Contents
- Krishi Megh Launched
- Report of the Committee on Business Responsibility Reporting
- Swachh Bharat Mission Academy Launched
- Tribal Freedom Fighters’ Museums
KRISHI MEGH LAUNCHED
Focus: GS-III Agriculture
Why in news?
Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare virtually launched the Krishi Megh (National Agricultural Research & Education System -Cloud Infrastructure and Services) along with the KVC ALUNET (Krishi Vishwavidyalaya Chhatr Alumni Network) and Online Accreditation System for Higher Agricultural Educational Institutions (HEI).
Details and Highlights
- The Government of India and World Bank funded the National Agricultural Higher Education Project.
- The National Agricultural Higher Education Project is designed for strengthening the national agricultural education system in the country with the overall objective to provide more relevant and high-quality education to the agricultural university students that is in tune with the New Education Policy – 2020.
- The need to save and preserve the important research-based data in a prompt digitized form to enable its access anywhere and enabling private investments in agriculture was highlighted.
Key Features of Krishi Megh
- The existing Data Centre (ICAR-DC) built shall be strengthened with cloud computing infrastructure. This will cater to the services and infrastructure needs of Digital Agriculture of National Agricultural Research and Education System (NARES).
- Deployment of mission critical applications such as e-Office, ICAR-ERP, Education Portal, KVK Portal and mobile apps etc., will meet the growing IT needs of NARES by NARES-Cloud Infrastructure and Services with its constituents ICAR-DC and ICAR-Krish Megh.
- Under NAHEP, the out-reach of existing ICAR Data Center is broadened to cover the Agriculture Universities.
- This new Centre has latest AI/Deep learning software/tools kits for building and deploying of deep learning based applications such as disease and pest identification using image analysis, detection of maturity and ripening of fruits through image analysis, disease identification in livestock etc.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON BUSINESS RESPONSIBILITY REPORTING
Focus: GS-III Indian Economy
Why in news?
Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) released the ‘Report of the Committee on Business Responsibility Reporting (BRR)’.
Highlights
- Indian companies are aspiring to have global foothold and thus they cannot ignore the emerging trend of Corporate Governance i.e. Responsible Business.
- Due to increasing trends of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing, the demand for non-financial reporting is also growing and in this respect the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR) framework will set the stage for sustainable investing.
Background
- As a first step towards mainstreaming the concept of business responsibility, the ‘Voluntary Guidelines on Corporate Social Responsibility’ were issued in 2009.
- These guidelines were subsequently revised as ‘National Voluntary Guidelines on Social, Environmental and Economic Responsibilities of Business, 2011 (NVGS)’.
- The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) mandated the top 1000 (as of 2019) listed entities by market capitalization to file Business Responsibility Reports (BRRs) from an environmental, social and governance perspective.
- These BRRs enabled business to demonstrate the adoption of the NVG principles and the attendant core elements with the intent of engaging businesses more meaningfully with their stakeholders going beyond regulatory financial compliance.
- Taking into account the national and international developments in the arena of business and human rights since 2011, the NVGs have been updated and released as NGRBC (National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct) to reveal alignments with the UNGPs, UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Paris Agreement on Climate change etc.
Committee on Business Responsibility Reporting
- The Ministry of Corporate Affairs had constituted a ‘Committee on Business Responsibility Reporting’ to develop new BRR formats for listed and unlisted companies.
- In its Report, the Committee recommended a new reporting framework called as the ‘Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR)’ to better reflect the intent and scope of reporting on non-financial parameters.
- As a long-term measure, the Committee envisions that the information captured through BRSR filings be used to develop a Business Responsibility-Sustainability Index for companies.
SWACHH BHARAT MISSION ACADEMY LAUNCHED
Focus: GS-III Environment and Ecology
Why in news?
Union Minister for Jal Shakti launched the Swachh Bharat Mission Academy as part of the ongoing week-long behaviour change campaign ‘GandagiMukt Bharat’.
Benefits of Swachh Bharat Mission Academy
- Swachh Bharat Mission Academy, with its mobile based technology will significantly boost the capacity building efforts in training of Swachhagrahis as well as PRIs members, community-based organizations, NGOs, SHGs and others who are associated with phase 2 of SBM(G).
- The phone-based academy will provide this free of charge, access to on-demand, anytime, anywhere training course with high quality and standardized content over basic mobile phone & also improve the knowledge and interpersonal communication skills in order to enhance the quality of interaction with the beneficiaries.
- For sustaining the behaviour change and promoting the capacity building of the key stakeholders i.e. Swachhagrahis and other field functionaries, this IVR based free mobile online learning course on ODF Plus will be crucial in achieving goals underlined in Phase 2 of (Swachh Bharat Mission – Grameen) SBM-G.
Other Highlights
- The Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) has transformed rural India by manifesting into a Jan Andolan for sanitation, leading to the historic achievement of Open Defecation Free (ODF) declaration by all villages, districts and states.
- Phase II of the SBM (G) was launched in 2020 focusing on ODF sustainability and Solid and Liquid Waste Management (SLWM).
Click Here to read more about the Swachh Bharat Mission
TRIBAL FREEDOM FIGHTERS’ MUSEUMS
Focus: GS-I Indian Society
Why in news?
Ministry of Tribal Affairs is developing “Tribal Freedom Fighters’ Museums” dedicated to the contributions of the Tribal people in India to the freedom struggle.
Details
- These “Tribal Freedom Fighters’ Museums” will trace the history along the trails, along which the tribal people in hills and forests fought for their right to live and will, therefore, combine ex situ display with in situ conservation, regeneration initiatives.
- These will demonstrate the way tribal struggles for protecting their custodial concerns for the biological and cultural diversity of the country, have helped in nation building.
- All the museums will have strong usage of technologies like Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 3D/7D holographic projections etc.
Background
- History of freedom fighters in India has recorded scores of instances of unequal battles that became inevitable when imperialist forces came out with their quest for acquiring territories through the use of brute force, destroying the sovereignty and freedom of free people and bringing in the process a holocaust to the lives of innumerable men, women and children.
- It is a battle between the evil designs of expansionism and the powerful instinct of self-presentation.
- For many centuries, tribals were isolated, scattered in forests, and each tribe has established its own socio-cultural diversity.
- They launched movements against the British authority in their respective regions, because of their exploitation in the form of encroachment on their land, eviction from their land, annulment of the traditional legal and social rights and customs, against enhancement of rent, for transfer of land to thetiller, abolition of feudal and semi-feudal form of ownership.
- On the whole, these movements had social and religious overtone, but they were directed against the issues related to their existence.
- Tribal Resistance Movement was an integral part of Freedom movement of India. In this historic struggle, the heroic role played by many distinguished tribal leaders like BirsaMunda, Rani Gaidinliu, LaxmanNaik, and Veer SurendraSai and many others.
