Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Mucormycosis
Mains level: Post covid hazards
Hospitals across the country have started to report a number of cases of Mucormycosis, an invasive fungal infection affecting patients who have recently recovered from COVID-19.
What is Mucormycosis?
- Mucormycosis is an aggressive and invasive fungal infection caused by a group of moulds called micromycetes.
- It can affect various organs but is currently manifesting as invasive rhino-orbito-cerebral disease, crawling through the sinus and working its way to the brain, affecting the ear, nose, throat, and mouth.
- While it is not contagious, it can cause a lot of damage internally and can be fatal if not detected early.
- It is an old disease; perhaps new and concerning is the sudden increase in the invasive form of the sinus variant, which involves the orbit, and at times the brain, leading to blindness, stroke or death.
What causes the disease?
- Diabetes mellitus is the most common underlying cause, followed by haematological malignancies and solid-organ transplants.
- Diabetes mellitus was reported in 54% to 76% of cases, according to a report.
- What seems to be triggering Mucormycosis in patients post COVID-19 is indiscriminate use of a high dose of steroids in COVID-19 patients, sometimes even in minimally symptomatic patients.
- This leads to spikes in the sugar level among diabetics, which, in turn, renders them vulnerable.
Symptoms
- The symptoms to watch out for are a stuffy nose, bloody, blackish, or brown discharge from the nose etc.
- Other symptoms include blackish discolouration of the skin, swelling or numbness around the cheek, one-sided facial pain, toothache or jaw pain, drooping of the eyelids or eyelid swelling, double vision, redness of eyes, and sudden decrease in vision.
Treatment
- The mainline of treatment is an anti-fungal drug called amphotericin B, which is given over an extended period of time under the strict observation of a physician.
- Rational use of steroids is necessary, and constant monitoring of sugar levels and resorting to insulin use to control these levels if required is essential.
- Surgery to remove the fungus growth might also be warranted.
Preventive measures
- It is important to keep blood sugar levels under control and ensure that appropriate calibration of oral drugs or insulin is done from time to time.
- Further, recognising the symptoms and seeking treatment early if there are two or three symptoms at a time is key.
- Like most illnesses, if detected early, Mucormycosis can be cured.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: 2DG
Mains level: COVID-19 Treatment
Defence Minister has released the first batch of the indigenously developed anti-Covid-19 drug, 2-deoxy-D-glucose or ‘2-DG’.
What is the news?
- The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) had cleared the formulation on May 1 for emergency use as an adjunct therapy in moderate to severe Covid-19 patients.
What is 2-DG?
- 2-DG has been developed by the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), New Delhi, a lab of the DRDO in collaboration with Hyderabad-based pharma company Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL).
- The 2-DG anti-Covid drug is expected to reduce dependence on medical oxygen in Covid-19 infected patients.
- The pseudo glucose molecule in the drug stops the virus in the tracts.
- Hence, it has been prescribed for Coronavirus infected patients requiring critical medical oxygen.
How does it work?
- Clinical trial data show that the molecule helps in faster recovery of patients hospitalized with Covid-19, and reduces their dependence on supplemental oxygen.
- The drug accumulates in virus-infected cells, and prevents the growth of the virus by stopping viral synthesis and energy production.
- Its selective accumulation in virally-infected cells makes this drug unique.
Advantages
- 2-DG being a generic molecule and an analogue of glucose, it can be easily produced and made available in large quantities.
- The drug is available in powder form in a sachet, and can be taken orally after dissolving in water.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Disproportionate burden of pandemic on women
The article highlights the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women and suggests measures to soften the impact.
Widening gender employment gap
- Even prior to 2020, the gender employment gap was large.
- Only 18% of working-age women were employed as compared to 75% of men.
- Reasons include a lack of good jobs, restrictive social norms, and the burden of household work.
- The nationwide lockdown hit women much harder than men.
- Data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Ltd. show that 61% of male workers were unaffected during the lockdown while only 19% of women experienced this kind of security.
- Men who did lose work were able to regain it, even if it was at the cost of increased precarity or lower earnings, because they had the option of moving into fallback employment arrangements.
- Even as new entrants to the workforce, women workers had poorer options compared to men.
- Women were more likely to enter as daily wage workers while men found avenues for self-employment.
- So, not only did women enter into more precarious work, it was also likely to be at very low earnings compared to men.
Growing domestic work
- With schools closed and almost everyone limited to the confines of their homes, household responsibilities increased for women.
- The India Working Survey 2020 found that among employed men, the number of hours spent on paid work remained more or less unchanged after the pandemic.
- But for women, the number of hours spent in domestic work increased manifold.
- This increase in hours came without any accompanying relief in the hours spent on paid work.
Way forward
- The following measures are needed now:
- The National Employment Policy, currently in the works, should systematically address the constraints around the participation of the women’s workforce.
- Expansion of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the introduction of an urban employment guarantee targeted to women as soon as the most severe forms of mobility restrictions are lifted.
- There is a need for coordinated efforts by States to facilitate the employment of women while also addressing immediate needs through the setting up of community kitchens, the opening of schools and anganwadi centres, and engagement with self-help groups for the production of personal protective equipment kits.
- Further, a COVID-19 hardship allowance of at least ₹5,000 per month for six months should be announced for 2.5 million accredited social health activists and Anganwadi workers, most of whom are women.
- The pandemic has shown the necessity of adequate public investment in social infrastructure.
- The time is right to imagine a bold universal basic services programme that not only fills existing vacancies in the social sector but also expands public investments in health, education, child and elderly care, and so on, to be prepared for future shocks.
Consider the question “Examine the impact of the pandemic on women. Suggest the measures to mitigate the impact.”
Conclusion
As the country meets the challenge of the second wave of the pandemic, it is crucial to learn lessons from the first wave to chart the policy path ahead.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Inflation
Mains level: Paper 3- Role of RBI in taming inflation
The article highlights the need for the RBI to focus on inflation instead of pursuing elusive growth.
Is inflation at a level to be concerned about?
- Due to the devastation caused by the pandemic, MPC kept its stance to ‘look through’ the sustained rise in prices through much of last year.
- The release of the consumer-price inflation number for April 2021 (4.3%) might seem to validate their decision.
- But there are many reasons why the MPC should be concerned.
- To start with, the April print carries little validity since the base for comparison (April 2020) has been rubbished by RBI in the past on the grounds that it relates to the first month of the lockdown.
Inflation comes down but after causing devastation
- Through a combination of the base effect (high level of inflation in the previous comparable period), belated but inevitable monetary policy action and a fall in demand that more than offsets the disruption in supply, inflation will come down.
- However, before inflation comes down, it brings untold misery to the public at large.
- In a country where close to 20% of the population lives below the poverty line and food is a major item of their consumption basket, any rise in inflation, especially food inflation, hurts the poor disproportionately.
- Add to that the distress caused by job losses on account of the pandemic, and this time round, the pain is likely to be magnified many times over.
What is causing inflation?
- Monetary policy acts with long and indeterminate lags.
- Far from spurring credit offtake through low interest rates excess liquidity has spilled over into price pressures in India.
- Wholesale price inflation at 7.4% (March 2021) was the highest in 8 years, while it would be naïve to take any solace from the latest consumer price index number.
- The RBI needs to be appreciated for doing its bit to keep the wheels of our economy moving during the pandemic.
- However, its failure to shift gear in the face of mounting evidence of inflation cannot be neglected.
- When inflation was breaching the upper end of RBI’s target band for months on end, the message should have been clear.
US recovery and its impact on Indian economy
- Globally, commodity prices are already on the rise.
- Not without reason, it would seem, as borne out by 12 May’s inflation print of 4.2%, America’s highest in 12 years
- Part of the reason is the excessive easing of US monetary and fiscal policies.
- Rising US inflation has huge implications for countries like India that are at the receiving end of US policies.
- As the US economy recovers, the dollar strengthens and US interest rates rise, the rupee is bound to weaken in response, adding to inflationary pressures here.
Consider the question “What are the factors stoking inflation in the pandemic? How far the monetary policies pursued by the central bank is responsible for it?”
Conclusion
When the MPC meets next in early June, it must re-order its priorities. Instead of chasing elusive growth, it must revert to its swadharma, own dharma, and focus instead on inflation.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Tribunals
Mains level: Paper 2- Need for the National Tribunals Commissions
Context
- The Centre has abolished several appellate tribunals and authorities and transferred their jurisdiction to other existing judicial bodies through the Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Ordinance 2021.
Issues with the abolitions of tribunals
- The Ordinance has met with sharp criticism for not bypassing the usual legislative process.
- Several tribunals such as the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal were abolished without any stakeholder consultation.
- Despite the Supreme Court’s direction in Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank (2019), no judicial impact assessment was conducted prior to abolishing the tribunals through this Ordinance.
- While the Ordinance has incorporated the suggestions made in Madras Bar Association v. Union of India (2020) on the composition of a search-cum-selection committee.
- But it has disregarded the court’s direction in Madras Bar Association v. Union of India (2020) for fixing a five-year term.
No NCT constituted
- Further, the Centre is yet to constitute a National Tribunals Commission (NTC), an independent umbrella body to supervise the functioning of tribunals, appointment of and disciplinary proceedings against members, and to take care of administrative and infrastructural needs of the tribunals.
- The idea of an NTC was first mooted in L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India (1997).
- Developing an independent oversight body for accountable governance requires a legal framework that protects its independence and impartiality.
- Therefore, the NTC must be established vide a constitutional amendment or be backed by a statute that guarantees it functional, operational and financial independence.
- As the Finance Ministry has been vested with the responsibility for tribunals until the NTC is constituted, it should come up with a transition plan.
Advantages of NTC
- The NTC would ideally take on some duties relating to administration and oversight.
- It could set performance standards for the efficiency of tribunals and their own administrative processes.
- It could function as an independent recruitment body to develop and operationalise the procedure for disciplinary proceedings and appointment of tribunal members.
- Giving the NTC the authority to set members’ salaries, allowances, and other service conditions, subject to regulations, would help maintain tribunals’ independence.
Consider the question “What are the issues with Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Ordinance 2021? How the constitution of the National Tribunals Commission would help to improve the role played by tribunals?”
Conclusion
The way to reform the tribunal system is to look at solutions from a systemic perspective supported by evidence. Establishing the NTC will definitely entail a radical restructuring of the present tribunals system.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.
Mains level: Paper 2- Dealing with orphaned children
The article highlights the need to be aware of the legal provisions while helping a orphan child.
Helping orphaned children
- Social media is flooded with requests to adopt children who have lost their parents in the pandemic.
- However, before handing over an orphan child to any agency, family or person, it is important to be aware of the laws.
- If an orphan child is kept by someone without lawful authority, he or she may land themselves in trouble.
- According to the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956, the father, and in his absence the mother, is the natural guardian.
- Not even a close relative can look after the child without authorisation.
What are the options to help
- First option is any individual who finds an orphan child or even any child who needs care and protection under the circumstances, should immediately call the toll free Childline number 1098.
- It is an emergency phone outreach service managed by the Women and Child Development department’s nodal agency, the Childline India Foundation.
- The second option is to intimate the district protection officer concerned whose contact details can be found on the National Tracking System for Missing and Vulnerable Children portal.
- The third alternative is to approach the nearest police station or its child welfare police officer who is specially trained to exclusively deal with children.
- jOne can always dial the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) which is a pan-India single number (112) based emergency response system for citizens in emergencies and seek the necessary help.
- The non-reporting of such children is also a punishable offence under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 (JJA).
Procedure after a child reaches outreach agency
- Once an orphan child is recovered by the outreach agency, it is the duty of the said agency to produce the child within 24 hours before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) of the district.
- The CWC, after an inquiry, decides whether to send the child to a children’s home or a fit facility or fit person.
- If the child is below six years, he or she shall be placed in a specialised adoption agency.
- The State thus takes care of all such children who are in need of care and protection, till they turn 18 years.
- In Sampurna Behrua vs Union of India (2018), the Supreme Court of India directed States and Union Territories to ensure that all child care institutions are registered.
Procedure for adoption
- Once a child is declared legally free for adoption by the CWC, adoption can be done either by Indian prospective adoptive parents or non-resident Indians or foreigners, in that order.
- Another important feature of the JJA is that it is secular in nature and simple in procedure.
- While the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956 is religion specific but also relatively cumbersome in procedure.
- Second, the procedure of adoption is totally transparent and its progress can be monitored from the portal of the statutory body, the Central Adoption Resource Authority.
Directives to the police
- The Supreme Court in Bachpan Bachao Andolan vs Union of India directed all Directors General of Police, in May 2013, to register a first information report as a case of trafficking or abduction in every case of a missing child.
- At least one police officer not below the rank of assistant sub-inspector in each police station is mandatorily required to undergo training to deal with children in conflict with the law and in need of care and protection.
- They are not required to wear a uniform and need to be child-friendly.
- Similarly, each district is supposed to have its special juvenile police unit, headed by an officer not below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police.
- The Supreme Court in Re: Exploitation of children in Orphanages in the State of Tamil Nadu (2017) inter alia, specifically asked the National Police Academy, Hyderabad and police training academies in every State to prepare training courses on the JJA and provide regular training to police officers in terms of sensitisation.
- The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) recently wrote to the Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories on the issue of children orphaned due to COVID-19.
Conclusion
Following the Covid surge and subsequent increase in request for adoption of children, the laws and procedure for the protection of children must be noted.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Red-eared slider
Mains level: Paper 3- Native Indian turtles face threat from red-eared slider
About red-eared slider
- The red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) derives its name from red stripes around the part where its ears would be and from its ability to slide quickly off any surface into the water.
- Native to the U.S. and northern Mexico, this turtle is an extremely popular pet due to its small size, easy maintenance, and relatively low cost.
Reports about threat
- Between August 2018 and June 2019, a team of herpetologists from NGO Help Earth published the finding in ‘Reptiles & Amphibians’, journal of the U.S.-based International Reptile Conservation Foundation in August 2020.
- But the alarm was raised experts from Mizoram University’s Department of Zoology published another report in the same journal in April this year.
How is it a threat?
- They grow fast and virtually leaves nothing for the native species to eat.
- People who keep it as pets become sensitive about turtle conservation but endanger the local ecosystem, probably unknowingly, by releasing them in natural water bodies after they outgrow an aquarium, tank or pool at home.
- Much like the Burmese python that went to the U.S. as a pet to damage the South Florida Everglades ecosystem, the red-eared slider has already affected States such as Karnataka and Gujarat, where it has been found in 33 natural water bodies.
- Preventing this invasive species from overtaking the Brahmaputra and other river ecosystems in the Northeast is crucial because the Northeast is home to more than 72% of the turtle and tortoise species in the country, all of them very rare.
Way forward
- Although the red-eared slider is traded legally, the time has come for the government to come up with regulations against keeping invasive as pets.
- There is a need to create awareness among pet traders for maintaining a database of red-eared slider buyers.
- They can be contacted to hand over the turtles to the repository insulated from any wetland or natural water body.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Iron Dome
Mains level: Paper 3- Iron Dome rocket defence system
Context
- Amid the Israel-Palestine conflict, the night sky over Israel has been ablaze with interceptor missiles from Iron Dome shooting down the incoming rockets in the sky.
What is Iron Dome?
- Iron Dome is a multi-mission system capable of intercepting rockets, artillery, mortars and Precision Guided Munitions as well as aircraft, helicopters and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) over short ranges of up to 70 km.
- It is an all-weather system and can engage multiple targets simultaneously and can be deployed over land and sea.
- Iron Dome is jointly manufactured by Rafael Advanced Systems and has been in service with Israeli Air Force since 2011.
- The radar system was developed by Elta.
Working of Iron Dome
- An Iron Dome battery consists of a battle management control unit, a detection and tracking radar and a firing unit of three vertical launchers, with 20 interceptor missiles each.
- The interceptor missile uses a proximity fuse to detonate the target warhead in the air.
- One of the system’s important advantages is its ability to identify the anticipated point of impact of the threatening rocket, to calculate whether it will fall in a built-up area or not, and to decide on this basis whether or not to engage it.
- This prevents unnecessary interception of rockets that will fall in open areas and thus not cause damage, the paper states.
- The system has intercepted thousands of rockets so far and, according to Rafael Advanced Systems, its success rate is over 90%.
Limitations of the system
- The system can see limitations when it is overwhelmed with a barrage of projectiles.
- The system has a ‘saturation point’.
- It is capable of engaging a certain number of targets at the same time, and no more.
- One of the possible limitations is the system’s inability to cope with very short range threats as estimates put the Iron Dome’s minimum interception range at 5-7 kilometres.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Standing Committees and their functions
Mains level: Paper 2- No virtual meetings of Standing Committees
Confidential nature of meeting not possible in virtual meetings
- Days after the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha wrote to Chairman to allow virtual meetings of parliamentary standing committees, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat has turned down his plea.
- Requests to allow virtual meetings of the standing committees were turned down last year as well by Rajya Sabha Chairman and Lok Sabha Speaker.
- The request was turned down on grounds that virtual meetings would violate the confidential nature of such meetings and that any change to the norms require approval by Parliament.
Matter referred to Committee on Rules
- The letter by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat points out that the Chairman and Speaker had decided last year, during the first wave of the pandemic, to refer the issue of allowing virtual meetings of parliamentary panels to the Committee on Rules in both Houses.
- The Committee on Rules, however, did not take up the matter for discussion since Committees started physical meetings as the lockdown restrictions gradually eased in the second half of last year.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Reforming medical education in India
The article highlights the issue of shortage of doctors in India and issues with the involvement of private sector in it.
Government approach
- Market-oriented approach towards medical education: NITI Aayog’s proposal of allowing private entities to take over district hospitals for converting them into teaching hospitals with at least 150 MBBS seats.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Al-Aqsa Mosque
Mains level: Paper 2- Israel-Palestine conflict
The article discusses the types of response the recent violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict would invoke across the world and also explains the perils of ignoring the conflict.
Three types of responses
- The deadly riots in Israel and the war in Gaza, is likely to evoke three kinds of responses: The indifferent, the imperial, the humanitarian.
1) Moral indifference
- Instead of becoming the symbol of the unfinished tasks of decolonisation, and a human rights catastrophe, the Palestinian question is now mostly an occasion to vent cynicism.
- The moral questions the oppression of Palestinians poses is avoided by claiming that in this conflict we can assigning rights and wrongs equally to both sides.
- There is the spectacle of civilians on both sides living in terror.
- There is the fanaticism of the right-wing in Israel and there is the fanaticism of Hamas and Fatah.
- Blaming both sides also whitewashes the fact that there is a monumental injustice to the Palestinians at the heart of the problem.
2) The imperial response
- The events leading up to the recent clashes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque can be seen as part of a long pattern of pushing out Palestinians from territory Israel wants to claim.
- American administration has not been able to significantly roll back this project of pushing the Palestinians out.
- Palestine will once again be the site where the Biden administration’s liberal internationalism will face challenge.
3) Humanitarian response
- This third response is to dig beneath the politics and find bridges in shared humanity and suffering.
- This is also the tack of the peace movements that use culture and a history of shared suffering to build bridges.
- They emphasise that dispossession and exile is something both communities share; they, of all the people, should be able to understand each other.
- Humanity and culture, even when deeply internalised, collapse quickly when subject to fear.
- And they always fall short of acknowledging the core issue at stake: Political equality between two peoples.
Geopolitical implications of conflict
- The violence of Israel will beget more terrorist violence of Hamas and Fatah, with every world power from Russia to Iran influencing the chaos.
- Israel needs to be reminded of the blowback of imperial politics: The ultimate consequence of trying to dominate a people is that you end up destroying the moral legitimacy of your own claims.
- No amount of military capacity can compensate for the images of lynching, rioting, and provocations that we have seen this week.
Conclusion
We continually risk conflict if the Palestinian question is simply treated as an object of geo-political opportunism, not as a question of basic dignity and justice.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Remittances received by India
Mains level: Paper 3- Remittances received by India bucks pandemic effect
What the World Bank report says
- India received over USD 83 billion in remittances in 2020, according to a World Bank report.
- In 2019, India had received USD 83.3 billion in remittances.
- The report said India’s remittances fell by just 0.2 per cent in 2020.
- Much of the decline was due to a 17 per cent drop in remittances from the United Arab Emirates, which offset resilient flows from the United States and other host countries.
- The World Bank, in its latest Migration and Development Brief, said despite COVID-19, remittance flows remained resilient in 2020.
Trend analysis
- China, which received USD 59.5 billion in remittances in 2020 against USD 68.3 billion the previous year, is a distant second.
- India and China are followed by Mexico (USD42.8 billion), the Philippines (USD34.9 billion), Egypt (USD29.6 billion), Pakistan (USD26 billion), France (USD24.4 billion) and Bangladesh (USD21 billion).
- Remittance outflow was the maximum from the United States (USD68 billion), followed by UAE (USD43 billion), Saudi Arabia (USD34.5 billion), Switzerland (USD27.9 billion), Germany (USD22 billion), and China (USD18 billion).
- The relatively strong performance of remittance flows during the COVID-19 crisis has also highlighted the importance of timely availability of data.
- Given its growing significance as a source of external financing for low- and middle-income countries, there is a need for better collection of data on remittances, in terms of frequency, timely reporting, and granularity by corridor and channel.
B2BASICS
Remittances
- Remittances are usually understood as financial or in-kind transfers made by migrants to friends and relatives back in communities of origin.
- These are basically sum of two main components – Personal Transfers in cash or in kind between resident and non-resident households and Compensation of Employees, which refers to the income of workers who work in another country for a limited period of time.
- Remittances help in stimulating economic development in recipient countries, but this can also make such countries over-reliant on them.
Remittance and the Indian Economy
Benefits
- Increased inward remittance is a boon for the economy at both macro and micro levels.
- At the macro level, remittances contribute to maintaining stable foreign reserves.
- Remittances help Indian Rupee hold its value against the US dollar and forms a significant part of the GDP.
- On a micro level, remittances have shown a positive impact on healthcare, entrepreneurship, education, and overall economic development of the recipient families.
Issues
An increase in outward remittances however, raises an alarm. It causes the rupee to weaken against the dollar, which in return impacts the businesses exposed to foreign exchange, and the economy overall.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- App to watch live proceedings of the Supreme Court
App to view virtual proceedings
- Chief Justice of India launched a mobile app that would allow media persons to view the Supreme Court’s virtual proceedings live on their mobile phones.
- The role of the media assumes importance in the process of disseminating information.
- Justice A.M. Khanwilkar said the facility, which is now temporary, could be made permanent in the future depending on the operational issues.
‘Indicative Notes’ on the SC website
- The CJI also launched a new feature in the Supreme Court’s official website called ‘Indicative Notes’.
- This feature is aimed at providing concise summaries of landmark judgments in an easy-to-understand format.
- This will serve as a useful resource for media persons and the general public who wish to be better informed about the rulings of the court.
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From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Difference between OCI and NRI
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues faced by OCI
About notification
- The Home Ministry’s March 4 order that required professional Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs), such as journalists, engineers and researchers, to notify the Ministry about their activities in India.
- The notification said that OCIs shall be required to obtain a “special permission or a special permit” from the competent authority or the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) or the Indian mission “to undertake research, missionary or Tabligh or mountaineering or journalistic activities or internship in any foreign diplomatic missions
- The Ministry issued a gazette notification that OCI cardholders could claim “only NRI (Non-Resident Indian) quota seats” in educational institutions.
Issues with the notification
- This will place undue burden on scientific, pharmaceutical, medical, biotechnology and other research fields.
- Even if an OCI student has secured a high rank in an exam like NEET, several institutions of repute do not have NRI seats.
- The exorbitantly high fees under the NRI quota cannot be afforded by many OCIs as they live and work in India.
- India-domiciled OCI students are deprived of domicile status both in India [country of residence] as well as the country of their citizenship.
- The notification equates India-domiciled OCIs with a foreigner.
About OCIs
- OCIs are of Indian origin but hold foreign passports.
- India does not allow dual citizenship but provides certain benefits under Section 7B(I) of the Citizenship Act, 1955 to the OCIs.
- So far, 37.72 lakh OCI Cards are said to have been issued.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Cluster of cases and community transmission classification of WHO
Mains level: Paper 2- Why community transmission tag matters
How other countries are classifying themselves
- Inspite of adding the highest number of cases in the world every day, India continues to label itself as a country with no community transmission (CT) according to the latest weekly report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on May 11.
- India opts for the lower, less serious classification called ‘cluster of cases’.
- Countries such as the United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, France have all labelled themselves as being in ‘community transmission.
- Among the 10 countries with the most number of confirmed cases, only Italy and Russia do not label themselves as being in community transmission.
- Both countries have been on a declining trajectory for at least a month and together contribute less than 20,000 cases a day — about 5% of India’s daily numbers.
- India, since the beginning of the pandemic has never marked itself as being in community transition.
Understanding the classification
- Broadly, CT is when new cases in the last 14 days can’t be traced to those who have an international travel history, when cases can’t be linked to specific cluster.
- Instead, the classification, ‘cluster of cases’ says “Cases detected in the past 14 days are predominantly limited to well-defined clusters that are not directly linked to imported cases”.
- The WHO guidelines further suggest four subcategories within the broader definition of CT.
- CT-1 implying “Low incidence of locally acquired, widely dispersed cases…and low risk of infection for the general population.
- The highest, a CT-4 suggests very high incidence of locally acquired, widely dispersed cases in the past 14 days.
- Very high risk of infection for the general population.
Why right classification matters
- If cases were still a cluster, it would mean that the government ought to be prioritising testing, contact tracing and isolating to prevent further infection spread.
- CT, on the other hand meant prioritising treatment and observing advisories to stay protected.
- CT — far from being stigmatic or an indicator of failure — has a bearing on how authorities addressed a pandemic.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Drugs and Cosmetics Act
Mains level: Paper 2- Blackmarketing during pandemic
The article highlights the issue of black-marketing of drugs during the pandemic and the factors responsible for it.
Problem of fake and sub-standard drugs
- There have been reports of fake remdesivir amid the Covid pandemic.
- It is difficult to quantify the morbidity and mortality effects of fake or sub-standard drugs, but they are substantial.
- Legally, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act (DCA) has different categories of misbranded, adulterated and spurious drugs.
- In 2003 Mashelkar Committee noted that although the Drugs and Cosmetics Act has been in force for the past 56 years, but the level of enforcement in many States has been far from satisfactory.
- The committee also noted that the problems in the regulatory system in the country were primarily due to inadequate or weak drug control infrastructure at the State and Central level.
Steps taken to deal with the issue
- Assistance has also been provided under the World Bank assisted Capacity Building Project to upgrade testing facilities and to establish new drug testing laboratories.
- The Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940 has recently been amended in 2008 for providing more stringent penalties to those involved in the trade of spurious drugs.
- There are specially designated courts and regulatory infrastructure has been strengthened.
- There is also a whistle-blower scheme.
Distinction between hoarding and black-marketing
- A hoarder is anyone who stocks up items.
- The crime isn’t hoarding per se but of selling a drug without a licence.
- Data on prosecutions, and convictions when prosecuted, of crimes under Drugs and Cosmetics Act, are not encouraging.
- Incidentally, courts have ruled police officers can’t register FIRs, arrest and prosecute (for cognisable crimes) under this law.
- That’s the job of drugs inspectors.
- The notion of a black market is different, though the two can be related.
- In this context, it means charging a premium when there is a shortage.
- A black market occurs when the price at which a product is sold is higher than an administratively determined price.
Conclusion
Action not taken in the best of times now strikes back at us in the worst of times.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Need for ethics policy in EdTech
The article highlights the privacy concerns associated with EdTech apps in the absence of a regulatory framework.
Privacy risks associated with EdTechs
- Since the onset of the pandemic, online education has replaced conventional classroom instruction.
- This has given rise to several EdTech apps which have become popular.
- To perform the process of learning customisation, the apps collect large quantities of data from the learners through the gadgets that the students use.
- These data are analysed in minute detail to customise learning and design future versions of the app.
- The latest mobile phones and hand-held devices have a range of sensors like GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer and biometric sensors apart from the camera and microphones.
- These provide data about the learner’s surroundings along with intimate data like the emotions and attitudes experienced and expressed via facial expressions and body temperature changes.
- In short, the app and device have access to the private spaces of the learner that one would not normally have access to.
Informed consent in research
- Researchers dealing with human subjects need to comply with ethics rules along with global standards.
- One of the cardinal rules that should never be broken is informed consent.
- Before any research on human subjects is undertaken, researchers have to submit detailed proposals to their respective ethics committees and obtain their permissions.
- Further, a researcher working with children, for example, would also have to convince schoolteachers, parents, and school managements about the nature of the research to be undertaken, type of data to be collected, method of storage, the potential harmful effects of such data, etc.
Minimal safeguards in EdTech
- The safeguards that traditional researchers are subject to are either missing or minimal in research that the EdTech industry promotes.
- The concept of informed consent is not meaningful since there are no proper primers to explain to stakeholders the intricacies in layperson terms.
- Since India does not have protection equivalent to the GDPR, private data collected by an EdTech company can be misused or sold to other companies with no oversight or protection.
Way forward
- Given these realities, it is necessary to formulate an ethics policy for EdTech companies.
- Such a policy draft should be circulated both online and offline for discussions and criticism.
- Issues of fairness, safety, confidentiality and anonymity of the user would have to be dealt with.
- EdTech companies would have to be encouraged to comply in the interest of a healthier learning ecosystem.
Consider the question “What are the challenges associated with the adoption of online education mode? Suggest the ways to deal with these challenges.”
Conclusion
The lack of a regulatory framework in India along the lines of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe could impinge on the privacy of students. What we need is ethics policy in online education space.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: ICAI
Mains level: Paper 2- MoU between ICAI and QFCA
Signing of MoU
- The Union Cabinet approved the signing of a pact between the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and the Qatar Financial Centre Authority (QFCA)
- The ICAI has more than 6,000 members in the Middle East.
Increase opportunities and enhance cooperation
- The MoU would enhance cooperation between the institutes to work together to strengthen the accounting profession and entrepreneurship base in Qatar.
- The MoU would provide the ICAI members in the entire Middle East better recognition, together with working to support Indian businesses desirous of doing business in Qatar
- The MoU will endeavour to increase opportunities for ICAI members to provide professional services in Qatar in the areas of assurance and auditing, advisory, taxation, financial services and allied areas.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: GSM-21
Mains level: Paper 2- GSM-21
Fostering relations with maritime neighbours
- Towards fostering friendly relations with its maritime neighbours, Indian Navy hosted ‘GMS-21’.
- The event for the first time was hosted in virtual mode, with online participation of Naval representatives from 13 Indian Ocean Littoral countries.
- The 13 countries included India, Bangladesh, Comoros, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Myanmar, Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
- The theme for GMS-21 was focused on “Maritime Security and Emerging Non-Traditional Threats: A Case for Proactive Role for IOR Navies,” with emphasis on capacity building amongst the IOR Navies to tackle emerging common maritime threats.
Bringing together the stakeholders
- With the Indian Ocean becoming the locus of 21st century strategic landscape, the symposium will play a constructive role in bringing together the stakeholders who have a role in evolving strategies, policies and implementation mechanisms on the issues of common interest in maritime domain.
- In addition to presenting cooperative strategies for enhancing interoperability among partner maritime agencies, the event provided a forum for articulation of views on the crucial maritime issues, followed by theme based discussions.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: MLA-LAD scheme
Mains level: Paper 2- Using MLA-LAD funds for Covid vaccination
MLA-LAD Fund for buying vaccine
- As part of the efforts to mobilise financial resources for COVID-19 vaccination, Rajasthan Chief Minister has approved a proposal to provide ₹3 crore each from the MLA Local Area Development (LAD) Fund.
- For meeting the expenses, the fund for each legislator has been increased from ₹2.25 crore to ₹5 crore a year.
- The 200 MLAs in the State will contribute a total of ₹600 crore to the vaccination fund account under the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund.
- From the remaining ₹2 crore in the MLA-LAD Fund, ₹1 crore will be spent on strengthening the medical infrastructure, purchase of equipment and setting up of model community health centres.
About MLA-LAD Fund
- Member of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development is a scheme that enables each MLA to undertake small developmental works in his/her constituency.
- The MLALAD Scheme is intended to be utilised for small but essential projects/works based on the felt needs of the local public.
- Under this scheme, funds will be provided in the State’s Plan Budget every year.
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