25 Mar 2018: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A. GS1 Related
B. GS2 Related
POLITY
1. Fodder Scam: Lalu gets 14 years in jail
2. Cauvery Panel
HEALTH ISSUES
1. National Anti-TB Drug Resistance Survey report 
2. Non-reporting of Tuberculosis (TB) 
C. GS3 Related
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
1. Protein that prevents spread of cancer cells in liver discovered
2. Svalbard Global Seed Vault 
D. GS4 Related
F. Prelims Fact
G. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions
H. UPSC Mains Practice Questions 

A. GS1 Related

Nothing here for today!!!

B. GS2 Related

Context

• A special CBI court has sentenced the former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad Yadav to a total of 14 years for two more convictions concerning his involvement in the fodder scam
• Lalu was held guilty of two separate offences — one under the Indian Penal Code and the other under the Prevention of Corruption Act was handed separate sentences of seven years each.

Background

• The fodder scam concerned embezzlement of public money earmarked for promotion of animal husbandry by officials of the department tasked with the job.
• The combine raised forged bills to withdraw Rs 970 crore from government treasuries, the amount far exceeding the budget of the animal husbandry department.

Penalties

• Prasad was sentenced to 14 years in jail, seven years each under Sections of 120(B), 419, 420, 467, 468 of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act.
  • This is the maximum sentence awarded to any politician in the fodder scam.
• He was also imposed a fine of Rs 60 lakh and directed the Enforcement Directorate to confiscate the assets of Lalu and other convicts, which may have been acquired from the illegal income they received by fraudulently withdrawing Rs 3.76 crore from the Dumka treasury between December 1995 and January 1996.
• Considering the volume of fraudulent withdrawals, the court also slapped a cumulative fine of Rs 5.1 crore on the 19 convicts. 

Context

• The union Water Resources Ministry has prepared a draft detailing the structure of the Cauvery Management Board and is likely be circulated to other Ministries before being put up for clearance

Concern of States

• The Board may have “extra members” to accommodate representations from States such as Karnataka and Kerala, who have expressed concerns over the constitution of the board

Cauvery Management Board

• The Cauvery Management Board, according to the 2007 order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, is to have three full-time and six part-time members, the latter including one from each of the riparian States of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the Union Territory of Puducherry.

What will the board do?

• The Board will monitor the inflow of waters in the Cauvery basin and decide the quantum of water to be released to the States and it will also have a Cauvery Water Regulation Committee to implement the Board’s decision.

Karnataka’s Objection

• Karnataka has objected to the constitution of such a Board, saying the Supreme Court verdict only mentions a “scheme” and not a Board to take a call on matters of distribution

Context

• The first-ever survey of drug-resistant (DR) tuberculosis (TB) has found that over a quarter of patients in India could be resistant to one or more drugs that can cure them.
• Among the 4,958 patients on whom drug susceptibility testing (DST) was conducted (necessary to find out if a person has drug resistant TB), 28% had resistance to one or the other anti-TB drug, while 6.19% had multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB.

Stats

• India is home to 2.8 million TB patients, the largest in the world.
• With 879 XDR patients, Maharashtra has the highest number of such patients.
• Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of cases of drug-resistant TB (9,138)

No private sector data

• The survey was done at designated microscopy centres (DMCs) within the laboratory network of the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), and provides a conservative estimate of India’s actual disease burden.
• The survey does not reveal the national burden of DR-TB as it does not include data from patients being treated in the private sector.

Targets

• India has set itself the target of eliminating TB by 2025, five years ahead of the global target set under the Sustainable Development Goals.
• To reach the ‘elimination’ target, the country will have to restrict new infections to less than one case per 100,000 people as against the current rate of 211 new infections per 100,000 people.

 

Context

• Researchers have discovered a new protein that prevents the uncontrolled proliferation of cancer cells in the liver.
• The protein, called LHPP, can serve as a biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of liver cancer

Details

• The researchers show that the loss of LHPP promotes tumour growth and reduces the chance of survival of cancer patients.
• The incidence of liver cancer, also known as hepatocellular carcinoma, is steadily increasing
• Hepatocellular carcinoma is usually diagnosed at a very late stage when the liver is already severely damaged and hence overall prognosis is poor.
• Detection of the anti-cancer protein LHPP as a biomarker may allow clinicians to provide better treatment options.

• It is a long-term seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time — and the challenge of natural or man-made disasters. The Seed Vault represents the world’s largest collection of crop diversity.
• It is famously called the ‘Doomsday’ or the ‘Apocalypse’ Seed Bank or ‘Noah’s Ark for seeds’.
• It is owned by the Norwegian government.
• The facility is managed through an agreement between the Norwegian ministry of agriculture and food, the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen), and the Crop Trust (formerly known as the Global Crop Diversity Trust).

Purpose

• The purpose of the Vault is to store duplicates (backups) of seed samples from the world’s crop collections.
• Permafrost and thick rock ensure that the seed samples will remain frozen even without power. The Vault is the ultimate insurance policy for the world’s food supply, offering options for future generations to overcome the challenges of climate change and population growth.
• It will secure, for centuries, millions of seeds representing every important crop variety available in the world today. It is the final back up.
• The Svalbard Global Seed Vault holds the most diverse collection of food crop seeds in the world, with over 60,000 samples from India.The first deposit from India at Svalbard had the pigeon pea or arhar dal.

 

India’s Seed bank

• India has national seed bank at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) in Delhi
• India has its own mini version of the seed vault in Chang-La, about 75km from Leh. This National Permafrost Repository was started in 2009 by the DRDO, in collaboration with the NBPGR.
• While the national seed bank has more than 1,500 crop species in the form of almost 400,000 seeds, the repository at Chang-La holds close to 5,000 seed samples from different plant species.

Extreme Altitude Research Center- Changla

• It is India’s doomsday vault.
• DRDO has established theworld’s highest terrestrial centre at 17,600 feet above sea level at Changla near Pengong lake in Ladakh.
• The centre will serve as a natural cold storage for preserving rare and endangered medical plants for generations to come.
• The centre will act as an important utility for research work in frontal areas of food and agriculture and bio-medical sciences for wellbeing of the soldiers deployed in high altitude cold desert.
• Other activities that are proposed to be undertaken here include human physiological work, designing, testing, validation and demonstration of mobile and portable greenhouses, soil-less micro-farming technologies for fresh food in remote landlocked posts besides conservation and propagation of endangered extreme altitude medicinal plants and others.

Why was the place chosen?

• Chang-La has the subzero temperatures and low humidity necessary to suspend seed life for future generations.
• It is a site carefully chosen. It is far from rising seas and tectonic plate movement but around 75 km from the Leh aiport, it is close enough to human civilisation today to deposit the country’s agricultural heritage with ease.

Challenges

• Security from the point of view of electricity and energy conservation, since gene banks rely heavily on artificial cooling systems.
• Since it is a big project will need inputs from not only scientists, but engineers, earth sciences experts

D. GS4 Related

E. Editorials

Nothing here for today!!!

F. Prelims Fact

G. Practice Questions for UPSC Prelims Exam

Question 1. Which of the following are Refractory ceramics?

Question 2. Mishmi Tribe belong to which state?

Question 3. Consider the following statements, with reference to the National Conference on Drug Law Enforcement

Question 4. World Happiness Index is published by

Question 5. Look at the following statements about “Office of profit”

Also, check previous Daily News Analysis