27-Dec-2017: President dedicates Andhra Pradesh Fiber Grid Project.
President Ram Nath Kovind dedicated Andhra Pradesh (AP) Fibre Grid and drone project to the nation.
The vision of Fibre Grid project is "to establish a highly scalable network infrastructure, accessible on a nondiscriminatory basis, to provide on demand, affordable and end-to-end broadband connectivity of 15 Mbps for all households and 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps for institutions & Offices by 2018, to enable realization of the Vision of Digital AP, in partnership with the Government of India and the private sector."
AP State FiberNet Limited (APSFL) is responsible for undertaking the works of AP Fibergrid , its operations and maintenance and business activities.
25-Sep-2017: PENCIL Portal launched for effective implementation of National Child Labour Project.
The government has launched a web portal called “PENCIL”: an electronic platform for effective enforcement for no child labour.
Children are valuable assets for any country who need to be nurtured for the better future of the country. The census 2011 showed a substantial decline in child labour as compared to the data of Census 2001, but a lot is required to be done to protect their childhood. Realizing the multifaceted nature of this problem, Government has embarked on a holistic and multi-pronged approach to eliminate child labour from the country in a phased manner. Government has enacted the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016 which came into force with effect from 1st September, 2016. With this amendment, employment of a child below 14 years is completely prohibited in any occupation or processes. This is a historic progression since the inception of the Act in 1986, when a complete ban in engaging children below 14 years is foreseen as a reality by this amendment. : First time the age of child is linked with the age of the child in the Right of Children to free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. Also, for the first time the definition of adolescent has been introduced and the ambit of the Act is enhanced to include adolescent in the age group of 14-18 years. The amendment prohibits the employment of adolescent in hazardous occupations and processes.
Government has taken several initiatives subsequent to the enactment of the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016 to strengthen the governance of the legislative provisions. This include Framing of State Action Plan and circulating to all States/ UTs for enforcement of the Amended Act, Framing of Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Central Rules subsequent to the Amendment in the Act (notified vide notification dated 02.06.2017) and Review of the Schedule of hazardous occupations and processes by Technical Advisory Committee. A series of stakeholder consultations have taken place to develop these initiatives.
The National Child Labour Project (NCLP) Scheme initiated in the in 1988 to rehabilitate working children by eliminating all forms of child labour through identification and withdrawal of all children in the Project Area from child labour, Preparing children withdrawn from work for mainstream education along with vocational training. NCLP has been revised expanded and aligned to the new legislative provisions.
The legislative changes have been accompanied by creation of additional institutional mechanisms at the district, state and national level for identification and rescue, along with revamping the rehabilitation scheme and a centralized database for case to case monitoring and accountability. The Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) is aimed at creating a ready reckoner for trainers, practitioners and monitoring agencies to ensure complete prohibition of child labour and protection of adolescents from hazardous labour ultimately leading to Child Labour Free India.
The genesis of the portal is in the felt need to create a robust implementing and monitoring mechanism for both enforcement of the legislative provisions and effective implementation of the NCLP especially in the backdrop that the subject of Labour is in the concurrent list and enforcement to a large extent depends of respective State Governments. It was felt that an online portal which connects Central Government to State Government, District and to all Project Societies would provide a mechanism for implementation. In this backdrop the online portal PENCIL was conceptualized. PENCIL Portal has following components:
- Child Tracking System
- Complaint Corner
- State Government
- National Child Labour Project
- Convergence
3-Aug-2017: AGRI UDAAN- Food and Agribusiness Accelerator 2.0
ICAR-NAARM Technology Business Incubator (TBI), a-IDEA and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad’s (IIM-A) incubator Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) announces “AGRI UDAAN”- Food and Agribusiness Accelerator 2.0. This programme will help to selected innovative startups who will be mentored in to scale up their operations in Agri value chain for effective improvement in agriculture. This is a 6 month program in which shortlisted Agri startups with promising innovative business models will be mentored & guided to scale up their operations.
Accelerators are 4-8 month program aiming at scaling up innovative startups with a working prototype and initial market traction. This is done through education, mentorship, and financing. Startups enter accelerators for a fixed-period of time, and as part of a cohort. The cohort is shortlisted by evaluation panel comprising of industry veterans, business experts, R&D scientists. Four distinct factors that make accelerators unique are fixed term, cohort based, mentorship driven and they culminate into demo day.
Forthcoming Food & Agribusiness accelerator: AGRI UDAAN
Looking at the impact created through NAARM TBI a-IDEA India’s first Food & Agribusiness accelerator 2015 in partnership with IIM-A CIIE, National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), DST has come forward to support AGRI UDAAN – a unique initiative for upliftment of Agri startups
Through AGRI UDAAN we will be reaching out to Agri-startups across the country with a series of road shows in Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata & Hyderabad. This initiative is backed by Caspian Impact Investments as Platinum Partner, Yes Bank as Banking Partner, NCDEX eMarkets Ltd (NeML) & Marico Innovation Foundation as Silver partners. AGRI UDAAN also received support from National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), Agrinnovate as tech transfer partners, and FICCI as outreach partner.
Unique selection process
Applications will be evaluated by mentors from industry, business and partner organizations, based on the average scores top 40 startups will be shortlisted and allowed to pitch in front of panel of evaluators during cohort finalization programme on 9th and 10th of October 2017 at NAARM. Out of these about 8 to 12 startups will be selected for final cohort for capacity building workshop.
Rigorous mentoring and acceleration
The shortlisted cohort of startups will undergo a capacity building (CB) workshop in ICAR-NAARM. During this period, the startups will be trained in different aspects of technology commercialization, product validation, business plan preparation, risk analysis, customer engagement, finance management, fund raising etc. There will be a match making between startup-mentor. The accelerator program will culminate with demo day/ investors meet at Hyderabad and Mumbai.