Current Affair 1:

Exports of millets to increase exponentially as Indian exporters find new markets

 

Millets exports are expected to grow tremendously in the next few years as Indian exporters find new markets abroad, according to the Department of Commerce, as worldwide demand for nutria-cereals continues to rise.

In 2020, India was the world leader in millet production, accounting for roughly 41% of total global production. India is currently the world's fifth largest exporter of millets, with exports increasing at a 3% CAGR over the last five years ending in 2020. India exported millets worth US$ 26.97 million in 2020-21, compared to US$ 28.5 million in 2019-20.

Nepal (US$ 6.09 million), the UAE (US$ 4.84 million), and Saudi Arabia (US$ 3.84 million) were the top three importers of millets from India in 2020-21. Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, the UK, Yemen, Oman, and Algeria round up the top ten destinations for Indian millet exports.

The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) has been working hard to make it easier for Indian exporters to transport millets and help them break into new markets. APEDA hosted its inaugural Virtual Trade Fair - India Rice and Agro Commodity Show – in March 2021, which included millet exporters as well. Virtual Buyer-Seller Meets (BSM) have been arranged involving Indian embassies, importers, exporters, and product groups.

To give impetus to the export of potential products as well as to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of nutria-cereals, APEDA has created Nutri Cereals Export Promotion Forum which also included millets exports. It has also organized a sensitization programme for millet start-ups to familiarize them about export opportunities.

The various kinds of millets include sorghum (Jowar), pearl millet (Bajra), finger millet (Ragi), little millet (Kutki), small millet (Samai), foxtail millet (Kangni), proso millet (Barri), barnyard millet (Jhangora), kodo millet (Kodra), two pseudo millets (buckwheat and kuttu), Ameranthus (Chulai) and other millets.

In a major boost to production and exports of nutri-cereals like millet, Finance Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, in her union budget (2022-23) speech, announced assistance for post-harvest value addition and branding of millet products in the domestic as well as global markets.

Current Affair 2:

Unitary Digital Identity framework

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India has agreed to provide a grant to Sri Lanka to implement a ‘Unitary Digital Identity framework’, apparently modelled on the Aadhaar card. The Rajapaksa government will “prioritise” the implementation of the Framework as a national level programme.

Under the proposed Unitary Digital Identity Framework, it is expected to introduce a personal identity verification device based on biometric data, a digital tool that can represent the identities of individuals in cyberspace, and the identification of individual identities that can be accurately verified in digital and physical environments by combining the two devices.

Current Affair 3:

India’s Population Growth Is Not a Climate Issue

 

India is the second most populous country in the world. At the rate we’re going, it’s set to overtake China to reach the first spot by 2024 – reportedly sooner than expected.

A common assumption is that a higher population means more consumption of natural resources. For instance, some have argued that a growing population means we will need more food and more land and water on which to cultivate that food. This could put more pressure on wild lands and our finite natural resources.

But this is wrong. India’s population growth is not a climate issue. Here are two reasons why.

India’s fertility rate is dropping

As per data from the fifth and latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS), for 2019-2021, India’s fertility rate has dropped. The fertility rate is the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime, under certain assumptions.

From 2.2 in the last NFHS, 2015-2016, India’s total fertility rate (TFR) is now 2.0. This is below the ideal replacement level – the rate at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next, without migration: 2.1.

India’s TFR is now lower than the replacement level, busting “the myth of population explosion” in India, as the Population Foundation of India recently wrote. There is no scientific evidence to show a population explosion in India.

 

Incidentally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in 2019 that a ‘population explosion’ stands in the way of India’s development.

Consumption is unequal

Second, population growth is a decoy – a concept created to distract us from the real and invisible problem of inequality.

A 2009 study found that population growth doesn’t drive growth in greenhouse gas emissions. It is driven instead by the number of consumers and their levels of consumption. In fact, consumption levels of a “significant proportion” of the world’s urban and rural populations are so low that “they contribute little or nothing to such emissions,” the study found.

It also reported that countries with very low emissions per person, and often only slowly growing emissions, have had the highest population growth rates.

So, the carbon footprints of people vary drastically across the globe, based on the resources they consume.

Simply put: Wealth and consumption inequity contribute more to climate change than just consumption.

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