PIB Analysis : 31st July

PIB Analysis for UPSC CSE

1. PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance And Timely Implementation)
2. United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements (UNISA)
3. Nutrient Based Subsidy Scheme
4. Atal Community Innovation Centre

1 . PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance And Timely Implementation)

Context :  Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, chaired his thirtieth interaction through PRAGATI – the ICT-based, multi-modal platform for Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation.

About PRAGATI

• PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance And Timely Implementation) is aimed at starting a culture of Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation.
• It is also a robust system for bringing e-transparency and e-accountability with real-time presence and exchange among the key stakeholders.
• It is a multi-purpose and multi-modal platform that is aimed at addressing common man’s grievances, and simultaneously monitoring and reviewing important programmes and projects of the Government of India as well as projects flagged by State Governments.
• The PRAGATI platform uniquely bundles three latest technologies: Digital data management, video-conferencing and geo-spatial technology.
• It also offers a unique combination in the direction of cooperative federalism since it brings on one stage the Secretaries of Government of India and the Chief Secretaries of the States.
• With this, the Prime Minister is able to discuss the issues with the concerned Central and State officials with full information and latest visuals of the ground level situation.
• It is a three-tier system (PMO, Union Government Secretaries, and Chief Secretaries of the States)
• Prime Minister will hold a monthly programme where he will interact with the Government of India Secretaries, and Chief Secretaries through Video-conferencing enabled by data and geo-informatics visuals; The programme will be held once in every month on Fourth Wednesday at 3.30 PM-to be known as PRAGATI Day.
• The system will ride on, strengthen and re-engineer the data bases of the CPGRAMS for grievances, Project Monitoring Group (PMG) and the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. PRAGATI provides an interface and platform for all these three aspects.

2 . United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements (UNISA)

Context : The Union Cabinet has approved the signing of the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements (UNISA) resulting from mediation by the Republic of India scheduled to be held at Singapore on 7th August, 2019, or at United Nations Headquarters.

About the Convention

• The United Nations General Assembly adopted the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (“the Convention”) on 20th December 2018.
• The General Assembly authorized that the Convention will open for signature at a signing ceremony to be held on 7^thAugust 2019 in Singapore and will be known as the “Singapore Convention on Mediation” (the Convention).
• The Convention provides a uniform and efficient framework for the enforcement of international settlement agreements resulting from mediation and for allowing parties to invoke such agreements, akin to the framework that the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York, 1958) (the “New York Convention”) provides for arbitral awards.
• The Convention defines two additional grounds upon which a court may, on its own motion, refuse to grant relief. Those grounds relate to the fact that a dispute would not be capable of settlement by mediation or would be contrary to public policy.
• Until the adoption of the Convention, the often-cited challenge to the use of mediation was the lack of an efficient and harmonized framework for cross-border enforcement of settlement agreements resulting from mediation. In response to this need, the Convention has been developed and adopted by the General Assembly. 

Benefit

• Signing of the Convention will boost the confidence of the investors and shall provide a positive signal to foreign investors about India’s commitment to adhere to international practice on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR).

Initiatives to promote ADR Mechanisms

• In order to encourage international commercial arbitration in India, to evolve a comprehensive ecosystem of arbitration the Government is establishing the New Delhi International Arbitration Centre (NDIAC) as a statutory body.
• The Commercial Courts Act, 2015, has been further amended and legislative exercise to further amend the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, is currently underway.
• These initiatives are being taken with a view to encourage the settlement of commercial disputes, domestic and international, in India through ADR Mechanism of Arbitration, Conciliation and Mediation.
• A new Chapter (IIIA) has been inserted in the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, for mandatory pre-institution mediation and settlement in certain category of cases. Therefore, the provisions of the ‘Convention’ are in line with the domestic laws and the efforts made to strengthen Alternative Dispute Resolution Mechanisms.

3 . Nutrient Based Subsidy Scheme

About Nutrient Based Subsidy Scheme

• The Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS) Policy is being implemented from 2010 by the Department of Fertilizers and under the said policy, a fixed amount of subsidy decided on annual basis, is provided on each grade of subsidized Phosphatic & Potassic (P&K) fertilizers depending on its Nutrient Content.
• At present 22 grades of P&K fertilizers are covered under the NBS policy.

Benefits accruing to the farmers

• The P&K fertilizers are made available to farmers in adequate quantities.
• More grades of P&K fertilizers have brought under the purview of the NBS Scheme giving the farmers wider choice to use complex fertilizer grades.

4 . Atal Community Innovation Centre

About Atal Community Innovation Centre

• ACIC is a new initiative of Atal Innovation Mission to support community innovation drive in the country.
• The program is directed to encourage the spirit of innovation through solution driven design thinking to serve the society.
• It will focus on underserved/ unserved regions of the country which at present lack a vibrant start-up and innovation ecosystem. 
• ACIC will be established either in PPP mode or with support of PSUs and other agencies.
• The maximum grant-in-aid support form AIM will be up to 2.5 crores subject following compliance to ACIC guidelines and contributing matching form the host institutions and their funding partner(s).

Features of the Programme

• Enabling infrastructure for building innovation ecosystem in above proposed areas.
• Community oriented approach to innovation by enabling solutions through advanced tinkering
• Offer opportunities to innovators to ideate in areas of societal importance
• Capacity building of communities in evolving technologies and taking their solutions from ideation to prototype.
• Promoting design thinking process to spur innovation
• Providing a framework to engage local industries to facilitate offering of innovative solutions in their products, services and processes
• Public private Partnership (PPP) mode to ensure financial sustainability and participationof central agencies, PSUs etc. to mobilize resources for running the program
• Offer an opportunity for everyone to innovate, ideate and design impactful solutions, irrespective of their age.
• One of the unique feature of this program wherein talented students and youth of ITI  and Diploma will be offered opportunity to display their and build innovative solutions through ACIC.
• The program will offer a big leapfrog jump towards establishing Indian for further scale up the ranking in Global Innovation Index.