UPSC Daily Current Affairs- 8th February 2023 | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly PDF Download

GS-II

Context

The existing income limit for determining the non-creamy layer (NCL) among Other Backward Classes (OBC) is considered sufficient and hence there is no proposal currently to revise the said income limit, informed the Centre.

What is Non-Creamy Layer in OBCs?

• Creamy Layer is a concept that sets a threshold within which OBC reservation benefits are applicable.
• While there is a 27% quota for OBCs in government jobs and higher educational institutions, those falling within the “creamy layer” cannot get the benefits of this quota.

Basis of Creamy Layer

• It is based on the recommendation of the Second Backward Classes Commission (Mandal Commission).
• The government in 1990 had notified 27% reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs) in vacancies in civil posts and services that are to be filled on direct recruitment.
• After this was challenged, the Supreme Court in the Indira Sawhney case (1992) upheld 27% reservation for OBCs, subject to exclusion of the creamy layer.

How is it determined?

Following the order in Indra Sawhney, an expert committee headed by Justice (retired) R N Prasad was constituted for fixing the criteria for determining the creamy layer.

• In 1993, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) listed out various categories of people of certain rank/status/income whose children cannot avail the benefit of OBC reservation.

1. For those not in government, the current threshold is an income of Rs 8 lakh per year.
2. For children of government employees, the threshold is based on their parents’ rank and not income.
3. For instance, an individual is considered to fall within the creamy layer if either of his or her parents is in a constitutional post; if either parent has been directly recruited in Group-A; or if both parents are in Group-B services.
4. If the parents enter Group-A through promotion before the age of 40, their children will be in the creamy layer.
5. Children of a Colonel or higher-ranked officer in the Army, and children of officers of similar ranks in the Navy and Air Force, too, come under the creamy layer.
6. Income from salaries or agricultural land is not clubbed while determining the creamy layer (2004).

What is happening now?

• Many communities have raised questions about the pending proposal for revising the criteria.
• They have asked whether the provision of a creamy layer for government services only for OBC candidates is rational and justified.
• The National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) has consistently maintained from as early as 2011 that the income limit should be raised to at least ₹10 lakh.

Has it ever been revised?

• Other than the income limit, the current definition of the creamy layer remains the same as the DoPT had spelled out in 1993 and 2004.
• The income limit has been revised over the years.
• No other orders for the definition of the creamy layer have been issued.
• While the DoPT had stipulated that it would be revised every three years, the first revision since 1993 (Rs 1 lakh per year) happened only in 2004 (Rs 2.50 lakh), 2008 (Rs 4.50 lakh), 2013 (Rs 6 lakh), and 2017 (Rs 8 lakh).
• It is now more than five years since the last revision.

What is the current NCL limit?

• Currently, an annual income of both parents of ₹8 lakh or more excludes OBCs from availing reservation.
• It puts them in the creamy layer category, leaving benefits only for those earning less than that.

Source: The Hindu

GS-III

Quasicrystals

Context

Recently, scientists have discovered a third natural source of quasicrystals.

About Quasicrystal:

• Quasicrystal, also called quasi-periodic crystal, matter formed atomically in a manner somewhere between the amorphous solids of glasses and the precise pattern of crystals.
• In quasicrystals, the atoms are arranged in a pattern that repeats itself at irregular, yet predictable, intervals.
• The American-Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman discovered quasicrystals in the lab in 1982.
• The first natural quasicrystal found was as microscopic grains in a fragment of the Khatyrka meteorite lying in the Koryak mountains of Russia.
• The second time scientists found natural quasicrystals in the remains of the Trinity test of the Manhattan Project.
• Recently in the Sand Hills dunes in northern Nebraska, where scientists found silicate glass which is a dodecagonal quasicrystal, rare even for quasicrystals.

Applications of Quasicrystals

• They are used in surgical instruments, LED lights and nonstick frying pans.
• They have poor heat conductivity, which makes them good insulators.

Source: PIB

Context

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has extended the validity of authorization issued to Vakrangee to setup, own and operate White Label ATMs in India.

What is White Label ATM?

• Usually ATMs are managed by banks. But White Label ATMs are owned and operated by non-banking entities.
• ATMs operated under this business model allow customers to use them for banking transactions regardless of the bank they have an account with.
• RBI approved the operation and inclusion of WLA ATM by non-banking organisations under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act of 2007.
• It was introduced to expand India’s ATM network, especially in semi-urban and rural areas.

How does it work?

• White Label ATM companies work with banking networks to enable bank customers to use banking services like withdrawing funds, paying bills and depositing cash.
• White Label ATM (WLA) operators’ charge card-issuing bank fees to provide this facility to the bank’s clients.
• The transaction process in White Label ATM operators consists of a lending bank, a sponsor bank that handles settlements and an ATM network provider.
• The Sponsor bank provides the cash facility for the White ATM.

Significance of WLA: Financial Inclusion

• Financial inclusion is concerned with the availability of financial services and adequate financing to low-income individuals and other vulnerable segments of society.
• ATMs promote financial inclusion and provide customers with various banking services at any location and time.

White Label ATM Operators in India

• Non-banks set up and operate White ATMs as per the rules laid down by RBI for using ‘other bank’ ATMs.
• These ATMs accept all domestic debit cards and offer the first five or three transactions per month free of cost, depending on the location.

Below mentioned are some examples of companies that operate white label ATMs:

• Indicash – India’s largest White Label ATM network responsible for ‘uberisation of ATMs.’
• India1 Payments (BTI Payments Pvt. Ltd.)
• Hitachi Payment Services Pvt. Ltd.
• Tata Communications Payment Solutions Ltd.
• Vakrangee Limited

Benefits of White Label ATMs

There are many benefits of White Label ATMs:

• Customers benefit from White Label ATMs since they eliminate the need to visit a bank branch on a regular basis
• ATMs are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays
• Banks benefit from this because they do not have to maintain a huge staff/office (compared to a system without ATMs). It lowers their branch-operational costs
• Financial inclusion of rural, semi-urban, and low-income people
• It allowed ATM cards to be issued by any bank that can be used at White Label ATMs
• WLA atm also provides mobile recharge, energy bill payments, and other value-added services

Limitations of White Label ATMs

There are also a few limitations of White Label ATMs:

• The issue of unsuccessful transactions is a key source of concern. In the event of a dispute, the dispute resolution method will include three entities, namely the WLA operator, the WLA operator’s sponsor bank, and the customer’s bank.
• Customers will be discouraged by the cost issue, as they will be obliged to pay a price to use the White Label ATMs, as only a limited number of free transactions are permitted on the WLAs
• White label ATMs’ financial viability is questioned because of their low interchange charge and hefty operational expenses
• If there is a bank-managed ATM in the same area as a WLA ATM, the White Label ATMs may not be able to generate a profit

Differences Between Brown Label and White Label ATMs

Source: The Hindu

Context

The Union Budget has recently announced Rs 2,516 crore for the computerisation of 63,000 Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) over the next five years

About Primary Agricultural Credit Societies:

• These are village-level cooperative credit societies that serve as the last link in a three-tier cooperative credit structure.
• These are headed by the State Cooperative Banks (SCB) at the state level.
• Credit from the SCBs is transferred to the district central cooperative banks, or DCCBs, that operate at the district level.
• These district central cooperative banks work with PACS, which deals directly with farmers.
• Individual farmers are members of the PACS, and office-bearers are elected from within them. A village can have multiple PACS.
• PACS are involved in short-term lending — or what is known as crop loans.
• At the start of the cropping cycle, farmers avail credit to finance their requirement of seeds, fertilisers etc.
• Banks extend this credit at 7 percent interest, of which 3 per cent is subsidised by the Centre, and 2 per cent by the state government. Effectively, farmers avail the crop loans at 2 per cent interest only.

Source: PIB

Context

The new CAR T-Cell Immunotherapy holds promise for Ovarian Cancer patients over other forms of treatment.

What are CAR T-cells?

• Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies represent a quantum leap in the sophistication of cancer treatment.
• Unlike chemotherapy or immunotherapy, which require mass-produced injectable or oral medication, CAR T-cell therapies use a patient’s own cells.
• They are modified in the laboratory to activate T-cells, a component of immune cells, to attack tumours.
• These modified cells are then infused back into the patient’s bloodstream after conditioning them to multiply more effectively.
• The cells are even more specific than targeted agents and directly activate the patient’s immune system against cancer, making the treatment more clinically effective.
• This is why they’re called ‘living drugs’.

How does the therapy work?

• In CAR T-cell therapy, the patient’s blood is drawn to harvest T-cells which are immune cells that play a major role in destroying tumour cells.
• Researchers modify these cells in the laboratory so that they express specific proteins on their surface, known as chimeric antigen receptors (CAR).
• They have an affinity for proteins on the surface of tumour cells.
• This modification in the cellular structure allows CAR T-cells to effectively bind to the tumour and destroy it.
• The final step in the tumour’s destruction involves its clearance by the patient’s immune system.

Where is it used?

• As of today, CAR T-cell therapy has been approved for leukaemias (cancers arising from the cells that produce white blood cells) and lymphomas (arising from the lymphatic system).
• These cancers occur through the unregulated reproduction of a single clone of cells, that is, following the cancerous transformation of a single type of cell, it produces millions of identical copies.
• As a result, the target for CAR T-cells is consistent and reliable.
• CAR T-cell therapy is also used among patients with cancers that have returned after an initial successful treatment or which haven’t responded to previous combinations of chemotherapy or immunotherapy.
• Its response rate is variable. In certain kinds of leukaemias and lymphomas, the efficacy is as high as 90%, whereas in other types of cancers it is significantly lower.

How widespread is its use?

• The complexity of preparing CAR T-cells has been a major barrier to their use.
• The first clinical trial showing they were effective was published almost a decade ago; the first indigenously developed therapy in India was successfully performed only in 2022.
• The technical and human resources required to administer this therapy are also considerable.
• Treatments in the US cost more than a million dollars.
• Trials are underway in India, with companies looking to indigenously manufacture CAR T-cells at a fraction of the cost.
• The preliminary results have been encouraging.

What are conventional cancer therapies?

• The three major forms of treatment for any cancer are surgery (removing the cancer), radiotherapy (delivering ionising radiation to the tumour), and systemic therapy (chemotherapy- administering medicines that act on the tumour only).
• Surgery and radiotherapy have been refined significantly over time whereas advances in systemic therapy have been unparalleled.
• A new development on this front, currently holding the attention of many researchers worldwide, is the CAR T-cell therapy.

Will this therapy be expensive in India as well?

• In India, introducing any new therapy faces the twin challenges of cost and value.
• Critics argue that developing facilities in India may be redundant and/or inappropriate as even when it becomes cheaper, CAR T-cell therapy will be unaffordable to most Indians.
• Those who are affluent and require the therapy currently receive it abroad anyway.
• While this is true, it may be the right answer to the wrong question.
• Having access to a global standard of care is every patient’s right; how it can be made more affordable can be the next step.

Source: Indian Express

Context

Google has finally decided to answer the challenge and threat posed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its AI chatbot- ChatGPT.

What is Bard, when can I access it?

• Google’s Bard is functioned on LaMDA, the firm’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications system, and has been in development for several years.
• It is what Sunder Pichai termed an “experimental conversational AI service”.
• Google will be opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.
• It is not yet publicly available.

What is Bard based on?

• Bard is built on Transformer technology—which is also the backbone of ChatGPT and other AI bots.
• Transformer technology was pioneered by Google and made open-source in 2017.
• Transformer technology is a neural network architecture, which is capable of making predictions based on inputs and is primarily used in natural language processing and computer vision technology.
• Previously, a Google engineer claimed LaMDA was a ‘sentient’ being with consciousness.

How does it work?

• Bard draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.
• In short, it will give in-depth, conversational and essay-style answers just like ChatGPT does right now.
• It requires significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback.

What about its computing power?

• Remember running these models also requires significant computing power.
• For instance, ChatGPT is powered by Microsoft’s Azure Cloud services.
• This also explains why the service often runs into errors at times, because too many people are accessing it.

Key difference between ChatGPT and Google’s Bard

• It appears that to take on ChatGPT, Google has an ace up its sleeve: the ability to draw information from the Internet.
• Bard draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.
• ChatGPT has impressed with its ability to respond to complex queries — though with varying degrees of accuracy — but its biggest shortcoming perhaps is that it cannot access real-time information from the Internet.
• ChatGPT’s language model was trained on a vast dataset to generate text based on the input, and the dataset, at the moment, only includes information until 2021.

Is Bard better than ChatGPT?

• Bard looks like a limited rollout right now.
• Google is looking for a lot of feedback at the moment around Bard, so it is hard to say whether it can answer more questions than ChatGPT.
• Google has also not made clear the amount of knowledge that Bard possesses.
• For instance, with ChatGPT, we know its knowledge is limited to events till 2021.
• Of course, it is based on LaMDA, which has been in the news for a while now.

Why has Google announced Bard right now?

• Bard comes as Microsoft is preparing to announce an integration of ChatGPT into its Bing Search engine.
• Google might have invented the ‘Transformer’ technology, but it is now being seen as a latecomer to the AI revolution.
• ChatGPT in many ways is being called the end of Google Search, given that conversational AI can give long, essay style and sometimes elegant answers to a user’s queries.
• Of course, not all of these are correct, but then AI is capable of correcting itself as well and learning from mistakes.

Source: Indian Express

Context

Recently, an alleged fossil discovered near Bhopal about two years ago and thought to be of the extinct Dickinsonia turned out to be the impression of a decayed beehive.

About Dickinsonia:

• Dickinsonia is an extinct genus of basal animal that lived during the late Ediacaran period on ocean floors around present-day’s Australia, Russia and Ukraine.
• The individual Dickinsonia typically resembles a bilaterally symmetrical ribbed oval.
• Its affinities are presently unknown; its mode of growth is consistent with a stem-group bilaterian affinity, though some have suggested that it belongs to the fungi or even an “extinct kingdom”.
• The discovery of cholesterol molecules in fossils of Dickinsonia lends support to the idea that Dickinsonia was an animal.
• It is believed to be one of the key links between the early, simple organisms and the explosion of life in the Cambrian Period, about 541 million years ago.

Key facts about the Ediacaran period

• It consisted of tubular and frond-shaped organisms that lived during this period.
• The Edicarian Period was about 20 million years before the emergence of modern animal life — a period known as the Cambrian explosion.

Source: PIB