Initiatives under Green Growth

Key Initiatives under Unleashing the potential:

Centres of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence:

• Three centers of excellence for Artificial Intelligence will be set up in top educational institutions.
• It will be set up to realize the vision of ‘make AI in India and make AI work for India’.
• Leading industry players will partner in conducting inter-disciplinary research and develop cutting-edge applications and scalable problem solutions in the areas of agriculture, health, and sustainable cities,”.

Simplification of Know Your Customer (KYC) process:

• The KYC process will be simplified by adopting a ‘risk-based’ instead of a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
• The financial sector regulators will also be encouraged to have a KYC system fully amenable to meet the needs of Digital India.

What is KYC?

• KYC is an effective way for an institution to confirm and thereby verify the authenticity of a customer.
• All financial institutions are mandated by the RBI to do the KYC process for all customers before giving them the right to carry out any financial transactions.

One-stop solution for identity and address updating:

• This will be established using DigiLocker service and Aadhaar as a foundational identity.
• Purpose: For reconciliation and updating of the identity and address of individuals maintained by various government agencies, regulators and regulated entities
• Common Business Identifier:
• What is it? A business identifier is a unique code or number for every company contained on a particular country’s company register.
• Budget 2023: For the business establishments required to have a Permanent Account Number (PAN), the PAN will be used as the common identifier for all digital systems of specified government agencies.
• Voluntary settlement scheme (Vivad se Vishwas II ):
• It will be introduced to settle contractual disputes of government and government undertakings, wherein the arbitral award is under challenge in a court.
• This will be done by offering graded settlement terms depending on the pendency level of the dispute.
• Under the scheme, a voluntary option is given to the private sector to come into the scheme or not.
•  Vivad Se Vishwas Scheme:
• It is a direct tax scheme introduced by the Government of India in 2020 for settling disputes between taxpayers and the income tax department.
• It aims to minimize tax-related litigation.
• Under this scheme, an individual taxpayer can claim a full waiver on interest and penalty on the full and final settlement of the disputed tax amount.

Result Based Financing:

• The financing of select schemes will be changed, on a pilot basis, from ‘input-based’ to ‘result-based’.

Purpose: To better allocate scarce resources for competing for development needs.

Entity DigiLocker:

• It will be set up for use by MSMEs, large businesses, and charitable trusts.
• Purpose: To store and share documents online securely, whenever needed, with various authorities, regulators, banks, and other business entities.

What is DigiLocker?

• It is a flagship initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) under the Digital India programme.
• It is a secure cloud-based platform for the storage, sharing, and verification of documents & certificates.
• It aims at the ‘Digital Empowerment’ of citizens by providing access to authentic digital documents to citizen’s digital document wallet.

Lab Grown Diamonds (LGD):

• What is it? These are diamonds that are produced using specific technology which mimics the geological processes that grow natural diamonds.
• The diamond simulants such as Moissanite, Cubic Zirconia (CZ), White Sapphire, YAG, and others are used to make them look like natural diamonds.
• Applications:
• They are used for industrial purposes, in machines and tools, and their hardness and extra strength make them ideal for use as cutters.
• Pure synthetic diamonds are used in electronics as a heat spreader for high-power laser diodes, laser arrays, and high-power transistors.
• Budget 2023: A research and development grant will be provided to one of the IITs for five years to encourage indigenous production of LGD seeds and machines and to reduce import dependency.

Q1)What is the Digital India Programme?

The Government has launched the Digital India programme with the vision of transforming India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge-based economy, by ensuring digital access, digital inclusion, digital empowerment and bridging the digital divide. The programme is centred on three key vision areas, namely digital infrastructure as a core utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens.

Source: Union Budget 2023: Here Are “Saptarshi” – The 7 Priorities Of Union Budget