The Ministry of Ayush launched the first batch of the Rashtriya Karmayogi Jan Seva Programme on Wednesday, aiming to build a more accountable, compassionate, and citizen-centric workforce, according to an official statement. Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary of the Ministry of Ayush, inaugurated the program, which is part of the broader Capacity Building Commission initiative designed to transform the mindset of Central Government employees toward public service.

The Rashtriya Karmayogi Jan Seva Programme emphasizes the spirit of “Seva Bhav” (service) and encourages public servants to view their roles as opportunities to bring meaningful change to people’s lives. It seeks not only to promote service but also to upskill employees, broadening their perspectives on their responsibilities.

Kotecha explained that the program aims to help participants recognise the privileges they hold and inspire them to contribute to the well-being of others through both their professional duties and personal growth. He highlighted the dual focus on service and self-improvement, urging employees to integrate these principles into their work.

Delhi Police has formed district-wise dedicated anti-eve-teasing squads (Shistachar squads) across the national capital to check incidents of harassment and ensure the safety of women in public spaces, officials said on Monday.

According to the police, they have been implementing multiple initiatives to curb crimes against women, including eve teasing, molestation, and other forms of harassment with the objective of fostering a safer public environment. Each district will form at least two squads, which will be supervised by the ACP Crime Against Women cell of the concerned district.

According to a circular by the Delhi Police Commissioner, each squad will comprise an inspector, a sub-inspector, four female officers, five male officers and one personnel from special staff from the anti-auto theft squad for technical assistance.

IDFC FIRST Bank has unveiled Ace Feature on its premium Mobile Banking App, that provides relevant insights and tools to allow investors make an informed Mutual Fund investment decision. This feature aims to empower an individual with 'do-it-yourself' investing, digitally.

The ACE Feature on the IDFC FIRST Bank app provides rich and useful details on more than 2500 Mutual Funds in India. Investors can browse through various fund categories (like Equity, Debt, Tax-Saving, Hybrid, and Index funds) and choose the right need-based fund to build a diversified portfolio.

IDFC FIRST Bank Customers can also access detailed information - like historical fund performance (1Y, 3Y & 5Y), holding patterns (by sectors, companies, and market cap), and expert ratings on each fund (Morningstar Rating).

Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), a Fortune Global 500 company, has announced the launch of the 'Emerge' cohort under the BPCL Ankur Fund to support startups in Energy Efficiency and City Gas Distribution (CGD). This reinforces BPCL's contribution towards India's transition to a greener and more efficient energy future through its commitment to fostering sustainability and innovation in the oil and gas sector.

Since its inception in 2016, BPCL through its startup initiative 'Ankur' has supported 30 startups with grants amounting to approximately Rs. 28 crores.

With the launch of the 'Emerge' cohort, BPCL through its 'BPCL Ankur Fund' aims to make investments in startups that have developed a Proof of Concept (PoC)/ prototype/ Minimum Viable Product (MVP), or fully implemented solution in the Oil & Gas sector or any other industry and are now ready to expand into Oil & Gas.

The International Day of Happiness, celebrated on March 20, is a day to promote happiness as a key factor in leading a healthy and disease-free life. Recognized by the United Nations (UN), happiness is considered a fundamental objective of human life. The UN prioritizes the importance of happiness, advocating for governments and international organizations to nurture the conditions that foster happiness, protect human rights, and incorporate well-being and environmental sustainability into policy frameworks, as outlined in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The UN stresses that governments should uphold peace and social order, ensuring efficiency in areas such as taxation, legal systems, and public service delivery to increase citizens’ overall satisfaction. In line with this goal, the UN declared March 20 as the International Day of Happiness in 2012.

Markets regulator Sebi on Wednesday partnered with DigiLocker, a government-backed digital document storage platform, to reduce unclaimed assets in the Indian securities market and enhance investor protection.

The initiative will help investors store and access information on their demat and mutual fund holdings through DigiLocker benefiting investors and their families.

Under this, DigiLocker users can now fetch and store their statement of holdings for shares and mutual fund units from their demat accounts, along with their Consolidated Account Statement (CAS), Sebi said in a circular.

This expands the existing DigiLocker services, which already include bank account statements, insurance policy certificates, and NPS account statements.

The union cabinet on Wednesday approved the incentive scheme for the promotion of low-value BHIM-UPI transactions (P2M) for the financial year 2024-25. The scheme is designed to encourage the adoption of the BHIM-UPI platform among small merchants and aligns with the government’s broader vision of transitioning towards a less-cash economy.

The initiative, with an estimated outlay of Rs 1,500 crore, will be implemented from April 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025. The focus will be on low-value UPI transactions, specifically those under Rs 2,000, conducted by small merchants.

Under the scheme, small merchants will receive an incentive of 0.15% per transaction for transactions up to Rs 2,000, while large merchants will not be eligible for this incentive. For each quarter, 80% of the admitted claim amount will be disbursed without any conditions. However, the remaining 20% will be contingent upon meeting specific performance criteria. This includes maintaining a technical decline rate of less than 0.75% and ensuring system uptime greater than 99.5%.

The Union Cabinet, on Wednesday (March 19, 2025), approved the proposal for setting up of a new Brownfield Ammonia-Urea Complex at Namrup in Assam, with an estimated total project cost of ₹10,601.40 crore. The project will have a capacity of producing 12.7 Lakh Metric Tonnes (LMT) of Urea annually and the new complex within the existing premises of Brahmaputra Valley Fertilizer Corporation Limited.

The Debt Equity ratio of the joint venture will be 70:30 and the tentative overall time schedule for commissioning of the project is 48 months. “Additionally, the Cabinet also approved the National Fertilizers Limited (NFL)’s equity participation of 18% in relaxation to the limits prescribed in Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) guidelines; and constitution of an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) to oversee the process of setting up of Namrup-IV Fertilizer Plant,” the Fertilizers Ministry said in the statement.

In an exciting scientific breakthrough, researchers have successfully turned light into a "supersolid" for the first time ever. This innovative achievement opens up new possibilities in the field of physics, where light, typically considered a form of energy, has now been transformed into a solid-state material with extraordinary properties.

The experiment, conducted by a team of scientists, has resulted in a novel phase of matter, combining the characteristics of both solids and superfluids. This "supersolid" formed by light could have wide-ranging applications, potentially revolutionising fields like quantum computing, materials science, and energy storage, researchers explained in a paper published March 5 in journal Nature.

"We can imagine the supersolid as a fluid composed of coherent quantum droplets periodically arranged in space, which are able to flow through an obstacle without undergoing perturbations, maintaining their spatial arrangement and mutual distance unchanged as happens in a crystalline solid", says Iacopo Carusotto, co-author of the study and researcher at National Institute of Optics (CNR-INO).

In a major step toward modernizing parliamentary processes, the Lok Sabha Secretariat and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop the Sansad Bhashini initiative on Tuesday. This ambitious project aims to leverage cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance multilingual support, streamline parliamentary operations, and improve access to vast archives of parliamentary debates and records, according to an official statement from the Ministry of Finance on Tuesday.

The MoU was signed in the presence of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Union Minister for MeitY, Ashwini Vaishnaw. The initiative will make it easier for Members of Parliament (MPs), researchers, and academics to access documents and data in multiple languages, reinforcing linguistic diversity and accessibility.

As part of the collaboration, the Lok Sabha Secretariat and MeitY will integrate parliamentary data with AI tools. The extensive parliamentary corpus will be used for developing AI solutions, while Bhashini, a MeitY initiative, will provide the necessary translation capabilities and technical expertise.