02-11-22 Daily-Odisha-OPSC Current Affairs

The Odisha government has decided to include members of thetransgender communityin a social welfare scheme which provides amonthly pensionto the needy.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has approved a proposal to cover the members of the community underthe Madhu Babu Pension Yojana(MBPY) which aims at providing financial assistance to the destitute elderly, differently-abled persons and widows, he said.

Around 5,000 transgenders will get a monthly pension in between Rs 500 and Rs 900 depending on their age, Social Security and Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (SSEPD) minister Ashok Panda said.

The government’s decision was taken in view of the promises made in the ruling BJD’s manifesto for the 2019 Assemble polls, the minister said.

The PMAY-U Award for Implementation and Innovation was instituted under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban, by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in 2019.

The PMAY-U was launched in 2015 to address the housing shortage in Indias urban areas.

There are 3 broad categories of these Awards:

State Awards, Municipal Corporations, Municipal Councils and Nagar Panchayats Awards

Special Category Awards

Beneficiary Awards

The Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education today released the Performance Grading Index (PGI) for States/UTs for 2020-21, a unique index for evidence based comprehensive analysis of school education system across State/UTs.

The Indian Education System is one of the largest in the world with about 14.9 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers, and nearly 26.5 crore students from varied socio-economic backgrounds. DoSE&L devised PGI for States/UTs to provide insights and data driven mechanism on the performance and achievements of on the success of school education across all States/UTs. The prime objective of PGI is to promote evidence-based policy making and highlight course correction to ensure quality education for all. So far, DoSE&L has released PGI report for the year 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20. The present report is for the year 2020-21.

The PGI structure comprises of 1000 points across 70 indicators grouped into 2 categories viz., Outcomes, Governance Management (GM). These categories are further divided into 5 domains, viz., Learning Outcomes (LO), Access (A), & Facilities (IF), Equity (E) & Governance Process (GP).

SAFAL (Simplified Application for Agricultural Loans) is Indias first online Agricultural credit facilitation portal. This common credit portal eases access to over 300 term loan products provided for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs. These term loan products will be provided by more than 40 partner banks.

The portal acts as a one-stop solution for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs to access loans offered by public and , Regional Rural Banks, state Cooperative banks and small finance banks.