Civil Service Bytes

Palwal-Manesar stretch of KMP expressway opened – NATIONAL – The Hindu In News:  Long-awaited Palwal-Manesar stretch of the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway inaugurated (April 06, 2016) General Studies  – PRELIMS – NH/Roads Maps The pace of building highways has picked up to 20 kms a day, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said as he inaugurated the Palwal-Manesar stretch of the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway. “Highways construction pace has now reached 20 kms a day with a target to reach 30 kms a day shortly. The focus is to bring in policies aimed at improving the condition of villages, poor people, farmers and labourers. A strong infrastructure plays a major role in fostering development. Now, the National Highway-2 (Delhi—Agra) is connected with NH-8 (Delhi-Jaipur), thus allowing vehicles going to Rajasthan and beyond a passage without entering Delhi. NH-1 and NH-2 are collectively called as the  Grand Trunk Road NH-7 is...

The utopian ideal of smart cities anchored by futuristic technologies such as robots and flying cars has been replaced by the idea that technology should be used to enrich society and the lives of people in ways that are practical and relatable. Global engineering, consulting and construction services firm Black and Veatch’s  2016 Strategic Directions: Smart City/Smart Utility Report , released this month, underscores the growing popularity of data analytics in which hardware and software enable important changes. A hallmark of smart systems is the union of data and action. Information gathered by sensors and smart devices is sped across high-speed networks and crunched by sophisticated software, it notes. The result is information that spurs cities, utilities and customers to knowledgeably take action. Fortunately, technology advances are making it easier for governments, municipalities and utilities to engage with their constituents and stakeholders on their terms. Not only c...

With the announcement of 20 names to be developed as smart cities, the process of giving a facelift to crumbing urban infrastructure in certain pockets is set to begin yet again. The Centre proposes to give Rs 200 crore to each of the selected cities in the first year and Rs 100 crore in subsequent years. Each city will have a special purpose vehicle in place to implement the scheme. Even as the work is about to begin to develop smart cities, it is high time we looked at how similar projects fared in the past. A review of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) by two Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad scholars show the implementation was slow, resulting in several instances of time and cost overruns. "It seems like the small and simple projects get done, whereas the complex projects are not performing as expected in terms of time and cost efficiency," write Vidhee Kiran Avashia and Amit Garg in a recently published report. One of the hand...

A smart city is not a destination, but a journey of several smart steps which will help change the way we live: There are five essential components to the success of this mission:  visionary leadership; global open standards; public private partnership; smart regulation (concerted efforts to identify regulations which do not lend themselves to a smart city and proactively address them—like stamping of boarding passes and hand baggage tags at airport security); and establishing new ecosystems to deliver these projects. While we have witnessed visionary leadership at the top, percolating that vision down to the last urban local body continues to be an area of concern. In the first stage of the competition, the process of citizen consultation was employed very well by most local governments. This is a healthy sign for participative governance.  The mission will be a true success when it becomes more of a demand-driven, citizen-led phenomenon. And now is the time fo...

Farakka Barrage Project: Nod to land transfer for new navigation lock  The Union Cabinet  approved the transfer of 14.86 hectares of land from Farakka Barrage Project  under the Ministry of Water Resources to  Inland Waterways Authority of India. The cost of the land in question is Rs 2.35 crore and the Inland Waterways Authority of India will bear this cost. Construction of the navigational lock is a subproject of  Jal Marg Vikas Project. The works shall be planned/ executed in such a manner that the existing arrangements about sharing of Ganga water at Farakka, as per  Ganga Water Treaty-1996   between India and Bangladesh, are not affected . Why Construction of the navigational lock? With the existing lock unable to efficiently handle the number of vessels passing through it, considerable time is taken for vessels to pass the lock. Therefore, a need was felt for construction of an additional lock to facilitate easy passage of ves...

Foreign funds plan share in India’s infrastructure corpus: Sovereign and pension funds from Russia, Singapore, the U.K. and the UAE are among those to express interest in the Rs. 40,000-crore National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. The government will invest Rs. 20,000 crore in the Fund that will build greenfield and brownfield projects and revive stalled projects. The remaining Rs. 20,000 crore is expected to come from private investors. The government’s share in the corpus will not exceed 49 per cent. The Governing Council of the Fund has decided to complete by January-end the selection process of the Chief Executive of the investment management company responsible for taking investment decisions of its corpus, Mr. Jaitley said. Review in March Mr. Jaitley, who is the chairman of the Council, said it will meet again in March to review the progress in the participation of the sovereign funds that are willing to invest. The Cou...