Policy Update Divya Natarajan Background Quality Control Orders (QCOs) are mandatory technical regulations, issued by Central Government Line Ministries after consultation with the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), that require specified products to comply with designated Indian Standards before they…
1. Background: What Is the Digital Development Compass?
Governments across the world routinely describe themselves as pursuing 'digital transformation,' yet few possess a comparative, evidence-based way of establishing where they actually stand. The Digital Development Compass (DDC), developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), was built to close this gap. Rather than functioning as one more competitive ranking, the Compass is designed as a diagnostic: a visualisation of a country's digital indicators, drawn entirely from publicly available datasets, that allows a government to identify its own strengths and weaknesses and locate itself within a five-stage digital maturity scale.
India’s infrastructure requirements are expanding rapidly, making private investment an important complement to public spending. The National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) envisaged investments of about ₹111 lakh crore between FY2020 and FY2025, underscoring the scale of financing required. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) can help bridge this requirement by combining public oversight with private capital and expertise.
India’s ports are critical to its trade competitiveness, handling nearly 95% of the country’s trade by volume and around 70% by value. Beyond facilitating imports and exports, port efficiency affects the cost, speed and reliability of entire supply chains, influencing India’s ability to integrate into global value chains.
The Micro & Small Enterprises Cluster Development Programme (MSE-CDP) is one of the primary schemes run by the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME). The idea behind the program is simple: small businesses often struggle to grow because they cannot afford modern machinery, proper testing labs, or good infrastructure on their own. Instead of giving scattered subsidies to individual shops, this scheme brings local businesses together into enterprise clusters.
India is home to 6,138 large dams as per the National Register of Large Dams (NRLD) 2023, making it the third most dam-intensive country after China and the USA. These dams are the backbone of India's water security, irrigation (covering 35% of irrigated area), hydropower (45,000 MW capacity), and flood moderation. However, the dam infrastructure is aging at an alarming rate. Over 75% of large dams are more than 25 years old and 227 dams have already crossed 100 years of age.
In the world of information technology, digitality has seeped into battlespaces and has found its place within the world of security as well