About Atal New India Challenge

• Atal New India Challenge is a flagship program of Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog.
• The program aims to seek, select, support and nurture technology-based innovations that solve sectoral challenges of national importance and societal relevance.
• ANIC solicits innovations in the prototype stage and supports the selected start-ups through to the commercialization stage over a course of 12 – 18 months.

Objectives:

• To incentivize innovations in areas critical to India’s development and growth – Education, Health, Water and Sanitation Agriculture, Food Processing, Housing,Energy, Mobility, Space Application etc.

To address the Commercialization Valley of Death (Gap between the research and commercialization) – supporting innovators scale over the risks associated with access to resources for testing, piloting and market creation

About M15 Petrol:

• M15 is a blend of 15 % methanol and 85 % Petrol.
• It helps lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by about 5 to 10%. Blending 15% methanol in petrol would bring down GHG emissions by 20% in terms of particulate matter, NOx, and SOx, thereby improving the urban air quality.
• Coal reserves and municipal solid waste can be converted into methanol.
• It helps in achieving fuel independence and reducing the import burden. Blending of 15% methanol in petrol can result in at least a 15% reduction in the import of crude oil.

Methanol economy

• According to NITI Aayog, Methanol Economy will create close to 5 million jobs through methanol production/application and distribution services. Additionally, Rs 6000 crore can be saved annually by blending 20% DME (Dimethyl Ether, a derivative of methanol) in LPG. This will help the consumer in saving between Rs 50-100 per cylinder.

Key Highlights:

• According to the report, the Indian economy is likely to take over 12 years to overcome the COVID-19 losses.
• Taking the actual growth rate of (-) 6.6% for 2020-21, 8.9% for 2021-22, and assuming a growth rate of 7.2% for 2022-23, and 7.5% beyond that, India is expected to overcome COVID-19 losses in 2034-35.
• The supply constraints and longer delivery times pushed up shipping costs, and commodity prices, thereby intensifying inflationary pressures and threatening the nascent economic recovery across the world.
• While the RBI expects the Indian economy to grow at 6.35 in FY24, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) report pegged India’s growth rate for FY24 at 6.9%.

Theme of the report

• The theme of the report is “Revive and Reconstruct” in the context of nurturing a durable recovery post-COVID and raising trend growth in the medium term.

Other Findings of the Report:

• The report states that for the country to hop on to a strong and sustainable growth path, price stability is a necessary precondition.
• Reducing general government debt to below 66% of GDP over the next five years is important to secure India’s medium-term growth prospects.
• The report emphasized providing opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses.
• India’s free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations should focus on the transfer of technology and better trade terms for high-quality imports from partner countries.
• The report says that the task is to create a virtuous cycle of greater opportunity for entrepreneurs, businesses, and the fiscal authority.

Reforms Highlighted in the Report

• Seven Wheels of Economic Progress: The blueprint of reforms proposed in the Report revolves around seven wheels of economic progress:
• Aggregate demand.
• Aggregate supply.
• Institutions, intermediaries and markets.
• Macroeconomic stability and policy coordination.
• Productivity and technological progress.
• Structural change.

About e-Shram Portal

• The Ministry of Labour and Employment launched the e-Shram portal.
• It is a government portal, launched six months ago, with the aim of creating a national database of unorganised workers and to facilitate social security schemes for them.
• Unique IDs on the e-Shram portal carry the same series from the Employees Provident Fund Organisation’s (EPFO) universal account number (UAN).
• If a worker is registered on the eSHRAM portal and meets with an accident, he will be eligible for Rs 2.0 Lakh on death or permanent disability and Rs 1.0 lakh on partial disability

Recent Context:

• Recently, The World Economic Outlook 2022 by IMF has been published and cut its forecast for India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in FY 2022-23 to 8.2%, making it the fastest-growing major economy in the world, almost twice faster than China’s 4.4 %.

Key Findings:

• It has also lowered India’s growth projection by 0.8 % points for 2022-23 from its previous forecast (9%) for the same period in 2021.
• In 2021, India registered a growth rate of 8.9 %.
• In 2023-24, India is estimated to grow at 6.9 %.
• The IMF has projected global growth at 3.6 % in 2022 and 2023, 0.8 and 0.2 % lower than in the January 2022 forecast, respectively

Reports by IMF:

• Global Financial stability report
• World Economic outlook

Recent Context:

• Recently, The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has released Special 301 Report 2022
• Released by: Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR)
• Purpose: To identify trading partners that do not adequately or effectively protect and enforce Intellectual Property (IP) rights or otherwise deny market access to U.S. innovators and creators that rely on the protection of their IP rights.
• Categories: The report places countries into:
• Priority Watch list countries -These are those countries that are having serious intellectual property rights deficiencies and require increased United States Trade Representative(USTR) attention.
• Watch List countries – These countries are having serious intellectual property rights deficiencies but are not yet placed on the Priority Watch list.
• Priority Watch List Countries: Argentina, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and Venezuela.

About Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD)

• It was launched in December 2021.
• It is the agency’s first-ever laser communications system.
• The LCRD will help the agency test optical communication in space.
• LCRD is a technology demonstration that will pave the way for future optical communications missions.
• The LCRD payload is hosted onboard the US Department of Defense’s Space Test Program Satellite 6 (STPSat-6).
• It will be in a geosynchronous orbit, over 35,000km above Earth.

Features:

• It has two optical terminals. One to receive data from a user spacecraft, and the other to transmit data to ground stations.
• The modems will translate the digital data into laser signals. This will then be transmitted via encoded beams of light.
• These capabilities make LCRD NASA’s first two-way, end-to-end optical relay.

Recent Context

• Recently, An anti-ship version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile was successfully test-fired jointly by the Indian Navy and the Andaman and Nicobar Command.

About BrahMos supersonic cruise missile

• The BrahMos is a ramjet supersonic cruise missile of a short-range developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Russian Federation’s NPO Mashinostroyeniya.
• BrahMos was named after two major rivers of India and Russia: Brahmaputra and Moskva.
• It is a two-stage (solid propellant engine in the first stage and liquid ramjet in second)
• It is capable of being launched from land, sea, sub-sea and air against surface and sea-based targets and has constantly been improved and upgraded
• It operates on the “Fire and Forgets” principlee it does not require further guidance after launch.
• Brahmos is one of the fastest cruise missile currently operationally deployed with speed of Mach 2.8, which is nearly 3 times more than the speed of sound.

Recent Context:

• Total global military expenditure increased by 0.7 per cent in real terms in 2021, to reach $2113 billion, according to new data on global military spending published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Important Facts:

• The five largest spenders in 2021 were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure.
• India’s military spending of $76.6 billion ranked third highest in the world. This was up by 0.9 per cent from 2020 and by 33 per cent from 2012.
• The USA and China alone accounted for 52 per cent. China, the world’s second largest spender.

Recent Context

• Google signed a MoU with the Telangana government to bring the benefits of the digital economy to the state’s young and women entrepreneurs, and officially off the construction of its three million square foot headquarters in the city from the ground up

About the collaboration

• Under this MoU, Google will be extending Google Career Certificate scholarships to the youngsters of the state to make them job-ready.
• Google will also be collaborating with the Telangana government to support the state’s women entrepreneurs through business, digital, and financial skills training.
• Google will also be strengthening the government’s school modernization efforts via learning and digital teaching tools and solutions.
• The organization will also be looking to support the government’s efforts of using digital technologies in agriculture and improving public transportation.