Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi has already taken two review meetings of the Jai Vigyan National Science and Technology Missions. In the 3^rd meeting held today the discussion focused on the food security mission. Secretaries of the Science Departments and other officials presented the progress made so far in the 16 identified Jai Vigyan Missions which will be treated as "Green Channel" projects. Dr. Joshi was of the view that the Jai Vigyan National Missions must benefit the poor man and the fruits of the research must reach the common man to fulfil many of his basic minimum requirements.

    The meeting noted that the missions on Nuclear Technology in Medicine, Development and Production of New Generation vaccines and diagnostics, Biotechnological approaches towards Herbal product development, setting up of Mirror Site for Genome Research, Light Transport Aircraft Project, establishment of Botanical Garden at NOIDA, Technology Mission on Indigenous Medical Equipment, for Education Training, Employment and Rehabilitation of the Visually Handicapped Persons and Mission for Indian languages, Ocean Thermal Energy Development Project and Project on Thalassemia and Community Control of Rheumatic Fever, Mission for Visually Impaired, and Himalayan Geology, Biodiversity Characterisation in Andaman & Nicobar Islands using Satellite have already been formulated and the necessary clearances have been obtained.

    In the project on Food and Nutritional Security, the main focus will be value addition to the crop species particularly, coarse cereals and pseudo cereals; enhancing the horticultural and vegetable production, improved post harvest technology and agricultural engineering for nutritional security. Crops like soyabean would be given high priority as also under utilised tropical fruits, indigenous vegetables and tuber crops. Improvement in the live stock productivity in the tribal, backward and hilly areas would also be taken up. This will be a time-bound programme for three years to begin with. As part of the food security a mission on coffee improvement specially to reduce the caffeine content would also be launched.

    Cropping system studies using the remote sensing and Geographical Information System(GIS) would also help and contribute towards the food security mission.

    The ultimate aim of these mission projects is to take the research to logical conclusions in terms of products, which can be used by the poorest of the poor. An appropriate monitoring system would be established with regular monitoring by the Minister. All these projects would be started before July, 1999.
 
 
 

    The Railway Health Services cater every day to nearly one lakh patients through its ten Central Hospitals, 56 Divisional Hospitals, 44 Sub-Divisional Hospitals, 7 hospitals at workshops, six at Production Units and 589 Health Units spread all over the country.

    The Director General, Railway Health Services Shri Phani Dhar has written to the Chief Medical Officers of all hospitals to take a session and explain the medical and para medical staff the underlying value system of the mission statement. They should be asked to work to the total satisfaction of the patients and their relatives.

    The Director General has said that patients have also got their self-respect and dignity. To win over their confidence, there is need of prompt and courteous approach.
 
 

    The other measures taken to improve urban India are Urban Environmental Improvement Programme, National Slum Development Programme, 73^rd and 74^th Constitution Amendments for empowering local bodies, repeal of Urban Land (Ceiling & Regulation) Act, and National Housing Policy. In addition, the involvement of private sector in resource mobilisation for housing and urban infrastructure development projects is some of the other schemes intended to make urban life livable.

    Recently, United Nations has warned that Indian cities and towns are likely to become urban nightmares due to growing population and lack of planning.

    The Government is aware of the problems faced by the cities and towns such as poverty, pollution, congestion, resource constraints, slums, inadequate infrastructure like housing, water supply, sewerage, solid waste disposal, urban roads as also social and cultural infrastructure.
 
 

    The Draft Notification will try to place areas into different categories like industrial, commercial and residential. Noise in these areas it is proposed will not exceed prescribed ambience noise standards. It is proposed to give police powers to act against those who violate these ambient noise standards.

    The Draft Notification will also cover the manufacture, sale and use of fire-crackers exceeding the prescribed ambient noise standards. The Draft Notification will similarly cover the use of loud speakers and noise emanating from the movement of vehicles.
 
 
 

• Form No.3CA- for audit report in the case of a person who carries on business or profession and who is required by or under any other law to get his accounts audited.
• Form No.3CB-for audit report in the case of a person who carries on business or profession, but not being a person referred to in clause (1) above.
• Form No.3CD for furnishing the particulars alongwith the audit report.

    Section 44AB of the Income-tax Act, 1961, inter alia, requires compulsory audit of accounts in the case of every person carrying on business or profession and having total sales, turnover or gross receipts, as the case may be, more than the specified limit (Rs.40 lakhs for business and Rs.10 lakhs for profession). The report of such audit is required to be furnished in Form No. 3CA/3CB/3CC alongwith the particulars in Form Nos.3CD/3CE.
 
 
 

    The salient features are:

• Cases are to be picked up in a joint meeting of Assessing Officer and his next superior authority on the basis of credible information after recording the reasons in writing.
• The selection process is to be completed all over the country by 30.9.99 to be followed by individual letters to assessees, whose cases have been selected. This will be followed by Press Note from respective Chief Commissioners/Directors General specifying the fact of completion of selection process and regarding intimation to the concerned assessees. Certain exceptional cases can be picked up only at the level of Chief Commissioner of Income-tax for reasons to be recorded in writing even after 30.9.99.
• However, all assessments relating to
• search and seizure,
• survey under section133A,
• re-assessment under section147 and
• set aside assessment

• The end result/findings of the assessment under section 143(3) will have to justify the selection of a particular case against specified norms.

    The Department, which is taking concerted efforts to promote commercialisation of plant tissue culture, discussed this issue in great detail with experts, scientists and industry recently. The proposed facility will help the industry to add value to their products and also satisfy the end users that the product they receive is disease free and genetically similar to the elite plant.

    The plant tissue culture has today become a commercial technology and targets the export and domestic market. The main crops being produced are ornamentals and horticulture crops. For successful commerecialisation of this technology it is necessary to ensure that the planting material produced and distributed for plantation is virus free and true-to-type to the mother plant. It is essential for the industry to have a proper certification of the plants they have produced before these are distributed for plantation.

    The two Micropropagation Technology Parks set up by the Department of Biotechnology at NCL, Pune and TERI, New Delhi have provided millions of plants to the users. Over 50 lakh plantlets mainly forest trees have already been produced and planted for field demonstrations covering an area of approx. 4500 hectares. Tissue culture raised plantlets are field evaluated to test their performance vis-à-vis the control or seeding raised plantlets in 17 different States of the Country, in association with the State Forest Departments and user Agencies. Forest tree species are generally not amenable to virus infection. However, for the material produced on large scale, efforts are made to collect the explant from the elite mother tree, which is free from any virus.

    The potential for producing large quantity of desired planting material through tissue culture is enormous and it is now being widely applied for improvement of crop species, forest tree species, horticulture and plantation crops. Apart from mass multiplication of desired species, tissue culture also allows the regeneration of transformed novel plants from genetically engineered cells, thus making it an essential component of plant biotechnology. The farmers and State Departments are very keen in taking up tissue culture raised plants which not only promise high yielding but also disease free plants. The yield is predictable in these, which is essential for perspective planning. Demonstrations are now being expanded to cover the farmer’s field . The results of the trials are highly encouraging and a preliminary cost benefit analysis has shown that the tissue culture raised plants give at least one and a half times higher returns compared to plants raised by usual practices. Intercropping practices beneficial to the farmers have been developed which give an additional earning of nearly Rs.15000 to Rs.20000 per hectare.
 
 

    Apart from the approved projects, three projects aggregating to 7 million tonnes port capacity and Rs. 600 crore investments are in the process of approval in the Ministry of Surface Transport. These are Captive Coal and General Cargo Berth at Pir Pau, Mumbai Port; Container Terminal at Kandla Port; and Captive Berth for Fertiliser Raw Materials at paradip Port.

    In all 26 projects aggregating to 91 million tonnes of port capacity with an investment of Rs.8000 crore approximately have been planned by the Ministry to be taken up through private investment during the Ninth Five-Year Plan. It may be mentioned that as per plans prepared by the Ministry, new port projects were to be started during the Ninth Plan in such a manner that capacity of 122 million tonnes could created through these projects. Out of this, a target of 76 million tonnes has been fixed for private investment.
 
 

    Two such Conferences were held in May 1998 and January 1999 at New Delhi and Shillong respectively. The Ministry of Power has prepared an Action Plan for development of power sector in the North Eastern Region and a number of important decisions relating to generation projects, transmission and sub-transmission and distribution have been taken based on the recommendations of the earlier Conferences. Tomorrow's Conference will deliberate on the important hydro-electric projects to be executed in the North Eastern Region, schemes for improvement of sub- transmission and distribution, survey and investigation of hydro-electric projects and transmission tariff etc.
 
 

    The debt-service ratio, which reached a peak of 35.3 percent in 1990-91, declined steadily to 19.8 percent of our current receipts in 1997-98. For the first three quarters of 1998-99 financial year (Apr-Dec 1998), the ratio is estimated at 19.4 percent. The table below gives some key external debt indicators since 1990-91.
 
 

Year                 Debt to                 Debt to                 Debt Service to                 Interest
                        GDP                     Current                 Current                              Payments to
                                                     Receipts                Receipts                            Current
                                                                                                                           Receipts
1990-91             28.0                     328.9                     35.3                                 15.5
1991-92             37.7                     312.3                     30.2                                 13.0
1992-93             36.6                     323.4                     27.5                                 12.5
1993-94             33.1                     275.6                     25.4                                 11.1
1994-95             30.0                     235.8                     25.9                                 10.0
1995-96             26.3                     188.8                     26.2                                 8.6
1996-97             23.8                     169.2                     22.9                                 8.0
1997-98             23.8                     163.2                     19.8                                 7.8
1998-99*           23.0                                                   19.4                                 7.8

    * : 1998-99 Debt to GDP ratio is the ratio of end-December 1998 debt to estimated GDP at market price for 1998-99. The Debt Service to Current Receipts for 1998-99 are ratios for the first three quarters of the financial year (April1, 1998-December 31, 1998)

    The debt to GDP ratio, another key indicator of debt burden, has also come down from a high of 37.7 percent in 1991-92 to 23.8 percent in 1997-98. The end-December 1998 external debt stock as a ratio of 1998-99 GDP is estimated at 23.0 percent. The following table gives the details of India's external debt outstanding.

Long term debt                75257     89068     94739     88696     86744     88862     92083
Short-term debt               8544       3627       4269       5034       6726       5046       3632
Total debt                        83801     92695     99008     93730     93470     93908     95715

Short term to                  10.2         3.9             4.3             5.4         7.2         5.4         3.8
Total Debt*
External Debt to             28.0         33.1             30.0         26.3       23.8       23.8         23.0
GDP**

    * : Short term to total debt ratios are derived from US $ figures.
** : Debt to GDP ratios are derived from Rupee figures.

    India's short-term debt, which is a crucial factor in the overall debt management of the country been low by international standards. The short-term component declined from 7.2 percent of the total debt at end-March 1997 to 3.8 percent at end-December 1998.

    The structural changes that have been evident in the composition of India's external debt continued in 1997-98. The share of debt on concessional terms declined from 45.3 percent at end-March 1995 to 39.3 percent at end-December 1998. The share of official creditors reached a peak of the total debt at end-December 1998.

    The Status Report says that the improvement in India's external indebtedness position in recent years has been made possible through a conscious debt management policy that emphasizes sustaining a high growth rate of exports, keeping the maturity structure as well as the total amount of commercial debt under manageable limits, prioritizing the use of commercial credit and encouraging foreign investment. The report also expresses satisfaction over the fact that India has emerged relatively unscathed from the Asian crisis and the global contagion.

    However, the gains already made have to be consolidated further. Short-term debt management has to continue as an area of high priority. The Report has identified debt monitoring and management activities in the following areas as focal points.

• There is a need for greater stress on debt sustainability exercises to consolidate the gains already made. This would include developing an external debt sustainability model with macro economic linkages and developing early warning indicators.
• Another area of priority is developing a sovereign external debt management model with objectives of costs and risks minimization. The benchmark currency, interest and maturity mix could be used as target configuration for borrowing and debt management decision. The model also has to be dynamic in the sense of its continuous review to take care of changing situations.
• Computerization allows debt data to be subjected to scenario building, sensitivity and stress testing exercises. Though most of the external debt data has been computerized, the scope has to be extended to components still reported on manual basis. Simultaneously, corporate sector data reporting mechanism has to be streamlined including reporting of debt related derivative transactions.
• Similarly, there is a need to monitor all contractual contingent liabilities arising out of both debt and non-debt liabilities as they have budgetary implications.

    To mark the launch of Easy Animal Aid, Easy Call presented pagers to representatives of the following organisations :

• People for Animals - Delhi
• Circle of Animal Lovers
• Friendicos
• Sanjay Gandhi animal Care Centre
• Jeev Ashram
• People for Animals - Gurgaon

    Inaugurating the services, Smt. Gandhi said that there are around one crore people in the city and about 200 to 300 animals are killed every day in road accidents and cruelty to animals. She said that smaller animals like birds, cats, dogs, deer, snakes are injured and are dying every day and rescue services are available at different telephone numbers of various organisations working in this field. Now with the centralised service with just one telephone no. 9622 069069 will help a lot. She said slowly and steadily 25 cities will be covered by this service very soon. She also said that many Acts of Parliament dealing with animal welfare need to be further amended.

    Smt. Gandhi said that Easy Animal Aid is an endeavour to take forward the campaign for Animal rights and give momentum to a move respecting all life on this earth, which is a small but crucial part of India's growing environmental awareness.
 

    How will "Easy Animal Aid" work? All that the caller needs to do is to dial 9622-069069. The message is then relayed by Easy Call to the organisation that is best equipped to respond, in terms of geographical proximity as well as infrastructure and kind of services available.