07 August 2018: UPSC Exam PIB Summary & Analysis

Read the daily PIB update and stay up-to-date on current affairs for the UPSC exam

Kaziranga National Park in Assam not under the ‘Adopt a Heritage’ scheme

  • No sites have been adopted by any private institute in Assam under the ‘Adopt a Heritage’ scheme. 
  • Any monument/heritage site/natural site for whose inclusion, the concerned asset owner (ASI, State Government etc) agrees can be considered under the Adopt a Heritage Scheme.

Adopt a Heritage – Salient Feature of Project Guidelines

  • ‘Adopt a Heritage’ project focusses on providing basic public conveniences and amenities which include cleanliness, drinking water, ease of access for differently abled and senior citizens, standardized signage, illumination and advanced amenities such as surveillance system, night viewing facilities, tourism facilitation centre etc.
  • Aim: To involve public sector companies, private sector companies and corporate citizens/individuals to take up the responsibility for making our heritage and tourism more sustainable through development, operation and maintenance of world-class tourist infrastructure and amenities at ASI/State heritage sites and other important tourist sites in India.

Primary objectives of the project include:

  • To develop basic and advanced tourism infrastructure in and around heritage monuments and any other tourist sites in collaboration with the public/private sector.
  • To promote cultural and heritage value of the country to generate livelihoods of local communities of respective heritage site/monument/tourist site.
  • To develop sustainable tourism infrastructure and ensuring proper Operations and Maintenance therein and thus increase the attractiveness of the tourist destinations.

Adopting a monument/heritage/tourist site include the following main approaches:

  • Submission of Expression of Interest (EoI): Agencies/organizations/individuals interested in adopting a monument/heritage/tourist site are required to submit an Expression of Interest (EoI) upon which the EoI is examined for compliance to the project guidelines and a Letter of Intent (LoI) is awarded to the potential Monument Mitra.
  • Need-Gap Analysis & Vision Bidding: Monument Mitras are required to carry out a need gap analysis for all the selected monuments in collaboration with the asset owners and submit Vision Bids. The Vision Bids would reflect the needs of every individual monument/heritage/tourist site. The Vision Bids are evaluated by the Oversight & Vision Committee (O&VC) and given in-principle approval on fulfillment of the extant project guidelines.
  • Signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU): A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is signed following which, a Detailed Project Report (DPR) is required to be submitted by the successful Monument Mitra to the asset owner. The asset owner in turn does a detailed examination of the DPR as per the extant guidelines prior to the execution of the proposed activities.

NITI Aayog’s workshop with Civil Society Organizations of Jammu & Kashmir

  • NITI Aayog in collaboration with the Jammu & Kashmir Government organized a daylong workshop in Srinagar today with the Civil Society Organizations, CSOs from the state to strengthen partnership between the service delivery CSOs and the government.
  • Member Coordinator of NITI-CSO committee, Amod Kanth emphasized the need to build on a collaborative approach between the government and the CSOs.
  • He stated that  a Joint Action Plan be prepared that outlines meaningful participation of CSOs per thematic areas of Women Empowerment, Child Welfare and Health, Senior Citizens, Welfare of the differently abled, Children in Conflict with Law, and Youth Engagement.
  • The CSOs were divided in six thematic groups, along with representatives from the state government and the central government.
  • Each group made a presentation detailing action points for the stakeholder towards building a more inclusive approach for socio-economic development in the state of J&K.
  • The conference evolved strategy to forge deeper and constructive ties between the Government organisation and the Civil Services Organisations for improving delivery services to common people.

TRAI integrates its Mobile App DND 2.0 & MyCall with UMANG Platform

  • TRAI integrates its Mobile App DND 2.0 & MyCall with UMANG Platform with the objective of reaching out to consumers and safeguarding their interests.
  • UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) is developed by National e-Governance Division (NeGD), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
  • UMANG provides a single platform for all Indian Citizens to access pan India e-Gov services ranging from Central to Local Government bodies and other citizen centric services.
  • It provides a unified approach where citizens can install one application to avail multiple government services. From now onwards, TRAI’s Mobile Apps namely DND 2.0 & MyCall shall also be available on Umang Platform.

Certain key features of these applications are:

(a) TRAI MyCall App

  • TRAI MyCall is an intuitive and user friendly application for Crowd sourced Voice Call Quality Monitoring.
  • The Application helps Mobile phone users to rate their experience about voice call quality in real time and help TRAI gather consumer experience data along with Network data.
  • A pop up requests the user to rate the call after it ends.
  • Callers simply select their rating in the form of stars and indicate if the calls were made in indoor, outdoor or while travelling.
  • Callers can also provide additional details such as noise or audio delay or mark a call-drop.

(b) DND 2.0 App

  • DND (Do Not Disturb) Services App enables smart phone users to register their mobile number under DND and report spam messages or calls to avoid Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC)/Telemarketing Calls/SMS.

Ishan Vikas and Ishan Uday schemes

  • Ishan Vikas and Ishan Uday schemes are being implemented for the students of North Eastern region.
  • Ishan Vikas is coordinated by IIT, Guwahati and under the programme, selected school children from North Eastern States  are  brought in close contact with the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) and  National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) during the vacation period to motivate them to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics and to facilitate internship opportunities for the engineering college students in various institutes of national importance. 
  • Annual target is to provide visit of 96 school children to premier institutes and summer internships to 250 engineering students.
  • Since inception of the programme in 2014-15, 1637 school children and 372 Engineering students have benefited.
  • Ishan Uday Scholarship Scheme is administered by University Grants Commission (UGC). Under the scheme, scholarship is provided to the economically backward students from the North East Region for pursuing general degree courses, technical and professional degree courses.
  • It is envisaged to provide 10000 scholarships annually.  

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Also See:

Adopt a Heritage Scheme TRAI NITI Aayog

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