Govt. regulator gives nod for GM mustard
May pave way for more such food crops
•The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), India's apex regulator for genetically modified seeds, on Thursday cleared GM mustard for environmental release and use in farmer fields.
•However, the approval is contingent on a final nod from Environment Minister Anil Dave.
•Should the Minister’s consent be obtained, GM mustard would be the first transgenic food crop to be allowed for commercial cultivation in Indian fields and would be a gateway for several genetically-modified food crops in India.
Bt brinjal blocked
•Thursday’s decision is not the first time GEAC has cleared a transgenic food crop for release.
•Bt Brinjal was cleared by the Committee in 2010 but was blocked by then Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, who cited, among other things, a paucity of safety tests.
•“We have cleared it [GM mustard] for four years subject to certain field conditions,” GEAC Chairperson, Amita Prasad, told The Hindu .
•“It was a unanimous decision with no dissent and all concerns around safety and the need for such a plant were discussed by the most eminent experts we have.“ Other than bio-safety concerns, transgenic technology was necessary for India to be scientifically relevant as well as have better seeds to address threats from climate change, Ms. Prasad argued.
Monsoon may hit Andaman early
No bearing on arrival in Kerala: IMD
•Monsoon rains may come two days earlier to the Andaman & Nicobar islands, but this will have no bearing on how soon it reaches Kerala, according to K.J. Ramesh, Director-General, Meteorology, India Meteorological Department.
•“Typically, the monsoon system reaches south Andaman around the 17th. There’s a circulation [clouds and rain-bearing winds] developing in the Andaman. If it persists, then there’s a chance it will reach there early,” he told The Hindu over the phone, “From there, it normally takes two weeks [to reach Kerala].”
El Nino threat
•Monsoon typically sets in over Kerala by June 1, but there have been instances of powerful winds gusting into the Andamans and then stalling. In 2015, for instance, the monsoon arrived five days later than the IMD’s estimate of May 30.
•Earlier this week, as The Hindu reported, the agency had indicated that the threat to the Indian monsoon from an El Nino may have receded.
•However, it is not yet clear if this would result in improved rainfall. The odds of the meteorological anomaly, known to dry up the monsoon, have dipped and so called “neutral conditions” are likely to prevail, according to D.S. Pai, Chief Forecaster, IMD Pune.
•Another sea anomaly, the Indian Ocean Dipole (that refers to oscillating temperatures in that ocean), was likely to be positive. “It is already becoming positive,” Mr. Pai said.
•A positive dipole buffered against an El Nino’s effects, but didn’t on its own improve chances of rains. Mr. Ramesh said the latest assessment was in line with international models.
Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims worst off: report
‘Historically disadvantaged groups most excluded from access to public goods’
•Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims continue to be the worst-hit communities in terms of exclusion from access to public goods, according to the 2016 Indian Exclusion Report (IXR) released by the Centre for Equity Studies (CES) in New Delhi on Wednesday.
•“The 2016 Report reviews exclusion with respect to four public goods: pensions for the elderly, digital access, agricultural land, and legal justice for undertrials. It also profiles four highly vulnerable groups in terms of their access to these goods,” said CES director Harsh Mander.
•“Despite the diverse public goods reviewed, the dominant finding of this report, like the last one, is that the groups most severely and consistently excluded from provisioning tend to the same historically disadvantaged groups: Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, and persons with disabilities and age-related vulnerabilities,” said a note on the IXR prepared by the CES.
Meagre land holdings
•On the provision of agricultural land as a public good, the IXR found that the pattern of land distribution “broadly reflects the socio-economic hierarchy — large landowners invariably belong to the upper castes, cultivators to the middle castes, and agricultural workers are largely Dalits and Adivasis.”
•The rate of landlessness was highest among Dalits, at 57.3%. Among Muslims, it was 52.6%, and 56.8% of women-headed households were landless. Around 40% of all those displaced by “development activity” were Adivasis.
•Where Dalits, Muslims and women owned land, the holdings were meagre in size, with only 2.08% of Dalit households owning more than two hectares of land. Also, the quality of land owned by Dalits was very poor, with 58% of it having no irrigation facility.
•Land reform efforts have not benefited Dalits, women or Muslims significantly, according to the IXR. Land allotments to SC/ST households were often only on paper, as allottees were forcefully evicted or not allowed to take possession, noted the report.
•On the subject of digital exclusion, the IXR observed that “almost 1.063 billion Indians were offline even though India ranks among the top five nations in terms of the total number of Internet users”. Poverty and geographic location were the two major barriers to digital access, with urban locations enjoying better Internet penetration rates.
Internet reach
•“Government initiatives to improve IT access have been riddled with implementation problems like poor infrastructure, a lack of adequate institutional frameworks, low literacy in the targeted areas, and poor cooperation from government officials,” according to the IXR.
•“In the new thrust towards a cashless economy, digital exclusion can often also result in financial exclusion,” warns the CES note.
ICJ writ may not be applicable to Pak.
Islamabad has revised its commitment
•Prominent commentators have expressed doubts over the ability of the International Court of Justice to enforce its order in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case. The case, which will come up for hearing on May 15, is likely to face a difficult hurdle as Pakistan had on March 29 revised its commitment to the ICJ and has withdrawn all domestic and national security related issues from the jurisdiction of the court.
•“Pakistan is a rogue state and India’s concerns are far greater than just the case over Kulbhushan Jadhav. The real issue is that the ICJ may not have the abilities to enforce its final order,” said strategic affairs commentator Brahma Chellany. He went on to say that Pakistan is likely to challenge the ICJ’s jurisdiction over the Jadhav case in view of its March 29 declaration.
•In a declaration to the ICJ, days before the announcement of death sentence to Kulbhushan Jadhav, Pakistan had informed the court that issues related to its domestic sphere and national security issues would no longer be part of the ICJ jurisdiction.
•The declaration from Pakistan was made even as a military court sentenced Mr Jadhav to death on charges of sabotage and violence against the state of Pakistan. The MEA said on Wednesday that India moved the ICJ to save the life of Mr Jadhav. However, commentators said India might win the arguments and yet find it difficult to pin down Pakistan in this case.
Boost for defence manufacturers
Ministry moots new procurement model to give private sector a shot in the arm
•Defence Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday held consultations with representatives of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CII) on the proposed Strategic Partnership (SP) model meant to promote the private sector in defence manufacturing.
•“The proposed strategic partner model is intended to enhance competition, increase efficiencies, facilitate faster and more significant absorption of technology, create a tiered industrial ecosystem, ensure development of a wider skill base, trigger innovation and enable participation in global value chains as well as promote exports,” the Defence Ministry said in statement after the consultations.
•Under the model, the government intends to boost private sector participation and create domestic expertise in four key areas, namely, fighter aircraft, helicopters, submarines, and armoured vehicles and main battle tanks.
Technology transfer
•One company would be selected for each area based on its competence, which would then tie up with the foreign Original Equipment Manufacturer selected through the procurement process, to build the platform in India with significant technology transfer. At the deliberations, industry representatives presented their suggestions. “The Ministry has taken due note of these proposals, which would be considered while finalising the policy in this regard,” the statement added.
•The fine points would be discussed in a Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) meeting scheduled for early next week. Officials expressed confidence that the policy can be finalised in the next couple of months.
Army apprehensive
•The Armed Forces are apprehensive over the overall model as they feel the SP model will block new technology and new players coming to the defence sector. On the other hand, existing defence players argue for committed orders for the next 30 years to give them the economies of scale as defence involves large investments.
PM gets warm welcome in Colombo
Meets former President Rajapaksa; attends dinner hosted by Sirisena
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Colombo on Thursday evening on a two-day visit to participate in the UN Vesak Day celebrations, amid elaborate security arrangements.
•However, New Delhi and Colombo have termed the visit as primarily a “religious” engagement.
•The PM’s first visit in Mach 2015 highlighted renewed ties between the neighbours after what many called Sri Lanka’s watershed election that saw the defeat of strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, an ally of China.
•Mr. Modi took part in a lamp lighting ceremony in the well-known Gangaramaya temple, and attended a dinner reception hosted by President Maithripala Sirisena during which the two leaders are understood to have reviewed the status of the bilateral relations.
•In an apparently unscheduled late night meeting, Mr. Modi met former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The meeting took place at Mr. Rajapaksa’s request, Indian High Commisioner to Sri Lanka Taranjit Singh Sandhu told reporters here.
New technology and old religion
Augmented reality is upending the interface between physical reality and human desire to shape our universe
•The Oracle has spoken. His vision will soon become your personal gadget. In the latest F8 annual global developer conference last month, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announced his vision of new technologies. He wants to change our lives by changing the way we perceive, engage and experience the real world around us. He wants to create augmented reality to spice up the mundane reality of our everyday world such as using an app to fill a cereal bowl with images of tiny swimming sharks.
•Augmented reality is like this. It begins with dissatisfaction with the way the world appears before us. It panders to the worst of our human desires when it creates a world which is special to each one of us as if the world should be amenable to our desires rather than the other way around.
A familiar lure
•However, Mr. Zuckerberg’s vision is not really new. This vision is presented as if it is something new and radical but there is much in this new technological imagination that should remind us of old religious imaginations.
•Mr. Zuckerberg wants us to “think about how many of the things around us don’t actually need to be physical”. His vision of a world suspicious of materiality points to technology’s attempt to always go beyond the real which is present in front of us. This view of technology is closely related to the old religious imaginations, suggesting that the more digital, technological we get, the more religious we will become. Is it only an accident that religiosity and new-age gurus have increased in the digital age?
•If this suggestion sounds absurd, consider the following. Like religion, this new technology begins with a suspicion of the real physical world, always searching for something more than the world outside us. Both technology and religion do so by choosing the physical body as the fulcrum of all problems of the physical. They use selective ideas of liberation and freedom as an escape from the physical. Both these domains raise fundamental questions about the autonomy of human action: do we lose our autonomy to God in the same way that we lose it to the digital gadgets? Both use magic and spectacle as a way to attract us towards them. Both of them create a sense of protection and comfort, and create forms of dependencies towards them. Finally, not to forget another common strategy to promote both these domains: the question of cost.
•Religion is cheap for all that it promises us. Zuckerberg has learnt this lesson well: he sells his vision by claiming that a $500 TV can be a $1 app in the future with the use of his technology. But what really is the problem with the physical? Why is the idea of the physical a problem for the digital technologists as also for the religious imagination?
Human and divine
•There is a marked difference between the human world and the world of the divine. A crucial aspect of this difference is defined by the physicality of human beings. We are all embodied creatures, occupy space and consume physical produce. Our body is the first model of the physical, and this body is also the problem for many notions of liberation.
•The body is a problem because the physical, by definition, is always an entity that is constrained and bound by laws. The body is a physical body in that it cannot do certain things because of its physicality. Liberation is firstly a liberation from the physical world. Heaven is not constrained by any of the factors that characterises the physical world. Gods and angels fly when we cannot. They are not restrained by the constraints of space and time. Gods are not like us. They are immaterial, omnipresent, eternal, a spirit, a consciousness. God is the first example of a digital world where there is no constraint due to physicality. That is also the reason why the notion of God was deeply correlated with mathematics in the Western tradition. Geometry was thought to embody the omnipresence, and arithmetic the eternality, of God. Isaac Newton was among those who subscribed to this fundamental relation between these two non-physical domains.
•Augmented reality takes this one step further and is actually the logical end to the imagination of science and technology. Science describes the world in its own way, but the aim of science does not lie in a mere description.
•The fundamental aim of science is to use this description and do something to the world which it describes. Science is as much about using the knowledge of nature in order to control and harness it. However, there is a more important aim of science: to ultimately create nature.
•For science, it is not enough to merely know how things are or why they act the way they do, but it is more essential to know how to recreate not just this world but ‘better’ ones. The ultimate aim of science is to be God; cloning, Bt foods, artificial intelligence and augmented reality are just the first faltering steps on this journey.
•Religion and Mr. Zuckerberg have one more thing in common. They depend on the fact that human individuals are perpetually unhappy with themselves and their world. Religion offers solace through another world, a world of the divine. Mr. Zuckerberg wants to create this world of the divine in his digital toys. He wants to change the world rather than ask us to change our individual selves.
•The domain of Gods was different from that of the humans, and so liberation meant leaving this place and going to the beyond. However, augmented reality is not about this form of liberation. It wants to create a heaven outside each of our doors, or at least outside each of our smartphones.
Not socially shared
•Augmented reality is narcissistic and self-centred unlike religion in general. Religions are always social. They arepractised socially and are composed of social rituals. But this new technological make-believe world which each one of us can create according to our desires and fantasies is not socially shared. It insulates and creates an individual who can only end up being socially delusional.
•It is the digital world, ephemeral, unlocated, seemingly free and floating, that beckons as the way out of the constraints of the human world. This new technology mimics all that the old religion had to give in order to create a delusion of a new religion. Like all religions, it too forgets that the digital and the ephemeral are always based on a foundation of the material, just like human life is always based on a foundation of loss and death.
•What Mr. Zuckerberg is showing us is only the glitz, and not the wires and the black boxes that are behind it which make all this possible. But eventually he is not responsible for what he creates. It is we, the suffering, burdened physical humans who go to him for the satiation of our desires. We are puppets in the hands of the digital masters and we have gone beyond the point of even asking whether we know what we are doing or what we are getting into. We are already in the land of the new religion.
What’s in a generic name?
The core issues are affordable access to medicines and their rational prescription and use
•The Medical Council of India (MCI) issued a circular on April 21 drawing attention to clause 1.5 of its regulations regarding the professional conduct of doctors: “Every physician should prescribe drugs with generic names legibly and preferably in capital letters and he/she shall ensure that there is a rational prescription of drugs.” Further, the circular said, “For any doctor found violating clause 1.5 of Ethics Regulation, suitable disciplinary action would be taken by the concerned SMC/MCI.”
•This has caused considerable unease among medical professionals. It appears that the MCI has responded to the statement by the Prime Minister on April 17 that the government intended to ensure that doctors prescribe medicines by generic names only.
•Nearly all drugs have three types of names, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the non-proprietary or generic, most commonly the International Non-proprietary Name (INN) administered by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the brand name. Some countries, such as the U.S., Britain and Japan, have their own generic names or approved names.
•Once patents have expired, companies other than the original manufacturer can produce and sell the drug. This usually results in significant reduction in costs. These off-patent drugs are called generics internationally. However, the term ‘generic’ has a different meaning in India’s pharma trade. Medicines marketed exclusively with INN names are called generics or generic medicine.
•The WHO advocates generic prescribing as part of an overall strategy to ensure rational medical treatment and prescribing tailored to local conditions. In India, there are many barriers to rational prescribing. For example, there are a bewildering number of fixed-dose combinations (FDCs), the vast majority of which have no therapeutic justification. These FDCs account for about 45% of the market (about Rs. 45,000 crore). The British National Formulary lists very few FDCs whereas in India there are thousands.
•Of the total domestic pharmaceutical formulations, a market of over Rs. 1 lakh crore, generic medicines, as understood by the pharma trade, account for not more than 10%, or Rs. 10,000 crore. Therefore, even if a doctor prescribes a drug by generic name, the patient will generally end up buying a branded product.
A misinformed debate
•It simply shifts the focus of promotional activities to the pharmacists. It is well known that different companies offer different trade margins. There is the moral hazard that pharmacists will dispense the brand which offers them the biggest margin. The current diktat by the MCI therefore will not reduce prices for the consumer.
•Some commentators argue that brand names ensure quality and many doctors believe this. This belief is ill-founded. The recent quality survey by the government found 26 of 32 samples from a particular plant of a prominent multinational drug company to be not of standard quality (NSQ). The most effective way to maintain quality is to have periodic testing and stringent disincentives for poor quality. The best insurance for good quality is good regulation.
•Some argue that bioavailability and bioequivalence (BA and BE) of generics may not be equal to the original brand. Bioavailability refers to the rate and extent to which the active ingredient of the drug present becomes available at the site of action of the drug. In order for a new generic drug to be licensed, it has to be bioequivalent to the reference drug. It means that BA of the generic drug is similar to that of the reference drug. Of the approximately 800 useful drugs known to modern medicine, bioequivalence is really only important for a few drugs with low solubility and high or low permeability, so the debate about BA and BE is somewhat misinformed.
•The present pronouncements by government spokespersons on drug pricing, and concomitant actions by the MCI, appear to put the onus of all the problems in this sector on the medical profession whereas successive governments have taken very few initiatives to reduce drug costs and promote manufacture of only rational medicines. The current method of price control legitimises margins of up to 4000% over the cost of the product.
•The core issues are affordable access to medicines and their rational prescription and use. These objectives require an enlarged list of essential and life-saving medicines under price control, elimination of all irrational FDCs, no brands for drugs off patent, and briefer officially approved names to make it easier for doctors to prescribe generics including the rational FDCs.
TB timelines
The transmission cycle of the drug-resistant strain must be broken aggressively
•Nearly two months after the Health Ministry set the ambitious target of working towards elimination of tuberculosis by 2025, a study published in The Lancet indicates that India’s TB crisis is set to snowball by 2040 when one in 10 cases could be drug-resistant — both multidrug-resistant TB (or MDR-TB, resistant to more than one of the first-line drugs) and extensively drug-resistant TB (or XDR-TB, also resistant to fluoroquinolones and at least one of the second-line injectable drugs). What is even more alarming is the projection that the increased number of drug-resistant cases will come from direct transmission from infected people to others rather than by strains acquiring resistance to TB drugs during treatment due to inadequate treatment or discontinuation of treatment midway. The study found that “most incident” MDR cases are “not caused” by acquired drug resistance, which will become a “decreasing cause” of drug-resistant TB. The increased availability of drugs to fight drug-sensitive TB has led to the emergence of MDR-TB strains. With an increasing number of MDR-TB cases, there has been a shift in the way people get infected with drug-resistant TB — from strains acquiring drug resistance during treatment to direct transmission of MDR-TB strains from an infected person. The same trend is seen in the case of XDR-TB too. As a result, in high MDR-TB burden countries such as India, improved treatment outcomes in people might only reduce and not eliminate drug-resistant TB. Till 2015, only about 93,000 people with MDR-TB had been diagnosed and put on treatment.
•The study, based on a mathematical model to forecast how TB is likely to progress in the four most-affected countries (Russia, the Philippines, South Africa, India), suggests that new MDR-TB cases a year in India will touch 12.4% by 2040, up from 7.9% in 2000. With respect to XDR-TB, the incident cases will rise to 8.9%, from 0.9% in 2000. In 2015, the four countries accounted for about 40% (more than 230,000) of all drug-resistant TB cases in the world. Besides targeting early diagnosis and treatment of those with the disease, India’s TB control programme has identified enhanced interventions to break the transmission cycle of the bacteria in the community. Contact screening of family members and preventive treatment of all children below the age of five who have not developed the disease are already a part of the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme, but rarely done. Another important strategy that has to be adopted is making drug-susceptibility testing universal and mandatory. Developing more accurate, cheaper and effective diagnostic tests and improved treatment regimens that are less expensive and of shorter duration will also go a long way in winning the war against the disease.
Voluntary unemployment rising: Debroy
NITI Aayog member calls for household plus enterprise surveys for credible job data
•While the lack of sufficient job creation could lead to resentment due to people’s high aspirations, NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy on Thursday flagged a dramatic rise in voluntary unemployment across the country, where people choose not to work below a certain income level after ‘investing’ in education.
•“Nothing has changed substantially in the last one year (on the jobs front), which is in a way a sad commentary… We need to create 10 million to 12 million new jobs. How many are we creating a year? We don’t know. If you believe the Labour Bureau, which I don’t believe — about 1 million,” he said.
•The trouble with current official data on labour and employment, he pointed out, is that they can be used to claim ‘jobless growth’ as well as ‘growth-less jobs’ — and fail to capture the pre-dominantly informal and unorganised nature of the Indian economy.
•“Especially, given our large self-employed and unorganised sector, let us recognise that the only credible way to get data on employment and jobs is using household surveys over and above enterprise-level surveys. Otherwise, we will always have an imperfect picture,” he said at a FICCI conference on jobs.
PM’s task force
•The views of the Centre’s think-tank member assume significance as Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week announced a task force led by the Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya on employment data.
•While the government attaches highest priority to job creation, policy making and analysis is conducted in a data vacuum, so the task force has been tasked with coming up with reliable and timely data solution for tracking employment trends.
•The latest employment data based on household surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), usually every five years, dates back to 2011-12 and a fresh set of data is expected sometime in 2018, the Aayog member said, though that will be a stand-alone survey on labour and employment, independent of the quinquennial exercise, he said.
•Mr. Debroy said the data compiled by the Labour Bureau from enterprises for select sectors on a quarterly basis is not amenable to finding out what is really happening to labour and employment thanks to its sample size and design.
•“If a sufficient number of jobs are not created, it can lead to a great deal of resentment, because of aspirations…,” Mr. Debroy said, stressing that manufacturing alone won’t create many direct jobs.
•“The primary growth in jobs will come from the services sector. Even when reforms happen in agriculture, most of the jobs will be created in areas that will show up in national income accounts as services such as transportation, logistics,” he pointed out.
CMIE survey
•Citing data compiled by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy based on a household survey with a ‘reasonably decent sample size,’ Mr. Debroy said that involuntary unemployment hasn’t gone up, but voluntary unemployment has gone up dramatically.
•“Anecdotally, we know about this – incomes going up and women voluntarily opting out... People are unwilling to settle for jobs, particularly after having ‘invested’ in education, that do not give you a salary above this level,” the NITI Aayog member said.
Centre to release new series of IIP, WPI data
Base year will be 2011-12, not 2004-05
•A new series of Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and Wholesale Price Index (WPI) will be released Friday in a bid to bring greater accuracy and improved synchronisation among such data sets, in turn leading to better policies.
•The new IIP and WPI series will be released by the Chief Statistician of India and Secretary, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, T.C.A.Anant, and the Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ramesh Abhishek, according to an official statement. The base year for the IIP and the WPI will be 2011-12 and not the current 2004-05. The Consumer Price Index and the GDP and gross value addition also have 2011-12 as the base year.
•The common base year is expected to reduce discrepancies and making it easier to draw comparisons. The new series of IIP will include technology items such as smartphones, tablets, LED television and tablets.
•According to the report of the ‘Working group for development of methodology for compilation of the all India IIP,’ the new item basket for IIP will include “809 products, re-grouped into 521 item groups,” 55 products from the mining sector and treating electricity as a single product.
‘NPA norms to force decision-making’
Lenders have to act: Shikha Sharma
•The Centre’s recent move amending the Banking Regulation Act to give more powers to the RBI to resolve stressed assets will force lenders to take a decision, said Shikha Sharma, MD & CEO, Axis Bank.
•Last week, the government amended Section 35A of the Act empowering the RBI to tell banks when to take a haircut or to proceed with insolvency.
•“There are layers of process [in resolution]. What the ordinance is doing is that it is cutting that layer off,” Ms. Sharma said.
•“It is forcing a decision mechanism because it is saying that if 60% agree, rest have to fall in line,” she told reporters here on Thursday.
•Following the amendment, the RBI had issued a notification lowering the threshold for approval of a resolution proposal at the Joint Lenders’ Forum — a body of bankers that decides on a loan recast — to 60% of the lenders by value, from 75%, and to 50%, from 60%, of the lenders by numbers.
