PRAGYATA Guidelines on Digital Education, economic corridor projects worth about Rs 20,000 crore, Embedding principles of waste-to-wealth
1. PRAGYATA Guidelines on Digital Education
- The Minister informed that PRAGYATA guidelines have been developed from the perspective of learners, with a focus on online/blended/digital education for students who are presently at home due to lockdown.
- These guidelines on Digital/ Online Education provide a roadmap or pointers for carrying forward online education to enhance the quality of education.
- The guidelines will be relevant and useful for a diverse set of stakeholders including school heads, teachers, parents, teacher educators and students.
- The guidelines stress upon the use of alternative academic calendar of NCERT, for both, learners having access to digital devices and learners having limited or no access.
- The PRAGYATA guidelines include eight steps of online/ digital learning that is, Plan- Review- Arrange- Guide- Yak(talk)- Assign- Track- Appreciate.
- These steps guide the planning and implementation of digital education step by step with examples.
- PRAGYATA guidelines have been prepared by the Ministry of HRD to ensure the safety and academic welfare of the students.
- The online education has filled lot of gaps during the pandemic but utmost care has to be taken while using digital technologies to educate the students that these guidelines will help students, teachers, parents, heads and other stakeholders to learn online safety practices.
The guidelines outlines suggestions for administrators, school heads, teachers, parents and students on the following areas:
- Need assessment
- Concerns while planning online and digital education like duration, screen time, inclusiveness, balanced online and offline activities etc level wise
- Modalities of intervention including resource curation, level wise delivery etc.
- Physical, mental health and wellbeing during digital education
- Cyber safety and ethical practices including precautions and measures for maintaining cyber safety
- Collaboration and convergence with various initiatives
2. Inaugurates and lays foundation stones of new economic corridor projects worth about Rs 20,000 crore in Haryana
- Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and MSMEs Shri Nitin Gadkari inaugurated and laid the foundation stones of various Highway projects as part of a new economic corridor worth about Rs 20 thousand crore in Haryana.
- The projects inaugurated include the 35.45 km 4-lane Rohna/Hasangarh to Jhajjar section of NH 334B costing Rs 1183 crore, the 70 km 4-laning of Punjab-Haryana Border to Jind section of NH 71 costing Rs 857 crore, and the 85.36 km 2-lane with paved shoulders Jind-Karnal Highway on NH 709 costing Rs 200 crore.
- Foundation stones were laid for projects including the 227 km 6-lane access controlled Greenfield expressway from Ismailpur to Narnaul on NH 152D in 8 packages costing Rs 8650 crore, the 46 km 4-lane Gurugram Pataudi-Rewari section of NH 352W costing Rs 1524 crore, the 14.4 km 4-lane Rewari Byepass costing Rs 928 crore, the 30.45 km 4-lane Rewari-Ateli Mandi section of NH 11 costing Rs 1057 crore, the 40.8 km 6-lane Narnaul Byepass on NH 148B, NH 11 and Narnaul to Ateli Mandi section of NH 11 costing Rs 1380 crore, the 40.6 km 4-lane Jind-Gohana (Pkg 1, Greenfield alignment) of NH 352A costing Rs 1207 crore, the 38.23 km 4-lane Gohana-Sonipat section of NH 352A costing Rs 1502 crore, and the 40.47 km 4-lane UP-Haryana Border to Roha on NH 334B costing Rs 1509 crore.
- These projects will benefit people of Haryana in big way by providing smooth connectivity within the State, as well as to other States like Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
- The Minister also said that these important projects will decongest big cities reducing travel time.
- It will take about 2 hrs to reach Delhi Airport from Chandigarh against 4 hrs now.
- The projects will also save on time, fuels and cost, as also boost development in backward areas of the State.
- The Government is committed to progress and prosperity of the country, and Rupees two lakh crore worth of works will be completed in the first two years of this government.
- People in the State should consider adopting crops for bio fuels, which has the capacity to improve their all-round life.
- This will ensure employment opportunities within the villages, which will also stop mass migration in search of employment.
- The proposed Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, Trans Haryana Economic Corridor and the Gurugram-Rewari-Ateli-Narnaul are the highways of a new emerging India, which will bring development in all corners of Haryana.
- The Minister also called upon Haryana CM to join in the efforts for developing industrial clusters including MSMEs, smart cities and smart villages as also to develop Khadi and Village industries alongside the express way projects particularly the new Delhi-Mumbai Expressway.
- He assured the Chief Minister of all assistances in this regard.
- The Minister informed about his goal for providing 5 crore jobs through MSMEs in next 5 years and enhancing KVIC turn over manifold from present level of Rs. 88000 crores per annum.
- These projects will have positive impact on both the industry and the business in the State.
- The State’s development to its vast road network and transport facilities.
- The CM informed that 29406-kilometre-long roads were developed/improved in the State during the last five years.
- Further, budget allocations have been made for construction of ROBs/RUBs at all railway crossings to prevent accidents.
- In 2014, total NH length in Haryana was 2050 kilometre, which has now been brought up to 3237 kms.
- The NH density of 75 km per 1000 sq km is the highest among the major States of the country.
- Four major corridors are being developed in Haryana, which include two brownfield projects of Jind-Gohana-Sonipat and UP/Haryana Border-Rohna-Jhajjar.
- The other two are greenfield projects – Ambala-Kotputli 304 km and Gurugram Rewari-Narnaul-Rajasthan Border 132 km. Apart from these, several important projects have been taken up in the Delhi NCR areas around Haryana.
- These include the 1350 km Delhi-Mumbai Expressway costing about Rs one lakh crore, the 600 km Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway costing Rs 30,000 crore, the 30 km Dwarka Expressway costing over Rs 8,000 crore, the 21 km Gurugram-Sohna Road costing Rs 1630 crore, the 28 km Ambala Ring Road, and the 30 km Karnal Ring Road.
- In addition, other NH projects of 410 km are proposed, which will be awarded by next year.
- In the next 2-3 years, 1550 km long Highways and Expressways will be developed at an investment of Rs 60,000 crore. Out of this, about Rs 12,000 crore is being distributed as compensation amount to land holders in Haryana.
3. Creative science for the sustainable, green processes embedding principles of waste-to-wealth
- Scientists at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), an autonomous organization of the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India have developed a simple, low-cost, environmentally friendly, and sustainable super capacitor electrode derived from industrial waste cotton which can be used as an energy harvester storage device.
- For the first time, natural seawater is explored as an environmentally friendly, cost-effective, scalable, and alternative aqueous electrolyte, which may replace the existing aqueous-based electrolytes for the economic fabrication of supercapacitor.
- Supercapacitor is a next-generation energy storage device that has received extensive research attention owing to advantages such as high power density, long durability, and ultrafast charging characteristic as compared to conventional capacitors and lithium-ion batteries (LIB).
- Among the four main components of supercapacitor electrode, electrolyte, separator, and the current collector, the first two are the pivotal components, which directly determine the electrochemical behaviour of the supercapacitors.
- The fabrication cost of electrode materials, as well as electrolytes, should be reduced because these two components account for major portion of the device manufacturing cost.
- In search of a cost-effective material for making affordable supercapacitor devices, scientists at ARCI have converted industrial waste cotton (Trash) into highly porous carbon fibers (Treasure) by activation process and then utilised the porous carbon fibers to make high-performance supercapacitor electrodes.
- In the recent research published in Energy Technology, scientists at ARCI demonstrated the feasibility of using seawater as natural electrolyte for the fabrication of aqueous-based supercapacitor devices which shows great potential for practical implementation.
- The study found that natural seawater-based supercapacitor exhibited maximum capacitances at a current density of 1 Ag-1. In addition, seawater-based supercapacitor shows very good durability upon 10,000 charge-discharge cycles with 99 % of capacitance retention and 99 % of Coulombic efficiency (efficiency with which charge is transferred in a system facilitating an electrochemical reaction).
- The research team’s new, sustainable and green supercapacitor device shows great potential for practical application, and perhaps most importantly, the integrated solar cell with seawater-based supercapacitor as low cost, eco-friendly, efficient and self-powering device.
- The successful demonstration of the device revealed that solar-powered supercapacitors can not only store the electrical energy but also overcome the drawbacks of the intermittent nature of the solar irradiation.
- Hence, the integrated solar cell with supercapacitor can be used as an energy harvester storage device due to their long cycle life and maintenance-free power supply.
- The large-scale use of renewable energy requires creation of matching capacity for inexpensive electrical energy storage.
- This study provides a solution for fabrication of super-capacitors from such abundant materials as waste cotton and seawater.
- It is an excellent example of the creative science for the sustainable, green processes embedding principles of waste-to-wealth, said Prof Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST.
