New government advertisement norms
A Supreme Court-appointed panel headed by eminent legal expert N.R. Madhava Menon has released a set of guidelines to prevent Funds misuse.
The panel said the issue of multiple advertisements by different departments and public sector undertakings should be avoided in commemorative advertisement and only one advertisement must be issued. As far as possible during the period prior to elections, only those advertisements required by law such as public health and safety advisories or job and contract advertisements alone should be released by the government. The government should appoint an Ombudsman to receive complaints of violations of guidelines and recommend action in accordance with the guidelines.
The guidelines include:
- Government advertisement must not mention the party in government by name.
- Government advertisement must not directly attack the views or actions of the Opposition.
- It must not include party political symbol or logo or flag.
- It must not aim to influence public support for a political party or candidate for election.
- It should not refer or link to the websites of political parties or politicians.
The panel also came to the conclusion that the existing Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) guidelines did not govern the issues.
The panel’s guidelines are intended to prevent misuse of public funds on advertisements to gain political mileage as distinct from legitimate government messaging and would apply to all institutions of government; public sector undertakings; and local bodies and other autonomous bodies or organisations established under a statute.
The report makes it clear that the objects of these guidelines are to prevent arbitrary use of public funds for advertising by public authorities to project particular personalities, parties or governments without any attendant public interest.
Sources: The Hindu.
Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana
In order to attain National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) goal of providing access to electricity to all rural households and electrification of all villages, Government of India, in April, 2005 conceived “Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana” (RGGVY) to electrify all un-electrified villages / habitations and to provide access to electricity to all rural households in un-electrified and electrified villages in the entire country.
The scheme covers electrification of all the villages in the country except the villages under the programme of Ministry of Non-conventional Sources (MNES) for providing electricity from non-conventional energy sources under their remote village electrification programme. With the launch of this scheme the existing “Accelerated Electrification of One lakh Villages and One Crore Households” and the Minimum Needs Programme for rural electrification got merged with RGGVY.
The scheme has been launched to fulfil the commitment of the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) of completing the household electrification in next 5 years and modernizing the rural electricity infrastructure.
The scheme is being implemented through the Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) which has been designated as Nodal Agency by Ministry of Power.
The scheme provides for free of cost connection to all rural households living below poverty line. The programme aims at a qualitative transformation of the rural electricity infrastructure. It envisages that there will not be any discrimination between urban and rural areas in respect of hours of supply. 24 hours supply of good quality power would also enable dispersal of small industries, khadi and village industries in the rural areas. It will also facilitate delivery of modern health care, education and application of information technologies. This is aimed at accelerated rural development, employment generation and poverty alleviation.
SALIENT FEATURES
The scheme has the following important features:
- Ninety per cent capital subsidy is provided towards overall cost of the projects under the scheme. 10% of the project cost is contributed by States through own resources / loan from financial institutions.
- Prior commitment of the States has been obtained before sanction of projects under the scheme for:
- Guarantee by State Government for a minimum daily supply of 6- 8 hours.
- Free of cost service connection to all families Below Poverty Lines.
Sources: The Hindu, http://rggvy.gov.in/.
Big Data
Big data is an all-encompassing term for any collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using traditional data processing applications. Big data usually includes data sets with sizes beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, curate, manage, and process data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data “size” is a constantly moving target.
Advertising and marketing are a major source of revenue for many companies and Big Data is quickly becoming one of the core priorities for advertisers and marketers. Big Data is seen by marketers as a tool for creating targeted and effective advertising.
Big Data can drive an integrated marketing and business strategy like nothing else. According to a recent IBM study, high-performing Chief Marketing Officers are integrating internal and external data to garner deep insights which, in turn, provide them with a much deeper understanding of their customers.
What is considered “big data” varies depending on the capabilities of the organization managing the set, and on the capabilities of the applications that are traditionally used to process and analyze the data set in its domain. Big data requires exceptional technologies to efficiently process large quantities of data within tolerable elapsed times.
Big Data and analytics technologies help marketers overlay offline transaction data with all of these other online data types – including data from various third-party sources – to gain insights and improve Returns On Investment. With the right interpretation of data, advertisers can understand their customers as individuals, know each customer in context and co-create authentic brand experiences.
A McKinsey study last year stated that companies using Big Data and data analytics effectively show productivity rates and profitability that are 5-6 per cent higher than competitors.
With Big Data technologies, advertisers can:
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Conduct real time analysis of customer behaviour to produce tailored experiences and targeted promotions
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Measure the effectiveness of online advertising to fine-tune campaigns while they are in progress
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Adopt advanced content analytics solutions to mine social media posts and call centre logs in order to assess customer sentiment and avoid churn
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Analyse data continuously streaming in from to increase service uptime, facilitate better planning
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Implement predictive analytics solutions to anticipate future customer behaviour.
The Big Data has been changing few (so called) market rules. First, it has brought the customer back into focus, whether in terms of what they think of products or how they react to marketing. Second, it seems to have queered the pitch for big marketers. The spread of marketing automation systems and database applications has taken all the customer data out of the technology departments and into marketing cubicles.
One can also say the arrival of such complex data sets has changed the role of the marketer from being largely creative to being slightly more technical, and that at a macro level, small businesses and their larger counterparts can finally compete on a level playing field.
Sources: http://www.business-standard.com/, Wiki.
The Electricity Act, 2003
It is an Act of the Parliament of India which covers major issues involving generation, distribution, transmission and trading in power.
It is an Act enacted to consolidate the laws relating to generation, transmission, distribution, trading and use of electricity industry, promoting competition therein, protecting interest of consumers and supply of electricity to all areas, rationalization of electricity traffic, ensuring transparent policies regarding subsidies, promotion of efficient and environmentally benign policies constitution central electricity authority, regulatory commissions and establishment of appellate tribunal and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
Before Electricity Act, 2003, the Indian electricity sector was guided by The Indian Electricity Act, 1910 and The Electricity (Supply) Act, 1948. The generation, distribution and transmission were carried out mainly by the State Electricity Boards in various States. Due to politico-economic situation, the cross-subsidies reached at an unsustainable level. For the purpose of distancing state governments form tariff determination, The Electricity Regulatory Commissions Act was enacted in 1998. So as to reform electricity sector further by participation of private sector and to bring in competition, Electricity Act was enacted in 2003.
The Act delicenses power generation completely (except for hydro-power projects over a certain size).As per the Act, 10 per cent of the power supplied by suppliers and distributors to the consumers has to be generated using renewable and non-conventional sources of energy so that the energy is reliable.
The Act delicenses distribution in rural areas and brings in a licensing regime for distribution in urban areas. However, as per the Act, only 16 states in India have notified what constitutes as rural areas and therefore the rural distribution is yet to be freed up in nearly one third of the country.
The main features of the Act are as follows:
- Generation has been delicensed and captive generation freely permitted, i.e. any generating company may establish, operate and maintain a generating station without obtaining a licence under this Act with the only exception that it should comply with the technical standards relating to connectivity with the grid.
- No person shall
- Generation has been delicensed and captive generation freely permitted, i.e. any generating company may establish, operate and maintain a generating station without obtaining a licence under this Act with the only exception that it should comply with the technical standards relating to connectivity with the grid.
- transmit electricity; or
- distribute electricity; or
- undertake trading in electricity,
Unless he is authorised to do so by a licence issued, exceptions are informed by authorised commissions through notifications.
- Transmission utility at the central and state level to be a government company with responsibility of planned and coordinated development of transmission network.
- Open access in transmission with provision for surcharge for taking care of current level of cross-subsidy, with the surcharge being gradually phased out.
- The state governments are required to unbundle State Electricity Boards. However they may continue with them as distribution licensees and state transmission utilities.
- Setting up State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) has been made mandatory.
- An appellate tribunal to hear appeals against the decision of (CERC’s) and SERC’s.
- Thrust to complete rural electrification and provide for management of rural distribution by panchayat, cooperative societies, NGOs, franchisees etc.
- Central government to prepare National Electricity Policy and Tariff Policy.
- Central Electricity Authority (CEA) to prepare National Electricity Plan.
For further reference: http://www.gercin.org/index.php?option=com_chapter2&view=category&id=53&Itemid=95&lang=en.
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p style=”text-align: right”>Sources: http://www.business-standard.com/, Wiki, powermin.nic.in.
