12.08.21

The road to admission for CBSE passouts has turned rocky with the state directorate of higher education asking college authorities to limit to 25% the intake of students from other boards except the state board. In other words, three-fourth seats in colleges have been reserved for passouts of Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC).

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The Govt. has decided that 75% of seats in Degree Courses of the Govt. and Provincialized Colleges shall be reserve for the students of AHSEC and hence you are requested to take necessary action accordingly,” read the latest letter from the director of higher Education (DHE), Dharma Kanta Mili, to the state universities and government-run colleges.

A directive has also been issued to educational institutions to accommodate 20% more students in the under-graduate (UG) level by increasing the seat capacities. “Govt. in the Education Department has decided to enhance the seat capacity of U.G. level courses in the institutions by 20 % and hence you are requested to accommodate the enhancement by considering admission for day and evening shift,” read the letter, which has been underlined as top most urgent.

The state government is planning to bring uniform research guidelines for state public universities and it will be framed after a discussion with the universities. The aim is to provide better service to research scholars and maintain quality of research works.TheOdisha State Higher Education Council(OSHEC) will take the lead to frame the guidelines after holding meetings with the university vice-chancellors.

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The guideline will address this issue. Universities will set a deadline for registration of students for PhD programmes and approval of the thesis in a time-bound manner to award degrees to scholars without much delay. It will also look into the matter related to use of anti-plagiarism Software and maintaining the quality of the research. Some universities are asking scholars to publish their research articles in the Scopus indexed journals, while others are advising somewhere else. After finding all these issues, we thought the council should bring a uniform guideline for the universities on this, said the council member.

The automobile population explosion has worsened traffic snarls, reducing the average vehicle speed from 33km/hr to 20km/hr on city roads.

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City roads have breached saturation point, says ProfessorKrishna Rajfrom Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru. Roads have exceeded carrying capacity and further entry of new vehicles will lead to gridlocks, which will have an adverse impact on the economy and Environment, he says. In a recent study, we found out that commuters lost 5% of their earnings due to additional fuel costs and traffic delays. Besides this, there was productivity loss and Health cost too, he explained.

His teams study on people who travelled on urban Indian roads for more than an hour a day suggested that 45% suffered from breathlessness or giddiness regularly and many developed psychological problems too.

G Sundarrajan ofPoovulagin Nanbargal, an environmental organisation, said the carbon emissions of so many vehicles would worsen https://exam.pscnotes.com/Climate-change”>Climate Change. To accommodate new vehicles, we need to build more roads and bridges, for which we need to destroy more Resources“>Natural Resources. Its a vicious circle.

Tamil Nadus road length has increased by roughly 60,000km in the past decade and half a dozen new bridges have come up in the city, but this hasnt helped ease traffic.

KeralaFinancial Corporation (KFC) has announced a comprehensive funding scheme forstartupsworth nearly Rs 10 crore. The scheme titled KFC Startup Kerala will support startups in all stages of their growth from proof of concept to prototype development, product trials, market entry, commercialization and scaling up. There will be a venture debt scheme and provision to finance purchase orders received by startups.

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Startups registered with Kerala Startup Mission or department of Industrial Policy and promotion, and having a registered office in Kerala, will be eligible for this scheme. Viable projects with a scalable business model and high potential for EMPLOYMENT generation or wealth creation will be considered under the scheme.

The assistance will be Rs 25 lakh for productization, Rs 50 lakh for commercialization and Rs 100 lakh for scaling up. This will be subject to 90% of the project cost in each stage. Loans will be provided at a concessional interest rate of 7% without collateral. The repayment period will be 60 months, including the moratorium period of 12 months.

The loans will be sanctioned as a soft loan with option to convert it into capital on condition that KFC share shall not exceed 30%.
Once startups get a firm purchase order, they are eligible to get loans up to Rs 10 crore for executing orders. The entities, after due diligence by a Sebi registered Venture Capital fund, can also get a venture debt of Rs 10 crore.

Karnatakabecame the first state to issue an order to implement theNational Education Policy, 2020 with effect from academic year 2021-2022.

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Highereducation minister Ashwath Narayanannounced this after convening a meeting with officials of the Education department and state higher education council.

As per that, students will have the flexibility to pursue a three-year bachelor or four-year honours degree, among other things.

Telanganareported a 26% increase in Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection this July, raising Rs 3,610 crore compared to the same period last year, when it mustered Rs 2,876 crore.

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But this years Growth rate is less than the countrys overall growth rate of 32% in July this year against the same period last year.

According to data on GST collection from the Union Government, neighbouring Andhra Pradesh reported a 28% increase, higher than in July this year.
Tamil Nadu had the highest growth rate among southern states in GST collection, with a 36% increase in July this year. While Keralas GST collection growth stood at 27% in July 2021, Karnataka had the lowest growth at 12% in the same period.
During the second Covid-19 pandemic, the Telangana governments goods and Services tax (GST) collection has improved with a 17 percent increase this March when compared to March 2020.

According to the Union governments GST collection figures, the State Government collected Rs 3,562 crore in March 2020 and it has gone up to Rs 4,166 crore in March this year.

Except a few months, GST collection in Telangana has been steadily increasing since July last year. The state had a negative growth rate in November 2020, with a 5 % decrease in GST collection compared to November 2019. GST collection figures for October 2020 and 2019 were Rs 3,175 crore and Rs 3,349 crore respectively.

To resolve the drinking water crisis in drought-hit regions, the state government has constituted separatespecial purpose vehicle(SPVs) take upwater gridprojects.

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The government has designed the SPVs in such a way that they could pool required from financial institutions and government agencies such as National Bank for Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) from different schemes. The State Government estimated that it would require at least Rs 9,000 crore to complete the new drinking water schemes.
The government directed the rural water supply and Resources“>Water Resources department to coordinate with other departments to expedite the water grid projects. The state government has granted administrative approvals for different water grid projects helping them to approach the financial institutions.

With abundantfundsavailable with the Union Jal Shakti ministry under drinking water schemes, the state government has tied up a majority of the water grid schemes with central funds to lessen the burden.

Sources said that the Centre had already agreed to extend financial assistance to the tune of Rs 3,200 crore to the state government to take up the drinking water schemes underJal Jeevan Mission.

The state government has also succeeded in roping in Nabard for grant of funds for water grid projects. While the state government is likely to spend close to Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 crore as its share, tie-ups with different agencies to grant loans to the tune of Rs 3,500 crore have also been finalised.

Chief minister Pramod Sawant on Wednesday made a strong pitch for skill-basededucationwhen he pointed out that at least50%of students remain unemployed upon completing their graduation. He also said the new National Education Policy (NEP) would be implemented in the state from the next academic year.

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Citing an example of why skill-based Education is necessary, Sawant said that when the government seeks to fill five vacancies for stenographers, it receives just 25 applications, but if it advertises five vacancies for lower-division clerks, as many as 25,000 applications are received.

RajasthanandMaharashtrahave emerged as the top-scoring states in the aged states category, while Chandigarh andMizoramhave topped the rankings onUnion territoriesand north eastern states respectively, a report on the quality of life for the elderly showed.

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The report classifies aged states as those with elderly Population of more than five million. States with less than five million elderly people have been termed relatively-aged. The report identifies the regional patterns in ageing across states and provides a deeper insight of what is being done to support the elderly population.

The reports index framework includes four pillars: financial well-being, social well-being, Health system and income security; and eight sub-pillars: economic Empowerment, educational attainment and EMPLOYMENT, social status, physical security, basic health, psychological well being, social security and enabling Environment.

The index created by theInstitute for Competitivenesshighlights that the best way to improve the lives of the current and future generations of older people is by investing today in the health, Education and employment for the young.

The health system pillar shows the highest national Average of 66.97, followed by 62.34 in social well-being. The financial well-being score is at 44.7, which is lowered by the low performance of 21 states across the education attainment and employment pillars, which has scope for improvement. Many states have performed particularly worse in the income security pillar because over half of them have a score below the national average of 33.03, which is the lowest across all pillars.

Soon, Haryana will have its own state song with the state Art and Cultural Affairs Department having begun the process for the composition of the state song.

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The Department has invited compositions from writers and poets of the state for the state song. Interested writers and poets can send their compositions to the department by August 15, said an official spokesman.

He said that the Department has invited compositions from writers and poets native to Haryana. The composition should be based on the cultural heritage of Haryana, its traditions and historical as well as geographical and social aspects.

The author of the best composition which will be selected as the state song, will be honoured with a cash award of Rs one lakh.