Notes:
The Punjab government recently announced Rs 1,500 incentive per acre for farmers opting for Direct Seeding of Rice (DSR).
Last year, 18% of the total rice area in the state was under DSR while the government target was 10 lakh hectares. According to the studies by Punjab Agriculture University (PAU), DSR technique can help save 15% to 20% water and sometimes to 23%. It can also solve labour shortage problem as paddy seeds are sown directly with machine, without paddy nursery and transplantation.

Notes:
Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya released the National Report of the 5th round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) at the ‘Swasthya Chintan Shivir’ held at Vadodara.
The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) which is measured as the average number of children per woman has come down from 2.2 to 2.0 at the national level between NFHS-4 and 5. There are only five states in India, which are above the replacement level of fertility of 2.1. This includes Bihar (2.98), Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Manipur.

Notes:
The Delimitation Commission, which redrew the electoral map of Jammu and Kashmir, was headed by Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, a retired judge of the Supreme Court. Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra and state election commissioner K K Sharma are its ex-officio members.
The Delimitation Commission released its final report, with 47 seats assigned for Kashmir and 43 for Jammu. There will be five parliamentary constituencies, each with an equal number of 18 Assembly seats while 9 seats were reserved for the Scheduled Tribes (ST).  Additional seats in the assembly for Kashmiri migrants and displaced persons from Pakistan occupied Kashmir were recommended.

Notes:
The Delhi Cabinet had passed an ambitious Delhi Startup Policy which aims to turn the capital into an international startup hub.
The vision is to enable Delhi to emerge as a “Global Innovation Hub and the most preferred destination for Startups by 2030”. The government intends to encourage, facilitate and support 15,000 startups by 2030. A Startup Policy Monitoring Committee will be formed to oversee the Policy. It will be headed by the Finance Minister of the Delhi Government.

Notes:
Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), received the 2022 World Food Prize from the World Food Prize Foundation.
World Food Prize is a prestigious award conceived as the ‘Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture’. Rosenzweig was selected for the award for her research to understand the relationship between climate and food systems and forecast how they will change in the future.