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(The Gist of Kurukshetra) MODERN TECHNOLOGY IN IMPLEMENTATION OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS

[DECEMBER-2018]

Modern Technology In Implementation Of Rural Development Plans

India is the nation of villages and the soul of India lives in its villages. In true sense, without the progress and prosperity of the villages, the country’s prosperity and well-being is inconceivable. Realizing this, the Government of India has been taking several initiatives for the all-round development of rural areas and the prosperity of the village folk. Progress in the past has been taking place at a glacial pace. More than seven decades have passed after getting independence from the British rule, but the villages are still going through the process of development. The root cause of this malady is that government and the political parties who have governed the country for a long period did not pay that much attention to this aspects as should have been done. It is a matter of great satisfaction that the main focus of the present government, led by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has been on the prosperity of the villages, the poor and the farmer and the results of these efforts as expected are noticeable.

The Ministry of Rural Development has been making sincere efforts to bring prosperity and well-being in the villages through its programmes and schemes viz. Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PNGSY), Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Gramin (PMAY-G), Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act(MGNREGA), National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), National Socal Assistance program (NSAP), Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY), Shyam Prasad Mukherjee Rurban Mission and Mission and Mission Antyodaya. In recent years, the schemes related to rural development have been restricted and their implementation has also been made more effective.

With the objective of providing pucca houses with basic facilities by 2022 to all the eligible homeless families and the households living in homeless families and the households living in dilapidated houses, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin was launched on 20th November 2016. Gramin was launched on 20th November 2016. Under this, selection is as per the Socio-economic caste Census-2011. Assistance is being provided to these poor families who do not have roof over their heads and are unable to build their houses because of the shortage or lack of financial resources. ‘Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana’ has created employment opportunities in the country on a large scale and also catalysed skill development in rural areas. The allocation of massive budget provision for this scheme and its expenditure at village and block level is consistently strengthening the rural economy. In fact, it is only a programme, but an important nation-building campaign. The ministry of Rural Development, in collaboration with state Governments and UNDP, HUDCO, construction Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) , National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), National Skill Development Corporation and Panchayati Raj and Indian Institute of technology (IIT) Delhi, has undertaken training related initiatives in every state through which all housing zones are being provided with suggestions and guidance to adopt designs and construction technologies according to their geographical, environmental and other needs. Under this scheme, the target is to construct one crore residential units till March 2019. Under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin, construction of 52.26 lakh houses has been completed by 19th November, 2018. In the implementation of this scheme, performance of

Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan has been commendable. The use of modern technology and new technology based MIS-Awas Soft, mobile-based application-Awas app and space technology are being used on a large-scale for monitoring purpose. All transfers of funds to the beneficiaries are done on the basis of Electronic Funds Transfer order (FTO). Fund transfer is not permitted in any other form. The entire work of this scheme i.e from the selection of beneficiaries to distribution of funds, verification of progress of housing construction work till the release of funds is being done through MIS-AwaasSoft, This has made it easier to monitor the progress of housing construction, showing geo-referenced photographs with the help of Android-based Awas app launched in April,2016, at different stages of construction of houses, photographs containing geo-tag and time taken to verify the progress of work. These has reduced can also be seen on GE0-Coordinated Bhuvan. ISRO has developed this software application through which 2-D/ 3-D images of the Earth’s surface can be seen. OFF-line module of this application has also been launched to register geotagged photographs of houses in areas where there is no network connection. The use of SMS has increased manifold following the introduction of electronic funds transfer to the beneficiaries through the Awas-Soft-PFMS platform. Rural Housing Knowledge Network (RHKN) has been started in collaboration with IIT Delhi with the objective to prepare multilingual web-portal in the public sector and to prepare comprehensive nationwide compilation of information related to business houses, institutions and practices associated with affordable and sustainable solutions of rural housing.

Rural connectivity is an important component of socio-economic development of villagers. It offers many facilities like education, health and marketing. The development of rural road network in the country has not been uniform. In India, when the era of planned development started in the year 1951, the road connectivity in the villages was negligible because only 20% of the villages had all weather roads. During the Fifth Five Year Plan, in the year Plan in the year 1974, the development of rural roads was made a part of the “Minimum Needs Program” Due to this some progress in the development of rural roads was noticed. Under the various programs of Central and State Governments, pertaining to employment generation and poverty alleviation, rural roads were laid without the aid of proper design and engineering. Consequently, the geometrical design of rural roads remained poor and these roads could not last for long.

On a special initiative of Ministry of Rural Development, the Indian Roads congress has published a Rural Roads Manual IRC SP: 20 on the geometric standards, design, construction and maintenance of rural roads. At present, in order to ensure proper design and preparation of the project, more than 60 reputed engineering and technology institutions in the country conduct independent investigations of project proposals. These institution are known as State Technical Agencies. National Rural Roads Development Agency has been constituted for technical and managerial assistance in the implementation of the program at the central State Rural Road Development Agencies. Standard Bid Document (SBD) has been prepared on the basis of best national and international systems for construction contracts under the pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and the tendering process for all construction works is carried out on the basis of this document. To ensure transparency had to get the benefits of electronic tendering the entire process of construction related contracts is being conducted only through e-procurement. Asian Development Bank approved technical assistance of US $500 million in December last year to emphasize on sustainability, innovative technology and anti-disaster mechanism in the development of rural roads in the country. It is the result of the use of modern technology and scientific methods that under the Pradhan Mantri

Gram Sadak Yojana, 1,68,394 out of 178184 eligible habitations have been connected by road till 19th November, 2018 which is 94.5 percent of the target. During the tenure of the present government. The speed of road constructions in the year 2013-14 was 75 km per day, which was 75 km per day, which increased to 134 kilometres per day in 2017-18.

Under world Bank-assisted PMGSY-Rural Road Project-ii, emphasis has been laid on adopting innovative and simplified methods of maintenance of rural roads. Under this, a mobile application Aarambh has been developed which helps in collecting necessary data for preparation of inventory of roads, GIS based mapping for survey of road surface, cost estimation and annual road maintenance plans and monitoring work. Modern Web-based on-line management, monitoring and accounting system, OMMAS has been set up to effectively monitor the entire program, bring in more efficiency in implementation and increase responsibility and transparency in the system.

Major application software modules include for rural road planning and core-networks, proposal, tenders and contracts, execution, quality monitoring, flow of funds and receipt and payment accounts. E-payment and e-procurement are new dimensions added to it. Using the dot-net technology, the new version of OMMAS 2.0 has also been started National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj has issued guidelines on technology in the constructions of rural roads using new materials. States have been advised to propose the use of any one of the new technologies for at least 10 percent of the roads involved in annual proposals including material approved by Indian Roads Organization (IRC) about which specifications are already available. Besides, for additional length of % percent roads included in the annual proposal, States have been asked to proposal, States have been asked to propose the use of any one of the new technologies about which the guidelines of the

Indian Roads Congress are not available. All states have been advised under 100 km long road on experimental basis, using cold mix technology in the constructions of upper surface of the roads.

The schemes of providing at least 100 days of unskilled manual labour to each family in the form of guaranteed employment in a financial year according to the demand in rural areas is well-known as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act- MGNREGA. It is an important program to ensure inclusive growth of rural India. Under this, the emphasis is on strengthening the livelihood base of the rural poor and the creation of productive assets of set quality and sustainable nature. This has increased agriculture productivity and income of rural poor and the creation of productive assets of set quality and sustainable nature. This has increased agriculture productivity and income of rural households. A budgetary allocation of Rs. 55,000 crore, largest ever, has been provided for MGNREGA in the financial year 2018-19. An exclusive initiative named Geo-MGNREGA was introduced in the financial year 2016-17 to strengthen the scheme and also to underpin transparency and monitoring mechanism in implementation. Under this initiative, space technology is being used for geo-tagging of all assets created through MGNREGA. In this scheme, 3.93 crore assets have been created so far. Out of these, 2.42 crore assets were created so far. Out of these, 2.42 crore assets were created during the tenure of the present government. Under this, special attention is being given on creation of permanent assets, natural resource management, water conservation works and livelihood growth. Geo-tagging of 3.31 crore MGNREGA assets has been made available to the public domain. Large scale capacity building and training is being given in order to promote natural resources management planning process using geo-informatics. Secure (software for Estimate Calculation Using Rural Rates for Employment) is an online application, specially designed and developed to prepare online estimates of MGNREGA works. Estimate received through this are also accorded online technical and administrative clearances. In the financial year 2017-18, an Android-based mobile application Jan-MGNREGA was launched which has a large-scale feedback mechanism for the public. This has ensured greater transparency in the implementation of the program. Ministry of Rural Development has started the National Electronic Fund Management System (NEFMS) from Jan 01, 2016 to further simplify the fund flow system. Funds are being transferred directly to beneficiaries in bank/post office accounts through this system in 24 States and one Union territory. In the Year 2018-19 so far, the payment of 99 percent wages has been done directly in the account of benefit transfer (DBT) system whereas during the financial year 2013-14, only 37 percent payments could have been issued to MGNREGA workers and about 10 crore workers have been linked to the AADHAR. 6.95 crore workers have been linked to the AADHAR based payments system.

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(GIST OF YOJANA) Towards An Inclusive and Empowered Nation

[DECEMBER-2018]

Towards An Inclusive and Empowered Nation

Digital India is a visionary initiative of the Prime Minister to transform India by leveraging the power of information technology. It is aimed to empower the poor and the underprivileged by using technology that is affordable, developmental and inclusive. Inclusive growth and empowerment of ordinary Indians is at the core of Digital India.

Today, India is recognised in the world for its thriving IT industry that is present in more than 200 cities of 80 countries. Growth of IT industry in India can be divided into three phases.

Phase-I: During this phase the Indian IT professionals and IT companies travelled to different parts of the world and established their presence.

Phase-II: During this phase the global IT giants started investing in India and tapped its vast domestic market. It is a matter of great assurance that India has the biggest user base for many of IT and Internet companies today.

Phase-III: This is the current phase where India is witnessing great where India is witnessing great growth in innovation and entrepreneurship led startups which are mostly founded by young Indians. The efforts of our government to encourage Startups has paid rich dividends and today India has emerged as the third largest Startup ecosystem in the world.

Digital Identity

Digital Identity is the key to unlock access and potential of the Digital India Programme. To provide a unique digital identity, Aadhaar has covered around 122 crore residents of the country. It has provided a digital identity to supplement the physical identity of individuals for delivery of various social welfare programmes and enabled portability. It has curbed leakages and corrupt practices from the public welfare delivery mechanism. Today, financial entitlements under 434 Government services are being delivered using Aadhaar based Direct Benefit Transfer, which has been discussed in detail in the subsequent paragraphs. The Supreme Court, in its historic judgment on Aadhaar, has not only upheld the Constitutional validity of Aadhaar but also described it as a tool for empowerment of poor people.

Digital Infrastructure: Building robust digital infrastructure is essential for the success of Digital India.

Bharat Net

Bharat Net aims to provide high speed internet in rural areas of India by building optical fibre network connecting all the 2.50 lakh Gram Panchayats of India. About 2,32,689 kilometers of optical fibre have been laid, connecting 1,19,947 Gram Panchayats by 3rd November 2018.

National Knowledge Network

National Knowledge Network (NKN) is a state-of-the –art network to promote collaboration and exchange of knowledge among educational and research institutions. Some of the NKN enabled applications are: virtual Classroom, Collaborative research groups over NKN NDL, NPTEL, various Grids etc. As on October, 2018, 1672 Edge links to Institution have been commissioned and made operational under NKN across the country which includes 388 links migrated from NMEICT to NKN. 497 district links to NIC district centers have also been commissioned under NKN.

The growth of digital payments ecosystem is set to transform the economy. Over the past four years digital payment transactions have frown multifold from 316 crore transactions in 2014-15 to 2071 crore transactions in 2017-18. Today, BHIM-UPI platform and RuPay debit cards have become very popular digital payment instruments for sending, collecting the money and for payments at merchant outlets.

GI Cloud (Meghraj)

In order to utilize and harness the benefits of Cloud Computing, this initiative aims to accelerate delivery of e-services in the country while optimizing ICT spending of the Government. This has ensured optimum utilization of the infrastructure and speed up the development and deployment of eGov applications. More than 890 applications are running on 15300 virtual servers.

eSign

eSign Electronic Signature Service in an innovative initiative for allowing easy, efficient, and secure signing of electronic document by authenticating signer using e-KYC services. Some applications enhancing services delivery are Digital Locker, e-filing Financial Sector, account opening in banks and post offices, driving licence renewal, vehicle registration, certificates for birth, caste, marriage, income certificate etc. 5 e-sign providers have been on-boarded and more than 5.89 crore e-Signs have been issued.

Digital India for Better Governance

JAM (Jan Dhan- Aadhaar-Mobile) Trinity for Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT)- The combination of 32.94 crore Jandhan Bank accounts, 121 crore mobile phones and digital identity through 122 crore Aadhaar is helping the poor receive the benefits directly into their bank accounts. Financial entitlements under 434 Government schemes are being delivered through Direct Benefit Transfers. In the last five years a total of Rs. 5.09 lakh crore have been transferred directly into the bank accounts of beneficiaries leading to a saving of Rs. 90,000 crore. This has not only enhanced efficiency of service delivery mechanism but also eliminated leakages and curbed corruption.

Digital Payments- The growth of digital payments ecosystem is set to transform the economy. Over the past four years digital payment transactions have grown multifold from 316 crore transactions in 2014-15 to 2071 crore transactions in 2017-18. Today, BHIM-UPI platform and RuPay debit card have become very popular digital payment instruments for sending, collecting the money and for payments at merchant outlets. In September, 2018, more than 48 crore transaction of value Rs 74,978 crore were made using BHIM-UPI platform. BHIM-UPI is a unique mobile based payment innovation of India that is being appreciated world over.

UMANG has put the power of governance in the hands of common people. It is a single mobile app that offers more than 307 government services. The target is to provide more than 1200 digital services on a single mobile app. More than 8.4 million users have downloaded this app since its launch in November 2017. Now, instead of surfing various websites for availing government services, citizens can just use one mobile app and also access it in 13 different languages. It is now possible to eliminate the need to carry any paper to avail a government service. With more than 1.57 crore registered users, 68 issuers and 27 requesters, Digi Locker provides access to over 336 crore certificates in digital format on a single platform

Digital Delivery of Services has spread and is now easily available to common people either through a dedicated portal or on UMANG mobile app. Some of these popular digital services are:-

National Scholarship Portal has become a one stop shop for all the scholarship needs of students. It has 1.08 crore students registered with scholarships worth Rs 5259 crore disbursed in the last years.

Jeevan Pramaan for ease of verification of pensioners using Aadhaar digital identity. 73 Crore Digital Life Certificates have been submitted since 2014.

eHospital and Online registration services aim to ensure that patients can get easy access to doctors. Implemented in 318 hospitals 5.6 crore eHospital transactions have taken place in all States since September 2015.

Soil Health Card: National Soil Health Card scheme was launched in 2015 to provide information on soil health digitally. So far, 12 crore cards have been issued.
eNAM: Electronic National Agriculture Market (eNAM) is a pan- India electronic trading portal which network the existing Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities. Over 585 markets in 16 States have already been integrated. It had around 93 lakh farmers and 84,000 traders registered.

Digi Locker: It is now possible to eliminate the need to carry any paper to avail a government service. With more than 1.57 crore registered users, 68 issuers and 27 requesters, Digi Locker provides access to over 336 crore certificates in digital format on a single platform. Various important documents like PAN card, driving license, Aadhaar etc. can be stored in digital form on Digi Locker.

eVisa: Services of e-Visa involves complete online application for which no facilitation is required by any intermediary/agents etc. E-Tourist Visa has been introduced for tourists coming from 163 countries at 24 airports and at 5 Sea Ports. Since the launch of the scheme more than 41 lakh eVisas have been issued.

eCourts: With eCourts mobile app and portal it has become easy to keep a track of case status of cases going on in different courts across India. Lawyers and litigants can also avail notification services about their cases.

National Judicial Data Grid: This is a comprehensive data base of 9.16 crore court cases and 5.63 crore court judgements that has been integrated with the eCourts. It provides information on cases pending, cases disposed and cases filed in both High Court and District Court complexes in the areas of civil and criminal cases.

GeM: Government eMarketplace is a transparent online marketplace for government procurements. Over 29,812 Buyer Organizations, 1,55,821 Sellers and Service Providers and 6,01,749 products have been registered on this platform. This has not only brought transparency in Government procurements but has also created opportunities for micro, small and medium enterprises to sell their products to Government departments and PSUs

Digital India for Employment, Entrepreneurship & Empowerment

Digital Service delivery near door-step (Common Services Centers) A vast network of more than 3.06 lakh of digital services delivery centres, spread across 2.10 lakh Gram Panchayats of the country has been created to provide access to digital services especially in rural areas at an affordable cost. Theses centres have also led to empowerment of marginalized sections of the society by creating jobs for 12 lakh people and by promoting rural entrepreneurs, out of which 60,055 are women. CSCs have also undertaken the Stree Swabhiman initiative to create awareness about menstrual health and hygiene among rural women. Under this initiative, more than 300 micro sanitary pad manufacturing units have been opened in rural areas. These units have not only provided livelihood opportunity to rural women but have also made low cost sanitary pads locally available.

Digital Literacy for the Masses

In line with the objective to make one person e-literate in every household in the country, two schemes were launched viz. NDLM and DISHA, wherein a total of 53.7 lakhs person were trained and certified in Digital Literacy in the country. In line with the earlier schemes, Government has approved a new scheme “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan to usher in digital literacy in rural India to cover 6 crore rural households. So far, a total of 1.47 crore candidates have been enrolled under the PMGDISHA Scheme, out of which 1.43 crore candidates have been trained and 74.5 lakh candidates have been certified. This is the largest digital literacy mission of the world.

BPO Promotion in Small Towns

To create employment opportunities for local youth and secure balanced regional growth of Information Technology and IT Enabled Services Sector in each State, India BPO Promotion Scheme and North East BPO Promotion Scheme have been launched under Digital India Programme. Today, more than 230 BPO units have come up in about 100 small towns of India across 20 States and 2 Union Territories, including in places like Visakhapatnam, Bhimavaram, Jammu, Sopore, Shimla, Patna, Muzaffarpur, Sagar, Nashik, Nagpur, Sangli, Aurangabad, Jaipur, Amritsar, Gwalior, Coimbatore, Madurai, Auroville, Bareilly, Lucknow, Kanpur Guwahati, Kohima etc.

Promotion of Electronics Manufacturing

Government of India has undertaken various initiatives to promote electronics manufacturing in India, with the target to reduce imports. The Phased Manufacturing Programme for mobile phones was launched with the goal of widening and deepening the mobile handsets and components manufacturing ecosystem in India. From 2 units in 2014, we now have 127 units manufacturing mobile handsets and components. The duty on import of mobile components fell from over 29 percent to 12.5 percent in 2016- 17 and domestic mobile handset manufacturing output increased from 60 million units in 2014-15 to 225 million in 2017-18. The ministry of Electronics and IT has received 245 applications for investing over $8 billion under the government’s Modified Specific Incentive Package Scheme, of which it has approved 142 applications representing investments. Out of these, 74 companies have started commercial production. This has created more than 4.5 lakh job opportunities. There are about 35 manufacturing units of LCD/LED TVs and 128 units of LED products in the country. Under Electronics Manufacturing Cluster Scheme. MeitY has accorded approval to 23 projects in 15 states across the country.

Initiatives in Emerging Technology

Centres of Excellence are being set up in the areas of internet of Things, Internal Security, Large Area Flexible Electronics, Intellectual Property Rights, Tactile Graphics for visually impaired, Agriculture and Environment, ESDM, Fintech, Language Technology, Automotive Electronics, Virtual Augmented Reality, Medical Tech and Health Informatics, Block Chains, Gaming and Animation, and Biometrics.

Cyber Security

To create an inclusive, safe and secure cyberspace for sustainable development, the Cyber Swachhta Kendra has been set up to provide alerts to users for preventing losses of financial and other data. The centre is providing facility to clean botnets in real time. National Cyber Coordination Centre has been made operational in 2017.

Way Forward

In the 21st Century, Digital Economy has emerged as a key drivers for global economic growth and will also effectively address common global challenges including energy, environment and inequality. Digital technologies offer new opportunities for businesses, workers and citizens to engage in economic activity and to enhance efficiency.

India is today among the top three global economies of digital consumers. Concerted efforts to facilitate and promote process of digitization including upgrading digital infrastructure, augmenting capacity to develop standards and testing electronics manufacturing with appropriate incentives, developing capacity to harness emerging technologies and strengthening cyber security as more services, including digital payments, permeate the economy has the potential to create a trillion-dollar digital economy by 2025.

India’s digital story is one of digital empowerment and digital inclusion for digital transformation based on technology that is affordable, inclusive and equitable. The Digital India Programme is generating pathways to a future powered by technology and achieving a high growth of our Digital Economy to reach a level of trillion Dollars by 2025.

PM Launches historic Support and Outreach Initiative for MSME Sector

The Prime Ministry launched a historic support and outreach programme for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises sector. As part of this programme, the Prime Ministry unveiled 12 key initiatives which will help the growth, expansion and facilitation of MSMEs across the country.

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Access to Credit

Launch of the 59 minute loan portal to enabled easy access to credit for MSMEs. Link to this portal will be made available through the GST portal.

2 percent interest subvention for all GST registered MSMEs, on fresh or incremental loans.
All companies with a turnover of more than Rs. 500 crore, must now compulsorily be brought on the trade Receivables e-Discounting System. Joining this portal will enable entrepreneurs to access credit from banks, based on their upcoming receivables resolving problems of cash cycle.

Access to Markets

Public sector companies asked to compulsorily procure 25 percent, instead of 20 percent of their total purchases, from MSMEs. Out of the 25 percent procurement mandated from MSMEs, 3 percent must now be reserved for women entrepreneurs.

• All Public Sector undertaking of the Union Government must now compulsorily be a part of Gem.
• Technology Up Gradation
• 20 hubs will be formed across the country the country, and 100 spokes in the form of tool rooms to be established.
• Ease of Doing Business
• Clusters to be formed of pharma SMEs - 70 percent cost of establishing these cluster will be borne by the Union Government.
• The return under 8 labour laws and 10 Union regulations must now be filed only once a year.
• Establishments to be visited by an Inspector will be decided through a computerized random allotment.

Under air pollution and water pollution laws, now both these have been merged as a single consent,- the return will be accepted through self-certification.
Ordinance had been brought, under which, for minor violations under the Companies Act, the entrepreneur will no longer have to approach the Courts, but can correct them through simple procedures.

Social Security for MSME Sector Employees

A mission to be launched to ensure that they have Jan Dhan Accounts, provident fund and insurance. The Prime Minister said that these decisions would go a long way in strengthening the MSME sector in India and implementation of this outreach programme will be intensively monitored over the next 100 days.

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(GIST OF YOJANA) Towards A Digital Future

[DECEMBER-2018]

Towards A Digital Future

India’s move towards its digital future began several decades ago. However, unprecedented acceleration in recent times has brought sharply into view both the enormity of the benefits that have already accrued and the immense opportunities that beckon. It is equally clear that the challenges that must be overcome while traversing this path are not trivial either. Today, we stand at a confluence of several synergistic progressions both in India and globally, that have collectively created an incredible springboard for highly accelerated economic development as well as far more equitable growth. This endeavor is and will remain, a key determinant of India’s future growth path.

Early efforts at digitization in government were largely government focused: how to improve efficiency, record keeping and data storage and processing especially in number crunching departments like finance, taxation, Statistics, etc. Substantial efforts and progress were seen in departments that dealt with large numbers of beneficiaries like rural development, PDS, etc. Their efforts were largely spread over a couple of decades during 1976-1996 and almost entirely based on NIC support, barring a couple of states like AP where NIC efforts were augmented by state technology organizations like APTS.

It was in 1997 that the first steps towards citizen focused e-governance program were taken, initially in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Later, thanks to a strong push by the Central Government and the birth of the annual National e-Governance Conference series, the movement rapidly spread to several other states. The next decade saw the emergence of several e-governance initiatives in diverse areas like land records, transportation, land registration, urban local bodies, PDS, etc. at the state level and Income Tax, Excise and MCA at the national level. Towards the end of this period, State Wide Area Networks were created under a scheme funded by the central government. Some of this project was implemented in a PPP mode, thereby drawing the country’s technology industry into the nation-wide effort and opening new approaches to rapid deployment of comprehensive e-governance solution. These sporadic, but highly visible were widely appreciated and hailed as truly path breaking changes in systems of governance in the country. The foundation for a comprehensive National e-Governance plan had been laid through these efforts.

Potential of Digital Economy

The advent of the present Government in 2014 was marked by a clear recognition of the huge potential of the digital economy. The Government took the digital push in the country to unprecedented levels with many spectacular initiatives that attracted global attention and drew praise. The Aadhaar project was taken to its logical conclusion by a vigorous drive, the JAM program saw over 200 million people benefitting from financial inclusion through bank account and direct benefits transfer. Linkage of mobile telephones and bank accounts with Aadhaar gave Government and businesses the ability to deal with a vast population individually and without leakage individually and without leakage caused by non-value adding intermediaries. The CSC program has expanded to 2,50,000 panchayats and now provides employment to nearly a million people in the rural heartland. Technology can indeed be used to distribute economic opportunity and job creation more equitably.

Digital Services Delivery

E-commerce, transportation, payment wallets, hotel/accommodation/cinema booking, local food and provision delivery services enabled by mobile apps are now familiar to most urban citizens and increasingly smaller towns as well. Global products like IBM Watson already provide a range of medical services across countries including treatment recommendations based on patient’s records. But within India, well known products in healthcare such as Practo, Portea, Lybrate, etc. are connecting doctors and medical professionals to patients in ways that make it easy to reach the right person from the comfort of your home. Apps like Byju’s are making high quality educational content and services easily accessible at highly affordable costs. Similar established a product albeit in smaller numbers exists in the agriculture sector too. But there are more new exciting efforts in the pipeline in social sectors like healthcare, agriculture, fintech/financial inclusion that hold the promise of scripting India’s future, riding on the back of and reinforcing the Digital India program.

AI and Internet of Medical Things are transforming healthcare. Similar transformation in the agriculture sector through technology interventions that enable precisions farming, early warning of pest attack in cotton farming for example, are available through AI-powered systems to lower risks and costs while increasing productivity. It is interventions like these and hundred of other such innovations that are going to help deliver desired outcomes like doubling farmers incomes, health coverage for the poor through Ayushman Bharat and similar programs.

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Challenges

It needs to be recognized that these exciting trends should not be taken to mean that progress is assured. McKinsey has estimated that India’s Digital economy could grow to 1 Trillion US$ by 2025 with focused efforts but could end up at about half that level with a business-as-usual approach. Regulatory facilitation and debottlenecking by Government are critical across sectors for rapid progress necessary for full realization of the potential. Example abound. Map Policy of the country was an impediment to growth of location-based services. Lack of a drone policy stymied use of drones and growth of a drone services ecosystem in the country. Some people have welcomed the recent drone policy, while others feel it is still suboptimal. Even as we formulate laws and regulations on data privacy, we have to strike a careful balance to ensure that innovation is not stifled by unduly restrictive regulation. The recent Supreme Court judgement on Aadhaar appears to bar use of Aadhaar by the private sector even with the consent of a citizen. Thereby constricting opportunities for innovative, convenient services in many areas. Regulatory facilitation of consensual use warrants fresh consideration by stakeholders. Conservative regulations in healthcare that disallow remote treatment by doctors are retarding the growth of commercial eco system in this field. There are many, many more example of policy and regulation which needs to be tweaked to enable and not retard Digital India. But we are all learning, as is the rest of the world. The new era requires speed: in thought, in action, in governance and regulatory changes. These are not easy. But we are fortunate to have a Government that has recognized the imperatives and has prioritized Digital India.

While all of these developments are hugely encouraging and give rise to well-founded optimism about the future of India’s digital economy, the path is not easy. Availability, power and affordability of technology are not longer the limitation. It is our imagination and our ability to assimilate them into the ordinary tasks of everyday life, normal business and governance. Equally, it is well-recognized that the power of technologies has grown at a pace far exceeding our ability to leverage them in key social sectors. This, even though we are beset by monumental problem that have defied solutions for decades since independence: poverty, employment, education and skilling, healthcare, increasing agricultural productivity and mitigating risk, financial inclusion including access to credit without collateral. There is an old saying: When an irresistible force meets an immovable, object, something gotta give! I’m betting on technology winning this battle. What about you?

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(The Gist of Kurukshetra) RENEWABLE ENERGY ADOPTION FOR RURAL AREAS

[DECEMBER-2018]

Renewable Energy Adoption For Rural Areas

A village is defined “electrified”, at least 10% of the households and public places such as schools and health centres are connected and receive electricity from the grid, through the transformers established in the village. This would still leave 90% of people living in these villages ”unelectrified. Total electrification can be a reality only when all households and hamlets are connected. Homes without electricity are spread across major states such as Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Assam, Odisha, and Jharkhand each having nearly 6 million unconnected households. According to Debajit Palit, Associate Director at the Energy and Resources Institute, 14.6 million households in the giant north Indian state of Uttar pradesh lack access to electricity.

The government did embark on an ambitious $2.5 billion program named “Saubhagya”, in order to provide power connections to every household by the end of march 2019. While the process of electrification involves 3 steps, the first being the extension of infrastructure to the village, followed by connecting the household, the last and most critical and challenging part would e to ensure the supply of reliable and affordable energy that is sustainable.

Decentralized renewable energy in the form of mini-grids and rooftop solar are a crucial part of the solutions where the grid can’t reach or serve in a reliable manner . It is here that+ disturbed renewables have a crucial role to play, for energy to be universally accessible.

It is known fact that Indians relies on coal, to meet 605 of its electricity demands. With stagnation in the production of coal, it would be an uphill task for the government to provide uninterrupted power to its citizens. Thermal power also has potentially harmful effects on the environment. Burning biomass for cooking and other purposes are rampant in villages, adding to the pollution while cutting down precious resources that act as a valuable carbon sink as well.

Energy is a critical factor and foundation for economic growth and social progress. With increasing pollution of the biosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels and cutting of forests, development of renewable energy has become a major societal challenge. Renewable energy, with its renewability and non-polluting property, promises to grow to be an effective and practical choice guaranteeing the future development of the world. Renewable energy commonly refers to those energies that do not pollute the environment and could be recycled naturally. International experts have categorised renewable energy as traditional and new. The former referring to giant hydropower and biomass burnt directly, while the latter refers to small hydropower, geothermal energy, wind energy, biomass energy, solar energy, ocean energy, etc.

While hydroelectricity refers to potential and kinetic energy of water being converted into electricity in hydroelectric plants, Geothermal energy is available as heat emitted from within the earth’s crust, usually in the form of hot water or steam. It is used either for electricity generation, heat production for sale to third parties or directly as heat in its production.Solar photovoltaic is solar radiation exploited for generation of electricity using photovoltaic cell. In Tide/wave/Ocean, the mechanical energy derived from tidal movement, wave motion or ocean current are exploited for generation of electricity generation.

India, has substantial renewable energy sources, including a large landmass that receives among the highest solar irradiation in the world, a long coastline and high wind velocities that provide many opportunities for both land-based and offshore wind farms , significant annual production of biomass, and numerous river and waterways that have potential for hydropowers (NREL, 2010). The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) is promoting multifaceted biomass gasifier based power plants for producing electricity using locally available biomass resource such as wood chips, rice husk, arhr stalks, cotton stalks and other agro residues in rural areas.

Increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix is high on the policy agenda in countries around the world. Several governments have set highly ambitious targets and have started to implement support schemes aimed at facilitating implementation. The degree of success of these policies varies between countries (Wustenhagenetal.,2007).

The issue of adoption and factors that determine adoption rate, of renewable energy, needs to understood and addressed if it is to be implemented successfully (Wustenhagenetal.,2007; hrayshat, 2007). The investment in this form of energy is considered risky, requiring too much time before the capital invested is recovered and starts yielding returns. Recent research indicates that successfully implemented renewable energy projects are usually managed by crop-op ventures rather than profit motive driven corporations (Subbaro and Lloyd, 2011). Co-ops are autonomous associations of people united voluntarily, in order to satisfy their mutual economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through jointly owned and consensually controlled enterprise (ICA,1995). The system of voluntary and open membership and the considerable co-determination rights for members ,makes co-ops compatible with the societal expectations of multi-dimensional sustainability goals with regard to projects of renewable energy (Yildiz, 2014). Viardot (2013) deliberates upon a number of possible constraints to RE adoption and tries to address hoe RE co-ops cam minimize them.

These constraints include:

• unfamiliarity with the technology,
• lack of awareness of the environmental
• benefits,
• opinion that the technology is unreliable, IV. belief that the technology can have
• harmful side effect
• unsuitable location for the installation to access sufficient credit,
• invested capital needed elsewhere, and
• fear of the administrative work involved in

RE systems. It was found that communication was an important initiatives taken by RE co-ops to decrease the barriers to RE adoption. In rural India, the solutions for rapid economic development can come in the form of rural cooperatives. Rural India requires institutions that are helpful in creating confidence, organizing people are utilizing their resources effectively. From this point of view, rural cooperatives have a vital role to play. Co-ops canmake bulk purchases of RE equipment to get volume discounts, which can be passed onto its members, lowering the price of RE.

What’s more, co-ops develop projects on local sites, responding to the constraint of location and variability of RE. Local projects contribute to increasing the social nacking of RE. Furthermore, RE co-ops are heated by a democratically elected management representing the interests of the community-based social marketing initiatives that are creating he promotional factors required for a secure investment environment. A recent study from Bihar suggests that a critical determinant of electricity access in rural India is proximity to the Central power grid.

Grossbardorf, a village in Germany runs a successful microgrid rural cooperative model that generates four times the electricity needed to power individual business and homes of the community. Excess power is fed back to the main electricity needed to power individual business and homes of the main electricity grid through a feed-in tariff system, and the revenue generated is shared equally among the various stakeholders. While Germany is well-known for its proactive collective renewable energy initiatives, a good number of success stories are emerging from different parts of India. A biomass-based rural cooperative in Tumkur district of Karnataka markets and decentralized environmental governance. The biomass is derived through tree-based farming, which provides employment to 30 households.

One of the reasons why the cooperative model of enterprise has been effective is that it responds to the increasing demand for democratically at the community level, and often by end users, thus empowering people and promoting equal participation. The growth of energy cooperatives, particularly in the renewable energy sector, suggests that cooperatives are increasingly being chosen by people around the world to respond to their needs. However, renewable energy-based rural cooperative model across India would require high levels of initial seed capital. Banks, governments and international agencies such as the United Nations may not help in achieving scale of financing required. So, it is imperative that private players such as big industrial houses and high net-worth philanthropic individuals take the lead in establishing rural energy cooperatives. The Need of the hour is a private-cooperative partnership.

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(The Gist of Kurukshetra) Krishi Vigyan Kendra: Promoting Scientific Temper

[DECEMBER-2018]

Krishi Vigyan Kendra: Promoting Scientific Temper

Innovation in agricultural has always shape the destiny of a promising country like India. The diffusion of science, technology and innovation in agriculture is rather the key to increase. Agricultural production in a sustainable manner. Role of science and technology in agricultural its pertinent to not only ensure national food security, but it also provides farmers to maintain affordability of food items for public. In order to draw true potential of farmers towards the state of the art technologies for the betterment of agriculture, India government has set up a big chain of over 700 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) across the country.

Origin, Philosophy & Objectives of KVK:

The concept of Krishi Vigyan Kendra was given by Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, initiator of green revolution in India and the father of Indian agricultural research. Dr, Swaminathan convinced Government of India that there is dire necessity to develop Krishi Vigyan Kendra in each district of India with an objective to cater activities such as technology assessment, refinement and demonstration of technology product. In light of this inspiration, the Government of India established first KVK in Pondicherry during 1974 with the financial support and able guidance of with the financial support and able guidance of Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR). In Kapgari village of West Medinipur district, the first KVK in West Bengal and second in India states and the number continues to grow. Presently, around 695 Krishi Vigyan Kendras are existing in different districts of India. A KVK can be created under a variety of host institution including agricultural universities, state departments, ICAR institutions or NGOs. A KVK must own about 20 hectares of land for the purpose of testing advanced agriculture technology.

The objectives cum activities of Krishi Vigyan Kendras can be summarized as below:

On Farm Testing of new Technologies: KVK act as a small laboratory and extension centre for agricultural research. Each KVK operators on a small farm to test new technologies related to seed varieties or innovative farming methods, developed by ICAR institutes. Through this platform, new technologies are tested at the local level before being transferred to the farmers. In this way, KVK serves as a centre to try and test forthcoming agricultural technologies.

Frontline Demonstration Centre: Because of the KVK’s farm and its proximity to nearby villages, it organizes programmes to show the efficiency of new technologies to be introduced in the farming community.

Capacity Building: Because of the KVK’s farm and its proximity to nearby villages, it organizes programmes to show the efficiency of new technologies on farmer fields. Such frontline demonstration outlets showcase new agricultural to be introduced in the farming community.

Multi sector support and Advisory Services: Krishi Vigyan Kendras offer support to various private and public initiatives through its local network and expertise. Government research institutes in general, leverage the network of KVK’s while performing surveys with a wide range of farmers. Due to the growing use of ICT, KVK’s have implemented technologies to provide farmers information, such as weather advisories or market pricing, through radio, mobile phones and social media.

Apart from above activities, KVKs also conduct training programmes for farmers to update their knowledge and skills in modern agricultural technologies. In this programme, extension personnel are trained to orient target farmers in the frontier areas of agricultural technology for supporting initiatives of public, private and voluntary sector for improving the agricultural economy of the district.

The study found that KVKs are playing a prominent role in transferring new technology at field level with beneficial impacts. They have an edge in technology transfer over other service providers by virtue of their having better technical expertise and demonstration units. About 40% farmers reported that they implemented the technology immediately after its dissemination by KVK and that 25% did so from the next agricultural SEASON. With the intervention by KVKs, about 80% of the farmers have modified their agricultural patterns which were related to diversification of crops and changes in cropping pattern, seed planting technique, use of fertilizers and pesticides, changes in cropping pattern, seed planting technique, use of fertilizers and pesticides, changes in machinery used and in water use pattern . More than 50% of the farmers have mechanized their farm operations, however, ownership of farm machinery and technology adoption increased with the sizes of holdings and education level of the farmers.

This study predicts a better future of KVKs. It exhibits that through KVKs, agriculture related technological development is getting momentum and the final outcome of this expedition is to support national development through a scientifically tempered approach.

KVK: A tool for promoting Scientific Temper

The Indian agriculture faces many challenges on a broad perspective. High number of small land holder farmers, lack of supply chain infrastructure and extreme weather conditions are such major challenges. A key strategy in addressing such issues, in addition to policy support and a functioning market, is using science and technology in an innovative manner to better understand and adapt to complex challenges. This approach is called rational and scientific method. Scientific methods comprises of five major components i.e. observation, hypothesis, experimentation analysis and conclusion. The person who applies this approach of thought process in his/her daily life, then it mean he or she is taking rational and justified decision in all walks of his/her life. This temper or attitude is commonly known as scientific temper or attitude. This is form of mindset which can be found both amongst educated and illiterate persons. Farmer is a good example in this context. Those farmers, who are not educated, apply scientific temper and take right decision at the right moment of time in their farming practices. In this to happen, their past experience, observation and analytical mind play a crucial role. If we see the methodology of a KVK, we may definitely consider it as the vital agent or may definitely consider it as the vital agent or promoter of scientific temper in the society. KVK arranges the testing of any improved technology along with farmer’s practice in their field with active participation of both the scientists and farmers, In this methods having scientific approach, improved technologies are tested to compare and verify the results.

Krishi Vigyan Kendra Portal: Extended Arm to this Farmer

Till the recent past, the efficiency of KVKs was difficult to measure due to the large number of farmers served by a single KVK largely offline communication between the KVK and farmers. For the reasons, research over the last 25 Years has focused on the capacity of KVKs to make use of ICT for the purpose of a better management of communications with farmers. Plenty of application have been developed, sharing advisors such as weather information and market pricing, supplementing the KVKs communication with its beneficiaries. However, any of these initiatives are of short impact, since the teams at each KVK often do not have the capacity to maintain software applications or because farmers do not find the information useful.

In 2016, Indian government launched Krishi Vigyan Kendra Portal to provide the information and advisory to the farmers and facilitate online monitoring of the KVK activities. At this portal, major events are reported on regular basis and reports are submitted online on monthly basis. This portal provides the information of future plans and programmes of KVKs which benefits farmers, entrepreneurs and youth in joining different training programmes by KVKs. Visitors can give their feedback on the content of the portal and programmes of KVKs. This component helps in order to improve the objectives of the portal and KVKs.

Conclusion

Krishi Vigyan Kendras provide requisite knowledge provide knowledge through training and other activities to improve the skill and attitude of the people particularly farmers towards new technology and approach in farming, provide proper guidance to solve any problems faced by the farming community in agriculture and allied fields. Scientists working under KVKs provide inspiration, constructive and constant advice to the people of that area to start new entrepreneurship for their livelihood and show them a proper way when needed. Krishi Vigyan Kendra acts as a lighthouse of new technology in agriculture. It develops scientific temper among the farmers, general public, women and Youth to enhance skill which further enable them to contribution in the national development.=

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(GIST OF YOJANA) Technology Areas for Indian Languages

[DECEMBER-2018]

Technology Areas for Indian Languages

Language technology has reached a level of maturity today where it is making mass impact on users of English and many other languages of the world. Indian language technology is also at an advanced level where it can make a mass impact on various aspect of language use. Indian language technology can enable people to access material in their own languages, for example, material in English and other Indian languages can be translated automatically. Similarly, computers can read out information to the illiterate or the blind through text to speech systems, remote data can become accessible through telephonic speech interfaces, sophisticated search can be provided to the internet, digitally scanned books and other material can be made more accessible by using optical character readers.

Technology Areas

Here are the Indian language technology areas and example tasks in each of them.

1. Localization

• Availability of Indian language support on all electronic devices
• Use of Standards
• Creating e-content in Indian languages
• Creating by original writing
• Creating through translation
• Automatic machine translation
• English to/from Indian Languages (ILs)
• Among Indian Languages

2. Cross language access to content

• Cross lingual search across Indian languages as well as English
• Speech processing
• Text to speech for ILs
• Speech to text for ILs
• Optical character recognition
• Optical character recognition for ILs
• Online handwriting recognition for ILs
• Status and Prospects of Technology Areas
• Each of the above technology areas are described below with respects to the following aspects:
• What the technology area is about
• Current status of technology for Indian languages
• What can be achieved in the foreseeable future for Indian languages?

Localization

Localization in our context means that the electronic device is enabled with Indian Languages using the standards. For example, when one buys a phone, it should already have the language of the region built into it along with Hindi and English, for displaying, Keyboarding etc. More ever, the customer should be able to add any other Indian language later on demand, without having to change the handset.

Creating e-Content in Indian Languages

There is an acute need to create e-content in Indian languages. While e-content is not a replacement for books, the young generation has started placing increasing reliance on the content available over the internet.

In was observed in Germany, not so long ago, that the German youth were assessing English language content much more than the German language content.

E-Content in ILS can be created rapidly, in the short terms term, through translation of English content; but in the long term, it should be created originally in the Indian languages.

Translation among Indian languages can be used to generate content in all the Indian languages. Translation across ILs can be effective in conveying the originally meaning and would also be suitable to the Indian Context.Automatic machine translation translates a given text in one language to another, instantly. While the quality of translation produced varies depending on the distance between the language pairs, and the technology used, it provides instant access to text in another language to the user.

Translation from English to Indian languages has lower quality, as expected, because English is linguistically distant from Indian languages. Machine translation among Indian languages, on the other hand, has much better quality. MT systems for Indian languages are available and produce good quality translation.

They compare favorably with similar systems across European languages, for example. However, effort needs to be put in deploying them and making them available to users, both general users as well as publication houses. Deployment of systems for the language pairs which are ready, can take place within a year. MT systems are available for about a dozen Indian languages, and need to be developed for all 22 scheduled Indian languages. Technology framework is fully developed and a new language pair can be added easily and rapidly, in a matter of 2 years. The task of addition of new pairs can of course, be done in parallel.

Cross Language Access to Content

As the e-content in Indian languages increases, there would be an even greater need to search for and locate relevant content by the users on the internet. Here, it would be that the content is getting created for Indian languages, because large amount of content might not be available in all Indian languages initially. Technology is available for this task across half a dozen ILS. However, indexing of content in the languages needs to be done. More languages also need to be added.

• Speech Processing
• There are two parts to this technology:
• Text to speech
• Speech to text Systems

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The former technology allows a computer to “read out” a given text file in an IL. The latter allows the computer to “listen” to the spoken language and convert it into a text file.

TTS can be used to allow a text file to be accessed by a blind person or an illiterate person. It can also allow interaction over the telephone, where the text cannot be seen by the user. TTS is a mature technology and is available for more than a dozen ILS.

• Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
• There are two technology areas under this head:
• Optical character recognition (OCR)

Online hand writing Recognition (OHWR) OCR takes a printed book and converts it into text form. When scanning of a book in hardcopy is done, the output is in the form of scanned images which cannot be used for search, machine translation, speech processing etc. OCR takes a scanned image of a page, recognizes the characters, and converts it into text form.

This technology for Indian Languages for about a dozen ILS is available as a field prototype. It needs to be converted into a product and provide to digital libraries which hold scanned collection of IL books, such as, Digital Library of India of Ministry of Information Technology.

Conclusion

The conditions are most conducive for the use and proliferation of language technology for Indian languages. There are a large number of users with digital devices who wish to get information in their own languages as they do not know English. There is a large amount of content in English but not in Indian Languages. Hence, there is a large unserved need!

Several things need to be done. For example, the Indian language technology should immediately be deployed to translate all central government websites into 22 Indian languages. This will generate a demand which will help growth of an ecosystem of academic institutions as researchers and technology developers, start-ups as technology maintainers and other who service the demand using MT technology. There would also be the need for human post-editors who would take the output of MT system, and make it more readable etc. Similarly, speech processing can be done, along with MT, to provide spoken language translation. The National Digital Spoken language translation. The National Digital Library of Indian should use services of an OCR for indexing the scanned images in Indian languages, in making them searchable.

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(GIST OF YOJANA) Regulating the Digital Revolution

[DECEMBER-2018]

Regulating the Digital Revolution

The Digital Revolution is often called as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the first three being the steam age of science and Mass production, and computers. World over, the Digital Revolution is driving the socio-economic and technological growth of the human race. The revolution is driven by various factors like the availability of high-speed Internet, innovative products and services, the need for efficient management and distribution of resource both by the Government as well as private entities, the user’s ubiquitous requirement of remaining connected at all times etc.
The entire gamut of Digital Transformation is to provide innovative products and services to improve productivity and efficiency. The connectivity to the digital devices would be predominantly provided by the telecom networks; hence the Telecom Sector would be the key growth engine driving the Digital Revolution.

Challenges

During the past two decades, the world has witnessed an unprecedented growth in technology. The advancement in technology has; on the one hand, provide the consumer services and devices which were earlier perceived as fiction; and on the other posed new challenges in the regulatory environment. A major portion of the Application and services that are being developed are based on the mobile connectivity, hence the role of Telecom Service providers as well as the Regulators becomes more and more challenging. The regulators have the onerous responsibility of maintaining a balance between encouraging innovation, protecting consumer, creating an environment for orderly growth of industry as well as address unintended consequences of disruptions.

Emerging technologies, along with the fast pace of commercialization of these technologies, has broken the popular myth that the regulations can be made deliberately at a slower pace and would be in place unchanged for a long time. The Regulator today can no longer afford to be lagging in the technology development curve. The challenges faced by the tradition regulation can be broadly classified into:

Business Challenges: These could be the Pacing problem i.e. a slow pace of regulation may become irrelevant very soon while a regulation released early may discourage innovation. Another issue that is of importance is the disruptive business models wherein the businesses may require intervention/regulation by multiple regulators. Technological Challenges: These are far too many and are dynamic in nature i.e. issues related to Data, Digital Privacy and Security, Data Ownership, AI-based challenges etc.

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One of the major challenges in the telecom sector today is to simultaneously regulate the legacy as well as the new digital networks. This requires framing of new set of regulations and frameworks that facilitate seamless co-existence as well as smooth migration. India is the second largest market in the world. Though a large number of initiatives have been undertaken both by the Government as well as the private sector but still a large population remains devoid of connectivity to the internet. Spreading awareness as well as connecting every individual is keys to the socio-economic metamorphosis of our country. As new business models and services emerge, government agencies are expected to create or modify regulations, enforce them and communicate the same to the environment at faster pace. The Regulator is not only entrusted with the responsibility to ensure the compatibility of the new technology with the legacy frameworks but also foster innovation on the other.

Regulations should be adaptive: A rigid Regulatory framework may prove to be detrimental to innovation as well as the growth of industry. An adaptive regulatory regime would foster innovation, provide a platform for the industry to grow, enhance user satisfaction, provide consumer protection and help the government to regulate. Use of Regulatory Sandboxes: Impact assessment of regulation on the technologies may be studied before issuing the Regulations. Collaborative Regulations: As brought out earlier, services and products today may require regulation by multiple Regulatory bodies; hence a collaborative Regulatory approach would have to be adopted.

A Regulator, therefore, has to be aware of the current state of regulations world over, know the right time to regulate, know the right approach to regulate and have an adaptive approach towards emerging technologies.

Conclusion:

The Telecom sector is witnessing the biggest transformation in the past several decades, new technologies and services based on mobile connectivity, social media, data-analytic; cloud computing etc are being designed today. These technologies and services have blurred geographical boundaries, created exciting business models. Created job opportunities, empowered the citizens and attracted world telecom leaders to India. TRAI had a very important role today in not only regulating the Digital revolution in the telecom sector but also be a front-runner in adaptively regulating emerging technologies.

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(GIST OF YOJANA) Digital India-At The Heart of Poorna Swaraj

[DECEMBER-2018]

Digital India-At The Heart of Poorna Swaraj

The promise of freedom and true empowerment at national, organizational and individual level was the intent behind the freedom movement championed by founding fathers like Bhagat Singh and Gandhi. The absence of which was object poverty, oppression at every level and exploitation of the average Indian in British hands. Gandhi, in his wisdom understood that perfection of freedom is paramount and transcends the need for perfection of government.

“For me the only training in Swaraj we need is the ability to defend ourselves against the whole world and to live our natural life in perfect freedom, even though it may be full of defects. Good government is no substitute for self-government.” M.K. Gandhi, September, 1920.

Fortunately, India has understood this spanning parties and administrations. Over the decades, fundamental rights have been established. Systems are in place to empower every individual- to ensure equality and fairness in nutrition, health, education, law and order and right to livelihood via farms, business or MNREGA. But unfortunately, thought we have been successful at a massive scale, hundreds of million still suffer under the yoke of poverty and exploitation.

Digital India providing information equality to everyone is the final realization of poorna swaraj for every individual. Digital India spans three fundamental blocks- universal broadband, 100 percent digital services and Open APIs.

This information problem, this information asymmetry due to a few malicious actors in spite of the sweat of the toiling masses, good intentions of many of our elected officials and best efforts of our most of our administrative officer- is why we, as a nation, have been unable to overcome. Macro economically, the facts are devastating. According to India’s CEC in 2015, it was observed that the PDS was most effective at reaching the poorest and the masses.

Even in the PDS. Grains do not reach 25-50 percent of the poor. Other programs like fertilizer subsidy, electricity and water are far worse. The cause is quite obvious- a country as vast as India requires systems and layers of processes and people responsible for implementation. Typically these chains of responsible actors, both public and private, are 10 to 15 long. Even one bad malicious actor in this chain disrupts, destroying the good intentions and work of the entire chains. At scale, the entire system is tainted- where, we as a nation, along with our policy makers have lost faith.
Since Independence, India’s share of global trade has barely budged- we account for 2 percent of global exports, while India’s share of global GDP has declined to around 3.1 percent from the 4 percent it used to be at independence.

Three Blocks of Digital India

Reversing this trends, unleashing India’s vast potential requires a level of transparency, speed of operations and efficiency in implementation-including eliminating leakage- at a national scale. In parallel, we need to build so much confidence in our ability to trust the system that we give pure freedom to our professionals, innovators and enterprises to conduct business at a speed that makes them global leaders.

All of this is very much possible only with three blocks that constitute Digital India. The caution is digital India cannot be done piecemeal. If we fail to serve everything digitally or fail to ensure it reaches everyone, we make the problem worse by deepening the asymmetry and creating chokepoints. Universal affordable broadband at speeds of 10-15 Mbps for each person and home ensures that each of our 1.3 billion citizens is empowered. Delivering every service digitally dissolves friction while bringing transparency and trust at all levels. And every digital government service available as one Open API ensures uniformity of access, sparking a Cambrian explosion of services using governance services. Aadhaar, GSTN, eSign, UPI are all vibrant examples of this approach. Digital India’s Open APIs are solely responsible for India’s leadership position in the global Fintech revolution underway.

Era of Infinite Productivity

India’s potential, once we peer beyond our current systemic problems is vast. We are heading into an era of infinite productivity fueled by AI and robotics. Economies will shift from resources, capital and labor constraints to resources, capital and invention constraints. All successful large enterprises will be resource rich, invention rich or both. All others will diminish.

Every global economy will go through social upheaval as jobs disappear and people are left to fend for themselves. India is already witnessing this trend-where we are growing as an economy but formal jobs are not growing at the same rate. I use formal to mean measurable formal jobs with payroll. The World Bank has assessed that India will lose 69 percent of its existing jobs.

This new infinity economy has two sources growth for India. Innovation enterprise owned by Indian situated in India will be the primary source of India will be the primary source of Indian government revenue which fuels our social programs and defense. What is in the way is friction of doing business. This will disappear if we do implement all digital India fully in all three dimensions to create an environment of zero friction enterprise. These enterprises will be staffed by the best and brightest in the world, which Indian higher education produces in numbers. Such enterprises will no longer be $1 billion unicorns; they will be $100 billion singularities which even at that size will grow 20-30 percent CAGR. Singularity enterprise is a winner takes all game, the bigger ones accelerating even faster.

Singularity Enterprises

However, the number of jobs created by these singularity enterprises will be miniscule-less than 5 percent of the country will be employed this way at best. I am often asked what the rest of the 95 percent will then do. I struggled with this for a while and in my humility realized that Gandhi gave us the answer decade’s back-humble, local, sustainable work. India is also a country of 1.3 billion. India is also a country of about 160 million small and micro enterprises of which 80 million are known. And for every known micro-enterprise, there is a locally visible home business usually run by a woman. Universal broadband married with ease of access via digital services and Open APIs will unleash India’s true power. India will never be a center for factor labor, nor will we ever be a nation of white collar workers. When I first moved back to India in 2004, I happened to visit a large retailer to find that the checkout clerk could barely operate the machine, was slow in handling customers, was slow in handling customers, looked disinterested and dull-dramatic departure from counterparts in other countries. The same week, happened to visit a local medical store and asked for a silver cream. The fourteen year old who was the owner’s son with a bright same immediately recognised it was for a burn, found the medicine within 15 seconds and suggested what else could help minor burns.

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These 160 million small and micro-enterprises, if truly empowered. Will not just create self-sufficiency for themselves. At scale they will solve two nation scale problems. They will solve the problem of agriculture income by collaborating with farmers to augment farm produce with derivative products, where at least a third of the net value of farm output will vest with the farmer. An illustration with potatoes is important to understand in the digital context. As I write this article, potato is retailing at Rs 27/kg in Delhi. Today, farmers would be happy to get just Rs 6/Kg, a margin of Rs 1. This will increase by Rs 3/Kg or more if supply chains get digitized, quadrupling their income. Even then, they may not move firmly out of poverty into the middle class. What if the farmer and their local neighborhood small business cold turn a fraction of these potatoes into derivatives-like got chips- and sell via emerging digital commerce platforms- whose logistic networks are just starting to touch rural India but will soon be firmly enmeshed. Both these possibilities- higher fraction of final sale value of commodities via digital commerce and moving up the values chain of farmers led by local enterprise-will dramatically transform farm income and livelihood, perhaps reversing the trends of systematic abandonment of farms

In parallel, as 160 million micro businesses starts thriving, they will solve the employment problem at a massive, hyper local scale. An anecdote is relevant. Years ago, when I was studying value of information to the disaffected as Head of Products of Google India, we ran across this sunar in Calcutta who has almost run out of business as he was unable to compete with modern jewellery stores and the fad of fake jewellery. For a change of scenery he happened to visit his relative in Delhi and saw this carpenter using the internet to find cool furniture designs.

A hundred and sixty million entrepreneurs coming on to the internet will be a planetary event. It will impact the planet at a magnitude that the American industrial revolution did. We will leap from 2 percent of global exports to 20 percent in a span of two three decades. All we need to do is ring fence our enterprises, while ensuring broadband and every government service is delivered digitally via Open APIs reaching each Indian. The elite in India do not need to solve poverty. The average Indian as always and in everything, will do even this for themselves, if we just open the gate for them a little. It is possible. “Saare Jehan Se Accha- Ek Peedhi Mein” Cooperation on Digital Communication and Economy discussed between India and European Commission.

The Minister of State for Communication Government of India and the H.E. Mr Andrus Ansip, European Commissioner for Digital single Market and Vice President of the European Commission met in New Delhi to discuss cooperation on Digital communication, Digital economy and society. Both sides noted the importance of supporting global standards and welcomed the close technical cooperation between the Indian and European Telecom Standardization Development Organization-TSDSI and ETSI. India and the EU will work together to develop joint plans of action in the agreed areas of cooperation such as-future networks and emerging technologies including 5G, LoT/M2M etc. promoting R&D and innovation, network security, spectrum management, enhanced capacity development as well as policy and regulatory requirements among other.

EU expressed interest in strengthening cooperation in the areas of testing and certification by supporting the visit of India Government experts to the European testing and certification laboratories for telecom equipment, with a view to exploring the possibility of India recognizing EU certifications. EU side also discussed about basic custom duties on some ICT products. The India-EU cooperation dialogue on Digital Communications will take place annually through appropriate mechanism within the existing framework of the India-EU joint Working Group on ICTs which was set up in 2011. Both sides agreed to hold the next India-EU dialogue on cooperation in the field of Digital communication in the first half of 2019.

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(GIST OF YOJANA) Aadhaar: The Digital Highway To New India

[DECEMBER-2018]

Aadhaar: The Digital Highway To New India

Since independence, rarely any single initiative of the Government of India has ever been as intensely debated as Aadhaar during the last nine years of its existence. The debate which engulfed practically every section of society- governments, NGOs, civil society, legal fraternity, political parties, academics, professionals, activists, techies, advocates, media, etc. was so widespread and passionate that no section of our society remained untouched. It was like the great mythological churning of the sea that has brought a number of gems like unique identity, privacy, data protection, digital security, etc. on the national agenda.

Critics alleged that Aadhaar was unconstitutional for it purportedly, as per their claim, infringed on individual liberty, privacy, personal autonomy, freedom of choice, etc. They perceived government’s enhanced ability to directly connect, reach, and serve people in a cost effective, efficient and transparent manner, as an increase in the state’s power and, hence, criticized Aadhaar as an instrument of state surveillance. It is useful to know how other developed democracies used unique identification numbers to cleanse their system. USA introduced Social Security Number through an enactment in 1935 for a limited purpose of providing social security benefits during the Great Depression. However, in 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt expanded the scope through a historic executive order no. 9397 which mandated all Federal agencies to exclusively use SSN in their programs. In 1962, SSN was adopted as the official Tax Identification Number (TIN) for income tax purposes. In 1976, the Social Security Act was further amended to say that any State may utilize, in the administration of any tax, general public assistance, driver’s license or motor vehicle registration law, the social security account numbers for the purpose of establishing the identification of individuals and may require any individual to furnish SSN. The mandatory use of SSN by the State did not go unchallenged in US courts which eventually held mandatory use of SSN to be constitutional. In Doyle vs. Wilson, it was held that “mandatory disclosure of one’s social security numbers does not so threaten the sanctity of individual privacy as to require constitutional protection.” In other cases, courts held that “requiring an SSN on a driver’s license application is not unconstitutional, nor is a requirement that welfare recipients furnish their SSNs” and “preventing fraud in federal welfare programs is an important goal, and the SSN requirement is a reasonable means of promoting that goal”. In United Kingdom too, almost every important service requires a National Insurance those who want to work, open bank accounts, pay taxes want to receive child benefits, and even those who want to vote.

In India, too, Aadhaar had to undergo several legal challenges. After six years of prolonged litigation and 38 days of marathon hearing in Aadhaar case by the 5 judges constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court of India where 36 petitions along with the lead writ petition no. 494 of 2012 of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy & others vs. Union of India & Others challenging various aspects and issues of Aadhaar and Aadhaar Act were argued and debated; and the SC delivered its historic and landmark judgment which upheld Aadhaar as constitutional albeit with some stronger safeguards that would go a long way in accelerating India’s digital journey and strengthening India’s digital narrative to create greater digital narrative to create greater digital trust, parity and confidence among people.

In fact, this judgement is a big win for the people of India, particularly for the marginalized and underprivileged section of the society who could now use Aadhaar to access any service anytime-anywhere. The Supreme Court decision in Aadhaar case would certainly take us together miles ahead on India’s digital voyage with augmented safety that is supported by stronger data protection measures to enhance digital trust of the people with hassle-free empowerment with the use of Aadhaar.

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Upholding the constitutional validity of Aadhaar- the world’s largest unique biometric identity project of India that caters to one-sixth of the population on this planet, the Supreme Court has held that the architecture of Aadhaar neither creates a surveillance state nor infringes the fundamental right to privacy. The Court said that Aadhaar identification is unparalleled and ensure empowerment and dignity of marginalized sections of the society. The Court also un held that the Aadhaar Act meets the concept of the limited government, good governance and constitutional trust and its passing as a Money Bill is justified and legitimate.

Aadhaar as empowerment enabler will be, as always, a game changer for the poor and for India. Aadhaar ensures that the benefits reach directly to the deserving beneficiaries in a hassle-free manner. Aadhaar is helping eliminate middlemen, ghosts. Fakes, and duplicates in schemes likes PDS, MGNREGS, PAHAL, Scholarships, etc. which has already led to saving of over Rs. 90,000 crore during the last three years. According to an estimate of the World Bank, if Aadhaar is used across all welfare schemes, it will help save Government about US $11 billion every year!
Aadhaar is the first and biggest public owned world’s largest biometric technology platforms which being constitutionally platform which being constitutionally valid, would now not only empower 122 crore people with biometric based unique identity but would also provide a nationwide infrastructure to establish voluntarily their identity online anywhere, anytime and enable them to receive their entitlements and exercise their rights.

Aadhaar makes it possible for the government to design special welfare programs and target them to deserving sections of the society. For example, use of Aadhaar in Ayushman Bharat ensures that benefits would not be siphoned away by non-deserving beneficiaries and thereby will help keep the insurance premium and expenses within the affordable limits. Also, Aadhaar has helped flood victims of Tamil Nadu who were stranded in relief camps to withdraw money from their bank accounts without any documents or withdrawal slips being filled just by their Aadhaar and fingerprint through AePS enabled micro-ATMs. Further, the government is using Aadhaar to create a tax compliant society by weeding out fake and duplicate PAN cards, shell companies, and curb tax evasion, money laundering, fraudulent, corrupt and dubious activities. No one can deny the fact that Aadhaar has proven to be a powerful, safe and secure digital platform to establish unflinching identity of a person created on three basic doctrines of minimal information, optimal ignorance and federated database and is free from the traits of caste, colour, creed, race, profiling, etc.

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(The Gist of Kurukshetra) FINANCING RURAL HEALTH CARE

[NOVEMBER-2018]

FINANCING RURAL HEALTH CARE

The health sector, one of the vital dimensions of human development, falls primarily in the domain of federal state Governments as per the Indian Constitutional assignments. There is a strong and positive association between public expenditure on health and the per capita incomes of the people. Enhanced public spending on health increases social welfare of the citizens and develops human capital.

The delivery of health services in India, however, is yet to improve itself, particularly in rural areas, as it lacks quality health facilities and human resources, financial limitations, absence of health awareness. The framework of Government of India’s fiscal responsibility legislation and that of the States restricts vigorous pressing for public expenditure on health service financed by respective government deficits and public borrowings. Thus, efficient and effective health services financing within the fiscal responsibility framework is the need of the hour. In this context, an attempt is made here to look into the Government’s of recent commitment and efforts for ensuring ‘Health For All’.

Rural Health Infrastructure:

India’s rural health care delivery is characterized by a three-tier system. At the lowest level are the Sub-centres with each covering a population between 3,000 and 5,000. The second tier is Primary Health centres a population of 20,000 to 30,000 and the third tier is Community Health Centres with a population of 80,000 to 1,20,000. While SCs are the most peripheral and the first contact point between primary health care system and the community and are responsible for bringing about behavioral change and providing services in relation to maternal and child health, family welfare and nutrition, immunization and control of communicable diseases, PHCs are the first contact between the village community and the medical officer. The PHcs are the main catalytic and vital organs to ensure the government’s vision of health for all. As on 31st March 2017, there were 1,56,231 Sub-Centres, 25,650 PHCs and 5,624 CHCs operating in India.

The SCs, PHCs and CHCs have increased in numbers between 2005 and 2017.

Health Outcomes & Goals 2020:

India has witnessed significant progress in achieving health outcomes in the last two decades. However, various key health indicators viz. Infant Mortality Rates (IMR), Life Expectancy, Malnutrition and Maternal Mortality Rates (MMR), etc. have remained below the satisfactory benchmark level and have not kept pace with the overall growth in the country’s Gross Domestic Product and Gross National Income. Out of Pocket spending on Health Expenditure (% to total Health Expenditure) 62.4 [2014] 50.0 Raising public health expenditure to 2.5% of GDP Positive and proactive engagement with the private sector to achieve national goals. Financial and other incentives for encouraging the private sector participation. Investment in health, organization and financing of healthcare services. Prevention of disease and promotion of good health through cross-sectoral action. Ensuring access to technologies, developing human resources, encouraging medical pluralism, building the knowledge base required for better health, financial protection strategies and regulation and progressive assurance for health. Reorienting and strengthening Public Health Institutions across the country, so as to provide universal access to free drugs, diagnostics and other essential healthcare. Achieving significant reduction in out of pocket expenditure due to healthcare costs. Ensuring voluntary service in rural and underserved areas on pro-bono basis by recognized healthcare professionals under a ‘giving back to society’ initiative.

Financing Health Care:

Health forms an integral part in the overall socio-economic development of the nation. Compared with other developing nations, the health status of India is still lagging behind in adequate public spending on medical, public health and family welfare. The gap is also quite sharper amount in relatively economically backward states within the country. Considering the importance of health infrastructure status and the national health goal targets, the government has initiated various reform measures to augment spending on health care through specific purpose transfer to the States by allocating grants under various health care schemes. A review of budgetary allocations under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare indicates that Health and Family Welfare indicates that health care schemes got a paltry 2 per cent hike in its 2018-19 budgetary allocation vis-à-vis the Revised Estimates of 2017-18. National Rural Health Mission-that caters exclusively to the rural health care delivery got Rs. 1,179 crore less in 2018-19 over 2017-18.

Union Budget 2018-19 underscored renewed importance to universal health care delivery to realize India’s demographic dividend. It announced ‘Ayushman Bharat’ programme for making path breaking interventions to address health holistically, in primary, secondary and tertiary care system covering both prevention and health promotion. Keeping in view the recommendations of the national health Policy, 2017, the Budget earmarked Rs. 1,200 crore to finance 1.5 lakh Health and Wellness Centres to revolutionise India’s health system by bringing health care system closer to the homes of the needy. These centres are required to provide not only comprehensive health care, including for non-communicable diseases and maternal and child health services, but also to provide free essential drugs and diagnostic services. Considering the ever-increasing out-of-pocket expenditure on health by lakh of families for indoor treatment in hospitals, the government decided to launch a flagship National Health Protection Scheme to cover over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families providing coverage up to Rs. 5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization.

Conclusion:

The present government has prioritized expenditure on health care delivery through one of its laudable innovative schemes- Ayushman Bharat aiming at enhanced productivity and well-being of the people. The health care budgetary support to the existing initiatives and innovative schemes may not be adequate keeping in view the health needs of the citizens and the country’s performance in achieving mandated health outcomes under Millennium Development Goals. A recent estimate indicates that the public expenditure on health care in India is 1.4% of the country’s GDP whereas the world average is 6%.

The primary health care yields better health and development outcomes at much lower cost. The health outcomes of rural areas such as IMR, Under Five Mortality Rate (U5MR), TFR, etc. are relatively poor as compared to urban areas and there should, thus, be continued and concerted focus on healthcare needs of rural areas.

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(The Gist of Kurukshetra) National dissemination workshop on Anaemia Mukt Bharat and Home-Based Child Care

[NOVEMBER-2018]

National dissemination workshop on Anaemia Mukt Bharat and Home-Based Child Care

The two-National Dissemination Workshop on Anaemia Mukt Bharat and Home-Based Young Child Care (HBYC) was inaugurated by MoS of MoHFW. The objective of this workshop was to orient the state program managers for rolling out these interventions. The Anemia Mukt Bharat-intensified Iron-plus initiative aims to strengthen the existing mechanisms and foster newer strategies for tackling anemia, focused on six target beneficiary groups , through six interventions and six institutional mechanisms, to achieve the envisaged target under the POSHAN Abhiyan. A Toolkit was also released for Anaemia Mukt Bharat & Home-Based care for Young Child programmes.

The strategy focuses on testing & treatment of anaemia in school going adolescents & pregnant women using newer technologies, establishing institutional mechanisms for advanced research in anaemia, and a comprehensive communication strategy including mass/mid media communication material. A web-portal anemiamuktbharat.info has also been developed as part of the monitoring mechanism of the strategy, which would provide survey data on anemia across beneficiary groups, target prevalence of anaemia as per POSHAN abhiyan and quarterly HMIS based reporting of programme implementation coverage upto the district level.

The programme is envisaged to be implemented as an extension to the existing HBNC programme and will be rolled out in a phased manner. In the first phase the programme will be rolled out in all the identified Aspirational Districts. In the second phase, all the remaining districts under Poshan Abhiyan will be included and in the third phase programme this shall be expanded to cover all the districts in the country. Under the HBYC programme, five additional home visits by ASHAs are proposed after the visit on 42nd day, as in the existing HBNC programme. Thus, the contact of new-born with the health system is extended till 2nd year of birth.

India has taken huge strides in reducing Maternal Mortality ratio and achieving MDGs and these initiatives will address the burden of anaemia and under-nutrition among children in the country. With an average prevalence of 40 percent across all age group, anaemia still is a challenge which needs attention. The Home-based Care of Young Child programme has an objective to reduce child mortality and morbidity by improving nutrition status, growth and early childhood development of young children through structured and focused home visits by ASHAs with the support of Anganwadi workers.

ASHA will ensure exclusive breastfeeding till 6 months of life, adequate complementary feeding after 6 months, Iron and Folic Acid supplementation, full immunization of children, regular growth monitoring, appropriate use of ORS, appropriate hand washing practices and age appropriate playing and communication for children during each home visit. Dedicated skill building, additional incentives, provision of additional commodities and additional home visits for SNCU discharged & sick-newborns are also included in the programme.

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(GIST OF YOJANA) Swachh Rail, Swachh Bharat

[NOVEMBER-2018]

Swachh Rail, Swachh Bharat

Rail transport is one of the most efficient and eco-friendly means for mass transportation of goods and passengers among the popular modes. India Railways has always has always committed itself towards adopting measures which are least detrimental to the environment, despite the impact of large-scale population and regional effects.

On October 2, 2014 on the occasion of 145th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the Government of India officially launched the national level campaign, “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” to achieve the dream of a clean India by October 2 ,2019. Consequent to the launch of the national level campaign, the Ministry of Railways launched the Swachh Rail, Swachh Bharat

Campaign with the mission to improve cleanliness across railway station premises and trains. Indian Railways has more than 8700 stations, running an average of over 13000 trains every day. Maintaining and improving cleanliness of these stations and trains is a moment task due to heavy footfalls/overcrowding. Uncontrolled usage nad passengers habits, particularly on trains and at major stations where passengers tend to remain for long hours.

Clean train Stations’ (CTS) are provided for limited mechanised cleaning services to passing through trains during their stoppage at selected stations enroute. So far 39 CTSs have been made operational across Indian Railways. Furthermore, to create awareness among passengers, cleanliness drivers have been launched by IR towards significant and sustainable improvements in cleanliness standards of trains and railway stations.

To assets the impact of cleanliness efforts at major stations, third party survey on cleanliness indicator is periodically being done at 407 major stations. Survey reports include guidelines for various steps to be taken to improve cleanliness standards.

Cleanliness Drive: Modalities

The mechanism of selecting the competent agency through the open, transparent , fair and competitive bidding process has been given impetus through process reforms for service contracts. Integrated Housekeeping Contracts have been put up in place at major stations to promote use of mechanised cleaning equipments and quality materials. General Conditions of Contracts(GCC) for service contracts has been introduced on Indian Railways to guide the Zonal Railways to tackle various situations governing the execution of service contracts Earlier, service contracts. Earlier, service contracts were also governed by GCC of works contract, which had different conditions focussing on creation/maintenance of assets and thus, were proving of service contracts.

In the new standard bid document issued for housekeeping of stations, coaching depots and trains, a 10 percent weightage has been given to use of type and quantity of consumables and machinery, in the evaluation of contractor’s performances which is linked to the monthly payments. Two-packet tendering system is followed. In addition to the minimum eligibility criteria, only the bidders scoring minimum 70 percent in technical evaluation stage will qualify for opening of financial bids. Provision of biometric attendance , payment linked to users feedback and price variation clause to ensure payment of minimum wages are some of the key features included to overcome manpower issues affecting housekeeping contracts. Zonal railways have started processing tenders based on this standards bid document. Empowerment of field officers has been done to cater to service exigencies. Notwithstanding, in case of complaints/unsatisfactory work regarding cleanliness, necessary action is taken to avoid such complaints and suitable penalty is imposed on the contractor as per contract conditions. Additional toilets at Railway Stations have been installed including Pay-and-Use toilets. Enforcement of Indian railways(Penalties for activities affecting cleanliness at railway premises) Rules 2012 has been intensified. Use of CCTVs for monitoring cleanliness activities at major stations has also been increased.

Effective Customer Engagement

Weekly intensive cleanliness drives have been undertaken at various railway stations in rotation by Zonal Railways. Theme based drivers are also undertaken from time to time with focus on cleanliness in different areas of railway working. Charitable Institution /Social Organisations including voluntary organisation have been associated to undertake cleanliness awareness campaigns. Use of social media, electronic media, public announcements etc. is being made to create awareness amongst rail users about cleanliness. An amount , of Rs. 2522 crores was spent on Cleanliness and sanitation, including bio-toilet by Railways in 2017-18.

Indian Railways have already introduced social media platform for customer engagement through twitter handles of the Ministry of Railways@ Rail Min India, facebook page “Ministry of Railways-India” as well as twitter handles of all Divisional Railway Managers of Indian Railways for effective customer engagement. This has proved to be a more effective interactive mechanism with passengers where issues are addressed on real time basis.

Passengers have begun to realise the power of social media and are now religiously resorting to Twitter and Facebook for quicker resolution of their issue and to speak response to their queries. Any passenger, touch with railways on real time basis for assistance. This facility was not available earlier The interactive mechanism with passengers works as under-

The official reads the tweet/post and tags it to the concerned authority(i.e. Zone/Division/Railway Board Directorate).

After a tweet/post reaches a division, concerned branch officer takes immediate action to provide the necessary help/assistance, thereby resolving the issue of the passenger. Once the issue gets resolved, the official tweets the status of the complain appropriately.

Tweets/posts received regarding ‘cleanliness and hygiene in coaches and stations, are taken care of through the above system on real time basis.

Along with forwarding such complains through Twitters, passengers are also made aware of the already existing system of “Clean My Coach” ( wherein one can SMS his PNR no. to 58888 to get their complaint registered for cleanliness at his seat ) and helpline no. 138 . In addition an online Complaint Management System (coms) is also functional where users can register their complaints.

Bio-Friendly Technology

Railways actively supported and participated in the drive launched by Government of India against Open Defecation (OD) on Sept 25, 2016. Bio-toilet technology has been developed jointly by Indian Railways (IR) and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) . This environment friendly , low-cost and robust technology is the first of its kind in the railway system has been tested by DRDO conditions like those at Siachen Glacier. The biggest advantage of this technology is that the colony of anaerobic bacteria converts human waste management into water and biogases Dioxide CO2). The gases escape into the atmosphere and the waste water in discharged after disinfection on to the track . Raw human waste thus does not fall on the railway track and this keeps railway station premises /tracks clean. To avoid misuse of bio-toilets, awareness programmes to educate the passengers on ‘how to use bio-toilets dos and don'ts are regularly conducted by Zonal Railways by providing stickers in coach toilets, playing audio/video clipping and model display etc.

With an aim to provide clean and efficient toilets and to reduce the water consumption in toilets. IR is doing a trial of Bio-Vaccum Toilets area on the coach . The fecal matter gets digested in the bio-tanks on board. Integrated mechanised cleaning is being provided in over 1000 trains, mechanised laundries are being set up to improve quality of washing of linen provided to AC coach passengers .

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(The Gist of Kurukshetra) POSHAN ABHIYAN: TOWARDS HOLISTIC NUTRITION

[NOVEMBER-2018]

POSHAN ABHIYAN: TOWARDS HOLISTIC NUTRITION

In the last decade, India has made some improvements in tackling malnutrition. For instance, stunting has declined from 48% in 2005-06 to 38.4% in 2015-16. Similarly, underweight prevalence has reduced by 0.68 percentage points from NFHS-3. However, gaps remain. According to the National Family Health Survey-4, over one-third of all under-five children are stunted, every fifth child is wasted, and more than 50% children are anaemic. Further, half of women in the reproductive age-group are anaemic and only 10% of children between the ages of 6 and 23 months are receiving an adequate diet.

Another challenge is that there is a large disparity in nutritional outcomes between states as well as population groups. For instance, according to NFHS-4 data, the states which have the maximum population of undernourished people are Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. The problem of overweight people, on the other hand, is more acute in Andhra Pradesh, sikkim and Goa. Anaemia levels in women range from 45% in Karnataka to 63% in Haryana.

Early onset of malnutrition causes irreversible damage with reduced cognitive and physical growth and development, increased susceptibility to diseases, diminished capacity to learn, poor performance in school and a lifetime of lost earning potential. This, is order to fully realize the potential of our children, capitalize on our demographic dividend and catalyse economic growth, urgent measures are necessary as nutritional deficiencies in childhood have a compounding effect in adulthood, both in the short and long term.

Determinants of Malnutrition

There are several underlying determinants of malnutrition including lack of access to health services, safe drinking water, sanitation and household food security as well as unhealthy behavioural practices. As a result, both direct and indirect interventions in areas like agriculture, education, and drinking water, sanitation and gender equity, impact outcomes in nutrition. For instance, several studies have highlighted the link between inadequate sanitation, diarrhea and stunting in children. Similarly, a greater influence of women in household decisions plays a major role in the nutritional choices made by households. This means that implementing programs in a fragmented manner can contribute significantly to the persistence of malnutrition. A comprehensive and coordinated approach is therefore necessary for addressing the multiple and inter-related determinants of malnutrition across the life cycle of an individual.

Pillars of the Abhiyaan:

One of the most important pillars of the POSHAN Abhiyaan is programmatic convergence for enabling the development of a shared understanding of roles and responsibilities as well as mutual accountability mechanisms across sectors. For instance, agriculture plays a crucial role in enabling the availability of nutritious food. However, within the policy arena, agriculture and nutrition are largely treated as separate issues. Similarly, although women play a key role in providing good care within the household, including nutritious food, gender-related policies rarely emphasise these vital linkages. Further, linkages with programs in sanitation are critical because although the percentage of the population defecating in the open has reduced, the density of open defecation has increased, resulting in an enhanced exposure to disease causing pathogens, Such an approach would draw upon various programs in health, sanitation and gender, among other sectors.

Another key aspect of the Abhiyaan is focusing on the first 1,000 days of child’s life by providing health and nutrition services in an intensive manner. Studies indicate that 80% of the drain development occurs this stage. Home visits would be conducted by frontline health workers, thereby shifting the approach from centre-based to outreach-based. This will enable the entire family to be sensitized, instead of being restricted to mothers who visit Anganwadi Centres. Thus, in addition to ensuring the availability of age appropriate complementary foods, counseling families about the importance of feeding practices and the ability to take early corrective action, as required. Further, there will be an emphasis not just on food but a range of essential health care measures, including birth spacing, delaying age of marriage, exclusive breastfeeding for 6 month and immunization.

Incentives will also be provided to states and districts based on the improvements to the nutritional status of their respective populations in the form of both high absolute levels of achievement as well as positive changer in key indicators. Further, greater flexibility will be given to states so that they can focus on health and nutrition interventions that best address their needs. The geographic spread and diversity of India calls for customized interventions. The sub-group of Chief Ministers set up to review Centrally

Sponsored Schemes had universally recommended a flexible component in every scheme besides decentralized decision making by states on the pattern of the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana. Additionally, the success of the Atal Bal Mission in Madhya Pradesh which provided some untied funds at the district level from state resources to supplement grants under the integrated Child Development Services is a case in point.

Educating Communities:

Household choices with respect to food types and preparatory practices impact outcomes in nutrition to a great extent. A major challenge is that families are often unaware that the young infant is slipping into malnutrition until it becomes patently visible. An education community about nutritious food, effective and hygienic food preparation and storage as well as improved water and sanitation is important for enabling them to make informed choices. The success of the nutrition effort in other countries including Thailand, Peru, Brazil and Zimbabwe has been attributed at least partially to their ability to involve local communities. Greater community ownership can enhance awareness of nutrition-related issues, improve practices and expand outreach to the most vulnerable groups.

A recent World Bank report estimates that about two-third of the workforce in India earns on average 13% less than what they would have if they had not been stunted during childhood. Another World Bank Study calculates that malnutrition costs India’s GDP between 2 and 3 percentage points every year. With the launch of the POSHAN Abhiyaan, we have a historical opportunity to change these statistics and conquer malnutrition.

National Nutrition Month (Poshan Maah) witnesses overwhelming People’s participate

September was celebrate as the Rashtriya Poshan Maah across the country to address the malnutrition challenger and sensitize our countrymen regarding the importance of holistic nutrition. Poshan Maah aimed at making people aware of the importance of nutrition & giving individual access to government services to support supplement nutrition for their children & pregnant women /lactating mothers.

Ministry of Women & Child Development as the nodal agency, launched Rashtriya Poshan Maah or National Nutrition Month, across the length and breadth of the country on the 01st of Sep 2018. With wide range of activities focusing on antenatal care, anaemia, growth monitoring, girl’s education, diet, right age of marriage, hygiene and sanitation, eating healthy as themes were organized during the Poshan Maah. Entire range of themes were exhibited and showcased in form food melas, rellies, school level campaigns, anaemia tests camps, recipe demonstration, radio & TV talk shows, seminars all across country. As per latest reports, 23 lakhs activities across the country were recorded on Jan Andolan Dashboard wherein approximately 27 crore people were reached through these activities in this nationwide exercise, out of which one third were men. In order to keep the momentum of the awareness being generated country wide, the Ministry will be awarding Exemplary performers with Poshan Awards on the 10th of this October. He also added that National Institute on Nutrition report next year. This report, dealing with various parameters of nutrition will now be compiled annually to give more frequent feedback on status of nutrition in the country. The secretary also disclosed that the ICDS-CAS rollout is also moving at a good pace and more than 4 lakh Anganwadis will be covered by this IT tool by December this year.

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(The Gist of Kurukshetra) AYUSHMAN BHARAT-PMjAY: INDIA’S ANSWER TO UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

[NOVEMBER-2018]

AYUSHMAN BHARAT-PMjAY: INDIA’S ANSWER TO UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

India has achieved significant public health gains and improvements in health care access and quality over the last three decades. The health sector is amongst the largest and fastest growing sectors, expected to reach US$ 280 billion by 2020. At the same time, India’s health sector faces immense challenges. It continues to be characterized by high out-of- pocket expenditure, low financial protection, low health insurance coverage amongst both rural and urban population. It is a matter of grave concern that we incur a high out-of-pocket expenditure on account of health and medical costs. 62.58% of our population has to pay for its own health and hospitalization expenses and are not covered through any form of health protection. Besides using their income and savings, people borrow money or sell their assets to meet their healthcare needs, thereby pushing 4.6% of the population below the poverty line. The Government is committed to ensure that its population below the poverty line. The Government is committed to ensure that its population has universal access to good quality health care services without anyone having to face financial hardship as a consequence.

Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) aims to reduce the financial burden on poor and vulnerable groups arising out of catastrophic hospital episodes and ensure their access to quality health service. It seeks to accelerate India’s progress towards achievement of Universal Health coverage (UHC) and sustainable Development Goal-3 (SDG3).

To ensure that nobody is left out, their will be no cap on family size and age in the Mission. The scheme is cashless & paperless at public hospitals and empanelled private hospitals. The beneficiaries are not required to pay any charges for the hospitalization expenses. The benefit also includes pre and post-hospitalization expenses. The scheme is entitlement based, the beneficiary id decided in the basis of family being figured in SECC database. When fully implemented, the AB-PA-JAY will become the world’s largest government funded health protection mission.

The initiatives are as follows:-

Health and Wellness Centre:- The National Health Policy, 2017 has envisioned Health and wellness Centres as the foundation of India’s health system. Under this, 1.5 lakh centres will bring care system closer to the homes of people. These centres will provide comprehensive health care, including for non-communicable diseases and maternal and child health services. These centres will also provide free essential drugs and diagnostic services. The Budget has allocated Rs. 1200 crore for this flagship programme. Contribution of private sector through CSR and philanthropic institutions in adopting these centres is also envisaged.

National Health Protection Scheme:- The second flagship programme under Ayushman Bharat is National Health Protection Scheme, which will cover over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families providing coverage upto 5 lakh rupees per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization. This will be the world’s largest government funded health care programme. Adequate funds will be provided for its smooth implementation.

The Finance Minister further said, that these twp health sector initiatives under Ayushman Bharat Programme will build a New India 2022 and ensure enhanced productivity, well being and avert wage loss and impoverishment. These Schemes will also generate lakhs of jobs, particularly for women.

In order to further enhance accessibility of quality medical education and health care, 24 new Government Medical Colleges and Hospitals will be set up, by upgrading existing district hospitals in the country. This would ensure that there is at least 1 medical college for every 3 Parliamentary Constituencies and at least 1 Government Medical College in each State of the country.

Implementation Strategy: At the national level to manage, an Agency would be put In place. States/ Uts world be advised to implement the scheme by a dedicated entity called State Health Agency (SHA). They can either use an existing Trust/ Society/Not for Profit Company/State Nodal Agency (SNA) or set up a new entity to implement the scheme. States/UTs can decide to implement the scheme. States/UTs can decided to implement the scheme through an insurance company or directly through the Trust/Society or use an integrated model.

Major Impact: In- patient hospitalization expenditure in India has increased nearly 300% during last ten years. More than 80% of the expenditure are met by out of pocket. Rural household primarily depended on their ‘household income/savings’ and on ‘borrowings’, the urban households relied much more on their ‘income/saving’ for financing expenditure on hospitalizations, and on borrowings. Out of pocket expenditure in India is over 60% which leads to nearly 6 million families getting into poverty due to catastrophic health expenditures. AB-PMJAY will have major impact on reduction of Out Of Pocket (OOP) expenditure on ground of:

Increased benefit cover to nearly to nearly 40% of the population, Covering almost all secondary and many tertiary hospitalizations, Coverage of 5 lakh for each family,

This will lead to increased access to quality health and medication. In addition, the unmet needs of the population which remained hidden due to lack of financial resources will be catered to. This will lead to timely treatments, improvements in health outcomes, patient satisfaction, improvement in productivity and efficiency, job creation thus leading to improvement in quality of life.

“Ayushman Bharat-NHPM is in synergy with NHM and will strengthen public health infrastructure. Various measure like identity validation through Aadhaar, cost control etc., make the Ayushman Bharat easily accessible and transparent in approach. The Health Minister said that Ayushman Bharat-NHPM will also strengthen spirit of cooperative federalism. “NHPM provides ease to be merged with the ongoing health protection or insurance schemes in various ministries and governments.”

Expenditure involved:

The expenditure incurred in premium payment will be shared between Central and States Government in specified ratio as per Ministry of Finance guidelines in vogue. The total expenditure will depend on actual market determined premium paid in States/Uts where AB-NHPM will be implemented through insurance companies. In States/Uts where the scheme will be implemented in Trust/Society mode, the central share of funds will be provided based on actual expenditure or premium ceiling in the predetermined ratio.

Number of Beneficiaries: AB-PMJAY will target about 10.74 crore poor, deprived rural families and identified occupational category of urban workers families as per the latest Socio-Economic Caste Census data covering both rural and urban. The scheme is designed to be dynamic any aspirational and it would take into account any future changer in the exclusion/inclusion/deprivation/occupational criteria in the SECC data.

States/Districts covered: AB-PMJAY will be rolled out across all states/ Uts in all districts with an objective to cover all the targeted beneficiaries.

Impact: According to international rating agency Moody’s Ayushman Bharat is credit positive for insurance companies as it will aide in higher premium growth. “The launch of universal health coverage is credit positive for the country’s insurers because it will help grow health premiums and provide insurers with cross-selling and servicing opportunities,” Moody’s said in a report.

British medical journal Lancet has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for prioritizing universal healthcare with his Ayushman Bharat initiative. An article by the journal’s editor-in-chief Richard Horton appreciated the Modi government for recognizing the ‘perils of public discontent about health’ after years of neglect. Modi is the first Indian Prime Minister to priorities universal health coverage as part of his political platform, Horton wrote in his article.

How to get covered under Ayushman Bharat Yojana? It’s simple … Just memorize the helpline number of the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, 14555. PM Modi says this number must be memorized by every citizen of India. Ayushman Bharat Yojana helpline: 14555.

Conclusion:

The scheme is innovative and path-breaking in the history of public health in India, which may have a transformative impact if implemented in an effective and coordinated manner. The scheme will also help in enriching the database of hospitals registered with the Registry of Hospitals in Network of Insurance System and the human capital captured under the National Health Resource Repository project. This can later be used innovatively for improvement of access to and quality of healthcare service in the country. The scheme will have a multiplier impact on the healthcare and allied sectors like pharmaceutical, diagnostics and medical devices and the overall Indian economy by way of employment generation. In the long run, AB-PMJAY should envision strengthening of primary care, inclusion of out-patients treatment and a public healthcare delivery system, and expanding the scope of coverage to the entire population in order to make the government’s transition from provider to payer a successful one and achieve Universal Health Coverage in the true sense.

Study Material for UPSC General Studies Pre Cum Mains

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Paper : General Studies and Engineering Aptitude

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