About:

• India has registered a decline in female infant mortality rate.
• In sixteen states, IMR remained higher for female babies than male but the gap had reduced since 2011. According to Sample Registration System Statistical Report 2020, Chhattisgarh had the highest gap in 2020, with a male infant mortality rate of 35 compared to female infant mortality rate of 41.

Infant Mortality

• Infant mortality is the death of an infant before his or her first birthday.
• The infant mortality rate is the number of infant deaths for every 1,000 live births.
• In addition to giving us key information about maternal and infant health, the infant mortality rate is an important marker of the overall health of a society.

Interventions for improving Infant Mortality Rate (IMR):

• Mothers’ Absolute Affection (MAA): Early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding for first six months and appropriate Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices are promoted under Mothers’ Absolute Affection (MAA).
• Social Awareness and Actions to Neutralize Pneumonia Successfully (SAANS) initiative implemented since 2019 for reduction of Childhood morbidity and mortality due to Pneumonia.
• Universal Immunization Programme (UIP)is implemented to provide vaccination to children against life threatening diseases such as Tuberculosis, Diphtheria, Pertussis, Polio, Tetanus, Hepatitis B, Measles, Rubella, Pneumonia and Meningitis caused by Haemophilus Influenzae B.
• Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakaram (RBSK):Children from 0 to 18 years of age are screened for 30 health conditions (i.e. Diseases, Deficiencies, Defects and Developmental delay) under Rashtriya Bal SwasthyaKaryakaram (RBSK) to improve child survival.

• Saudi Arabia was chosen to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games at a $500 billion futuristic megacity in the desert that planners say will feature a year-round winter sports complex.
• “The deserts and mountains of Saudi Arabia will soon be a playground for winter sports,” the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) said in a statement on the decision made during its general assembly meeting in Phnom Penh.
• The Saudi bid was “unanimously approved”, the statement said, noting that the megacity known as NEOM will be the first West Asian city to host the event.
• First announced in 2017, NEOM has consistently raised eyebrows for proposed flourishes like flying taxis and robot maids, even as architects and economists have questioned its feasibility.
• In July, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled plans for a project within NEOM known as The Line, two parallel mirror-encased skyscrapers extending over 170 kilometres of mountain and desert terrain.
• The Asian Winter Games are slated to take place in Trojena, an area of NEOM “where winter temperatures drop below zero celsius and year-round temperatures are generally 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the region”, according to the project’s website.
• Set to be completed in 2026, Trojena will include year-round skiing, a manmade freshwater lake, chalets, mansions and ultra-luxury hotels, the website says.
• The Asian Winter Games include competitions for skiing, snowboarding, ice hockey and figure skating — 47 events in all, 28 on snow and 10 on ice, the OCA said.
• Saudi Arabia has drawn criticism for alleged “sportswashing” — hosting high-profile boxing, Formula 1 and other contests to divert attention from its human rights record.
• An Egyptian official said in September that Egypt, Greece and Saudi Arabia were in talks on a proposal to jointly host the 2030 World Cup football tournament.

• Election Commission of India (ECI)in creating awareness amongst voters, Actor Pankaj Tripathi has been declared as the ‘National Icon’ of ECI.
• The actor was chosen for the honour by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC)Rajiv Kumar for keeping in view his commitment to the cause and wide appeal across the country.
• An event on the ‘Voter Awareness Program’, CEC Rajiv Kumar complimented ECI state icon, Pankaj Tripathi, for his association with ECI in creating voting awareness across citizens, and henceforth declared him as the National Icon for ECI.

• Eighty-Two-year-old French writer Annie Ernaux has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for the year 2022. The Swedish Academy has awarded the Nobel to the octogenarian french author for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory. Her literary work maintains close links with sociology.
• Last year the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Tanzanian-born British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.
• Annie Ernaux is a pioneer of autofiction, a style of writing that combines two mutually inconsistent narrative forms, namely autobiography and fiction. The events in her book, she says, belong to everyone, to history, to sociology. In her works, the past is a raw material of her writings, which is transformed by rooting it in the present.
• Ernaux says “necessity, not pleasure” takes her back to her past, which she dissects like a forensics expert examining a crime scene. Her magnum opus, Les années (The Years) has been written in the vein of a memoir and explodes with perspective and voice. The book has been written using “one” and “we” and occasionally “she” or “they”, but never “I” The Happening, recounting her experience as a university student in France in 1963, is an intense account of an illegal abortion.
• The novel was also adapted into an award winning French drama thriller film in 2021 by the same name. In Simple Passion, Ernaux touches on her sexuality through a fictionalised account of a tumultuous affair with an Eastern European businessman. She attributes her view of her life as a woman to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and acknowledges the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre.

• Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) has taken up an urgent investigation after the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an alert on four India-made cough and cold syrups used for paediatric groups.
• The investigation in the matter has been taken up by CDSCO with the State Regulatory Authorities immediately after receiving communication from WHO. It said, all required steps will be taken in the matter, as a robust National Regulatory Authority.
• WHO has been requested to share at the earliest with CDSCO, the report on establishment of causal relation to death with the medical products in question, photographs of Products.

 About Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO)

• The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO)under Directorate General of Health Services,Ministry of Health & Family Welfare,Government of India is the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) of India.
• Its headquarter is located in New Delhi.
• It has six zonal offices,four sub zonal offices,thirteen Port offices and seven laboratories spread across the country.
• The Drugs & Cosmetics Act,1940 and rules 1945 have entrusted various responsibilities to central & state regulators for regulation of drugs & cosmetics.
• It envisages uniform implementation of the provisions of the Act & Rules made there under for ensuring the safety, rights and wellbeing of the patients by regulating the drugs and cosmetics.
• CDSCO is constantly thriving upon to bring out transparency, accountability and uniformity in its services in order to ensure safety, efficacy and quality of the medical product manufactured, imported and distributed in the country.
• Under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, CDSCO is responsible for approval of Drugs, Conduct of Clinical Trials, laying down the standards for Drugs, control over the quality of imported Drugs in the country and coordination of the activities of State Drug Control Organizations by providing expert advice with a view of bring about the uniformity in the enforcement of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act.
• Further CDSCO along with state regulators, is jointly responsible for grant of licenses of certain specialized categories of critical Drugs such as blood and blood products, I. V. Fluids, Vaccine and Sera.

• World Cotton Day 2022:Cotton is grown in more than 75 countries across five continents and is traded worldwide. It is one of the most widely used plant products globally is cotton, specifically cotton fiber and cottonseed.
• To highlight the importance of this global commodity in generating jobs and maintaining economic stability in less developed countries, the United Nations General Assembly declared October 7 as World Cotton Day in 2021. The international event will be celebrated in 2022 for the third time.

World Cotton Day 2022 theme

• The World Cotton Day theme 2022 is ‘Weaving a better future for Cotton’.
• The theme of World Cotton Day looks at the sustainable farming of cotton to help in improving the lives of the cotton workers, such as smallholders, laborers as well as their families.

History

• The first World Cotton Day was proposed by the World Trade Organization on October 7, 2019, by the Cotton Four, four sub-Saharan African cotton producers Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali, collectively known as the Cotton Four (WTO).
• The Cotton-4 countries’ initiative to organize World Cotton Day was welcomed by the WTO on October 7, 2019.
• Together with the secretariats of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the International Cotton Advisory Committee, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the WTO Secretariat organized the event (UNCTAD).

• International Solar Alliance’s Fifth Assembly will be held in New Delhi from 17th to 20th October. Power and New and Renewable Energy Minister R.K Singh will preside over the Assembly.
• He unveiled the curtain raiser to the Fifth Assembly of the International Solar Alliance yesterday, October 6. He said India’s pace of Energy Transition is the fastest in the world and International Solar Alliance is absolutely essential for the planet’s goal of Energy Transition.
• The Minister said that solar energy is the cheapest source of energy. He added that solar and mini-grids are the answer to universal access of energy in the world. The Minister said, ISA is the essential vehicle to fulfill the international pledges on Energy Transition.
• The Assembly is the apex decision-making body of ISA, in which each Member country is represented. It meets annually at the ministerial level and assesses the aggregate effect of the programmes and other activities in terms of deployment of solar energy and performance among others.
• India holds the office of the President of the ISA Assembly. Ministers, missions, and delegates from 109 Member and Signatory Countries will participate in this meeting.

About International Solar Alliance:

• The ISA was conceived as a joint effort by India and France to mobilise efforts against climate change through the deployment of solar energy solutions.
• It was presented by the leaders of the two countries at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Paris in 2015.
• ISA is a coalition of solar resource rich countries lying fully or partially between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn to specifically address energy needs by harnessing solar energy.
• The Paris Declaration establishes ISA as an alliance dedicated to the promotion of solar energy among its member countries.
• ISA brings together countries with rich solar potential to aggregate global demand, thereby reducing prices through bulk purchase.
• It facilitates the deployment of existing solar technologies at scale, and promotes collaborative solar R&D and capacity building.

• Narendra Modi became the first Prime Minister to witness the historic Rath Yatra during the opening ceremony of the seven-day long International Kullu Dussehra festival.
• The idols of chief deity Lord Raghunath, Sita, Hanuman and other deities were brought to Dhalpur in a palanquin from their sanctum sanctorum in Sultanpur.
• These were then placed in a beautifully decorated wooden chariot called the Rath. Modi went to the Rath and paid obeisance to the chief deity Lord Raghunath before the Rath Yatra.
• Later, the descendants of erstwhile ruler of Rupi (Kullu) valley along with the head of family Maheshwar Singh led the Rath Yatra. The Rath was pulled by thousands of devotees from the northern end of the Dhalpur ground to the camp temple of Lord Raghunath in the middle of the ground.
• The palanquins of Gods and Goddesses with their bands accompanied Lord Raghunath in the Rath Yatra. Thousands of men, women and children in their traditional folk dresses, besides hundreds of foreign and domestic tourists, gathered to watch the spectacular event.
• The PM was served local delicacies Siddu and Patroda. He was also given metal carved idols of Lord Rama Parivaar by the Kullu Dussehra Festival Committee.
• The idols were then placed in the camp temple located in the middle of the Dhalpur ground. Traditional rituals will be carried out at the camp temple during the festivities.
• Kullu Dasehra is being celebrated since mid-seventeenth century and celebrations begin on Vijaya Dashmi, the day when the festivities end in the rest of the country.
• Deities from various parts of Kullu district are participating in the festival this year and the invitation had been sent to 332 deities.
• Unlike the past two years, this year commercial activities will be carried out in the Dhalpur ground and the cultural programmes will be held in the Kala Kendra.

• CSK HP Agriculture University (HPAU) and Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR), Hyderabad, have signed an MoU to promote scientific and academic interaction between the institutions.
• The MoU was signed by the Vice-Chancellor of HPAU, HK Chaudhary, and IIMR Director C V Rathnavati. Chaudhary said that under this MoU, work on millet research like its breeding, including germplasm exchange, crop improvement, processing and value addition, would be expedited.
• IIMR is a premier research institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

• Adani Green Energy Ltd (AGEL) has commissioned the world’s largest wind-solar power plant of 600 MW capacity in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.
• The plant has a power purchase agreement with Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) at Rs 2.69/kWh for 25 years.

Key Points:

• The project consists of 600 MW solar-wind plants.
• In May 2022, AGEL operationalized India’s first hybrid power plant with a capacity of 390 MW in Jaisalmer.
• The commencement of the 600 MW plant AGEL has a total operational generation capacity of 6.7 GW.
• This includes an operational hydropower generation capacity of 1 GW, the largest in the world.
• AGEL’s total renewable portfolio goes up to 20.4 GW to reach its vision of 45 GW capacity by 2030.

About Adani Green Energy

• Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) is an Indian renewable energy company headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. It is owned by Indian conglomerate Adani Group. The company operates the Kamuthi Solar Power Project which is one of the largest solar photovoltaic plants in the world.