Quote of the day

 “You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

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A.A. Mine

Author/Poet

October 27: World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2021

 The World Day for Audiovisual Heritage is observed on October 27, every year.

World day for Audiovisual Heritage

• Audio-visual Heritage Day is observed with the aim of raising general awareness among people related to the need of taking urgent measures.
• The day also acknowledges the significance of audio-visual documents.
• It also brings the priceless heritage of these documents to notice, telling the stories of lives & cultures from across the world.
• The day also sensitize people across the world for conserving and safeguarding valuable audio-visual resources for future generations.

Why this day is significant?

The world, particularly the younger generation, is going digital in every significant aspect of life. Thus, this is significant as it reminds that even though we are moving forward, it is important to carry heritage so that it does not get lost. It encourages the preservation of work of professionals against the range of political, technical, social, financial, and other factors that threatens the safeguards of audio-visual heritage.

Theme of the day

The Audio-visual Heritage Day 2021 was observed under the theme “Your Window to the World”. The theme highlights that, audio-visual sources provide a window in the form of documentary heritage objects, to the world.

History of the day

This day was adopted by the 21st General Conference  of the recommendations, in the year 1980, in a bid to safeguard and preserve the moving images. The day was declared by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural organization) on October 27, 2005.

Current Affairs-October 28, 2021

 

INDIA

– SC constitutes an expert committee overseen by former SC judge Justice R.V. Raveendran to probe Pegasus allegations

– Defence Minister Rajnath Singh delivers keynote address at Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue 2021

– PM Modi participates in 16th East Asia Summit hosted by Brunei through video conference

– Immunologist Rajesh Gokhale (54) appointed as Secretary, Department of Biotechnology

– Post of CEO for Development of Museums and Cultural Spaces abolished

– Gandhian Salem Nanjudaiah Subba Rao passes away at 92 in Jaipur

– Union Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Cooperation, Amit Shah inaugurates three-day National Conference on “Delivering Democracy: Two Decades of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as Head of Government”

– Indian Army celebrates Infantry Day on Oct 27

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– Centre appoints veteran banker Kundapur Vaman Kamath as the Chairperson of the National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development (NaBFID), a newly set up DFI

– RBI approves appointment of Baldev Prakash as J&K Bank MD & CEO

– Plan of retail selling of small LPG cylinders through Fair Price Shops is on anvil: Govt

– Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia launches Krishi UDAN 2.0 scheme for to facilitating and incentivizing movement of Agri-produce by air transportation

– Union Minister for MSME Narayan Rane launches “SAMBHAV” National Level Awareness Programme, 2021

– ADB, India sign $100 million loan for agribusiness development in Maharashtra

– Govt waives charges on cargo flights to boost agro exports from North East

– DGCA to conduct on-demand license exams for pilots, aircraft engineers

WORLD

– Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appoints 13-member task force for the establishment of the ‘One Country, One Law’ concept

– African Union suspends Sudan after military coup

– Japan: Campaigning Hiroshima survivor, Sunao Tsubo dies aged 96

– Indian-origin politician Anita Anand appointed new Defence Minister of Canada

– Saudi Arabia comes to cash-strapped Pakistan’s rescue with $3 bn package

– World Day for Audiovisual Heritage celebrated on Oct 27

Sachchidanand Sinha’s work is a reminder of what the Republic of India is. We must cherish it

 H

ave you heard about Sachchidanand Sinha? I bet not. If you have, I guess it’s one of his namesakes, perhaps the famous member of the Constituent Assembly, or Jayaprakash Narayan’s secretary or an academic, but not the one I am talking about. Google search won’t yield much on him except for one thoughtful profile and a bland listing of his books or their Amazon links.

You should know him. At 93, he is a bridge between two centuries, someone who brings lessons of the 20th-century ideological debates to our times. Over the last five decades, he has published more than two dozen books, about a dozen in English and more in Hindi. His oeuvre ranges from contemporary politics to aesthetics, from understanding Bihar’s underdevelopment to tracing the origins of the caste system, from critiquing the ideological foundations of the Naxalite movement to writing a manifesto for socialism for our generation. The publication of his eight-volume rachnavali (Selected Works) in Hindi last month is a good occasion to (re)read him.

If you don’t know him, it’s hardly your fault. Sachchidanand Sinha has no academic credentials, not even a bachelor’s degree. He has never worked in any academic institution. A political activist all his life — first with the Socialist Party, and then with Samata Sangathan and Samajwadi Jan Parishad — he chose reading and writing as his principal arena of political action. Just as he stayed away from big parties and ideological orthodoxies, he also stayed away from big publishers. Self-effacing to a fault, Sinha has spent the last 35 years in a modest cottage in a Bihar village. His prose is as sparse as his life: no academic jargon, no fashionable lingo, no catchphrases, no stunning one-liners, no stylised provocation. He has turned down awards. In a world where the worth of ideas is determined mainly by external markers, Sachchidanand Sinha is content to remain in oblivion.

Learning from Sachchidaji

I was plain lucky to know ‘Sachchida-ji’. I saw him around 1981 at one of the post-dinner talks at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) organised by the Samata Yuvjan Sabha (SYS), a youth organisation with Gandhian Socialist leaning that I belonged to. I don’t remember the topic, but recall how I was drawn to his intellect: clear logical reasoning, backed with solid knowledge sans any rhetorical flourish. Just like my father.

Over the next decade, I attended many study circles and camps where he educated the young cadre of Samata Sangathan on wide-ranging issues, from the most recent political events to the most abstract ideological and philosophical debates. Learning from him (as well as Kishen Pattnayak and Ashok Seksaria) was a privilege that I did nothing to deserve. I remember visiting his bare one-room tenement in Saket, New Delhi that seemed too big for his worldly possessions: a cot, a table and a kerosene stove that served as his kitchen. Sachchidaji was, and has remained, an ascetic.

His single-minded pursuit of ideas, unmindful of ideological orthodoxies and academic fashions, allows him to chart through the ideological contestations that marked the 20th century. He is not a non-aligned spectator. He has been, and continues to be, a socialist. But his socialism is not a creed tied to a sacred book or a  supreme leader. It helps that he comes from an unorthodox sub-stream of Indian socialism associated with Jayaprakash Narayan, Narendra Deva and Rammanohar Lohia. At the same time, Sachchidaji is not a ‘Lohiaite’ and has nothing but contempt for what passes for socialist politics in today’s India.

Beyond political ideologies

In his first major book, Socialism and Power, Sachchidaji continued this interrogation of the received socialist orthodoxy. While he is more deferential to Karl Marx than most of his colleagues, he critiques Marx and Marxists for their blind faith in big industry, megacities and capital-intensive technology. This was not a recipe for revolution, but for a concentration of economic and political power that resulted in the collapse of the USSR and the rise of state-capitalism in China.

His book, Poonji Ka Antim Adhyay, extends Marx’s magnum opus, Das Kapital, to its unwritten fourth volume. The political activist in him cannot leave things at a critique. His Socialism: A Manifesto for Survival offers an outline of socialism for our age. In his version — decentralised democracy, appropriate technology, non-consumerist standards of living, ecological sustainability and primacy of labour over capital — socialism does not remain just one of the ideologies from the 20th century but becomes a synthesis of all that is worth learning from that century.

His unique gaze extends beyond the limited world of political ideologies. In The Caste System: Myth and Reality, he counters the orientalist reading of scripturally sanctioned, ever-unchanging caste order. One of his first books, Internal Colony, questioned the established economic wisdom to argue that the backwardness of states like Bihar (which included Jharkhand then) draws upon the logic of capitalist development that must suck resources from ‘internal colonies’. In the hay days of Congress monopoly and defying proponents of the two-party democracy, he postulated that a coalition is the most appropriate form of power-sharing in a democracy like India. Unlike most political activists, he does not view art as an instrument of propaganda. His writings on aesthetics establish art as a means to contain human impulses for violence.

The problem is with us

In a world of ideas dominated by academic experts, Sachchidanad Sinha would be seen as an interloper, an amateur generalist. The problem lies not with him, but with us. He is among the last surviving species of a great tradition of modern Indian social and political thinkers that began in the 19th century. For the next 150 years or so, this intellectual effervescence and contestation laid the foundations of the Republic of India.

Unlike Europe, social and political thinking in India was not happening in universities or academic institutions. Our thinkers were practitioners, mostly social and political activists themselves. They asked big questions and provided bold answers. Anchored in our context, they engaged with the modern world on our own terms, mostly using Indian languages.

This tradition suffered a sudden death soon after Independence. Social and political theorising was taken over by experts in social sciences and humanities who looked up to and hoped to engage with their western counterparts. Not to put too fine a point, this transition has been a disaster for India – from our perspective to policy and politics. After the death of Rammanohar Lohia, the last great thinker in that tradition, in 1967 it is hard to name many Indian thinkers outside the academia who helped us connect with the big questions of our times. I can only think of Kishen Pattanayak, Dharampal, R. P. Saraf and, of course, Sachchidaji.

Sachchidanand Sinha reminds us of what we have lost and need to regain if we wish to reclaim our republic.

The author is a member of Swaraj India and co-founder of Jai Kisan Andolan. He tweets @_YogendraYadav. 

Source: The Print, 27/10/21

US govt to give preference to student visas, appointments to be available from November 1

 The United States of America (USA) will give preference to student visas as the country forecast heavy surge in the application of the authorisation with the lifting of travel curbs for vaccinated travellers, a diplomat of the country said here on Wednesday.

The US government has already announced the lifting of the severe travel restrictions on China, India and much of Europe effective from November 8. The US travel restrictions were first imposed in early 2020 to check the spread of COVID-19.
“The appointments for visa will be made available from November 1.  Priority will be given to student visas,” US Consul General to Kolkata, Melinda Pavek said on the sidelines of an interactive session with the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) here.

The US has already issued 62,000 Indian student visas in 2021, she said. She said with the US presidential proclamation coming to an end on November 8, applications for all types of visas will become eligible.

The accounting period for a US visa for various purposes like work, business and studies is between September of a year to August the next year, officials said. A consul official said except for a brief period student and emergency visas were not closed. From November 8 all types of visas will be given and a heavy surge of visa applications is expected.

Patton International senior official Preeyam Bhudhia said Indo-US trade will get a boost with the lifting of the travel restrictions. Bilateral trade between the two countries had already recovered by 50 per cent till August and is expected to reach the pre-COVID level of 2019 in the current year, ICC officials said.

Source: Indian Express, 29/10/21

What India’s new water policy seeks to deliver

 

Mihir Shah writes: It calls for multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder approach to water management.

In November 2019, the Ministry of Jal Shakti had set up a committee to draft the new National Water Policy (NWP). This was the first time that the government asked a committee of independent experts to draft the policy. Over a period of one year, the committee received 124 submissions by state and central governments, academics and practitioners. The NWP is based on the striking consensus that emerged through these wide-ranging deliberations.

The policy recognises limits to endlessly increasing water supply and proposes a shift towards demand management. Irrigation consumes 80-90 per cent of India’s water, most of which is used by rice, wheat and sugarcane. Without a radical change in this pattern of water demand, the basic water needs of millions of people cannot be met. Thus, crop diversification is the single most important step in resolving India’s water crisis. The policy suggests diversifying public procurement operations to include nutri-cereals, pulses and oilseeds. This would incentivise farmers to diversify their cropping patterns, resulting in huge savings of water. The largest outlets for these procured crops are the Integrated Child Development Services, the mid-day meal scheme and the public distribution system. Creating this link would also help address the crisis of malnutrition and diabetes, given the superior nutritional profile of these crops. Reduce-Recycle-Reuse has been proposed as the basic mantra of integrated urban water supply and wastewater management, with treatment of sewage and eco-restoration of urban river stretches, as far as possible through decentralised wastewater management. All non-potable use, such as flushing, fire protection, vehicle washing must mandatorily shift to treated wastewater.

Within supply-side options, the NWP points to trillions of litres stored in big dams, which are still not reaching farmers and explains how irrigated area could be greatly expanded at very low cost by deploying pressurised closed conveyance pipelines, combined with Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and pressurised micro-irrigation. The NWP places major emphasis on supply of water through “nature-based solutions” such as the rejuvenation of catchment areas, to be incentivised through compensation for eco-system services. Specially curated “blue-green infrastructure” such as rain gardens and bio-swales, restored rivers with wet meadows, wetlands constructed for bio-remediation, urban parks, permeable pavements, green roofs etc are proposed for urban areas.

The NWP gives the highest priority to sustainable and equitable management of groundwater. Participatory groundwater management is the key. Information on aquifer boundaries, water storage capacities and flows provided in a user-friendly manner to stakeholders, designated as custodians of their aquifers, would enable them to develop protocols for effective management of groundwater.

From time immemorial, the people of India have had a reverential relationship with rivers. But water policy has seen rivers primarily as a resource to serve economic purposes. This overwhelmingly instrumentalist view of rivers has led to their terrible degradation. While acknowledging their economic role, the NWP accords river protection and revitalisation prior and primary importance. Steps to restore river flows include: Re-vegetation of catchments, regulation of groundwater extraction, river-bed pumping and mining of sand and boulders. The NWP outlines a process to draft a Rights of Rivers Act, including their right to flow, to meander and to meet the sea.

The new NWP considers water quality as the most serious un-addressed issue in India today. It proposes that every water ministry, at the Centre and states, include a water quality department. The policy advocates adoption of state-of-the-art, low-cost, low-energy, eco-sensitive technologies for sewage treatment. Widespread use of reverse osmosis has led to huge water wastage and adverse impact on water quality. The policy wants RO units to be discouraged if the total dissolved solids count in water is less than 500mg/L. It suggests a task force on emerging water contaminants to better understand and tackle the threats they are likely to pose.

The policy makes radical suggestions for reforming governance of water, which suffers from three kinds of “hydro-schizophrenia”: That between irrigation and drinking water, surface and groundwater, as also water and wastewater. Government departments, working in silos, have generally dealt with just one side of these binaries. Rivers are drying up because of over-extraction of groundwater, which reduces the base-flows needed for rivers to have water after the monsoon. Dealing with drinking water and irrigation in silos has meant that aquifers providing assured sources of drinking water dry up because the same aquifers are used for irrigation, which consumes much more water. And when water and wastewater are separated in planning, the result is a fall in water quality.

The NWP also suggests the creation of a unified multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder National Water Commission (NWC), which would become an exemplar for states to follow. Government water departments include professionals predominantly from civil engineering, hydrology and hydrogeology. Without experts in water management, social mobilisation, agronomy, soil science, hydrometeorology, public health, river ecology and ecological economics, solutions to India’s complex water problems will remain elusive. Since systems such as water are greater than the sum of their constituent parts, solving water problems requires understanding whole systems, deploying multi-disciplinary teams and a trans-disciplinary approach. Since wisdom on water is not the exclusive preserve of any one section of society, governments should build enduring partnerships with primary stakeholders of water, who must become an integral part of the NWC and its counterparts in the states. The indigenous knowledge of our people, with a long history of water management, is an invaluable intellectual resource that must be fully leveraged.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 29, 2021 under the title ‘A new paradigm for water’. The writer chaired the committee to draft the new National Water Policy set up by the Ministry of Jal Shakti in 2019

Source: Indian Express, 29/10/21

The three acts of entrepreneurship that accelerated India’s start-up ecosystem

 

India’s startup ecosystem is radically breaking from its past in company valuations, unicorn numbers, funding round sizes, foreign interest, and growth. What’s going on? Historians suggest caution with origin stories — every theory just points to an earlier beginning. But we believe three acts of entrepreneurship from five years ago — Jio, UPI, and GST — have converged to accelerate our startup ecosystem. We also make the case that this triad of private, nonprofit, and government courage demonstrates the economic upsides of a better balance between the three sectors.

The Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann suggests economic development is like a game of scrabble. Goods and services are made by stringing together productive capabilities — inputs, technologies, and tasks — just as words are made by putting letters together. Countries with a greater variety of capabilities can make more diverse and complex goods, just as a scrabble player who has more letters can generate more and longer words. If a country lacks a letter, it cannot make the words that use it. Moreover, the more letters a country has, the greater the number of uses it can find for any additional letter acquired. In Hausmann’s framing, the government provides the vowels and the private sector provides the consonants. The 1955 Avadi resolution poisoned India’s economic scrabble by restricting constants and shrinking the state’s resources to provide vowels. Our triad provides new letters and vowels that enable entrepreneurs to create newer and longer words. Let’s look at each in more detail:

JIO: India’s per GB internet data costs are just 3 per cent of those in the US. A bold and risky $35 billion bet made by a private company transformed Indians from being data deprived to data-rich; consumption has jumped 15 times because costs fell by over 90 per cent. The addition of millions of consumers and smartphones since Jio’s delightful five-year disruption of the market has exploded the most important universal metric in startup valuation — addressable market. Most Indians toil in low productivity and self-exploitation. Affordable digital connectivity is transforming 75 crore of them into consumers, entrepreneurs, employees, and suppliers.

UPI: Google’s letter to the US Federal Reserve suggesting America learn from India’s Universal Payments Interface (UPI) run by the remarkable nonprofit — National Payment Corporation of India — acknowledged that our real-time, low-cost, open-architecture payment plumbing is a public good. UPI’s mobile-first architecture is a key pillar of the paperless, presenceless, and cashless framework of the Aadhaar-seeded India Stack. UPI’s current four billion transactions a month — it will soon reach a billion a day — greatly reduces friction and costs for entrepreneurs and consumers in low-value payments. Remember the inefficiency and low reliability of cash-on-delivery?

GST: India’s economic tragedy began with the second five-year plan in 1956, leading entrepreneurs to conclude that the benefits of formality were lower than the costs. This informality bred corruption; transmission losses between how the law was written, interpreted, practiced, and enforced. More painfully, informality bred low-productivity enterprises with low-paying jobs, whose business model of regulatory arbitrage and tax evasion made formal enterprises uncompetitive. GST attacked complexity and incentivised law-abiding supply and distribution chains. It was long in the making but going live needed the risk-taking of starting with a second-best architecture, accepting some unjustifiable rates, and state revenue guarantees. The doubling of indirect tax registered enterprises since GST creates a virtuous economic cycle of higher total factor productivity for enterprises and employees.

India now has the highest ratio of unlisted to listed companies with a $1 billion valuation, suggests Neelkanth Mishra of Credit Suisse (a unicorn was born every 10 days this year). Initial public offering documents filed by early startups like Nykaa, Paytm, Zomato and PolicyBazaar roughly average a 10x valuation rise since the triad went live. Estimates suggest India’s startup ecosystem valuation will explode from $315 billion today to $1 trillion by 2025. An unintended delightful upside of Rs 2 lakh crore startup fundraising in 2021 is the mass diversion of high-quality young human capital from wage employment to job creation.

Humanity will never resolve the debate whether history is a social science or literature. The social science camp of Karl Marx believes circumstances are paramount and history makes people. But the literature camp of Carlyle believes people make history. As entrepreneurs, we would go crazy if we didn’t believe in the ability of individuals to give the push that history sometimes needs. Of course, the triad’s success needed talented civil servants, central bankers, foreign partners, committees, technology, and managers. But we believe the triad wouldn’t have happened in time for India@75 if Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mukesh Ambani, and Nandan Nilekani hadn’t provided conviction, persistence, and strategy.

English’s 26 letters — 21 consonants and five vowels — enable creating roughly two lakh dictionary words and 10 lakh usage words. Framing development as scrabble has much to teach the post-1947 economic policy; our 6.3 crore enterprises only translate to 23,000 companies with a paid-up capital of more than Rs 10 crore because consonants were restricted and vowels were misclassified or missing. The wonderful recent ghar wapasi of Air India is just the start of righting the historical wrong of misclassifying many private consonants as government vowels. A government does more when it does less.

In the third decade of the third millennium, one of India’s opportunities is China’s ongoing corrosion of Deng Xiaoping’s economic miracle built on a healthy balance between the state, entrepreneurs, and foreigners. Our mass prosperity after Independence was sabotaged by an imbalance between private, nonprofit, and government players because economic magic needs an engine firing on all three cylinders. The triad reinforces each element to drive inclusion and prosperity by enabling billions of people and millions of enterprises to do billions of sachet size transactions with low or no cost.

Gandhiji’s notion of democracy — where the weakest have the same opportunity as the strongest — needs an economic meritocracy only possible when entrepreneurs have all the consonants and vowels. India’s better scrabble has begun.

Sabharwal and Mantri are co-founder, Teamlease Services and Managing Director, Navam Capital respectively.

Source: Indian Express, 29/10/21

Quote of the Day

 

“Goals determine what you are going to be.”
Julius Erving, Basketball Star

“हमारे लक्ष्य निर्धारित करते हैं कि हम क्या बनने जा रहे हैं।”
जूलियस इरविंग, बास्केटबाल सितारा

IIT Madras to Develop Online Marketplace called e-Source

 IIT Madras is in process of developing an online platform called e-Source that will be used to tackle electronic wastes (e-waste).

Key Facts

• E-Source will be used to tackle e-waste by linking stakeholders of the formal and informal economy.
• e-Source will act as an exchange platform to serve as an online marketplace for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE).
• It will also act as a formal supply chain between several stakeholders, including buyers and sellers.
• This initiative is being headed by Indo-German Centre for Sustainability (IGCS).
• According to IGCS team, problem of e-waste can be resolved by connecting buyers and sellers of Used and Waste electronic equipment without compromising their interests.

What is the need of e-Source initiative?

To formalize e-waste handling and management, a novel open-source solution is needed which is data enriched and leveraging the potential of transparency because, e-waste either completely stripped down to get precious metals and other high-value materials or are dumped in landfills, without exploring potential re-use. Such unscientific recycling methods e-waste are harmful for waste handlers as well as environment.

Waste generation

As per a study, world generates 53.6 million tonnes of e-waste annually.  This amount is expected to double in next 16 years. Such waste is pressing issues in India as well. India is the world’s third-largest producer. It generated 38 percent more e-waste in between 2019-2020.

What waste generation in India is a concern?

because, in India, only 5 percent of e-waste is recycled responsibly.

Features of e-Source

A unique feature of e-Source initiative is that, it will deploy a detection system which uses a combination of image processing and natural language processing techniques in order to get product information and upload it to the database. Furthermore, it can be self-certified by means of prescribed standard protocols.

Current Affairs-October 21, 2021

 

INDIA

– PM inaugurates Kushinagar International Airport in UP

– PM lays foundation stone of Rajkiya Medical College, Kushinagar (UP)

– Conference on ‘Tourism in Buddhist Circuits – A way forward’ being held in Kushinagar (UP) on Oct 20-21

– Namal Rajapaksa presents trilingual copy of Bhagvad Gita to PM Modi in Kushinagar (UP)

– PM virtually addresses a joint conference of CVC and CBI at Kevadia in Gujarat

– UPSC launches helpline for govt. job aspirants from economically weaker section, backward classes

– India more vulnerable to heat extremes: Lancet report

– Centre extends PMGKP (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package) insurance scheme for healthcare workers for 180 days

– Police Commemoration Day being observed on Oct 21

– Punjab: Huge cache of weapons recovered near India-Pakistan border in Tarn Taran

– WHO chief Adhanom Ghebreyesus discusses Covid vaccination and other issues with Indian Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya

– Israel: EAM S. Jaishankar calls on President Isaac Herzog, PM Naftali Bennett in Jerusalem

– India expresses strong opposition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) projects at the UN Global Sustainable Transport Conference in Beijing

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– Sri Lanka receives first consignment of non-harmful Nano Nitrogen liquid fertiliser from India to boost paddy, maize cultivation

– India is exporting only non-GMO rice to the world: Government

– Bijnor farmer wins U.P. sugarcane competition with a yield of 2,635 quintal per hectare

– India talks tough at CERAWeek, pushes for lowering of crude oil price

WORLD

– Fossil fuel plans evade Paris limits, says UNEP report

– Jailed Russian Opposition leader wins top EU human rights prize

– Jailed Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny wins EU’s Sakharov Prize

– IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath to leave job and return to Harvard University

– Facebook fined $70 million in Britain for breaching order in Giphy deal

– Russia hosts conference on Afghanistan in Moscow with participation from Taliban, Pakistan, China, Iran, India and former Soviet Central Asian states

– Japan: Mount Aso volcano erupts at country’s main island of Kyushu

Goodbye, Columbus: Vikings crossed the Atlantic 1,000 years ago

 Long before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, eight timber-framed buildings covered in sod stood on a terrace above a peat bog and stream at the northern tip of Canada’s island of Newfoundland, evidence that the Vikings had reached the New World first.

But precisely when the Vikings journeyed to establish the L’Anse aux Meadows settlement had remained unclear – until now.

Scientists on Wednesday said a new type of dating technique using a long-ago solar storm as a reference point revealed that the settlement was occupied in 1021 AD, exactly a millennium ago and 471 years before the first voyage of Columbus. The technique was used on three pieces of wood cut for the settlement, all pointing to the same year.

The Viking voyage represents multiple milestones for humankind. The settlement offers the earliest-known evidence of a transatlantic crossing. It also marks the place where the globe was finally encircled by humans, who thousands of years earlier had trekked into North America over a land bridge that once connected Siberia to Alaska.

“Much kudos should go to these northern Europeans for being the first human society to traverse the Atlantic,” said geoscientist Michael Dee of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, who led the study published in the journal Nature.

The Vikings, or Norse people, were seafarers with Scandinavian homelands: Norway, Sweden and Denmark. They ventured through Europe, sometimes colonizing and other times trading or raiding. They possessed extraordinary boat-building and navigation skills and established settlements on Iceland and Greenland.

“I think it is fair to describe the trip as both a voyage of discovery and a search for new sources of raw materials,” Dee said. “Many archaeologists believe the principal motivation for them seeking out these new territories was to uncover new sources of timber, in particular. It is generally believed they left from Greenland, where wood suitable for construction is extremely rare.”

Their wooden vessels, called longboats, were propelled by sail and oars. One surviving example, called the Oseberg ship, is roughly 70 feet.

The Viking Age is traditionally defined as 793-1066 AD, presenting a wide range for the timing of the transatlantic crossing. Ordinary radiocarbon dating – determining the age of organic materials by measuring their content of a particular radioactive isotope of carbon – proved too imprecise to date L’Anse aux Meadows, which was discovered in 1960, although there was a general belief it was the 11th century.

The new dating method relies on the fact that solar storms produce a distinctive radiocarbon signal in a tree’s annual growth rings. It was known there was a significant solar storm -a burst of high-energy cosmic rays from the sun – in 992 AD.

In all three pieces of wood examined, from three different trees, 29 growth rings were formed after the one that bore evidence of the solar storm, meaning the wood was cut in 1021, said University of Groningen archaeologist Margot Kuitems, the study’s first author.

It was not local indigenous people who cut the wood because there is evidence of metal blades, which they did not possess, Dee said. The length of the occupation remains unclear, though it may have been a decade or less, and perhaps 100 Norse people were present at any given time, Dee said. Their structures resembled Norse buildings on Greenland and Iceland.

Oral histories called the Icelandic Sagas depict a Viking presence in the Americas. Written down centuries later, they describe a leader named Leif Erikson and a settlement called Vinland, as well as violent and peaceful interactions with the local peoples, including capturing slaves.

The 1021 date roughly corresponds to the saga accounts, Dee said, adding: “Thus it begs the question, how much of the rest of the saga adventures are true?”

Source: Indian Express, 21/10/21

The journey of Mosquirix and future of Malaria

 

Malaria has plagued mankind for tens of thousands of years and the pesky mosquito, which serves as the host or vector for the disease, has killed more human beings than any other creature in existence, facilitating 400,000 deaths annually.

The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recent decision to endorse a vaccine for malaria, clinically known as the RTS,S vaccine and colloquially called Mosquirix, was a massive milestone in the campaign to eradicate the disease. Malaria has plagued mankind for tens of thousands of years and the pesky mosquito, which serves as the host or vector for the disease, has killed more human beings than any other creature in existence, facilitating 400,000 deaths annually.

Early evidence of malaria exists dating back to 2700 BC with the disease said to have contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire, the weakening of indigenous populations during the colonisation of the Americas, huge losses for British forces during the Revolutionary War, and the death of thousands of American forces in the Indo-Pacific during World War Two. Recognising the deadly toll of malaria, most Western countries successfully eliminated the disease by the 1950s. This was largely done through supply-side interventions that reduced the prevalence of mosquitos in those regions.

However, malaria still devastates large parts of Africa and Asia, with Sub-Saharan countries in particular, accounting for the vast majority of cases and deaths. Mosquirix could provide those regions with a potential, albeit limited, lifeline though challenges prevail in terms of administration, production, and complimentary antimalarial interventions.

Why is Malaria more prevalent in some regions over others?

Dr Prakash Srinivasan, an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and expert on malaria vaccines, tells indianexpress.com that “Western states, with developed economies, have been able to eradicate malaria carrying mosquitos due to improved sanitation and other control measures like insecticides and drugs.” However, just because malaria isn’t currently prevalent in those regions, doesn’t mean that the situation will remain that way. Many strains of malaria have developed immunity to insecticides and, according to Srinivasan, “with global climate change, countries are getting warmer, and it is possible that malaria can re-emerge without proper control measures.”

Unlike in Europe and North America, countries in Asia and Africa have a long way to go before eradicating malaria. According to Srinivasan, there are a number of reasons why malaria has not been eradicated in Africa and Asia, ranging from logistical challenges to the evolution of the disease and socio-economic factors that hinder intervention.

For now, however, the problem is primarily centred around Africa, which accounts for 94 per cent of global malaria cases. This is partially because mosquitos thrive in tropical climates, where the heat and humidity increase the lifespan of the mosquito which gives the disease time to metastasise.

Malaria is primarily transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes, which develop faster in the temperate waters found in the tropics. Given that the disease likely originated in Africa, Srinivasan also claims that mosquitos evolved in tandem with humans and thus are more resilient in those regions. Srinivas says humans have actually developed a greater resistance to the diseases in Africa. “African adults are probably bitten by several malaria-carrying mosquitos over the course of their lifespan,” he explains. “Most of them develop some sort of antibodies that protect them which is why children under the age of five, who don’t have those antibodies, are particularly vulnerable.”

Countries in Africa also have lower standards of living and poor sanitation conditions. This prevents them from implementing control measures like the use of mosquito nets, pesticides, and rapid treatment. Once the symptoms of malaria appear, it can take under 24 hours for the disease to kill its host and without access to healthcare, people in poor countries are particularly vulnerable. Lack of proper sanitation measures also mean that those countries have inadequate water management techniques, which in turn, provides breeding grounds for the mosquitos.

According to Srinivasan, because malaria is seen as a “tropical disease,” there is little impetus for industries and the governments of developed economies to research a vaccine. “Unlike Covid,” he says, “the malaria vaccine has been in trials for over 25 years.”

However, in terms of net investment, relatively little has been spent on eradication because it poses less of a risk to developed economies. Countries that have achieved at least three consecutive years of zero indigenous cases are declared malaria-free by the WHO. Thus far, only 11 countries have reached that benchmark. However, globally, the elimination net is widening. In 2019, 27 countries reported fewer than 100 indigenous cases of malaria compared to six countries in 2000.

Mosquirix

“The World Health Organization’s recommendation of RTS,S/AS01 for use as a complementary malaria prevention tool is a historic milestone in vaccine development, scientific innovation for malaria and long-term public-private partnerships,” says a representative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

However, Srinivasan was quick to clarify that while the WHO has endorsed the vaccine, it has not yet approved it. Produced currently by GlaxoSmithKline, Mosquirix is still a long way away from being found at doctors’ offices or in pharmacies. “What the WHO has done is give a strong recommendation for its wide-spread use,” says Srinivasan, adding that the final approval will still come from regulatory agencies of respective countries.

Although researchers knew that the vaccine was effective in clinical trials for many years, questions remained surrounding its suitability in real world settings. However, since 2019, Mosquirix, has been administered to approximately one million people in Malawi, Kenya, and Ghana, three countries with high rates of malaria. The efficacy of the vaccine in those settings ranges around 30 per cent which is modest compared to vaccines designed to prevent diseases such as polio and Covid, but nonetheless significant.

When asked why this was such a seminal moment given the context of the Covid vaccine being developed so quickly and efficiently, Srinivasan explains: “First, because parasites are far more complex pathogens, malaria in particular codes for around 5000 proteins in its genome so the challenge is what do you target. For Covid in comparison there are only a handful of proteins and only one major protein on the surface. Also, the parasites have multiple forms. There are forms that are found in the red blood cells which cause the disease but there are also forms that are found in the saliva, found during the reproductive phase and so on.”

He explains that the RTS,S vaccine targets the stage of the parasite called sporozoites that are transmitted by the mosquitos. “It does so by generating antibodies to sufficient levels to prevent the sporozoite from entering the liver, the phase known as the silent phase because it doesn’t cause any clinical symptoms. Once it exits the liver, it enters the red-blood cells, causing the disease.”

The complexity of the disease makes Mosquirix ground-breaking. However, combined with the high mortality rate of malaria, the results are even more impressive.

“We should be aiming higher than 30 per cent,” states Srinivasan, but the context is relevant given that there are over 400,000 deaths annually from malaria. Even though the 30 per cent won’t translate directly into a 30 per cent reduction of deaths, it will still save tens of thousands of lives per year according to WHO estimates.

Additionally, according to Srinivasan, “getting the seal of approval goes a long way in allaying fears, especially because the current data which the WHO used as the basis of its recommendation was based on real-life evaluation of this vaccine under real-life conditions. This means that the tests were not administered in doctors’ offices but rather in conditions under which the vaccine would regularly be given, like with measles or polio.”

This in turn demonstrated that wide-spread availability could be accepted by the local populations and that bodes well for the vaccine because it shows that people understand its importance.

Challenges

Distribution will remain complicated however and given that the vaccine requires four doses spread across one year, making sure that people complete the dose will be a challenge. Additionally, there are questions over how the vaccine will be manufactured and according to Srinivasan, “licensing of this technology will be crucial, alongside distribution.”

Moreover, prevention is still more effective than treatment. Srinivasan and other experts argue that Mosquirix alone will have a limited impact unless paired with other anti-malarial strategies. Drugs and vaccines become less effective the more they are used as they give malaria parasites more opportunities to develop resistance.

Since 2000, most progress in malaria control has resulted from expanded access to vector control interventions, particularly, sleeping inside an insecticide-treated net (ITN). ITNs can reduce contact between people and mosquitos and since 2019, an estimated 46 per cent of all people at risk of malaria in Africa were protected by an ITN, compared to 2 per cent in 2000. However, ITN coverage has been limited since 2016.

According to the representative from the Gates Foundation, “while the addition of RTS,S gives countries with high malaria burden another option to consider, accelerating progress against and saving more lives now from malaria requires significantly scaling up a range of current and cost-effective tools, including improved long-lasting insecticide nets (LLINs), seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) and intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy and infancy (IPTp and IPTi).”

Another prevention tactic is the use of indoor residual spraying (IRS), which involves spraying the inside of housing structures with an insecticide, typically once or twice annually. Globally, IRS protection declined from 5 per cent in 2010 to 2 per cent in 2019, in part, because the disease was generating resistance to the insecticides. According to the WHO’s latest World Malaria Report, 73 countries reported mosquito resistance to at least one of the four commonly used insecticides in the period between 2019-2019. In 28 countries, mosquito resistance was reported to all the main insecticide classes.

Additionally, according to the report, “gaps in access to life-saving tools are undermining global efforts to curb the disease, and the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to set back the fight even further.”

Funding for malaria eradication has also decreased over the years and in 2019, total funding reached $ 3 billion against a target of $ 5.6 billion. Calling it a plateau in progress, the report states that, “in 2019, the global tally of malaria cases was 229 million, an annual estimate that has remained virtually unchanged over the last 4 years.” Progress has slowed in recent years and gaps in funding threaten to roll-back gains made since 2000, a timeframe in which malaria deaths reduced by 44 per cent.

Disruptions in the supply of anti-malarial treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa caused by Covid, could similarly have devastating effects. For example, the report finds that a “10 per cent disruption in access to effective antimalarial treatment in sub-Saharan Africa could lead to 19,000 additional deaths in the region. Disruptions of 25 per cent and 50 per cent in the region could result in an additional 46 000 and 100 000 deaths, respectively.” According to WHO global projections, the 2020 target for reductions in malaria case incidence will be missed by 37 per cent and the mortality reduction target will be missed by 22 per cent.

The Mosquirix vaccine will undoubtedly catalyse the campaign to eradicate malaria, especially amongst vulnerable populations living in Africa. However, in order for it to succeed, three main criteria must be met. First, the vaccine must be licensed to production centres across the globe, similar to how Covishield is produced by the Serum Institute of India, using a formula developed by AstraZeneca. Second, there must be parallel efforts to ramp up measures and healthcare infrastructure that will prioritise prevention and rapid treatment. Lastly, the vaccine should not deter future funding for malaria research and the global community must avoid becoming complacent in the face of this recent progress.

According to the representative from the Gates Foundation, “achieving malaria eradication will require more than the tools we have today. The first-ever malaria vaccine brings us a major step forward in our goal of developing a highly effective, all ages elimination vaccine. Additional investment in transformative tools is critical to saving millions more lives, reducing the burden on health systems and ending the disease for good.”

Written by Mira Patel

Source: Indian Express, 13/10/21