ISRO to tap small cities for innovations-Agartala gets space technology incubation centre

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched a space technology incubation centre in Tripura capital Agartala which is the first of six such centres planned nationally to build capacity in new locations.
• The incubation centre will be located in the National Institute of Technology, Agartala.
• The space agency’s new Capacity Building Programme directorate will invest Rs.2 crore in incubation facilities in Jalandhar, Bhubaneswar, Tiruchi, Nagpur and Indore.

Indian space market

• Domestic industry should increase the production of critical electronics items needed in space and other programmes, as 75% of it is now imported.
• The Indian space market offers big opportunity to industry as it is estimated to grow to $1.6 billion by 2023.

National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED)

• National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED) is an apex organization of marketing cooperatives for agricultural produce in India, under Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India.
• It was founded in October 1958 to promote the trade of agricultural produce and forest resources across the nation.
• NAFED is now one of the largest procurement as well as marketing agencies for agricultural products in India.
• In 2008, it established, National Spot Exchange, a Commodities exchange as a joint venture of Financial Technologies (India) Ltd. (FTIL).

Objective

NAFED was set up with the object to promote co-operative marketing of agricultural produce to benefit farmers.

• The objective of NAFED is to organize, promote and develop marketing, processing, storage of agricultural, horticultural and forest produce, import and export of agricultural commodities to augment the supplies in domestic market.
• NAFED also extends support to farmers in collaboration with State level Marketing Cooperatives/ Commodity Federation and Primary Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Societies.
• NAFED is the only National Level Marketing Federation with performance legacy of around 57 years. NAFED has membership of 847 societies consisting of National Level Federation, State and UT level Apex Cooperative Marketing/Processing Scoieties.

Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process

• The Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process was established to provide a platform to discuss regional issues, particularly encouraging security, political, and economic cooperation among Afghanistan and its neighbors.
• This region-led dialogue was launched in November 2011 to expand practical coordination between Afghanistan and its neighbors and regional partners in facing common threats, including counterterrorism, counternarcotics, poverty, and extremism. The United States and over 20 other nations and organizations serve as "supporting nations" to the process.

It has produced a declaration in support of

• Afghanistan’s development and the withdrawal of international forces.
• Regional efforts in the areas of counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics trafficking, trade promotion, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, the CASA-1000 electricity project, and the expansion of the transit corridors under the Asian Development Bank’s Central Asia Regional Economic Corridor (CAREC) Program.
• Funds to the Afghan National Security Forces and financed a fifty-million-dollar program to educate Afghan students in Kazakhstan.