KERALA

Minister of state for information technology and Skill development Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the central government will soon launch a Digital India Innovation Fund to support deep tech startups.

Addressing around 1,000 college students as part of ‘New India for Young India: Techade of Opportunities’ programme at the Catholic Bishop House Campus at Thamarassery on Friday, he said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of New India is one where there were ample opportunities for every Indian to participate in the development process and hard work and skills are the only determinants of success.

He said that for most part of the past 75 years, India had been a dysfunctional Democracy where the opportunities for Growth were limited to a select few.

The minister had lunch with bishops Remigiose Inchananiyil and Varghese Chakkalakal and other members of Kerala Catholic Youth Movement.

NaduandKeralaplan to jointly request the Union Government to exempt their government buses from paying user fee at toll plazas. Every month, the two southern states pay at least Rs 16 crore. Transport ministers of both states met in Chennai to discuss various such issues they face and how to resolve them.

TN transport sources said problems relating to procurement of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and electric government buses are likely to be taken up during the SITCO meet as their cost was thrice that of a conventional diesel bus. So, the states might seek more financial assistance from the Centre.

Technology Transfer Scheme will be implemented via the Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM).

It will reimburse the expense incurred by the new startup ventures while procuring technology licenses from the government research institutes in India to commercialize and scale their products.

Under this scheme, a maximum of Rs.10 lakh will be reimbursed to startups purchasing or sourcing technologies the government research institutes and working on them to develop products that can be commercialized.

The will reimburse 90 per cent of the technology fee paid by the startups to the research institutions that are providing technology licenses.

The ultimate goal of the scheme is to encourage startups to innovate their ideas by minimising the cost involved.

At a time when rapid Urbanisation and other forms of human activities are posing a threat to plant , the Kerala State Biodiversity Board (KSBB) is making an effort to conserve and popularise locally important as well as endangered species with help from local bodies.

The board has announced Haritha Gramam (Village Forest), a project designed for decentralised Biodiversity conservation which will be implemented through the biodiversity management committees (BMC) of the local bodies.

As the name suggests, the aim is to create tiny ‘forests’ in public land and school compounds by planting fruit trees. Additionally, these green lungs will feature endangered plant species from the Kerala part of the biodiversity-rich Western Ghats region, KSBB said.

Each ‘Haritha Gramam’ should cover at least 10 cents of land. Only Plants/trees found locally and species that are considered threatened in Kerala should be selected for planting. The village forests will be created and managed with the help of the Kudumbashree units and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural EMPLOYMENT Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) workers.

Kuttiattoor mango and Edayur chilli gets Geographical Indication (GI) tag from the GI Registry at Chennai. The GI status was received through the concerted efforts jointly undertaken by the Intellectual Property Cell of the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU), the state department of Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture-development”>AGRICULTURE DEVELOPMENT and Farmers Welfare as well as the farmers from Edayur and Kuttiattoor.

The GI tag brings fame to the products and generates interest in more people and that will result in higher demand. This eventually benefits the farmers of these products as they get higher prices in the market, said Prof C R Elsy, former coordinator of the IPR Cell of Kerala Agricultural University (KAU), during whose tenure, the applications for both these products were submitted.

Edayur chilly is cultivated in Edayur, Athavanad, Marakkara, Irimbiliyam, Kalpakanchery and Valanchery panchayats in Valanchery block, as well as Moorkanad and Kuruva panchayats in Angadipuram block of Malappuram district. It has been cultivated in the area for the past 150 years.

As many as 1,25,070ration card holdersin various categories have voluntarily surrendered their cards to the government till July 31, after the government urged them tosurrenderif they do not fall in various eligible categories.
In order to weed out the remaining ineligible card holders, the civil supplies department has launched aWhatsAppnumber by which the public can inform any such information about ineligible card holders.

Till July, out of the 5,85,977Antyodaya Anna Yojana(AAY) cards distributed in the state, 9,935 cards have been surrendered and brought under non-priority non-subsidy (NPNS) category, who are offered rice and wheat at regular, non-subsidised rates.

The state had implemented theNational Food Securities Act, 2013, on November 1, 2016. As per the Act, the state has 4,228 fair-price shops (authorized ration dealers ARD) with 90,86,816 card holders. The total number of beneficiaries under the system is 3,57,42,768 (as per the estimates, each card has 4.2 beneficiaries in the state).

As many as 5,95,800 cards under the AAY are allowed in the state, of which the state has already distributed 5,85,977 cards. The remaining 9,823 cards can be distributed to 41,256 beneficiaries. Also, as per the NFSA, the total number of cards that can be distributed in the priority household category is 1,54,80,040.