NEW DELHI, 21 October — The first JCB backhoe built in Pune for New Zealand left India on 19 October with a minister’s flag-off. Thereafter, , and every other Indian product, crossed into New Zealand at the same zero tariff.
Four sensitive New Zealand products — Mānuka
At a glance
India’s tariff lines opened to New Zealand: 70.03%
Tariff lines kept out (dairy, onions, sugar, edible oils and more): 29.97%
Lines under quota with minimum import price (apples, kiwifruit, Mānuka honey, albumins): 0.06%
Investment New Zealand commits to facilitate: USD 20 billion over 15 years
India–New Zealand merchandise trade, 2024-25: USD 1.3 billion
What India gains
Duty-free entry for every Indian product, work routes for skilled Indians, and dairy farmers fully protected.
Ramesh Chand Panel to weigh cane’s journey from field to weighbridge
NEW DELHI, 21 October — How much of a farmer’s cane is lost between the field and the mill’s weighbridge will now be examined by a committee headed by Professor Ramesh Chand, former Member of NITI Aayog.
The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution set up the panel on 14 October, two days after Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Minister Pralhad Joshi met cane growers’ delegations from Maharashtra and Karnataka in New Delhi.
What farmers gain
Is a single table, chaired by one of India’s best-known farm economists, at which weighing, recovery and price are examined together rather than fought out on highways.
Gaya tops farm-district ranking, soil drive begins on 22 October
NEW DELHI, 21 October Gaya in Bihar has been ranked the best of the 100 districts under the Prime Minister’s Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana, ahead of Nagaur in Rajasthan and Umaria in Madhya Pradesh.
The districts are scored every month on 121 indicators through a dashboard of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.
September exports jump 23pc to $ 44.4 billion
NEW DELHI, 21 October — India’s merchandise exports rose 23.04% to $44.40 billion in September 2026 from $36.08 billion a year earlier. Exports to the United States rose 47.99% in the month and 11.11% over April–September, to about $51 billion,
1,500 rural women entrepreneurs sell at Vijayawada Saras Mela
VIJAYAWADA, 21 October — About 1,500 self-help group women from 34 States and Union Territories are selling at the national Saras Mela at Punnami Ghat, Vijayawada, which runs to 31 October.
The fair has more than 650 stalls and a 50-stall India Food Court.
Onion pushes retail inflation to 5.4pc, rural India hit hardest
NEW DELHI, 21 October — Retail inflation rose to 5.54% in September 2026 from 4.83% in August, on the new Consumer Price Index series with base 2024, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation said. Food inflation climbed to 7.74% from 5.97%; in villages it was 8.06%.
IMF lifts India’s growth to 7pc, more than twice of the world’s pace
NEW DELHI, 21 October — The International Monetary Fund projects India’s economy to grow 7.0% in both 2026 and 2027, according to the statistical tables of its World Economic Outlook..
Gaganyaan Capsule clears separation test
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, 21 October — The Indian Space Research Organisation has completed the Crew Module–Service Module separation tests for the Gaganyaan missions at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre.
Graphene as a meter: IIT Bombay idea to read light’s quantum noise
MUMBAI, 21 October — Light is never perfectly steady. Even the best laser carries quantum fluctuations, and in “squeezed” light those fluctuations are shaped on purpose. Measuring them is the basis of the most sensitive instruments physics has. Two physicists at IIT Bombay propose a new way to do it, using graphene.
Kartik Prabhu and Professor Gopal Dixit of the Department of Physics report in a Letter in Physical Review B, that when graphene is driven by squeezed light it emits high harmonics that symmetry would normally forbid.
Those forbidden harmonics carry the intensity and polarisation of the light’s quantum fluctuations — so the material becomes the meter. “Our study brings together, for the first time, quantum light, a quantum material and high harmonic generation,” Dixit said in the institute’s release.
