# Road safety

• In a first, the Bureau of Indian standards (BIS) will establish a National road safety code for national highways (NHs), expressways, state highways (SH) and Major district roads (MDR).
• The safety code will specify the safety benchmark in engeenering, construction, enforcement and energy care.
• Only the NHs and SHs networks have nearly 60% of the total road deaths in India despite constituting barely 5% of the entire road network in the country.
• In 2021, the road crashes on NHs and SHs claimed 92655 lives out of the total 1.57 lakh fatalities.

# Tejas

• India can scale up production of the Indigenous tejas light combat aircraft to meet operational requirements and export orders, defense ministry official said.
• The single engine Tejas fighter is already the front runner to bag a malaysian order for 18 light twin seat fighter trainers despite strong competition from Chinese JF-17, South Korean FA-50.
• Moreover, there are also inquiries about the fighter from Argentina, Egypt and Phillipines.
• The current production rate of Tejas by defense PSU Hindustan Aeronautics limited (HAL) is eight aircraft per year, which is set to be increased to 16.

# RBI

• An increase of 50 basis points in interest rates by the monetary policy committee of the RBI is seen inevitable by economists in the wake of the 75 basis points hike by the US fed.
• The repo is the rate at which the RBI lends money to banks.

# North east

• IAS and IPS officers belonging to North East cadres – Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland and Sikkim – will now no longer receive incentives and special allowances granted to them for the past several years, to encourage all India services officers to serve in the region.
• Special benefits included additional monetary incentives equivalent to 25% of their basic salary, post retirement housing among others.