Cabinet approves UNESCO Agreement to be signed for establishing International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography (ITCOocean)
- The International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography, hosted at the ESSO-INCOIS (ESSO-Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services) campus in Hyderabad will be established as a Category-2 Centre (C2C) through an agreement to be signed with UNESCO.
- The field of operational oceanography involves systematic ocean studies aimed at supporting day-to-day operations and providing information services to various sectors of the blue economy (valued at millions of crores of rupees) viz. fishing, disaster management, shipping and ports, coastal management, environmental management, offshore industries and defense forces i.e. navy, coast guard.
Details
- ESSO-INCOIS is India’s premier institution in operational oceanography providing several services that include the ISO 9001:2008 certified Potential Fishing Zone Advisory Service, Ocean State Forecast Service and Tsunami Warning Service.
- Establishing ITCOocean with UNESCO C2C recognition, will provide an opportunity for India to emerge as a leader in the Indian Ocean, forging cooperation among South Asian and African countries.
- The Centre will cater to the worldwide increasing need to build technical and management capacity in marine and coastal sustainability issues as well as efficient management and response to marine natural hazards.
- The Centre may thus contribute to achieving UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goal-14 (SDG 14) and fulfill commitments to support Small Island Developing States, Least Developed Countries etc.
Tuitial Hydroelectric Power Project in Mizoram
- The Tuirial HEPP has been constructed as a Central Sector Project and implemented by North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO), under the administrative control of the Ministry of Power, Government of India.
- The Project is the biggest power project located in the State of Mizoram and will feed the entire energy to be generated to the home State, which will facilitate all-round development of the State and achieving Government of India’s ambitious and flagship Mission ‘24×7 Affordable Clean Power for All’.
How will this help?
- The State’s current demand of electricity is only 87 MW and this is being met by State’s mini power projects and availability of its share of power from central sector projects.
- With the additional 60 MW of electricity from the project, the State of Mizoram will now be the third power-surplus State in North East India after Sikkim and Tripura.
- Apart from attaining self-sufficiency in electric power, the project will fetch other spin-off benefits to the State of Mizoram like employment generation, navigation, water supply, pisciculture and wild life conservation, tourism etc.
Sampark, Samanvay, Samvad
- Indian Railways holds special conclave on “Sampark, Samanvay, Samvad” to discuss and deliberate “Vision for New Railway – New India 2022” Conclave aimed at designed to break silos (sampark), improve co-ordination (samanvay) and find solutions (samvad) to the critical issues facing Indian Railways
Details
- Shri Piyush Goyal motivated Railway employees to think out of the box to enable game changing reforms and bring about transformational results
- Railway Minister Emphasised on no scarcity of resources for good ideas and need to scale up good projects avoiding time lag and delay
- Topics covered included reforms to ensure highest standards of safety, punctuality and passenger comfort; improving the capacity and speed of trains; dynamic pricing including discounts in off peak seasons etc.
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