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Dear students,
We have launched Mains 2020 Full-Length Test series, and are providing the first test of the series as open to all.
Details of the test
Subject: GS mains paper 1
Syllabus: Indian Heritage and Culture, History and Geography of the world, Society and Current Events
Mains FLTs 2020 is a personalised and Mentor guided comprehensive and intensive program for GS Mains papers.
There are 12 full length FLTs.
The focus is on making students understand the requirement of Mains Question, its elements, using information, and imparting answer writing skills for that.
The article analyses some trends in India’s population growth as found in the Sample Registration System Statistical Report (2018).
Context
There have been some encouraging trends in India’s population in the Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report (2018) and global population projections made by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), US.
Declining TFR
SRS report estimated the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), the number of children a mother would have at the current pattern of fertility during her lifetime, as 2.2 in the year 2018.
It is estimated that replacement TFR of 2.1 would soon be, if not already, reached for India as a whole.
As fertility declines, so does the population growth rate.
This report estimated the natural annual population growth rate to be 1.38 per cent in 2018.
A comparison of 2011 and 2018 SRS statistical reports shows that TFR declined from 2.4 to 2.2 during this period.
Fertility declined in all major states.
In 2011, 10 states had a fertility rate below the replacement rate. This increased to 14 states.
The annual natural population growth rate also declined from 1.47 to 1.38 per cent during this period.
So, when will India’s population stabilise
Duet to population momentum effect, a result of more people entering the reproductive age group of 15-49 years due to the past high-level of fertility, population stabilisation will take some time.
The UN Population Division has estimated that India’s population would possibly peak at 161 crore around 2061.
Recently, IHME estimated that it will peak at 160 crore in 2048.
Some of this momentum effect can be mitigated if young people delay childbearing and space their children.
Factors affecting fertility rates
Fertility largely depends upon social setting and programme strength.
Programme strength is indicated by the unmet need for contraception, which has several components.
The National Family Health Survey (2015-16) provides us estimates for the unmet need at 12.9 per cent and contraceptive prevalence of 53.5 per cent for India.
Female education is a key indicator for social setting, higher the female education level, lower the fertility.
As the literacy of women in the reproductive age group is improving rapidly, we can be sanguine about continued fertility reduction.
Declining sex ratio at birth: Cause for concerrn
The SRS reports show that sex ratio at birth in India, measured as the number of females per 1,000 males, declined marginally from 906 in 2011 to 899 in 2018.
Biologically normal sex ratio at birth is 950 females to 1,000 males.
The UNFPA State of World Population 2020 estimated the sex ratio at birth in India as 910, lower than all the countries in the world except China.
This is a cause for concern for following 2 reasons:
1) This adverse ratio results in a gross imbalance in the number of men and women.
2) Impact on marriage systems as well as other harms to women.
Increasing female education and economic prosperity help to improve the ratio.
It is hoped that a balanced sex ratio at birth could be realised over time, although this does not seem to be happening during the period 2011-18.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is an urgent need to reach young people both for reproductive health education and services as well as to cultivate gender equity norms. This could reduce the effect of population momentum and accelerate progress towards reaching a more normal sex-ratio at birth. India’s population future depends on it.
Back2Basics: Total Fertility Rate and Replacement rate
Total fertility rate (TFR) in simple terms refers to total number of children born or likely to be born to a woman in her life time if she were subject to the prevailing rate of age-specific fertility in the population.
TFR of about 2.1 children per woman is called Replacement-level fertility (UN, Population Division).
This value represents the average number of children a woman would need to have to reproduce herself by bearing a daughter who survives to childbearing age.
If replacement level fertility is sustained over a sufficiently long period, each generation will exactly replace itself without any need for the country to balance the population by international migration.
The article analyses the changing geopolitical context against the background of the pandemic. China has been facing some challenges at the UN of late. Multilateralism faces an unprecedented crisis. This context provides an opportunity for India to push for reforms in international institutions.
China facing difficulty in elections to UN bodies
Recently, India besting China in the elections for a seat on the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
Soon after the CSW vote, it lost another election, this time to tiny Samoa for a seat on the UN Statistical Commission.
And a couple of days ago, it just about managed to get elected to the UN High Rights Council, coming fourth out of five contestants for four vacancies.
Earlier, China’s candidate had lost to a Singaporean in the race for DG World Intellectual Property Organization.
China’s strengths
Taking advantage of its position as a member of the P-5 and as a huge aid giver, China made itself invincible in UN elections.
It won among others, the top positions at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Historical background on China’s rise at the UN
World War II saw strong U.S.-China collaboration against the Japanese, including U.S. operations conducted from India.
Their bilateral ties saw the U.S. include the Chinese in a group of the most important countries for ensuring world peace post- World War II, along with the U.S., the USSR and the U.K.
This enlarged into the P-5, with France being added by the UK at the San Francisco conference held in 1945 where the UN charter was finalised.
The pure multilateralism of the League of Nations was thus infused with a multipolarity, with the U.S. as the sheet anchor.
Challenges to multilateralism and the need for reform in the international institutions
Multilateralism is under stress due to COVID-19 pandemic and a certain disenchantment with globalisation.
At the root is the rise of China and its challenge to U.S. global hegemony.
But in the current scenario multilateralism backed by strong multipolarity in the need of the hour.
This demands institutional reform in the UN Security Council (UNSC) and at the Bretton Woods Institutions.
In this context, it is good that recently India, Germany, Japan and Brazil (G-4) have sought to refocus the UN on UNSC reform.
As proponents of reform, they must remain focused and determined even if these changes do not happen easily or come soon.
This is also the way forward for India which is not yet in the front row.
Way forward
Earlier in the year, India was elected as a non-permanent member of the UNSC for a two-year term.
India will also host the BRICS Summit next year and G-20 Summit in 2022.
These are openings for India in collaborating the world in critical areas that require global cooperation especially climate change, pandemics and counter-terrorism.
India also needs to invest in the UN with increased financial contributions in line with its share of the world economy and by placing its people in key multilateral positions.
Consider the question “The UN, which came into existence in different time fails to take into account the realities of the changing world. In light of this, examine the basis of India’s claim to a permanent seat at the UN. What are the challenges to India’s claim.”
Conclusion
Against the backdrop of pandemic and subsequent pushback against China at the UN, it is also an opportune moment for India and a Reformed Multilateralism.
India has the highest prevalence of wasted children under five years in the world, which reflects acute undernutrition, according to the Global Hunger Index 2020.
Note the parameters over which the GHI is based and their weightage composition.
Global Hunger Index (GHI)
The GHI has been brought out almost every year by Welthungerhilfe lately in partnerships with Concern Worldwide since 2000; this year’s report is the 14th one.
The reason for mapping hunger is to ensure that the world achieves “Zero Hunger by 2030” — one of the SDGs laid out by the UN.
A low score gets a country a higher ranking and implies better performance.
It is for this reason that GHI scores are not calculated for certain high-income countries.
Each country’s data are standardised on a 100-point scale and a final score is calculated after giving 33.33% weight each to components 1 and 4, and giving 16.66% weight each to components 2 and 3.
For each country in the list, the GHI looks at four indicators:
Undernourishment (which reflects inadequate food availability): calculated by the share of the population that is undernourished (that is, whose caloric intake is insufficient)
Child Wasting (which reflects acute undernutrition): calculated by the share of children under the age of five who are wasted (that is, those who have low weight for their height)
Child Stunting (which reflects chronic undernutrition): calculated by the share of children under the age of five who are stunted (that is, those who have low height for their age)
Child Mortality (which reflects both inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environment): calculated by the mortality rate of children under the age of five.
India’s performance this year
In the 2020 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 94th out of the 107 countries with sufficient data to calculate 2020 GHI scores.
With a score of 27.2, India has a level of hunger that is serious.
The situation has worsened in the 2015-19 period, when the prevalence of child wasting was 17.3%, in comparison to 2010-14, when it was 15.1%.
India fares worst in child wasting (low weight for height, reflecting acute undernutrition) and child stunting (low height for age, reflecting chronic undernutrition), which together make up a third of the total score.
Useful comparative data
Overall, India ranks 94 out of 107 countries in the Index, lower than neighbours such as Bangladesh (75) and Pakistan (88).
In the region of the south, east and south-eastern Asia, the only countries which fare worse than India are Timor-Leste, Afghanistan and North Korea.
Russian President Mr Putin has proposed a one-year extension without conditions of the last major nuclear arms reduction accord, the New START Treaty between Russia and the U.S.
The New START, INF and the Open Skies …. Be clear about the differences of these treaties. For example- to check if their inception was during cold war era etc.
New START Treaty
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) pact limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers and is due to expire in 2021 unless renewed.
The treaty limits the US and Russia to a maximum of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, well below Cold War caps.
It was signed in 2010 by former US President Barack Obama and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
It is one of the key controls on superpower deployment of nuclear weapons.
If it falls, it will be the second nuclear weapons treaty to collapse under the leadership of US President Donald Trump.
In February, US withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), accusing Moscow of violating the agreement.
Russian Navy along with CSTO members has begun military exercises in the central waters of the Caspian Sea north of the Azerbaijani capital Baku.
Try this MCQ:
Q.The Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) sometimes seen in news is an alliance led by:
(a) Russia (b) USA (c) India (d) European Union
Collective Security Treaty Organization
CSTO is an intergovernmental military alliance that was signed on 15 May 1992.
In 1992, six post-Soviet states belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States—Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—signed the Collective Security Treaty
This is also referred to as the “Tashkent Pact” or “Tashkent Treaty”.
Three other post-Soviet states—Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Georgia—signed the next year and the treaty took effect in 1994.
Five years later, six of the nine—all but Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan—agreed to renew the treaty for five more years, and in 2002 those six agreed to create the CSTO as a military alliance.
India joins the UK in drive known as ‘Five Eyes’ group of nations, as a seventh member against encrypted social media messages.
Map the countries in ‘Five Eyes’ group of nations.
‘Five Eyes’ group of nations
The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The origins of the Five Eyes alliance can be traced back to the Atlantic Charter, which was issued in August 1941 to lay out the Allied goals for the post-war world.
These countries are parties to the multilateral UK-USA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.
India is among seven countries to back a UK-led campaign against end-to-end encryption of messages by social media giants such as Facebook, which they say hinder law enforcement by blocking all access to them.
A formal expansion
The UK and India joined this group to ensure they do not blind themselves to illegal activity on their platforms, including child abuse images.
This marks an expansion of the so-called “Five Eyes” group of nations, a global alliance on intelligence issues, to include India and Japan.
For a common cause
All members claim that end-to-end encryption policies such as those employed by the social media giant erode the public’s safety online.
They have made it clear that when end-to-end encryption is applied with no access to content, it severely undermines the ability of companies to take action against illegal activity on their own platforms.
It also prevents law enforcement investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes being committed on these services such as online child sexual abuse, grooming and terrorist content.
Back2Basics: End-to-end encryption
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a system of communication where only communicating users can read the messages.
It is regarded as the most secure way to communicate privately and securely online.
By encrypting messages at both ends of a conversation, end-to-end encryption prevents anyone in the middle from reading private communications.
In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers, Internet providers, and even the provider of the communication service – from being able to access the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt the conversation.
The Mumbai police last week began “chapter proceedings” against the Editor-in-Chief of a news channel.
Can you relate the philosophy behind chapter proceedings and preventive detention?
What exactly are “chapter proceedings”?
Chapter proceedings are preventive actions taken by the police if they fear that a particular person is likely to create trouble and disrupt the peace in society.
These proceedings are unlike punitive action taken in case of an FIR with an intention to punish.
Here, the police can issue notices under sections of the Code of Criminal Procedure to ensure that the person is aware that creating nuisance could result in action against him.
What are the sections using which these notices are served?
Generally, a notice is issued to a person under section 111 of the CrPC whereby he is asked to present himself before the Executive Magistrate – an ACP-rank officer in a Commissionerate of a Dy. the collector in rural areas – who has issued the notice.
The person has to explain why he should not be made to sign a bond of good behaviour.
If the Executive Magistrate is not satisfied with the answer, the person is asked to sign a bond of good behaviour and produce sureties vouching for his/her good behaviour.
A fine amount is also decided – in accordance with the crime and the person’s financial capability – which the person would have to pay if he violates the conditions set in the bond.
Legal immunities against such proceedings
On receiving the notice under section 111, a person can appeal the notice before the courts.
In fact, in the past, courts have come down strongly against chapter proceedings in some cases.
The Central government has notified the Director-General of Shipping as the national authority for recycling of ships under the Recycling of Ships Act, 2019.
The ‘Hong Kong Convention’ is the odd man out here. Read more about the convention at:
The national authority of ship recycling will be set up in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.
The location of the office will benefit the ship recycling yard owners situated in Alang, Gujarat which is home to the largest ship recycling industry in the world.
DG Shipping is authorized to administer, supervise and monitor all activities relating to ship recycling in the country.
DG Shipping will oversee the sustainable development of the ship recycling industry, monitoring the compliance to environment-friendly norms and safety and health measures for the stakeholders.
DG Shipping will be the final authority for the various approvals required by the ship-recycling yard owners and state governments.
Recycling of Ships Act, 2019
Under the Ship Recycling Act, 2019, India has acceded to the ‘Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships’.
This was adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
DG Shipping is a representative of India in the IMO and all the conventions of IMO are being enforced by DG Shipping.
The CRISPR-Cas9 system has revolutionized genetic manipulations and made gene editing simpler, faster and easily accessible to most laboratories.
To its recognition, this year, the French-American duo Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna have been awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for chemistry for CRISPR.
Gene editing using CRISPR technology
The CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, developed in the year 2012
CRISPR has made gene editing very easy and simple, and at the same time extremely efficient.
The technology works in a simple way — it locates the specific area in the genetic sequence which has been diagnosed to be the cause of the problem, cuts it out, and replaces it with a new and correct sequence that no longer causes the problem.
The technology replicates a natural defence mechanism in some bacteria that use a similar method to protect it from virus attacks.
Working of CRISPR
An RNA molecule is programmed to locate the particular problematic sequence on the DNA strand.
A special protein called Cas9, often described in popular literature as ‘genetic scissor’, is used to break and remove the problematic sequence.
A DNA strand, when broken, has a natural tendency to repair itself. But the auto-repair mechanism can lead to the re-growth of a problematic sequence.
Scientists intervene during this auto-repair process by supplying the desired sequence of genetic codes, which replaces the original sequence.
It is like cutting a portion of a long zipper somewhere in between and replacing that portion with a fresh segment.
Because the entire process is programmable, it has remarkable efficiency and has already brought almost miraculous results.
A promising technology for the future: With many Applications
The gene-editing technology has opened up a vast window of opportunity.
Human health: In the last six years, the tool has enabled scientists to edit human DNA in a dish and early-stage clinical trials are being attempted to use the tool to treat a few diseases, including inherited disorders/diseases and some types of cancer.
Agricultural productivity: The tool is being extensively used in agriculture. It is being tried out in agriculture primarily to increase plant yield, quality, disease resistance, herbicide resistance and domestication of wild species.
How safe is CRISPR?
Last year, a study by Stanford University, U.S., found that the CRISPR-Cas9 system introduces unexpected off-target (outside of the intended editing sites) effects in mice.
There is a growing fear that the CRISPR system is being prematurely rushed for clinical use lingers.
Some researchers have highlighted that CRISPR-Cas9-edited cells might trigger cancer.
Another study found that both the mouse and the human gene-edited cells suffered from large DNA deletions far from the intended editing sites.
Issues with CRISPR
The many potential applications of CRISPR technology raise questions about the ethical merits and consequences of tampering with genomes.
1) Ecological dis-equilibrium: An introduced trait could spread beyond the target population to other organisms through crossbreeding. Gene drives could also reduce the genetic diversity of the target population. There is a danger that CRISPR’s affordability and efficiency could run roughshod over long‐standing and valid concerns about the generation and release of GMOs.
2)Threats to species: There is another, potentially much more dangerous and controversial, application of CRISPR, namely to potentially eradicate disease by eradicating disease vectors and invasive species. Such methods could effectively destroy an entire species and could have significant environmental consequences.
3) Germline editing concerns: Making genetic modifications to human embryos and reproductive cells such as sperm and eggs is known as germline editing. Since changes to these cells can be passed on to subsequent generations, using CRISPR technology to make germline edits has raised a number of ethical concerns.
4)Biosafety concerns: It is not unreasonable to think that, in the wrong hands, CRISPR could be used to make dangerous pathogens even more potent. There exist some concerns about the accidental or deliberate release of GE microorganisms or viruses into the environment.
5) Regulatory bypass: Editing the genomes of crops and trees is not new, and debates over the pros and cons of genetically modified (GM) plants have gone on for decades. What makes CRISPR different from other methods of agricultural genetic engineering is that it no longer requires the insertion of foreign DNA into the plant. Hence traditional GM crops/organisms would no longer classify as transgenic.
Ethical concerns
In November 2018, a Chinese researcher in Shenzen created an international sensation with his claim that he had altered the genes of a human embryo that eventually resulted in the birth of twin baby girls.
This was the first documented case of a ‘designer babies’ being produced using the new gene-editing tools like CRISPR.
1) Safety
Due to the possibility of off-target effects (edits in the wrong place) and mosaicism (when some cells carry the edit but others do not), safety is of primary concern.
2) Informed Consent
Some people worry that it is impossible to obtain informed consent for germline therapy because the patients affected by the edits are the embryo and future generations. Bioethicists also worry about the possibility of obtaining truly informed consent from prospective parents as long as the risks of germline therapy are unknown.
3) Justice and Equity
As with many new technologies, there is concern that genome editing will only be accessible to the wealthy and will increase existing disparities in access to health care and other interventions. Some worry that taken to its extreme, germline editing could create classes of individuals defined by the quality of their engineered genome.
Regulation in India
In India, several rules, guidelines, and policies are notified under the Environment Protection Act, 1986 to regulate genetically modified organisms.
The above Act and the National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research involving human participants, 2017, by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and the Biomedical and Health Research Regulation Bill implies regulation of the gene-editing process.
This is especially so in the usage of its language “modification, deletion or removal of parts of heritable material”.
However, there is no explicit mention of the term gene editing.
Way forward
CRISPR technology continues to mature, and existing systems are being engineered to contain innovative capabilities.
The potential benefits of such revolutionary tools are endless. Currently, this is difficult because many international laws discourage or ban such research and/or inhibit its funding for certain types of investigation.
Thus, wide spread and reliable data about benefits and risks are unavailable.
Going forward, many support establishing an organization that will decide how best to address the aforementioned ethical complexities.
Many countries have advocated for the development of an international and interdisciplinary “global observatory for gene editing.”
However we must not forget that the risk cannot be justified by the potential benefit.
Conclusion
Genetic ‘determinism’ holds that the DNA sequence is the prime cause of all human traits, normal and abnormal (health and disease). We should do away with this idea, very first.
It will take years before the CRISPR system is ready for prime time and clinical use.
An important issue in its research is that benefits must be greater than risks. Here greater attention needs to be placed on risks, since they may damage living beings or the environment.
Concerning its regulation, it is time for our policymakers to come up with a specific law or put out guidelines for conducting gene-editing research giving rise to modified organisms.
The principle of solidarity and consideration of the public good deserve far greater consideration in making sure that these rapid advances become shared benefits for all. This should be our ultimate goal.
