📰 What is the Sri Lanka political crisis all about?
What is it?
•Late on November 9, President Maithripala Sirisena dissolved the Sri Lankan Parliament and called a snap general election for January 5. The announcement came within hours of his party spokesman publicly admitting to lacking a majority in Parliament. Mr. Sirisena’s front was aiming for a majority to push its controversially installed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa through the legislature.
How did it come about?
•Sri Lanka has been facing a political crisis for a fortnight now, with Mr. Sirisena abruptly sacking his Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replacing him with Mr. Rajapaksa, a former President, apparently defying the Constitution or more specifically, its 19th Amendment — a 2015 legislation that clipped the powers of the President significantly.
•Resisting Mr. Sirisena’s move, Mr. Wickremesinghe maintained that he was the legitimate Prime Minister and challenged Mr. Rajapaksa to a vote in Parliament to test their claims to majority. Mr. Sirisena had earlier suspended Parliamentuntil November 16, possibly to muster strength for his front, but summoned the House for November 14, amid growing pressure.
Why does it matter?
•Both decisions of Mr. Sirisena — sacking Mr. Wickremesinghe and dissolving Parliament — have raised serious questions about constitutional validity. As for the dismissal of Mr. Wickremesinghe, the 19th Amendment removed the President’s authority to arbitrarily sack his Prime Minister. Under the Constitution, the Prime Minister’s office does not fall vacant unless in circumstances of his death, voluntary resignation or loss of majority in a crucial vote in Parliament. Since none of these is true in the current situation, a new appointment by the President is constitutionally ruled out. Some lawyers point to a discrepancy between the English and Sinhala texts of the Constitution and claim the President, as per the Sinhala version, still has the power to remove a Prime Minister. Other constitutional lawyers have argued that while there is a discrepancy in language and framing, the import and essence of the Sinhala text is consistent with that in English, especially when read along with the rest of the Constitution in Sinhala. On the dissolution of Parliament, the President does not have the powers to dissolve Parliament within four-and-a-half years of its convening, unless requested by two-thirds of its members, as per the 19th Amendment. The President’s side has invoked Article 33(2) C that lists the powers to summon, prorogue and dissolve Parliament, in addition to his existing powers. All the same, critics have noted that while the Article is a general enumeration of his powers, it is the 19th Amendment’s specific provision that must prevail in such a situation.
What lies ahead?
•The political flux over the past two weeks was the culmination of a bitter power struggle between Mr. Sirisena and Mr. Wickremesinghe within the ruling coalition. The two leaders, from traditionally rival parties and with incompatible ideologies, had joined hands to form the government in 2015, ousting Mr. Rajapaksa. In about three-and-a-half years, they fell apart. Amid the pressure of a Rajapaksa comeback , Mr. Sirisena chose to side with him.
•The conduct of elections will depend on the Election Commission’s position on the development and possible legal hurdles, since Mr. Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) has vowed to move the Supreme Court on the “illegal” dissolution of Parliament. From the time the 19th Amendment capped the Presidency at two terms, Mr. Rajapaksa has been eager to return as Prime Minister. But he is now with Mr. Sirisena, who brings with him at least part of his unpopular coalition government’s incumbency. Mr. Wickremesinghe, on the other hand, is faced with a dual challenge — some within his party have been demanding a new leader for some time, while those backing him are aware of his falling political stock amid a growing economic crisis.
📰 Assam, where killing of five Bengalis has led to another language flashpoint
•The killing of five Bengalis in eastern Assam’s Sadiya on November 1 has led to an uneasy calm in a State divided over language amid a bid by the Central government to pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016.
Why the controversy?
•The Assamese and the Bengali, the two largest linguistic groups in the northeastern region, have had an ambivalent relationship since 1836 when the British made Bengali the official language of Assam. Assamese became the official language 37 years later, but the psychological divide between the communities remained. The situation reached a flashpoint in the 1960s when there was violence against the Bengalis. They seemed to have buried the differences in the decades since the Assam agitation (1979-1985).
Where is Sadiya?
•Sadiya, a police district under Tinsukia, is a metaphor for geographical extremity as well as a cultural paradox. The place bordering Arunachal Pradesh is where the Brahmaputra begins flowing after three rivers — Siang, Dibang and Lohit — meet. Sadiya was the birthplace of Bhupen Hazarika, the balladeer who sang about building bridges between communities.
•The place was also where Nathan Brown and Oliver Cutter, two American Baptist missionaries, arrived in 1836 from erstwhile Burma with a printing press to eventually give the Assamese language its standard form. Sadiya means ‘land of the rising sun,’ but communication bottlenecks because of a difficult terrain ensured, as conflict management experts say, a fertile ground for the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), whose revolutionary symbol is the rising sun.
Why was a community targeted?
•The anti-talks faction of the ULFA, headed by Paresh Baruah, denied involvement in the killings but the police have “no doubt” that the outfit, desperate to regroup after setbacks, carried out the attack to cash in on a “conflict situation” triggered by opposing stands on the Citizenship Bill taken by groups adhering to “Assamese nationalism” and “Bengali sub-nationalism.” Allegedly provocative statements by BJP Bengali lawmaker Shiladitya Dev and pro-talks ULFA leaders Mrinal Hazarika and Jiten Duttta added fuel to the emotionally charged atmosphere. The Assamese fear that the Bill, seeking to grant citizenship to non-Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who came to India as refugees by December 2014, will make Assam a home for “Bangladeshi Hindus.” The BJP insists the Bill is not specific to Hindus and the refugees who fled religious persecution in India’s neighbourhood will be distributed across the country.
•The police’s Special Branch said it had inputs about possible attacks in Bengali-dominated areas, but nothing was specific. Multi-ethnic Tinsukia is scattered with sizeable pockets of non-indigenous groups such as Bihari, Bengali, Gorkha, and Adivasi with enough voting strength not to elect indigenous candidates in some Assembly seats. The ULFA had in the 1980s set up its first camps in the district. The police say proximity to the jungles of Arunachal Pradesh makes the area ideal for hit-and-run operations. But former Assam police chief G.M. Srivastava said the political situation called for preparedness, and the security agencies failed to analyse the intelligence inputs properly.
What is the way ahead?
•Lurinjyoti Gogoi, general secretary of the All Assam Students’ Union, said it was unfortunate that political parties were playing up the protests against the Bill as anti-Bengali. The ethnic issues of Assam are more complex than simple binaries, and one must remember that non-Bengali Hindus, apart from Bengali Muslims, crossed over from erstwhile East Pakistan and Bangladesh too, he said. Beyond politics, a section of Hindu Bengalis who prefer to be called ‘Asomiya Bangali,’ just like Assamese Sikhs and Assamese Chinese (a small community from China at Makum), says the Bill has stolen their happiness. Assamese politicians feel that the Bill, contradictory to the exercise to update the National Register of Citizens, must be scrapped.
📰 National body set up to study rare form of diabetes
Monogenic Diabetes is misdiagnosed in many cases.
•A National Monogenic Diabetes Study Group has been formed to identify cases of monogenic diabetes across the country. Supported by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation (MDRF) and Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre (DMDSC) will be the national coordinating centre for the study group.
Genetic mutation
•Monogenic diabetes is a group of disorders where mutation of a single gene causes diabetes; the three commonest forms being - Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young (MODY), Neonatal Diabetes Mellitus (NDM) and Congenital Hypoglycaemia, according to V. Mohan, chairman, DMDSC.
•“ICMR already has a young diabetics registry. As an off-shoot, a National Monogenic Diabetes Study Group has been formed with MDRF as the nodal centre. As of now, 33 doctors from across the country are ready to collaborate for this initiative,” he told reporters on Saturday.
•Under this initiative, MDRF would provide guidelines to the collaborators for identifying monogenic diabetes. “They need to look out for certain parameters such as children below six months of age and those diagnosed as Type 1 diabetes but have atypical features such as milder forms of diabetes, and strong family history of diabetes going through several generations,” he explained.
•The collaborators will identify cases of monogenic diabetes and send their details.
•“They will send blood samples to us. Following the test results, we will give them the treatment protocols,” Dr. Mohan said.
📰 ISRO invites foreign ‘riders’ to Venus
Seeks experiment ideas from space agencies, universities and researchers
•An 18-month-old pitch for what could be the first Indian orbiter mission to Venus has just been refreshed and relaunched, opening it up now for international experiments.
•Tentatively marking the yet to be named ‘Mission Venus’ for mid-2023, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to study the planet from an elliptical orbit that is closest to Venus at 500 km and 60,000 km at the farthest end — similar to its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) of 2013.
•The latest announcement opportunity (AO) does not specify the weight of the spacecraft; it plans to send up instruments or payloads totally weighing 100 kg. (MOM’s payloads weighed nearly 15 kg.)
•The new round invites space-based experiment ideas on Venus from space agencies, universities and researchers.
•They should complement a dozen Indian experiments that have been shortlisted from among responses that came in for the AO of April 2017. It had then planned a total payload of 175 kg. The responses were said to be fewer and below expectations.
3rd interplanetary dash
•Currently being handled by the Space Science Programme Office, the entire project must be vetted by the Advisory Committee on Space Sciences and approved by the Space Commission and eventually the government.
•From the Moon orbiter mission Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 and the ₹450 crore MOM, the Venus voyage — if approved — would be ISRO’s third interplanetary dash.
•A lunar lander and rover mission called Chandrayaan-2 is getting ready to take off in January or February 2019.
•ISRO says that it may lower the orbit of its future Venus spacecraft after a while for sharper observations. According to an informed ISRO official, the Venus mission would be comparable to the phenomenally popular MOM in terms of its the orbit and the cost.
•The official said the plan was in very early stages and would get finely defined once the experiments were chosen. They would decide the weight of the spacecraft and the rocket that it would need.
📰 Why polio vaccine contamination is a worry?
What happened?
•Since April 2016, all oral polio vaccines (OPV) across the world contain only two of the three polio serotypes — Type 1 and Type 3.
•Type 2 is banned because the wild, disease-causing version of this virus was eradicated globally by 1999, and because OPV itself can cause polio in rare cases.
•However, sometime in September, routine surveillance detected the Type 2 vaccine virus in stool samples from children in Uttar Pradesh, implying that someone was still making the vaccine. Further investigations revealed that the OPV, made by a Ghaziabad-based firm called Bio-Med, contained traces of the Type 2 vaccine virus.
Can a vaccine cause polio?
•Yes. There are two ways in which all three oral vaccine viruses can cause polio. The first is called Vaccine Associated Paralytic Polio (VAPP). Here, in extremely rare cases, the vaccine virus mutates into a virulent version of itself, causing disease in the child who received the vaccine, or in a person who came in contact with the child. VAPP causes isolated cases and not outbreaks, because it doesn’t spread from person to person.
•The second way in which the vaccine can cause polio is through Circulating Vaccine Derived Polio Virus (cVDPV). Here, too, the vaccine virus mutates into a virulent version, but spreads from person to person, causing outbreaks. For this to happen, though, the vaccine virus must circulate among people for at least around 12 months. During this transmission, the virus has a chance to mutate. This usually happens in communities where vaccination rates are low. cVDPV, too, is extremely rare.
Can contamination cause VAPP or cDVPV?
•It can, but the probability is small. According to T. Jacob John, a Vellore-based virologist, “The risk is virtually zero, but not absolutely zero.”
•Take VAPP for instance. The risk of VAPP is extremely low, in general. A 2002 study in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation estimated that India saw one case of VAPP for every 4.1-4.6 million OPV doses administered in 1999. This was the combined risk from all three serotypes. The risk from the Type 2 virus alone is even smaller.
•cVDPV, on the other hand, is a bigger worry, because the Type-2 vaccine virus is the most likely to turn cVDPV among all the three. But for this to happen, two conditions must be fulfilled. First, a large number of children must be unimmunised against Type-2. Second, the virus needs to circulate from person to person for several months.
•Both these conditions don’t seem to be met in Uttar Pradesh. Even though India stopped giving children OPV Type 2 in 2016, it has been giving them the Inactivated Polio Vaccine, which also protects against the Type-2 polio. After news of the contamination, mop-up rounds to give IPV to any children who had missed it earlier were conducted. All this drastically reduces the chance that the vaccine virus will stick around in the environment for long enough to turn into cVDPV.
Is there anything to worry about?
•Yes. The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation ought to trace the source of the contamination, which it hasn’t done yet. Unless this happens, we won’t know how to prevent incidents of larger contamination in future. The two possible sources are Ghaziabad’s Bio-Med and PT Bio Farma, an Indonesian firm which supplied the vaccine raw material to Bio-Med and all other Indian OPV manufactures. Therefore, if Bio Farma was the source, the worry is bigger.
•Second, Uttar Pradesh health authorities haven’t made it clear how widespread the contamination was. Early media reports said 1.5 lakh vials were contaminated.
•Assuming 20 doses per vial, this is around 3 million doses. The previous calculations of low risk are based on this number. If a substantially larger number of doses was administered, the risk would grow.
•However, when asked for the final number of doses administered, Uttar Pradesh Expanded Programme for Immunisation Officer A.P. Chaturvedi told The Hinduthat this number was unknown.
📰 AIIMS-led team develops sensitive tests for pulmonary, pleural TB
Sensitivity for pulmonary TB and pleural TB were 94% and 93%, respectively.
•A highly sensitive diagnostic test for pulmonary TB and pleural TB has been developed by a multi-institutional team led by Jaya Sivaswami Tyagi from the Department of Biotechnology at AIIMS. The diagnostic test makes use of a DNA aptamer (a small single-stranded DNA molecule that binds to a specific target molecule) that shows high binding affinity to a TB antigen. Sputum samples were used for diagnosing pulmonary TB while pleural fluid was used for diagnosing pleural TB.
•The sensitivity of the diagnostic test for pulmonary TB and pleural TB was 94% and 93%, respectively. Specificity was 100% for pulmonary TB and 98% for pleural TB. The results were published in the journals ACS Infectious Diseasesand Analytical Biochemistry.
•The laboratory-based aptamer test for diagnosing pulmonary TB takes about five hours to turn in the results while the portable, rapid test takes just 30 minutes. “The lab-based test has several steps and so takes time while the rapid test is an electrochemical sensor-based detection which is a direct detection and so takes less time,” says Surabhi Lavania from AIIMS and first author of the pulmonary TB paper and coauthor of the other paper. At 92.3% and 91.2%, the sensitivity and specificity of the portable test is a bit inferior compared with the lab-based test.
•In the case of pleural TB, the aptamer-based lab diagnosis was far superior to even Xpert. While the sensitivity was about 22% with Xpert, it was about 93% with aptamer. “Xpert relies on the presence of bacteria, which is nearly absent in pleural fluid, while the aptamer-based testing relies on bacterial antigen and so has high sensitivity,” says Pooja Kumari from AIIMS and first author of the paper on pleural TB test.
•The sensitivity of the lab-based and portable aptamer-based test for pulmonary TB is far superior compared with smear microscopy, X-ray and even ELISA.
Cost-effective
•“The portable test is cheaper and can be used for screening pulmonary TB and active case finding in high-risk groups,” says Prof. Tyagi.
•The HspX antigen present in sputum samples of people with pulmonary TB is made use of for diagnosis. The team had used the same antigen present in the cerebrospinal fluid samples for diagnosing TB meningitis (published in September 2018 in Tuberculosis). The researchers made use of a particular aptamer (H63SL2-M6) that detects the antigen in sputum samples for pulmonary TB diagnosis.
•“Sputum is a difficult sample to handle due to the presence of mucus. The sputum should first be made into a uniform suspension before applying the test. So [we] must prepare the sample and this takes time,” says Prof. Tyagi.
•In the case of the lab-based diagnosis, the sputum sample is immobilised on a plate and the aptamer is added. If the sample is positive for pulmonary TB then it will contain the HspX antigen and the aptamer binds to it. An enzyme (horseradish peroxidise) that binds to the aptamer (through biotin-streptavidin affinity) is then added followed by a substrate. A change in substrate colour is seen indicating that the sample is positive for pulmonary TB. If the sample is negative for pulmonary TB, then even the first step of the aptamer binding to the sample does not take place and the colour change does not occur.
•Relying on HspX antigen to diagnose pleural TB in a lab setting was found be effective and highly sensitive (93%).
Rapid diagnosis
•To make the pulmonary TB diagnosis portable, the researchers bound the aptamer to an electrode coated with gold nanoparticles. “When the sample containing the HspX antigen is added, the aptamer binds to the antigen and undergoes a structural change, which is read out in the electrical signal,” says Dr. Tarun Kumar Sharma from Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), Faridabad, and the other corresponding author of the papers. “There is a drop in electrical signal if the sample is positive and no change in signal when the sample is negative.”
•The electrode is already immobilised with the aptamer, so only the liquefied sputum has to be added and the reaction is instantaneous. “Most time is taken to liquefy the sputum sample than the testing per se,” says Prof. Tyagi. No sample processing is needed in the case of pleural TB samples.
•“We are also trying to adapt this aptamer on an electrode for rapid diagnosis of pleural TB,” says Dr. Sharma.
•“We have applied for a patent for the aptamer reagent and have licensed it to AptaBharat Innovation Pvt. Ltd, a start-up at THSTI. We soon plan to validate the tests on well characterised panel of specimens and field evaluation,” says Prof. Tyagi.
📰 Groundwater depletion alarming in northwest, central India
Natural recharge during monsoon may not help much if groundwater depletion becomes acute, as rainfall of past years controls current storage
•With 230 billion metre cube of groundwater drawn out each year for irrigating agriculture lands in India, many parts of the country are experiencing rapid depletion of groundwater. The total estimated groundwater depletion in India is in the range of 122–199 billion metre cube.
•The Indo-Gangetic Plain, northwestern, central and western parts of India account for most intensive groundwater-based irrigation. And among these regions, western India and the Indo-Gangetic Plain have more than 90% of the area irrigated using groundwater.
Significant depletion
•Based on Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) data of nearly 5,900 wells which have long-term data (1996–2016), a team of researchers led by Vimal Mishra from the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Gandhinagar found that a majority of districts in India experienced significant depletion in groundwater storage. The satellite data confirms the well data. The results were published in American Geophysical Union’s journal Earth’s Future.
•While districts with significant decrease in groundwater are located in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, northwest, and central (Maharashtra) regions, a few districts in Punjab show substantial decline in groundwater table. With depletion occurring at a rate of 91 cm per year, Punjab has been witnessing a steep decline in groundwater table since 1996. “In northwestern India, the amount of groundwater extracted exceeds the total recharge leading to groundwater depletion,” says Prof. Mishra. In contrast, some districts in western India, east coast and peninsular India have witnessed an increase in groundwater levels.
•“If groundwater is depleted and the region experiences drought for two–three years consecutively, there will be serious challenges. Availability of even drinking water will be a huge problem,” says Prof. Mishra. “Natural recharge during monsoon may not help much if groundwater depletion becomes acute, as rainfall of past several years controls the current groundwater storage levels.”
•The study published in June this year found that groundwater recharge has declined between 1996 and 2016 in northwest and northcentral India due a reduction in low-intensity rainfall. Low-intensity rainfall during the monsoon is responsible for groundwater recharge in northwest and northcentral India. The study also found that carbon dioxide emission from pumping groundwater and release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the soil when groundwater is depleted is less than 2-7% of the total carbon dioxide emissions in India.
Groundwater management
•More than 500 tensiometers to visually monitor soil moisture conditions in rice fields and irrigate the crops only when required were used in five districts in Punjab. Irrigation based on information provided by the tensiometers helped farmers in the five districts save 10–36% groundwater. Using groundwater to irrigate the field only when necessary led to a reduction in electricity consumption and greenhouse emissions.
•“The tensiometer gives visual information about the availability of soil moisture conditions. Irrigating the field based on this information will help conserve groundwater,” says Prof. Kamal Vatta from the Columbia International Project Trust, New Delhi and co-author of the paper.
•The tensiometer is 2–3 feet long and has a ceramic cup containing numerous tiny pores at the bottom. It is inserted up to 8 inches into the soil, which is beyond the root zone of rice. The water inside the tensiometer reaches equilibrium with soil moisture, and rises or falls depending on the amount of moisture in the soil.
•“Farmers are advised not to irrigate the field when the water level in the tensiometer is in the green zone. When the soil gets dry the water level in the tensiometer drops and reaches the yellow zone in the device. Farmers should start irrigating the field at this time and never allow the water in the device to reach the red zone,” Prof. Vatta explains.
•According to Prof. Vatta, the instrument is quite accurate in monitoring soil moisture. One device per farm would be sufficient, especially when the terrain is nearly flat. So far, over 22,000 tensiometers, manufactured by Punjab Agriculture University, have been given to rice farmers in Punjab. It costs just Rs.300 per piece.
•“Since stopping or reducing the subsidy in electricity prices may not be possible, farmers in the regions where groundwater depletion has already occurred should consider cultivating less water-intensive crops, use better irrigation technologies and irrigate crops only when necessary,” says Prof. Mishra.
