Prime Minister has recently received the crew of Strategic Strike Nuclear Submarine (SSBN) INS Arihant.
INS Arihant is the first of five nuclear missile submarines planned for induction.
It is to be equipped with K 15 (or BO-5) shortrange missiles with a range of over 700 km and the K 4 ballistic missile with a range of 3,500 km.
At present, the only nuclear - powered platform in service is the INS Chakra, a Akula class SSN on lease from Russia.
The induction of INS Arihant marks the completion of India’s nuclear triad.
A nuclear triad refers to the nuclear weapons delivery via land, air and sea i.e. land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), strategic bombers, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).
Operation Greens
Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) has recently approved the operationalisation strategy for Operation Greens.
Operation Greens was announced in the Budget 2018-19 with an outlay of Rs. 500 crores.
The main objective of the project is to reduce price volatility in agri commodities such as vegetables.
It aims to stabilize the supply of Tomato, Onion and Potato(TOP) crops and to ensure availability of TOP crops throughout the country round the year without price volatility.
It is to promote farmer producers organizations, agri-logistics, processing facilities and professional management.
Hope Island
Greater Flamingoes have recently been spotted on the coast of Hope island after a long period.
Hope island is a part of the Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary, off the coast of Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh.
It is relatively a young island, formed from the sediment outflow carried by the waters of the Koringa River, a distributary of the Godavari.
It acts as natural barrier for storm surges and provides tranquility to the ships anchored in Kakinada Bay which makes Kakinada Port one of the safest natural ports in the Eastern Coast of India.
The northern tip of the island is called "Godavari Point", which overlooks the entry point into the Kakinada Bay and the Kakinada harbour.
PMI – Services
Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for services of the October month has been released recently. This is the fifth successive month of expansion.
PMI is an indicator of the economic health and investor sentiments about the manufacturing sector (Manufacturing PMI) and services sector (Services PMI)
Its purpose is to provide information about current business conditions to company decision makers, analysts and purchasing managers.
For India, the PMI Data is published by Japanese firm Nikkei but compiled and constructed by Markit Economics.
In a PMI survey, a standard questionnaire is administered to business entities.
The respondents can either give a “Positive, Neutral or Negative” response and each response is marked as “1, 0.5 or 0” on the score card respectively.
In adding up the response, a reading above 50 indicates economic expansion, while a reading below 50 points shows contraction of economic activities.
