Month: October 2017

Addressing the session on – A Digital Bridge Growth –at the IACC’s (Indo-American Chamber of Commerce) in Mumbai, Aruna Sundararajan, IAS, Secretary, Department of Telecommunications, Government of India, said that in the last eight months 216 million people have been brought under the ambit of financial inclusion using mobile banking. Now the number of people having bank accounts in the country has surged to 65%. “Never before such a massive scale of enrollment in the banking sector has happened in India. It is indicative of how digital space is connecting…

Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that 95 mobile manufacturing companies have set up their plants under the new government. “Today 95 mobile manufacturing factories have come in India and India is becoming a big hub of electronics and mobile manufacturing. 32 have come in Noida and Greater Noida,” Prasad said at Capital Foundation Annual Lecture. He was speaking on ‘Emerging Digital World In India’. “In Silicon Valley 51 per cent of new inventions are IT based and 14 per cent of those are created by Indian minds…

The Centre’s flagship Digital India scheme, to create a digitally-empowered society, may elude a vast section of the country’s population — the old and vulnerable — if one goes by a survey done in Delhi-NCR alone. A majority (75 per cent) of 5,000 old people surveyed by Agewell Foundation said that lack of computer skills and digital illiteracy was affecting their life in old age adversely. The survey found 85.8 per cent respondents to be digitally and computer illiterate. Of this, 76.5 per cent were men and 95 per cent…

Clarifying on media reports which said that the Railways is not accepting a number of financial institutions from using its payment gateway for debit cards, The Railway ministry said that it has not imposed any restrictions and debit and credit cards of all Indian banks powered with VISA and Mastercard are accepted. IRCTC or Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation said that it has provided seven payment gateways for accepting domestic debit and credit cards and has also provided direct integration to some banks as value added service to for…

The Centre has taken up highway projects worth Rs 34,100 crore to decongest the national capital and sought Delhi government’s support in expediting the work. Chairing a high-level meeting on ‘Projects on Decongestion of Delhi, Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said a comprehensive exercise for decongesting arterial road network of national highways connecting NCT Delhi was on. He further said that projects were being expedited and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has taken up comprehensive development and decongestion of NH-1, NH-8 and NH-24. The NH-1, NH-2, NH-8,…

The nation-wide Swachhata Hi Seva campaign is now entering its second week. The inaugural week saw a wave of cleanliness activities across the country. In Chennai to keep the city ‘clean and green’, a battery of Judges from the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court joined hands with public, students, officials of the district administration, city corporation, police, Public Works and Income Tax departments in a massive cleaning drive along the Vaigai river. In Maharashtra 430 GPs have been declared ODF and over 58 thousand toilets have been constructed…

The Government has provided an additional Rs.12000 Crores to fight malnutrition over next three years in the country by revising cost norms for supplementary nutrition provided in anganwadis and in the scheme for adolescent girls. Briefing media persons in New Delhi, Secretary, WCD Shri Rakesh Srivastava said that the government has effected a quantum increase of about 33% in cost norms, which have been revised for the first time since 2011 in the case of ICDS. In the case of Scheme for Adolescent Girls, cost norms have been increased first…

A MoU was signed by Lt Gen Ashwani Kumar, AG, IHQ of MoD (Army) and Prof. E Vayunandan, Vice Chancellor, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University (YCMOU), Nasik on 21 Sep 2017 at New Delhi to empower the soldiers. The Bachelor’s degree Programme designed for the Army Personnel gives special recognition to the in-service training/Army courses completed and by providing exemption from studying certain courses. Apart from the highly subsidised fees charged, the courses offered for study by the university have been carefully selected on the basis of their relevance and…

A high-level Canadian delegation comprising Brian Parrott from the High Commission of Canada and James A. Dovchuk, President, Cameco called on the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh for discussion on various aspects of uranium and nuclear/atomic energy collaboration with India. They acknowledged and complimented the Department of Atomic Energy, GOI for having distinguished itself as an internationally known Uranium and nuclear/atomic energy establishment. Dr Jitendra…

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the revamped Khelo India programme at a cost of Rs.1,756 crore for the period 2017-18 to 2019-20. This marks a watershed moment in the history of Indian sports, as the Programme aims at mainstreaming sport as a tool for individual development, community development, economic development and national development. The revamped Khelo India Programme would impact the entire sports ecosystem, including infrastructure, community sports, talent identification, coaching for excellence, competition structure and sports economy. The programme strives to…