PIB Summary- 28th June, 2022 | PIB (Press Information Bureau) Summary - UPSC PDF Download

Performance Grading Index For Districts

Why in News?
The Ministry of Education has released the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) for 2019 which studied 83 indicators grouped in six categories.

What is PGI-D?

• The PGI for District (PGI-D), which comprises 83 indicators, was created to assess how well each district is performing in terms of education.
• Through an internet portal, districts enter the data.
• A district’s areas for improvement are shown by the indicator-by-indicator PGI score.
• There are 83 indications totaling 600 points in the PGI-D framework.
• They are divided into six categories: outcomes, effective classroom transactions, infrastructure facilities and students’ entitlements, school safety and child protection, digital learning, and governance process.
• These categories are outcomes, effective classroom transaction, infrastructure facilities and student’s entitlements, school safety and child protection, digital learning and governance process.

Significance

• In order to motivate districts to perform better, the PGI-D will reflect the relative performance of each district on a consistent scale.
• The state education agencies should be able to use it to discover performance gaps at the district level and make decentralised improvements.

How does the grading scale works?

• The PGI-D grades the districts into 10 grades with the highest achievable grade being ‘Daksh’, which is for districts scoring more than 90% of the total points in that category or overall.
• ‘Utkarsh’ category is for districts with score between 81-90%, followed by ‘Ati-Uttam’ (71-80%), ‘Uttam’ (61-70%), ‘Prachesta-I’ (51-60%), ‘Prachesta-II’ (41-50%) and ‘Pracheshta III’ (31-40%).
• The lowest grade in PGI-D is called ‘Akanshi-3’ which is for scores up to 10% of the total points.

Performance of the states

• Rajasthan’s Sikar is the top performer, followed by Jhunjhunu and Jaipur.
• The other States whose districts have performed best are Punjab with 14 districts in ‘Ati-uttam’ grade (scoring 71-80% on a scale of 100).
• It followed by Gujarat and Kerala with each having 13 districts in this category.
• However, there are 12 States and UTs which do not have even a single district in the ‘Ati-uttam’ and ‘Uttam’ categories and these include seven of the eight States from the North East region.

Ethanol Blending

Why in News?
Recently, India has achieved the target of 10 percent ethanol blending, 5 months ahead of schedule.

What is Ethanol fuel?

• Ethanol fuel is ethyl alcohol, the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, used as fuel.
• It is most often used as a motor fuel, mainly as a biofuel additive for gasoline.
• Ethanol is commonly made from biomass such as corn or sugarcane.
• Bioethanol is a form of renewable energy that can be produced from agricultural feedstocks.
• It can be made from very common crops such as hemp, sugarcane, potato, cassava and corn.
• There has been considerable debate about how useful bioethanol is in replacing gasoline.
• Concerns about its production and use relate to increased food prices due to the large amount of arable land required for crops, as well as the energy and pollution balance of the whole cycle of ethanol production, especially from corn.

Ethanol Blended Petrol Programme (EBP)

• Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) programme was launched in 2003- and this initiative is pursued aggressively in the last 4 to 5 years to reduce import dependence of crude oil as well as mitigate environmental pollution.
• The Ethanol Blending Programme (EBP) seeks to achieve blending of Ethanol with motor sprit with a view to reducing pollution, conserve foreign exchange and increase value addition in the sugar industry enabling them to clear cane price arrears of farmers.
• Although the Government of India decided to launch EBP programme in 2003 for supply of 5% ethanol blended Petrol, it later scaled up blending targets from 5% to 10% under the Ethanol Blending Programme (EBP).
• The Government of India has also advanced the target for 20% ethanol blending in petrol (also called E20) to 2025 from 2030.
• Currently, 8.5% of ethanol is blended with petrol in India.

Roadmap for Ethanol Blending in India by 2025

• The central government has released an expert committee report on the Roadmap for Ethanol Blending in India by 2025 that proposes a gradual rollout of ethanol-blended fuel to achieve E10 fuel supply by April 2022 and phased rollout of E20 from April 2023 to April 2025.
• The Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas (MoP&NG) had instituted an Expert Group to study the issues such as pricing of ethanol, matching pace of the automobile industry to manufacture vehicles with new engines with the supply of ethanol, pricing of such vehicles, fuel efficiency of different engines etc.

Advantages of Ethanol Blending

• Use of ethanol-blended petrol decreases emissions such as carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
• The unregulated carbonyl emissions, such as acetaldehyde emission were, however, higher with E10 and E20 compared to normal petrol. However, these emissions were relatively lower.
• Increased use of ethanol can help reduce the oil import bill. India’s net import cost stands at USD 551 billion in 2020-21. The E20 program can save the country USD 4 billion (Rs 30,000 crore) per annum.
• The oil companies procure ethanol from farmers that benefits the sugarcane farmers.
• Further, the government plans to encourage use of water-saving crops, such as maize, to produce ethanol, and production of ethanol from non-food feedstock.