NITI – National Institution for Transforming India
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 1 January 2015 announced replacing the Planning Commission with the NITI Aayog or the Policy Commission. The term NITI, which means policy in Hindi, was taken from the new body NITI (National Institution for Transforming India), will act more like a think tank or forum in contrast with the Commission which imposed five-year-plans and allocated resources to hit set economic targets.
PRAGATI
PRAGATI – Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation
PRAGATI is the name given to the ambitious multi-purpose and multi-modal platform to address public grievances that was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 25 March 2015. The PRAGATI platform integrates three latest technologies – digital data management, video-conferencing and geo-spatial technology. It also offers a unique combination in the direction of cooperative federalism since it brings on one stage the Secretaries of Government of India and the Chief Secretaries of the States. It will be interactive as well as integrative. From now on the fourth Wednesday of every month will be known as PRAGATI Day and it will feature the Prime Minister interacting with the Government of India Secretaries, and Chief Secretaries through Video-conferencing enabled by the PRAGATI platform. The PRAGATI platform has been designed in-house by the PMO team with the help of National Informatics Center (NIC).
PaHaL
PaHaL – Pratyaksha Hastaantarit Laabh
The acronym PaHaL stands for the Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme for LPG Subsidy. Under PaHaL, LPG cylinders are sold at market rates and entitled consumers get the subsidy directly into their bank accounts. This is done either through an Aadhaar linkage or a bank account linkage. PaHaL aims to reduce diversion and eliminate duplicate or bogus LPG connections. It is perhaps the world’s largest cash transfer program as compared to similar programs in other countries, such as China, Mexico and Brazil. As on 31 January 2015 around 9.75 crore LPG consumers have joined the scheme. This is 66% of the total consumer base of 15 crore.
HRIDAY
HRIDAY – Heritage Development and Augmentation Yojana
HRIDAY is the name of a new plan launched by the Union Urban Development Ministry on 21 January 2015 that seeks to preserve and rejuvenate the rich cultural heritage of the country. It seeks to promote an integrated, inclusive and sustainable development of heritage sites, focusing not just on maintenance of monuments but on advancement of the entire ecosystem including its citizens, tourists and local businesses. Under HRIDAY Rs.500 crore would be provided to the 12 cities selected in the first phase and the Central Government will meet the entire expenditure under the scheme. These 12 cities include Varanasi, Amritsar, Warangal, Ajmer, Gaya, Mathura, Kanchipuram, Vellankini, Amaravati, Badami, Dwarka and Puri.
EEU
EEU – Eurasian Economic Union
EEU is a political and economic union between Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that came into effect on 1 January 2015. A treaty aiming for the establishment of the EEU was signed on 29 May 2014.
NSM
NSM – National Supercomputing Mission
National Supercomputing Mission is the name of the mission established during March 2015 with the objective of putting India in the league of world class computing power nations. NSM would be implemented and steered jointly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) at an estimated cost of Rs.4500 crore over a period of seven years. Currently, in the top Supercomputing machines in the world, a major share is taken from advanced countries such as the US, Japan, China and the European Union (EU). The mission envisages India to be in the select league of such nations. The NSM envisages empowering country’s academic and R&D institutions by installing a vast supercomputing grid comprising of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities. These supercomputers will also be networked on the National Supercomputing grid over the National Knowledge Network (NKN). The NKN is another programme of the government which connects academic institutions and R&D labs over a high speed network.
AMRUT
AMRUT – Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation
Union Govt. has decided to rename the second phase of JNNURM, the scheme to rejuvenate India’s 500 cities and towns, after Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This scheme will be known as Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT). Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) was a massive city-modernisation scheme launched by the Government of India under Ministry of Urban Development. It was launched on 3 December 2005 to improve the quality of life and infrastructure in the cities. It had seven-year time frame and its first phase ended in March 2012. Though UPA-II had done preparatory work to approve second phase of JNNURM, it could not clear the scheme. Now the Modi government has decided to rename the second phase after the first BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. AMRUT will be a 10-year programme with total investment of about Rs 2 lakh crore.
MRT
MRT – Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy
MRT is a ground-breaking technique that uses genetic material from three different people to prevent certain inherited and untreatable, genetic diseases from passing from the mother to her offspring. This therapy came to news after it was approved to be adopted in Britain by British Parliament’s lower house, the House of Commons, on 3 February 2015. The technique involves an IVF procedure in which the egg’s defective mitochondrial DNA is replaced with healthy DNA from a female donor. This technique was developed at the University of Newcastle by a team led by Professor Doug Turnbull.
BOSS
BOSS – Bharat Operating System Solutions
Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS) is a free and open source Linux distribution for usage in Indian government departments developed by the National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) of India. BOSS GNU/Linux is also known by the acronym BOSS. The Union Govt. during January 2015 asked states to deploy the open source Linux-based operating system BOSS meant to run official computers. BOSS is being proposed as a ‘homegrown’ alternative to the Microsoft Windows operating system, which is the predominant OS in use across Central and state government computer systems, alongside other Linux variants such as Redhat and Ubuntu, as well as Android and Unix systems.
NMET
NMET – National Mineral Exploration Trust
NMET is the name given to a new seed trust floated by the Union Govt. during January 2015, which has primarily been established to promote more exploration of non-coal minerals and meet the growing needs of the domestic steel, aluminium, copper and other utilities. This seed trust has been established with an initial corpus of Rs. 500 crore. The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) (Amendment) Ordinance, 2015 was promulgated to establish NMET. As per the ordinance, holders of mining leases or prospecting-cum-mining leases would pay to the NMET a sum equivalent to 2% of the royalty they pay to the government. The trust would utilise the money for fresh exploration. In effect, it would function similarly to the state-run Geological Survey of India (GSI) or its junior counterpart Mineral Exploration Corporation Limited (MECL). The mines ministry’s efforts to strengthen its exploration firms gathered momentum following the steel ministry’s December 2014 presentation to the PMO wherein it had said that the total thermal coal requirement for steel, cement and aluminium sectors is approximately 200 million tonne, of which 40 million tonne is imported at a revenue outgo of Rs. 500 crore each year.
UPI
UPI – Unified Payment Interface
UPI is the name given to a unified platform launched by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on 18 February 2015 for providing a single payment interface across all systems. Under UPI, anyone who has an account, should be able to send and receive money from their mobile phone with just an identifier without having any other bank/account details. It is designed to enable all account holders to send and receive money from their smartphones with a single identifier – Aadhaar number, mobile number, virtual payments address – without entering any bank account information. UPI will make payments possible only by providing an address with others without having ever provided account details or credentials on 3rd party applications or websites.
TLCs
TLCs – Tech Learning Centres
Tech Learning Centres (TLCs) is a new massive initiative launched by State Bank of India (SBI) recently to empower its customers through technology and awareness. Under this initiative special SBI centers across the length and breadth of the country have started holding interactive learning sessions and demos of the bank’s tech-channels. This initiative has been on since December 2014. Under this 385 State Bank TLCs across the length and breadth of the country have started holding interactive learning sessions and demos of the bank’s tech-channels for over ten thousand customers every month. A large number of customers are having an initial fear and hesitation to use technology for their banking needs. But through this initiative SBI seeks to remove such hesitation among them. After launching in December, 2014, more than 30,000 customers were trained in these TLCs. TLCs will spread awareness of the Bank’s various tech channels including Cash Deposit Machines, Mobile Banking apps, Net Banking and Green Remit Cards, in addition to providing guidance on how to use these channels safely and in a secure manner.
JAM
JAM – Jan Dhan, Aadhar and Mobile
JAM is an abbreviation used for Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and Mobile number. The government is pinning its hopes on these three modes of identification to deliver direct benefits to India’s poor. The use of JAM gained momentum after it was mentioned in the Union Budget of 2015-15 delivered by Union Finance Minister on 28 February 2015.
PSF
PSF – Price Stabilization Fund
Price Stabilization Fund (PSF) is the fund that was launched by the Union Govt. during March 2015 with an objective of keeping prices of perishable farm commodities under control through suitable market interventions. It will be used to advance interest free loans to state governments and central agencies to support their working capital and other expenses on “procurement and distribution” interventions for such commodities. It has initially been proposed for onion and potato. The fund has been set up as a follow-up of a budget announcement made by finance minister Arun Jaitley on 28 February 2015.
POTUS
POTUS – President of the United States
POTUS stands for President of The United States. This term has been used for decades now to denote the U.S. President. The use of the term POTUS was probably started by the security team of the President to call him in short. The term was, however, used by the Indian media in a wide-spread manner for the first time on the occasion of President Barack Obama’s historic visit to India from 25 to 27 January 2015. One reason POTUS was used so extensively this time was that in the times of prevalence of social media and Internet use of slang words and acronyms have gained huge popularity.
Ind AS
Ind AS – Indian Accounting Standards
Ind AS is the converged Indian version of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) that will come into effect for the first time in 2016-17. The Central Government will notify adoption of the proposed Indian Accounting Standards (Ind AS) in March 2015. By pushing Ind AS into Indian corporate balance sheets, India will join the growing band of nations in terms aligning accounting standards for cross-border acceptability and facilitation of two-way capital flow. Adoption of Ind AS was proposed by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech in July 2014. According to the roll-out roadmap, stock exchange listed companies with net worth of over Rs. 500 crore are obligated to follow Ind AS in the first year. In the second year, the Ind AS will be applicable to all listed companies and unlisted companies having net worth of over Rs. 500 crore. The third year will see unlisted companies having net worth of over Rs. 250 crore will have to follow the new accounting standards.
AVAM
AVAM – AAP Volunteer Action Manch
AVAM is the name of the break-away volunteer group of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that came to news during February 2015 after it claimed that AAP have received cheques from these dubious companies in lieu of cash and tried to convert black money into white money. Karan Singh and Gopal Goel of AVAM alleged that four donations worth Rs 50 lakh each were remitted to the account of AAP from four different “dubious companies”. However, these charges were categorically rejected by AAP and the party demanded an SIT probe into matter.
NERPAP
NERPAP – National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme
NERPAP is the name of the programme launched by the Election Commission of India (ECI) from 3 March 2015 with the prime objective of bringing a totally error free and authenticated electoral roll. During the programme, EPIC data of electors will be linked with Aadhar data of UIDAI for the purpose of authentication. NERPAP will focus on improving image quality of electors along with sorting issues like corrections of errors etc. Electors have been provided the facility to feed their respective Aadhar number through sms, email, mobile application and National Voters Service Portal (NVSP) using web services through election commission website. The programme will end on 15 August 2015. According to operational details of the fund, the states will set up a “revolving fund” for adequate market interventions. The Centre and state will contribute equally (50:50) for the revolving fund. The ratio of Centre-state contribution to the state level corpus in respect of north-east states will be 75:25. Apart from this an eight-member price stabilization fund management committee has been set up under the chairmanship of additional secretary in agriculture ministry to manage the fund at the Centre and monitor revolving funds in each state.
IRNSS
IRNSS – Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System
IRNSS is an independent regional navigation satellite system designed to provide position information in the Indian region and 1500 km around the Indian mainland. ISRO has proposed to place 7 satellites under the IRNSS series and on 28 March 2015 the fourth satellite of this series – the IRNSS-1D, was successfully launched the IRNSS
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