1. The Agriculture Ministry has commenced the project of creating ‘Agristack’, which is a digital ecosystem of agriculture in the country. It aims to help the government in effective planning towards increasing the income of farmers and improving the efficiency of the agriculture sector. Recently, the Agriculture Ministry also announced that the Government is aiming to create a National Farmers Database using digitised land records, to provide personalised services to farmers.
2. The Lok Sabha recently passed the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Bill, 2021. The Bill will replace the IBC Amendment Ordinance 2021 promulgated in April, which introduced pre-packs as an insolvency resolution mechanism for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with defaults up to Rs 1 crore. Under a pre-packaged process, main stakeholders identify a prospective buyer and negotiate a resolution plan before approaching NCLT.
3. Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs launched the ‘India Cycles4Change Challenge’ in 2020, to create cycle-friendly initiatives across the country. Recently, the Ministry awarded 11 cities with the title of ‘India’s Top 11 Cycling Pioneers’. With this, the next stage of the first season has started. The top 11 cities shall receive an award of Rs 1 crore each to scale up their cycling initiatives. The India Cycles4Change Challenge launched its first report—’The Dawn of India’s Cycling Revolution’. Season 2 of the challenge has also been started.
4. The Tamil Nadu government has become the first in the country to launch free Covid-19 vaccination at private hospitals. The scheme is being funded by Corporate Social Responsibility funds of various companies. Under the scheme, 130 private hospitals have been identified to provide free Covid vaccines to the people. The Union government procures 75 per cent of the vaccines produced and the remaining 25 per cent is available for private hospitals, which is largely under-utilised.
5. COVID BEEP is India’s first indigenous, wireless physiological parameters monitoring system for COVID-19 patients, developed by ESIC Medical College Hyderabad in collaboration with Electronics Corporation of India Ltd. (ECIL) and Department of Atomic Energy. A proposal has been recently submitted to Ministry of Labour & Employment for large scale deployment of the system.
6. In 1986, “All India Quota” scheme was introduced under the directions of Supreme Court. It was introduced with an aim to provide domicile-free merit-based opportunities to students from any states who aspire to study in medical college located in another state. The scheme comprises 15% of UG seats and 50% of PG seats in government medical colleges. The Union Health Ministry has recently announced that 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) will be offered under the All India Quota scheme for Undergraduate (UG) and Postgraduate (PG) medical and dental courses from 2021-22 onwards.
7. On the occasion of International Tiger Day, Bhupendra Yadav (Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate change) stated that 14 Tiger reserves of India have received accreditation of the Global Conservation Assured Tiger Standards (CA|TS). The 14 accredited tiger reserves are Manas, Kaziranga and Orang in Assam; Satpura, Kanha and Panna in Madhya Pradesh; Pench in Maharashtra; Valmiki tiger reserve in Bihar; Dudhwa in Uttar Pradesh; Sunderbans in West Bengal; Parambikulam in Kerala; Bandipur in Karntaka and Mudumalai & Anamalai in Tamil Nadu.
8. According to the fourth national serology survey of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Madhya Pradesh has the highest Covid-19 Sero-prevalence and Kerala has the lowest Covid-19 Sero-prevalence. Sero-prevalence refers to the frequency of individuals with antibody to a particular virus in a population. 21 states were taken under consideration in this survey. The state-wise approximate prevalence was issued on July 28, 2021. Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar are the top three states with high Sero-prevalence rate. Kerala has a Sero prevalence of only 44%.
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