02-11-22 Daily-Jharkhand-JPSC Current Affairs

In view of the increased work under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural EMPLOYMENT Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the Union Rural Development Ministry had demanded an additional amount of Rs 25,000 crore from the Government of India and this amount is expected to be allotted by the second week of November. State Rural Development Minister, Alamgir Alam said that it is a welcome step and it will create more employment in rural areas and stop Migration.

In this way, now the total MGNREGA budget for this financial year will be Rs 98,000 crores. An amount of Rs 73,000 crore was allocated for MGNREGA in the Union Budget for the year 2022-23. So far, about Rs 54,000 crore has been allocated to the states under the MGNREGA scheme. About Rs 181 crore work has been created under the scheme. For the additional amount in the MGNREGA scheme, the Central Government will have to take approval in the winter session of Parliament. The will seek Assembly’s approval for the allocation of additional funds under the demands for grants to be presented in the upcoming winter session.

In the Union Budget for the year 2022-23, the Central Government had cut Rs 25,000 crore in the MGNREGA funds. In the financial year 2020-21, the total budget of MGNREGA was more than Rs 1 lakh crore. This scheme was implemented in the first phase in 200 most backward districts of the Country with effect from February 2, 2006, later it was extended to 113 additional districts with effect from April 1, 2007 and from May 15, 2007. The remaining districts were included under the Act with effect from April 1, 2008. The Act now covers all rural districts of the country.

The PMAY-U Award for Implementation and Innovation was instituted under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban, by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in 2019.

The PMAY-U was launched in 2015 to address the housing shortage in Indias urban areas.

There are 3 broad categories of these Awards:

State Awards, Municipal Corporations, Municipal Councils and Nagar Panchayats Awards

Special Category Awards

Beneficiary Awards

The Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education today released the Performance Grading Index (PGI) for States/UTs for 2020-21, a unique index for evidence based comprehensive analysis of school education system across State/UTs.

The Indian Education System is one of the largest in the world with about 14.9 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers, and nearly 26.5 crore students from varied socio-economic backgrounds. DoSE&L devised PGI for States/UTs to provide insights and data driven mechanism on the performance and achievements of on the success of school education across all States/UTs. The prime objective of PGI is to promote evidence-based policy making and highlight course correction to ensure quality education for all. So far, DoSE&L has released PGI report for the year 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20. The present report is for the year 2020-21.

The PGI structure comprises of 1000 points across 70 indicators grouped into 2 categories viz., Outcomes, Governance Management (GM). These categories are further divided into 5 domains, viz., Learning Outcomes (LO), Access (A), & Facilities (IF), Equity (E) & Governance Process (GP).

SAFAL (Simplified Application for Agricultural Loans) is Indias first online Agricultural credit facilitation portal. This common credit portal eases access to over 300 term loan products provided for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs. These term loan products will be provided by more than 40 partner banks.

The portal acts as a one-stop solution for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs to access loans offered by public and , Regional Rural Banks, state Cooperative banks and small finance banks.