The Daily Brief – 16th August 2019

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech, rolled out a road map of the NDA government for the betterment of farmers and common man. He said that, by the 75th year of independence, farmers’ income should double, every poor person should get a pucca house, every family should get electricity connection and every village should have optical fibre network and broadband connectivity. He also said that there is a need to lay stress on blue economy, farmers should become exporters and every district of the country should be an export hub.

Union Ministry of Railways launched Commando for Railway Security (CORAS) of Indian Railways, which is a separate Commando Unit of Railway Protection Force. These CORAS commandos will be posted in the Left Wing Extremism (LWE)/Insurgency/Terrorism affected railway areas.

A high-performance centre for hockey – Naval Tata Hockey Academy (NTHA) – has been inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Odisha Naveen Patnaik at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha for grooming the best hockey talent in the State. It was opened as part of a joint initiative of Tata Steel, Tata Trusts and Government of Odisha-Tata Odisha Hockey Programme. The academy is named after Naval H. Tata to commemorate his contribution to hockey in India as well as his achievements as a sports administrator.

Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi appointed Harshad Pandurang Thakur, a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai as the Director of the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare (NIHFW) for a term of five years. Established in 1977 by the merger of the National Institute of Family Planning (NIFP) and the National Institute of Health Administration and Education (NIHAE), the NIHFW is headquartered in New Delhi.

Union Ministry of Textiles and 16 states have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for skilling about 4 lakh workers as a part of the “Scheme for Capacity Building in Textile Sector” (SAMARTH). These states are Arunachal Pradesh, Kerala, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura, Karnataka, Manipur, Haryana, Meghalaya, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. SAMARTH was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in December 2017.

Geographical Indication (GI) tag has been granted to the famous Palani panchamirtham, given as ‘prasadam’ at the Murugan Temple in Palani, Tamil Nadu. With this, the total number of products from Tamil Nadu that have been accorded GI tag becomes 29. In 2004-05, Darjeeling tea became the first GI tagged product in India.

Wrestler Deepak Punia became India’s first junior World Champion with a win over Russia’s Alik Shebzukhov in the 86kg category at the Junior World Championships in Talinn, Estonia on August 14^th, 2019. The 18-year old had won the silver medal in Slovakia. Vicky Chahar won bronze in the 92 kg category by beating Mongolia’s Batmagnai Enkhtuvshin.