UPSC Daily Current Affairs-15th December 2022 | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly PDF Download

GS-I

Beypore Uru

Context

The District Tourism Promotion Council, Kozhikode has applied for a Geographical Indication (GI) tag for the famous Beypore Uru (boat).

Context

Several political groups in Ladakh have been demanding Statehood and possible inclusion of Ladakh under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, on the lines of Jammu & Kashmir.

• In 2021, Ladakh’s only member in the Lok Sabha, the BJP’s Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, demanded constitutional safeguards by amending the Ladakh Autonomous Hill District Council (LAHDC) Act for the protection of land, employment, and the cultural identity of Ladakh under the Sixth Schedule

The Sixth Schedule:

• It is under Article 244
• It applies to Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram (three Councils each), and Tripura (one Council).
• It provides for the formation of autonomous administrative divisions — Autonomous District Councils (ADCs) — that have some legislative, judicial, and administrative autonomy within a state.
• ADCs have up to 30 members with a term of five years.
• ADCs can make laws, rules, and regulations with regard to land, forest, water, agriculture, village councils, health, sanitation, village- and town-level policing, inheritance, marriage and divorce, social customs and mining,
• The Bodoland Territorial Council in Assam is an exception with more than 40 members and the right to make laws on 39 issues.
• Aim: protects tribal population and inclusion in socio-economic development.

Ladakh’s situation:

• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs tabled a report in the Rajya Sabha which said that, according to the 2011 Census, the tribal population in the Union Territory of Ladakh is 2,18,355, that is 61% of the total population of 2,74,289.
• Ladakh administration had recently increased the reservation for Scheduled Tribes in direct recruitment from 10% to 45%.
• The committee recommended that special status may be granted to the Union Territory of Ladakh considering the developmental requirements of the tribal population.
• The Committee further recommends that the possibility of including Ladakh in fifth or sixth Schedule may be examined.

Source: The Hindu

Remission of a crime

Context

Supreme Court judge, Justice Bela M. Trivedi recused herself from hearing a writ petition filed by Bilkis Bano against a Gujarat government decision to prematurely release 11 men sentenced to life imprisonment for gang-raping her during the 2002 riots.

• The convicts were released under the Premature release policy of the Gujarat 1992.

Context:

• Bano has argued that the early release of the convicts amounted to a violation of her fundamental right to life.
• She has said the remission policy of the State of Maharashtra, where the trial happened, and not Gujarat would have governed the case.
• The Government of India conveyed the concurrence/approval of the Central government under Section 435 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for premature release of 11 prisoners.

Bilkis Bano case:

• Bilkis Bano and her family were attacked in 2002 Gujarat Riots.
• She was gangraped and seven of her family members were murdered.
• The Supreme Court ordered a CBI probe into the incident and arrests were made in 2004.
• In 2008, the Special CBI Court in Mumbai sentenced the 11 accused to life imprisonment on the charges of conspiring to rape a pregnant woman, murder and unlawful assembly under the Indian Penal Code.
• One of the convicts had approached the Supreme Court for the remission of his sentence. This plea led to the remission of the sentences of the 11 convicts.
• The apex court directed the Gujarat government to look into the issue of remission, following which the government formed a committee. Following the recommendation of the committee, the government decided to release the convicts.

Rules of Remission:

• Life imprisonment means convicts remain in jail for the whole of their life.
• However, they can be released by the State and Central governments but not before they complete 14 years, by remitting the remaining prison term.
• Judicial decisions advocate both subjective and objective norms for remission.
• Courts have ruled that remission should be informed, fair and reasonable, and not arbitrary; that it should not undermine the nature of the crime.
• In Laxman Naskar vs Union of India (2000), the Supreme Court laid down five considerations:
• whether the offence is an individual act of crime that does not affect society;
• whether there is a chance of the crime being repeated in future;
• whether the convict has lost the potentiality to commit crime;
• whether any purpose is being served in keeping the convict in prison;
• socio-economic conditions of the convict’s family.
• A remission panel usually consists of government officials, officers in charge of parole, rehabilitation and probation of offenders and prison officials.
• Section 432(7) of the CrPC says the appropriate government will be “the State within which the offender is sentenced or the said order is passed”.

Challenges:

• Brutal and horrific nature of the crime of gang-rape.
• Against Current remission policy (2014) – It bars those found guilty of heinous crimes from being given remission.
• “Prisoner convicted for murder with rape or gang rape” are not eligible
• Absence of mandatory consultation required under Section 435 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), in a case investigated by the CBI, prior to remission.
• However, the remission has been granted by the Gujarat government without consulting the Centre.
• The Supreme Court has also ruled that ‘consultation’ means ‘concurrence’ in this regard.
• Presence of political functionaries on the committee that recommended remission may have influenced the decision. It contained some Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionaries, including two MLAs.
• The injustice of exceptionalism – the district judge is understood to have opposed the grant of remission.
• The 1992 policy did not clearly state eligibility criteria.
• Convicts in the Bilkis Bano case were not eligible under the 2014 policy for remission.

Suggestions:

• The question whether Gujarat is indeed the appropriate government may also be raised again, even though the order by which the Supreme Court wanted their remission plea to be considered has already given its finding.
• In 2003, the Justice Malimath Committee submitted a report advocating a permanent statutory committee to prescribe sentencing guidelines to reduce ambiguity in the award of such sentences.
• In April 2022, a Supreme Court bench, led by Justice U Lalit, revoked the death sentence of Mohammad Firoz, a man convicted for the rape and murder of a four-year-old girl.

Way forward:

• There is a need to balance retributive justice with restorative justice
• Justice must not be denied on account of jurisprudence and technicalities of law.

Source: The Hindu

Context

In an unprecedented move, Iran has been expelled from the United Nation's Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in a vote on which India abstained.

• The US had proposed at the UN Economic and Social Council to remove Iran from the panel

UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)

• It is one of the six principal organs of UN, responsible for the direction and coordination of the economic, social, humanitarian, and cultural activities carried out by the UN.
• It was established by the UN Charter (1945) and has 54 members.
• Members are elected for three-year terms by the General Assembly.
  • Four of the five permanent members of the Security Council have been continuously re-elected because they provide funding for most of ECOSOC’s budget, which is the largest of any UN subsidiary body.
• Decisions are taken by simple majority vote. The presidency of ECOSOC changes annually.
• India held the inaugural Presidency of ECOSOC (Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar, in 1946).
  • In April 2022, India was elected to four key bodies of the ECOSOC.
  • These four bodies are:
    • Committee on Non-Governmental Organisations;
    • Commission for Social Development;
    • Commission on Science and Technology for Development; and
    • Committee for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Function

• ECOSOC is responsible for coordinating the social and economic fields of the organization, specifically in regards to the 15 specialized agencies, the five regional commissions under the jurisdiction, the eight functional commissions.
• It also serves as a central forum to discuss the international social and economic issues and formulating policy recommendations addressed to the member states and the United States system.

UN Women

• UN Women is the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women.
  • It was created In July 2010 by the United Nations General Assembly.
• It was created by merging the four bodies of the UN system:
  • Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW)
  • International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW)
  • Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI)
  • United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
• It is headquartered at the United Nations in New York.

Functions of UN Women

• Working for the empowerment and rights of women and girls globally, UN Women’s main roles are:
  • To support inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms.
  • To help Member States implement these standards, to provide suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it, and to forge effective partnerships with civil society.
  • To lead and coordinate the UN system’s work on gender equality, as well as promote accountability, including through regular monitoring of system-wide progress.

News Summary

• Iran was ousted from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in the wake of Tehran's brutal crackdown of women-led protests.
  • CSW is the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.
• The vote came after intense lobbying by the US following widespread protests in Iran sparked by outrage against the edict compelling women to wear hijabs.

Key highlights

• A simple majority was needed to adopt the move, which was opposed by 8 nations including Russia and China.
• India along with 15 other nations abstained from the vote as 29 countries stood in favour of the resolution.
• Iran's term, which began this year, was to have run through 2026.

Source: The Hindu

GS-III

Context

The UN secretary general stated that the adaption finance needs of developing countries will gallop to $340 billion annually.

• While funding contours and future contributors remain unclear, least developed and vulnerable smaller island nations in need of assistance to tackle climate disasters are its likely beneficiaries.
• Not only must India continue pushing rich nations to contribute additional monies for past excesses, but also mobilize more private capital finance on its own by co-creating an auxiliary funding mechanism.

What is climate finance:

• It refers to the financial arrangements that are specific to the use for projects that are environmentally sustainable or projects that adopt the aspects of climate change.
• It includes
• Production of energy from renewable sources like solar, wind, biogas, etc.
• Clean transportation that involves lower greenhouse gas emission
• Energy efficient projects like green building
• Waste management that includes recycling, efficient disposal and conversion to energy, etc.

Current situation:

• A glance at the OECD’s climate finance trends report 2022 indicates that of the targeted $100 billion aggregate climate funding, about $83 billion was mobilized from developed nations via global agencies through 2020.
• Of this, bilateral and multilateral public climate finance from the developed West stood at $68 billion, comprising concessional and non-concessional loans (71%), grants (26%) and equity (2%), while private climate finance and export credit extended via agencies comprised just $15 billion.
• Experience suggests that depending solely on timely Western public funds, per current or post-2025 quantified agreements, will be unwise in times of geo-strategic competition and recessionary fears.
• Monies from rich countries are unpredictable, yet the allocation thereof by global agencies is predictably done among least developed and developing nations across Asia (42% of the 2020 total), Africa (26%) and Latin America (17%).

Challenges in India:

• High borrowing costs due to asymmetric information, higher risk perception and governance issues.
• Green-washing or false claims of environmental compliance
• Plurality of green loan definitions
• Maturity mismatches between long-term green investment and relatively short-term interests of investors.
• Lack of adequate market infrastructure and policy framework
• Public sector orientation – Climate finance funds on concessional terms will largely be earmarked for select public sector projects or renewable energy mitigation and low-carbon transport systems planned under India’s long-term Low Emissions Development Strategy (LEDS) for climate action.
• Presently, adaptation and mitigation financing for compact businesses, SMEs and local communities is not in focus.
• Fiscal incentives like production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes may work in drawing manufacturing mitigation investments for utility-scale solar or wind, however the same are not resilient and sustainable.

Suggestions:

• New financial instruments such as green bonds, carbon market instruments (e.g. carbon tax) and new financial institutions (e.g. green banks and green funds).
• A banking framework wherein Indian banks are nudged to lock in long-tenure, low-cost private climate capital from alternative sources, like overseas investor institutions, global pledge organizations, private philanthropy, CSR budgets, etc, and are incentivized to on-lend cheaper loans to diverse businesses.
• Arming banks with risk weight and priority sector incentives can help extend concessional low-coupon, shorter tenor sustainability financing to clients.
• This may also deepen funding liquidity for lower-rung entities and improve global forex inflows at a time of weak exports.
• Delineated projects of larger companies or well-rated special purpose vehicles(SPVs) that meet pre-set mitigation specifications should continue to be encouraged to raise funds through domestic financial institutions (DFIs), project financiers and private and sovereign green bonds.
• Impact funds, blended finance instruments and venture capitalists betting on new climate technologies need to be nurtured for the purpose.
• Fintech start-ups and digitization can play a big supporting role in connecting small clients with banks.
• Regulators and financiers need to evaluate various use-case scenarios before implementation.
• Decentralised approach – For instance, block-level wholesalers/transport operators or fertilizer and tractor sellers can be incentivized to arrange machinery for mulching crop stubble into farm fields or recycling waste for biofuels, with the objective of lowering husk-fire emissions and air pollution across the Indo-Gangetic plains.
• DFI funds and direct fiscal transfers by the government may only work partially.
• Low coupon sustainability-linked bank loans or overdraft facilities at the entity level would be a more practical adaptation solution for many across the rural and urban divide.

Way forward:

• As India lays out a G20 agenda, the government should set the direction for augmenting our private climate finance framework, too.
• As the country marches forward in its quest towards net-zero emissions powered by a people’s movement as much as low-cost climate finance.
• Inclusive growth with relentless and resilient development (“Sahit Vikas, Satat Viksan”) should be our mantra.

Source: Livemint

Rare Diseases

Context

Rajya Sabha MP from the Nationalist Congress Party Fauzia Khan on Friday raised concerns over the benefits of the National Policy of Rare Diseases (NPRD) not reaching any patient with rare diseases even after several months since its introduction.

What are Rare diseases:

• A rare disease is any disease that affects a small percentage of the population such as fewer than 200,000 people across a broad range of possible disorders.
• These rare diseases are majorly thought to be genetic and are passed on from one generation to the next.
• In India, Haemophilia, Thalassemia, Sickle cell anaemia and Primary Immuno Deficiency in children, auto-immune diseases, Lysosomal storage disorders such as Pompe disease and Gaucher’s disease are in the rare diseases list.

National Policy of Rare Diseases (NPRD) 2021

• Objectives – promotion of research and development for diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases.
• Promotion of local development and manufacture of drugs and creation of conducive environment for indigenous manufacturing of drugs for rare diseases at affordable prices.
• The rare diseases have been identified and categorized into 3 groups.
• Group 1: Disorders amenable to one-time curative treatment.
• Group-2: Diseases requiring long term/lifelong treatment having relatively lower cost of treatment and benefit has been documented in literature and annual or more frequent surveillance is required.
• Group 3:- Diseases for which definitive treatment is available but challenges are to make optimal patient selection for benefit, very high cost and lifelong therapy.
• Eight (08) Centres of Excellence (CoEs) have been identified for diagnosis, prevention and treatment of rare diseases.
• Five Nidan Kendras have been set up for genetic testing and counselling services.

Challenges in India:

• Lack of treatment: About 95% rare diseases have no approved treatment and less than 1 in 10 patients receive disease specific treatment.
• Loss of lives due to delayed and misdiagnoses, limited access to resources, and absence of specific therapies often preclude patients from receiving proper, timely care.
• Impact on children: Children are disproportionately affected by these diseases as compared to adults
• 50 percent of new cases are observed to be in children, out of which 35 percent of children die before the age of one year, 10             percent die between the ages of 1 to 5 years, and 12 percent between the ages of 5 to 15 years. (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare 2017)
• High cost: The cost of treatment of rare diseases may vary from INR 10 lakhs to INR 1 crore on an annual basis.
• Issues in policy design: India does not have its standard definition for rare disease and neither does sufficient data on prevalence exists.
• The Government of India launched the Indian Rare Disease Registry only in April 2017.
• Only 450 rare diseases have been recorded in the registry as per data available from tertiary hospitals
• Unending delay and lack of urgency in policy implementation
• Eg lack of will of Centres of Excellence (CoE), designated as per the NPRD policy, has endangered the survival prospects of 415 patients, largely children, diagnosed with rare diseases.
• Majority of these patients have been diagnosed with Gaucher disease, for which therapy approved by Drug Controller General of India is available for many years.
• Lack of governance
• In NPRD policy, many CoEs were yet to seek financial support as per the policy for treating the patients.

Suggestions:

• The amount of 20 lakh sanctioned under the Rashtriya Arogya Nidhi, although appreciable but is barely enough to cover the costs of treatment.
• The Central Government recently informed the Delhi High Court that a digital platform has been made operational for crowdfunding of treatment and medicines for rare disease.
• Support from foundations, NGO’s and crowdfunding-led initiatives is extremely helpful, however, it will not be accessible to all and is only a stop-gap solution.
• As of August 2019, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company’s programme has covered 199 patients from 13 countries including India.
• Sustained medical and financial support to the patient from Government.
• Robust and inclusive policy in consultation with the State Governments.
• Public health concern is addressed sustainably to provide respite to thousands of victims of rare diseases and their families in India.

Way forward

• The private initiatives are leading the war, but without support from the Government, such solutions are not sustainable.
• Strength of policy making is integral to the strength of the government as a whole, and that of the country at large.

Source :The Hindu

Context

French-Canadian singer Celine Dion has opened up about being diagnosed with Stiff-Person Syndrome (SPS), a rare neurological condition that makes the muscles spasm uncontrollably.

Stiff-Person Syndrome

• It is a syndrome of fluctuating but progressive muscle stiffness and spasm that preferentially affects axial (back and abdominal) muscles
• It is a central nervous system disorder, meaning encephalomyelopathy, in which myelopathic features predominate in most patients. It frequently affects women with a median onset of 35 to 40 years of age

What are its causes?

• Spasms occur at any random time and can be triggered by loud noises, touch, and emotional distress.
• Autoimmune disease is caused by antibodies to proteins, resulting in impaired GABAergic (Gamma amino butyric acid) inhibition of the motor nerves in the brain and spinal cord.
• It is associated with GAD65 (Glutamic acid decarboxylase) and amphiphysin antibodies.
• 70 per cent of patients with GAD antibodies have diabetes mellitus as comorbidity.
• It is associated with other autoimmune diseases like cerebellitis, myasthenia gravis, hypo/hyperthyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus
• The malignancies associated with stiff-person syndrome are breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and small cell carcinoma of the lung

Common Symptoms

• SPS is known to affect the body posture of a person due to severe pain and stiffness in muscles in the trunk (torso), arms and legs.
• But symptoms can also include a person having greater sensitivity to noise, touch, and emotional distress

Treatment

• Since it is a rare disease with heterogenous clinical manifestations, the diagnosis may be delayed by an average of six years following symptom onset
• Treatment involves the use of both symptomatic agents to enhance GABAergic influences and Immuno modulating treatment aimed at the autoimmune basis of the disease.
• In patients with paraneoplastic Stiff Person Syndrome, identification and eradication of the underlying malignancy can alleviate symptoms

Source: The Indian Express