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India is regarded as the skills capital in technology and artificial intelligence (AI), Jitin Prasada, Union minister of state for electronics and information technology, told the Lok Sabha.
The most reliable AI rankings place India among the top countries in AI skill penetration, AI project development capabilities and AI policy implementation. In the Stanford AI Index 2024, India ranked first in the AI skill penetration segment.
Stanford University ranked India among the top four countries, along with the United States, China and the United Kingdom, in the global and national AI vibrancy ranking based on 42 indicators, Prasada noted. GitHub, a community of developers, has ranked India at the top with a global share of 24 per cent of all AI projects, he added.
An estimated 1.2 million households would have benefitted through the installation of solar rooftop panels under the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana in the first year of the scheme, during financial year 2024-25, said Shripad Yesso Naik, Union minister of state for new & renewable energy and power, in the Lok Sabha.
A total of 1.009 million residential households have been benefitted under the scheme through installation of rooftop solar plants as on March 10, 2025, the minister said.
The Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project plans to establish six units of 1,730 megawatts each in Jaitapur, Maharashtra, in collaboration with France, Jitendra Singh, Union minister of state for atomic energy, told the Lok Sabha.
Once completed, the project will produce 10,380 MW of continuous clean power, making it the largest power station in the country, Singh shared.
It will represent a tenth of the 100 GW nuclear power capacity targeted by 2047 as part of the Nuclear Energy Mission announced by the government, he said. This initiative aims to meet the goals of Viksit Bharat by 2047 and Net Zero by 2070, Singh added.
National Curriculum Framework (school education) 2023 has strongly recommended the inclusion of environmental education as an inter-disciplinary area of study in the school education, said Jayant Chaudhary, Union minister of state for education told the Rajya Sabha. Accordingly, he added, environmental education has been an integral component of school education, which is evident from the existing curriculum for school education.
Concepts and concerns related to environment have been infused appropriately in different subject disciplines at all stages of school education, the minister shared.
The government has noted changes in the weather cycle due to climate change, Singh told the Lok Sabha. It is documented comprehensively in the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) report titled Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region.
The Indian Ocean has been warming rapidly over the last few decades, Singh said in the Lok Sabha. An estimate based on Enhanced Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (SST) indicates that the tropical Indian Ocean is warming at a rate of 0.15°C per decade during 1951-2015, he added.
The SST trend during 1982–2019 for the Arabian Sea indicates that annual anomalous warming of around 1.5°C in the recent decade is limited to the northern part of the Arabian Sea and around 0.75°C in some parts of the southern Arabian Sea.
Owing to this rapid warming, the duration (frequency) of marine heatwaves (MHW) exhibits a rapidly increasing trend of about 20 days per decade in the northern Arabian Sea and the southeastern Arabian Sea close to the west coast of India, which is a multifold increase in MHW days (frequency) from the 1980s.
Moreover, longer heatwave days are also associated with dominant climate modes. The decaying phase of El Nino is the most influential mode contributing to more than 70-80 per cent of observed heatwave days in the Indian Ocean basin.
MoES published Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region in 2020 with a comprehensive assessment of the impact of climate change upon the Indian subcontinent, Singh informed.
Plastic litter was found to be one of the dominant pollutants in beaches, Singh said in the Lok Sabha, citing data collected by various studies conducted by National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR), an attached office of MoES.
The main source of plastic litter on the studied beaches were observed to be public-derived litter followed by non-sourced litter and fishing activity related litter, the minister said.
In 2021, plastic litter was 74 per cent of beach pollution. It then declined sharply to 40 per cent by 2022.The percentage of beach plastic litter was 43 per cent in 2023 and stayed stable in 2024, Singh informed.
A total of 730 people died due to heat / sun stroke in 2022, whereas 374 deaths were recorded due to these reasons in 2021, said Singh to the Lok Sabha.