PM Action Plan

In News

• Recently, the Centre has prepared a comprehensive 60-point action plan following the Prime Minister’s marathon meeting with secretaries of all departments and ministries.

60 Point Action Plan

• Aim: 
  • Leveraging IT and technology for governance, 
  • Improving business climate,
  • Upgrading the civil services.
• Different Areas: It includes everything – from linking birth certificates to citizenship to pushing for jobs while negotiating trade pacts, from promoting a ‘family database design’ to drafting a single environment Act that subsumes all other laws in the sector.
• Citizenship: 
  • Citizenship to be linked to the Birth Certificate and in future, available benefits will be linked to the latter. 
  • Only those having the Birth Certificate i.e, citizens of India, will be able to use the benefits.
• To Attract Business: 
  • doing away completely with certain permissions 
  • reducing the cost of starting a business in 10 sectors 
  • bring it on a par with Vietnam and Indonesia
  • automatic notification of clearances
  • single-point access to all government services
  • incentives to states for timely land acquisition and forest clearances 
  • one comprehensive Environment Management Act that subsumes various laws in the sector 
  • mentoring platform for start-ups and skilling programmes for emerging sectors
  • These are mostly directed at the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, and the Niti Aayog
• Use of new technology, data, and IT to improve governance:
  • From streamlining disbursement of scholarships to bridging the digital divide for underprivileged students by developing indigenous tablets and laptops.
  • Digitisation of land records, 
  • There are several actionable inputs for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
• Follow Best Practices: 
  • For instance, the Department of Sports has been asked to adopt the Odisha model for the promotion of sports at a national level, 
  • The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances has been asked to organise all government circulars like the Reserve Bank of India’s Master Circulars. 
  • States/ municipal bodies have undertaken many good initiatives. 
  • The National Urban Digital Mission is being developed to bring all such initiatives in one place. 
  • Further, systems like Integrated Command and Control Centre may be made available by the industry as a service so that smaller towns may also take advantage.
• Planned Eradication of Poverty: 
  • Niti Aayog is directed to target poverty eradication within five years. 
  • Further, it also asks the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to ab initio plan residential facilities for service staff engaged in construction to prevent the formation of slums. 
  • The plan also recommends using Aadhaar for “bringing together beneficiary oriented schemes of different ministries” and also adds that a ‘family database design’ has been developed by the ministry of social justice and empowerment and “maybe promoted like Aadhaar.” 
• Availability of data: 
  • The action plan also states all government data should be made accessible to all ministries.

Conclusion

• Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged lives and the economy, the government has been taking various measures to revive the situation, including steps to boost economic growth.

Source: IE