India’s spending on Research and Development (R&D) activities has been far less than 1% of the GDP for years, with the private sector chipping in less than half of investments. The Companies Act requires firms with a net worth of ₹500 crore, turnover of ₹1,000 crore or net profit of ₹5 crore or more to set aside 2% of their average net profits over the last three years towards ‘approved’ CSR activities.
“There has been a huge investment in India in relation to solar power. India still has a meaningful amount of coal and we have also discussed that. And he (Modi) has a number of other initiatives of different sorts related to the Clean India (campaign) and many other aspects that will have, we believe and we hope, a strong impact from the point of view of India’s progressive performance in relation to climate action,” Guterres said in response to a question by PTI here on India’s climate action efforts.
Mother Dairy, with the help of a Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO), has collected and recycled around 1,073 tonnes of plastic waste till May 2019. This quantity includes around 183 tonnes of multi-layered packaging (MLP) and 890 tonnes of non-multi-layered packaging.
Modi will remotely inaugurate the solar park at the UN Headquarters and the ‘Gandhi Peace Garden’ during a special commemorative event on September 24 marking Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary. On the occasion, a special UN Postage on Gandhi’s 150 years will also be released.
During his tour, PM Modi is expected to perform a “Maa Narmada Poojan” and visit the Sardar Sarovar dam control room. The puja will be part of the Namami Devi Narmada Mahotsav, organised by the state government. The dam has been completely filled up for the first time after its height was raised to 138.68 metres.
The commitment to increase additional 2.5-3 billion tonnes carbon sink was made by India in the Paris Agreement in 2015 to fight climate change.
In his Independence Day speech, Modi had appealed to the nation to eliminate single-use plastic and find alternatives to plastic water bottles on a priority basis. The railways has issued directions that from October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, no single-use plastic will be used in its premises. he railways will add money to your mobile phone wallet if you use plastic bottle crushing machines installed at stations
One of the initiatives include creating a huge ‘green path’ running from Mahatma Gandhi’s birthplace at Porbandar in Gujarat to New Delhi as part of the country’s scaled up target to restore minimum 30 million hectares of degraded land – little less than 1/3rd of India’s total degraded land – in a time-bound manner.
The idea is to raise the standards of dining out, while also ensuring the food served is safe and of good quality. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has already started a pilot for rating among online players. It has also trained over 1.7 lakh food supervisors to ensure compliance, chief executive Pawan Agarwal said.
Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is gearing up to ready its infrastructure to issue Aadhaar cards to non-resident Indians (NRIs) holding Indian passports on their arrival in the country.
