Telecom, NITI Aayog - Current Affairs Questions and Answers

ANSWER: Atal Tinkering Lab's Community Day

Explanation:
NITI Aayog's Atal Innovation Mission will launch the Atal Tinkering Lab's Community Day in the national capital tomorrow on Friday, 15th December, 2017.

The day will mark the Community Drive Initiative in which 25 young Mentors will engage with more than 200 students who are not enrolled in the formal education system.

CEO NITI Aayog, Mr. Amitabh Kant will launch the initiative in which these mentors will visit four locations in New Delhi to conduct brief sessions with children from various NGOs, on how innovations can help resolve the problems in the communities.

ATL: Know More

• The Atal Tinkering Lab Community Drive Initiative is aimed at maximizing the impact of Atal Tinkering Labs by extending innovation to children in the community who do not have access to formal educational institutions.
• The purpose of this initiative is to provide these children with the same educational tools as the students in Atal Tinkering Labs to enable them to become problem solvers.
• The NGOs participating in these interactions include organizations working with disabled children, street and working children, and girls from the weaker sections of society.

ANSWER: Amitabh Kant

Explanation:
The Union Government has constituted high-level committee headed by NITI Aayog Chief Executive Amitabh Kant to address problem of Non-performing assets (NPAs) or stressed assets in India's power sector.

It comprises secretaries in the ministries of power, coal and department of financial services as it members.

The Government is also planning to investigate whether private developers have inflated project costs to show higher debt.

NPAs: Know More

• According to second volume of Economic Survey 2016-17 released in August 2017, NPAs in power generation accounted for around 5.9% of the banking sector's total outstanding advances of Rs. 4.73 trillion.
• Tackling issues that afflict so-called stranded power assets will provide much-needed relief for Indian banks weighed down by bad loans.
• Besides, weak financial health of state-owned power distribution companies (discoms) is also hampering process of signing long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) through competitive bidding.
• So far, a total of 34 coal-fuelled power projects, with an estimated debt of Rs. 1.77 trillion were reviewed by government after being identified by department of financial services.
• Issues faced by these projects include paucity of funds, lack of PPAs and absence of fuel security.

ANSWER: IRF Geneva

Explanation:
The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) and the International Road Federation, Geneva (IRF Geneva) have on 21st Sept 2017 signed a Statement of Intent (SoI) to cooperate in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).

The objective of the SoI is to create a national platform, involving all relevant Government of India stakeholders, Indian and foreign companies active in the sector, and relevant technical experts for the purpose of developing a National ITS Policy covering:

1) Traffic Management,

2) Parking Management,

3) Electronic Enforcement of Traffic Rules and Regulations,

4) Fleet Management and Monitoring,

5) Innovation in the field of ITS, and

6) Education in the field of ITS.

Objectives of National ITS Policy

• The objectives of this national ITS Policy will be to contribute to reducing urban traffic congestion, improving the situation around parking of vehicles in cities, improving road safety, and improving the security of passenger and goods traffic.
• The work of this National Platform will provide a coherent and consistent National ITS Policy covering domains such as traffic and parking management, enforcement, and security.

ANSWER: Rajiv Kumar

Explanation:
Dr. Rajiv Kumar has taken charge as the new Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog today.

A renowned economist, he replaces Shri Arvind Panagariya as the head of the premier think tank of the country.

The new Vice Chairman said there would be more emphasis on improving Government capacity at the state level to ensure the values of co-operative and competitive federalism.

NITI Aayog is well placed to play the role of a platform that cuts across these issues. The thematic focus will be on generating employment, enhancing investment, improving ease of doing business, transforming agriculture, and reforming education and health.

Members of NITI Aayog: Shri Ramesh Chand, Shri VK Saraswat, Dr.VKPaul and CEO NITI Aayog, Shri Amitabh Kant.

ANSWER: NITI Aayog

Explanation:
NITI Aayog has developed a Handbook of State Statistics that consolidates key statistics across sectors for every Indian State/UT.

While the State data on crucial indicators is currently fragmented across different sources, this handbook provides a one-stop database of important State statistics.

Starting with Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), the handbook provides sectorial compositions of State economies from 1980-81 to the latest possible year.

Five different GSDP series are available between 1980-81 and now, and this database covers all of them.

It covers statistics on State government finances from 1981 to 2017across indicators such as gross fiscal deficits, revenue deficits, social sector expenditure, capital expenditure etc.

Labour statistics from the national sample surveys (NSS), statistics on labour force participation rates (LFPR), worker-population ratio (WPR) by industry and unemployment rates are also presented.

Data on education covers primary, secondary and tertiary levels including enrolment ratios, schools, enrolment, teachers and performance indicators, among others.

Some of the health indicators covered by the handbook include infant mortality rate (IMR), birth rates, life expectancy, sex ratio at birth, immunisation and institutional deliveries among others.

For certain indicators such as IMR, TFR, birth rates, data from 1971 onwards to 2015 is available.

For other indicators the data series starts in 2005.

Data in the Handbook: Know More

• The final section of the publication provides state-wise estimates of poverty numbers. Data has been presented according to the Lakdawala Methodology (data from 1973-74 to 2004-05) and the Tendulkar Methodology (data from 1993-94 to 2011-12).
• Data is quinquennial, as estimates for poverty are derived from NSS Household Consumption Surveys.

ANSWER: Judicial performance index

Explanation:
The Niti Aayog has suggested introduction of a ‘judicial performance index’ to check delay in trial and address the issue of pendency of cases.

Asserting that corruption cases get held up in the judicial system inordinately, the policy think-tank has also recommended putting a time-limit for processing them.

In its draft three-year action agenda (for 2017-18 to 2019-20), the Aayog has suggested several judicial reforms.

This is including increasing the use of information and communication technology, and streamlining judicial appointments.

The draft was circulated among the Niti Aayog’s Governing Council members (consisting of chief ministers of all states and others) on April 23.

It takes eight years to finalise a major vigilance case from the date of occurrence of irregularity and underlined the need to speed up decision - making process in corruption cases.

The judicial system is another avenue where corruption cases get held up. Delays in obtaining justice encourage the corrupt and discourage those who are honest.

Beyond the larger reforms in the justice system to reduce pendency, special courts set up to try corruption cases should be strengthened and time limits to process corruption cases should be introduced.

The report has also suggested introduction of a ‘judicial performance index’.

Such an index could be established to help high courts and high court chief justices keep a track of performance and process improvement at the district courts and subordinate levels for reducing delay.

This would require fixing non-mandatory timeframes for different types of cases as broad guidelines to benchmark when a case has been delayed, it said.

ANSWER: United Nations

Explanation:
Celebrating the outstanding achievements of women in India, NITI Aayog, in partnership with MyGov and the United Nations, announces winners of the Women Transforming India Awards, 2017.

The awards ceremony recognizes the exceptional work of 12 women in critical areas such as preventing violence against women; bridging the gender gap in education; providing healthcare.

Additionally the awards recognize building livelihoods and enterprises for women; and promoting inclusion for persons with disabilities.

The awardees were selected after a rigorous process by an eminent jury comprising P.T. Usha, track and field Olympian; Pooja Thakur, Wing Commander, Indian Air Force; Nirupama Rao, Former Foreign Secretary and Ambassador, Arvind Panagariya, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog; Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog and Yuri Afanasiev, UN Resident Coordinator.

Launched on International Women’s Day on 8 March, the contest aimed to gather lesser-own stories of women leading change.

It was hosted on MyGov.in and ran till 1 June and was supported by an extensive outreach campaign to promote equal opportunity for women.

Top 6 Contestants

Laxmi Agarwal: Attacked in 2005 in broad daylight at the age of 15, Laxmi Aggarwal is today a champion of violence against women.

She has filed public interest litigations in India’s highest court to restrict the sale of acid.

Safeena Husain: The founder and executive director of Educate Girls, a non- profit organization working for girls’ education, Safeena Husain has worked to bring education to some of India’s most backward districts.

Kamal Kumbhar: Broke free from the shackles of poverty and a suffocating marriage to create a micro-enterprise network, enabling women like herself to realise their dreams of a brighter tomorrow.

Subasini Mistry: After losing her husband at a young age, Subasini Mistry saved for two decades to build a hospital for the needy.

Arunima Sinha: Is the first female amputee to scale the highest mountain in the world.

Jamuna Tudu: Along with her band of women activists, Jamuna Tudu has conserved 50 hectares of forest land around her village in Jharkhand, taking on encroachers with little more than bows and arrows and courage.

ANSWER: Ease of Doing Business

Explanation:
The Survey was released by the Union Minister of Commerce Smt. Nirmala Sitaraman and Minister of Law & Justice and Electronics and Information Technology, Shri Ravishankar Prasad.

The Ease of Doing Business report based on an Enterprise Survey of 3,500 manufacturing firms Survey comes in the backdrop of the fact that India needs to create an environment that fosters globally competitive firms, capable of driving and sustaining economic growth.

ANSWER: Mentor India Campaign

Explanation:
NITI Aayog will launch the Mentor India Campaign.

This is a strategic nation building initiative to engage leaders who can guide and mentor students at more than 900 Atal Tinkering Labs.

These were established across the country as a part of the Atal Innovation Mission.

CEO NITI Aayog, Shri Amitabh Kant will unveil the online nationwide initiative in the capital tomorrow on Wednesday, 23rdAugust.

Mentor India is aimed at maximizing the impact of Atal Tinkering Labs, possibly the biggest disruption in formal education globally.

The idea is to engage leaders who will nurture and guide students in the Atal Tinkering Labs.

These labs are non-prescriptive by nature, and mentors are expected to be enablers rather than instructors.

NITI Aayog is looking for leaders who can spend anywhere between one to two hours every week in one or more such labs.

This will enable students to experience, learn and practice future skills such as design and computational thinking.

Atal Innovation Mission: Know More

• Atal Tinkering Labs are dedicated works spaces where students from Class 6th to Class 12th learn innovation skills.
• They also develop ideas that will go on to transform India.
• The labs are powered to acquaint students with state-of-the-art equipment such as 3D printers, robotics & electronics development tools, Internet of things & sensors etc.
• NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission is among one of the flagship programs of the Government of India.
• This is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the country to set up the Atal Tinkering Labs across the country.
• The Mission has / is in the process of setting up 900+ such labs across India and aims to have 2,000 such labs by end of 2017.

ANSWER: UP, Assam and Karnataka

Explanation:
In a major push to competitive, cooperative federalism, NITI Aayog on Aug 8, 2017 launched a partnership with three States each to radically transform their Health and Education sectors.

NITI Aayog has selected Uttar Pradesh, Assam, and Karnataka to improve healthcare delivery and key outcomes in these States.

In Education, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Jharkhand have been selected for support to better learning outcomes.

The six States have been chosen after a rigorous competitive process based on comprehensive metrics to determine potential for impact and likelihood of success.

States were called to, first, express intent of collaborating with NITI Aayog to better their Health and Education indices.

States then made presentations for each sector which was assessed by a committee comprised of senior members of NITI Aayog and Health and Education ministries.

The States highlighted the initiatives undertaken by them thus far, their willingness to accelerate improvement and justified why they should be selected for the institutional support being offered by NITI Aayog.

On thorough technical evaluation, the chosen States have committed to time-bound, governance reforms in both sectors.

A Program Management Unit to push for efficiency and efficacy in governance structures and service delivery will now be available in the six chosen States for a period of 30 months.

It is expected that these three years of focussed attention and support from the premier think tank will lead to a marked transformation and also provide a model for other States to replicate and adapt.

This three-way partnership between NITI, State Governments and a knowledge partner for each of the sectors is part of the Sustainable Action for Transforming Human Capital (SATH) initiative of NITI Aayog.

SATH by NITI Aayog: Know More

• NITI Aayog has been working to foster co-operative federalism by ranking states through health, water, education, and agricultural indices.
• However, SATH has been launched to go beyond ranking states and to handhold them in improving their social sector indicators.
• SATH is a challenging and ambitious initiative as the baseline of various indicators and parameters of education and health in the States are in public domain.
• It defines a new dimension for cooperative federalism, where NITI Aayog and its knowledge partner will actively aid implementation of their recommendations, in addition to just policy inputs.
• All stakeholders will be under pressure from the day of signing of the MOU to initiate reforms or processes which will show improvement in education and learning outcomes.