PRIME MINISTER'S 15 IMPORTANT INITIATIVES ON
INDEPENDENCE DAY 2002
In addition to the announcements
made in the Prime Minister’s Address to the Nation today, the
following 15 important initiatives on Independence Day, 2002 have
been approved :
1: Indian
Railways is celebrating its 150th anniversary this
year. A befitting way to pay tribute to this great institution,
which has contributed immensely to India’s economic progress and
national integration, is to put it on a path of fast-track growth.
The Government is drawing up an important
non-budgetary investment initiative for the development of Indian
Railways, to be called the National Rail Vikas Yojana.
Under this, all the capacity bottlenecks
in the critical sections of the railway network will be removed
at an investment of Rs. 15,000 crore over the next five years.
These projects would include
- Strengthening of the Golden Quadrilateral to enable
Railways to run more long-distance mail/express trains and freight
trains at a higher speed of 100 kmph, at a cost of Rs. 8,000
crore;
- Strengthening of rail connectivity to ports and
development of multimodal corridors to hinterland, at a cost
of Rs. 3,000 crore;
- Construction of four mega bridges — two over the
River Ganga, one over River Brahmaputra, and one over the River
Kosi — at a cost of Rs. 3,500 crore;
- Accelerated completion of last mile and other
important projects, at a cost of Rs. 763 crore.
Today, there are sanctioned projects
worth Rs. 40,000 crores, which have been languishing for a long
time. At the present rate of allocation, it will take more than
25 years to complete them.
The Government has decided to draw
up a plan to complete all the viable Sanctioned Railway Projects
within the next 10 years.
Indian Railways will launch "Operation
Cleanliness" to significantly improve the standards of
sanitation at railway stations, on platforms and inside railway
compartments.
2: Work on the Rs. 3,564-crore
project for constructing the Udhampur to Baramulla railway line
in Jammu & Kashmir will be given on a single-tender basis
to IRCON and Konkan Railway Corporation Limited, which have an
excellent track record of undertaking construction of railway
projects in difficult terrain. As announced by the Prime Minister,
during his recent visit to Srinagar, the first train would roll
into Kashmir Valley before August 15, 2007.
3: In pursuance of the Prime Minister’s
announcement on Kargil Vijay Diwas last year, the Ministry of
Defence has finalized a scheme for medical care for ex-servicemen
and their dependants. It will be launched within three months.
The Ministry will take several new initiatives to strengthen national
security, of which the important ones are:
- Production and induction of AGNI class of missiles
into the Army.
- Production and induction of Brahmos, the supersonic
missile capable of launch from multiple platforms, into the
Services.
- Supply of two LM-2500 Engines for Naval Frigates
to the Indian Navy.
- Delivery of 11 Advanced Light Helicopters to the
Armed Forces.
- Rolling out of T-90 tanks assembled from kits
from Russia.
4: The Ministry of Home Affairs
will prepare a plan to issue multi-purpose machine-readable
Identity Cards to all citizens. For this, a pilot project
will be launched in October to cover select districts in eight
States. This pilot project will be completed within a year. These
identity cards will also facilitate the implementation of e-governance
initiatives.
5: Social security is a matter
of serious concern for most of the citizens. The fall in the interest
rates on deposits, coupled with the difficulties faced by some
of the financial institutions, have caused worry to the saving
community.
The Government soon proposes to introduce
a comprehensive and participative scheme of social security, which
will seek to address the Life-Time Concerns of the poor and
the middle-class — such as income-enhancing education; provision
for the needs of the girl child; emergency health care needs;
economic security in old age; and protection to families in the
event of untimely deaths of breadwinners.
Alleviation of hunger among the most
vulnerable sections of the society — such as old people, widows
and disabled persons without family or societal support — will
be an important component of the initiative on Life-Time Concerns.
Accordingly, extending the scope of the Antyodaya Anna Yojana,
and taking advantage of the surplus stock of foodgrains, the Government
will operationalise a major food-based social security for
the destitute.
6: So far, nearly two and a half
crore Kisan Credit Cards have been issued. Efforts will
be made to cover the entire population of eligible farmers under
this scheme in the next two years.
Public sector general insurance companies
will promote a new initiative to expand and further improve the
provision of crop insurance needs of our kisans.
The Ministry of Consumer Affairs,
Food and Public Distribution will set up a National Commodities
Exchange to streamline commodity futures trading in the country.
7: The Ministry of Power, guided
by the slogan "Power for All" by 2012, will launch
a programme for accelerated completion of the electrification
of all villages in the country by 2007, and all households in
the next ten years, relying significantly on local renewable energy
resources and decentralized technologies. For this, it will set
up a Rural Electricity Supply Technology (REST) Mission. The Accelerated
Power Development & Reforms Programme (APDRP) would intensify
the Ministry’s cooperative interaction with State Governments
to restore the commercial health of SEBs/Utilities.
8: Thanks to the initiatives taken
by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology,
130 lakh new telephone lines will be added in the coming
year. Of these, 75 lakh will be mobile telephones. This is expected
to take India’s teledensity from 4.38 to 5.61 – the highest ever
yearly increase since Independence.
The Ministry will implement a comprehensive
programme to accelerate e-Governance at all levels of the
government to improve efficiency, transparency and accountability
at the government-citizen interface. E-Bill Post and internet-based
E-Post Service network will be expanded to cover all districts
in the coming year.
The establishment of Media Lab
Asia, a joint collaboration between the Department of IT and
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, has been an important
initiative to address the challenge of Digital Divide in India
and other developing countries. It would pursue high-end research
in four areas germane to the needs of rural India: "World
Computer" (low-cost computing devices); "Bits for All"
(bringing low-cost connectivity to the doorstep of rural masses;
"Tools for Tomorrow" (creation of low-cost learning
tools to bring out the spirit of innovation among the rural youth);
and "Digital Village" (where the above three research
programmes would be demonstrated for palpable impact). Media Lab
Asia has been designated as an Asian Regional Hub of the United
Nations ICT Task Force for coordinating activities of academia
and the private sector in the area of IT for the Masses.
9: Ministry of Petroleum, together
with other concerned ministries, will take steps to universalize
blending, with petrol and diesel, of ethanol from various
feedstocks, including sugar factories. It will also promote use
of other bio-fuels. Sale of gasohol will become mandatory in nine
States and four Union Territories from January 1, 2003.
10: Ministry of Textiles will
earmark Rs. 100 crore for a one-time special rebate on handloom
fabrics to kickstart this employment-intensive industry and revive
its production cycle. An additional Rs. 125 crore will be spent
for skill upgradation of one lakh handloom weavers. The Government
will start a special contributory insurance scheme for one million
weavers and artisans, which will combine the Jan Shree Bima Yojana
with group insurance.
11: The Ministry of Urban Development
and Poverty Alleviation is working on early introduction of a
Model Municipal Law to facilitate participation of the
private sector in urban infrastructure projects, especially in
water supply and sanitation. The ministry will operationalise
"City Challenge Fund" this year to promote urban
sector reforms, with a special focus on making the urban local
bodies viable.
The Valmiki Ambedkar Awas Yojana
(VAMBAY), which was launched last year, has become highly
popular in a short time. The scheme will support construction
of over one lakh slum houses in the current year, with an allocation
of Rs. 256 crore. The scope of construction of community toilets
in slum areas, under the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, will be further
expanded.
12: The Ministry of Human Resource
Development will formulate a National Plan of Action for Children,
which will contain the developmental targets relating to India’s
children in the next decade. A National Charter for Children
will be adopted in the coming year. The National Nutrition
Mission will be fully operationalised during the current year.
The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) will be universalized
in all the 5,652 blocks in the country.
13: The Government will amalgamate
all the different schemes, presently being run by Ministry of
Social Justice and Empowerment, Ministry of Rural Development
and Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation, for
speeding up the liberation and rehabilitation of scavengers.
14: The Ministry of Social Justice
and Empowerment will launch a scheme to provide National Scholarships
to disabled persons for pursuing higher technical education. The
scheme will be implemented under the National Fund for People
with Disabilities.
15: The Ministry of Culture will
launch a National Mission for Manuscripts to preserve and
unlock the precious treasurehouse of scientific, intellectual,
literary and spiritual knowledge in different Indian languages,
contained in different kinds of material. Among other things,
the Mission will set up a National Manuscripts Library and promote
ready access to these manuscripts through publication in book
form as well as machine-readable form.
