GENERAL STUDIES PAPER 3
Topic: Infrastructure
River linking help farmers grow more and contribute in progress of the country: Vice President
Context:
- The Vice President of India said that linkage of rivers will help farmers of the country to grow more crops and increase their earnings which in turn will contribute towards the progress of the nation.
Keypoints:
- Government should make agriculture viable to the farmers by providing basic infrastructure facilities.
- Swaminathan Committee had suggested some recommendations on how to make agriculture viable, only a few recommendations were implemented so far.
- The need for providing rural infrastructure facilities like road linkage, transportation etc., so that the farmers to get better market price for their products is the need of the hour.
- Government’s recent initiative, National Agriculture Market (NAM) is a pan-India electronic trading portal which networks the existing APMC markets to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities.
- E-markets to facilitate farmers to buy and sell their produce is also a beneficial step.
- The rural electrification under Deen Dayal Upadhyaa Gram Jyoti Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sanchi Yojana for water conservation and its management and insurance cover to farmers under Pradhan Mandtri Fasal Bima Yojana are some of the other initiatives of the centre for agriculture sector.
Chairman NHAI launches new website and PMIS Mobile App
Context:
- NHAI also plans to soon launch a public interface of the PMIS desktop and App versions, so that the general public will be able to view the real-time status of any project across the Highway network.
Keypoints:
- The National Highways Authority of India launched a world class, new multilingual website of the organization.
- Within two months it will be possible for the general public to rate National Highways through this website.
- Project Monitoring Information System (PMIS) Moblie App that will facilitate close, in-house monitoring of NHAI projects on a mobile phone.
- To maintain transparency, the information is in the public domain. Apart from this, as a single point repository of all relevant information, the enterprise applications are mapped to the website, which are for internal use of NHAI.
- To ensure timely delivery of its projects, the NHAI is now digitally monitoring them through a state-of-the-art Project Monitoring Information System (PMIS), which has been developed in-house along with The Boston Consulting Group.
- PMIS has a comprehensive database with over 180 data fields being tracked for each project, and a further 500 fields specifically for complex PPP projects, covering all key progress matrics such as design progress, contracting progress, construction progress, land acquisition, compensation disbursement, toll and traffic information and concession / contract information.
- An in-built algorithm automatically highlights focus projects with key pending issues, so that focused interventions for these projects can be discussed during these reviews.
- Apart from dashboards views of data, the PMIS is also enabled with Geographical Information System (GIS), which provides a geographical visualization of all NHAI projects on an India map.
- This is a unique feature of PMIS, which enables geo-visualization of projects rather than searching through a database.
- The PMIS has enabled significant progress, with a 32% increase in construction in 2016-17 over the previous year, and with over 60% of the projects identified in 2016 with issues, now being back on track.
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CWC sign MoU with IIT Roorkee and MNNIT Allahabad to support capacity building in dam safety areas under dam rehabilitation and improvement project
Context:
- Central Water Commission (CWC) has signed MoUs with IIT Roorkee and MNNIT Allahabad to support dam rehabilitation efforts of various implementing agencies and CWC.
Keypoints:
- The scope includes strengthening the testing laboratories, enhancing analytical capabilities, exposure visits to best global institutions and on ground exposure to dam safety concerns to the faculty of these institutions.
- CWC has already signed MoUs with IIT Madras, IISc Bangaluru, NIT Calicut and NIT Raurkela for supporting these institutes for the procurement of specified equipment and software for enhancing their testing and modeling capabilities.
- Establishment of seismic instruments, certification of these installations, generation of post seismic event report having an intensity greater than 4.0 on Richter Scale and sharing of these reports with State and Central Agencies, data collection, processing, monitoring, analysis, interpretation, integration of the State Dam Seismological Network (SDSN) with Indian Dam Seismological Network (IDSN) being maintained by National Agencies to exchange the information and help to strengthen the existing seismological network for a strong national perspective plan, and conducting training programmes for the dam owning personnel.
- DRIP is assisting rehabilitation of 225 dams in seven States which are experiencing different levels of distress.
- Owners of these dams require technical support for the investigation of dam conditions and supporting rehabilitation efforts.
- The Government of India has decided to enhance the capability of selected premier academic institutes in dam safety areas so that they, in turn, carry out field investigations and material testing, and provide training and consulting services to the dam owners in their dam rehabilitation efforts.
- In addition to rehabilitation of dams, Project also has component of institutional strengthening wherein capacity building of all partners agencies as well as few selected premier academic institutions of country are being strengthened in dam safety areas by imparting trainings to operational efficiencies of these owner agencies, exposure visits to best global institutions and on ground exposure to the dam safety concerns to the faculty of these institutions.
- It is a holistic effort of the Government of India to equip our national institutions to develop capability and expertise at par with global institutions in the coming times to ensure self-reliance.
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