Ministry of Communication launched “DARPAN - Digital Advancement of Rural Post Office for A New India”.
The project aimed at realizing financial inclusion of un-banked rural population.
It is IT modernization project which intends to provide a low power technology solution to each branch postmaster to improve service delivery.
DARPAN offers core banking services such as cash deposit and withdrawal in savings bank and recurring deposit, mini statement, Aadhaar seeding and daily transaction report.
The application will also be used for the reimbursement of social security benefits such as MNREGS, old age pension and DBT.
It is targeted to complete the project by March 2018.
SRISTI
SRISTI - Sustainable Rooftop Implementation for Solar Transfiguration of India is a proposed scheme by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
The proposed scheme will incentivise the installation of roof top solar projects in India.
It aims to achieve a national solar rooftop target of 40 GW by 2021-22.
Under SRISTI, a central financial assistance will be provided only for installation of roof top solar plants in residential sectors.
Once approved, the concept will acts as a basis for phase – II of solar rooftop power programme.
ICGS Sujay
Samarth Class OPV is a series of six 105m offshore patrol vessel (OPV) being built by Goa Shipyard Limited for the Indian Coast Guard.
Indian Coast Guard Ship Sujay is the sixth in the series of six OPV under Samarth class.
The other ships are ICGS Samarth, Shoor, Sarathi, Shaunak, Shaurya.
ICGS Sujay is based at Paradip, Odisha under the operational and administrative control of Commander Coast Guard Region (North-East).
It will be deployed extensively for EEZ surveillance and will give a fillip to the maritime protection in the state of Odisha and West Bengal in particular.
Kimberly Process
The Kimberley Process (KP) is a joint Government, International Diamond Industry and Civil Society initiative to stem the flow of Conflict Diamonds.
Conflict Diamonds- Rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments.
In its 2016 session held in Dubai, India was appointed as Vice Chair of KP for 2018 & Chair for 2019. The EU will be chair for 2018.
This year, the session was held at Brisbane, Australia.
It came into effect in 2003 with representation from 81 countries including EU.
India is one of the founding members, which held chair for the year 2008.
Ro – Ro services in India
In RO-RO service, vessels have either built-in or shore-based ramps that allow the cargo to be efficiently rolled on and off the vessel when in port.
This is in opposite to the lift-on and lift-off (lo-lo) vessels, which use a crane to load and unload cargo.
This service is currently in operational in two states – Gujarat and Assam.
Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) rolled out a regular RO-RO between Assam-Meghalaya connecting Dhubri and Hatsingimari.
Dhubri and Hatsingimari are located in the north bank and south bank of River Brahmaputra.
Recently, India’s first RO-RO passenger (RO Pax) service was inaugurated between Ghogha in Saurashtra and Dahej in south Gujarat in the Gulf of Khambhat region.
Mini-Earth like Planets
The Alpha Centauri system is located 24.9 trillion miles from Earth, which is the closest star system to our planet.
An Earth-like planet was discovered last year in the system.
Scientists have recently detected data from the observatory located in Chile.
The data shows that the planet orbiting around stars Alpha Centauri A and B would be almost small, rocky planets.
This new information will help astronomers narrow down the search area and prioritize their efforts to detect additional planets in the system.
