01-10-22 Daily-Himachal Pradesh-HPPSC Current Affairs

Himachal Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur inaugurated a new Milkfed Plant Chakkar in Balh area of Mandi district which would increase its capacity to over 50,000 litres constructed at a cost of Rs 16.32 crore. He said this plant would process milk in a semi-automatic way, which would provide a facility of procurement of more milk from the farmers.

Addressing a public meeting at Chakkar, Thakur said that the HP Milkfed collected about 395 lakh liters of milk from 47,295 farmers of the State during the year 2021-22 and Rs 110.56 crore was provided to the farmers. He said that milk was one of the most important sources of income to the farmers of the State and during the tenure of the present , the purchase of milk has increased by 78 per cent, that is, from 219.00 lakh liters in the year 2017-18 to 395.39 lakh liters in the year 2021-22. The total turnover of Himachal Pradesh Milk Federation in the year 2017-18 was Rs.99 crore which has increased to Rs.172 crore in the year 2021-22, he added.

Thakur said that during the present government, an unprecedented increase of Rs.9 was made in the price of milk purchased from farmers, from Rs.22.90 per liter in the year 2017-18 to Rs.31.90 per liter in the year 2022-23. He said that the commission of milk societies was increased from 4.5 per cent to 5 percent and the Milk Federation was paying the best price to the milk producers in the country.

He said that Milkfed today has 11 Milk Processing Plants, one Cattle Feed Plant and one Powder Plant functioning in the State. With the commissioning of Milk Plant Chakkar (Mandi), the daily capacity of milk plots has increased from 100000 litres to 130000 litres. He said that another Milk Processing Plant of 50,000 litres capacity was under construction in Duttnagar, of which 70 percent work has been completed. He said that this plant would facilitate about thousands of farmers from Mandi, Kullu and other districts.

The donations that recognised national parties received during financial year 2020-21 decreased by over 420 crore, a sharp fall of 41.49% from the previous fiscal.

Donations to the BJPdecreased from 785.77 crore during FY 2019-20 to 477.54 crore during FY 2020-21 a fall of 39.23%. The party’s donations had increased by 5.88% during FY 2019-20 in comparison to FY 2018-19, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said in a statement.

Thedonations received by Congressplunged from 139.016 crore during FY 2019-20 to 74.524 crore during FY 2020-21 — a reduction of 46.39%.

Its donations had decreased by 6.44% between FY 2018-19 and FY 2019-20, the statement said.

A total of over 246 crore was donated to the national parties from Delhi, followed by 71.68 crore from Maharashtra and over 47 crore from Gujarat.

The corporate and the business sector made 1,398 donations to the national parties amounting to 480.655 crore over 80% of the total donations while 2,258 individual donors contributed 111.65 crore or 18.804% of the total to these parties during FY 2020-21.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development will implement naari adalat (womens courts) led by womens collectives in the country in a phased manner as an alternate grievance redressal mechanism to resolve petty disputes at the gram panchayat level.

The scheme is part of the Ministry guidelines for the Mission Shakti umbrella scheme. The umbrella scheme comprises of sub-schemes for womens safety and Empowerment.

In the beginning, the scheme will be launched in some States and Union Territories, preferably in aspirational districts where elected women representatives head gram panchayat, according to the guidelines.

In the first year, there will be an awareness drive regarding legal, constitutional rights and entitlements. In the second year, a formal set up of women collectives with seven to 11 members will be provided in order to address socio- economic and cultural issues faced by women.

The proposed framework for online gaming in India will catalyse innovation while protecting gamers rights, privacy and safety, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.

Mr. Chandrasekhar termed online gamers important stakeholders and said that their views will be taken into consideration when the government comes up with a final framework for online games.

The government has set up an inter-ministerial panel to work on regulations for the online gaming and identify a nodal ministry to look after the sector.

To bolster measurement of Air Pollution in rural India, the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, is embarking on a $2.5 million project (19 crore) to install nearly 1,400 sensors in rural blocks of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The three-year pilot project is expected to pave the way for a national Network of air quality sensors in rural India.

Air pollution in India is largely framed as an urban blight though causes of pollution, such as burning, and reliance on diesel gensets for electricity are worsening air quality in villages too.

In 2019, the government launched the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) to achieve 20-30% reduction in particulate matter (PM) air pollution by 2024 with 2017 as the Base Year for comparison. This however is primarily aimed at 122 cities that have been categorised as Indias most polluted cities.

Under NCAP, 375.44 crore was provided to 114 cities from 2018-19 to 2020-21 and 290 crore was allocated to 82 cities for the financial year 2021-2022. The programme has an allocation of 700 crore envisaged for 2021-26. However interim analysis by independent bodies have found that theres been minimal reduction so far in PM trends under NCAP and that pollution-reduction targets remain elusive.