PIB 12

1. Civil society is seen as a social sphere separate from both the state and the market.

2. Article 39A of the Constitution gives mandate to offer free legal services for the poor. Remembering Late Justice V.R.Krishna Ayyar’s belief that “Society is guilty if anyone suffers unjustly.” Goal 16 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, which is dedicated to the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, the provision of access to justice for all, and building effective, accountable institutions at all levels. One of the first steps taken towards this goal would be to address the issue of the 68% of under trial prisoners lodged in various prisons. The Government joins hands with NALSA towards addressing this issue.

3. The Union Cabinet approved the Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana, UDAY in its meeting last week, newly unveiled debt restructuring plan for DISCOMs.UDAY provides for the financial turnaround and revival of Power Distribution companies (DISCOMs). the weakest link in the power value chain is distribution, wherein DISCOMs in the country have accumulated losses. Discoms were trapped in a vicious cycle with operational losses being funded by debt. The new scheme UDAY lays thrust on four initiatives for financial turnaround of Discoms. (i) Improving operational efficiencies of DISCOMs; (ii) Reduction of cost of power; (iii) Reduction in interest cost of DISCOMs; (iv) Enforcing financial discipline on DISCOMs through alignment with State finances. The energy efficiency under UDAY would be achieved by reduction in interest rate, reduction in aggregate technical and commercial losses, increase in coal availability, improving billing and collection efficiency, and better demand side management

4. Paris agreement to be based on equity and Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR & RC). We strongly believe that there can be no Action Holiday in the pre-2020 period. While post-2020 Finance has to be predictable and scaled up from USD 100 Billion onwards, The commitment to provide finance by developed countries is based on their historical responsibilities and not only on their economic capacities. Any attempts, therefore, to enlarge the donor base by ‘countries in a position to do so’ or ‘countries willing to do so’, will not be appropriate from our perspective.

5. 6th Asian Ministerial Energy Roundtable:the issue of equitable access to affordable energy; only then can the growth be termed as truly inclusive. Unfortunately, a vast cross-section of India’s population still does not have access to energy simply on account of lack of purchasing power. I believe that an opportune time has now come when this “Energy Poverty” must give way to “Energy Justice”. In order to do so, the oil suppliers must make earnest efforts for a Responsible & Reasonable Pricing which will be sustainable. He also reiterated the demand to end the practice of charging “Asian Premium” and instead provide “Asian Dividend” to countries like India. He advocated that to achieve a more stable oil market large buyers and large sellers of oil need to develop mutual investment linkages.

6. The objective behind abolition of interviews for such posts is that it will curb corruption, ensure more objective selection in a transparent manner and substantially ease the problems of the poor and resourceless aspirants. This will not only enable giving more weightage to the merit but also supplement the government’s resolve for “Maximum Governance, Minimum Government”.

7. Implementation framework given 30% weightage, Result orientation-20%, Citizen participation-16%, smartness of solutions-10%, SWOT analysis based strategic plan-10%.second stage of ‘City Challenge Competition’

8. To stimulate growth, we need to enhance public investments, not just rely on monetary policy. G20 efforts must be aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, adopted this year, particularly with the number one goal of elimination of all poverty by 2030.

9.Manipur has a literacy rate of over 79 per cent which is higher than the average all-India literacy rate. But, in spite of this, its per capita income is lower than the average per capita income at all-India level. One of the reasons for this, he said, is inadequate utilization of the State’s human and non-human resources, as a result of which, there is a mass exodus of youth to other parts of the country and the vast woman potential also remains under-utilized in spite of the level of female emancipation and literacy being higher in comparison to other States of the country.

10. India and Bangladesh signed the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) in New Delhi today, to operationalize the “Agreement on Coastal Shipping” signed between the two countries in June, 2015. Rapid growth in bilateral trade between India and Bangladesh has led to congestion on the road at Indo-Bangladesh border and at the Land Custom Stations/integrated Check Posts.  The traffic congestion at “Petrapole” and “Benapole” on the Bangladesh side has emerged as one of the biggest impediments to the movement of EXIM cargo. Due to such congestion, the exporters/importers on both sides have been facing undue increase in the transportation cost. The present connectivity through sea route with Bangladesh is through ports of Colombo and Singapore. The long sea route adds significantly to the transportation costs of EXIM trade. There is no significant cargo movement between sea ports of Bangladesh and India as it is not profitable for the big vessels to operate between these sea ports.  Under such circumstances there is a need for smaller ships to provide direct connectivity of eastern sea ports of India with Chittagong and other ports in Bangladesh. This, besides improving the connectivity will also provide competitive freight rates.