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  • Major seismic hazard along Assam faultline

    Explained | Enviro & Biodiversity | Mains Paper 1: Geographical Features & Their Location

    Location of epicentre

    • An earthquake of magnitude 6.4 on the Richter scale hit Assam around 8 am on Wednesday.
    • The primary earthquake had its epicentre at latitude 26.690 N and longitude 92.360 E, about 80 km northeast of Guwahati, and a focal depth of 17 km, the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) said.

    The faultline

    • The preliminary analysis shows that the events are located near to Kopili Fault closer to Himalayan Frontal Thrust (HFT).
    • The Kopili Fault is a 300-km northwest-southeast trending fault from the Bhutan Himalaya to the Burmese arc.
    • The fault is a fracture along which the blocks of crust on either side have moved relative to one another parallel to the fracture.
    • The area is seismically very active falling in the highest Seismic Hazard zone V associated with collisional tectonics where Indian plate sub-ducts beneath the Eurasian Plate the NCS report said.
    • HFT, also known as the Main Frontal Thrust (MFT), is a geological fault along the boundary of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates.

    Need for earthquake preparedness

    • The Northeast is located in the highest seismological zone, so we must have constant earthquake preparedness at all levels.
    • Continuous tectonic stress keeps building up particularly along the faultlines.
    • Today’s earthquake was an instance of accumulated stress release — probably, stress was constrained for a fairly long time at this epicentre, and hence the release was of relatively higher intensity.

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  • Making social welfare universal

    | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Government Scheme/Policies,Schemes For Vulnerable Sections

    The article highlights the need for universal social protection scheme in India and suggests a way to achieve it.

    Need for universal social security

    • The pandemic has revealed that leveraging our existing schemes and providing universal social security is of utmost importance.
    • This will help absorb the impact of external shocks on our vulnerable populations.
    • The country has over 500 direct benefit transfer schemes for which various Central, State, and Line departments are responsible.
    • However, these schemes have not reached those in need.

    Lessons from Poor Law System in Ireland

    • An example of a universal social protection scheme is the Poor Law System in Ireland.
    • In the 19th century, to deal with poverty and famine, Ireland introduced the Poor Law System to provide relief that was financed by local property taxes.
    • These laws were notable for not only providing timely assistance but maintaining the dignity and respectability of the poor while doing so.
    • They were not designed as hand-outs but as necessary responses to a time of economic crisis.
    • Today, the social welfare system in Ireland has evolved into a four-fold apparatus that promises social insurance, social assistance, universal schemes, and extra benefits/supplements.

    Issues with the existing social protection schemes in Inda

    • Existing schemes in India cover a wide variety of social protections.
    • However, they are fractionalised across various departments and sub-schemes.
    • This causes problems beginning with data collection to last-mile delivery.

    How universal system would help

    • Having a universal system would improve the ease of application by consolidating the data of all eligible beneficiaries under one database.
    • It can also reduce exclusion errors.
    • The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) is one scheme that can be strengthened into universal social security.
    • It already consolidates the public distribution system (PDS), the provision of gas cylinders, and wages for the MGNREGS.
    • Generally, social assistance schemes are provided on the basis of an assessment of needs.
    • Having a universal scheme would take away this access/exclusion barrier.
    • For example, PDS can be linked to a universal identification card such as the Aadhaar or voter card, in the absence of a ration card.
    • This would allow anyone who is in need of foodgrains to access these schemes.
    • It would be especially useful for migrant populations.
    • Making other schemes/welfare provisions like education, maternity benefits, disability benefits etc. also universal would ensure a better standard of living for the people.
    • To ensure some of these issues are addressed, we need to map the State and Central schemes in a consolidated manner.
    • This is to avoid duplication, inclusion and exclusion errors in welfare delivery.
    • The implementation of any of these ideas is only possible through a focus on data digitisation, data-driven decision-making and collaboration across government departments.

    Consider the question “What are the issues with existing social security schemes in India? What would be the benefits of replacing all these social security schemes with universal social security scheme?”

    Conclusion

    India is one of the largest welfare states in the world and yet, with COVID-19 striking in 2020, the state failed to provide for its most vulnerable citizens. This underlines the need for a universal social protection scheme in India.

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  • The Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) formally launched

    | International Relations | Mains Paper 2: Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and agreements involving India

    Tackling the supply chain disruption through SCRI

    • The Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) was formally launched on Tuesday by the Trade Ministers of India, Japan and Australia.
    • The three sides agreed that the pandemic revealed supply chain vulnerabilities globally and in the region and noted the importance of risk management and continuity plans in order to avoid supply chain disruptions.
    • Some of the joint measures they are considering include supporting the enhanced utilisation of digital technology and trade and investment diversification, which is seen as being aimed at reducing their reliance on China.

    How China reacted

    • China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday described the move as ‘unrealistic’.
    • The formation and development of global industrial and supply chains are determined by market forces and companies choices, it said.
    • It also said that the artificial industrial ‘transfer’ is an unrealistic approach that goes against the economic laws and can neither solve domestic problems nor do anything good to the stability of the global industrial and supply chains, or to the stable recovery of the world economy.

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  • Air Pollution

    Limited sops make scrappage policy for vehicles unattractive

    | Enviro & Biodiversity | Mains Paper 3: Conservation, Environmental Pollution & Degradation, Eia

    Why the Vehicle Scrappage Policy is unattractive

    • The policy proposes to de-register vehicles that fail fitness tests or are unable to renew registrations after 15-20 years of use.
    • Limited incentives and poor cost economics for trucks in the Vehicle Scrappage Policy, coupled with lack of addressable volumes for other segments is unlikely to drive freight transporters to replace their old vehicles with new ones, said a Crisil report.
    • Though the scrappage volume of buses, PVs and two-wheelers is expected to be limited as well, the policy’s impact on new commercial vehicle (CV) sales could be sizeable, based on addressable volume, ratings agency Crisil Research said in its report.
    • The potential benefit from scrapping a 15-year-old, entry-level small car will be ₹70,000, whereas its resale value is around ₹95,000. That makes scrapping unattractive, Crisil said in the report.

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  • Antibiotics Resistance

    Antimicrobial resistance

    op-ed snap | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Health & Education

    The article highlights the challenges posed by anti-microbial resistance (AMR) and suggests ways to deal with it.

    Understanding the severity of challenges posed by AMR

    • Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the phenomenon by which bacteria and fungi evolve and become resistant to presently available medical treatment.
    • AMR represents an existential threat to modern medicine.
    • Without functional antimicrobials to treat bacterial and fungal infections, even the most common surgical procedures, as well as cancer chemotherapy, will become fraught with risk from untreatable infections.
    • Neonatal and maternal mortality will increase.

    How AMR will affect low and middle-income countries

    • All these effects will be felt globally, but the scenario in the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) of Asia and Africa is even more serious.
    • LMICs have significantly driven down mortality using cheap and easily available antimicrobials.
    • In the absence of new therapies, health systems in these countries are at severe risk of being overrun by untreatable infectious diseases.

    Factors contributing to AMR

    • Drug resistance in microbes emerges for several reasons.
    • These include the misuse of antimicrobials in medicine, inappropriate use in agriculture, and contamination around pharmaceutical manufacturing sites where untreated waste releases large amounts of active antimicrobials into the environment.

    Stagnant antibiotics discovery

    •  The Challenge of AMR is compounded by fact that no new classes of antibiotics have made it to the market in the last three decades.
    • This has happened on account of inadequate incentives for their development and production.
    • A recent report from the non-profit PEW Trusts found that over 95% of antibiotics in development today are from small companies, 75% of which have no products currently in the market.
    • Major pharmaceutical companies have largely abandoned innovation in this space.

    Measures to deal with the challenge of AMR

    •  In addition to developing new antimicrobials, infection-control measures can reduce antibiotic use.
    • A mix of incentives and sanctions would encourage appropriate clinical use.
    • To track the spread of resistance in microbes, surveillance measures to identify these organisms need to expand beyond hospitals and encompass livestock, wastewater and farm run-offs.
    • Finally, since microbes will inevitably continue to evolve and become resistant even to new antimicrobials, we need sustained investments and global coordination to detect and combat new resistant strains on an ongoing basis.

    Way forward

    •  A multi-sectoral $1 billion AMR Action Fund was launched in 2020 to support the development of new antibiotics.
    • The U.K. is trialling a subscription-based model for paying for new antimicrobials towards ensuring their commercial viability.
    • Other initiatives focused on the appropriate use of antibiotics include Peru’s efforts on patient education to reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions.
    • Australian regulatory reforms to influence prescriber behaviour, and initiatives to increase the use of point-of-care diagnostics, such as the EU-supported VALUE-Dx programme.
    • Denmark’s reforms to prevent the use of antibiotics in livestock have led to a significant reduction in the prevalence of resistant microbes in animals and improved the efficiency of farming.
    • Finally, given the critical role of manufacturing and environmental contamination in spreading AMR there is a need to curb the amount of active antibiotics released in pharmaceutical waste.
    • Regulating clinician prescription of antimicrobials alone would do little in settings where patient demand is high and antimicrobials are freely available over-the-counter in practice, as is the case in many LMICs.
    • Efforts to control prescription through provider incentives should be accompanied by efforts to educate consumers to reduce inappropriate demand, issue standard treatment guidelines.
    • Solutions in clinical medicine must be integrated with improved surveillance of AMR in agriculture, animal health and the environment.
    • AMR must no longer be the remit solely of the health sector, but needs engagement from a wide range of stakeholders, representing agriculture, trade and the environment with solutions that balance their often-competing interests.
    •  International alignment and coordination are paramount in both policymaking and its implementation.

    Consider the question “Anti-microbial resistance (AMR) represents an existential threat to modern medicine. What are the factors contributing to AMR? Suggest the measures to deal with it.”

    Conclusion

    With viral diseases such as COVID-19, outbreaks and pandemics may be harder to predict; however, given what we know about the “silent pandemic” that is AMR, there is no excuse for delaying action.

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  • Delhi Full Statehood Issue

    Centre notifies GNCT Act that gives more powers to Delhi L-G

    op-ed snap | Polity | Mains Paper 2: Executive & Judiciary,Governance, Transparency & Accountability, Citizens Charters

    GNCT Act comes into effect

    • The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a gazette notification stating that the provisions of the Government of National Capital Territory (GNCT) of Delhi (Amendment) Act, 2021, would be deemed to have come into effect from April 27.
    • The Act defines the responsibilities of the elected government and the L-G along with the “constitutional scheme of governance of the NCT” interpreted by the Supreme Court in recent judgements regarding the division of powers between the two entities.

    What the Amendment seeks to achieve

    • The Act will clarify the expression Government and address ambiguities in legislative provisions.
    • It will also seek to ensure that the L-G is “necessarily granted an opportunity” to exercise powers entrusted to him under proviso to clause (4) of Article 239AA of the Constitution.
    • Clause (4) of Article 239AA provides for a Council of Ministers headed by a Chief Minister for the NCT to “aid and advise the Lieutenant Governor” in the exercise of his functions for matters in which the Legislative Assembly has the power to make laws.
    • Now Act will also provide for rules made by the Legislative Assembly of Delhi to be “consistent with the rules of the House of the People” or the Lok Sabha.

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  • Renewable Energy – Wind, Tidal, Geothermal, etc.

    Clean energy innovation slowing, report warns

    | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways Etc.

    Major findings of the report

    • It is a joint report titled “Patents and the energy transition” released by the European Patent Office and the International Energy Agency.
    • The average annual growth rate of patents for low carbon emissions technologies has fallen to 3.3 percent since 2017, the rate was 12.5 percent in the period 2000-2013.
    • The report found that around 35 percent of the cumulative CO2 emissions reductions needed to shift to a sustainable path to reach net-zero emissions by 2070 are still currently at the prototype or demonstration phase.
    • The report found that energy efficiency and fuel-switching technologies remained at the top of patent activities, accounting for about 60 percent of the total.

    Shifting trend withing renewable

    • Patent activity in renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar has been in decline for nearly a decade however, and represented just 17 percent of the total in 2019, report found.
    • The key driver of patent growth since 2017 has been innovation in cross-cutting technologies such as batteries, hydrogen and smart grids, along with carbon-capture, utilisation and storage.

    Source:

    https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/renewable/clean-energy-innovation-slowing-report-warns/82270391

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  • Intellectual Property Rights in India

    How IPR served as barrier to the right to access healthcare

    op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Intellectual Property Rights

    Request for waiver

    •  Last year, India and South Africa requested WTO for a temporary suspension of rules under the 1995 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
    • A waiver was sought to the extent that the protections offered by TRIPS impinged on the containment and treatment of COVID-19. 
    • The request for a waiver has, since, found support from more than 100 nations.
    • But a small group of states — the U.S., the European Union, the U.K. and Canada among them — continues to block the move.
    • These countries have already secured the majority of available vaccines.
    • But for the rest of the world mass immunisation is a distant dream.

    Grounds on which patent laws are justified

    • Patent laws are usually justified on three distinct grounds:
    • On the idea that people have something of a natural and moral right to claim control over their inventions.
    • On the utilitarian premise that exclusive licenses promote invention and therefore benefit society as a whole.
    • On the belief that individuals must be allowed to benefit from the fruits of their labour and merit.
    • These justifications have long been a matter of contest, especially in the application of claims of monopoly over pharmaceutical drugs and technologies.

    Patent laws in India

    • In 1959, a committee chaired by Justice N. Rajagopala Ayyangar objected to monopolies on pharmaceutical drugs through colonial-era patent law.
    • The committee found that foreign corporations used patents to suppress competition from Indian entities, and thus, medicines were priced at exorbitant rates.
    • The committee suggested, and Parliament put this into law through the Patents Act, 1970, that monopolies over pharmaceutical drugs be altogether removed, with protections offered only over claims to processes.
    • This change in rule allowed generic manufacturers in India to grow. 

    How TRIPS goes against the interest of developing countries

    • WTO has into its constitution a binding set of rules governing intellectual property.
    • Countries that fail to subscribe to the common laws prescribed by the WTO would be barred from entry into the global trading circuit.
    • It was believed that a threat of sanctions, to be enforced through a dispute resolution mechanism, would dissuade states from reneging on their promises.
    • With the advent in 1995 of the TRIPS agreement, this belief proved true.
    • The faults in this new world order became apparent when drugs that reduced AIDS deaths in developed nations were placed out of reach for the rest of the world.
    • It was only when Indian companies began to manufacture generic versions of these medicines as TRIPS hadn’t yet kicked in against India, that the prices came down.

     Argument in support of the patent regime

    • Two common arguments are made in response to objections against the prevailing patent regime.
    • One, that unless corporations are rewarded for their inventions, they would be unable to recoup amounts invested by them in research and development.
    • Two, without the right to monopolise production there will be no incentive to innovate.

    Issues with the argument in support of patent regime

    • Big pharma has never been forthright about the quantum of monies funnelled by it into research and development.
    • Moderna vaccine in the U.S. emanated out of basic research conducted by the National Institutes of Health, a federal government agency, and other publicly funded universities and organisations. 
    • Similarly, public money accounted for more than 97% of the funding towards the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
    •  Therefore, the claim that the removal of patents would somehow invade on a company’s ability to recoup costs is simply untrue.
    • The second objection — the idea that patents are the only means available to promote innovation — has become something of a dogma.
    • The economist Joseph Stiglitz is one of many who has proposed a prize fund for medical research in place of patents.

    Consider the question “What are the issues with the patent regime under the TRIPS in the field of medicine?”

    Conclusion

    We cannot continue to persist with rules granting monopolies which place the right to access basic healthcare in a position of constant peril. In its present form, the TRIPS regime represents nothing but a new form of “feudal calculus”.

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  • Zoonotic Diseases: Medical Sciences Involved & Preventive Measures

    Understanding the Ct value in a Covid-19 test

    ExplainedPrelims Only | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Awareness in various sc and tech fields

    Recently, the Maharashtra government sought clarity from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on the threshold Ct value to treat a person Covid-negative.

    What is Ct value

    • Short for cycle threshold, Ct is a value that emerges during RT-PCR tests.
    • In an RT-PCR test, RNA is extracted from the swab collected from the patient.
    • It is then converted into DNA, which is then amplified.
    • Amplification refers to the process of creating multiple copies of the genetic material — in this case, DNA.
    • Amplification takes place through a series of cycles — one copy becomes two, two becomes four, and so on.
    • Put simply, the Ct value refers to the number of cycles after which the virus can be detected.
    • The lower the Ct value, the higher the viral load — because the virus has been spotted after fewer cycles.

    Why Ct value is important

    • According to the ICMR, a patient is considered Covid-positive if the Ct value is below 35.
    • If the benchmark were to be lowered to 24 — the value mentioned in Maharashtra’s letter — it would mean that Ct values in the range 25-34 would not be considered positive.
    • A benchmark of 35, therefore, means that more patients would be considered positive than we would get if the benchmark were 24.
    • The ICMR has said lowering Ct threshold parameter may lead to missing several infectious persons.

    Does Ct score indicate the severity of disease

    • A small study published in the Indian Journal of Medical Microbiology in January this year found that there was no correlation between Ct values and severity of disease or mortality in patients with Covid-19 disease.
    • It found that the time since the onset of symptoms has a stronger relationship with Ct values as compared to the severity of the disease.
    • The Ct value tells us about the viral load in the throat and not in the lungs.
    • The Ct value does not correlate with severity – only with infectivity.

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  • Judicial Reforms

    Need for diversity and propriety in judiciary

    op-ed snap | Polity | Mains Paper 2: Executive & Judiciary

    The article highlights the issue of women representation and its implications for the role of the judiciary.

    Improving representation of women

    • Presently, the Supreme Court is left with only one woman judge, who is also going to retire next year, after which, the SC will be left without a woman judge.
    • The collegium failed to take timely steps to elevate more women judges in the SC.
    • In the 71 years of history of the SC, there have been only eight women judges — the first was Justice Fathima Beevi, who was elevated to the bench after a long gap of 39 years from the date of establishment of the SC.
    • In the submissions filed by the AG on the issue states that improving the representation of women in the judiciary could go a long way towards attaining a more balanced and empathetic approach in cases involving sexual violence.
    • The AG also brought up the fact that there has never been a woman Chief Justice of India (CJI).

    Women representation in developed countries

    • The situation is not any different in developed countries such as the US, UK, Ireland, France and China.
    • According to the data collected by Smashboard, a New Delhi and Paris-based NGO, not only has no woman ever been appointed as the CJI, the representation of women across different courts and judicial bodies is also abysmally low.

    Way forward

    • In the last few meetings of the collegium, there has been some talk of promoting women to the apex court.
    • In this regard, if Justice B V Nagaratha of the Karnataka High Court is elevated to the Supreme Court, she could become the first woman CJI in February 2027.
    • But her elevation will lead to the supersession of 32 senior judges.
    •  Supersession itself is perceived as a threat to an independent judiciary
    • Seniority combined with merit is the sacrosanct criteria for promotion in the judiciary.
    • New CJI should secure the trust of members of his collegium to fill the backlog of 411 vacancies across high courts and six vacancies in the SC.

    Consider the question “What are the various structural issues faced by the judiciary in India? Suggest the measures to deal with them.”

    Conclusion

    A greater number of women in the Supreme Court would eventually lead to a woman CJI. This would be a gratifying change, which may mark the beginning of a new era of judicial appointments.

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