• January 17, 2023

Government Representation in Collegiums

• GS1 Executive & Judiciary
• In Context
• The Chief Justice of India, D Y Chandrachud, recently received a letter from the Union Law Minister, Kiren Rijiju, offering ideas for the recruitment of judges.
• More about the news
• Government representative in Collegiums:
• Government representatives ought to be a part of the Supreme Court and High Court Collegiums, according to Union Minister Rijiju’s letter.

• The Collegiums would no longer be made up only of senior judges, which would be a significant change from the current arrangement.
• Significance:
• The most recent suggestion made by the Union Minister is noticeably different because, rather than advocating the creation of a brand-new forum (like the NJAC), he suggests modifying the current system of judicial selections to include central government officials.
• Criticisms: 
  • Undermining independence of judiciary:
  • Critics claim that this will seriously damage the concept of judicial independence and upset the delicate balance that was intended by the constitution.
  • Non-inclusive:
  • While adding only a representation of the ruling government is seen by many as an egregious attack not only on the independence of the judiciary but also on the competitive balance between the ruling party and the opposition, the proposed NJAC did include greater and more diverse representation of India’s political heads.

About Collegium system

• About:

According to the guidelines outlined in Articles 124 and 217 of the Indian Constitution, judges of the High Courts and the Supreme Court are appointed.

According to Articles 124 and 217, the Chief Justice of India and other judges must be consulted before the President names justices to the Supreme Court and high courts.

Composition:

• The Chief Justice of India and the four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court make up the Supreme Court Collegium.

• The Chief Justice of the High Court and the two most senior justices of that particular court make up the High Court Collegium.
• Recommendations: 
• Importantly, the Collegium’s recommendations are enforceable; the government may raise issues and request that the Collegium reconsider, but if the Collegium chooses to reaffirm its recommendations, they become enforceable.
• Significance of the system:
• The collegium system was developed to preserve the fundamental framework of the Constitution by maintaining the independence of the court.

• Additionally, it was done to make sure that the Chief Justice of India does not force his or her personal viewpoint on the appointment of judges, but rather the viewpoint of the entire body as a whole.
• Issues with the current collegium system:

• The collegium system does not provide any guidelines or criteria for the appointment of the Supreme Court judges and it increases the ambit of favouritism. 
• In the collegium system, there are no criteria for testing the candidate or for doing a background check to establish the credibility of the candidate. 
• The absence of an administrative body is also a reason for worry because it means that the members of the collegium system are not answerable for the selection of any of the judges.

Way Ahead

• Putting a government representative in the Collegium itself would significantly alter the system if the Minister’s proposal were to become reality.
• The very fact that a non-judicial member is there is likely to affect matters, even though it is unclear what particular authority this person will have.
• The situation is extremely important and complicated because, while the court should function independently, the legislative and the executive cannot be entirely disregarded.

Source: TH

Antimicrobial Resistance

• GS 2: Government Policies & InterventionsIssues Arising out of their Design & ImplementationHealth

In Context

• Recently, a strand of antimicrobial-resistant gonorrhoea outbreak has hit Kenya.

More about the news

• About:

o According to experts, the outbreak of Neisseria gonorrhoeae poses a threat not only to the citizens of the East African anchor state, but to the entire region.

o The outbreak is a major cause for concern among medical professionals, especially as the WHO strives to eliminate STIs as a public health concern by 2030.

• More about Gonorrhoea:

About:

• According to the World Health Organization, after chlamydia, gonorrhoea is the second most common sexually transmitted disease in the world (WHO).
• According to medical professionals, drug-resistant super gonorrhoea was first detected in sex workers in Nairobi and other urban areas such as Kiambu County.
• Drug resistance:
  • Ciprofloxacin and ceftriaxone, which are part of the current STI treatment algorithm in Kenya, were among the drugs exhibiting 100 percent resistance.
• In its regular reports, the United Nations health agency attributed the drug resistance of some strains of gonorrhoea to the overuse of antibiotics, genetic mutations of the bacteria, and the repeated use of low-quality drugs.
• Other diseases with the concern of antimicrobial resistance:

In addition to SARS-CoV-2, ebola virus disease, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, and marburg virus disease, various strains of SARS-CoV-2, ebola virus disease, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, and marburg virus disease have caused concern among medical professionals.

o It has been reported that some strains of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, Rift Valley fever, severe acute respiratory syndrome, Nipah, and henipaviral diseases share this characteristic.

More about the Antimicrobial resistance

• About: 

• Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites evolve over time and no longer respond to antibiotics, making it more difficult to treat infections and increasing the risk of disease transmission, severe illness, and death.

o Antibiotic versus antimicrobial resistance:

• Antibiotic resistance specifically refers to bacterial resistance. Resistance to bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites is known as antimicrobial resistance.

Issue:

• A study in 2019 found more than 1 million people a year died from infections linked to microbes that are resistant to antibiotics — more than those who died due to malaria or with HIV/AIDS.
• Experts describe antibiotic resistance as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity.
  • They predict that if the problem remains unsolved, 10 million people could die as a result by 2050.
• Causes:
• Bacteria that have adapted to avoid antibiotics are said to be resistant to them. The main causes of resistance are antibiotic overuse and abuse.
• In other words, the problem of antibiotic resistance gets worse the more antibiotics we use.
• Lack of access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for humans and animals, inadequate infection and disease prevention and control in healthcare facilities and farms, poor access to high-quality, affordable medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics, and ignorance are additional drivers of antimicrobial resistance.
  • How does it work?
  • Antibiotics kill bacteria from the inside out by attaching to a specific target protein on the organism.
  • For instance, penicillin weakens the bacterial cell wall, causing the cell to break down.
  • Mutations that enable bacteria to prevent medications from binding to them are the most frequent means by which bacteria avoid antibiotics.
  • The antibiotic key no longer works to unlock the cell door; it’s as though the germs replaced the locks.
  • By creating proteins that render the antibiotic inactive or change it so it no longer binds to the bacteria, microorganisms can also develop resistance. Or the target protein is altered, making it impossible for the antibiotic to bind to it.
  • The worst case scenario is when bacteria develop multiple of these backup mechanisms, meaning that even if you manage to overcome one, additional resistances may step in to fill the void.
  • Suggestions
  • Unfortunately, finding a medicine that can permanently defeat antibiotic resistance is not as easy as it might seem.
  • The problem of antibiotic resistance will never go away. Because of how bacteria evolve through natural selection, they will always find ways to resist antibiotics.
  • Modifying existing antibiotics:
  • Scientists have been working on the issue from many different angles. One approach is to modify old antibiotics so they overcome resistance.
  • Developing new antibiotics:
  • Making entirely new medications is an alternative technique, although it hasn’t been very effective in recent years.
  • But there are some indications of development. One is that researchers now have access to considerably more advanced drug development tools, including artificial intelligence (AI).
  • But at the heart of the problem is the fact that antimicrobials, which form the basis of antibiotic medications, are created slowly and antibiotic resistance does not.
  • Global efforts:
  • Overcoming antibiotic resistance will require tremendous international effort dedicated to the problem.
  • Measures Taken to Rising Anti-Microbial Resistance in India 
  • National programme on AMR containment:
  • It debuted in the 12th FYP, which ran from 2012 to 2017.
  • National Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance (NAP-AMR): 
  • It was introduced on April 19, 2017, with the goal of involving numerous stakeholders ministries/departments, with an emphasis on the One Health concept.
  • AMR Surveillance Network:  
  • The AMR surveillance and research network (AMRSN), created by ICMR in 2013, aims to identify trends and patterns in drug-resistant illnesses across the nation.
  • AMR Research & International Collaboration: 
  • To advance medical research in AMR, the ICMR has taken steps to create novel treatments and medicines through worldwide partnerships.
  • India’s National Action Plan for containment of AMR:
  • Coordination is required at the state, national, and international levels, with a focus on an integrated One Health strategy.
  • Key priority of National Health Policy 2017:
  • In its National Health Policy 2017, India has identified managing AMR as a key priority and since then the health ministry has taken several initiatives to nip the epidemic that is growing fast globally.

Cancer in India: A Status Report

• GS 2 Government Policies & Interventions
• In News
• According to a recent report by the American Cancer Society, the number of Americans dying from cancer has decreased by 33% since 1991.
• Key Points
• US:
  • Declining number of deaths: 
  • This resulted in 3.8 million fewer fatalities.
  • Reason of decline: 
  • early recognition,
  • lower smoking rates,
  • advancements in cancer therapy.
  • Types of cancer:
  • between 2012 and 2019, a sharp 65% decline in the prevalence of cervical cancer in women in their early 20s.
  • a cohort that was given the first dose of the HPV vaccination.
  • India: 
    • Rising cases and deaths: 
      • The fashion in India is in no way comparable.
      • Even with improvements in treatment, both the incidence of cancer and mortality continue to rise in the country.

Image Courtesy: IE 

• Types of cancer:
• In India, the prevalence of smoking-related and cervical cancers has decreased as well.
• Breast and lung cancer rates, however, have gone up.
• Trends: 
• In India, one in nine people will eventually get cancer.
• Lung cancer will affect 1 in 68 men.
• Breast cancer will strike one in every 29 women.
• Women v/s men: 
  • In 2020, there were 103.6 cancer cases for per 100,000 women, compared to 94.1 for men.
  • Among men, the most common cancers were of:
  • Lung,
  • mouth,
  • Prostate,
  • mouth, and
  • stomach;
  • For women, they were:
  • Breast,
  • cervix,
  • Ovary,
  • Lung and uterus.
  • Why are some cancers on the decline and others continue to rise?
  • Decline: 
  • In India, the incidence of cervical cancer has decreased from 45 to 10 per 100,000 people during the past 50 years. Due to later marriages, fewer children, improved hygiene, and immunisation, its incidence have decreased.
  • Given that HPV vaccines are becoming more affordable and because it is preventable, the government is shortly planning a campaign to eradicate it entirely.
  • The incidence of tobacco-related malignancies, such as oral and esophageal cancers, is also declining.
  • The tobacco legislation that have decreased smoking in public places are mostly to blame for this.
  • Rise: 
  • Breast cancer incidence is rising, particularly in metropolitan areas. Due to the same factors—after marriage, later childbirth, giving up breastfeeding, and a high-protein diet—its rate has increased.
  • Because the cause of breast cancer is uncertain, there is no specific management other than screening.
  • Improvements in Cancer Treatments and its Impact
  • Numerous tumours are being treated more successfully, and there are more cases of cancer survivorship.
  • Types: 
  • Pancreatic cancer has a 6% cure rate today compared to 3% 50 years ago.
  • The prevalence of prostate cancer has increased from 60% to 100%.
  • And with modern treatments, the success rate for breast cancer has increased from 50% to 90%.
  • Through the government’s enhanced health and wellness centres, screening for the three most prevalent types of cancer—breast, cervical, and oral—has already begun. As a result of this and other government initiatives, patients are getting to hospitals more quickly.
  • Cervical, breast, and oral cancer screening is beneficial because they make up 34% of cancer cases in India.
  • To increase mortality, it needs to be more concentrated.
  • The best test for detecting cervical cancer is dual staining, while the best test for detecting lung cancer in people who have smoked in the past is a low-dose CT scan.
  • Self-examination of the breasts cannot be a routine method of detecting breast cancer.
  • Way Ahead
  • There is a need for better screening and treatment facilities.
  • To lower cancer mortality in the nation, stronger connections between hospitals and screening facilities are required.
  • It’s crucial to make sure that people receive prompt diagnosis and treatment in order to lower mortality.
  • There are many government programmes that operate separately and in compartments. They must be coordinated in order for a person to actually arrive at a hospital after being screened.
  • There must be many more cancer care facilities.

• Source: IE
• Does Chat GTR have an Ethical Ptoblem?
  • GS 3 Information Technology Space Computers Robotics

In News

• Academics and educators have recently expressed worry about moral conundrums related to ChatGPT’s potential.

About

• ChatGPT is not an ethical decision-making or ethical reasoning language model. As a result, it can be applied to a wide range of tasks, some of which may be morally dubious.
• The Ethical AI team at OpenAI aims to make sure that models are applied in ways that uphold the principles of security, justice, and explicability.
• In November 2022, ChatGPT, the most latest and potent AI chatbot from OpenAI, was made available to users for testing.
• Although ChatGPT is built to reject requests to produce phishing emails or malicious code for hackers, more skilled hackers frequently succeed in tricking the bot into improving or repairing malicious code they have already partially developed.

What is ChatGPT?

• ChatGPT is not an ethical decision-making or ethical reasoning language model. As a result, it can be applied to a wide range of tasks, some of which may be morally dubious.

• The Ethical AI team at OpenAI aims to make sure that models are applied in ways that uphold the principles of security, justice, and explicability.

• In November 2022, ChatGPT, the most latest and potent AI chatbot from OpenAI, was made available to users for testing.

• Although ChatGPT is built to reject requests to produce phishing emails or malicious code for hackers, more skilled hackers frequently succeed in tricking the bot into improving or repairing malicious code they have already partially developed.

Importance of ChatGPT

• Chatbots and conversational AI: ChatGPT can be fine-tuned to understand and respond to natural language input, making it well-suited for building chatbots and other conversational AI applications.
• Language generation: ChatGPT can be used to generate coherent, fluent, and natural-sounding text, making it a powerful tool for tasks such as language translation, summarization, and text completion.
• Arts creation: It can be used to generate poetry, and other forms of text, making it a useful tool for industries such as media, publishing, and advertising.
• Language model fine-tuning: It can be fine-tuned to specific tasks such as sentiment analysis, question answering, and named-entity recognition.
• Business use-cases: It can be used to generate product descriptions, customer service responses, and other forms of business-related text, potentially increasing efficiency and reducing the need for human-generated content.
• Research: Researchers looking into natural language processing, machine learning, and AI can use ChatGPT as a tool.
• Major issues
• Bias: Like other AI models, ChatGPT may perpetuate and even amplify biases present in the data it was trained on. This can lead to unfair and inaccurate predictions or generated text.
• Misinformation: ChatGPT may generate text that is factually incorrect or misleading, especially when it is used to generate news articles, social media posts, or other forms of content that can spread rapidly online.
• Privacy: ChatGPT may be used to generate text that contains personal information, such as names, addresses, or other sensitive data. This can raise privacy concerns and lead to potential misuse of the data.
• Misuse: ChatGPT can be used to generate text for nefarious purposes such as creating fake news, impersonating others, or spreading hate speech.
• Ethical conundrums
  • The following key fields will encounter ethical challenges, according to the UNESCO World Commission on Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST):
  • Education:  It is crucial to participate in ethical reflection, critical thinking, responsible design methodologies, and the acquisition of new skills given the impacts on the labour market, employability, and civic involvement.
  • Science: The introduction of new research capabilities and methods by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has implications for how we think about scientific explanation and knowledge, as well as providing a new basis for making decisions.
  • Cultural identity and diversity: Although AI technologies have the potential to improve the cultural and creative industries, they also run the risk of consolidating control over a smaller number of actors’ access to markets, income, and cultural content. This could have a negative impact on the diversity and pluralism of languages, media, cultural expressions, participation, and equality.
  • Communication and information: AI technologies play an increasingly important role in the processing, structuring and provision of information thus, automated   journalism   and   the   algorithmic can give rise to disinformation, misinformation, hate speech and emergence of new forms of societal narratives.

Way Ahead

• Although ChatGPT is a strong tool with many possible applications, it is crucial to take into account and deal with any ethical dilemmas that can occur when utilising the model.
• It’s crucial to remember that these problems may be avoided by using the model appropriately, giving it the proper training data, and regularly observing the model’s output, all of which OpenAI strives to achieve.

 Source: TH

Microfinance Institution (MFI)

• GS 3 Indian Economy & Related Issues

In News

According to a recent report, Microfinance Institutions (MFI) will be crucial to India’s economic development.

Key Points

• Support system: 
  • MFIs have acted as a financial support system to low-income households by offering credit access to six crore borrowers in the last few years.
• Changes with time: 
•  The MFI sector saw numerous changes in terms of inclusion and growth from February 2017 to June 2022.
• Expected Growth: 
•  From 2021 to 2026, the MFI industry’s global market size is projected to increase by USD122.46 billion at a compound yearly growth rate of 11.61 percent.
• Coordinated efforts: 
  • Global development agencies and several governments have made concerted efforts to alleviate poverty through micro-credits.
• Digitalised MFIs:
  • From 2017 onwards, the Indian MFI industry embraced the digital route by using online delivery channels, mobile banking and e-wallets.
  • What is Microfinance?
  • Small loans and other financial services are offered to low-income and underprivileged households through the financial service known as microfinance.

• The term “small loans” has different meanings in different nations. All loans in India that are less than Rs. 1 lakh are categorised as microloans.
• Microcredit is delivered through a variety of institutional channels viz:
• Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs), which also include Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and Small Finance Banks (SFBs).
• bank cooperatives.
• Nonbank Financial Institutions (NBFCs).
• Microfinance organisations (MFIs) registered in various ways, including as NBFCs.

About Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs)

• MFIs are financial institutions that offer modest loans to borrowers without access to banking services.
• MFI encourages financial inclusion so that low-income and poor households can escape poverty, raise their income levels, and generally enhance their standard of living.
• It can make it easier to implement national policies aimed at raising living standards, empowering women, reducing poverty, and helping vulnerable populations.
• Growth: 
  • The Indian microfinance sector has witnessed phenomenal growth over the past two decades in terms of increase in both the number of institutions providing microfinance as also the quantum of credit made available to the microfinance customers. 

Significance 

• It aids low-income families in balancing their income fluctuations and setting up money for upcoming needs.

• In prosperous times, microfinance supports the growth of families and small enterprises; in trying times, it can aid in coping and reconstruction.

• It improves the income and employment situation by making credit more easily accessible.

• It assists in providing for underfunded groups like women, the unemployed, and individuals with impairments.

• Families who get microloans are more likely to give their kids better and ongoing education.
• Challenges 
• It will be challenging to serve the different needs of consumer categories such small farmers, vendors, and labourers.
• Different clients may demand different levels of assistance with financial goods and digital literacy depending on their borrowing needs and consumer behaviour.
• Reaching last-mile borrowers is difficult for MFIs due to their reliance on physical interactions, as was demonstrated during the epidemic when group gatherings were impossible.

Way Ahead

• The capacity of MFIs to form alliances, create new products and investment channels, and utilise technology will define the future direction of the sector.

• MFIs will benefit from technological integration in both the service delivery and debt collection operations.

• All institutions should be encouraged by RBI to use a “social impact scorecard” to track their social impact.

Source: Print

Venus mission ‘Shukrayaan’

• GS 3 Space

In News

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is yet to receive approval from the Indian government for the Venus mission and the mission could, as a result, be postponed to 2031.

• ISRO received an allocation of ?13,700 crores in the 2022-2023 budget, marginally higher than the year before. The bulk was diverted to the human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan. 

About the mission, 

• Timeline: The pandemic was mentioned by ISRO as the reason for delaying Shukrayaan I’s launch from mid-2023 to December 2024.
• Delays in manufacturing and obligations to commercial launch services have also had an impact on other ISRO projects, such as Aditya L1 and Chandrayaan III.
• The concept was conceived in 2012; five years later, after the Department of Space got a 23% increase in the 2017–2018 budget, ISRO started preliminary investigations.

Overview of Mission: Shukrayaan I will be an orbiter mission. Its scientific payloads currently include a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar and a ground-penetrating radar. 

• The mission is expected to study Venus’s geological and volcanic activity, emissions on the ground, wind speed, cloud cover, and other planetary characteristics from an elliptical orbit.

Progress of other countries 

• The VERITAS and EnVision missions from the American and European space agencies, respectively, are scheduled to visit Venus in 2031, while “China might go anytime: 2026, 2027.

Source:TH

Neelakurinji

• GS 3 Species in News

In  News

• Neelakurinji (Strobilantheskunthiana) has been added to the list of protected plants by the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEF) under Schedule III of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

Image Courtesy:TH

About Neelakurinji

• Kurinji or Neelakurinji is a shrub that grows in the shola forests of the Western Ghats in South India.
• It is a shrub of the Acanthaceae family that famously blooms once every 12 years. 
• Scientific Name: Strobilantheskunthiana.
• The genus oStrobilanthes contains over 350 species of flowering plants in the family Acanthaceae, the majority of which are indigenous to Madagascar and tropical Asia.
• • Nearly 70 different types of Neelakurinji plants have been identified in the Western Ghats region.
• The Eravikulam National Park, near Munnar, is known for widespread blooming of the kurinji, with the next flowering season expected in 2030.

Source:TH

Dolphins

GS 3 Species in News

In News

A new study has found that noise generated by human activity makes it harder for dolphins to communicate and coordinate with each other.

• As the levels of underwater noise increase, these mammals have to “shout” to each other.
• About Dolphins
• They are a type of marine mammal that belongs to cetaceans.
• They are social mammals that communicate through squeaks, whistles, and clicks. They also use echolocation in order to locate food and other objects.
  • Therefore, anthropogenic noise coming from large commercial ships, military sonars or offshore drilling can severely impact their well-being.
  • They are popularly noted for their grace, intelligence, playfulness, and friendliness to humans.
  • They can live in either fresh or saltwater. 
    • Distributed in marine environments worldwide, they range from equatorial to subpolar waters and also can be found in many major river systems.

Source:IE