SPARC- The Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration aims at improving the research ecosystem of India’s Higher Educational Institutions by facilitating academic and research collaborations bw Indian Institutions and the best institutions in the world from 28 selected nations to jointly solve problems of national and/or international relevance.

By MHRD

The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) Programme launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MoHUPA), in Mission mode envisions provision of Housing for All by 2022, when the Nation completes 75 years of its Independence.

Address the housing requirement of urban poor including slum dwellers through following programme verticals:

• Slum rehabilitation + participation of private developers using land as a resource
• Promotion of Affordable Housing for weaker section through credit linked subsidy
• Affordable Housing in Partnership with Public & Private sectors
• Subsidy for beneficiary-led individual house construction /enhancement.

Julia programming language
The  Julia programming language ranked #37 in the  TIOBE index ranking of programming languages.

Highlights:

• Known for its speed, high performance, and versatile nature to run on several platforms.
• It  allows researchers to write high-level code in an intuitive syntax
• It produce code with the speed of production programming languages
• It  has been widely adopted by the scientific computing community for application areas that include astronomy, economics, deep learning, energy optimization, and medicine.

Mohan Reddy Committee- A government committee headed by IIT-Hyderabad chairman B V R Mohan Reddy has submitted its report and that its suggestions are being considered by AICTE.

The committee was appointed to come up with a medium and short-term perspective plan for expansion in engineering education

Important recommendations made by the committee:

• Stop setting up new colleges from 2020 and review the creation of new capacity every 2 years after that.
• No additional seats should be approved in traditional engineering areas such as mechanical, electrical, civil and electronics and institutes should be encouraged to convert current capacity in traditional disciplines to emerging new technologies.
• For approving additional seats in existing institutions, the AICTE should only give approvals based on the capacity utilisation of concerned institute.
• Introduce undergraduate engineering programmes exclusively for artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics, quantum computing, data sciences, cybersecurity and 3D printing and design.

https://www.dhyeyaias.com/brain-booster/committee-on-engineering-education

The India Post Payments Bank
is a public sector company under the Department of Posts and Ministry of Communication where the Indian government holds 100 per cent equity.
Highlights:

• The payments bank will be governed by RBI.
• It offer a range of products such as savings and current accounts, money transfer, direct benefit transfers, bill and utility payments, and enterprise and merchant payments.
• These products, and related services, will be offered across multiple channels (counter services, micro-ATM, mobile banking app, SMS and IVR), using the bank’s state-of-the-art technology platform.
• NO ATM debit card. Instead, it will provide its customers a QR Code-based biometric card.
• 3rd party financial services such as insurance, mutual funds, pension, credit products and forex.

Universal Basic Income –
Economic Survey for the year 2016-17 has an entire chapter dedicated to the discussion on Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Universal + Periodic+ Unconditional cash transfer to every citizen in the country.
NO social + economic position bias

How UBI works?

• Under UBI, only those with zero income will receive the full benefits in net terms.
• For those, who earn additional income over the basic income, the net benefits will taper off through taxation.
• So even though the basic income is universal, only the poor will receive the full benefits.

click link for mind map

CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS(CPS)
The  cabinet approved the launching of National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NMICPS) which is to be implemented by Department of Science & Technology for a period of 5 years.

About Cyber-physical system (CPS):

• CPS is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the deployment of computer-based systems that do things in the physical world. It integrates sensing, computation, control and networking into physical objects and infrastructure, connecting them to the Internet and to each other.
• Examples of cyber physical systems are Smart Grid Networks, Smart Transportation System, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Utility Service Infrastructure for Smart Cities, etc.
• CPS and its associated technologies, like Artificial Intelligence (Al), Internet of Things (loT), Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DP), Big Data Analytics, Robotics, Quantum Computing, Quantum Communication, Quantum encryption (Quantum Key Distribution), Data Science & Predictive analytics, Cyber Security for physical infrastructure and other infrastructure plays a transformative role in almost every field of human endeavor in all sectors.

EWS- Economically weaker Section
The Union Cabinet has approved a proposal for introduction of the Constitution (124th Amendment) Bill, extending 10% quota to “the economically weaker sections in the general category who are not covered by any of the existing schemes of reservation”
Amendment of Article 15 = Reservation in Educational Institutions +
Article 16 = Reservation in Jobs

India’s First Lithium Ion Giga Factory

BHEL and LIBCOIN to Build India’s First Lithium Ion Giga Factory.

• It will create integrated manufacturing ecosystem resulting in self-reliance and lower cost.
• The supply chain in combination with cutting edge digital technologies to replace high CAPEX and high OPEX processes.

GI TAgs- Geographic Indication for > 300 registered
International market development
Boost for Export + Genuine material+ correct pricing + legal protection for farmers & artisans

Angel Tax–
The government has eased the norms under which start-ups can apply for exemption from the angel tax which would otherwise be applicable on them. What is angel tax??-the income tax payable on capital raised by unlisted companies via issue of shares where the share price is seen in excess of the fair market value of the shares sold. It has come to be called angel tax since it largely impacts angel investments in startups

Small Farmers’ Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC)

GOI concluded the silver Jubilee Celebrations of the Small Farmers’ Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC).

The consortium:
1. The Government established Small Farmers’ Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC) as a Society in January 1994.
2. To facilitate agri-business ventures by catalysing private investment through Venture Capital Assistance (VCA) Scheme in close association with financial institutions.

The main functions:

• Promotion of development of small agribusiness through VCA scheme.
• Helping formation and growth of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) / Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs).

The limits of management capacity for tiger habitation
The conservation efforts are aimed at increasing the tiger count in India, global experts and officials in the government suggest that India must also prepare for a new challenge of reaching the limits of its management capacity.

Current situation:

• India had 2,226 tigers as of 2014.
• An ongoing census is expected to reach more numbers.
• 25-35% of India’s tigers now lived outside protected reserves.
• India’s current capacity to host tigers ranged from 2,500-3,000 tigers.

Reasons for limited management capacity:

• Dwindling core forest
• Shrinking of tiger corridors
• Poaching
• Man-animal conflict

Remedial measures:

• Develop tiger corridors
• Curbing poaching
• Minimise an-animal conflict
• Increase core forest