• Responding to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s assertion that the import duty on apple had been levied at a maximum of 50% as agreed under the WTO pact, growers said the cess on the US produce was 70% since 2019.
• “If the import duty on apple from the US could be enhanced to 70%, why it can’t be done for the produce being imported from other countries, especially Iran,” said Sanyukt Kisan Manch convener Harish Chauhan.
• The apple growers have been demanding the increase of the import duty on apple to 100 per cent, especially on the cheap produce coming from Iran that’s hurting the domestic farmers a lot. “If the government wants, it can put apple in the special category status. It can then easily raise the duty,” said Lokinder Bisht, president, Progressive Growers’ Association.
• Apple growers have been constantly demanding that central and state governments raise duty on imported apples. It is imported to India from 44 countries across the world, but the ones eating into our profits the most are from Chile and Iran.
• Not just fruit growers from Himachal, but also those from Jammu & Kashmir, Uttrakhand and other apple-growing states are facing huge losses,” said Harish Chauhan, president of the Fruit, Vegetables and Flower Growers’ Association, Himachal Pradesh.
• The ₹60,000 crore apple market is the source of sustenance for around 1.75 lakh families in Himachal. The fruit is grown in seven of HP’s 12 districts with Shimla, Kullu and Kinnaur being the largest producers.

• The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has constituted a seven-member committee to prepare a national drugs database to strengthen the monitoring mechanism for quality drugs and create a uniform regulatory mechanism.
• State Drugs Controller Navneet Marwaha is enlisted as a member of the committee, which was notified by the Drugs Controller General of India on October 2.
• Marwaha said the committee would prepare a database on drugs that would include information such as their dosage form, strength, details of manufacturer, marketer, importer, etc.
• Himachal has been given representation in the committee as it houses the pharmaceutical hub of Asia in the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh (BBN) industrial belt with every third drug in the domestic market being manufactured in the BBN region.
• The state has around 650 manufacturing units with an investment of about Rs 8,000 crore. It contributes 7 to 9% in the nation’s exports and 45 per cent to the exports of the northern region. The existing database available with various states and drug control departments, manufacturers, marketers, importers will also be examined by the committee, which is supposed to submit its report within three months.

• Against the backdrop of COP27 climate change meet which opened on Sunday in Egypt, the Government announced that it will continue the Bio Energy Programme till 2025-26, indicating its commitment to continue with the measures to mitigate its carbon footprints.
• The Union Ministry of New & Renewable Energy said that a budget outlay of Rs 858 crore has been allocated for the first phase of the programme that will aid the use of huge surplus biomass, cattle dung, and industrial and urban biowaste available in the country for energy recovery.
• On November 2, the National Bioenergy Programme was notified. It will include the three Sub-schemes: Waste to Energy Programme, Biomass Programme and Biogas Programme.
• The Waste to Energy Programme (Programme on Energy from Urban, Industrial and Agricultural Wastes /Residues) will support the setting up of large Biogas, BioCNG and Power plants (excluding MSW (municipal solid waste) to power projects).
• Biomass Programme (Scheme to Support Manufacturing of Briquettes & Pellets and Promotion of Biomass (nonbagasse) based cogeneration in Industries) will support the setting up of pellets and briquettes for use in power generation and non-bagasse-based power generation projects.
• The biogas programme will also support the setting up of family and medium size Biogas in rural areas. According to a team of researchers from IIT-Delhi and Mumbai, clean energy transition via utilizing biomass resources has been projected as an important climate change mitigation strategy.
• A vital characteristic of biomass is its localized nature; therefore, bioenergy utilization should follow decentralized planning.
• Agrarian countries like India can take advantage of its large agricultural biomass waste pool to produce clean renewable energy, they said in their study.
• “Sustainable utilization of biomass resources for decentralized energy generation and climate change mitigation: A regional case study in India,” published in the journal Environmental Research.

• Giving a boost to self-reliance, Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) launched Hull Module of Submersible Platform for Acoustic Characterization and Evaluation (SPACE) facility at Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory   (NPOL) Kochi
• It is a state-of-the-art testing and evaluation facility for sonar systems developed for use by the Indian navy onboard various platforms, including ships, submarines and helicopters.
• The SPACE facility is based on the concept design and requirements projected by the NPOL and constructed by Larsen and Toubro(L&T) Shipbuilding, Chennai. This will be mainly utilized for evaluating sonar systems, allowing for quick deployment and easy recovery of scientific packages such as sensors and transducers.
• The SPACE is one-of-a-kind facility in the world. The uniqueness of this facility lies in the specially designed submersible platform, which can be lowered up to depths of 100 meters using a series of synchronously operated winches.
• The design and construction of the platform meet all the statutory needs of Indian Register of Shipping and the vessel classifying authority and strictly adhere to the inspection and registration criteria as per Kerala Inland Vessel Rules, they said.

• Rajasthan accounts for 70 per cent of the country’s stone production and more than 10 lakh people are getting employment, Chairman of RIICO (State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation) and CM’s Principal Secretary Kuldeep Ranka claimed.
• Speaking at India Stonemart-2022, the largest international exposition on the stone industry and a showcase of the world of natural dimensional stones, Ranka said, “There are abundant deposits of marble, sandstone, granite, cotstone, slate, etc. By adopting their scientific exploitation and processing, the stone industry has made a special identity in the last decades.”
• “There are 4,920 mining leases in the state. Rajasthan produces 90 percent of the marble and sandstone in the country. About 10 lakh people of the state are getting employment directly from this sector”, he claimed.
• Earlier in his inaugural speech, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said the recently-held Investment Rajasthan summit had signed a major chunk of MoUs worth Rs. 800 crore related to the stone industry.
• Elaborating on the state’s investment friendly environment, Gehlot said, “Infrastructure with mineral reserves, efficient human resources and implementation of effective policies has increased the possibilities of investment on a large scale in the state”.
• Rajasthan Investment Promotion Scheme-2022 (RIPS) has recently been launched in the sequel to the environment that the state government has created for employment and economic development by implementing NERIPS-2019.

About India Stone Mart

• India Stone Mart is being organized biennially by Centre for Development of Stones (CDOS) with FICCI as co-organiser and is supported by the Government of Rajasthan and other reputed institutions.
• Rajasthan State Industrial Development & Investment Corporation Ltd. is the Principal Sponsor of the event.
• The mart is a brainchild of Ashok Gehlot, in the year 2000 when he served his first tenure as the Chief Minister of the state. It was conceptualized for developing the domestic and overseas markets for Indian stones.

• Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal highlighted the significant growth of the India-US economic relations driven by the common interest of promoting sustainability, emerging technologies, globally resilient supply chains, and small businesses.
• He also reiterated the importance of such dialogues in leveraging this momentum. Mr Goyal was chairing the India-U.S. CEO Forum with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo through video conferencing.
• The U.S. Commerce Secretary thanked Piyush Goyal and other members for their participation and insightful identification of common focus areas that will bolster the bilateral partnership between the two nations.
• CEOs from leading Indian and US-based companies participated in the forum. This is the sixth time that the forum has been convened since its reconstitution in December 2014.
• It continues to be an effective platform for dialogue across key sectoral themes, and to identify areas for closer collaboration for mutual benefit of both economies.
• This dialogue will serve as a framework under which specific recommendations will be charted out during the sixth edition of the India-US CEO Forum to be held early next year.

• Centre has formulated an action plan to promote exports of millets. The government has planned to facilitate participation of exporters, farmers, and traders in 16 international trade expos and Buyer Seller Meets for exports and promotion of Indian millets across the globe.
• According to the action plan, Indian missions in abroad would be roped in branding and publicity of Indian millets. This include, identification of potential buyers such as departmental stores, supermarkets, and hypermarkets for organizing business-to-business meetings and direct tie-ups.
• As part of the promotion of Indian millets, Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority has planned to showcase millets and its value-added product at various global platforms.
• The United Nations has declared 2023 as the International Year of Millets. India is one of the leading producers of millets in the world with an estimated share of around 41 percent in global production.
• The country recorded 27 percent growth in millet production in 2021-22 which stood at 15.92 million metric tonnes. Country’s top five millet-producing states are Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. It is estimated that the millets market is set to grow to 12 billion US dollar by 2025 from the current 9 billion dollars.

• Union Minister for Labour and Employment Bhupender Yadav launched an online portal for ESIC Maternity benefits claim facilities for insured women in New Delhi.
• The portal was launched at the 102 birth anniversary of Dattopant Thengadi , a social reformer and the founder of  Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh , organized by the National Labour Education and Development Board.
• Speaking at the event the Minister said Dattopant Thengadi wanted to develop India and Indian workers not as followers but as leaders on the world stage.
• He said that the public needs to be made aware of all government programmes at the local level in order to benefit the most from them.
• Talking about the e-SHRAM Portal, Mr. Yadav said that as of now 29 crore people who are working in unorganized workers have been registered and the government is working to take it to 38 crores.
• The e-SHRAM portal was launched on August 26 2021 to improve the implementation efficiency of the social security services for unorganized workers.

• Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s office, Dr Jitendra Singh launched India’s first national repository for life science data, the Indian Biological Data Center’ (IBDC) at Faridabad, Haryana.
• Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, as per the BIOTECH-PRIDE guidelines of the Government of India, IBDC is mandated to archive all life science data generated from publicly-funded research in India.
• Supported by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), it has been established at Regional Centre of Biotechnology (RCB), Faridabad with a data disaster recovery site at National Informatics Centre (NIC), Bhubaneshwar.
• According to the Ministry of Science and Technology, it has a data storage capacity of about 4 petabytes and houses the ‘Brahm’ High-Performance Computing (HPC) facility.
• Dr Jitendra Singh informed that IBDC has started nucleotide data submission services via two data portals viz. The ‘Indian Nucleotide Data Archive (INDA)’ and ‘Indian Nucleotide Data Archive – Controlled Access INDA-CA’ has accumulated over 200 billion bases from 2,08,055 submissions from more than 50 research labs across India.

• India has joined the Mangrove Alliance for Climate, MAC, at the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP27) at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.
• After joining the alliance, India called for integration of mangroves conservation with the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programmes for carbon sequestering.
• Speaking at the launch of MAC, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said, India sees the tremendous potential mangroves have for mitigation of growing GHG concentration in the atmosphere.
• He said studies have shown that mangrove forests can absorb four to five times more carbon emissions than landed tropical forests.
• MAC is an intergovernmental alliance that seeks to expand and hasten the progress towards conservation and restoration of mangrove ecosystems. India is among the first five countries to join the MAC, including Australia, Japan, Spain, and Sri Lanka.
• The alliance will raise global awareness about the role of mangroves as a nature-based climate change solution. It will ensure the rehabilitation of mangrove forests on a global level.

About Mangroves:

• Mangroves are small trees and shrubs which grow along the coastlines thrive in salty water and form unique forests on the edge of land and the sea. Mangrove ecosystems are among the most productive and ecologically important ecosystems in the world.
• They provide significant climate change mitigation and adaptation co-benefits since they are capable of storing carbon up to 400 percent faster than land-based tropical rainforests.
• They protect coastal regions from rising sea levels, erosion, and storm surges and provide breeding grounds for marine biodiversity. Around 80 percent of the global fish population rely on these ecosystems for their survival.
• India contributes to nearly half of the total mangrove cover in South Asia and West Bengal, the home to Sundarbans, has the highest percentage of mangrove cover in India. Spread over India and Bangladesh the Sundarbans are also the single largest mangrove forest in the world.
• Gujarat and Andaman, and Nicobar Islands, Maharashtra, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Goa, and Kerala too have mangrove forests.