PERIYAR IAS CURRENT AFFAIRS,4-October-2017
Topic: Role of women and women’s
organization, population and associated issues, poverty and developmental
issues, urbanization, their problems and their remedies.
Cleanest iconic place in the country
Sri Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple in Madurai has been
adjudged the cleanest iconic place in the country under Swachhta Hi Seva (cleanliness is service) programme. The temple earned the
top slot from among 10 iconic places selected under the Swachh Bharath Mission
in the country.
Background:
Meenakshi Temple is a historic Hindu temple located on the
southern bank of the Vaigai River in the temple city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu,
India. It is dedicated to Meenakshi, a form of Parvati, and her consort,
Sundareswar, a form of Shiva. The temple forms the heart and lifeline of the
2,500-year-old city of Madurai.
About Swachhta Hi Seva campaign:
It was a nation-wide, fortnight-long sanitation campaign launched
to highlight the government’s flagship cleanliness initiative Swachh Bharat
Mission.
§ The campaign was coordinated by the Ministry of Drinking Water and
Sanitation, the convening Ministry for the Swachh Bharat Mission.
§ The objective of the campaign is to mobilise people and reinforce
the “Jan Aandolan” for sanitation to contribute to Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of a
Clean India.
Sources: the hindu.
Paper 2:
Topic: Welfare schemes for
vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the
performance of these schemes; mechanisms, laws, institutions and bodies
constituted for the protection and betterment of these vulnerable sections.
Fix deadline for PMJDY insurance claims
Reviewing the performance of PMJDY, Prime Minister Narendra Modi
recently asked the finance ministry to fix a time limit for payment of
insurance claims of Rs 30,000 to the family of the deceased who opened a bank account
under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) in 2014-15.
§ Although most claims so far have been given out expeditiously, the
idea is to fix a time limit so that the poor do not have to wait without any
certainty of time for getting the insurance amount.
Background:
Under the PMJDY, any person who opened his first bank account
between August 15, 2014, and January 26, 2015, along with a RuPay card, is
eligible for a life cover of Rs 30,000 on death due to any cause. The idea is
to provide security to poor families in both urban and rural areas who cannot
afford direct insurance and are not covered under any social security scheme.
According to the government, crores of new bank accounts were opened in 2014-15
after the PM launched the scheme.
About PMJDY:
The primary aim of this scheme is to provide poor people access to
bank accounts.
§ The scheme covers both urban and rural areas of India. All bank
accounts will be linked to a debit card which would be issued under the Ru-Pay
scheme. Rupay is India’s own unique domestic card network owned by National
Payments Corporation of India and has been created as an alternative to Visa
and Mastercard.
§ Under this scheme, every individual who opens a bank account
becomes eligible to receive an accident insurance cover of up-to Rs 1 Lakh for
his entire family.
§ The scheme also provides incentives to business and banking
correspondents who serve as link for the last mile between savings account
holders and the bank by fixing a minimum monthly remuneration of Rs 5000.
Sources: et.
Topic: Important International
institutions, agencies and fora, their structure, mandate.
ADB $500 million funding soon for private sector
infrastructure in Asia and Pacific
Asian Development Bank (ADB) is actively processing USD 500
million (about Rs 3,275 crore) as debt and equity funding for private
infrastructure projects in countries. This includes potential projects in
India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand.
§ ADB has already approved two projects worth over USD 210 million
in debt financing from the co-financing arm Leading Asia’s Private
Infrastructure Fund (LEAP) in its first year of operation.
About Leading Asia’s Private Infrastructure Fund (LEAP):
The Leading Asia’s Private Sector Infrastructure Fund (LEAP) was
established in March 2016. The fund is an infrastructure co-financing fund,
expected to leverage and complement ADB’s existing nonsovereign platform to
fill financing gaps and increase access to finance for infrastructure projects
in the region. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has made a
contribution to the fund.
What are the priorities?
The fund will provide cofinancing to nonsovereign infrastructure
projects at different stages of development, including early stage, growth
stage, and greenfield and brownfield projects. It will support projects with
strong anticipated development impacts and alignment with the strategies of ADB
and JICA. The fund will undertake project finance (nonrecourse or limited
recourse) and corporate finance transactions, and will seek to support a range
of private sector participation modalities including public–private
partnerships, joint ventures, private finance initiative projects, and
privatizations, as well as conventional project finance.
What kind of activities are eligible for the fund?
Eligible project types will include the following infrastructure
subsectors:
§ Energy, including renewable energy generation, energy efficiency
and conservation, and natural gas transmission and distribution.
§ Water and other urban infrastructure and services, including
water, wastewater, and solid waste management.
§ Transport, including road transport, water transport, rail
transport, air transport, multimodal logistics, urban roads and traffic
management, and urban public transport.
§ Information and communication technology and health.
The fund will extend ADB’s operations by deploying both commercial
and concessional capital from the same fund, and cofinancing will be provided
in the form of loans, equity investments, and mezzanine finance transactions.
Who is eligible to receive the fund?
The fund will provide financing to companies and projects, as well
as to financial intermediaries (e.g., holding companies and local currency
vehicles) where there is a link to Infrastructure (with the exclusion of
private equity funds).
Eligible countries include ADB developing member countries that
are also eligible for official development assistance (ODA) from Japan.
Sources: et.
Paper 3:
Topic: Indian Economy and issues
relating to planning, mobilization of resources, growth, development and
employment.
Crisil report on farm loan waiver
As per estimates by rating firm Crisil, if all affected states
also announce farm loan waivers the Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and
Punjab did, then the total cost the
exchequer could be upto Rs 2.5 lakh crore or 0.5% of GDP.
Views of Crisil on farm loan waiver:
It has termed farm loan waivers as a “paradox” in a year of normal monsoon. The ratings firm has said that the cost of loan waiver could be
significantly high for Tamil Nadu, which has the highest outstanding
agricultural loans among states. Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, too,
could feel some pressure.
What next?
The pain points for the farmers are all too visible. And unless
measures to lower this pain are planned and implemented carefully, and soon,
there could be a gaping hole in the exchequer as well.
Drawbacks of loan waivers:
§ Firstly, it covers only a tiny fraction of farmers. The loan
waiver as a concept excludes most of the farm households in dire need of relief
and includes some who do not deserve such relief on economic grounds.
§ Second, it provides only a partial relief to the indebted farmers
as about half of the institutional borrowing of a cultivator is for non-farm
purposes.
§ Third, in many cases, one household has multiple loans either from
different sources or in the name of different family members, which entitles it
to multiple loan waiving.
§ Fourth, loan waiving excludes agricultural labourers who are even
weaker than cultivators in bearing the consequences of economic distress.
§ Fifth, it severely erodes the credit culture, with dire long-run
consequences to the banking business.
§ Sixth, the scheme is prone to serious exclusion and inclusion
errors, as evidenced by the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) findings in
the Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme, 2008.
§ Lastly, schemes have serious implications for other developmental
expenditure, having a much larger multiplier effect on the economy.
What needs to be done?
Proper identification: For providing immediate
relief to the needy farmers, a more inclusive alternative approach is to
identify the vulnerable farmers based on certain criteria and give an equal
amount as financial relief to the vulnerable and distressed families.
Enhance non- farm income: The sustainable solution
to indebtedness and agrarian distress is to raise income from agricultural
activities and enhance access to non-farm sources of income. The low scale of
farms necessitates that some cultivators move from agriculture to non-farm
jobs.
Improved technology, expansion of irrigation coverage, and
crop diversification towards high-value crops
are appropriate measures for raising productivity and farmers’ income. All
these require more public funding and support.
Sources: et.
Topic: Science and Technology-
developments and their applications and effects in everyday life Achievements
of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and
developing new technology.
Nobel prize for gravitational wave detection
Three American scientists from the Laser Interferometer
Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) have won the Nobel Prize in Physics for
their contribution to detecting gravitational waves — ripples in the fabrics of
spacetime which were predicted by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago.
§ The scientists were awarded the Nobel prize “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the
observation of gravitational waves”.
§ The 9 million Swedish kronor (825,000 British pounds) prize will
be divided. One half was awarded to Rainer Weiss of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) and the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S.
Thorne — both from California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
What are gravitational waves?
In simple terms, gravitational waves can be explained as ripples
in the fabric of space-time which can only be caused by massive astronomical
events such as neutron stars or black holes orbiting each other so that these
waves would finally radiate from them.
About LIGO:
The observatory, described as “the most precise measuring device
ever built,” is actually two facilities in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford,
Washington. They were built and operated with funding from the National Science
Foundation, which has spent $1.1 billion on LIGO over the course of several
decades.
The project is led by scientists from the California Institute of
Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is supported by
an international consortium of scientists and institutions.
Sources: the hindu.
Topic: disaster management.
Capacity building in dam safety areas
Central Water Commission (CWC) has signed MoUs with IIT Roorkee
and MNNIT Allahabad to support dam rehabilitation efforts of various
implementing agencies and CWC.
Background:
Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga
Rejuvenation has taken on board selected premier academic and research
institutes, for capacity building in the areas of dam safety through World Bank
assisted Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP).The scope includes
strengthening the testing laboratories, enhancing analytical capabilities,
exposure visits to best global institutions and on ground exposure to dam
safety concerns to the faculty of these institutions.
CWC has already signed MoUs with IIT Madras, IISc Bangaluru, NIT
Calicut and NIT Raurkela for supporting these institutes for the procurement of
specified equipment and software for enhancing their testing and modeling
capabilities.
About DRIP:
The Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR), Government of India, with
assistance from the World Bank, is implementing the DAM REHABILITATION AND
IMPROVEMENT PROJECT (DRIP), which would be a six-year project.
§ The project originally envisaged the rehabilitation and
improvement of about 223 dams within four states namely, Kerala, Madhya
Pradesh, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu and later Karnataka, Uttarakhand (UNVNL) and
Jharkhand (DVC) joined DRIP and total number of dams covered under DRIP
increased to 250.
§ The project will also promote new technologies and improve
Institutional capacities for dam safety evaluation and implementation at the
Central and State levels and in some identified premier academic and research
institutes of the country.
§ The Central Dam Safety Organisation of Central Water Commission,
assisted by a Consulting firm, is coordinating and supervising the Project
implementation.
The project development objectives of DRIP are: (i) to improve the
safety and performance of selected existing dams and associated appurtenances
in a sustainable manner, and (ii) to strengthen the dam safety institutional
setup in participating states as well as at central level.
Sources: pib.
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