Inclusive Development for Aspirational India
- February 2, 2021
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Inclusive Development for Aspirational India
Agriculture
- The MSP regime has undergone a sea change to assure price that is at least 1.5 times the cost of production across all commodities. The procurement has also continued to increase at a steady pace. This has resulted in increase in payment to farmers substantially.
- Early this year, Honourable Prime Minister had launched SWAMITVA Scheme. Under this, a record of rights is being given to property owners in villages. Up till now, about 1.80 lakh property-owners in 1,241 villages have been provided cards and the Finance Minister proposed during FY21-22 to extend this to cover all states/UTs.
- Allocation to the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund increased from Rs. 30,000 crore to Rs. 40,000 crore. The Micro Irrigation Fund, with a corpus of Rs.5,000 crore has been created under NABARD will be doubled.
- The scope of ‘Operation Green Scheme’ that is presently applicable to tomatoes, onions, and potatoes, will be enlarged to include 22 perishable products.
- Keeping in view the transparency and competitiveness that e-NAM has brought into the agricultural market, 1,000 more mandis will be integrated with e-NAM. The Agriculture Infrastructure Funds would be made available to APMCs for augmenting their infrastructure facilities.
Swamitva Scheme
- Swamitva Scheme is an ownership plan scheme that will record and decide the ownership of land in rural residential areas. The scheme will make use of drones and other modern technology to record the land areas.
Features
- Scheme was launched under the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj.
- The scheme is to address the issue of many villagers having no record or documental proof for their land holdings.
- Drones will be used to measure the residential areas to prevent disputes.
- Google mapping will also be used under this scheme for assessment.
- This will enable better tax collection from these lands. The revenue collected is to go into rural infrastructure development.
Operation Green
- It is a price fixation scheme that aims to ensure farmers are given the right price for their produce.(Reduces Price Volatility)
- It aims to promote Farmer Producers Organizations (FPO), Agri-logistics, processing facilities and professional management of agri-produce.
- It focuses on organized marketing of Tomatoes, Onions and Potatoes (TOP vegetables) by connecting farmers with consumers.
- State Agriculture and other Marketing Federations, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO), cooperatives, companies, Self-help groups, food processors etc. can avail the financial assistance under it.
Fisheries
- Finance Minister proposed substantial investments in the development of modern fishing harbours and fish landing centres.
- To start with, 5 major fishing harbours – Kochi, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Paradip, and Petuaghat – will be developed as hubs of economic activity.
Migrant Workers and Labourers
- Government has launched the One Nation One Ration Card scheme through which beneficiaries can claim their rations anywhere in the country.
- One Nation One Ration Card plan is under implementation by 32 states and UTs, reaching about 69 crore beneficiaries – that’s a total of 86% beneficiaries covered. The remaining 4 states and UTs will be integrated in the next few months.
- Government proposes to conclude a process that began 20 years ago, with the implementation of the 4 labour codes.
- For the first time globally, social security benefits will extend to gig and platform workers. Minimum wages will apply to all categories of workers, and they will all be covered by the Employees State Insurance Corporation.
- Women will be allowed to work in all categories and also in the night-shifts with adequate protection. At the same time, compliance burden on employers will be reduced with single registration and licensing, and online returns.
One Nation One Ration Card Scheme
- Under the scheme a beneficiary will be able to avail benefits across the country using a single ration card across all PDS shops in the country.
- The scheme will also allow portability of food security benefits.
- It was launched in January 2020 in 12 states.
Highlights of the scheme:
- In this system, eligible beneficiaries would be able to avail entitled food grains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) from any Fair Price Shop(FPSs) in the country using the same ration card.
- The eligible beneficiaries will be able to buy subsidized food grains, rice at ₹3 per kg, wheat at ₹2 per kg, and coarse grains at Re 1 per kg, from anywhere in the country.
- 100 percent of national portability of these cards has been assured by March 31, 2021.
- The new system is based on a technological solution to identify a beneficiary through biometric authentication on electronic Point of Sale (ePoS) devices installed at the FPS’s.
- The Integrated Management of Public Distribution System (IM-PDS) portal provides the technological platform for the inter-state portability of ration cards.
- A standard format for ration cards has been prepared after taking into account the format used by different states and it has been advised that ration cards be issued in a bi-lingual format having Hindi or English apart from the local language.
Financial Inclusion
- To further facilitate credit flow under the scheme of Stand Up India for SCs, STs, and women, the Finance Minister proposed to reduce the margin money requirement from 25% to 15%, and to also include loans for activities allied to agriculture.
- Moreover, a number of steps were taken to support the MSME sector and in this Budget, Government has provided Rs. 15,700 crore to this sector – more than double of this year’s BE.
Stand Up IndiaScheme
- Stand up India is a scheme that empowers SC, ST, and women entrepreneurs to enable their enterprises by helping them to approach a loan from banks for the same.
- It has targeted to create 2.5 lakhs such as entrepreneurs across the country.
Key Features
- Stand Up India, provides composite loans between Rs 10 lakhs and Rs 1 crore to at least one scheduled caste (SC) or a scheduled tribe (ST) borrower, and at least one woman borrower per bank branch for building up a Greenfield enterprise (A Greenfield project is one which is not constrained by prior work.)
- Under the scheme, 1.25 lakh bank branches will provide loans up to Rs 1 crore.
- Under the scheme, the borrowers will get support such as pre-loan training, facilitating the loan, factoring, and marketing.
- Refinance window through Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) with an initial amount of 10,000 crore rupees.
- Debit Card (RuPay) for withdrawal of working capital.
- Creation of an entity of 5,000 crore rupees for credit guarantee through National Credit Guarantee Trustee (NCGTC).
- Web portal for online registrations and other particulars.