The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) recently announced that it provided Rs 1,236 crores to Assam in 2020-21 from its Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF).

What is RIDF?

It was created in 1995-96 with an initial corpus of Rs 2,000 crores. In 2020-21, Rs 29,848 crores was allocated to RIDF. With this the cumulative allocation has reached Rs 18,500 crores.

Assam’s Red rice export to U.S.

The first consignment of ‘red rice’ was flagged off on March 4, 2021 to the United States. This adds on to the India’s rice exports potential. The rice was sourced by leading rice exporter called ‘LT Foods’.The ceremony of the flagging-off of the export consignments was carried out by APEDA Chairman Dr. M. Angamuthu in Haryana. The APEDA is involved in promoting rice exports with the help of several stakeholders along the value chain. The government had also set up a “Rice Export Promotion Forum (REPF)” under the parent head of APEDA.

Other Current Affairs

• Russia started construction of fifth nuclear power unit at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu on June 29, 2021.
• European Medicines Agency (EMA) has excluded Serum Institute of India (SII) manufactured Covishield from the list of approved vaccines for ‘Green Pass’. As per EMA, vaccine was excluded from list because it does not have marketing authorisation in European Union (EU).
• NITI Aayog released a comprehensive study on not-for-profit hospital model in India on June 29, 2020.
• Department of Justice has launched an “Enforcing Contracts Portal” on June 29, 2021.
• United Nations published its report on Racial Justice & Equality and called to immediately dismantle systemic racism against black people worldwide to avoid repeating outrages such as killing of George Floyd.
• To harness the export potential of agricultural & processed food products from north-eastern states, fresh Burmese grapes shipment was exported to Dubai from Guwahati. Highlights Burmese grapes are referred as ‘Leteku’ in Assamese language. Leteku is rich in vitamin C and Iron.