PM launches Jeevan Pramaan – Digital Life Certificate for Pensioners

Huge relief for senior citizens who have to produce Life Certificates each year to continue receiving pension The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, today launched "Jeevan Pramaan" – an "Aadhar-based Digital Life Certificate" for pensioners, in a move that could eventually benefit over a crore pensioners. The Prime Minister said that after the push towards self-certification, this digital life certificate was another enabling mechanism which would benefit the common man. The proposed digital certification will do away with the requirement of a pensioner having to submit a physical Life Certificate in November each year, in order to ensure continuity of pension being credited into his account. The Department of Electronics and IT has developed a software application which will enable the recording of the pensioner`s Aadhar number and biometric details from his mobile device or computer, by plugging in a biometric reading device. Key details of the pensioner, including date, time, and biometric information will be uploaded to a central database on real-time basis, ultimately enabling the Pension Disbursing Agency to access a Digital Life Certificate. This will conclusively establish that the pensioner was alive at the time of authentication. The earlier requirement entailed that a pensioner either personally presents himself before the Pension Disbursing Agency, or submits a Life Certificate issued by authorities specified by the Central Pension Accounting Office (CPAO). At present, 50 lakh individuals draw pension from the Central Government alone. A similar number draw pension from State and Union Territory Governments. Several PSUs also provide pension benefits. Over 25 lakh retired personnel draw pension from the Armed Forces. The Aadhar-Based Digital Life Certificate will go a long way in reducing hardship which so many senior citizens have to go through to produce a Life Certificate every year. The software application system will be made available to pensioners and other stakeholders on a large scale at no extra cost. It can be operated on a personal computer or a smartphone, along with an inexpensive biometric reading device. This facility will also be made available at Common Service Centres being operated under the National e-Governance Plan, for the benefit of pensioners residing in remote and inaccessible areas.

india Signs Loan Agreements with World Bank for US$ 200 Million for Technology Centre System Programme (TCSP)

The Loan Agreement for World Bank (IBRD) financing of US$ 200 million for Technology Centre System Programme (TCSP) was signed here today between Government of India and the World Bank             The Loan Agreement was signed by Shri Tarun Bajaj, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs on behalf of the Government of India and Mr Onno Ruhl, Country Director (India) of World Bank on behalf of the World Bank.  Representatives from Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) and the World Bank, among others, were present on the occasion.             The Technology Centre System Programme (TCSP) is for setting-up 15 new Technology Centres (TCs) and to modernize/upgrade existing 18 TCs at an estimated cost of Rs. 2200 crore (US$ 400 million) including World Bank assistance of US$ 200 million.             Project Components: The project will have three components which are: (i) Technical assistance to the Technology Centers (TCs), (ii) Investment to upgrade existing/develop new TCs and (iii) Technical Assistance to the MSME Ministry for programme implementation and monitoring & evaluation.             The Objective of the project is to enhance the productivity of MSMEs by improving their access to technology and business advisory services as well as skilled workers through systems of financially sustainable technology centers.             The programme beneficiaries will be Indian MSMEs and larger firms as well as trainees and workers.                         The loan is for an implementation period of 5 years. The Office of Development Commissioner, Ministry of MSME is the implementing agency.

New drug to replace antibiotics

In a breakthrough, scientists have developed the first effective alternative to antibiotics that may aid the fight against drug-resistant infections.

In a small patient trial, the drug was shown to be effective at eradicating the superbug Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Researchers said it is unlikely that the infection could develop resistance against the new treatment, which is already available as a cream for skin infections.

They hope to develop a pill or an injectable version of the drug within five years.

The treatment marks “a new era in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” according to Mark Offerhaus, chief executive of the biotechnology company Micreos, which is behind the advance.

The treatment attacks infections in an entirely different way from conventional drugs and, unlike them, exclusively targets the Staphylococcus bacteria responsible for MRSA, and leaves other microbes unaffected.

The approach is inspired by naturally occurring viruses that attack bacteria using enzymes called endolysins. It uses a ‘designer’ endolysin, Staphefekt, which the scientists engineered to latch on to the surface of bacteria cells and tear them apart, ‘The Times’ reported.

“Endolysins exist in nature, but we’ve made a modified version that combines the bit that is best at binding to the bacteria with another bit that is best at killing it,” said Bjorn Herpers, a clinical microbiologist, who tested the drug at the Public Health Laboratory in Kennemerland, the Netherlands.

Conventional antibiotics need to reach the inside of the cell to work, and part of the reason they are becoming less effective is that certain strains of bacteria, such as MRSA, have evolved impenetrable membranes.

By contrast, endolysins target basic building blocks on the outside of bacterial cells that are unlikely to change as infections genetically mutate over time.

Scientists believe that the results could mark the first of a wave of endolysin-based therapies for infections that conventional drugs are no longer able to treat.

About 80 per cent of gonorrhoea infections are resistant to frontline drugs, and multidrug-resistant salmonella, tuberculosis and E coli are regarded as significant threats.

Naturally occuring endolysins can attack all of these diseases, and the challenge is to create stable versions that can be packaged as drugs, researchers said.

The findings were presented at the Antibiotic Alternatives for the New Millennium conference here.

- See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/new-drug-to-replace-antibiotics/#sthash.dlf5TX9W.dpuf

The failure of the Indian imagination

If the recent image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi swinging on the jhula with Chinese President Xi Jinping was meant to suggest a technological consensus of two great eastern republics, it was a mistaken metaphor. China’s advances in technology and infrastructure have moved it much beyond Indian reach, leaving Mr. Modi alone on the swing. With no one to push, India flounders.

In fact in the standard parlance of engineering development, the Chinese have even outwitted the West. Earlier, if the country’s geopolitical isolation had made comparisons difficult, the opening up has asserted its preeminent presence in the new world. In allowing the world’s star architects to build and plan the Olympic Games and the commercial structures of Shanghai, the Chinese model is now a diligent and deliberate upscaling of western ideas. In China, roads and railways whisk traffic across thousands of miles on flawless concrete, and its rail system straddles some of the world’s highest passes. Even the Hoover dam is child’s play when compared to the Three Gorges dam. German and French engineers are agog at the sight of such structural bravado; connectivity across the eastern seaboard of China is being studied by western transport planners. At one time, the industrial town was a symbol of 19th century England, the highway of 20th century America; now, the shiny factory assembly line is a picture of the new China. Having outwitted most western engineering inventions, the Chinese have even given everything a hyperbolic edge: the biggest dam, the highest rail line, the tallest single span bridge, the longest highway, the largest port, the greenest city. They have become better Americans than even the Americans.

Right course of action?

But the Chinese technological thrust has always been part of a history of persistence that came from political and economic hardship. A nation whose ethics of work and physical labour were intrinsically linked to political ideology, Chinese success came at a huge cost to personal freedom and a Draconian martial arts-like discipline that has had widespread social and cultural implications. It need hardly be confused with the exercise of a new eastern imagination. Moreover, it would be downright ludicrous to suggest that India attempt anything on that scale.

There are of course serious doubts whether the Chinese model of physical development of city and countryside is in fact the correct course of action for India. Serious differences of perception and interpretation remain. China’s continental size — more than three times our own — and consequently a population density a third of India, makes the applicability of standard urban models a real possibility there. Moreover, Indian cities have large concentrated pockets of marginalised population — a growing number that live off the streets in a hand-to-mouth existence. The real qualities of Indian urbanisation are therefore closer in character to West Africa, where similar migrations from the impoverished countryside make African cities a makeshift melting pot of the dispossessed. Cities like Lagos, Monrovia and Abuja and their ramshackle unmade state are similar to Indian towns like Lucknow, Pune, and Hyderabad — places that seem not to be governed by any overall civic order, but appear as either planning failures, or as temporary encampments. Without any defined sense of public purpose, people jostle, park, sell, eat, sleep, defecate … everything goes on everywhere.

In such a setting, the failure of Mr. Modi’s infrastructure plan reflects the larger failure of the Indian imagination — a desperate and mindless enumeration of ideas that have little or no bearing on Indian reality. When much of what is built is a half-baked imitation of disparate items tried and tested elsewhere, it becomes hard to fault Mr. Modi. So, his own campaign begins as a national sanitation drive. Pride in the belief of big things — like suspension bridges and high speed rail — can come only after a classroom reprimand on cleanliness and littering. Why give people the best highway if they are only going to defecate alongside it?

Endorsing public transport

In providing the right answers to the wrong questions, disappointment multiplies. The failure of the Delhi metro system for instance is not linked to its ability to respond to the city’s growing need, but its expediency as the right means to a wrong end. The city’s capacity to contain its residents in active living and working neighbourhoods is continually thwarted by encouraging them on longer and longer commutes, as the metro does. So much so, that the system itself is reaching breaking point. Though its 12-year operation, the metro has made regular changes to keep pace with demand. Increase in the number of coaches, length of the platforms, frequency of trains, the fight to stay ahead of the numbers is a lifelong struggle. Why then in such a failing scenario, does the government propose more metro systems in other cities: Bengaluru, Chennai, then Jaipur and Bhopal? In the long term, wouldn’t the Modi plan make more sense if it clearly restated the futility of distance travel and countered the excessive mobility that is destroying most cities?

Increasing car population similarly has rendered travel so inefficient, traffic speeds in India are some of the slowest in the world, Mumbai at 9 km per hour, Delhi at 7. Instead of promoting the car industry, with ready licences to set up new plants, the government needs to endorse both public transport and shared private transport. At the same time it should encourage the research and development of Indian solar/electric hybrids for buses and city trams. Brazil’s attempt at a cheap wooden vehicle for rural transport hasn’t met with much success, but in the search for alternatives, there is a sincere attempt to develop an indigenous model.

Imbalance in housing

Of the many other vague infrastructure promises, Mr. Modi’s agenda makes references to every Indian owning his own home by 2020. The history of government promises on home construction is littered with statistical failure and numerous housing programmes that have died while still on paper. In 1990, the National Buildings Organisation stated that the country’s requirement for shelter was two crore units. A decade later, the backlog doubled. Today, the housing demand stands at a whopping 5.5 crore. The dysfunctional imbalance between expectation and provision clearly suggests that a private house on a private piece of land is an impossible anomaly. Given the numbers, is the idea of home ownership itself practical? How can such demands be replaced by other more effective architectural mechanisms that examine urban privacy and community living and create living models?

On the subject of smart cities, the Prime Minister’s ideas arise out of mere information and communication technology, and state no clear guides to urban organisation, no vision on the values of civic life and settlement. The setting up of smart cities, based on the assumption that Indian cities can operate as technological models similar to Berlin and Toronto, is as good as inventing an air-conditioner for Alaska. Redundancy is guaranteed. How do computer-aided living, banking, utility distribution, etc. help a formless city where more than half its citizens are the unregistered dispossessed, without home or long-term employment?

Among the majority of people buoyed by Mr. Modi’s recent victory into an animated optimism, many remain a silent majority. Even if the Prime Minister’s intentions are good, their future action seems to be emerging from misguided sources and inspirations. Certainly, the Chinese experiment has been a resilient retesting of the American technological model, and Mr. Modi’s wholehearted support for it finds many takers among the young in India. But many others oppose its application on the grounds that slower development along traditional lines would perpetuate a more suitable Indian cultural identity and a less degraded environment.

The failure of both these streams of thinking leaves India a residual mess, and in a constant state of war over resources, distribution and implementation. The inability to fully grasp and copy the most rudimentary of time-tested western — now Chinese — models for cities, highways, trains, bridge designs, auto and transport ideas, Bus Rapid Transit Systems (BRT), etc. has left the country’s landscape a time warp of incompetence and despair. Because it stifles innovation, the traditional path on the other hand promises a far slower transition to modernity; in the surge for increasing material demands and a populace screaming for better days ahead, the traditional idea too is unacceptable. The unease with both approaches, must lead to a third, perhaps more innovative local approach, and one that Mr. Modi must first discover by asking the right questions. Otherwise the hope for something new, wholly inventive and wholly Indian will fade altogether from memory.

For cleaner skies Climate-change report shows domestic action more urgent

The fifth report of the United Nations-backedIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released on Sunday, presents a picture that is far more scary than that outlined in any of its previous versions. It also shifts the goalpost for climate mitigation action to ensure that the rise in temperature is contained to two degrees Celsius, which is essential to prevent irreversible damage to global climate and its perilous economic and health consequences. The new target set by the IPCC requires phasing out the use of fossil fuels for power generation by the end of this century to bring down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to near zero. That translates to cutting down the GHG emissions by 40 to 70 per cent by 2050 from the levels that prevailed in 2010. For India, the implications of these changes are huge: shutting down its coal-run power plants, modifications to vehicular fuels, stopping the diversion of forest lands for infrastructure, industrial projects and other uses, and sweeping changes to agriculture and other economic activities.

Given the overwhelming scientific consensus that the IPCC reports represent, their conclusions cannot be overlooked. Nor can their recommendations be disregarded in economic and environment policy formulation. The latest report is particularly significant because it is likely to form the basis for negotiations leading, hopefully, to drafting an agreement to succeed the expired Kyoto protocol on climate change at Lima next month for final approval at Paris in December 2015.

One reason why many of the IPCC's warnings and prescriptions get less attention than they merit is that their projections usually pertain to the distant future rather than to the hazards on hand, such as environmental pollution and weather-induced natural calamities. In fact, India is already facing the consequences of climate change. Air pollution data released recently by the World Health Organization show that 13 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in India and that the dirtiest air on this planet is in Delhi. Worse still, the cities ranked second, third and fourth for their poor air quality are also in India. This is a matter of grave concern requiring immediate remedial steps, especially because the high concentration of fine particulate matter (measuring less than 2.5 micrometres or PM2.5) recorded in these cities can cause breathing disorders, heart diseases and cancer. The country is also a victim of an increased number of intense rainfall events, and of severe cyclones that were rare earlier. The pattern of monsoon rainfall, the lifeline of the country's agriculture, too, seems to have changed noticeably, necessitating continual last-minute alterations in cropping plans.

India's National Action Plan for Climate Change can take care of many of these aspects provided it is implemented meticulously. This, unfortunately, is not the case, particularly with regard to some of its components. The content of solar, wind, hydro and bio energy in the total energy use needs to be progressively stepped up. At the same time, forests need to be preserved and upgraded to sequester greater amounts of GHGs and to cleanse the air of other pollutants. Equally important are adaptation measures to alleviate environment-induced economic losses.

PM Modi at No. 15 on Forbes' Most Powerful global list

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday made his debut among the world's most powerful people, ranked 15th on the Forbes list, topped by Russian President Vladimir Putin who pipped his US counterpart Barack Obama for a second year.

The list of 72 most-powerful people in the world also included Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani at 36th, ArcelorMittal Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Lakshmi Mittal at 57th, and Microsoft India-born CEO Satya Nadella at 64th.

On Modi, Forbes said "India's newest rock star doesn't hail from Bollywood. He is the newly elected Prime Minister who sailed into office in May with a landslide victory, ushering the Bharatiya Janata Party into power after decades of control by the Gandhi dynasty." Forbes described him a "Hindu nationalist" and referred to the 2002 Gujarat riots when he was the state's chief minister.

"Modi is credited with massive reconstruction projects in his home state of Gujarat. His administration promises to bring economic rejuvenation to other beleaguered parts of India. The world is as impressed as the citizens of India: So far he's toured the US and China and met with his Southeast Asian neighbours," the magazine said.

Singapore shows interest in developing a new smart satellite city in India

Committees to be set up to firm up specific areas of cooperation in urban sector Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu holds detailed discussion with present and former PMs of Singapore

Singapore has shown keen interest in partnering with India in the urban development sector, including development of a new smart satellite city and a new capital for the state of Andhra Pradesh. Top leadership of Singapore conveyed their areas of interest during the extensive talks that the Minister of Urban Development Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu held today with Singapore’s Prime Minister Shri Lee Hsien Loong and former Prime Minister and Emeritus Minister shri Goh Chok Tong in Singapore, in separate meetings. During the talks, both the sides decided to set up Committees to further examine and concretise the areas of cooperation between the two countries in the context of India’s initiative to build 100 news smart cities, develop infrastructure in 500 towns and cities, development of heritage cities and massing urban housing programme. Singapore reiterated its keenness to take up the project of developing the new capital of Andhra Pradesh which was first indicated during the recent visits of Shri Goh Chok Tong to India. Shri Venkaiah Naidu and the Singapore leaders spent considerable time in acquainting each other with India’s initiatives in urban sector and the experiences of Singapore leadership in making the city state as one of the models of smart city. The two top leaders of Singapore acknowledged that there is a new sense of purpose, dynamism and action in India since Shri Narendra Modi took over as the Prime Minister. Shri Venkaiah Naidu sough Singapore’s assistance in promoting smart city features like Intelligent Transport Systems, e-urban governance including delivery of services, water management including recycling and solid waste management. Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu visited the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the Centre for Liveable cities and held extensive discussions about Singapore’s public housing shemes and regulatlons for private housing. Means of financing of urban transport infrastructure was also discussed.