1.Uttar Pradesh ranks First in Number of Child Labourers.
CRY report on child labour released recently according to those reports, 8 lakh and more than 8 lakh children are in between the ages of 5 and 6 years in India are engaged in child labour.
The organization, Child Right and You(CRY) is an NGO Working towards the unliftment of underprivileged children. The CRY organization was got established in the year 1979 by the honorable Rippan Kapur.
Over five lakh children in India do not attending the school according to the survey of recent reports. A majority of them are involved in family based work.
Uttar Pradesh occupied fist rank in the number of child laboursers. Nearly there are 2,50,672 children in UP and two more states are occupied by 2nd and 3rd ranks. Those are Bihar having nearly 1,28,087 child labours and Maharastra having 82,847 child labours.
Some of the reports as identified that majorly unemployment and high level of poverty and another thing is lack of adequate social security net are the factor to forcing the children to the work and they become child labours. These children are often forced to migrate with their parents and assist in family occupations such as working in brick kilns.
The ICDS namely Integrated Child Development Scheme suffers with many limitations and is now covering only 50% of the child labours.
In last 10 years between 2001-1, the working children In the age group of 10 to 14 years a reduction of 30% but the child labours in the age group of years 5 to 9 have seen an increase of 37% from 2001.
2. Bihar`s Project Jal Sanchay Chosen for National Award.
Project Jal Sanchay is a water conservation model project in Bihar state. It is successfully adopted in nalanda district in south central bihar. It has been chosen for the national award for the excellence in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme-MGNREGP by the Ministry of Rural Development. The award may conferred in the date of June 19th 2017 at a function held at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi.
Nalanda district in bihar is one of the agriculture-oriented district remained affected by drought-like conditions that hampered the farming activities in the district. Though the district receives flash floods during the monsoon, the water runoff in the district was very high. Because of this reason entire water got washed away in a span of 15 to 20 days.
To overcome under these circumstances, project jal sanchay was launched under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme-MGNREGP ot offset the water crisis in the district.
The main principle under this project is check dams and tradidtional Aahar Pane irrigation systems were constructed. In addition to that traditional water bodies were desilted and renovated. The team campains about the usefulness of rainwater harvestin were also carried out.
This project mixed up with traditional technologyes and modern days techniques and got evolved into a holistic program to conserve water.
As a result of the implementation of the project , availability of water got improved drastically which positively impacted the farm production in the district.
3. The government has made Aadhaar mandatory for opening bank accounts as well as for carrying out financial transactions above of Rs 50,000. In addition, the government has asked all the existing account holders to link Aadhaar numbers to their bank accounts by December 31, 2017. Failure to comply with this guideline will make the account invalid. Further, the notification issued amending the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Rules, 2005, will require quoting of Aadhaar card mandatory along with PAN by individuals, companies and partnership firms for all financial transactions of 50,000 or above. Before the notification, the PMLA Rules made it mandatory to submit PAN number or Form 60 to banks while opening accounts for high-value transactions.
Section 139AA(1) of the I-T Act,1961, as introduced by the Finance Act, 2017, makes it mandatory quoting of Aadhaar/Enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form while filing income tax returns with effect from July 1, 2017.
Section 139AA(2) of the I-T Act provides that persons with PAN card as on the 1st day of July 2017, and who is eligible to obtain Aadhaar should intimate his Aadhaar and in the case of non-intimation of Aadhaar, the PAN allotted to the person shall be deemed to be invalid.
4. IOC, BPCL, HPCL Sign Agreement to set World’s Largest Refinery.
The Public Sector Oil Marketing Companies, Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum has have signed the joint venture agreement to jointly set up the world’s largest refinery and petrochemical complex in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra.
Key Highlights:
ü Indian Oil Corp (IOC) will hold 50% stake and the Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) will each hold a stake of 25% each in the new complex.
ü The refinery is expected to be set up at an estimated cost of Rs 3 lakh crore. The new complex is expected to be completed by 2022. The new complex will have a 60 million tonnes refining capacity. The complex would come up at Babulwadi, Rajapur in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra located very close to the West coast. Being on the West coast will be helpful in easily sourcing the crude oil from the Middle-East, Africa and South America.
ü The refinery complex will have three crude units of 20 million tonnes each. The refinery will produce petrol, diesel, LPG, ATF and feedstock for making petrochemical.
ü The refinery complex will have an accompanying mega petrochemical plant which will include an aromatic complex, naphtha cracker and polymer complex.
5.DRDO Successfully Test-fires anti-Tank Nag Missile.
The anti-tank Nag missile is one of the five missile systems developed by the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) under the integrated guided missile development programme (IGMDP). The four other missiles developed under this programme include Agni, Akash, Trishul and Prithvi.
The Nag missile is a third generation anti-tank guided missile which works on “fire and forget” principle. The anti-tank Nag missile has been equipped with the highly advanced Imaging Infrared Radar (IRR) seeker along with integrated avionics.
This technology is possessed by very few nations. It also possess advanced passive homing guidance system. The missile has been designed mainly to destroy modern main battle tanks and other heavily armoured targets.
Nag can be launched from land and air-based platforms. The helicopter launched version known as helicopter-launched NAG (HELINA) can be fired from Dhruv advanced light helicopter (ALH) and HAL Rudra attack helicopter.
The land-based version of the missile is at present available for integration on the Nag missile carrier (NAMICA).
6. Ministry of Railways launches Mission Retro-Fitment.
Minister of Railways Suresh Prabhu has launched Mission Retro-Fitment to enhance the passenger experience by upgrading the existing fleet of coaches.
Key Highlights:
Mission Retro-Fitment is an ambitious program of the ministry or railways to upgrade the level of furnishing & amenities in the coaches of Indian Railways. The refurbished coaches will have better furnishing, aesthetics & amenities and better safety features which are aimed at providing a safe and comfortable travel to the railway passengers.
Under Mission Retro-Fitment, 40,000 coaches will be refurbished and retrofitted in the next five years. The mission aims to induct about 40,000 coaches with upgraded interiors by 2022-23. The mission will be one of the largest retro fitment projects in the world.
The mission will be carried out without affecting the traffic operation. It is estimated that cost of refurbishing per coach to be approximately Rs 30 lakhs.