administrative reforms in taxation and passage of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016.