UPSC: PIB Summary and Analysis Jan 01

ASPIRE Scheme

• ASPIRE Scheme or Scheme for promotion of innovation, entrepreneurship and Agro-Industry is promoted by the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
• It will promote Innovation & Rural Entrepreneurship through rural Livelihood Business Incubator (LBI), Technology Business Incubator (TBI) and Fund of Funds for start-up creation in the agro-based industry.
• The ASPIRE Scheme fund has a Rs.200 crore corpus

The main objectives of the ASPIRE scheme are to:

• Create new jobs and reduce unemployment;
• Promote entrepreneurship culture in India;
• Grassroots economic development at district level;
• Facilitate innovative business solution for un-met social needs; and
• Promote innovation to further strengthen the competitiveness of MSME sector.

The Ministry of MSME is also implementing various schemes and programmes for promotion and development of MSME sector.

The major schemes/programmes include

• Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP),
• Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries (SFURTI),
• Credit Guarantee Scheme, Credit Linked Capital Subsidy Scheme (CLCSS),
• National Manufacturing Competitiveness Programme,
• Micro & Small Enterprises – Cluster Development Programme (MSE-CDP),
• Marketing Development Assistance,
• Skill Development Programmes,
• International Cooperation Scheme, etc.

Margdarshan (Share and Mentor Institutions)

Objectives

• Mentoring to institutes by a well performing Institute.
• The Hub ‘n Spoke system is to be established by a Institute of repute as a Mentor within an existing facility to serve as the hub to guide and disperse knowledge to ten technical institutions to encourage best practices.
  • The secondary branches, the spokes, are additional services provided to faculty for self improvement.
  • Eventually, the Hub ‘n Spoke system will allow for inter-hamlet information sharing, such as technical education, research and sharing of resources to the entire system

NARI

• Developed by the Ministry of Women & Child Development, the portal will provide women citizens with easy access to information on government schemes and initiatives for women.
• Further to provide a platform for NGOs and Civil Societies to interact with the Ministry of Women & Child Development, e-Samvad portal has also been developed which will be inaugurated by the WCD Minister.

Why was it done?

• The Government – both Central and State – has implemented a number of schemes & legislations for women to provide them equal rights, economic opportunities, social support, legal aid, housing etc. However, there is often a lack of awareness of these provisions and difficulties in accessing their benefits.
• However, information related to women centric schemes/legislations are all scattered on different websites/portals.
• In order to make this information more easily accessible in one place, the NARI portal summarizes over 350 government schemes and other important information for the benefit of women, with more being added every day.
• It provides links to the Ministries, Departments and autonomous bodies offering these schemes as well as easy access to online applications and grievance redressal.

How does it help?

• NARI will provide information to women on issues affecting their lives. There are tips on good nutrition, suggestions for health checkups, information on major diseases, tips for job search and interview, investment and savings advice, information on crimes and against women and reporting procedures, contacts of legal aid cells, simplified adoption procedures and much more.
  • It will endow women with the power of information to build their life skills and facilitates them in taking full advantage of the services provided by the Government for them.
• Through e-Samvad portal, NGOs and civil society can provide their feedback, suggestions, put up grievances, share best practices etc.
  • Senior Officers within MWCD will be able to view the inputs/suggestions received for their concerned subject areas and appropriately respond to NGOs.
  • This will help in formulation of effective policies and measures for welfare of women and children.

Satyendra Nath Bose

• Satyendra Nath Bose’s was one of the world’s pioneering theoretical physicists, know for his discovery of Boson, or a class of particles that obey Bose–Einstein statistics. His work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s laid the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate. He is widely called the ‘Father of the God Particle’ for his work on the Boson.
• Satyendra Nath Bose, also known as SN Bose, was born on January 1, 1894, in Calcutta, the eldest and only male in a family with seven children.

Research

• He moved back to Calcutta in 1945 and continued his research on various theories of Physics. In 1924, while working in Dhaka, he wrote a paper deriving Planck’s quantum radiation law without any reference to classical physics. He did this by counting states with identical particles and his paper in a way gave birth to the field of quantum statistics.
• But the paper was not accepted for publication. However, Albert Einstein, to whom Bose had sent a copy, himself translated the paper into German and submitted it on Bose’s behalf to the prestigious Zeitschrift für Physik. He later went on to work for a considerable amount of time in European X-ray and crystallography laboratories as a recognition of his paper. This was when he got to work with Einstein as well as Louis de Broglie and Marie Curie.
• Bose was honoured with Padma Vibhusan in 1954, the second-highest civilian award in India. In 1959 he was appointed National Professor, the highest honour in the country for a scholar. He was also part of several research and development committees.

Context

• Bose’s 125th birth anniversary

SFURTI

• SFURTI is Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries.
• Ministry of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Govt. of India has launched this scheme in the year 2005 with the view to promote Cluster development.
• The Scheme guidelines of SFURTI have been revamped in 2015 and the Scheme has taken giant strides in 2015. Funds to the tune of Rs.62 Crore have been sanctioned under the Scheme in 2015 as against Nil in 2014.

Objectives of Scheme

• To organize the traditional industries and artisans into clusters to make them competitive and provide support for their long term sustainability and economy of scale;
• To provide sustained employment for traditional industry artisans and rural entrepreneurs;
• To enhance marketability of products of such clusters by providing support for new products, design intervention and improved packaging and also the improvement of marketing infrastructure;
• To equip traditional artisans of the associated clusters with the improved skills and capabilities through training and exposure visits;
• To make provision for common facilities and improved tools and equipment for artisans to promote optimum utilization of infrastructure facilities

Criteria for Selection of Clusters

• The selection of clusters will be based on their geographical concentration which should be around 500 beneficiary families of artisans/micro enterprises, suppliers of raw materials, traders, service providers, etc., located within one or two revenue sub-divisions in a District (or in contiguous Districts).

Price Stabilization Fund

• India first created a price stabilisation fund for some export oriented plantation crops in 2003, and this ceased to exist in 2013. Another fund was created in 2015 for perishable agricultural and horticultural commodities, but initially limited to support potato and onion prices only.

2015

• The Price Stabilization Fund (PSF) was set up in 2014-15 under the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Famers Welfare (DAC&FW) to help regulate the price volatility of important agri-horticultural commodities like onion, potatoes and pulses were also added subsequently.
  • The amount in the fund is generally utilised for activities aimed at bringing down/up the high/low prices say for instance, procurement of such products and distribution of the same as and when required, so that prices remain in a range.
• The PSF scheme was transferred from DAC&FW to the Department of Consumer Affairs (DOCA) w.e.f. 1st April, 2016. 
• The Price Stabilization Fund will be managed centrally by a Price Stabilization Fund Management Committee (PSFMC) which will approve all proposals from State Governments and Central Agencies. The PSF will be maintained as a Central Corpus Fund by Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC), a society promoted by Ministry of Agriculture for linking agriculture to private businesses and investments and technology.
• Accordingly, the Government of India, on 27 March 2015, approved the creation of a Price Stabilization Fund (PSF) with a corpus of Rs.500 crores as a Central Sector Scheme, to support market interventions for price control of perishable agri-horticultural commodities during 2014-15 to 2016-17.

Details

• The scheme provides for maintaining a strategic buffer of aforementioned commodities for subsequent calibrated release to moderate price volatility and discourage hoarding and unscrupulous speculation.
• For building such stock, the scheme promotes direct purchase from farmers/farmers’ association at farm gate/Mandi. The PSF is utilized for granting interest free advance of working capital to Central Agencies, State/UT Governments/Agencies to undertake market intervention operations.
• Apart from domestic procurement from farmers/wholesale mandis, import may also be undertaken with support from the Fund.