Comprehensive Current affairs 17 October 2020

 Cengov. approves STARS scheme for reforming education sector.

GoI has approved a project partially funded by the World Bank to carry out a reform agenda in the governance of school education, and improve data and assessment systems at the national level, as well as teaching and learning outcomes in six States, especially for early childhood and vocational education.

The project includes an emergency response component to help the government respond to disaster situations which lead to school closures and loss of learning, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, according to an official statement issued after the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

The Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) project will have a total project cost of ?5,718 crore, with the World Bank’s support amounting to about ?3,700 crore ($500 million), said the statement.

 At the State level, the project seeks to improve education outcomes and school-to-work transition strategies for better labour market outcomes in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Odisha.

A similar project to be funded by the Asian Development Bank will cover Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Assam and every State will partner with one other State to share best practices, said the statement.

India gets re-elected as president of ISA.

India has been re-elected as the President of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) and France as the Co- President for a term of two years.

This was decided during the virtual meeting of third assembly of the International Solar Alliance attended by 34 ISA members today.Four new Vice-Presidents were also chosen to represent the four regions of ISA.

The assembly also approved the initiatives of the ISA Secretariat in institutionalizing ISA’s engagement with the private and public corporate sector through the Coalition for Sustainable Climate Action.

Speaking in the plenary, President of the ISA assembly and India’s Power and New and Renewable Energy Minister, R.K. Singh appreciated the Alliance Members coming together to work for combating climate change.

He welcomed the seventh initiative on heating and cooling to be introduced for discussion in the Third Assembly.

Mr Singh said solar energy is already contributing around 2.8 percent of global electricity and if trends were to continue, by 2030 solar will become most important source of energy for electricity production in large part of the world.

The President also mentioned about various activities and programmes initiated by ISA since the 2nd Assembly.

Russia reluctant to extend New START pact with U.S.

Moscow has said that it does not see prospects for extending the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Washington.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this yesterday, while adding that the countries plan to continue talks nonetheless.

The New START accord was signed in 2010. It limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads that Russia and the United States can deploy. It is due to expire in February next year.

Failure to extend the pact would remove the main pillar maintaining the balance of nuclear arms between Moscow and Washington.

IMF claims India’s public debt to rise to almost 90% due to COVID.

India’s public debt ratio, which remarkably remained stable at about 70% of the GDP since 1991, is projected to jump by 17 percentage points to almost 90% because of an increase in public spending due to COVID-19, the IMF said.

“In our projections, the increase in public spending, in response to COVID-19, and the fall in tax revenue and economic activity, will make public debt jump by 17 percentage points to almost 90% of GDP,” Vitor Gaspar, Director of IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, told the Press Trust of India.

“Going forward, it is projected to stabilise in 2021, before slowly declining up to the end of the projection period, in 2025. Broadly speaking, the pattern of public debt in India is close to the norm around the world,” he said.

According to Mr. Gaspar, in the near-term, additional fiscal action can and should be deployed as needed to support the poor and the vulnerable.

MSME ministry launches AI & ML for champions portal.

Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises- MSME Ministry has introduced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for strengthening its single window system portal ‘Champions’ to assist the MSMEs in the country.

 Champions Portal was launched by the Prime Minister in June this year.This multi-modal system also comprises technology equipped physical control rooms at around 69 locations in the country.

Appreciating the efforts made by the MSME Ministry, Minister Nitin Gadakari said, the entire conceptualization and scope analysis has been done in the Ministry with the help of NIC and guidance provided by the team of Intel.

Artificial Intelligence and Analytics technology help in understanding the issues on real-time basis based on widely available social media and online data.

MSME Ministry is also aggressively working in the direction of Industry 4.0 to give a boost to the MSME sector.Ministry is also helping the MSMEs for manufacturing the products like sensors, motors, computer displays and other animation technologies.

Health ministry launches Thalassemia BalSewa yojana phase-2.

Health and Family Welfare Minister Harsh Vardhan today virtually launched the second phase of “Thalassemia BalSewaYojna” for the underprivileged Thalassemic patients.

The Minister said that Prime Minister NarendraModi had introduced the Ayushman Bharat-PradhanMantri Jan AarogyaYojana for targeted populace.

He said, beneficiaries of the scheme had expressed their gratitude for this valuable support in midst of the gloom in their lives.

Expressing satisfaction that the scheme has been extended to cover Aplastic Anaemia patients for a total of 200 such patients from this year, Dr. Harsh Vardhan said, such cases can be prevented by using the Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centres network.

He said, blood transfusion facilities have been made available in every district hospital while some districts also offer the facility in health centres at sub-district level.

India's first Saviour Sibling experiment.

Recently, doctors successfully conducted India’s first ‘saviour sibling’ experiment.

 The Saviour Sibling named Kavya saved her 6-year-old brother (suffering from Thalassemia).

150- 200 ml bone marrow was harvested from Kavya in an hour-long procedure and then given to her brother Abhijeet through transfusion.

Kavya suffered low haemoglobin for some time but it was corrected with supplements and she also endured some pain in the areas from where the marrow was taken for a few days. Presently, both Kavya and Abhijeet are healthy.

Key Points

‘Saviour Sibling’ refers to babies that are created to serve an older sibling as a donor of organs, bone marrow or cells.

Stem cells from the umbilical cord blood or blood of the saviour sibling are used for treatment of serious blood disorders like thalassemia, sickle cell anaemia.

They are created with In vitro fertilisation (IVF) so that they can undergo pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (or testing) to rule out any genetic disorders and also check bone marrow compatibility.

Pre-implantation Genetic Testing (PGT) refers to the genetic profiling of embryos. It is used to screen embryos for genetic diseases or chromosomal abnormalities.

From each embryo, PGT takes a biopsy of only a few cells and conducts a genetic analysis.

This analysis can search to exclude embryos carrying a genetic variant that causes a hereditary disease, and it can search to find embryos that are an Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) match to a sibling.

HLA is a type of molecule found on the surface of most cells in the body. These play an important part in the body’s immune response to foreign substances.

These make up a person’s tissue type, which varies from person to person.

HLA typing is important in organ transplantation protocols, as they determine the likelihood of rejection.

 The world’s first saviour sibling, Adam Nash, was born in 2000 in the USA.

Need:

For those families with a child that requires a stem cell transplant, often there is a hurdle of finding a donor for the transplant.

A successful transplant requires an HLA match between donor and recipient. However, the probability of finding a suitable match among family members is about 30% overall.

Ethical Considerations and Implications: In a 2004 paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, UK researchers debated whether selecting saviour siblings should be banned.

They studied the arguments to ban it:

That saviour siblings would be wrongfully treated as means rather than ends.

They would cause or constitute a slide towards designer babies,

They would suffer physically and/or emotionally.

But the paper found these arguments to be flawed. It concluded that the selection of saviour siblings should be permitted, especially given that prohibiting it would result in the preventable deaths of a number of existing children.

In vitro Fertilisation

IVF is one of the more widely known types of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART).

In vitro comes from the latin word ‘in glass’, i.e. studies are done in a test tube rather than in a human or animal.

The opposite to ‘In-vitro’ is ‘In-vivo’, which comes from the latin word ‘within the living’. In vivo refers to experimentation being done in a living organism.

In vitro means outside the body. Fertilization means the sperm has attached to and entered the egg.

During IVF, mature eggs are collected (retrieved) from the ovaries and fertilized by sperm in a lab. Then the fertilized egg (embryo) or eggs (embryos) are transferred to a uterus.

Way Forward

Currently there is a significant gap between the biotechnology advancements in prenatal testing versus the necessary legal and ethical framework. It is imperative that legal and ethical standards be set for the benefit of both the families and professionals involved in the creation of savior children.

Demand for Gurkha Rights in Assam.

The Gurkha community in Assam has sought gazette notification ensuring that the safeguards according to Clause 6 of the 1985 Assam Accord are also extended to Gurkha people of Assam.

Key Points

The demand for the safeguards by Gurkha community further intensified with the recommendations of the high-level committee formed under the Chairmanship of Biplab Kumar Sharma by the Union Home Ministry on Clause 6 of Assam Accord.

The committee recommended that all Gurkhas of Assam are not indegenous Assamese people as per the definition of Assamese people .

Clause 6 of the Accord envisages constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards for protecting, preserving and promoting the culture, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.

Biplab Kumar Sharma Committee Recommendation:

Definition of Assamese: The report proposes 1st January 1951 as the cut-off date for any Indian citizen residing in Assam to be defined as an Assamese for the purpose of implementing Clause 6.

 Reservation for Assamese: It seeks reservation for Assamese in Parliament, state assembly, local bodies. It recommended creating an Upper House (Legislative Council of Assam) whose seats will be reserved for the ‘Assamese people’.

The report also seeks quotas in government jobs.

Regulation of Outsiders: Recommends regulation of entry of people from other states into Assam, which include the implementation of an Inner Line Permit (ILP) regime in the state.

The ILP is a system in which a special permit is required by people from other regions of India to visit the state.

Currently the ILP is applicable in Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram.

Other Rights: It also talks about issues related to land and land rights, linguistic, cultural and social rights and protection of the state’s resources and biodiversity.

Concern: It did not mention anything about the constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards of local Gorkhas.

This means the exclusion from the rights under the Clause 6 of the Accord.

Government Assurance

The Gurkhas in Assam are “one of the old communities”.

The government would treat them “at par with other indigenous communities and protect their constitutional rights while implementing Clause 6”.

Gorkhas in Assam:

There are currently 25 lakh Gurkhas in Assam.

The Gurkhas were permanently settled in the Scheduled Areas in the last part of the 18th century as grazers and cultivators.

They fought for Assam against the Burmese invaders in 1826 resulting in the Treaty of Yandaboo.

It was a peace treaty that resulted in the end of the First Anglo Burmese War. This treaty was signed on February 24, 1826 after two years of the war between British and Burmese.

They were declared as protected class by the British in the tribal belts and blocks according to the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation Act, 1886.

Assam Accord

It was a tripartite accord signed between the Government of India, State Government of Assam and the leaders of the Assam Movement in 1985.

The Accord ended the anti-foreigners Assam Agitation from 1979-1985.

The signing of the Accord led to the conclusion of a six-year agitation that was launched by the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) in 1979, demanding the identification and deportation of illegal immigrants from Assam.

It sets a cut-off of midnight of 24th March 1971, for the detection of illegal foreigners in Assam.

However, the demand was for detection and deportation of migrants who had illegally entered Assam after 1951.