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- Agriculture Ministry has suggested several measures including setting up of a system for forecasting demand, green logistics corridor for perishables, and use of e-commerce, to boost shipments of agri commodities to USD 60 billion by 2022. Other steps suggested to Commerce Ministry in this regard include strengthening of domestic regulatory authority, review of Essential Commodity Act and involving Indian missions abroad.
- Besides, measures like protecting farmers through appropriate duty instruments, and special safeguard mechanism have been suggested, a senior government official said.
- The commerce ministry has floated a draft agriculture export policy and is seeking views of all stakeholders including different ministries and departments on the same.
- In the draft, it has recommended stable trade policy regime, reforms in the APMC Act, streamlining of Mandi fee and liberalisation of land leasing norms.
- The policy seeks to increase the shipments to over USD 60 billion by 2022 from about USD 38 billion.
- The agri ministry has also suggested setting up of an administrative machinery for regular monitoring of the progress and to ensure that the goal is achieved by 2022.
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- Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman handed over two categories of indigenised multi-fuel engines for powering main battle tanks to the Vice Chief of Army Staff on 28 july
- The engines were developed at the Engine Factory Avadi, Chennai, a unit of Ordnance Factory Board under the Department of Defence Production.
- The engines have been fully indigenised for the first time under the Make-in-India Programme.
- Speaking on the occasion, the Defence Minister said that the country aims to produce all its defence hardware indigenously.
- She congratulated the EFA staff for achieving indigenization in both design and manufacture of these engines.
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- The Government has decided to set up a high level empowered committee headed by cabinet secretary P K Sinha and representation from the ministries of railways, finance, power, coal and banks having major exposure to the power sector to revive stressed thermal power projects.
- ET had on July 25 reported that the government may recommend more time for stressed power companies in the next hearing in Allahabad High Court on Aug 2 and is mulling setting up a high-level committee to address cross-sectoral issues including delayed payment of private power companies.
- An official statement released on 29july evening said the Committee would look into various issues with a view to resolve them and maximise the efficiency of investment including changes required to be made in the fuel allocation policy and regulatory framework.
- It will also look into mechanisms to facilitate sale of power, ensure timely payments, payment security mechanism, changes required in the provisioning norms/Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), Asset Restructuring Company regulations and other proposals for revival of stressed assets so as to avoid such investments becoming NPA, the statement said.
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- India Post Payments Bank is expected to go live with 650 branches and around 170 million accounts in August, following clearance from Reserve Bank of India to start operations"We are looking at launch date. From an operational, technology and market perspective, we are ready to go live," India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) MD and CEO Suresh Sethi told PTI.
- He confirmed that RBI has given approval to IPPB after testing its entire system. The final approval for the launch of IPPB was pending before the RBI. According to sources in the communications ministry the launch of IPPB is expected in August.
- When asked about the launch schedule, Sethi without specifying the timings said: "It is very much around the corner".
- IPPB was the third entity to receive payments bank permit after Airtel and Paytm. Payments banks can accept deposits up to Rs 100,000 per account from individuals and small businesses
- The new model of banking allows mobile firms, supermarket chains and others to cater to the banking requirements of individuals and small businesses. It will be set up as a differentiated bank and will confine its activities to acceptance of demand deposits, remittance services, Internet banking and other specified services.
- "We have already started testing within closed user group and it is very much running on a national basis. As we speak we are already doing it at around 250 branches," Sethi said.
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- Concentration varies with rice variety and stage in crop cycle; samples collected from North 24 Parganas district
- A recent publication by researchers at the School of Environmental Studies (SOES), Jadavpur University, reveals not only rise in arsenic contamination of paddy plants from ground water in West Bengal, but also that concentration of ‘arsenic accumulation’ depends on the variety of paddy and its stage in the crop cycle.
- The study titled ‘Arsenic accumulation in paddy plants at different phases of pre-monsoon cultivation’, published earlier this year in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Chemosphere, highlights the processes and dependencies of arsenic trans-location in rice from contaminated irrigation water.
- Samples for the study were taken from the Deganga block in the State’s North 24 Parganas district, an area that’s worst affected by ground water arsenic contamination.
- The study found that arsenic contamination in paddy was higher than in previous studies.
- The study shows that arsenic uptake in the paddy plant reduces from root to grain, and that its concentration is related to the variety of the rice cultivated. The study was carried out on two commonly consumed rice varieties Minikit and Jaya and the latter was found to be more resistant to arsenic.
- “The highest concentration was observed in the initial or vegetative state in the first 28 days. It reduced during the reproductive stage (29-56 days) and again increased in the ripening stage,” Tarit Roychowdhury, Director, SOES, and corresponding author of the publication told The Hindu.
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