The Vice President of India Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that Indian Muslims are, in more ways than one, sui generic. They are 13.4 percent of India’s population; at the same time, they are the second or third largest Muslim community in our world of nation-states. Addressing after releasing a book entitled “Muslims in Indian Cities” edited by Laurent Gayer and Christoph Jafferlot, Shri Ansari has said that Muslims have lived in India’s religiously plural society for over a thousand years, at times as rulers, at others as subjects and now as citizens. They are not homogenous in racial or linguistic terms and bear the impact of local cultural surroundings, in manners and customs, in varying degrees.

In pursuance of the Government’s vision of creating a Slum-free India, ‘Rajiv Awas Yojana’ (RAY) has been approved on June 2011. The Phase I of Rajiv Awas Yojana is for a period of two years from the date of approval of the scheme. Phase II will cover the remaining period of the 12th Plan (2013-17). The Scheme will provide financial assistance to States that are willing to assign property rights to slum dwellers. This assistance is for provision of decent shelter and basic civic and social services for slum redevelopment, and for creation of affordable housing stock. Fifty percent (50 %) of the cost of provision of basic civic and social infrastructure and amenities and of housing, including rental housing, and transit housing for in-situ redevelopment – in slums would be borne by the Centre, including operation & maintenance of assets created under this scheme. For the North Eastern and Special Category States the share of the Centre would be 90% including the cost of land acquisition, if required.

India plans to increase the share of renewable power
India plans to increase the share of renewable power in the electricity mix to 15 per cent by the year 2020. An action plan has already been developed that aims at accelerating the deployment of renewable energy with a target of around 30 GW of renewable power by  the end of 2017. Currently India stands among the top five countries of the world in terms of renewable energy capacity and renewable power represents about 12 per cent of total installed electricity generation capacity in India. Apart from that around 1.1 million Indian households are already using solar energy to meet their lighting energy needs. Jawahar Lal Nehru National Solar Mission is the flagship program of India which aims to facilitate the installation of 20 GW grid-connected solar power, 20 million sq. m of solar thermal collector area and 20 million rural households with solar home lighting by 2022. Along with solar energy, wind energy continues to contribute significantly to India’s renewable energy matrix and with over 17 GW installed capacity.

South Asia Call for Action on Ending Violence against Children
The SAARC countries reaffirmed their determination and renewed their commitment to end violence against children in all forms and all settings at the meet of the member countries at Colombo. They countries unanimously adopted the South Asia Call for Action on Ending Violence against Children. Held under the aegis of SAIEVAC, the South Asian Initiative to End Violence Against Children, an apex body of SAARC, the regional follow up reaffirmed their commitment made by Governments to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women etc.

Next Global Economic crisis in 2014
According to Dr. Kaushik Basu, Chief Economic Advisor of India, 2014 is an important year because numerous European banks would have to begin to repay 1.3 trillion dollars worth of loans that they had received from the European Central Bank. This could precipitate a major global economic crisis—a third round of crisis after 2008 and 2011. I also asserted that despite India’s current slowdown (growth in 2011-12 was 6.9%), we will see Indian growth picking up slowly initially. But soon after the possible European crisis of 2014, we could see India as the world’s fastest growing economy, faster than even China.

India Water Week
The Ministry of Water Resources since this year has endeavoured to celebrate India Water Week annually as an international event to focus on water issues. It would provide a global platform for water related issues that will bring policy makers, industry leaders, experts, professionals and practitioners together to address the challenges, showcase technologies, discover opportunities, recognizing the excellence of professionals/organizations and celebrate their achievements. The first international event in the series of India Water Week on “Water, Energy and Food Security: Call for Solutions” will be organized during April 10-14.

2012 : Year of the intensification of Routine Immunization
Strengthening routine immunization is an imperative if we wish to sustain our gains in polio and guard ourselves against both distant and international importations. Thus 2012 has been declared the year of the intensification of Routine Immunization. Govt intend to accelerate routine immunization activities from 1st April itself through special immunization drives, with a special focus on 207 districts recording low routine immunization coverage”. 26 million mothers and children have already been registered under the web enabled mother and child tracking system set up by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The system generates weekly work plans for the Auxiliary Nurse Midwives through SMS. Alerts are also sent to the beneficiaries to remind them of the date of the due health services. In 14 States where coverage is less than 80 percent, introduction of second dose of measles has been started.

Nuclear Security Summit Ends Without Clear Targets
The Seoul Nuclear Security Summit ended Tuesday with the leaders of 53 countries unanimously adopting a communiqué that encourages nations to take all possible steps and cooperate to secure vulnerable weapons-grade fissile material by 2014. President Lee Myung-bak, who chaired the summit, told reporters its main achievement was steps to reduce highly enriched uranium and plutonium, which are key to preventing nuclear terrorism. But critics said that in reality no progress has been made in terms of reducing nuclear materials and that the communiqué is no significant improvement over commitments made during the first Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in 2010, where the U.S., Russia and other participating countries agreed to reduce nuclear materials equivalent to 20,000 nuclear weapons and actually lowered materials equivalent to 3,000.

Agmarknet
Price and market related information in respect of agricultural commodities is being disseminated to the farmers and other market users though AGMARKNET portal. Indian Farmers and Fertilizers Co-operatives Limited (IFFCO) have installed about 1000 multimedia-enabled kiosks in rural areas which are integrated with AGMARKNET. They are providing market information as voice messages in the language of the State using AGMARKNET service. Messages are provided free of charge to the subscribers as value added services. During February, 2012, IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd. delivered SMS/voice messages to 14,03,136 subscribers.

One Year of Polio Free India 

On Jan 12th 2012, India has touched a milestone of being polio free for one whole year. The lone case of polio in 2011 was detected in a two year old girl in Panchla block of Howrah, West Bengal, with the onset of paralysis on 13th January 2011. India took a lead in introducing bivalent polio vaccine (bOPV) in January 2010. Despite global shortage of both bOPV and trivalent Polio vaccine, India tapped domestic market for timely supply of vaccine to ensure pulse polio rounds without interruptions. The prorgamme has been in the forefront of adopting technological innovations. The more efficacious monovalent oral polio vaccines were introduced in the Pulse Polio campaigns in 2005 which helped curtail the most dangerous type 1 polio strains to record low levels by 2009. In 2010 the bivalent oral polio vaccine was introduced which helped curtail both Type 1 and Type 3 polioviruses simultaneously and as efficaciously as the monovalent vaccines.