From: Press Information Bureau Ministry of I&B <pib.kolkata@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 5:36 PM
Subject: Releases.........pt3
Press Information Bureau
Government of India
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Ministry of Environment and Forests
Threatened Plant Species of India
New Delhi: September 13, 2010.
India is known for its rich biological diversity .The country has already documented over 91,000 species of animals and 46,000 species of plants in its ten bio-geographic regions. Nearly 65,000 native plants are still used prominently in indigenous health care systems. The country is also recognised as one of the eight Vavilovian Centres of Origin and Diversity of Crop Plants. Here we have more than 300 wild ancestors and close relatives of cultivated plants still growing and evolving under natural conditions. At the same time we loose certain species or their number dwindles for various reasons. These are threatened plants.
Threatened plant species are any species which are vulnerable to extinction in the near future. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the foremost authority on threatened species, and treats threatened species not as a single category, but as a group of three categories: vulnerable, endangered, and critically endangered, depending on the degree to which they are threatened.
Critically Endangered (Cr) is the highest risk category assigned by the IUCN for wild species. Critically endangered species means a species numbers have decreased, or will decrease by 80% within three generations. It is therefore considered to be facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.
Endangered (EN) species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters. Also it could mean that due to deforestation there may be a lack of food and/or water. It is therefore considered to be facing a very high risk of extinction in the wild.
Vulnerable (VU) species is a species which has been categorised by the IUCN as likely to become endangered unless the circumstances threatening its survival and reproduction improve. It is therefore considered to be facing a high risk of extinction in the wild.
A species becomes extinct when the last existing member of that species dies. Extinction therefore becomes a certainty when there are no surviving individuals that are able to reproduce and create a new generation. A species may become functionally extinct when only a handful of individuals survive, which are unable to reproduce due to poor health, age, sparse distribution over a large range, a lack of individuals of both sexes (in sexually reproducing species), or other reasons.
An important aspect of extinction at the present time is human attempts to preserve critically endangered species, which is reflected by the creation of the conservation status "Extinct in the Wild" (EW). Species listed under this status by IUCN are not known to have any living specimens in the wild, and are maintained only in zoos or other artificial environments. Some of these species are functionally extinct; as they are no longer part of their natural habitat and it is unlikely the species will ever be restored to the wild.
Main reasons for extinction are either natural or manmade. Through evolution, new species arise through the process of speciation and species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance although some species, called living fossils, survive virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. Extinction, though, is usually a natural phenomenon; it is estimated that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct.
Various anthropogenic activities causing extinction are manmade reasons. Only recently scientists have become alarmed at the high rates of recent extinctions due to various anthropogenic activities. Some of these anthropogenic activities include intentional or accidental introduction of invasive alien species, over exploitation and unscientific collection of Non-Timber Forest Produce (NTFPs) including medicinal plant, climate change, unsustainable tourism, habitat destruction, encroachment etc.
Extinct plants are enlisted in Red Data book of Botanical Survey of India. As per the Red Data book of Botanical Survey of India (BSI), 17 plants have been recorded as extinct. However, during recent exploration by BSI in some of the previously unexplored areas, numbers of such reported extinct species of plants have been rediscovered.
kp/dk/kol/17:25 hrs.
Press Information Bureau
Government of India
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Ministry of Finance
CAG Inaugurates 96th International Training Programme on Performance Audit
New Delhi: September 13, 2010.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, Shri Vinod Rai, inaugurated the 96th International Training Programme on 'Performance Audit', here today. The month long programme has been organized by International Centre for Information System & Audit (iCISA).
The Office of the Comptroller & Auditor General of India has been organizing International Training Programmes in different areas of auditing and accounting since 1979. Ninety five international training programmes have been organized so far and 2815 middle and senior level officers from Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) of 121 countries of Africa, Central Asia, South East Asia, Far East , Middle East ,Pacific and East European region have participated in these training programmes. Most of the trainees are funded under Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) & Special Commonwealth Assistance for Africa Programme (SCAAP) and Colombo Plan, run by the Ministry of External Affairs.
Performance audit has assumed great importance today in view of the prominence gained by governance and service delivery. Performance auditing promotes concepts and principles that enable public auditor to go beyond traditional compliance issues and enable him to examine performance of the executive in a wider context. While compliance and attest audits still are important, the focus has shifted to performance audit, which examines economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the implementation of the programmes, projects and schemes. It promotes public accountability and is an aid to good governance.
The programme will be attended by forty five participants from thirty six nations. Georgia is a new country for this programme and participation from Georgia will take our tally of participating nations to 122.
Following is the text of the Inaugural Speech of the Comptroller & Auditor General of India, Shri Vinod Rai:
"It gives me immense pleasure to be here this morning to inaugurate the 96th International Training Programme on Performance Audit, which commences today at our International Training Center - iCISA. At the outset, I welcome all the participants of this programme to India and to my office.
During the next one month you will live here as global citizens, in a group that encompasses 36 countries from all the continents. You have come from different backgrounds with different cultures, languages, political systems, cuisines, and varied work environments yet with one common link – most of you are auditors working with the Supreme Audit Institutions of your respective countries. Apart from the training programme that you will attend, you will also get this rare opportunity to share experiences about your countries and know other cultures. You will find these four weeks both challenging as well as a rewarding experience.
Performance audit is an innovation on the conventional financial and transactional audits that were being conducted by auditors worldwide. Its objective is to engage more closely with the auditee institution to establish a formal process to use audit evidence to enable the public auditor to form an opinion and thereby to communicate to the auditee the extent to which that agency has utilized its resources in an economic, efficient and effective manner. Whilst such an exercise certainly involves an element of value judgement on behalf of the auditor, a robust methodology does help to provide a fairly objective framework for use of this judgement. It is this methodology to which you will be exposed in the course of your training programme.
You will appreciate that mere audit of expenditure and thereby ascertaining the compliance with rules and regulations alone though beneficial to the stakeholder does not help upgrade governance at large. If the external public auditor has to be part of the development process and partner the administration in a task of improving delivery channels ensuring better standards of governance and thereby assuring the public at large of a loophole free procedure has to provide recommendations towards more effective and efficient utilization of the resources available with Government. Administrations worldwide are engaged in the task of improving through innovations and introduction of newer management practices. It is the responsibility of audit also to keep pace with the changes and keep honing its skill-sets with that of the management.
Another recent phenomenon witnessed globally is that governments, world over, are accountable to their stakeholders more than ever before and are increasingly being called upon to demonstrate results. Stakeholders are no longer satisfied with ensuring compliance with rules and the regularity of expenditure; they are now interested in actual outcomes. They want to know if value for money is being achieved from the expenditure of public funds and expect a greater accountability from public managers for the collection, spending and management of public funds. This requirement has evoked a response from Public Auditors and Government. The Government of India has established a framework for evaluating the performance of various departments based on measurable targets and performance indicators through a results framework document approach.
There was a time, not too long ago, when timely and cost efficient completion of infrastructure such as schools, hospitals etc. was taken as evidence of good performance. Now the focus has shifted to outcomes of such investments in terms of quality of learning and health of the beneficiaries.
Performance Audit is a response to these new challenges in public sector management. Performance auditing promotes concepts and principles that enable public auditors to go beyond traditional compliance issues and enable them to examine performance of the executive in a wider context. It promotes public accountability and is an aid to good governance. Accountability continues to encompass the concepts of traditional audits - the financial, compliance and propriety audits – but it is also expected to address concerns relating to equity, ethics and even environment while assessing the effectiveness of a program or activity. During this programme, you will be discussing all these concepts as well as the best practices in the field of performance audit.
I take this opportunity to highlight a few issues that you may encounter relating to performance audit. There are no straight answers or best practices, the public auditing community needs to find workable solutions appropriate for their contexts.
We all know that to measure the results of programmes and projects it is necessary to set some performance indicators for each of the objectives. However, in certain situations such indicators may not be available in the project or programme documents. Alternatively, you as the auditor may not agree with the available performance indicators. They may either not be relevant or not be capable of being measured accurately. How would you, as an auditor, react to such situations?
There is yet another issue which confronts a performance auditor. Should he or should he not question a particular government policy or suggest policy alternatives! There is a view that while such matters are essential components of programme evaluation they are excluded from the scope of performance audits. Discuss these issues with various faculty members and attempt to gain your clarity during the programme.
Another critical issue is the selection of the sample on which our findings and recommendations are based. Unless our samples are representative of the total population our recommendations will lack credibility and acceptance. You will also need to strike a balance between selecting a sample large enough to be reliable and the associated time and costs involved.
As we begin to allocate greater effort to performance audits we will feel the need for adequate domain knowledge. The question that arises is the extent to which the expertise can be built in house and the extent to which we can supplement through engagement of domain experts. These are issues we need to grapple with.
As the focus shifts to outcomes which are dependent on the quality of services delivered, we will also need to obtain feedback from the beneficiaries. In this context we must take cognizance of the work being done by other stakeholders such as civil society in the form of social audits and field research. We must partner with such organizations and share our methodologies.
Finally, to enhance the impact of our performance audits we need to communicate more effectively with the people at large. This can be done both while defining the scope of our audit as well as after completing the audit. In a recent performance audit we invited inputs from the people by inserting advertisements in newspapers. This creates awareness of the work being done by us, on the one hand, and gives us new insights in to the issues that affect the people. We have also been distributing simplified, illustrated summaries of our performance audit reports to engage the attention of readers who may not find the traditional form of our reporting interesting enough. There has been an overwhelming response to these initiatives.
I have gone through the programme schedule; I am happy to note that you will have an opportunity to interact with several senior level officers from the department. The study tour to Udaipur, Ajmer and Jaipur will give you an opportunity to see implementation of development schemes at the grassroots and the role that civil society is playing in enhancing accountability. I am also happy to note that the programme entails working in groups on case studies.
I am sure that you will enhance your skills as well as get an opportunity to share experiences about your respective SAIs and countries with your fellow participants.
I wish you a happy and fruitful stay in India and I hope you will find the training programme meaningful and interesting."
by/s-cag/10/dk/kol/17:25 hrs.
Press Information Bureau
Government of India
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Ministry of Finance
Tripartite agreement signed between Ministry Of Finance, World Bank and SIDBI for Financing Energy Efficiency Project for Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises
New Delhi: September 13, 2010.
A tripartite agreement was signed today between Ministry of Finance, World Bank and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) for financing Energy Efficiency Project for Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises. The project is proposed to be implemented through Global Environment Facility (GEF) Grant of US $ 11.3 million.
The Grant Agreement was signed by Dr. Anup K. Pujari, Joint Secretary (MI), Department of Economic Affairs on behalf of Government of India. Mr. N. K. Maini Deputy General Manager, signed the Grant Agreement on behalf of SIDBI. Mr. Roberto N. Zagha, Country Director (India) signed the Agreements on behalf of the World Bank.
The objective of the Project is to increase demand for energy efficiency investments in target micro, small and medium enterprise clusters and to build their capacity to access commercial finance
The project consists of following parts:
Part A: Capacity and Awareness Building
Part B: Increasing Energy Efficiency Investments (SIDBI)
Part C: Knowledge Management and Sharing (BEE)
Part D: Project Management
The project is expected to be completed by December 31, 2014.
dsm/by/gn-301/10/dk/kol/17:26 hrs.
Press Information Bureau
Government of India
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Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises
India Surpasses Automotive Sector Growth Target
New Delhi: September 13, 2010.
"India was projected to become the 7th largest vehicle producing country in the world by 2016; we have already achieved this milestone good 6 years ahead of the set target" – the Secretary for Ministry of Heavy Industry, Sh B S Meena informed this while speaking in New Delhi today at the Roundtable on "India – EU Cooperation in the automotive Sector.
Sh Meena added that for the period up to August 2010, the performance of the sector has been extremely good with the cumulative production of vehicles growing at 32.4% over the corresponding period last year. The passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles and two-wheeler segments have all recorded impressive growth rates of 32%, 49% and 31% respectively during this period, he elaborated. The Secretary also informed that it is estimated that the size of the Indian passenger vehicles segment in 2020 will be close to 9 million units and two-wheelers approx. 30 million units. Light vehicle production in India is expected to have the highest growth rate. The realization of these volumes would position India as one of the top 5 vehicle producing countries in the world by 2020 with the domestic consumption growing by 4-folds to Rs.5.6 Lakh crore (120 billion dollars).
Sh Meena said that it is only apt that the automotive sector in India is described as the next sun rise sector of the Indian economy. He noted that the automotive sector was amongst the first few manufacturing sectors to recover and emerge from the down turn in the wake of the global economic slowdown. "While globally the automotive sector is still to recover fully from the down turn, we in India have been recording impressive growth figures; in fact India was the second fastest growing auto market in 2009-10", the Secretary said.
However the Secretary cautioned that the most important challenge for all of us is to ensure that this growth is accompanied by strategies aimed at mitigating the adverse impact of vehicles on the environment. "This can only be achieved through greater emphasis of adopting latest production technologies and also the technologies used in the vehicles especially more advanced IC engines, greater emphasis of hybrid technology and a shift towards electric mobility", he added.
"In view of the huge potential of the Indian automobile industry and the challenges that need to be met in order for the industry to achieve these targets, I see tremendous possibilities for the European Union and its member states to partner and cooperate with India and its automotive industry", he noted.
sbs/dk/kol/17:26 hrs.
Press Information Bureau
Government of India
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Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions
Two-day RTI Convention gets Underway
Whistle Blowers' Protection bill to be Passed During Winter Session- Veerappa Moily
New Delhi: September 13, 2010.
The 5th Annual Convention on RTI got underway here today. Organized by Central Information Commission (CIC), the Convention this year has a theme "RTI: Challenges & Opportunities". Union Minister of Law & Justice, Shri Veerappa Moily inaugurated the Convention. In his address Shri Moily said that the RTI agenda of truly empowering people with information, needs to be taken forward. He said that RTI Act underlines to make the governance citizen centric and not officer-centric. The Minister said that the whistleblowers and RTI activists are instrumental in furthering the cause of transparency and need adequate protection. He asserted that the Whistleblower Bill (The Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons making the Disclosure Bill) will be passed by the Parliament in the winter session. Shri Moily said that a strong monitoring mechanism needs to be in place for ensuring the success of RTI Act. Referring to Pricewater Cooper (PwC) study, he said that still a large number of our population in the rural as well as urban areas are not aware of RTI Act, reflecting peoples alienation from governance. Shri Moily also stressed the need to put in place a mechanism by preventing the abuse of RTI Act.
In his welcome address, Chief Inforamtion Commissioner Shri Wazahat Habibullah said that the RTI Act forces the bureaucracy to share information and thereby ensuring accountability. He felt that in due course, the empowerment through RTI could become the instrumental in eradicating poverty and other deep rooted problems in our society. The large number of appeals being filed with Central Information Commission reflects that CIC has been able to withstand the test. Shri Habibullah called upon the media, Non-Government Organisations and Civil Society Organisations to actively pursue the cause of RTI so that the Government acts as a facilitator for sharing information with people. He informed that so far 65 thousand cases and appeals have been filed with CIC of which around 54 thousand have been disposed of. CIC has awarded compensations amounting to Rs.25 lakhs. He stressed that there is need to extend the reach of RTI to the rural people. Shri Habibullah felt that complete operationalisation of Section 4 of RTI Act has to be ensured and it needs to be clarified as to which authority is to enforce this Section. He further said that there is need to develop a mechanism to ensure protection of RTI activists.
Information Commissioner, Smt. Deepak Sandhi proposed a vote of thanks on the inaugural session.
The two-day convention will have five technical sessions covering major aspects of Right to Information (RTI). The various sessions will deliberate on issues such as: RTI and Public Private Partnership (PPP) Projects, Responsibility of Political Leadership in promoting RTI, RTI and Judiciary, Challenges and Opportunities in RTI – Role and Responsibility of Media/Civil Society Organizations, RTI and Unique Identification Project-Possibilities.
The present convention is being attended by representatives of Transparency International, Civil Society and media both from within the country and from SAARC countries. The deliberations are expected to produce documents of contemporary as well as long term relevance to South Asia.
On the occasion of this convention a monograph released. This monograph sets out the experiences of stakeholder from all sections in regard to the implementation of the Right to Information legislation in the last five years. The "Resonance of Information" was first of its kind brought on the occasion of National Convention on RTI in 2006 and the present monograph the second in series. The monograph documents the report and recommendations of two of the conventions of this Commission.
rs/sr/dk/kol/17:26 hrs.
Press Information Bureau
Government of India
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Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports
Dr. Gill Congratulates Sushil Kumar on Winning Gold Medal
New Delhi: September 13, 2010.
Union Sports Minister Dr. M.S. Gill has congratulated Sushil Kumar on winning the Gold Medal at the World Wrestling Championship in Moscow. In his message, Dr. Gill has said that Sushil Kumar, with this historical win in the World Wrestling Championship, has made the country proud. He has said that his achievement will inspire others also to bring laurels for the country.
Sushil Kumar is first wrestler from India to win a gold medal at the World Wrestling Champion. He got the gold medal in 66kg. freestyle category in the World Wrestling Championship in Moscow yesterday.
ncj/jl/dk/kol/17:27 hrs.
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Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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