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GS Paper: GS3

  • What is World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda ’22?

    PM Modi has made a special address ahead of the theme-setting World Economic Forum (WEF) Agenda on the ‘State of the World’ at Davos.

    About World Economic Forum (WEF)

    • WEF is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland.
    • It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab.
    • The foundation, which is mostly funded by its 1,000 member companies – typically global enterprises with more than five billion US dollars in turnover – as well as public subsidies.
    • It aims at improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.

    Major reports released:

    • Engaging Tomorrow Consumer Report
    • Inclusive growth & Development Report
    • Environmental Performance Index
    • Global Competitive Index
    • Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report
    • Global Gender Gap Report
    • Global Information Technology Report
    • Human Capital Report
    • Inclusive growth & Development Report
    • Global Risk Report
    • Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report by WEF

    Important agenda: Davos meeting

    • The WEF is mostly known for its annual meeting at the end of January in Davos, a mountain resort in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland.
    • The meeting brings together some 3,000 paying members and selected participants – among which are investors, business leaders, political leaders, economists, celebrities and journalists.

    Why is WEF important?

    • Common platform: The WEF summit brings together the who’s-who of the political and corporate world, including heads of state, policymakers, top executives, industrialists, media personalities, and technocrats.
    • Influence global decision-making: Deliberations at the WEF influence public sector and corporate decision-making.
    • Discusses global challenges: It especially emphasizes on the issues of global importance such as poverty, social challenges, climate change, and global economic recovery.
    • Brings in all stakeholders: The heady mix of economic, corporate, and political leadership provides an ideal opportunity for finding solutions to global challenges that may emerge from time to time.

    What are the main initiatives?

    • Agenda 2022 will see the launch of other WEF initiatives meant for:
    1. Accelerating the mission to net-zero emissions
    2. Economic opportunity of nature-positive solutions
    3. Cyber resilience

    Criticisms of WEF

    • WEF has been criticized for being more of a networking hub than a nebula of intellect or a forum to find effective solutions to global issues.
    • It is also criticized for the lack of representation from varied sections of the civil society and for falling short of delivering effective solutions.

    Way forward

    • WEF sees large-scale participation of top industry, business leaders, civil society, and international organizations every year.
    • This collaboration is necessary for addressing global concerns such as climate change and pandemic management.
    • It is one of such few platform, that provides an opportunity for collaboration through comprehensive dialogue.

     

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  • Houthi Attack on United Arab Emirates

    A suspected drone attack on Monday in Abu Dhabi, the capital of UAE, caused multiple explosions in which three Indians were reportedly killed.

    Who is behind the attack?

    • The Shia Houthi rebels of Yemen have claimed responsibility for the attack.

    Who are the Houthis?

    • The roots of the Houthi movement can be traced to “Believing Youth” (Muntada al-Shahabal-Mu’min).
    • It is a Zaydi revivalist group founded by Hussein al-Houthi and his father, Badr al-Din al-Houthi, in the early 1990s.
    • Badr al-Din was an influential Zaydi cleric in northern Yemen.
    • This group is inspired by the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the rise of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the 1980s.
    • Badr al-Din and his sons started building vast social and religious networks among the Zaydis of Yemen, who make up roughly one-third of the Sunni-majority country’s population.

    What led to the Houthis’ rise?

    • When protests broke out in Yemen in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring protests that felled Tunisian and Egyptian dictators.
    • The Houthis, now confident from their military victories and the support they enjoyed in Sadah, backed the agitation.

    Why did Saudi Arabia attack Yemen?

    • The rapid rise of the Houthis in Yemen set off alarm bells in Riyadh which saw them as Iranian proxies.
    • Saudi Arabia, under Mohammed Bin Salman, started a military campaign in March 2015, hoping for a quick victory against the Houthis.
    • But the Houthis had dug in, refusing to leave despite Saudi Arabia’s aerial blitzkrieg.
    • With no effective allies on the ground and no way-out plan, the Saudi-led campaign went on with no tangible result.
    • In the past six years, the Houthis have launched multiple attacks on Saudi cities from northern Yemen in retaliation for Saudi air strikes.

    Not a one-way proxy war

    • There are serious allegations against both the Saudis and the Houthis in the war.
    • While the Saudi bombings caused a large number of civilian deaths, the Houthis were accused, by rights groups and Governments, of preventing aid, deploying forces in densely populated areas.
    • Houthis have been using excessive force against civilians and peaceful protesters.

    Why did the Houthis target the UAE?

    • This is not the first time the Houthis attacked the UAE. In 2018, when the UAE-backed forces were making advances in Yemen, the Houthis claimed attacks against the Emirates.
    • They stayed focussed entirely on Saudi Arabia and Saudi-backed forces inside Yemen.

    Try this PYQ:

    Consider the following pairs:

    Towns sometimes mentioned in news: Countries

    1. Aleppo: Syria
    2. Kirkuk: Yemen
    3. Mosul: Palestine
    4. Mazar-i-sharif: Afghanistan

    Which of the pairs given above are correctly matched?

    (a) 1 and 2 only

    (b) 1 and 4 only

    (c) 2 and 3 only

    (d) 3 and 4 only

     

     

    [wpdiscuz-feedback id=”lv8gqunrwl” question=”Please leave a feedback on this” opened=”1″]Post your answers here.[/wpdiscuz-feedback]

     

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  • What are Smog Towers?

    Some researchers in New Delhi have observed paradoxical phenomena near the smog towers. The air closest to the tower should be cleanest, but the device recorded the opposite in several instances.

    What are Smog Towers?

    • Smog towers are structures designed to work as large-scale air purifiers. They are fitted with multiple layers of air filters and fans at the base to suck the air.
    • After the polluted air enters the smog tower, it is purified by multiple layers before being re-circulated into the atmosphere.

    Structure of the Delhi smog tower

    • The structure is 24 m high, about as much as an 8-storey building — an 18-metre concrete tower, topped by a 6-metre-high canopy. At its base are 40 fans, 10 on each side.
    • Each fan can discharge 25 cubic metres per second of air, adding up to 1,000 cubic metres per second for the tower as a whole. Inside the tower in two layers are 5,000 filters.
    • The filters and fans have been imported from the United States.

    How does it work?

    • The tower uses a ‘downdraft air cleaning system’ developed by the University of Minnesota.
    • Polluted air is sucked in at a height of 24 m, and filtered air is released at the bottom of the tower, at a height of about 10 m from the ground.
    • When the fans at the bottom of the tower operate, the negative pressure created sucks in air from the top.
    • The ‘macro’ layer in the filter traps particles of 10 microns and larger, while the ‘micro’ layer filters smaller particles of around 0.3 microns.
    • The downdraft method is different from the system used in China, where a tower uses an ‘updraft’ system — air is sucked in from near the ground, and is propelled upwards by heating and convection.
    • Filtered air is released at the top of the tower.

    Likely impact

    • Computational fluid dynamics modelling suggests the tower could have an impact on the air quality up to 1 km from the tower.
    • The actual impact will also determine how the tower functions under different weather conditions, and how levels of PM2.5 vary with the flow of air.

    Issues with smog towers

    • Many experts say that the smog towers are not a viable method to clean city’s air.
    • The government had talked about 80% pollution reduction at inlet and outlet of the tower but never mentioned about the effect of distance from the tower.
    • Instead of spending â‚č40 crore on two towers, the government could have spent the funds on several other options such as replacing the small and polluting industrial boilers or chimneys etc.

     

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  • World Employment and Social Outlook – Trends, 2022

    Global unemployment is projected to stand at 207 million in 2022 (21 million more than in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic began) says ILO World Employment and Social Outlook – Trends 2022.

    World Employment and Social Outlook – Trends 2022

    • The report examines the impacts of the crisis on global and regional trends in employment, unemployment and labour force participation, as well as on job quality, informal employment and working poverty.
    • It also offers an extensive analysis of trends in temporary employment both before and during the COVID-19 crisis.

    Key highlights

    (1) Job Losses in 2022

    • It is estimated that in 2022 around 40 million people will no longer be participating in the global labour force.
    • The downgrade in the 2022 forecast reflects the impact of ever new variants of COVID-19 on the world of work.
    • Global working hours in 2022 will be almost two per cent below their pre-pandemic level.
    • This is equivalent to the loss of 52 million full-time jobs.

    (2) Pauperization

    • The pandemic has pushed millions of children into poverty.
    • It is estimated that in 2020, an additional 30 million adults fell into extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90 per day in purchasing power parity) while being out of paid work.
    • The number of extreme working poor — workers who do not earn enough through their work to keep themselves and their families above the poverty line — rose by eight million.

    (3) Impact on women

    • Women have been worse hit by the labour market crisis than men and this is likely to continue.
    • The closing of education and training institutions will have long-term implications for young people, particularly those without internet access.

    Key suggestions

    • There is the need for a broad-based labour market recovery — the recovery must be human-centred, inclusive, sustainable and resilient.
    • The recovery must be based on the principles of decent work — including health and safety, equity, social protection and social dialogue.

    Back2Basics: International Labour Organization (ILO)

    • The ILO is a UN agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice through setting international labour standards.
    • Founded in 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and oldest specialised agency of the UN.
    • The ILO has 187 member states: 186 out of 193 UN member states plus the Cook Islands.
    • The ILO’s international labour standards are broadly aimed at ensuring accessible, productive, and sustainable work worldwide in conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity.

    Its Governing Body

    • The Governing body is the apex executive body of the ILO which decides policies, programmes, agenda, budget and elects the Director-General.
    • It meets three times a year, in March, June and November.

    Major reports released:

    1. World Employment and Social Outlook
    2. World Social Protection Report
    3. Global Wage Report

     

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  • Highlights of the Inequality Kills Report

    The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened economic inequalities across the world says the Inequality Kills Report.

    Try substantiating this:

     

    Q. Extreme inequality is a form of ‘economic violence’—where structural and systemic policy and political choices are skewed in favor of the richest and the most powerful people. Critically examine.

    What is the “Inequality Kills” Report?

    • “Inequality Kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19” is a report released in January 2022 by Oxfam, a U.K.-based consortium.
    • The report argues for sustained and immediate action to end the pandemic, address global inequality and initiate concerted measures to tackle the climate emergency.
    • The central argument of the report is that inequality is a death sentence for people that are marginalized by social and economic structures and removed from political decision-making.

    Key highlights

    • Billionaire variants: Identifying this process as “the billionaire variant”, the report says that this vertical aggregation of global wealth into the hands of a few is “profoundly dangerous for our world”.
    • Pauperization: 160 million people were rendered poor during the pandemic, while the ten richest people doubled their fortunes since the start of the pandemic.
    • Vaccine apartheid: Holding governments to account the report identifies “vaccine apartheid” (unequal access to vaccines between countries) and the lack of universal vaccination programs in many countries.
    • Inflation: It also demonstrates how emergency government expenditure (estimated at $16 trillion) that was meant to keep economies afloat during this crisis, inflated stock prices.
    • Collective: This resulted in billionaires’ collective wealth increasing by $5 trillion during the pandemic.

    Why does the report say that inequality kills?

    • For the writers of the report inequality is not an abstract theory.
    • Instead, they see it as institutionalized violence against poorer people.
    • Extreme inequality is a form of ‘economic violence’—where structural and systemic policy and political choices that are skewed in favor of the richest and the most powerful people.
    • This results in direct harm to the vast majority of ordinary people worldwide.

    Implications of inequality

    • Crime and violence: The report identifies higher inequality with more crime and violence and less social trust.
    • Impact on marginalized: The brunt of inequality and the violence is borne, for instance, by women across the world, Dalits in India, Black, Native American and Latin persons in the US and indigenous groups in many countries.
    • Victimization of women: Pointing to the example of women, the problem runs a lot deeper as 13 million women have not returned to the workforce and 20 million girls are at risk of losing access to education.

    Way ahead

    The “Inequality Kills” report proposes far-reaching changes to structures of government, economy and policy-making to fight inequality.

    • Vaccine sharing: It urgently asks for “vaccine recipes” to be made open-source so that every qualified vaccine manufacturer can manufacture them.
    • Taxing the opportunists: The report then asks for governments to claw back the wealth from billionaires by administering solidarity taxes higher than 90% especially on the billionaires that have profited during pandemic.
    • Taxation reforms: The report asks for permanent cancellation of tax havens, progressive taxation on corporations and an end to tax dodging by corporations.
    • Welfare: The report then suggests that this regained wealth be redirected towards building income safety nets, universalizing healthcare for everyone, investing in green technologies and democratizing them, and, investing in protecting women from violence.

     

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  • How  do  SDRs  help maintain Balance of Payments (BoP)?

    A recent report by the RBI shows that India received support of $17.86 billion in August 2021 by way of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) has helped cushion the worsening current account deficit.

    What are Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)?

    • SDRs, created by the IMF in 1969, are an international reserve asset and are meant to supplement countries’ reserves.
    • Adding SDRs to the country’s international reserves makes it more financially resilient.
    • Providing liquidity support to developing and low-income countries allows them to tide over the balance of payments (BOP) situations like the one India has been experiencing due to the pandemic and the one it faced earlier in 1991.
    • SDRs being one of the components of foreign exchange reserves (FER) of a country, an increase in its holdings is reflected in the BOP.

    What are the key components of BOP?

    The BOP divides transactions of a country with the rest of the world into two accounts:

    1. Current Account: It consists of net trade of exports and imports of products and services, net earnings on cross-border investments and net transfer payments.
    2. Capital Account: It constitutes a country’s transactions in financial instruments i.e. assets and liabilities constituting of direct investment, portfolio investment, loans, banking capital, and other capital.

    What does the SDR support signify?

    • Pandemic impact: Countries worldwide are going through one of the worst health and economic crises, and India has been no exception.
    • Domestic business underperformance: It is also indicative of the fact that the domestic business environment is failing to attract foreign direct investment.

    Is dependence on SDR a matter of concern?

    A BOP dependent on an SDR-dependent capital account surplus to cushion the country’s widening current account deficit is not a comfortable position to be in.

    • Compulsion for reforms: Importantly, IMF support comes with a baggage of conditions as was the case in 1991—the support came with the condition that India initiates big-ticket economic reforms.
    • Sovereign decisions: Any democratic country would be more comfortable with sovereign rights to design its policy strategy.

    Back2Basics:  Foreign Exchange Reserve

    • Foreign exchange reserves are important assets held by the central bank in foreign currencies as reserves.
    • They are commonly used to support the exchange rate and set monetary policy.
    • In India’s case, foreign reserves include Gold, Dollars, and the IMF’s quota for Special Drawing Rights.
    • Most of the reserves are usually held in US dollars, given the currency’s importance in the international financial and trading system.
    • Some central banks keep reserves in Euros, British pounds, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan, in addition to their US dollar reserves.

    India’s forex reserves cover:

    1. Foreign Currency Assets (FCAs)
    2. Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)
    3. Gold Reserves
    4. Reserve position with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

    Significance of these reserves

    • Import support: Holding liquid foreign currency provides a cushion against such effects and provides confidence that there will still be enough foreign exchange to help the country with crucial imports in case of external shocks.
    • USD reserves: All international transactions are settled in US dollars and, therefore, required to support India’s imports.
    • Exchange rate regulation: More importantly, they need to maintain support and confidence for central bank action, whether monetary policy action or any exchange rate intervention to support the domestic currency.
    • Cushion against inflation: It also helps to limit any vulnerability due to sudden disturbances in foreign capital flows, which may arise during a crisis.

    Initiatives taken by the government to increase forex

    • Self reliance: To increase the foreign exchange reserves, the GoI has taken many initiatives like Atmanirbhar Bharat, in which India has to be made a self-reliant nation so that India does not have to import things that India can produce.
    • Duty remission: The government has started schemes like Duty Exemption Scheme, Remission of Duty or Taxes on Export Product (RoDTEP), Nirvik (Niryat Rin Vikas Yojana) scheme, etc.
    • FDI and EoDB: Apart from these schemes, India is one of the top countries that attracted the highest amount of Foreign Direct Investment, thereby improving India’s foreign exchange reserves.

     

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  • How predatory pricing is affecting distributors and traders

    Context

    Consumer goods distributors in Maharashtra has been protesting against Colgate’s alleged unfair treatment of traditional distributors vis-à-vis B2B (Business-to-Business) technology companies such as Reliance’s JioMart, Udaan and others.

    The disruption caused by B2B companies

    • Nearly half-a-million of India’s distributors pick up goods from consumer companies such as Colgate and deliver them to 13 million small local stores located in 7,00,000 villages and towns across the country through a web of millions of traders and other intermediaries.
    • Enter the new age technology B2B companies.
    • They have developed technologies to connect directly to the kirana store through a mobile phone app, bypassing the intermediaries.
    • They supply goods to the local store for lower prices than the charged by the distributor.
    • Unable to match such prices and facing the peril of losing business, India’s distributors claim these are unfair practices and want manufacturers such as to stop supplying goods to the technology companies.

    Issue of disruption caused by the pricing power and predatory pricing

    • Creative destruction: New innovations disrupting an existing process and rendering incumbents futile is generally a healthy process of ‘creative destruction’, as the Austrian economist, Joseph Schumpeter, postulated.
    • But this disruption in India is driven not entirely by technology innovation but also through pricing power.
    • These technology companies bear the loss on the products they sell to the local store.
    • Further, they offer extensive credit terms and working capital to the local stores.
    • In other words, these technology companies rely not just on their mobile phone app innovation but also steep price discounting and cheaper financing to win customers.
    • Evidently, these companies use the money to not only build new technologies but also to undercut competitors and steal market share. 
    • This practice, called predatory pricing, is illegal in most countries including India.
    • These companies are supplied with funds from foreign venture capital firms, which in turn are largely funded by American pension funds and university endowments.
    • The flip side is that India’s millions of distributors and intermediaries have no access to such finance.
    • These small companies are cut off from the endless stream of free foreign money that gushes into new age ‘startups’ and established large corporates.

    Problems created by predatory pricing

    • While consumers may benefit from lower prices, the livelihoods of millions of distributors, traders and their families suffer.
    • To be sure, this is not just an India problem but a global one.
    •  Social media companies such as Facebook give away their products for free and e-commerce companies such as Amazon sell at lower prices, benefiting consumers enormously, but also causing immense social strife and disharmony.
    • But in India’s case, there is an added complexity of foreign capital flows.
    • Access to this capital is only available to a tiny proportion of Indian businesses but threatens the livelihoods of millions of Indian families, as in the case of distributors, causing massive income and social disparities.
    • This unequal access to capital creates leads to anti-competitive behaviour.

    Consider the question “What is predatory pricing? What are the issues created by predatory pricing?”

    Conclusion

    To be clear, this is not a Luddite argument against e-commerce or technological innovations. The issue is about illegal predatory pricing and abuse of pricing power by startups and big corporates through preferential access to easy foreign money.

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  • Opportunity for agri-reforms in Punjab

    Context

    It is no secret that Punjab, once the frontrunner of Indian agriculture, is struggling to retain its dynamism.

    Need to diversify

    • While Punjab ranked at the top of major Indian states in terms of per capita income during 1967-68 to 2002-03, it has slipped below the 13th position.
    • Punjab’s agricultural growth rate, at 5.7 per cent, was more than double the country’s average of 2.3 per cent during 1971-72 to 1985-86.
    • This has reversed between 2005 and 2019 with Punjab at 1.9 per cent and India at 3.7 per cent.
    • Agriculture least diversified state: With almost 85 per cent of the gross cropped area under wheat and rice, agriculture is least diversified in the state. 
    • Mandi transactions cost about 8.5 per cent of the MSP, the highest in the country, making Punjab wheat and rice less competitive.

    What explains low diversification in agriculture?

    • Policies: Guaranteed MSP for wheat and paddy, backed by assured procurement, free power and highly subsidised fertilisers, has disincentivised diversification.
    • Political economy: The political economy around wheat and rice is so intense that any effort to address its distortionary impact is met with fierce opposition by vested interest groups.

    How to recalibrate Punjab agriculture towards higher, sustainable growth?

    • Augment livestock and milk processing: While fruits and vegetables account for 7.4 per cent of the value of the output of agriculture and allied sectors, livestock accounts for 31.5 per cent and fisheries less than 1 per cent.
    • The state has the highest per capita availability of milk but it can process less than 20 per cent of it.
    •  Promoting mega parks for value addition in fruits and vegetables, milk, and other livestock products through medium and small enterprises will strengthen its competitiveness.
    • Strengthen market for seed potato: It is also a significant player in seed potato and with the right package of practices, traceability systems, and infrastructure, the market for Punjab seed potato can be strengthened.
    • Scaling up alternative marketing channel: Alternative marketing channels for fruits and vegetables such as direct marketing, contract farming, and exports have been in place but these models need to be scaled up with the right ecosystem.
    • Shift to demand-driven agriculture: Punjab needs to switch from supply-driven agriculture to demand-driven agriculture.
    • The demand for fisheries, poultry, dairy, and fruits and vegetables is increasing way faster than the demand for wheat and rice.
    • Rationalise mandi charges:  Rationalising mandi charges to not more than 3 per cent will attract private sector investments in building efficient value chains.
    • Rationalise subsidies: Time-bound incentives in the form of freight subsidies for exporters of high-value agri-produce, tax exemptions for the processing of perishable commodities for value chain players would be more rational than the overloaded subsidies of urea and free power.
    • Use technology and start-up revolution: Punjab should leverage the start-up revolution that is unfolding in India, and use technology to ensure optimal utilisation of resources, expand markets, and augment farmers’ income.
    • Geo-tagging of farms can address concerns related to long-term leasing of land that is critical for large-scale investments and enable vibrant agricultural land markets.
    • Innovations in supply chain management, be it automated grain silos or state-of-art herd management will not only optimise the use of resources but also bring in traceability of farms and animals, early monitoring and prevention of disease outbreaks, and contain value chain losses.

    How to manage financial resources?

    • Rationalise urea subsidy: It should rationalise its fertiliser subsidy regime by moving towards cash transfers on a per hectare basis and free up fertiliser prices.
    • Include urea in nutrient-based subsidy scheme: If that’s not possible, then urea should be included in the nutrient-based subsidy scheme.
    • Bring soluble fertiliser under subsidy: Bring soluble fertilisers under subsidy, which will enhance fertiliser use efficiency through fertigation.
    • This will also help reap environmental gains.
    • Rationalise food subsidy: Food subsidy can also be rationalised through direct cash transfers replacing PDS, as Punjab is a grain surplus state.

    Conclusion

    Both environmental and financial sustainability concerns related to business-as-usual farming in Punjab call for a rebooting strategy.

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  • Web 3.0: A vision for the future

    The concept of Web3, also called Web 3.0, used to describe a potential next phase of the internet, created quite a buzz in 2021.

    What is Web3?

    • The model, a decentralized internet to be run on blockchain technology, would be different from the versions in use, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.
    • In web3, users will have ownership stakes in platforms and applications unlike now where tech giants control the platforms.

    Previous versions of Web

    To understand web3, we should start with Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.

    [1] Web 1

    • Web 1.0 is the world wide web or the internet that was invented in 1989. It became popular from 1993.
    • The internet in the Web 1.0 days was mostly static web pages where users would go to a website and then read and interact with the static information.
    • Even though there were e-commerce websites in the initial days it was still a closed environment and the users themselves could not create any content or post reviews on the internet.
    • Web 1.0 lasted until 1999.

    [2] Web 2

    • Web 2.0 started in some form in the late 1990s itself though 2004 was when most of its features were fully available. It is still the age of Web 2.0 now.
    • The differentiating characteristic of Web 2.0 compared to Web 1.0 is that users can create content.
    • They can interact and contribute in the form of comments, registering likes, sharing and uploading their photos or videos and perform other such activities.
    • Primarily, a social media kind of interaction is the differentiating trait of Web 2.0.

    What are some of the concerns?

    • In Web 2.0, most of the data in the internet and the internet traffic are owned or handled by very few behemoth companies ex. Google.
    • This has created issues related to data privacy, data security and abuse of such data.
    • There is a sense of disappointment that the original purpose of the internet has been distorted.
    • It is in this context that the buzz around Web3 is significant.

    Dawn of Web3

    • Gavin Wood, founder of Ethereum, a block chain technology company, used the term Web3 first in 2014 and in the past few years many others have added to the idea of Web3.
    • In 2021, owing to the popularity of crypto-currency, more discussions happened on Web3.

    How will Web3 address the problems of data monopoly?

    Web3 will deliver decentralized and fair internet where users control their own data.

    • Currently if a seller has to make a business to the buyer, both the buyer and seller need to be registered on a “shop” or “platform” like Amazon or Ebay or any such e-commerce portal.
    • What this “platform” currently does is that it authenticates that the buyer and seller are genuine parties for the transaction.
    • Web3 would try to remove the role of the “platform”.
    • For the buyer to be authenticated, the usual proofs aided by block chain technology will be used. The same goes for the seller.

    How is blockchain technology used here?

    • With block chain, the time and place of the transaction are recorded permanently.
    • Thus, Web3 enables peer to peer (seller to buyer) transaction by eliminating the role of the intermediary. This concept can be extended to other transactions also.
    • Consider a social media application where you want to share pictures with your followers.
    • It could be a broadcast operation from you aided by blockchain and you don’t need social media accounts for all the participants to be able to perform this.

    Another key feature: Decentralized Autonomous Organization

    • The key concepts in Web3 seen so far are peer to peer transaction and block chain.
    • The spirit of Web3 is Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).
    • DAO is all about the business rules and governing rules in any transaction are transparently available for anyone to see and software will be written conforming to these rules.
    • Crypto-currency and block chain are technologies that follow the DAO principle.
    • With DAO, there is no need for a central authority to authenticate or validate.

    Will it take off?

    • We don’t know yet if Web3 will become the dominant mode of handling the internet but the questions it raises are relevant.
    • Web3 is in its very initial days and there is no consensus if it will take off like Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 did.
    • There is much skepticism from top tech brains in the industry and the academic community that Web3 does not solve the problems it purports to solve.

     

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  • Xeno-Transplantation and Related Issues

    Recently, the University Of Maryland School Of Medicine announced that it had successfully transplanted a genetically-modified pig heart into a patient with severe ailments.

    What is Xenotransplantation?

    • Xenotransplantation, or transplanting organs across different species, was first tried in humans in the 1980s.
    • The experiment was abandoned after the famous case of the American Baby Fae who was born with a congenital heart defect and received a baboon heart in 1984.
    • However, pig heart valves have been used for replacing damaged valves in humans for over 50 years now.
    • Nowadays, harvesting organs from genetically engineered pigs is seen as a viable alternative to meet organs shortage.

    How the pigs are genetically engineered?

    • The donor pig underwent 10 genetic modifications, by which the genes responsible for the rapid rejection of foreign organs by the human body were inactivated or knocked out.
    • Four pig genes were removed, and six human genes were added.
    • “GalSafe” pigs, or pigs that had undergone editing to knock out a gene that codes for Alpha-gal (a sugar molecule) were used.
    • Alpha-gal can elicit a devastating immune response in humans.
    • GalSafe pigs have been well studied, and are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in pharmacology.

    Why pursue xenotransplantation?

    • Modern scientific supporters of xenotransplantation argue that the potential benefits to society outweigh the risks, making pursuing xenotransplantation the moral choice.
    • None of the major religions object to the use of genetically modified pig organs for life-saving transplantation.

    A crucial case in India

    • Harvesting organs from genetically engineered pigs is seen as a viable alternative to meet organs shortage.
    • According to the health ministry, around 0.18 million people in India are estimated to suffer from renal failure every year, but only about 6,000 renal transplants are carried out in the country.
    • About 25,000-30,000 liver transplants are needed annually in India but only about 1,500 are being performed.
    • In the case of the heart, 50,000 people suffer from heart failure and are in need of a heart transplant.
    • Yet, only 10-15 heart transplants are carried out in India each year.

    Issues with Xenotransplantation

    Besides scientific challenges, there are several ethical challenges to overcome:

    • Animal rights: Many, including animal rights groups, strongly oppose killing animals to harvest their organs for human use.
    • Decreased life expectancy: In the 1960s, many organs came from the chimpanzees, and were transferred into people that were deathly ill, and in turn, did not live much longer afterwards.
    • Religious violations: Certain animals such as pork are strictly forbidden in Islam and many other religions.
    • Informed consent: Autonomy and informed consent are important when considering the future uses of xenotransplantation.
    • Threats of zoonosis: The safety of public health is a factor to be considered. We are already battling the biggest zoonotic disease threat.

     

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