Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund (FIDF):The FIDF scheme provides concessional finance to the State Governments/Union Territories and State entities for development of identified fisheries infrastructure facilities through the interest subvention up-to 3% per annum. The objectives of FIDF are; (i) Creation and modernization of capture & culture fisheries infrastructure, (ii) Creation of Marine Aquaculture Infrastructure, (iii) Creation and modernization of Inland Fisheries Infrastructure, (iv) Reduce post- harvest losses and improve domestic marketing facilities through infrastructure support, (v) To bridge the resource gap and facilitate completion of ongoing infrastructure projects.
National Creche Scheme: Under the newly approved Mission Shakti, the National Creche Scheme has been revised and subsumed as Palna scheme to provide day-care facilities for children (6 months to 6 years) of working mothers and to improve nutrition and health status of children. It is a centrally sponsored scheme being implemented by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
The fund sharing pattern under National Creche Scheme amongst Centre, States/UTs & Non Governmental Organisations/Voluntary Organisations is in the ratio of 60:30:10 for States, 80:10:10 for North Eastern States and Himalayan States and 90:0:10 for UTs.
Silk Samagra Scheme: It is a Central Sector Scheme for the development of sericulture in the country.The scheme is being implemented by the Central Silk Board (CSB).
It focuses on improving the quality and productivity of domestic silk thereby reducing the country’s dependence on imported silk.
There are five major types of silk:Mulberry, Oak Tasar & Tropical Tasar, Muga and Eri.
Except mulberry, other non-mulberry varieties of silks are wild silks, known as vanya silks.
South India is the leading silk producing area of the country and is also known for its famous silk weaving enclaves like Kancheepuram, Dharmavaram, Arni, etc.
Exercise KAZIND-22: The 6th Edition of Indo – Kazakhstan joint training exercise “KAZIND-22” is scheduled to be conducted at Umroi (Meghalaya) from 15 to 28 December 2022. Joint annual training exercise with the Kazakhstan Army was instituted in 2016 as Exercise Prabal Dostyk, which was later upgraded to a company level exercise and renamed as Ex Kazind in 2018.
The scope of this exercise involves a Command Post Exercise (CPX) at the Battalion level and Company level Field Training Exercise (FTX) on sub-conventional operations.
Rare Earth Minerals:They are a set of seventeen metallic elements. These include the fifteen lanthanides on the periodic table in addition to scandium and yttrium that show similar physical and chemical properties to the lanthanides.
The 17 Rare Earths are cerium (Ce), dysprosium (Dy), erbium (Er), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), holmium (Ho), lanthanum (La), lutetium (Lu), neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), scandium (Sc), terbium (Tb), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), and yttrium (Y).These minerals have unique magnetic, luminescent, and electrochemical properties.They are called ‘rare earth’ because earlier it was difficult to extract them from their oxides forms technologically.
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