26 September 2014

Government announces ‘Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Antyodaya Yojana’- DAY for uplift of urban, rural poor


All 4,041 statutory cities/towns to be covered under urban component of DAY
Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu says Rs.500 cr on skill development of urban poor during 2014-15
Minister says, skills stimulate self-worth and nation’s economy
                The Government today announced an overarching scheme for uplift of urban and rural poor through enhancement of livelihood opportunities through skill development and other means. The scheme has been named as ‘Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana – DAY’. The announcement was made today by Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation and Shri Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Rural Development at a National Convention on Skills for Rural and Urban Poor.
                The Minister further informed that under the current urban poverty alleviation programmes, only 790 cities and towns are covered and the government has decided to extend these measures to all the 4,041 statutory cities and towns, there by covering almost the entire urban population.
                Announcing the details of urban component of DAY, Shri Venkaiah Naidu said, Rs.1,000 cr has been provisioned for urban poverty alleviation during 2014-15. Out of this, Rs.500 cr will be spent on skill development of over 5,00,000 urban poor. He said, for realizing the ‘Make in India’ objective, skill development is essential. He observed that “If India is to emerge as the manufacturing base to meet global needs, the only certain way is to empower every youth of the country with the necessary skills. Skill development has multiple outcomes including enhancing employment opportunities, stimulating economic growth and promoting self-worth of beneficiaries.’’
                Shri Venkaiah Naidu informed that under the urban component of DAY, focus will be on:
1.Imparting skills with an expenditure of Rs.15,000 – Rs.18,000 on each urban poor;
2.Promotion of self-employment through setting up individual micro-enterprises and group enterprises with interest subsidy for individual projects costing Rs.2.00 lakhs and Rs.10.00 lakhs for group enterprises. Subsidized interest rate will be 7%;
3.Training urban poor to meet the huge demand from urban citizens by imparting market oriented skills through City Livelihood Centres. Each Centre would be given a capital grant of Rs.10.00 lakhs.
4.Enabling urban poor form Self-Help Groups for meeting financial and social needs with a support of Rs.10,000/- per each group who would in turn would be helped with bank linkages;
5. Development of vendor markets besides promotion of skills of vendors; and
6. Construction of permanent shelters for urban homeless and provision of other essential services.

Text of PM's Op-Ed in Wall Street Journal



Following is the text of the Op-Ed written by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, published in the Wall Street Journal today:

There is a high tide of hope for change in India. This May, across India’s immense diversity, 1.25 billion people spoke unequivocally for political stability, good governance and rapid development. India has a government with a majority in the Lok Sabha, our lower house of parliament, for the first time in 30 years. A young nation with 800 million people under age 35, India is brimming with optimism and confidence. The young people’s energy, enthusiasm and enterprise are India’s greatest strength. Unleashing those attributes is my government’s biggest mission.

We will pursue this mission by eliminating unnecessary laws and regulations, making bureaucratic processes easier and shorter, and ensuring that our government is more transparent, responsive and accountable. It has been said that doing the thing right is as important as doing the right thing.

We will create world-class infrastructure that India badly needs to accelerate growth and meet people’s basic needs. We will make our cities and towns habitable, sustainable and smart; and we will make our villages the new engines of economic transformation. “Make in India” is our commitment—and an invitation to all—to turn India into a new global manufacturing hub. We will do what it takes to make it a reality.

We ran our election campaign on the promise of inclusive development. To me, that means many things: skills education, and opportunity; safety, dignity and rights for those in every section of our society, especially women; a bank account for every Indian; affordable health care within everyone’s reach; sanitation for all by 2019; a roof over every head by 2022; electricity for every household; and connectivity to every village. In addressing these daunting challenges, I draw confidence from countless extraordinary stories of ordinary Indians that I have seen through decades of travel across India.

I also strongly believe in the possibilities of technology and innovation to transform governance, empower people, provide affordable solutions for societal challenges and reach people in ways that were unimaginable not so long ago. The number of cell phones in India has gone up from about 40 million to more than 900 million in a decade; our country is already the second-largest market for smart phones, with sales growing ever faster. When I think of the growth in computing power and storage capacity and its miniaturization that the world has witnessed over the past two decades, I am confident that this can be replicated in renewable energy. With solar and wind power, thousands of Indian villages will be able to get access quickly to reliable, affordable and clean energy, without waiting for large, faraway conventional power plants to be built.

For this reason, India’s journey to prosperity can be a more sustainable and environmentally sensitive one than the path followed by countries that came of age in earlier eras. This is a journey of our choice, rooted in our tradition that worships nature’s bounties.

India will pursue its dreams in partnership with our international friends. History tells us that India’s natural instinct is to be open to the world. India will be open and friendly—for business, ideas, research, innovations and travel. In the coming months, you will feel the difference even before you begin your travel to India.

The United States is our natural global partner. India and the U.S. embody the enduring and universal relevance of their shared values. The thriving Indian-American community in the U.S. is a metaphor for the potential of our partnership, and for the possibilities of an environment that nurtures enterprise and rewards hard work. Our strengths in information technology are especially important for leadership in the digital age. The partnership between our businesses takes place in the comfort and certainty of similar political systems and shared commitment to rule of law. In education, innovation, and science and technology, the U.S continues to inspire India.

India and the U.S. have a fundamental stake in each other’s success—for the sake of our values and our many shared interests. That is also the imperative of our partnership. And it will be of great value in advancing peace, security and stability in the Asia and Pacific regions; in the unfinished and urgent task of combating terrorism and extremism; and in securing our seas, cyber space and outer space, all of which now have a profound influence on our daily lives.

The complementary strengths of India and the U.S. can be used for inclusive and broad-based global development to transform lives across the world. Because our countries’ values and interests are aligned, though our circumstances are different, we are in a unique position to become a bridge to a more integrated and cooperative world. With sensitivity to each other’s point of view and the confidence of our friendship, we can contribute to more concerted international efforts to meet the pressing global challenges of our times.

This is a moment of flux in the global order. I am confident in the destiny of our two nations, because democracy is the greatest source of renewal and, with the right conditions, offers the best opportunity for the human spirit to flourish. 

25 September 2014

A faster, cheaper Mars orbiter

India’s Mars orbiter mission tells the world that the more technology was denied the more determined the country became to master space technologies

India has created global history by becoming the first Asian nation to reach the Mars orbit in a space mission. The success is sweeter because this has been done in its maiden attempt. No other country that has attempted a mission to Mars has succeeded in reaching the planet on debut. So, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) can claim that it has done a shade better than accomplished space powers such as the United States and Russia in reaching Mars.
India’s Mangalyaan has cost the country Rs.450 crore or about $70 million; it is without doubt the cheapest inter-planetary mission ever to be undertaken since Martian exploration began. On September 22, a mission by NASA called the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), made at a cost of over $670 million, reached Mars. This Indian marathon took 300 days to cover a distance of over 670 million kilometres — a sprint really in a record time of 10 months.
The first official hint that India was undertaking a mission to Mars came in the budget speech of 2012. Subsequently, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh formally declared in his Independence Day speech that year that an Indian mission was heading to Mars. The mission itself was launched on a balmy afternoon on November 5, 2013, and the journey from the Red Fort to the Red Planet has had a dream run.
On his last visit to ISRO, when he witnessed the launch of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India’s Mars orbiter is a “great achievement” since it costs less than the making of the Hollywood blockbuster movie “Gravity” which had a tag of $100 million.
An inexpensive mission

Many have questioned why India should be sending a robotic mission to Mars when there is so much poverty, malnutrition, death, disaster and diseases among its 1.2 billon population. Some have even called this mission as being a part of India’s “delusional dream” of becoming a superpower in the 21st century. There can be nothing farther from the truth. If one analyses the cost of the Mars Orbiter mission of Rs.450 crore, for Indians it works out to be about Rs.4 per person. Today, a bus ride would cost a lot more.
India’s Mars Orbiter mission has paved the way for cheaper and faster inter-planetary probes. During his upcoming U.S. visit, Mr. Modi and U.S. President Barack Obama are likely to sign a new agreement for the making of the joint Indo-U.S. Radar Satellite Mission. China and India recently signed an agreement on “peaceful uses of outer space.” So, many are now wanting to partner in ISRO’s success.
The mission, within minutes of reaching Mars, has already taken its first images of the Martian surface. The Mars colour camera, which is essentially an Indian eye to track Mars, will bring back the first tangible truths to Indian taxpayers that their money has been well spent.
If the 20th century witnessed a “space race” between the U.S. and the USSR, the 21st century is seeing an Asian space race. In most aspects of space technology, China is way ahead of India. It has larger rockets, bigger satellites and several rocket ports. It even launched its first astronaut in space way back in 2003 and has a space laboratory in the making.
In 2008, when India undertook its first mission to moon Chandrayaan-1, China raced ahead and orbited its Chang’e-1 satellite ahead of India. But in this Martian marathon, India has reached the finish line ahead of China. This now puts India in the pole position as far as Asian Martian exploration goes. In 2012, the first Chinese probe to Mars Yinghuo-1 failed. It was riding atop a Russian satellite called Phobos-Grunt. But the Chinese probe failed to even leave earth. Earlier in 1998, a Japanese probe to Mars ran out of fuel.
Today, India’s Mars orbiter mission has shown that the Indian elephant has lumbered ahead of the Chinese red dragon. For the record, ISRO’s chairman Dr. K. Radhakrishnan has gone on record by saying, “We are not racing with anybody. We are racing with ourselves. We have to race to reach the next level of excellence.”

Challenges ahead

Now that India has reached Mars, ISRO has several other goals and challenges to meet. Coming up in the next few weeks is the test firing of India’s monster rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk III, a rocket capable of carrying heavy payloads into space. This flight will carry a dummy crew module, which is part of a programme for the development of critical technologies that ISRO seeks to develop as part of its human space flight programme.
As ISRO says, the first astronaut could well be a woman. In a few weeks, an Indian navigation satellite will be also launched into space. By 2017, ISRO wants to undertake India’s second mission to moon Chandrayaan-2 which will have an Indian lander and a rover. Subsequently, it also wants to launch dedicated missions to study the Sun and the planetary bodies in the solar system.
Mr. Modi, in his stirring speech to ISRO, spoke of its capabilities and efficiencies. It is an eye-opener that a country which can undertake a mission to Mars is unable to provide electricity to 400 million citizens. What is worse is that 600 million Indians still don’t have access to toilets. It is hoped that Mr. Modi would have learnt a lesson or two from the Indian space agency on how to undertake cost-effective projects with no time or cost overruns. If only Mr. Modi internalises this big learning can his dream of having “Swachh Bharat” by 2019 become a reality.
The Orbiter mission undoubtedly tells the world that India is a space power to reckon with. The more technology was denied to India, the more determined it became to master these technologies.
Amid the celebration, if there is one point of regret, it is that the Mars Orbiter Satellite — a truly nationalistic mission — does not carry the Indian tri-colour or the flag. This is one inexplicable omission ISRO may regret for a long time to come.

Mars mission success

After a journey of over 660 million kilometres that took 10 months, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission has swept with effortless ease into orbit around the Red Planet, making this country the first to achieve such a feat in a maiden attempt. Probes despatched to Earth’s sibling planet over the last half a century have often run into trouble of one kind or another, with only less than half of those spacecraft ending the voyage successfully. Thus far, only the United States, the former Soviet Union and the European Space Agency have succeeded in doing so. India and its space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), now proudly join their ranks. Although ISRO could draw on its experience with the lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, launched six years back, the challenges involved in sending a spacecraft all the way to Mars are far greater. That includes propelling the spacecraft with sufficient velocity to escape Earth’s gravitational grasp, guiding it along the proper trajectory over vast distances, and then slowing it down sufficiently to go into orbit around that planet. The spacecraft had to be capable of operating autonomously as communication signals to and from ground stations could take minutes to reach it. All of this has gone remarkably smoothly, including the orbit insertion manoeuvre with the spacecraft’s main engine, which had lain idle for almost 300 days. It is a tribute to ISRO and the professionalism of its scientists and engineers that every minute detail for such a complex mission could be attended to in the course of a project completed in just one and a half years. India’s Mars effort costs Rs.460 crore, an economical price tag by Western standards.
The Indian probe joins four spacecraft already circling Mars, including America’s MAVEN (acronym for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) that went into orbit just two days earlier, as well as two U.S. rovers exploring the planet’s surface. The Indian and U.S. space agencies are holding discussions on possible scientific collaboration. Success with the Mars Orbiter will give ISRO the confidence and capability to undertake more challenging missions. However, if the country wants to send heavier and more powerful spacecraft to Mars, it cannot do so with the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) that was used for the current mission. However, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) equipped with an indigenous cryogenic stage made its first successful flight only in January this year, and a few more flights will be necessary to establish its reliability. Further improvements to the rocket may also prove essential. ISRO has achieved much, and more will be expected of it in the years to come.

first image of ISRO MOM

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International Buddhist Conclave 2014 to be Inaugurated in Bodhgaya on 27th September 2014


India, the birthplace of Buddhism, has a very rich Buddhist Heritage, with several important sites associated with the life of Lord Buddha which are essential pilgrimages for followers of Buddhism the world over.

With a view to showcasing and projecting the Buddhist heritage and pilgrim sites of India, the Ministry of Tourism is organizing the 4th International Buddhist Conclave in Bodhgaya and Sarnath, in collaboration with the State Governments of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh from the 26th to 28th September 2014. The event will give the participants an opportunity to interact, promote, package and sell pilgrimage itineraries to the Buddhist sites in the country, for overseas visitors. International Buddhist Conclaves have earlier been organized in New Delhi and Bodhgaya (February 2004); Nalanda and Bodhgaya (February 2010) and Varanasi and Bodhgaya (September 2012).

The International Buddhist Conclave is one of the initiatives being taken by India as its commitment as the land of origin of Buddhism and to improve the experience of pilgrims as well as tourists wishing to savour the essence of Buddhist heritage, at the Buddhist sites of the country.

The Conclave will include presentations, panel discussion, business to business meetings between the international and domestic tour operators, an exhibition highlighting the Buddhist attractions in India, as well as visits to important Buddhist sites in and around Bodhgaya and Sarnath. State Governments will set up booths at the conference venue for interacting with the international delegates and for showcasing India’s Buddhist Heritage.

Participants in the Buddhist Conclave will include international Buddhist opinion makers, tour operators and media, as well as State Governments and domestic tour operators promoting pilgrimages to the Buddhist sites in the country. Approximately 120 international delegates comprising tour operators, media representatives and opinion makers from 32 countries are participating in the Conclave.

In addition to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the State Governments participating in the Conclave include Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Telangana and West Bengal.

The Conclave will be inaugurated on 27th September 2014 at the Kagyupa International Monlam Trust, near Terger Monastery, Bodhgaya, by the Chief Minister of Bihar and the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Tourism and Culture Shri Shripad Naik, in the presence of the Minister for Tourism, Government of Bihar and the Minister for Technical Education, Government of Uttar Pradesh. 

Mars Orbiter Spacecraft Successfully Inserted Into Mars Orbit


India’s Mars Orbiter Spacecraft successfully entered into an orbit around planet Mars today morning (September 24, 2014) by firing its 440 Newton Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) along with eight smaller liquid engines. This Liquid Engines firing operation which began at 07:17:32 Hrs IST lasted for 1388.67 seconds which changed the velocity of the spacecraft by 1099 metre/sec. With this operation, the spacecraft entered into an elliptical orbit around Mars. Honourable Prime Minister of India, Mr Narendra Modi, was present at ISRO’s Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore to witness this important event. Other dignitaries who were present at ISTRAC include His Excellency Governor of Karnataka, Mr Vajubhai R Vala, Hon’ble Minister of Railways, Mr D V Sadananda Gowda, Hon’ble Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Mr Ananth Kumar, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka, Mr Siddaramaiah, Hon’ble Minister of State (Space), Dr Jitendra Singh, Hon’ble Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Mr G M Siddeswara, Hon’ble Member of Parliament, Mr Prahlad V Joshi, Hon’ble Minister of Transport, Government of Karnataka, Mr Ramalinga Reddy and Hon’ble Member of Legislative Assembly, Government of Karnataka, Mr Muniraju S. Prof U R Rao, former chairman, ISRO and Prof Yash Pal, former director, Space Applications Centre, were also present.

The events related to Mars Orbit Insertion progressed satisfactorily and the spacecraft performance was normal. The Spacecraft is now circling Mars in an orbit whose nearest point to Mars (periapsis) is at 421.7 km and farthest point (apoapsis) at 76,993.6 km. The inclination of orbit with respect to the equatorial plane of Mars is 150 degree, as intended. In this orbit, the spacecraft takes 72 hours 51 minutes 51 seconds to go round the Mars once.

Mars Orbiter Spacecraft was launched on-board India’s workhorse launch vehicle PSLV on November 05, 2013 into a parking orbit around the Earth. On December 01, 2013, following Trans Mars Injection (TMI) manoeuvre, the spacecraft escaped from orbiting the earth and followed a path that would allow it to encounter Mars on September 24, 2014.

With today’s successful Mars Orbit Insertion operation, ISRO has become the fourth space agency to successfully send a spacecraft to Mars orbit. In the coming weeks, the spacecraft will be thoroughly tested in the Mars orbit and the systematic observation of that planet using its five scientific instruments would begin. 

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