UPSC 2017-18: PIB Summary and Analysis Aug 22

UPSC 2017-18: PIB Summary and Analysis Aug 22 for IAS Exam Preparation.

India and Uzbekistan should work for increasing trade: Vice President

• Uzbekistan Foreign Minister calls on Vice President.
• India and Uzbekistan have close cultural and historical connections and both peoples have similar developmental aspirations.
• Traders and travelers over centuries helped exchange of ideas between countries.
• The Vice President expressed his happiness over several cultural events which were held in Uzbekistan to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between these two nations.

PM addresses Young CEOs at the "Champions of Change" initiative organised 
by NITI Aayog

• The Prime Minister today interacted with Young CEOs at the “Champions of Change – Transforming India through G2B partnership” initiative organised by NITI Aayog at Pravasi Bharatiya Kendra.
• Today was the Prime Minister’s second address in this series, following his interaction with young entrepreneurs last week.
• Six groups of young CEOs made presentations before the PM on themes such as Make in India; Doubling Farmers’ Income; World Class Infrastructure; Cities of Tomorrow; Reforming the Financial Sector; and New India by 2022.
• The Prime Minister said people’s participation is an important element of governance. This attempt at CEOs partnership with Government is aimed at enhancing their participation towards welfare of the people, and the nation.
• Development too, must become a mass movement like freedom movement of India. All Indians became soldiers for freedom, even as they continued to do their own work. Hence, he helped the freedom struggle become a mass movement. Like this everyone’s active involvement is needed for the development of the country.

Agriculture sector

• Giving the example of value addition in agriculture, the Prime Minister said a multi-pronged approach is essential for achieving desired objectives such as doubling of agriculture incomes. Emphasizing the importance of food processing, the Prime Minister said lack of infrastructure is leading to huge losses in the agriculture sector.
• The Prime Minister said the Union Government has taken a number of decisions that have brought about fundamental transformation. He gave the illustration of decisions taken for urea availability and production – such as gas price pooling; remuneration for excess production etc. This led to additional production of 20 lakh tonnes of urea. He said Neem-coating of urea ended its large scale diversion.

Towards Less-cash society

• He said that the Government wants to move towards making India a less-cash society. He asked CEOs to partner with Government to build momentum in this regard.

Development for the poor

• Khadi could be promoted through gifting etc – and this would greatly help the poor. An atmosphere must be created to take the poor along in every sphere of life.
• The Prime Minister gave the example of Government e-Marketplace (GeM) to show how small traders are competing successfully in provision of supplies to the Government. He said 1000 crore rupees have been transacted through GeM so far and 28,000 suppliers have contributed to this platform.
• The Prime Minister said Indians must take pride in their own country. He said each one should develop a temperament to promote tourist destinations within India, spontaneously among their contacts.
• Giving the example of “waste to wealth” entrepreneurs, the Prime Minister said that this can help achieve the objectives of Swachh Bharat and clean environment. He said the aim of entrepreneurs and business should be to provide products which solve simple problems faced by people in the country.

Dr Jitendra Singh calls for 'Make in India' health module

• Dr Jitendra Singh has called for establishing a “Make in India” health module while addressing the CII Health Conference organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Health in Indian society

• Indian society, as a whole, is fast evolving and at the same time, in recent years, India too has become a part of shrunken global world and this phenomenon is impacting every sphere of life including the healthcare system.
• While on the one hand, disorders like Diabetes and heart disease, which were hitherto confined to urban population, are now also on the rise in rural areas, on the other hand, the access to modern modalities of treatment is confined only to cities and big towns, as a result of which 70% of rural population gets access only to 1/3rd of country’s hospitalization facilities and over 600 million people in the country are deprived of access to affordable healthcare.
• For a heterogeneous country like India, public sector healthcare was still very much relevant.
• Healthy synergism between public sector and private sector healthcare agencies is a need of the hour.
• The minister had proposed the introduction of Helicopter Care Service in the form of Air Clinics wherein specialist doctor could fly to remote areas to hold the OPD and on way back, could also carry some needy patients requiring hospitalization. The same concept, he said, could also be applied to hill states like Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

National Workshop on Enforcement of IPRs inaugurated in New Delhi

• Counterfeiting and piracy activities give rise to serious organized crimes.
• Such activities finance criminals and terrorists who deal in counterfeit goods to launder illegal money.
• Therefore, police officials should be therefore equipped with proper knowledge and training, so as to curb and restrain IPR violations, at the very outset.

Up-gradation of functionalities for subscribers by the Central Recordkeeping 
Agencies (CRAs) for April - June Quarter ended on 30-06-2017

Finance Minister Sh Arun Jaitley chairs the 17th meeting of FSDC

• The seventeenth Meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) was held in New Delhi today under the Chairmanship of the Union Minister of Finance, Shri Arun Jaitley.
• The meeting was attended Governor of RBI; Finance Secretary, Secretary of Department of Economic Affairs, Secretary of Department of Financial Services, Secretary of Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Secretary of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Chief Economic Adviser, Chairman of SEBI; Chairman of IRDAI; Chairman of PFRDA; and other senior officers of the Government of India and financial sector regulators.
• The Council noted that India has macro-economic stability today on the back of improvements in its macro-economic fundamentals, structural reforms with the launch of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), action being taken to address the Twin Balance Sheet (TBS) challenge, extraordinary financial market confidence, reflected in high and rising bond and especially stock valuations and long-term positive consequences of demonetization.
• FSDC took note of the developments and progress made in setting up of Computer Emergency Response Team in the Financial Sector (CERT-Fin) and Financial Data Management Centre and discussed measures for time bound implementation of the institution building initiative.

National Sports Awards – 2017

• National Sports Awards are given every year to recognize and reward excellence in sports.
• Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award is given for the spectacular and most outstanding performance in the field of sports by a sportsperson over a period of four year, Arjuna Award is given for consistency outstanding performance for four years, Dronacharya Award for coaches for producing medal winners at prestigious International sports events, Dhyan Chand Award for life time contribution to sports development.

GS paper II

GS Paper III