Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) launched National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) in January, 2019 with an aim to improve air quality in 131 cities (non-attainment cities and Million Plus Cities in 24 States by engaging all stakeholders. The Programme envisages to achieve reductions up to 40% or achievement of National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter10 (PM 10) concentrations by 2025-26. Under the Programme, Cities are required to take measures to improve air quality inter-alia include solid waste management, control of pollution from biomass burning and air pollution from construction & demolition activities.
India’s largest floating Solar Power Project is now fully operational. NTPC declared Commercial Operation of the final part capacity of 20 MW out of 100 MW Ramagundam Floating Solar PV Project at Ramagundam, Telangana with effect from 00:00 hours of July 01, 2022. The 100-MW Floating Solar project at Ramagundam is endowed with advanced technology as well as environment friendly features. Constructed with financial implication of Rs. 423 crores through M/s BHEL as EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) contract, the project spreads over 500 acres of its reservoir. Divided into 40 blocks, each having 2.5 MW. Each block consists of one floating platform and an array of 11,200 solar modules. The floating platform consists of one Inverter, Transformer, and a HT breaker. The solar modules are placed on floaters manufactured with HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) material.
The National Monuments Authority is to submit a report on comprehensive development of Mahuli Group of Temples to Ministry of Culture. The famous group of temples - known as Dakshin Kashi, comprise of five temples belonging to 11th and 12th CE in Hemadpanthi style of architecture and are located near Satara. Read more at www.pointias.com
The National Wildlife Database Cell of Wildlife Institute of India (WII) has been developing a National Wildlife Information System (NWIS) on the Protected Areas of the country. India has a network of 987 Protected Areas including 106 National Parks, 564 Wildlife Sanctuaries, 99 Conservation Reserves and 218 Community Reserves covering a total of 1,73,053.69 km2 of geographical area of the country which is approximately 5.26%.
Important reports and indices published by the ‘World Bank'.
The third edition of Indian Navy (IN) – Bangladesh Navy (BN) Bilateral Exercise ‘Bongosagar’ commenced at Port Mongla, Bangladesh on 24 May 22. The Harbour Phase of exercise is scheduled from 24-25 May which will be followed by a Sea Phase in the Northern Bay of Bengal from 26-27 May.
Important reports and indices published by the ‘World Economic Forum’.
India has achieved its NDC targets well before the stipulated time.
The Sowa-Rigpa, system of medicine is one of the oldest surviving and well-documented medical traditions of the world with history of more than 2500 years. It is also popularly known as Amchi and popularly practiced in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Darjeeling.
In line with the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, the government has launched the “GatiShakti Sanchar” portal for Centralised Right of Way (RoW) approvals. The portal has been developed keeping in view the vision areas of the National Broadband Mission at the core, which are, providing broadband infrastructure as a core utility to every citizen, Governance and services on demand and in particular, digital empowerment of the citizens of our country. National Broadband Mission (NBM) was set up by the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) on December 17, 2019; to facilitate universal and equitable access to broadband services across the country, especially in rural and remote areas. To fulfil this vision, it is imperative that a backbone of infrastructure is created by facilitating smooth and efficient deployment of Digital Communications Infrastructure across the country. To ensure that, DoT, is launching the “GatiShakti Sanchar” portal. This will provide a robust mechanism to achieve the goal of “Broadband for All” as envisaged in the National Digital Communication Policy-2. The portal shall act as an enabler to the objective of “Ease of doing business” for telecommunications infrastructure works. The timely disposal of RoW applications of various Service and Infrastructure providers shall enable speedy infrastructure creation which would be an enabler for timely rollout of 5G Network also.
NITI Aayog recently launched the National Data & Analytics Platform (NDAP) for open public use. The platform aims to democratize access to public government data by making data accessible, interoperable, interactive, and available on a user-friendly platform. It hosts foundational datasets from various government agencies, presents them coherently, and provides tools for analytics and visualization. NDAP follows a use-case based approach to ensure that the datasets hosted on the platform are tailored to the needs of data users from government, academia, journalism, civil society and the private sector. All datasets are standardized to a common scheme which makes it easy to merge datasets and do cross-sectoral analysis. The main value that NDAP adds is making key foundational datasets interoperable with each other. This will enable easy cross-sectoral analysis and democratize the use of Indian government data. NDAP aims to aid India’s progress by promoting data-driven disclosure, decision making and ensuring availability of data connecting till the last mile. India has a rich data ecosystem which generates data that is invaluable for decision making and research. NDAP is adding to these efforts to further strengthen the data ecosystem.
POINT IAS 