• As India celebrates 75 years of its Independence, Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, the Government has stepped up efforts to engage with citizens in participatory governance and delivery of schemes and programmes.
• As a part of this last-mile delivery approach, MyGov under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is organising the Sabka Vikas Mahaquiz Series, which is part of an outreach effort to build awareness in citizens.
• The quiz aims to sensitise the participants about the various schemes and initiatives and how to avail the benefits.
• Massive participation in the quiz series will deepen government engagement at the grassroots level.
• Sabka Vikas Mahaquiz is one of the biggest citizen engagement initiatives building awareness and encouraging people to be informed citizens.
• The first quiz is the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.

• This quiz is a part of the Sabka Vikas MahaQuiz Series in which different quizzes on various themes will be launched.

• It is a pro-poor scheme intended to reduce the challenges encountered by the poor because of disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The immediate goal was to ensure that no poor or vulnerable person or household went hungry.
• Under the scheme, all National Food Security Act (NFSA) beneficiaries are entitled to 5 kgs of free food grain every month.
• This is over and above the highly subsidised food grains available to NFSA beneficiaries.
• The scheme has been successful in keeping extreme poverty low during the pandemic and has been praised in a working paper prepared by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

• Department of Fisheries, Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Government of India and the Government of Singapore organized a virtual East Asia Summit (EAS) Workshop on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing yesterday co-chaired by India and Singapore Food Agency (SFA).
• The workshop was attended by 8 EAS member countries, and 4 knowledge partners, officials of Department of Fisheries, Government of India , Fisheries officials of different States/UTs and other invitees.
• The knowledge-partners, namely, the Bay of Bengal Programme Inter-Governmental Organization (BOBPIGO), the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shared the regional efforts and the ground breaking and continuous efforts being taken to combat IUU fishing.

• It is a forum of 18 regional leaders established in 2005, for strategic dialogue and cooperation on the key political, security, and economic challenges facing the Indo-Pacific region.
• There are six priority areas of regional cooperation within the framework of the EAS.
• These are - Environment and Energy, Education, Finance, Global Health Issues and Pandemic Diseases, Natural Disaster Management, and ASEAN Connectivity.
• It comprises the ten member states of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) which are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, along with 8 other countries namely Australia, China, Japan, India, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Russia and the USA.
• The EAS calendar culminates in the annual Leaders' Summit, which is usually held alongside ASEAN Leaders' meetings in the fourth quarter of every year.
• EAS can only be chaired by an ASEAN member as it is an ASEAN-centred forum
• Brunei Darussalam is the chair for 2021.
• India is one of the founding members of the East Asia Summit.

• The fourth ‘2+2' dialogue between India's External Affairs Minister (EAM) and the Defence Minister with their American counterparts, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, took place in Washington DC.
• The 2+2 dialogue is a format of meeting of the foreign and defence ministers of India and its allies on strategic and security issues.

Indo-US 2+2 dialogue - background

• The US is India's oldest and most important 2+2 talks partner, with the first such talks taking place in 2018 in New Delhi.
• The launch of the dialogue reflected a shared commitment by the two countries to provide a positive, forward-looking vision for the India-US strategic partnership and to promote synergy in their diplomatic and security efforts.
• The second and third editions of the 2+2 dialogues were held in Washington DC and New Delhi in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

2+2 dialogues format with other nations

• India has 2+2 dialogues with four key strategic partners: the US, Australia, Japan, and Russia.
• Besides Russia, the other three countries are also India's partners in the Quad.
• The 2+2 dialogues with the US began in 2018, with Japan in 2019, with Australia and Russia in 2021.

4th Indo-US 2+2 dialogue - highlights

about CAATSA sanctions

• The US has said it has not yet made a decision on sanctions on India under its CAATSA law for India's purchase of the S-400 Triumf missile defence system from Russia.
• CAATSA is known as the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.
• It specifically targets Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
• The Act empowers the US President to impose sanctions on persons engaged in a significant transaction with the Russian defence and intelligence sectors.

India into the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF):

• An important measure announced towards enhanced cooperation was that of India joining the Bahrain-based multilateral partnership Combined Maritime Force (CMF) as an associate partner.
• CMF is a 34-nation maritime partnership based in Bahrain that undertakes counter-terrorism, counter-piracy and regional cooperation in international waters.
• CMF is not bound by a fixed political or military mandate and exists to uphold the rules-based international order by countering illicit non-state actors on the high seas.

Cooperation in outer-space and cyberspace

• The two sides discussed deepening cooperation not just in outer-space but also cyber-space.
• India and the U.S. signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Space Situational Awareness (SSA) - to further cooperation in outer-space.
• SSA refers to the knowledge of the space environment, including location and function of space objects and space weather phenomena.

Revitalising and transforming the DTTI

• India wants the Indo-US Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) to transform the buyer-seller relationship into joint manufacture of advanced weapon systems.
• The Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) was signed between India and the USA in 2012.
• It aims to promote bilateral defence trade relationship and create opportunities for co-production and co-development of defence equipment.
• Two DTTI projects identified during the dialogue were:
• Counter-unmanned aerial systems and
• An ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, targeting and reconnaissance) platform

Infrastructure Development/GSIII
National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP)

What's the NEWS

• The Central Government has completed transactions worth an estimated Rs 96,000 crore in 2021-22 under the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), surpassing the target of Rs 88,000 crore for the financial year.

Know! about Asset Monetisation

• Asset Monetisation involves creation of new sources of revenue by unlocking of value of hitherto unutilized or underutilized public assets.
• Internationally, it is recognized that public assets are a significant resource for all economies.
• A public asset can be any property owned by a public body, roads, airports, railways, stations, pipelines, mobile towers, transmission lines, etc., or even land that remains unutilised.

• Monetizing these assets, that are under the Government's control, is widely held to be a very important but inadequately explored public finance option for managing public resources.
• Many public sector assets are sub-optimally utilised and could be appropriately monetized to create greater financial leverage and value for the companies.
• Monetisation signifies ‘structured partnerships' with the private sector under certain contractual frameworks.
• Asset monetisation unlocks value from the public investment in infrastructure, and it utilises productivity in the private sector.
• Asset monetisation aims to tap the private sector investment for new infrastructure creation.

Know! about National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP)

• In India, the idea of asset monetisation was first suggested by the Vijay Kelkar committee(2012) on the roadmap for fiscal consolidation.
• The Central Government announced the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) in August, 2021.
• The project has been developed by NITI Aayog.
• Objective: To serve as a roadmap for the asset monetisation of several brownfield infrastructure assets across sectors.
• The NMP targets to raise Rs 6 lakh crore through asset monetisation of the Central Government, over a four-year period, from FY22 to FY25.
• NMP focuses on Brownfield Assets in which investments have already been made but are underutilised.

The framework for monetisation of core assets has three key imperatives:

1. Monetisation of 'Rights' not 'Ownership' - assets are handed back to the Government at the end of transaction life;
2. Brownfield de-risked assets, stable revenue streams;
3. Structured partnerships under defined contractual frameworks with strict Key-Performance Indicators (KPIs)& performance standards.

The top 5 sectors include

• Roads (27%) followed by Railways (25%), Power (15%), Oil &Gas pipelines (8%) and Telecom (6%).