Use of Led Lamps

For large scale adoption of LEDs for lighting, Ministry of Power had prepared a roadmap, in close cooperation with the lighting industry, in 2009 which sought to: (a) ensure the quality and reliability of LED lamps; (b) reduce the price of LED lamps, initially through large scale public procurement and then through a labelling programme; and (c) facilitate awareness and demonstration of this lighting through LED technology. Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), Ministry of Power, simultaneously promoted demand for LED bulbs and LED streetlights by providing financial support to all states to set up demonstration projects to highlight the lighting quality and energy savings of LED technology. This was stated by Sh. Piyush Goyal, Minister of state for Power, Coal & New and Renewable Energy (Independent Charge) in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha today. Shri Goyal further stated that the Ministry of Power has also written to all Ministries/Departments to procure LEDs in place of Compact Florescent Lamps (CFLs) and Incandescent Lamps (ICLs) and also requested the Directorate General of Supplies & Dsiposals (DGS&D) to include LEDs in the rate contract list. Ministry of Finance has been requested to issue directives to all Central Ministries/Departments to procure LED bulbs instead of CFLs/ICLs. Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS) has stopped giving license to produce incandescent bulbs of wattage more than 100W. The efficacy of the lamp (assembly of LED chip, diffuser, driver and heat sink which makes up the bulb or tubelight) currently ranges from 80-120 lumen/watt. Hence, LED lamps available in the market consume about 1/10th of power as compared to incandescent lamp and close to 1/2 of CFLs, to provide equivalent light output. The production of 300 lumen per watt is only under lab conditions and that too only of the LED chip as claimed by some manufacturers. Under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY), Ministry of Power in 2013 has issued guidelines that LED bulbs would be provided with free electricity connection to eligible Below Poverty Line Households, Shri Goyal added. As per a report of ASSOCHAM published in 2011, it is estimated that with wide spread use of efficient lighting devices such as CFLs and LEDs can save around 34,743 MW of generation capacity. Given that our total generation capacity is 254649.49 MW (Oct. 2014), the saving is of the tune of 13% of installed capacity.

‘Karnataka Mobile One’

Shri Pranab Mukherjee at the launch of the mobile governance project, ‘Karnataka Mobile One’

1. I am happy to be here this afternoon for the launch of ‘Karnataka Mobile One’, the Mobile Governance project of the Government of Karnataka. I compliment the State Government for this pioneering effort of starting an integrated mobile-enabled services delivery system. This unique initiative, which I am told is the first-of-its-kind in the country, signals a new era in Governance. 2. This Mobile Governance project will make available services like bill payments, traffic alerts, traffic fine payments and other utility services through the mobile phone. It will also enable access to Sakala, the platform for time-bound delivery of services, as well as prompt redressal of grievances. It is commendable that Karnataka, which is a leading centre of IT, has cohesively merged technology, innovation and governance to create a novel process of citizen-government engagement. 3. Good decision-making calls for pooling of knowledge, experience and views of all stakeholders including citizens. Recognizing thismantra of statecraft, Karnataka pursues the deepening of bond between the government and the governed. This, according to me, epitomizes the philosophy of governance that our ancient treatiseslikeBhagavat Gita,Arthashastra and Manusmritihad propounded. These treasured scriptures provided a prescription for governance based on acollaborative system between government and citizens. Ladies and Gentlemen: 4. Happiness of citizens is the foremost objective of a welfare state. It is the fulcrum on which rests it’s other goals. Driving its fulfilment calls forgood governance that has such sacrosanct elements as adherence to rule of law, participatory decision-making, equity, inclusiveness, responsiveness, transparency and accountability. 5. The Constitution of India is a model of good governance principles. The Preamble, the Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of State Policy comprise the tenets of governance. They provide a reference point for value based governance of our country. Fundamental rights are essential for the development of personality of every individual and for the preservation of human dignity. 6. TheDirective Principles of State Policyis a blueprint for good governance. Parliamentary enactments, and government policies and programmes have helped transform these directives into actionable points for governance. For instance, entitlements for food, education and job, backed by legal guarantees, have empowered citizens. Schemes for universal healthcare and education have shown good results. Recently, the Government has provided further boost to inclusive development through a slew of innovative schemes aimed at complete financial inclusion, provision of digital infrastructure, cleanliness campaign and creation of model villages. 7. The key parameter of success of public programmes is the meeting of the expectations of people. In the context of good governance, it implies the availability of effective delivery mechanisms. Responsiveness in catering to the needs of the citizens is a challenge the public administration of our country has to deal with. The efficacy of public institutions depends on the delivery mechanism and the institutional framework of rules, regulations and procedures, which has to evolve continuously to respond to the changing times.There is a pressing need, on the one hand, to improve organizational capabilities to cater to the increasing demand for services and improvement in the quality of service delivery, and on the other, to improve transparency and accountability. This underscores the need for innovative solutions based on technology. Late Carl Sagan, the astrophysicist, author and science communicator, had said and I quote: "We have arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology” (unquote). 8. The ‘Aadhaar’ project was initiated providing every resident with a unique identification number aimed at improving delivery and easy access to benefits and services. The Direct Benefits Transfer Scheme launched in January 2013 leveraged the Aadhaar system to improve targeting, eliminate waste, usher in greater transparency, reduce transaction costs and enhance efficiency. This initiative demonstrated how good governance practices can be consolidated using suitable technology models. E-governance holds great promise for a quantum leap in governance standards. The need of the hour is to leverage India’s leadership position in ICT to introduce technology-intensive solutions for governance. Ladies and Gentlemen: 9. Dramatic developments in the IT sector have transformed the society. It has created an eco-system for the Government to tap technology-enabled solutions for deployment in the area of governance for the benefit of the common man. Karnataka, for one, is an IT hub portraying a success story that has few parallels. It contributes to thirty percent of the total software exports of our country. 10. Not only has the State created a conducive environment for the expansion of the IT sector, it has skilfullycombined innovation and government vision to bring about reforms touching the lives of citizens.E-initiatives like Bhoomi, which is an on-line system for land records management;Kaveri, which is a valuation and e-registration system of the Department of Stamps and Registration;e-swathu, which is a software that lists properties in urban local bodies and that has now been integrated withKaveri; and e-procurement have set governance benchmarks. Karnataka also has the distinction of being the first Indian state to have a dedicated secretariat for e-governance. I commend your passion to deploy technology in governance. In this context, I want to express my delight at having been associated with the demonstration of 3D holography, which is a cutting-edge technology. Ladies and Gentlemen: 11. Mobile phone has revolutionized the communication system like none other. It has brought people closer, shrunk distance and alleviated geographic separation. The total number of mobile phone subscribers in India is 93crore with a density of 75 percent. 41 percent of the subscribers reside in rural areas. The monthly growth rate of mobile phone subscription of 0.76 percent in the rural areas is higher than the 0.55 percent in the urban areas. These numbers have significance from the policy perspective of governance. 12. The ‘Digital India’ programme launched in August this year envisages the creation of a digitally-empowered society and knowledge economy by breaking the divide between digital ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. One of the components of this programme is the availability of government services in real time from mobile platforms. It is in this context that I consider the ‘Karnataka Mobile One’ to be an initiative of great foresight. It is heartening to note that nearly five hundred G2C and over four thousand B2C services have been integrated into this platform and I am told more services are being on-boarded. This, to me, will translate into ‘meaningful governance’ and take e-governance to the next level.

Crude fall to oil Indian economy

For India’s economy, projected to grow at a faster clip from early-2015, the timing of the oil-prices relief could not have been sweeter

Down nearly 40 per cent since June, international crude prices are close to levels last seen in 2009, when the global economy was gripped by its worst slump since the 1930s. Indians though are not enjoying commensurate savings on fuel bills — retail prices of petrol and diesel are not declining at the same pace as the plummeting price of crude. Consumers are paying 8.32 per cent less for diesel and 11.31 per cent less for petrol than on June 1.

But there are indirect gains. The sharp fall in global crude prices has a favourable impact on India’s macro economy, setting off multiple growth boosters. Investment bank Nomura estimates that the $40 fall can potentially boost growth by up to 0.4 percentage points to 6 per cent in the current financial year. “Improvement in macro fundamentals [inflation and the fiscal deficit and the current account balance] will, at the margin, increase the space for macro [monetary and fiscal] policies to boost growth,” it says in a report on the impact of the tumbling international crude prices on India.

“The price fall is fortunate for the new government … it will reduce the balance of payments and if handled well it can be translated into economic growth,” economist Kirit Parikh told The Hindu. Dr. Parikh, who has been on the economic advisory councils of five Prime Ministers — Atal Bihari Vajpayee, P.V. Narasimha Rao, V.P. Singh, Chandra Shekhar and Rajiv Gandhi, said the biggest impact on India can be that the government, if it wants, will be able to spend more on development.

The timing of this windfall could not have been better for India’s economy. A new government with a huge mandate is in office and business is on the cusp of an upturn.

The most obvious positive fallout is on price rise. Wholesale inflation growth could slow by around 2 percentage points, Nomura estimates. Consumer prices will ease too, though to a much less extent, it says. The spare cash from fuel cost savings, howsoever small, should increase consumer discretionary spending. Higher consumption adds to corporate incomes. Abating input costs too will widen profit margins for businesses. As balance sheets start improving, companies will be better placed to start new projects or revive stalled ones, generate new jobs and growth.

Just as for companies, the government will be able to mend its balance sheet. The fortuitous oil-price situation released substantial savings on the fuel subsidy bill, which Nomura estimates at 0.1 per cent of the GDP. This has made it possible for the Finance Ministry to increase excise duty rates for petrol and diesel for additional revenue of up to Rs 15,000 crore this year.

The cushion of extra revenue and subsidy savings will come in very handy for the Centre in keeping its fiscal deficit for this year within the Budget target of 4.1 per cent of the GDP, especially because the Finance Ministry has warned that tax collections will miss the Budget target. More important, the happy oil position has emboldened the Modi government to roll out far-reaching fuel subsidy reforms and clean up the Centre’s account books. The Centre has capped the Budget subsidy on cooking gas and eliminated the one on diesel, freeing its pricing from government control. The diesel subsidy that had amounted to 0.3 per cent of the GDP last year stands scrapped.

Besides the government’s coffers, the pubic sector oil companies’ profitability could benefit too from these measures.

The third channel through which growth impulses can be expected is India’s external account or the current account deficit (CAD). Since India imports more than 70 per cent of its oil consumption, deflating global crude prices reduces India’s import bill. Nomura estimates that India’s annual CAD could improve by up to $36 billion from the $40 fall. This gives the Reserve Bank some room to add more dollars to India’s forex reserves, allowing the rupee to depreciate, which will make exports more competitive.

How did this window of good luck become available to India and till when will it last?

The remarkable fall in global oil prices is continuing because of a mismatch in demand and supply. Demand is down because of eurozone’s economic stagnation, Japan’s slipping into recession and China’s slowdown. Output, on the other hand, is rising on account of the U.S. shale boom.

The downward trend in global crude is expected to sustain after Saudi Arabia led the oil producers of OPEC last fortnight to decide against cutting their output target of 30 million barrels a day.

After the first global oil shock following the 1973 Middle East War, Saudi Arabia, the ultra-low-cost producer of oil, has influenced geopolitics at will by turning the taps on and off.

It is again playing politics with oil to force down the price with three objectives: of hurting Iran and Russia’s oil incomes and rendering the U.S. shale production unviable. The threat from the shale project to the oil producers being that the U.S. is projected to become a net petroleum exporter before 2020.

Saudi Arabia also wants to counter the attempts of the Rouhani regime in Iran at dominating the Middle East region.

Already falling oil prices have driven down Russia’s rouble by 35 per cent since June, shrinking its economy to the size of Spain’s. The vulnerability of U.S. shale, however, is still unclear with several estimates showing it will remain profitable even at crude levels far below $50 a barrel. Post-OPEC’s decision, crude prices are ruling at about $68 a barrel, at which level, Saudi Arabia believes, U.S. shale will become unviable.

Still, how long Saudi Arabia will manage to hold prices down is anybody’s guess. Projections vary from a few months to two years.

The only foreseeable downside to the emerging oil story for India comes from the fact there is a huge non-resident Indian presence in the Gulf. Their incomes could be affected if these oil-producing countries are hit. This will depress remittances from them to India.

On Tuesday, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan became one of the first worldwide to caution against the possibility of a reversal in the downward trend in global crude and prices rising on the back of geopolitical risks. Just when this can be expected the Governor did not say. For India’s economy, which the Governor has projected will begin to revive in 2015, the oil-price relief window’s timing could not have been sweeter.

A case for SAARC reforms

SAARC, regrettably, has yet to develop into a conflict-mediating or resolving institution on multilateral and bilateral issues. While it has succeeded in evolving as a forum, it does not have the capacity to devise instruments for consultations on bilateral and multilateral political and security problems

The organisation of eight South Asian nations, namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, with observer nations, Myanmar, China, Iran, the European Union (EU) and the United States, to name a few, is known as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). It was established at the first summit in Dhaka on December 7-8, 1985. The last summit, the 17th, was held in Addu, in the Maldives, in November 2011. After a gap of three years, the 18th Summit Meeting is to be held in Nepal on November 26-27, 2014.

These eight nations of South Asia constitute 3 per cent of the world’s area, but house 21 per cent of the global population. India, significantly, constitutes 70 per cent or more of SAARC’s area and population.

Seven of them have common borders with India but not each other. All have a shared culture, ethnicity and experienced long interactive historical events including British imperialism and its consequences.

South Asian nations together also make an integrated “condominium” of common rivers, a mountain system, an ocean and a conjoint ecological system. The region’s endowment for economic production is also more or less the same.

Limitations

Since India constitutes 70 per cent or more of SAARC’s area and population, and has political conflicts with all its neighbours, India has to redefine its role, from seeking reciprocity in bilateral relations, to being prepared to go the extra mile in meeting the aspirations of all other SAARC nations.

SAARC, regrettably, has yet to develop into a conflict-mediating or conflict-resolving institution both on multilateral and bilateral issues. It has succeeded however in evolving as a forum and a framework but which does not have the capacity to devise instruments and techniques for consultations on bilateral and multilateral political and security problems.

This is because the SAARC Charter mandates that decisions, at all levels in SAARC, are only of multilateral issues, and only those issues are for inclusion in the agenda in a SAARC summit meeting on the basis of unanimity. Article X(2) of the Charter, thus excludes “bilateral and contentious issues” from the ambit of SAARC deliberations.

A shortcoming in the current situation is that unlike Europe, SAARC is not an association of nearly equally sized countries. India, as stated earlier, is about 70 per cent of the size of South Asia, and the other SAARC member-nations have a common border bilaterally only with India, and not with each other. The economic and quality of life disparities among South Asian nations are also quite wide.

Sri Lankan policy

During the period of 10 years since May 2004, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was pathetically hamstrung by the sectarian, former secessionist and pro-LTTE parties such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) for its survival in Parliament and majority.

Hence, India’s policy towards Sri Lanka was driven both bilaterally and in U.N. organisations by the hyperbole of the parties of the Dravidian Movement, in speech and dramatics, and which was bolstered by the threat of these parties to withdraw support to the Manmohan Singh government. These sectarian parties thus exercised a veto over the UPA government’s Sri Lanka policy.

As a consequence, China, which is not a member of SAARC, gained a strategic advantage in Sri Lanka by moving into the policy space vacated by India. Hambantota port is an example of how China filled the vacuum when India decided, based on the DMK’s threat, to decline Sri Lanka’s offer first to India to assist building the port.

SAARC thereby underwent rigor mortis and the summit failed to take place after 2011 for three years. Time is at hand now at the Kathmandu summit to rectify this.

Furthermore, with India having declined to help Sri Lanka build the Hambantota port (later built with China’s assistance), it is unproductive for SAARC’s effectiveness to unilaterally protest periodic visits by Chinese submarines to Hambantota port, which is on the shores of the international waters of the Indian Ocean.

Issues before SAARC

The destiny of South Asian nations today is to either swim together or risk sinking separately in the battle against poverty and unemployment as well as in meeting the challenges of the environment, national security, and globalisation.

Today, there are five crucial issues on SAARC:

First, SAARC is off and on in a limbo. Thus the first issue is this: how to grapple with SAARC’s uncertain future and how to put it back on the rails again, and not permit in the future, international political changes affecting the functioning of SAARC.

Second, SAARC has to resolve whether essential economic cooperation in an increasingly globalised world economy can be achieved despite continuing political conflicts.

The issue is whether political differences — beyond vital national interests issues — can be set aside by each member country while a more harmonious environment is created through healthy economic cooperation.

Third, is SAARC so fragile that it cannot survive if bilateral controversial political questions are raised in its deliberations without undermining its utility?

Fourth, given that India is 70 per cent of SAARC, geographically and economically, and that the other SAARC nations have borders only with India and not with each other, unlike in the EU, does India have the special responsibility to go the extra mile to make SAARC work?

Fifth, given the way World Trade Organization (WTO) disciplines are to be enforced, does SAARC need a “level playing field” regional agreement, modelled on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), with cross-retaliatory powers and a Regional Trade Organization (RTO) to enforce it?

A road map for reforms

To address these five issues and overcome the current impasse in SAARC and to make it work, two preconditions have to be obtained:

(1) India has to go the extra mile to make SAARC work because India is 70 per cent of South Asia, and has common borders with seven SAARC nations.

(2) South Asian countries have to work on the common values and shared historical perceptions of the peoples of the region, consciously addressing essential political differences.

Transparency in action in bilateral dealings is key to achieving these two preconditions. No country of the region should either act the big brother or be a dog in the manger.

Hence, mindful of the uphill task of promoting South Asian regional integration, I suggest the following reforms:

(a) No SAARC nation should internationalise any bilateral issue beyond the SAARC forum.

(b) SAARC will do all it can to facilitate the creation of the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) immediately, if possible by the end of 2014. Thereafter, SAARC resolves to make Sri Lanka’s coast the gateway to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by developing the hard infrastructure and freight movement facilitation.

(c) SAARC should strive to enhance investment activity between its member states, and not merely trade. South Asian joint venture promotion schemes should also be promoted on a priority.

(d) The energy sector should be linked together through a unified South Asian electric power grid system and countries could pool their technical and financial resources in collaborative projects.

(e) In only the fields of science and technology, universities in SAARC countries should pool their faculties and teach across borders or engage in online education using the Internet.

(f) Broader popular support at the grass-root level must be vastly improved by encouraging freer legal movement of people for economic and cultural tourism reasons by minimising immigration procedures.

(g) Effective steps must be undertaken to jointly deter cross-border, illegal migration, terror attacks and block the narcotics trade and drug trafficking.

It should be remembered that the EU was made possible only due to the conclusion drawn by the people of Europe, after the experience of two terrible world wars, that a third world war would destroy Europe totally. Hence, despite a violent history of warfare, European nations sank their differences and formed the EU. Furthermore, there were a few leaders like Adenauer, de Gaulle, Schuman and de Gasperi who had a vision of a peaceful development of the continent and dared to embark towards this goal.

But as the popular saying goes, it takes two to tango. With two of the eight SAARC nations in possession of deliverable nuclear weapons, it is imperative for the peaceful existence of SAARC nations that they effectively bind together and develop harmoniously.

Cash transfers can work better than subsidies

Providing people with a modest basic income instead of subsidies would save public revenue

With oil prices falling, it was perhaps a good time to fade out fuel subsidies. All subsidies are inefficient and distortionary, and most are regressive. The same could be said of costly public works schemes as well.

By contrast, the debate on direct benefit transfers has moved into a more sensible phase, with the posturing criticism of a couple of years ago rather muted. In that context, perhaps it is time for a more dispassionate discussion.

This month my colleagues and I are publishing a book based on two pilot schemes conducted in Madhya Pradesh, in which thousands of men, women and children in nine villages received a modest basic income, paid each month, in cash, unconditionally, for 18 months.

The effects were evaluated by a series of surveys, comparing what happened to the recipients with what was happening to thousands of non-recipients in 13 other villages. The amount of money provided was modest, about a third of subsistence. But what we wanted to find out was whether, as scornful sceptics had claimed, people would waste the money or by contrast be able to use it rationally to improve their lives.

We made sure to issue no guidance as to how to spend the money. The only insistence was that recipients should open bank or cooperative accounts within three months of starting to receive the monthly payment. This showed that financial intermediation can be achieved effectively when there are incentives to do so. No less than 96 per cent of all recipients had opened accounts by the end of three months.

“Surveys conducted among people in Madhya Pradesh's villages, who received a modest basic income as cash transfers, showed that beneficiaries were quite capable of making rational decisions that improved their lives”

As for the claim that villagers would waste the money, the evidence gathered through three rounds of detailed surveys showed that people were quite capable of making rational decisions that improved their lives and their communities.

Some critics claim India could not afford to provide all its citizens with a basic income. That conveniently overlooks the fact that a vast amount is spent on schemes that never reach the intended beneficiaries. Every informed policymaker and social scientist knows that.

Providing people with a modest basic income instead of subsidies would actually save public revenue. We know that most of the money spent on the Public Distribution System is wasted, leaving villagers to rely on stale wheat or rice. The system also acts as a deterrent to local food production. Of course, if the state throws vast amounts at even a chronically inefficient scheme, some of it will get through. But it is dumb.

Be that as it may. What the pilots have shown is something we had not fully anticipated. Unlike subsidies or public works, the basic income transfers have the potential to be transformative. If the government is setting up a Policy Commission in which one of the four pillars is to focus on Direct Benefit Transfers, it should start by considering this point.

Effects of basic income

The point is that the basic income has three types of effect. First, it improves personal and community welfare. The evidence from the pilots showed improvements in child nutrition, schooling attendance and performance, health and healthcare, sanitation and housing. It also has desirable equity outcomes, since it benefitted women more than men, the disabled more than others, the least secure and lowest income groups more than others.

However, what should please my fellow economists is that it also stimulates growth. While discussing economic growth, there is a tendency to concentrate on corporations and big industrial sectors, and to see villages as zones of stagnation. However, in the villages receiving the basic incomes, economic activity increased, new small-scale businesses sprung up, work and labour increased — contrary to critics who claim that giving people cash would induce idleness — and more equipment and livestock were bought.

Although child wage labour declined, the overall increase in work and labour was shown by way of a shift from casual wage labour to more secondary activities. Other studies have tended to concentrate on people’s main activity. Had we done that, we would not have picked up the phenomenon that, in a rational risk-reducing way, households tended to diversify into more secondary activities.

The key point here, however, is that the cash transfers should not be depicted simply as welfare expenditure. That is bad economics and poor accounting.

Yet it is the third dimension that really makes the policy transformative. One way of putting it is to say that the emancipatory value of the basic income is greater than the monetary value. Money itself is a scarce commodity in Indian villages, and, as with any scarce commodity, this drives up the price. Moneylenders and landlords can easily put villagers into debt bondage and charge exorbitant rates of interest that families cannot hope to pay off.

What we found is that many recipients used the cash to make savings, putting themselves in a better position to avoid highly costly short-term borrowing in emergencies. In effect, the liquidity lowered their cost of living and reduced the monopoly power of the moneylenders. Indeed, in a survey of impressions after the pilot had ended, several respondents told us that the only people who were unhappy about the experiment had been the moneylenders. How tragic.

The emancipatory effect helped make the welfare and growth effects more sustainable. So, the scheme had a combination of positive effects, not just one.

Now, government should be encouraged to make haste slowly. Launch several pilots in a few low-income areas in which the design could vary. There are good reasons for believing that making cash transfers universal within communities would save money in administrative and other costs, and induces more positive economic and social outcomes than selective or targeted schemes. Among other reasons is that they induce collective action for community benefits.

It is also important to consider the potential role of intermediary non-government bodies. They can play a strong role in encouraging beneficial outcomes and help overcome the tendency for vulnerable people to remain vulnerable.

Above all, however, policymakers should learn to trust people whom they claim to serve. A growing danger in social policy is that it will veer towards social engineering, through sophistry and tighter conditionalities. Freedom matters, and so does the challenge of transformation.

Pluto-bound spacecraft ends hibernation to start mission

After nine years and a journey of 4.8 billion km, NASA's New Horizons robotic probe awoke from hibernation on Saturday to begin an unprecedented mission to study the icy dwarf planet Pluto and sibling worlds in its Kuiper Belt home.

A pre-set alarm clock roused New Horizons from its electronic slumber at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT), though ground control teams didn't receive confirmation until just after 9:30 p.m. (0230 GMT on Sunday).

New Horizons is now so far away that radio signals travelling at the speed of light take four hours and 25 minutes to reach Earth.

The scientific observation of Pluto, its entourage of moons and other bodies in the solar system's frozen backyard begins January 15, program managers said. The closest approach is expected on July 14.

Pluto lies in the Kuiper Belt, a region of icy mini-planets orbiting the sun beyond Neptune that are believed to be leftover remains from the formation of the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. It is the last unexplored region of the solar system.

"It's hard to underestimate the evolution that's taking place in our view of the architecture and content of our solar system as a result of the discovery ... of the Kuiper Belt," lead researcher Alan Stern said.

Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has been a mystery. Scientists struggled to explain why a planet with a radius of just 740 miles (1,190 km) - about half the width of the United States - could come to exist beyond the giant worlds of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

"We wondered why Pluto was a misfit," Dr. Stern said.

In 1992, astronomers discovered that Pluto, located about 40 times farther away from the sun than Earth, was not alone in the far reaches of the solar system, prompting the International Astronomical Union to reconsider its definition of "planet."

In 2006, with New Horizons already on its way, Pluto was stripped of its title as the ninth planet in the solar system and became a dwarf planet, of which more than 1,000 have since been discovered in the Kuiper Belt.

With New Horizons approaching Pluto's doorstep, scientists are eager for their first close-up look at this unexplored domain.

India to showcase its commitment to renewable energy in Lima

India is planning to create a buzz around its renewable energy programme during the climate talks in Lima after the arrival of Minister of State for Environment Prakash Javadekar for the high level segment which begins on Tuesday.

In a booklet specially prepared for the occasion, it has set out its achievements for the world to see. During the past three decades, a significant thrust has been given to the development, trial and induction of a variety of renewable energy technologies for use in different sectors, the government said.

India today has one of the most active renewable energy programmes in the world and renewable energy applications have brought about significant changes in the Indian energy scenario. Apart from electricity generation, the application of these technologies has benefited millions of rural folk by meeting their lighting, cooking, productive energy needs in a decentralized and environmentally benign way, the booklet said.

India’s total renewable power installed capacity as on October 31, 2014, has reached 33 gigawatt (GW). Wind energy accounts for 70 per cent of the installed capacity at 22.1 GW followed by biomass power-4.2 per cent, small hydro power-3.9 GW and solar power 2.8 GW.

Renewable power is generating around 65 billion units per year corresponding to about 6.5 per cent in the total electricity mix.

There are 1.1 million households using solar energy and over 10,000 remote and inaccessible hamlets have been provided with basic electricity services through distributed renewable power systems.

The 12th five year plan has projected 33 per cent installed capacity of power in 2030 from renewable energy sources. India has ambitious plans to scale up renewable energy to 165 MW, of this solar energy will be 100 GW by 2019-20. It has proposed 25 solar parks in India and 100,000 solar pumps for irrigation and drinking water. It has also provided for incentives in investment and a ten -year tax holiday. It is world number five in solar water heating systems, number two in biogas plants and number one in bagasse co-generation.