• The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi addressed a Natural Farming Conclave via video conferencing. The conclave, organised in Surat, Gujarat, is witnessing participation of thousands of farmers and all other stakeholders who have made adoption of Natural farming in Surat a success story.

KEY POINTS:

• Gujarat is leading the country’s resolution of achieving the goals of the Amrit Kaal.
• The Surat Model of natural farming can become a model for the entire country.
• Sabka Prayas’ is leading the development journey of New India.
• Our villages have shown that villages can not only bring change but can also lead the change.
• India has been an agriculture-based country by nature and culture.
• Now is the time when we move forward on the path of natural farming and take full advantage of the global opportunities.
• Certified natural farming products are fetching good prices when farmers export them.

• The first indigenously built aircraft carrier — Vikrant — is set to be commissioned next month. The fourth and the last phase of sea trials for the Vikrant were successfully completed. The warship conducted integrated trials of equipment and systems onboard, including some of the aviation facilities on the deck.
• The first trial was successfully completed in August last year, followed by the second and third phase in October 2021 and January 2022, respectively.
• The warship’s endurance testing of propulsion machinery, electrical and electronic warfare suites, deck machinery, life-saving appliances, navigation and communication systems have been tried out at the sea.
• The fighter jets that will operate from the deck of the carrier are to be tested using the Russian MiG-29K jets after the warship is handed over to the Navy.
• The 44,000-tonne indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC) has been made at the state-owned Cochin Shipyard in Kochi, Kerala.
• It is being commissioned in the backdrop of India-China race off to expand their naval strength.
• India has one operational carrier — INS Vikramaditya — purchased from Russia and the upcoming Vikrant. The plan for the third carrier is, so far, not approved by the Government.

• India is all set to enhance emergency response preparedness in the wake of Covid-19 with the government forming a high-level committee this week to finalise the new public health law and repeal the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897.
• The seven-member committee, chaired by Girija Vaidyanathan, former Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary and incumbent expert member of the National Green Tribunal, has been directed to submit its report within a month of the first meeting.
• The primary objective of the committee was to ready the new law and repeal the 125-year-old epidemic Act which was woefully inadequate to deal with pandemics, as evidenced during the Covid-19 outbreak.
• The antiquated Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, is ineffective in supporting public health surveillance and responding comprehensively to public health emergencies arising from epidemics and disasters and needs to be replaced with a new law, particularly in light of the International Health Regulations (IHR), 2005. There is also a need to provide a legislative framework in keeping with the UN General Assembly Resolution on the Prevention and Control of NCDs (non-communicable diseases), 2011.
• The new Public Health Act, proposed to be enacted under Entries 13 and 14 of Seventh Schedule and Article 253 of the Constitution, seeks to strengthen public health governance in India.
• The draft Bill provides for the constitution of public health authorities at the national, state, district and block level with well-defined public health powers and functions. “It will mandate the preparation of national, state and district-level policies and plans and ensure decentralisation.
• The establishment of public health laboratories and setting up of central and state-level public health cadres are among other hallmarks of the draft law.

• Uttar Pradesh has become the first state in the country to have 13 expressways. Of these 13 expressways having a total length of 3,200 kilometers, work is going on, on seven while six expressways are operational.
• The foundation stone of the 594 km long Ganga Expressway has been laid. This expressway will not only reduce the distance between East and West but will also serve to connect people.
• The Bundelkhand Expressway will connect people with Delhi and other states as well. This will benefit the people of Chitrakoot, Banda, Mahoba, Hamirpur, Jalaun, Auraiya and Etawah districts. People will get the benefit of connecting Bundelkhand with Delhi directly and Bundelkhand will be free from the stain of backwardness.
• Apart from this, Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway, Bundelkhand Expressway, Gorakhpur Link Expressway, Ghazipur-Ballia-Manjhighat Expressway and Delhi-Dehradun Expressway are being constructed
• These corridors will give impetus to rapid, balanced and inclusive growth as well as immense employment potential. Lands have been marked for this. Airstrips are also being built on the expressways for landing and take-off of Air Force aircraft in case of emergency.

Expressway network in Uttar Pradesh

1. Yamuna Expressway — 165 km
2. Noida-Greater Noida Expressway — 25 km
3. Agra-Lucknow Expressway — 302 km
4. Delhi-Meerut Expressway — 96 km
5. Purvanchal Expressway — 341 km
6. Bundelkhand Expressway — 296 km

Total operational expressways – 1,225 km

Expressways under construction

1. Gorakhpur Link Expressway — 91 km
2. Ganga-Expressway– 594 km
3. Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway — 63 km
4. Ghaziabad-Kanpur Expressway — 380 km
5. Gorakhpur-Siliguri Expressway — 519 km
6. Delhi-Saharanpur-Dehradun Expressway — 210 km
7. Ghazipur-Ballia-Manjhighat Expressway — 117 km

Expressways under construction – 1,974 km

• The State government presented a case for the inclusion of Una in the Amritsar Kolkata Industrial Corridor (AKIC) project at the meeting of the Apex Monitoring Authority for National Industrial Corridor Development Programme (NICDP) in Delhi.
• Una is just 80 km from the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh industrial area and has the potential of becoming another industrially-developed district. Una district is well connected with a road and rail network and the state government has already proposed a Bulk Drug Park and an EV Park there.
• Una district has the state’s first Food Park and seven developed industrial areas, besides a few upcoming industrial areas with a total land parcel of around 2,000 acres. The inclusion of Una under the AKIC project will help provide impetus to industrial development in the district and will also provide economic boost to neighbouring districts comprising almost 50 per cent of the state’s population”.
• Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), a joint venture between the state government and the National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (NICDC) Limited, was being formulated. The master plan for trunking infrastructure had been prepared by a professional agency hired by the NICDC. He apprised the meeting that in the BBN area projects of ‘national importance’ such as the Medical Devices Park (300 acres) and the Defence Park (800 acres) had been grounded.

• JUARE (Joint United Action for Resilience in Emergencies), a theatrical genre in which the methods of dealing with disasters have been presented very effectively, has made it to the Asia Book of Records and the India Book of Records after being staged simultaneously at 206 places of the district by school students on the occasion of World Environment Day on June 5.
• Apart from this, it was staged at 14 places in six other districts — Mandi, Bilaspur, Chamba, Una, Sirmaur and Hamirpur.
• The district administration had set the target of training 25,000 people simultaneously by staging a play together for its entry in the Asia and India Book of Records. However, the data collected revealed that 61,498 persons participated in the event.
• NDMA chairman PM had provided 10-point guidelines related to disaster management and JUARE covers most of these.
• JUARE is a unique initiative of District Disaster Management Kullu to spread awareness to deal with various types of calamities and to avoid loss when disaster strikes. Its objective is also to create a task force locally consisting of local people, including women and children.

• State-led Union Bank of India launched a Metaverse-based virtual lounge where it will showcase its products to customers virtually. The lender is the first Indian bank to open a virtual shop for publicity.
• Uni-verse, the Metaverse virtual lounge of the bank, hosts the bank’s product information and videos in the initial phase.
• Uni-verse will deliver a unique experience of banking to the customers who can roam around the lounge, get information of the bank’s deposits, loans, government welfare schemes, and digital initiatives as if they are experiencing the real world. This initiative is in partnership with Tech Mahindra.
• US-based JPMorgan Chase & Co achieved that feat earlier this year in February.
• In simple words, Metaverse is an evolved form of internet. The technology enables real-life experiences and situations with Augmented Reality (AR). Users can do nearly every task using Metaverse. They can visit different stores, enquire and hold conversations with different Metaverse users.

• Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will launch the first-ever ‘Artificial Intelligence in Defence’ (AIDef) symposium and exhibition organised by the Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence at Vigyan Bhawan in the national capital.
• The event will feature an exhibition to showcase the cutting-edge AI-enabled solutions developed by the services, research organisations, Industry and start-ups and innovators and the launch of AI products for the market.
• The 75 newly-developed AI products/technologies, having applications in defence, will be launched, as part of the celebrations marking 75 years of Independence ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ and to promote ‘Aatmanirbharta’ initiative in Defence.
• The products are in the domains of automation/unmanned/robotics systems, cyber security, human behaviour analysis, intelligent monitoring system, logistics and supply chain management, speech/voice analysis and Command, Control, Communication, Computer and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems and operational data analytics.

• The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned in its latest report that global solar PV manufacturing capacity has increasingly moved from Europe, Japan and the United States to China over the last decade, with the second-largest economy’s share in all the manufacturing stages of solar panels exceeding 80 per cent.
• The IEA Special Report on Solar PV Global Supply Chains states that China has invested over USD 50 billion in new PV supply capacity – ten times more than Europe – and created more than 300 000 manufacturing jobs across the solar PV value chain since 2011.
• China’s share in all the manufacturing stages of solar panels (such as polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells and modules) exceeds 80 per cent.
• According to, IEA report This is more than double China’s share of global PV demand. In addition, the country is home to the world’s 10 top suppliers of solar PV manufacturing equipment.
• The report highlighted how government policies in China have shaped the global supply, demand and price of solar PV over the last decade. Chinese industrial policies focusing on solar PV as a strategic sector and on growing domestic demand have enabled economies of scale and supported continuous innovation throughout the supply chain.
• These policies have contributed to a cost decline more than 80 per cent, helping solar PV to become the most affordable electricity generation technology in many parts of the world. However, they have also led to supply-demand imbalances in the PV supply chain.
• According to the IEA, global capacity for manufacturing wafers and cells, which are key solar PV elements, and for assembling them into solar panels (also known as modules), exceeded demand by at least 100 per cent at the end of 2021.
• By contrast, production of polysilicon, the key material for solar PV, is currently a bottleneck in an otherwise oversupplied supply chain. This has led to tight global supplies and a quadrupling of polysilicon prices over the last year.
• Solar PV products are a significant export for China. In 2021, the value of China’s solar PV exports was over USD 30 billion, almost 7 per cent of China’s trade surplus over the last five years.
• In addition, Chinese investments in Malaysia and Viet Nam also made these countries major exporters of PV products, accounting for around 10 per cent and 5 per cent respectively of their trade surpluses since 2017.
• The total value of global PV-related trade – including polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules – exceeded USD 40 billion in 2021, an increase of over 70 per cent from 2020.

• The Environment Ministry notified yet another draft for demarking 46,832 sq km areas across five states sans Kerala as the Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA) of the Western Ghats.
• A global biodiversity hotspot, the Western Ghats – parts of which are inscribed in the UNESCO World Natural Heritage List – are the origin of Godavari, Krishna, Cauvery and a number of other rivers and extends over a distance of approximately 1,500 km from Tapti River in the north to Kanyakumari in the south through six states namely, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
• Originally, the Madhav Gadgil-led committee had recommended designating the entire region as Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) — more than 1 lakh sq kms — in the 522-page report submitted to the Environment Ministry in 2011 while the Kasturirangan panel, constituted soon after that had diluted it to about 50 per cent area.
• The Environment Ministry had constituted a High-Level Working Group to study the ecology, environmental integrity and holistic development of the Western Ghats. It was to address the balance between protection of environment / biodiversity and aspirations of the communities. It had submitted its report on April 15, 2013 wherein it had identified approximately 37 per cent of the Western Ghats as ecologically sensitive covering an area of 59,940 sq kms.
• The first draft notification was issued on March 10, 2014 that mentioned ESA for other states as recommended by the High-Level Working Group (13,108 sq kms) and for Kerala, mentioned the area as recommended by the state (9,993.7 sq kms). That was followed by consultation with stakeholders, including states and there came a series of drafts, last of which expired on June 30.
• This time round, the latest draft notified on July 6 has recommended an ESA totaling to 46,832 sq km sans Kerala’s. It comprises 449 sq kms in Gujarat, 17,340 sq kms in Maharashtra, 1,461 sq km in Goa, 20,668 sq kms in Karnataka and 6,914 sq kms in Tamil Nadu.