23-Mar-2021: Work undertaken under National Mission on Libraries
During the past six months, work has been undertaken in the following components of National Mission on Libraries (NML): -
DETAILS OF WORK DONE IN PAST 6 MONTHS (Sept 2020 to Feb 2021)
- 43,512 digital records have been added to the Indian Culture Portal under various categories.
- 10,00,000 bibliographic records were harvested in new Koha instance.
- Metadata creation and curation of 68,830 digital and 25,709 bibliographic records was carried out for data received from MoC Organizations.
- Five new categories have been added to the Indian Culture Portal to make the users more familiar with the Culture of India which includes Newspaper Clippings, Historic Cities of India, Forts of India, Textiles and Fabrics of India and Virtual Walkthrough.
- Continuous development of APIs for Android and Umang platform was carried out. Indian Culture Portal is available on Google play store, Umang Website and Umang mobile application. Development for iOS devices is in process.
- Search Engine Optimization of Indian Culture portal was carried out for better ranking on Google search.
- DSpace and Koha instances of MoC Organizations such as National Library were created and monitored. Adequate support was also provided.
- Content of 2,415 digital objects was translated from English to Hindi on the Indian Culture Portal.
- Instructional material for Dspace training, namely Spoken Tutorials, suitable for self-learning, was completed, and a Pilot workshop was conducted to verify its suitability for large scale training.
- Various initiatives have been taken to collect relevant material from other Ministries and State Governments for display in this portal.
Execution and implementation of the approved work under the NML Model Library Scheme is directly controlled by the respective State / UT Library authority.
10-Feb-2021: National Digital Education Architecture (NDEAR) to be set up
Union Budget 2021-22 has laid a major emphasis on strengthening country’s digital infrastructure for education by announcing setting up of a National Digital Educational Architecture (NDEAR) within the context of a Digital First Mindset where the Digital Architecture will not only support teaching and learning activities but also educational planning, governance administrative activities of the Centre and the States/ Union Territories.
It will provide diverse education eco-system architecture for development of digital infrastructure, a federated but interoperable system that will ensure autonomy of all stakeholders, especially States and UTs.
NDEAR is being envisioned to be a digital infrastructure for Education. NDEAR will be beneficial for both Centre and States in planning, administering and governing school education as well as to teachers, students and schools for having a seamless digital learning experience. The institutional structure, governance framework, technology and data of NDEAR will benefit the entire student and teacher community.
23-Dec-2020: Cabinet approves transformatory changes in Post Matric Scholarship for SCs.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has today approved major and transformatory changes in the Centrally Sponsored Scheme ‘Post Matric Scholarship to students belonging to Scheduled Castes (PMS-SC)’ to benefit more than 4 Crore SC students in the next 5 years so that they can successfully complete their higher education.
The Cabinet has approved a total investment of Rs. 59,048 Cr of which Central Government would spend Rs. 35,534 Cr (60%) and the balance would be spent by the State Govts. This replaces the existing 'committed liability' system and brings greater involvement of the Central Govt in this crucial scheme.
The Post Matric Scholarship Scheme for Scheduled Castes allows students to pursue any post matric course starting from class 11th and onwards, with the Govt meeting the cost of education.
The Central Govt is committed to give a big push and further impetus to this effort so that the GER (Higher Education) of SCs would reach up to the National standards within the 5 year period.
Following are the details:
The focus of the scheme would be on enrolling the poorest students, timely payments, comprehensive accountability, continuous monitoring and total transparency.
- A campaign will be launched to enroll the students, from the poorest households passing the 10th standard, in the higher education courses of their choice. It is estimated that 1.36 Cr such poorest students, who are currently not continuing their education beyond 10th standards would be brought into the higher education system in the next 5 years.
- The scheme will be run on an online platform with robust cyber security measures that would assure transparency, accountability, efficiency, and timely delivery of the assistance without any delays.
- The States will undertake fool-proof verification of the eligibility, caste status, Aadhar identification and bank account details on the online portal.
- Transfer of financial assistance to the students under the scheme shall be on DBT mode, and preferably using the Aadhar Enabled Payment System. Starting from 2021-22, the Central share (60%) in the scheme would be released on DBT mode directly into the bank accounts of the students as per fixed time schedule, after ensuring that the concerned State Government has released their share.
- Monitoring mechanism will be further strengthened through conduct of social audits, annual third party evaluation, and half-yearly self-audited reports from each institution.
The Central Assistance which was around Rs 1100 crore annually during 2017-18 to 2019-20 would be increased more than 5 times to be around Rs 6000 core annually during 2020-21 to 2025-26.