General Studies- II
Topic- Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
India @ 75
Context
E-Governance is key to “India@75” when the nation celebrates 75 years of independence: MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances ,Pensions.
About
- National Conference on e-Governance was organized by Department of Administrative Reforms and Personnel Grievance (DARPG) in Mumbai.
- Digital transformation is essential for achieving P M’s vision for “India 2022”.
What is ‘India@75’?
- ‘India @75’ is a Strategy of NITI Ayog aims to make India a USD 5 trillion economy by 2030.
- ‘The Strategy for New India @75’ is an attempt to bring innovation, technology, enterprise and efficient management together, at the core of policy formulation and implementation.
- It will encourage discussion and debate, and invite feedback for further refining our policy approach.
‘The Strategy for New India @75’
- ‘Strategy for New India @75’was released on December 19, 2018, defines clear objectives for 2022-23.
- It is a detailed account across 41 crucial areas that recognises the progress already made, identifies binding constraints, and suggests the way forward for achieving the objectives.
- The forty-one chapters in the document have been merged under four sections – Drivers, Infrastructure, Inclusion and Governance.
Objective
The Strategy document aims to further improve the policy environment in which private investors and other stakeholders can contribute their fullest towards achieving the goals set out for New India 2022 and propel India towards a USD 5 trillion economy by 2030.
Highlights of ‘Strategy for New India @75’
- Niti Aayog aims to accelerate growth to 9-10 percent and make India a USD 5 trillion economy by 2030 With ‘Strategy for New India @ 75′.
- The development strategy includes:
- doubling of farmers’ income,
- boosting ‘Make in India’,
- upgrading the science, technology and innovation ecosystem, and
- promoting sectors like fintech and tourism.
- NITI Aayog prescribed in this document reducing upper age limit to join the civil services to 27 years from the present 30 years for General Category candidates by 2022-23 in a phased manner and also to have one integrated exam for all civil services.
- It calls for successfully implementing the Ayushman Bharat programme including the establishment of 150000 health and wellness centres and rolling out Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana.
- The document outlines the need for creating agripreneurs, which implies creation of agro-processing industry at a much faster pace to enhance farmer participation though agro processing.
- It calls for participation of Private Sector in Indian Railways.
- It boasts of expanding the scope of Swachh Bharat Mission to cover initiatives for landfills, plastic waste and municipal waste and generating wealth from waste.
- The government will have to ease the tax compliance burden and eliminate direct interface between taxpayers and tax officials using technology.
- It suggests better compensation to banking correspondents, facilitating paperless banking and introducing financial literacy chapters in school curricula to spur financial inclusion.
- It recommends identification of the poorest among the minority communities through the socio-economic caste census data for proper targeting of various schemes.
General Studies-III
Topic- Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.
Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL)
Context
14th Foundation Day of Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) celebrated
About DFCCIL
- The DFCCIL is a corporation run by the Ministry of Railways.
- It aims to undertake planning & development, mobilisation of financial resources and construction, maintenance and operation of the Dedicated Freight Corridors.
- DFCC has been registered as a company under the Companies Act 1956.
Genesis of DFCCIL
- The Indian Railway is linking quadrilateral the four metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Howrah.
- Commonly it is known as the Golden Quadrilateral.
- Its two diagonals (Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Howrah) are adding up to a total route length of 10,122 km.
- It is comprising of 16% of the route carried more than 52% of the passenger traffic and 58% of revenue earning freight traffic of IR.
- Ministry of Railways initiated action to establish a Special Purpose Vehicle for construction, operation and maintenance of the dedicated freight corridors.
- This led to the establishment of “Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCC)”.
- DFCC was incorporated as a company under the Companies Act 1956 on 30th October 2006.
Mission
As the dedicated agency to make the vision into reality, DFCCIL’s mission is:
- To build a corridor with appropriate technology that enables Indian railways to regain its market share of freight transport.
- To set up Multimodal logistic parks along the DFC to provide complete transport solution to customers.
- To support the government’s initiatives toward ecological sustainability by encouraging users to adopt railways as the most environment friendly mode for their transport requirements.
Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC)
- The Eastern and Western Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) are a mega rail transport projects.
- These are being undertaken to increase transportation capacity, reduce unit costs of transportation, and improve service quality.
- The Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridors (1839 route kilometres (RKM) extends from Dankuni near Kolkata to Ludhiana in Punjab.
- The Western Dedicated Freight Corridors (1499 RKM) extends from the Jawahar Lal Nehru Port (JNPT) in Mumbai to Dadri /Rewari near Delhi.
Significance
- The DFC will separate freight and passenger traffic to increase the speed of freight movement.
- It will be used to transport fertilisers, food grains, salt, coal, iron & steel and cement.
- The project will eventually be linked to the Eastern DFC to form four hubs known as India’s Golden Quadrilateral including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.
For Prelims
Guru Ravidas
Highlights
- Sant Ravidas Jayanti was celebrated on February 9th. This year is said to be the 643rd birth anniversary of Guru Ravidas.
- Guru Ravidass Jayanti is the birthday of Guru Ravidas, celebrated on Magh Purnima, the full moon day in the month of Magh month.
Who was Guru Ravidas?
- Guru Ravidas was a North Indian mystic poet of the bhakti movement.
- While the exact year of his birth is not known, it is believed that the saint was born in 1377 C.E.
- The Adi Granth of Sikhs, in addition to the Panchvani are the two of the oldest documented sources of the literary works of Guru Ravidas.
- Notably, he belonged to an untouchable caste and suffered a lot of atrocities as a result.
- However, the saint chose to focus on spiritual pursuits and also penned several devotional songs which made a huge impact in the Bhakti movement during the 14th to 16th century CE.
Bhuvan Panchayat V 3.0 Web portal
Highlights
- Bhuvan Panchayat web portal’s version 3.0. is launched For better planning and monitoring of government projects.
- It is launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
- For the first time, a thematic data base on a 1:10,00 scale for the entire country is available with integrated high resolution satellite data for planning.
- The third version of the portal will provide database visualisation and services for the benefit of panchayat members, among others.
- The project is meant to provide geo-spatial services to aid gram panchayat development planning process of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj.
