World’s Largest Solar Energy Project (5GW!) Planned for Gujarat, India

Now this is a world record worth talking about! Although still very much at the planning stage, The Business Standard is reporting that the Clinton Foundation is investigating developing what would be by far the world’s largest solar energy project in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

Over Five Times the Size of the Current Largest Solar Project
The project would be an ‘integrated Solar City’ with a capacity of 5 gigawatts. Yes, 5 gigawatts.

The facility is expected to cost Rs 200-billion (approximately $475-million) and will produce all raw materials and manufacture all panels on site. Hence ‘integrated Solar City’. This is expected to reduce costs so that the power produced at the site will cost about Rs 4 ($0.10) per (unspecified) unit. It has not been disclosed whether the project would employ solar photovoltaic or solar thermal technology.

The government of Gujarat is considering a Kutch or Banaskanta location—in the westernmost part of the state near the border with Pakistan for those people for whom Indian geography isn’t a strong point—for the project.

Project Would Be Significantly Larger Than Fossil Fuel Power Plants
At about five times the capacity of a typical coal or nuclear plant, this project would certainly a big step in the right direction towards making solar power a greater part of India's power mix. Recently prime minister Manmohan Singh announced that solar power would be a key part of his plan to deal with climate change.

Currently, the largest solar energy project in the world is a solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert being developed by BrightSource, with an eventual capacity of up to 900 megawatts.

via :: The Business Standard

Gujarat has special courts for bounced cheques

The state will have eight special courts for dealing with cases of bounced cheques. Cases of bounced cheques are increasing and there are more than 1.25 lakh cases pending in various courts.

The courts would be inaugurated on Saturday. They would work in the old collector office in Gheekanta area. Eight judges have been appointed for the courts. Such cases are dealt with 138 of negotiable instrument act and there is a provision of penalty and imprisonment.

E-governance in Gujarat has reduced corruption : IIMA

Computerization in various government departments have proved beneficial to the citizens. The direct cost savings averaged Rs.60-110 and it has also helped reduce corruption to some extent.

These are the findings of a study on‘Impact Assessment of e-Government projects’ by Prof. Subhash Bhatnagar of IIM Ahmedabad. The report was released on Wednesday at a two day workshop jointly organized by the IIMA and Department of Information Technology, Government of India. The primary objectives of the workshop is to share the findings and learning from the impact assessment study, and to identify a new set of mature e-governance projects that could be assessed in the next phase.

Three state-level e-government projects – vehicle registration, property registration and land records across twelve states, and three national-level projects implemented by the Income Tax department, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Regional Passport Offices were assessed. Large samples of citizens and businesses using the manual and computerized delivery of these services were surveyed by eleven established market research agencies to measure the impact. The survey was done under the supervision of IIMA.

Assessment results indicated an abysmal state of delivery of services in the existing manual system in all the three types of projects. The study revealed that users need to make 3-4 trips to government offices on an average (up to 8 trips in some cases), wait for two hours or more (up to 6 hours in some cases) in each trip and indicates corruption practices (20 to 50% of all transactions) to get services. Even in a simple service such as issue of a copy of land record, the elapsed time (submission of application to receipt of document) averaged 5 days. For property registration and drivers license, the average time (over 12 states) was 32 and 23 days respectively.

However, basic computerization has helped a lot. For instance, in all three services, the number of trips to offices reduced by 1 to 2 after computerization whereas waiting time has been reduced by 20 to 40%. Direct cost savings to citizens averaged rupees 60-110 across all states. Although the outcome in reducing corruption is mixed, e-government seems to have the potential for significant reduction in corruption. It has been observed that corruption has either been eliminated or significantly reduced in five out of the ten states after land record computerization whereas it has become very marginal in property registration and transport services.

The study reveals a great deal of difference in the performance of the best and the worst state in the three computerized applications. Based on an overall rating Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu rank high in all three projects.

Among the three national-level projects, Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA21) appears to have had the most positive impact on the users on key dimensions covered in this study. The passport project has had virtually no impact. Results of the Income Tax survey indicate that whereas corporate users have benefited on some aspects, individual filers have not benefited significantly. The varying degree of impact can be explained by the difference in the extent of computerization and process reform done in each of the projects.

R Chandrashekhar, Special Secretary, Department of IT, Government of India inaugurated the workshop. Prof. Samir Barua, Director IIMA said that e-governance is clearly the way forward to improve governance in all kinds of organizations.

NASSCOM award for Gujarat VAT e-governance project

The Gujarat government has got NASSCOM award for best e-governance in Value Added Tax(VAT) system for 2008. Under this system the government has introduced e-filing of returns, e-payment, e-registration and e-refund besides other facilities.

The award has been given for “ Best IT adoption through e-governance”. The state had earlier received two national level awards for the above project.

Godrej Ahmedabad township selected for climate programme

odrej group's proposed 270-acre Ahmedabad township Godrej Garden City has been selected by Clinton Climate Initiative's Climate Positive Development Programme (CPDP) for clean and green urban development. It is one of the 16 founding projects being taken up globally under the programme. Climate Positive real estate developments will strive to reduce the amount of on-site CO2 emissions to below zero.

The 16 projects, which aim at providing one million people living and working opportunities in climate positive communities, include projects in Ahmedabad and Jaipur in India, Melbourne, Palhoca in Brazil, Toronto and Victoria in Canada, outside Panama City, Pretoria and Johannesburg in South Africa, Seoul, Stockholm, London, as well as San Francisco and Destiny (Florida) in the US.

CPDP, launched by former US president Bill Clinton on May 19, 2009 in Korea, will support development of large-scale urban projects that demonstrate cities can grow in ways that are climate positive'.

"Climate Positive real estate developments will strive to reduce amount of on-site CO2 emissions to below zero. Along with other founding projects, Godrej Garden City will demonstrate Climate Positive strategies, setting a compelling environmental and economic example for cities to follow," a release said.

To reduce net greenhouse gas emissions of their Climate Positive Development projects to below zero, property developers and local governments will work in partnership on specific areas of activity.

This includes implementing economically viable innovations in buildings, the generation of clean energy, waste management, water management, and transportation and outdoor lighting systems.

"Godrej Properties looks forward to working towards achieving the goal of a climate positive development in our upcoming Ahmedabad township," said Godrej Properties executive director Pirojsha Godrej.

According to estimates, while 2008 saw half the world's population or nearly 3.2 billion people living in cities, the number is expected to grow to 70 per cent by 2050. Cities also occupy just 2 per cent of the world's landmass, yet are responsible for more than two-thirds of global energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. How cities change and grow is therefore a critical component to tackling the climate crisis, the release added.

Gujarat CM office gets ISO 9001 first in the country

Office of the Gujarat Chief Minister has got ISO certification. A certificate of ISO: 9001 was presented to the CM Narendra Modi in the inaugural session of the Gujarat Global Investors Summit 2009 at the Science City here on Monday.

Gujarat Chief Minister’s Office is the first in the country to get ISO-9001 certificate.

Ahmedabad, the biggest city of Gujarat, tops in the use of internet among mini metros in India

Ahmedabad, the biggest city of Gujarat, tops in the use of internet among mini metros in the country. Kids here beat kids in the areas known as IT hubs in the country. This has emerged as a major finding in a TCS survey in four metros and eight mini metros in India engaging 14,000 students.

However, the trend of use shows that much of this is used for surfing information about films and celebrity gossip. The internet penetration is 63 percent in Ahmedabad homes whiuch is quite impressive, the study says.

Gujarat Food and Drug Laboratory first to get NABL

State Government’s Food and Drug Laboratory in Vadodara is the first Food and Drug Laboratory in the country to get accreditation of National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories.

The state government had allotted Rs.4 crore during the last two years for providing latest equipments in the laboratory. A quality policy and quality manual were prepared and training was given to the scientists.

With this the government has started procedure for getting NABL accreditation for Bhuj and Rajkot laboratories. For Bhuj a provision of Rs.24 lakh and for Rajkot Rs.55 lakh has been made.