
Information, Education and Communication (IEC) Scheme, 2025
Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) is an essential component of India's public health and social development interventions.

Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) is an essential component of India's public health and social development interventions.

The National Crop Insurance Portal (NCIP) was developed as the digital interface for the flagship crop-insurance scheme Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare. The PMFBY was launched in 2016 to provide affordable crop-insurance cover to farmers in India, ensuring protection against natural risks (drought, flood, hailstorm, pests/diseases) from pre-sowing to post-harvest.

India and Germany are celebrating their strategic partnership, which has been over 25 years long, and recently started cooperating in defence and dual use technologies more than before. The world is getting more and more uncertain—due to conflicts, climate issues, and technological disruptions—the two countries want to increase their partnership through practical cooperation in high-tech areas supporting civilian as well as military purposes.

When India speaks of inclusive development, the Northeast often features at the center of the conversation, a region of not only picturesque beauty and rich diversity but also persistent infrastructure gaps. In 2017, recognizing that existing central schemes were not fully bridging these gaps, the Government of India launched the North East Special Infrastructure Development Scheme (NESIDS) under the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (MDONER).

Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (M-SIPS) started in July 2012 as a three-year scheme addressing India’s growing import dependency. In 2015, it underwent its first major revision, extending the program to 2020, adding 15 verticals, and simplifying approval processes to encourage faster investment. By 2017, strategic amendments further expedited procedures and extended deadlines to the end of 2018. Applications closed in December 2018, but implementation continues. In 2020, the Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors (SPECS) was launched as a successor, focusing on incentivizing component manufacturing with 25% capital expenditure support.

Indian engineers have designed a three-nanometre chip. Another team of Indian engineers is hard at work developing a two-nanometre chip, right at the frontier of chip technology. So, India is taking great strides in the area of semiconductor design and manufacture, right? Wrong.

India is emerging as a global center for its vast digital user base and government initiatives, free and open source software (FOSS) innovation. India's digital ecosystem is well deployed to use open-source technologies, with more than 96% of the 4G users accessing the Internet through open-source platforms such as Android. Recognizing this capacity, the Government of India (GOI) has actively promoted the adoption of open-source since 2015, notably through Openforge, an official platform for collaborative development of e-governance applications.