1 July 2018: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A. GS1 Related

A. GS2 Related

• In a bid to make data-driven decision making more than a mere buzzword, the Ministry of Rural Development launched the DISHA dashboard, a nifty tool that will make it easier to monitor governance by geography in real time.
• The application, which is now available to all members of Parliament and State Assemblies as well district officials, allows the user to track the progress of multiple and diverse schemes in a certain district, block, or even a gram panchayat.
• The application automatically turns sets of statistics and data into interactive and visually accessible graphics and maps.
• Currently, 18 schemes are covered; the ultimate plan is to integrate all 42 Central schemes — representing a total outlay of ₹3 lakh crore — which are already monitored by DISHA or District Development Coordination and Monitoring Committees.
• Several schemes have good Management Information Systems, but they don’t talk to each other. So, it is difficult for elected representatives and local planners to go through all the data and get a sense of what is happening in a particular place.
• Currently, geographic mismatches make it difficult to unite data; for instance, while the Rural Development Ministry tracks its schemes by gram panchayat, the Health Ministry tracks it by anganwadis, which are mapped by population, while crime data uses different boundaries.

B. GS3 Related

• Over the last few decades, the emergence of TB strains that are resistant to first-line medication has alarmed doctors and public health experts.

Concerns

• Some forms of drug-resistance — especially to the two first-line drugs (referred to as multidrug-resistant TB or MDR-TB) — require a longer duration of therapy that is more expensive and toxic.
• Therefore, MDR-TB and other advanced forms of drug resistance have the potential to undermine global TB elimination efforts.
• These concerns are particularly relevant for India which has the world’s largest TB epidemic and the largest number of individuals with MDR-TB.

TB drug-resistance survey

• On World TB Day this year (March 24), the Government of India released the country’s first national TB drug-resistance survey.
• It found that 6% of patients seeking care in the government sector have MDR-TB; this includes 3% of patients diagnosed with TB for the first time and 12% of patients with a prior history of TB treatment.

Other findings

• Recent modelling studies predict that the percentage of patients with MDR-TB in India is only likely to rise over the next two decades.
• As of 2013, the outcomes of patients with MDR-TB in the government TB programme were dismal.
• Of the 61,000 patients estimated to have reached government diagnostic centres that year, 14% were successfully diagnosed and have completed therapy.
• To its credit, since 2013, the government has made efforts to improve diagnosis and treatment of such patients.
• The findings of the survey highlight an urgent need to accelerate these efforts.

Shortcomings of the survey

• The findings of the survey are limited by the fact that it was conducted using a sample of a little over 5,000 patients from the public sector.
• This is a significant shortcoming as about 50% to 60% of patients in India are being treated in the private sector.
• Recent studies have found very poor quality of TB care in the private sector.
• It is quite common for patients to first consult a private or informal health-care provider when they develop symptoms, which has been shown to increase delays in diagnosis.
• Also, patients often do not have access to support systems that are in place in the public health system.

Drug susceptibility testing (DST)

• Drug susceptibility testing (DST) is used to determine if a patient has MDR-TB, thereby enabling prompt diagnosis and treatment.
• In previous years, the government had restricted use of DST to patients at higher risk for MDR-TB (those with a history of TB treatment).
• As a result, patients diagnosed with TB for the first time had to fail the first-line regimen before being screened with DST, resulting in prolonged delays in diagnosis.
• Last year, the government introduced universal DST in 19 States.
• It needs to be rapidly rolled out in the States with the highest TB burden if there is to be a meaningful impact in India’s MDR-TB epidemic.
• Further, strict adherence to medication can lower the chances of developing drug resistance and reduce TB deaths.
• Improving pill-taking by patients, however, is easier said than done.
• The MDR-TB drug regimen is demanding and can have severe side-effects (loss of appetite and hearing loss) if patients are not closely monitored.
• Enhanced counselling and access to patient support groups may help patients stick to their treatment.
• In addition, innovative treatment-monitoring technologies such as digital pillboxes may assist in improving patient outcomes.

Way forward

• Engaging with the private sector is crucial to address the challenge of drug resistant TB (DR-TB).
• Innovative models for Mumbai, Patna (Bihar), and Mehsana (Gujarat) have proven to be successful.
• These models can serve as a starting point for conducting a drug resistance survey in the private sector and extending universal DST to the private sector.
• While the government is employing some of these strategies, the pace and scale of implementation have been slower and smaller than will be needed to turn the tables on DR-TB.

• Astronomers across the world are puzzled by a new phenomenon — a very bright celestial object seen close to the very small galaxy CGCG 137-068.

COW

• A fast-brightening spot, initially thought to be a bright transient astronomical event lying close to the galaxy CGCG 137-068, was spotted by the ATLAS telescope.
• Named AT2018cow, the transient was soon given the nickname ‘cow’.
• This is not due to any resemblance to the quadruped but a mere coincidence of letters in the way of naming such transients.
• The cow proved to be suitably interesting, because though it was initially thought to be a nova, later analysis showed that it was more like a broadline supernova of the type Ic.
• A nova is an explosion from the surface of a white-dwarf star in a binary star system while a supernova is a violent stellar explosion that can shine as brightly as an entire galaxy of billions of normal stars.
• However, AT2018cow’s fast rise time and high luminosity are unprecedented for a supernova.
• Transient astronomical events last from a few seconds to several weeks and may have several causes.
• Specifically, a Type Ic supernova is caused by the explosion of an extremely massive star which has lost its outer layers of hydrogen and helium.

India

• Indian scientists too are keeping an eye on the mysterious transient AT2018cow using the 2-metre Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) at Hanle, Ladakh.
• The HCT observations indicate that the transient is steadily fading in all optical bands.

Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO)

• The Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO), is located near Leh in Ladakh, India, has one of the world’s highest sites for optical, infrared and gamma-ray telescopes.
• It is operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore.
• It is currently the third highest optical telescope in the world, situated at an elevation of 4,500 meters (14,764 ft).
• The Observatory has two active telescopes: Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) and a High Altitude Gamma Ray Telescope (HAGAR).
• The Himalayan Chandra Telescope is a 2.01 meters (6.5 feet) diameter optical-infrared telescope named after India-born Nobel laureate Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar.

• Looking around at the amount of plastic that fills our homes and surroundings, it is difficult to believe that as many as 18 States have some kind of ban on plastic in place.
• The Maharashtra Plastic and Thermocol Products (Manufacture, Usage, Sale, Transport, Handling and Storage) Notification, 2018, issued under a 2006 State law, the Maharashtra Non-Biodegradable Garbage (Control) Act, is just the latest in a series of attempts by various State governments as well as the Centre to curb the growing menace of virtually indestructible plastic waste that is choking our planet.

Background

• The fight against plastic goes as far back as 1999 in India, when the Centre notified rules controlling the manufacture, sale and usage of plastic.
• The rules have been amended since then. Changes introduced in 2016 were considered the most environment friendly, extending responsibility to producers and generators of plastic, and imposing responsibilities on industry, consumers and civic bodies (up to and including the village level) for segregating, managing, recycling and reducing the usage of plastic.

Challenges

• India’s per capita, per year consumption of plastic is around 11 kg per year, while the average American consumes over 100 kg.
• In total, India is one of the largest consumers and generators of plastic in the world.
• According to Central Pollution Control Board data, India generates nearly 26,000 tonnes of plastic waste a day.
• But the availability of data is poor and this volume doesn’t correlate with India’s annual plastic production, expected to cross 20 million tonnes per year by 2020.
• The plastic industry generates over ₹1 lakh crore per year, has more than 30,000 processing units and generates 11 lakh jobs, according to a 2017 FICCI study.
• Given this huge economic impact, there is bound to be pushback against any attempt to control the manufacture, sale and usage of plastic.
• Every attempt to impose some kind of control by fiat has immediately been met with huge lobbying by those with a key stake in the plastic industry.
• And almost invariably, the government has caved.
• Two years after the Centre’s 2016 plastic control rules, implementation has not even started, but dilution has.
• In amendments issued in 2018, multilayered plastic, of the kind we find in juice cartons, which was earlier banned (except of the recyclable variety, a rare and expensive type) is now allowed provided energy can be recovered from it or it can be put to alternative use.
• How all this is to be done is not specified.
• Likewise, the 2016 rules which made retail establishments start charging for plastic carry bags (by making them register with the local civic body and pay ₹4,000 a month as fees) has been reworded so that the explicit charge for plastic bags (which was beginning to encourage reuse) is no longer there.

Maharashtra

• For instance, the Maharashtra ban has been diluted several times within a week of being introduced.
• First, after imposing a ban on single-use plastic across the State, the government has now given a three-month extension to small retailers to phase out single-use plastic.
• Then, with Ganesh Chaturthi looming, the government hurriedly exempted thermocol, which is used to decorate Ganapati pandals, from the ban, while also throwing a lifeline to the fishing community by exempting that near-indestructible material for storing fish.
• A string of other exemptions has followed — plastic medical packaging, food grade plastic, plastic used for handling solid waste, plastic bins, plastic used in exports, plastic integral to manufacturing, bags for agriculture (allegedly degradable), and so on.
• Under pressure from e-tailers like Amazon and Flipkart, the State government is also reportedly considering allowing them to continue, provided they set up a mechanism to collect the waste.
• This has pretty much been the story of India’s attempts to impose legal controls on plastic.

The way forward

• What is needed is firmness of resolve in committing to reducing plastic usage, imposing responsible behaviour on producers and consumers of plastic, especially at the industry level, and a focussed search for alternatives.
• India, in fact, is home to jute, one of the world’s best natural packaging materials, but the jute industry has been sent into terminal decline by cheaper plastic and policy decline.
• Above all, we need social change. Sikkim has shown the way.
• Massive awareness campaigns backed with policy change has led to a noticeable decline in plastic use in the tiny State.
• Unless India does a Sikkim, the dystopian earth of Wall-E will be the home of future generations.

E. Editorials

1. PSLV bags first Australian order

2. Decreasing ‘greenness’ in India’s forests

3. Exoplanets with seasons

4. Cheers to Camellia

5. Mars valleys

Question 1. Which of the following statement/s is/are incorrect with respect to the high seas?

1. These are parts of the sea that are not included in the territorial sea or in the internal waters of a State.
2. The high seas are open to all States, whether coastal or land-locked.
3. The high seas shall be reserved for peaceful purposes.

Options:

1. i) and ii) only
2. ii) only
3. i) and iii) only
4. None of the above

See

Question 2. Consider the statements:

1. Supreme court has jurisdiction over the decisions regarding disqualification of a member of the parliament.
2. An exemption has been provided to the Speaker and deputy speaker of the House of people to disqualification.

Which of the above statements is/are correct?

1. i) only
2. ii) only
3. Both i) and ii)
4. None

See

Question 3.Article 243G talks about the provisions related to powers, authority and responsibilities of panchayats. These matters for economic and social development of the villages are listed in

1. Schedule 10
2. Schedule 11
3. Schedule 12
4. Schedule 7

See

Question 4. Which of the following is incorrectly matched?

1. Humayun’s Tomb – Haji Begam
2. Hampi – Vijayanagara Empire
3. Churches and Convents, Goa – Portuguese
4. Moti Masjid, Agra – Akbar

See

H. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

1. With the consumption levels of plastic in India on the rise, curbing the plastic menace will prove to be an arduous task. Discuss the challenges faced by the government in the implementation of the various legislations to control plastic pollution and suggest measures to design and implement an effective policy.
2. Wars bring plight to one, an opportunity for another. In this context, discuss the economic impact of World War II on various sections of the Indian society.

Also, check previous Daily News Analysis

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