PUNJAB

· Punjab budget 2019-20: Highlights

ð Petrol to cost Rs 5 less and diesel Re 1 less per litre from midnight in Punjab.

ð Provision of Rs 80 crore for relining of Rajasthan feeder and Rs 120 crore for Sirhind Feeder Canal.

ð Rs 22,842 crore kept for capital expenditure

ð Revenue Deficit for 2019-20 expected at Rs 11,687 crore

ð Fiscal Deficit at Rs 19,658 crore

ð GSDP at current prices – Rs 5,77,829 crore

ð Rs 26,979 crore to go into disbursement of salary and wages to employees

ð Total receipts expected: Rs 1,54,170 crore

ð Total budget size for 2019-20: Rs 1,58,493 crore

ð Rs 19.47 crore allocated for compensation of RS 10,000 per acre to the farmers of 6 districts whose land is situated between border fence and international border. These districts are Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Fazilka, Ferozepur, Gurdaspur, Pathankot.

ð Rs 86.33 crore for Swachh Bharat Mission

ð Under Smart Cities, Rs 296 crore for development of Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar

ð Rs 100 crore for development of 7 border districts and Kandi area

ð Rs 978.12 crore for National Health Mission.

ð Rs 189.15 crore for upgradation of medical colleges in Patiala and Amritsar.

ð Under Smart Cities, Rs 296 crore for development of Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar

ð Rs 700 crore allocated under AMRUT scheme

ð Rs 60 crore allocated for work on Tertiary Care Cancer Centres at Hoshiarpur, Fazilka, Amritsar

ð Rs 250 crore for Sarbat Sehat Bina Yojana for providing Rs 5 lakh per family annual health care to 70 percent population of Punjab.

ð Rs 5 crore allocated for establishment of Open University at Patiala, CM Amarinder Singh’s home city.

ð 15 new ITIs proposed at Rampuraphul, Raikot, Fatehgarh Sahib, Bassi Pathana, Fazilka, Ferozepur, Shuttrana, Amargarh, Tarn Taran with an allocation of Rs 15 crore.

ð Rs 3,465.06 crore allocated for health care services, which is an increase of 10.87 percent over 2018-19.

ð Rs 938.71 crore allocated for various scholarship schemes for SC/BC.

ð Rs 300 crore allocated for celebration of 550th Prakash Parab of Guru Nanak Dev

ð Rs 5 crore for centenary commemoration of Jalianwala Bagh massacre

ð Amritsar to be developed into an ‘Iconic City’. Rs 10 cr set aside for the project in the budget.

ð Rs 1,513 crore allocated for subsidised power to industries.

ð Finance Minster claims till date more than 1.13 lakh youth provided jobs

ð Rs 375 crore for crop residue management. Rs 20 crore allocated for dairy development.

ð Budget allocates Rs 8,969 for free power to agriculture sector.

ð Rs 200 crore for Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna.

ð Rs 355 crore to provide support to sugarcane farmers.

ð Rs 3,000 crore for debt relief to farmers, landless farmers and families of farmers who committed sucides

ð Total outstanding debt on March 31,2018: Rs 2.12 lakh crore. It is 40 percent of GSDP.

ð Oustanding Debt likely to be Rs 2.29 lakh crore by March 31,2020. Whereas debt servicing for 2019-20 is a whopping Rs 30,309 crore.

ð Agriculture gets Rs 13,643 crore. Allocation has been increased by Rs 159 crore.

INTERNATIONAL

· NASA plans to send astronauts on Moon in 2028

NASA, The U.S. space agency, plans to send American astronauts back on the Moon by 2028, with unmanned demonstration missions in2024 and 2026. Bridenstine laid out the space agency’s plan to support the development of commercial hardware capable of landing astronauts on the Moon. The mission architecture represents a dramatic shift from the way NASA had put humans on the Moon when Apollo 11 in July 1969 put Neil Armstrong as the first man to walk on the lunar surface.
The procurement plan, as laid out in a document known as a Broad Agency Announcement, calls for commercial ventures to propose concepts for a descent module, a space refueling system and a transfer vehicle by March 25. In May, NASA would select several companies for an initial six-month phase to study and develop in this line and will allocate up to$9 million to each company. Astronauts would make their first trip to the lunar surface in 2028. NASA’s plan calls for four astronauts to spend as long as seven days on the Moon.

· Symantec has launched Email Fraud Protection

Global cybersecurity company Symantechas launched ‘Email Fraud Protection’, an automated solution, to help organizations block fraudulent emails from reaching enterprises.
It aims to reduce workload for IT departments and eliminate the need to manually manage email security configurations while combating Business Email Compromise attacks. The solution is now available as part of Symantec’s Email Security Solution and Integrated Cyber Defence Platform. With this solution, email authentication standards are met by automatic monitoring of approved third-party senders.

NATIONAL

Inland Waterways Authority of India launches LADIS portal

The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) launched a new portal LADIS – Least Available Depth Information System.

The portal being hosted on IWAI’s website www.iwai.nic.in has been developed in-house.

Initially LAD information will be available for NW-1, NW-2, Indo-Bagladesh Protocol route and NW-3, along with the date of survey.

The facility will be expanded to other NWs also.

Emergency response number ‘112’

Persons in distress across 16 states and Union territories, apart from the city of Mumbai, can now call a single emergency response number ‘112’ to get immediate assistance from the police, fire and rescue, health and other emergency services. Union home minister Rajnath Singh launched the emergency response support system (ERSS) and other initiatives for women safety, including an investigation tracking system for sexual offences and safe city implementation monitoring portal

ERSS, under which all states and UTs must set up a dedicated emergency response centre (ERS), is being launched for Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, UP, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Puducherry, Lakshadweep, Andaman, Dadar Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu and J&K. The service has already been started in Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland.

ERSS also provides a 112 India mobile App for making distress calls by any person. For women and children, 112 India App provides a special ‘SHOUT’ feature which alerts registered volunteers in the vicinity of victim for immediate assistance. The Central government is funding Rs.321.69 crore to the States/UTs for ERSS as part of Nirbhaya scheme project.

Singh also launched the Investigation Tracking System for Sexual Offences (ITSSO). The ITSSO, meant for law enforcement agencies in the country, is an online module that allows state to undertake real-time monitoring and management for completion of investigation in rape cases in 2 months. It leverages the existing CCTNS data base, which covers nearly 15,000 police stations in the country.

In order to instil sense of security in women in metro cities, government has identified eight cities for implementation of safe city projects in first phase at a cost of Rs 2,919 crore. The cities are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow & Mumbai.

· Study finds link between drought and groundwater

A study that reconstructed droughts and famines across India over the last 146 years says lack of moisture in the soil for extended periods of time can be linked to some of the most devastating famines.

The study found that between1870 and 2016 India witnessed seven major soil moisture droughts or agricultural drought periods (1876-1882, 18951900, 1908-1924, 1937- 1945, 19821990, 1997-2004, and 2011-2015) based on their analysis of severity, area, and duration. Three droughts in 1877, 1896, and 1899 were linked to El Nino when warm temperatures in the Pacific Ocean cause below-normal rains, but barring the famine of 1943, five major famines during 1873-74, 1876, 1877,1896-97, 1899 were caused by large-scale and severe soil moisture droughts driven by JuneSeptember monsoon failures.

India is the world’s largest user of groundwater extracting 250 cubic kilometres every year – more than one-fourth of the world total.

The South Asian Network on Dams, River and People estimates that ground water is vital for two-thirds of irrigated area, 85% of rural population and more than half of urban and industry.

As per the Central Ground Water Board, water level in only 30% wells rose more than two metres between 2007 and 2017, while there was a 30% decrease in 43% wells.

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