The Daily Brief – 8th December 2018

National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) and Centre for Ganga River Basin Management and Studies (cGanga) jointly organised the annual India Water Impact Summit-2018 in New Delhi. The annual summit focused on three key aspects: Spotlight on 5 states (Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi and Bihar), Ganga Financing Forum and Technology and Innovation.

Maharashtra Government has launched World Bank assisted State of Maharashtra’s Agribusiness and Rural Transformation (SMART) Project to transform rural Maharashtra. This project aims to revamp agricultural value chains, with special focus on marginal farmers across 1,000 villages. It will cover almost one-fourth of Maharashtra. Its focus is on villages which are reeling under worst agriculture crisis compounded by lack of infrastructure and assured value chains to channelize farm produce.

Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has given its in principle approval for strategic sale of Central Government’s existing 52.63% of total paid up equity shareholding in Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) to Power Finance Corporation (PFC) along with transfer of management control. Both REC and PFC are Central Public Sector Enterprises under the Ministry of Power. Founded in July 1969, REC is public Infrastructure finance company in India’s power sector. It finances and promotes rural electrification projects across India.

Indian Coast Guard (ICG) has conducted Regional Level Marine Oil Pollution Response Exercise titled ‘Clean Sea– 2018’ at sea off Port Blair, Andaman & Nicobar (A&B) Islands with an objective to ascertain preparedness of IGC, resource agencies and other stakeholders in responding to major oil spill in line with provisions of National Oil Spill Disaster Contingency Plan (NOS-DCP).

The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 6, 2018 approved the launching of National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS). The mission will be launched by the Department of Science and Technology at an expected cost of Rs 3660 crore for a period of five years. The mission addresses the ever-increasing technological requirements of the society and takes into account the international trends and roadmaps of leading countries for the next generation technologies.

The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given its ex-post facto approval to the Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) between India and Japan in the field of environmental cooperation. The MoC was signed on October 29, 2018 during the visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Japan. It is expected to bring in the latest technologies and best practices suited for bringing about better environmental protection, better conservation, and better management of climate change and biodiversity conservation.

The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been apprised of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and the United States of America concerning scientific and technical cooperation in the Earth Sciences. The MoU was signed on November 1, 2018. The specific areas of cooperation include ecosystems, climate variability and land-use changes, energy, minerals, environmental health, natural hazards, risk and resilience of assessments, water resources, and informatics and data integration.

The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been apprised of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and France in the field of energy efficiency and energy conservation. The MoU was signed on October 17, 2018. The MoU is a science and technology agreement, which involves knowledge exchange and cooperation in the nature of technical assistance only.