Economy/GSIII
NITI Aayog and USAID Collaborate to Accelerate Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship in India

What's the NEWS

• Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a new partnership under the Sustainable Access to Markets and Resources for Innovative Delivery of Healthcare (SAMRIDH) initiative
• It will improve access to affordable and quality healthcare for vulnerable populations in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, and rural and tribal regions.

• In 2020, USAID, IPE Global, and stakeholders from the Indian government, academia, and the private sector developed the innovative SAMRIDH blended finance facility to combine public and philanthropic funds with commercial capital to create and rapidly scale market-based health solutions.

• This new partnership will enhance SAMRIDH's efforts to reach vulnerable populations, leveraging AIM's expertise in innovation and entrepreneurship.
• AIM and SAMRIDH will leverage philanthropic capital, and public sector resources to offset barriers for commercial investments in small and medium health enterprises to invest in and scale healthcare solutions.
• The collaboration will focus on innovations across the healthcare landscape with the common goal to mount an effective response to the ongoing third wave of COVID-19 and build health system preparedness for future infectious disease outbreaks and health emergencies.
• There lies a unique opportunity to catalyze the space of healthcare innovation and entrepreneurship using innovative financing opportunities like blended finance, that leverages philanthropic funding to reduce the risk for commercial investments.
• This approach enables increased private capital flows to fill the current financing gap in health sector and builds an enabling ecosystem for innovation adoption in health systems

• to strengthen the healthcare infrastructure
• improve diagnostic products and services
• build the capacity of healthcare workers
• tactics for communication and behavior change
• focus on mental health solutions
• to scale sustainable healthcare models
• to demonstrate innovative financing mechanisms to improve the quality of spending in the health sector.

• In ATLs, students of class 6th to 12th acquire a problem-solving attitude, develop innovative solutions leveraging technologies like 3D printers, robotics, miniaturised electronics, IOT and programming and DIY kits, with support from teachers and mentors.

• AIM is the Government of India's flagship initiative to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country.
• AIM's objective is to develop new programmes and policies for fostering innovation in different sectors of the economy, provide platform and collaboration opportunities for different stakeholders, create awareness and create an umbrella structure to oversee innovation ecosystem of the country.

• Atal Tinkering Labs-Creating problem-solving mindset across schools in India.
• Atal Incubation Centers-Fostering world class start-ups and adding a new dimension to the incubator model.
• Atal New India Challenges-Fostering product innovations and aligning them to the needs of various sectors/ministries.
• Mentor India Campaign- A national Mentor network in collaboration with public sector, corporates and institutions, to support all the initiatives of the mission.
• Atal Community Innovation Centre- To stimulate community centric innovation and ideas in the unserved /underserved regions of the country including Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
• ARISE-To stimulate innovation and research in the MSME industry.

• Indian Medicines Pharmaceutical Corporation (IMPCL), a central public sector enterprise (CPSE), working under the Ministry of AYUSH, Government of India, has announced to pay a dividend of Rs 1.65 crores to its stakeholders - Ministry of Ayush and Government of Uttarakhand.
• The dividend, in the form of a cheque, was handed over to Ayush Minister

• IMPCL is a Public Sector undertaking under the administrative control of M/o Ayush.
• It is a joint Venture Company with the Govt. of India having a share of 98.11% and the Govt. of Uttarakhand having a share of 1.89%.
• The IMPCL has paid 15% Dividend on Profit After Tax (PAT) which comes to Rs. 1.66 cr.
• The dividend proportion to Rs. 1.63 cr. to Government of India and Rs. 3 Lakhs to M/s KMVN ltd for the year 2020-21. IMPCL is a Mini Ratna company
• Certification line Company is presently manufacturing 656 Classical Ayurvedic, 332 Unani and 71 Proprietary Ayurvedic Medicines for the various diseases spectrum.
• Recently, IMPCL has been conferred WHO¬GMP/CoPP certification by DCG(I) for 18 Ayurvedic Products which gave the opportunity to explore export business.

What's the NEWS

• In a historic achievement, Jammu & Kashmir became the first Union Territory to be onboarded the National Single Window System (NSWS).
• This marks a major leap in Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) in the Union Territory.
• Lieutenant Governor launched the J&K Single Window Clearance System integrated with NSWS
• NSWS is linked with India Industrial Land Bank (IILB) which hosts 45 industrial parks of J&K. This will help Investors to discover available land parcels in J&K.

• The NSWS, a 2020 budgetary announcement of the Government of India, is a digital platform that serves as a guide for investors to identify and to apply for approvals as per their business requirements.
• The platform was soft launched in September 2021 by the Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, Textiles and Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Shri Piyush Goyal.
• NSWS will eliminate the need for investors to visit multiple platforms/offices to gather information and obtain clearances from different stakeholders.
• Twenty Ministries / Departments have been integrated on NSWS including Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare amongst others.
• Currently 142 central approvals can be applied through the NSWS portal.

• With demand for nutria-cereals rising steadily globally, the Department of Commerce expects millets exports to increase exponentially in the coming years as Indian exporters find new markets abroad.

• Currently, India is the fifth largest exporter of millets in the world, according to 2020 data, with exports continuously increasing at around 3% CAGR in the last five years ending with 2020.
• In 2020-21, India exported millets worth USD 26.97 million against USD 28.5 million in 2019-20.
• World export of Millet has increased from USD 380 million in 2019 to USD 402.7 million in 2020.
• Major exporter of millets are USA, Russian Federation, Ukraine, India, China, Netherlands, France, Poland and Argentina.
• Together, their millets exports stood at USD 221.68 million in 2020. Global exports of millets in 2020 stood at USD 466.284 million.
• The top three importers of millets from India in 2020-21 were Nepal (USD 6.09 million), UAE (USD 4.84 million) and Saudi Arabia (USD 3.84 million).
• The other seven destinations in the top-ten list of India's millet export are Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, UK, Yemen, Oman and Algeria.
• Altogether, these ten countries imported millets worth USD 22.03 million from India.
• Other countries accounted for millets imports worth of USD 5.13 million from India, taking the grand total of imports from India in 2020-21 to USD 27.43 million, according to DGCIS data.
• The top importers of millets along with their share in world import are Indonesia (8%), Belgium (7.36%), Germany (4.65), Mexico (4.1%), Italy (4.02%), United States of America (3.35%), United Kingdom (3.25%) Brazil (3.24%) and Netherlands (3.14%) in 2020.
• India is the world leader in the production of millets with share of around 41% of total world production in 2020.
• India produces around 12 million MT of millets annually, according to Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare data.
• The various kinds of millets include sorghum (Jowar), pearl millet (Bajra), finger millet (Ragi), little millet (Kutki), small millet (Samai), foxtail millet (Kangni), proso millet (Barri), barnyard millet (Jhangora), kodo millet (Kodra), two pseudo millets (buckwheat and kuttu), Ameranthus (Chulai) and other millets.
• To give impetus to the export of potential products as well as to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of nutria-cereals, APEDA has created Nutri Cereals Export Promotion Forum which also included millets exports.
• APEDA has signed an MOU with Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR) for making a strategy for promotion of millets and millet value added products.

• 'Police' and 'Public Order' are State subjects as per the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India.
• States/UTs are primarily responsible for deployment of adequate infrastructure facilities, state-of-art technology gadgets, manpower and training of police personnel to combat the cyber crime menace.
• The Central Government supplements the initiatives of the State Governments through various advisories and schemes for the capacity building of their LEAs.

• Under Digital India Programme, Ministry is implementing e-Panchayat Mission Mode Project (MMP) with the aim to transform the functioning of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs).
• Under e-Panchayat MMP, Ministry of Panchayati Raj launched eGramSwaraj, a simplified work-based accounting application to addresses various aspects of Panchayat functioning viz. planning, budgeting, accounting and online payments through eGramSwaraj-PFMS Interface for expenses incurred.
• BharatNet project is being implemented in a phased manner by Department of Telecommunications to provide broadband connectivity to all the Gram Panchayats and equivalent in the country.
• The scope of BharatNet on 30.06.2021 has been extended to all inhabited villages beyond GPs in the country.
• The targeted date for the completion of the BharatNet project to provide service-ready broadband connection to all the Gram Panchayats and traditional local bodies in the country is August 2023.

• A team of scientists has developed a new technology, platform for fluorometric detection of pathogens such as viruses by measurement of fluorescent light emitted.
• The potential of the new technology has been demonstrated for the detection of SARS-CoV-2.
• This technology platform can also be used to detect other DNA/RNA pathogens such as HIV, influenza, HCV, Zika, Ebola, bacteria, and other mutating/evolving pathogens.

• Scientists have demonstrated a noncanonical nucleic acid-based G-quadruplex (GQ) topology targeted reliable conformational polymorphism (GQ-RCP) platform to diagnose Covid-19 clinical samples.
• The present work demonstrated the first GQ-targeted diagnostic platform for SARS-CoV-2 in clinical samples, based on a novel platform GQ-RCP.
• This molecular detection platform can be integrated into field-deployable isothermal amplification assays with more reliability and sequence specificity.
• RT-q-PCR has been the gold standard for accurate detection of SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19). Among the recent innovations on nucleic acid-targeted diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2, the techniques such as RT RPA and RT-LAMP use general-purpose DNA sensing probes.
• This increases the propensity of false-positive results arising out of unbiased detection of nonspecific amplification products.
• Recognizing unique DNA secondary conformations can be a promising solution to achieve reliable readouts.
• The team developed GQ topology targeted detection of SARS-CoV-2 derived DNA obtained after reverse transcription and amplification from genomic RNA in clinical samples.
• It demonstrates a reliable strategy for fluorogenic organic molecule-based GQ-RCP platform to diagnose Covid-19 clinical samples and is the first practical demonstration of it.

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