📰 Aadhaar-bank account link must: RBI
•The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Saturday clarified that linking of Aadhaar to bank accounts was mandatory under the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules, 2017.
•The clarification comes after a section of the media, citing a reply to a Right to Information Act application, reported that the linking of Aadhaar and bank accounts was not mandatory. “The Reserve Bank clarifies that, in applicable cases, linkage of Aadhaar number to bank account is mandatory under the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules, 2017, published in the Official Gazette on June 1, 2017,” it said.
📰 is it difficult to clean up the Ganga?
•Coursing about 2,500 km, the Ganga is the longest river within India’s borders. Its basin constitutes 26% of the country’s land mass (8,61,404 sq. km.) and supports 43% of India’s population. Even as its basin traverses 11 States, five States are located along the river’s main stem spanning Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal. Much of the river’s pollution load — from chemical effluents, sewage, dead bodies, and excreta — comes from these States. In the Ganga basin, approximately 12,000 million litres per day (mld) of sewage is generated, for which there is now a treatment capacity of just 4,000 mld. Particularly, on the stretch spanning Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, approximately 3,000 mld of sewage is discharged, and a treatment capacity of just 1,000 mld has been created to treat it. Though the contribution of industrial pollution, volume-wise, is about 20%, its toxic and non-biodegradable nature has a disproportionate impact. The industrial pollutants largely emanate from tanneries in Kanpur, distilleries, paper mills and sugar mills in the Kosi, Ramganga and Kali river catchments. Then there is the municipal sewage which, at about a billion litres a day, generates 80% of the pollution load. This spans a wide range, from run-off in rural settlements to carcasses floated down the river.
What is the government doing?
•The BJP included the cleaning of the Ganga in its 2014 election manifesto. The Narendra Modi government earmarked Rs. 20,000 crore for the clean-up and promised that the river would be clean by 2020. Former Union Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharti said the river would be clean by 2018 but the new Minister, Nitin Gadkari, indicated that this deadline was unlikely to be met. He, however, said the river would be “noticeably clean” by March 2019.
What has been done so far?
•The government has set up an empowered authority called the National Mission for Clean Ganga. This is a dedicated team of officers who are responsible for disbursing the Rs. 20,000 crore fund towards a variety of projects that involve setting up of sewage treatment plants (STPs), replacing woodfired crematoriums with electric ones or those that use fuel more efficiently, setting up biodiversity parks that will enable native species — from the Gangetic river dolphin to rare turtles — to replenish their numbers and planting trees to improve the water table in the surrounding regions and prevent soil erosion. The authorities focussed on having trash skimmers ply along the river and collecting garbage, and improving crematoria. However the big task — of installing sewage treatment plants — is grossly delayed. Barely Rs. 2,000 crore of the Rs. 20,000 crore has been spent so far. The government says this has taken time because it wanted to put in place an extremely transparent tendering process. It has also established a system called the hybrid-annuity model, used in commissioning highways, for selecting firms that will manage STPs. Under this, firms would be given nearly half the money upfront to set up a plant and the rest (with a profit margin included) at regular intervals, provided they meet certain criteria over 15 years. Sixty-three sewerage management projects are being implemented in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. Last week, STPs to treat 1187.33 mld were cleared for Hardwar and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
What are ‘clean river’ criteria?
•The ultimate objective, for the river to be clean, would be to ensure that the coliform bacteria level, biochemical oxygen demand, pH and dissolved salts remain within the standards prescribed by the Central Pollution Control Board.
Can the government meet its targets?
•A lot will depend on how soon the STPs are commissioned. On average, they will take about a year-and-a-half to work at their optimal capacity. The tanneries, a major polluter, will have to install new systems to ensure that no discharge leaches into the river. Given that several employ techniques that have not been tried on a large scale in Indian rivers, it is unclear how soon they will deliver results. Moreover, a clean river also implies that it maintains minimum levels — called ecological flows — across all stretches of the river. This requires management on a larger scale, including controlling the several dams along the river that bring with them their own challenges.
📰 Decoding Xi’s road map for China
Chinese President’s emphasis on Marxist idea of ‘principal contradiction’ gets hair-splitting scrutiny
•Delegates participating in the twice-a-decade conference of the Communist Party of China (CPC) are poring over President Xi Jinping’s marathon opening address on Wednesday, especially his emphasis on the “principal contradiction” facing China.
•An explainer published by the state news agency Xinhua has tried to decode the hidden meaning behind the “principal contradiction,” purposefully highlighted by President Xi.
•“Principle contradiction” is not an “obscure piece of political jargon,” but a central part of the “dialectical materialism” through which Marxists interpret the world, the commentary observes.
•“Contradictions — or dynamic opposing forces — are omnipresent in society and drive social change. The ‘principal contradiction’ is what defines a society. By identifying and solving it, society develops peacefully. Left unsolved, it can lead to chaos and eventually, as Marx predicted, to revolution,” it adds.
•An inaccurate reading of the “principle contradiction” can lead to disastrous consequences. China faced “prolonged social turmoil” after the party wrongly diagnosed “proletariat versus bourgeoisie” or an irreconcilable class war between the working people and the affluent as the “principle contradiction” during the late Mao-era.
•But in 1981, the CPC changed its assessment of the “principal contradiction,” which led to structural market economic reforms, leading to near 10% expansion of the Chinese economy for the next 30 years.
Today’s scenario
•The situation has changed yet again. Pointing to the dawn of a “new era,” Mr. Xi has stressed that the principle contradiction was now “between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life.”
•The commentary explains that aspirations among many Chinese have spiralled. Many Chinese are now seeking an education at Oxford or Cambridge, a vacation in California, or a villa in Sydney.
‘Inability to satisfy’
•“This demand for a better life overseas is derived from an inability to satisfy these desires at home. The very highest level of education is not available or in acute short supply. There are long waiting lists in the very best hospitals. Tourist sites are crowded and services there have hardly advanced at the same pace as people’s expectations.”
•Chinese regions have also developed unevenly. Besides, the gap in personal wealth is a major concern.
•“The country’s three richest men — two Internet gurus and one property magnate are each worth more than $30 billion. Meanwhile, millions of people struggle to get by on less than a dollar a day,” the report observes.
•The fulfilment of aspirations for equitable growth, a cleaner environment, a richer cultural life, and a secure external environment identified by the current “principle contradiction,” will guide policy formulation in the coming decades.
•During his address, President Xi pointed to the twin centenary goals — making China a moderately prosperous country by 2021, leading to the emergence of an advanced socialist nation by 2049 when the
•People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established.
•“His [President Xi’s] two-stage development strategy spans 30 years, with the objective of making China a “great modern socialist country,” the commentary observed.
•Ning Jizhe, a Vice Chairman of the National Development and Reforms Commission (NDRC), China’s top planning body, pointed to a mammoth Greater Bay Area plan that would help achieve the “centenary goals”.
📰 Women survivors who won over TB
The ‘Bolo Didi’ campaign attempts to support female TB patients, who have little help navigating the health-care system
•Some years ago, Nandita Venkatesan took a power nap only to wake up deaf. She could “see” the music playing on a mobile phone and her brother talking but her world had turned silent.
•Nandita, who was then getting treated for tuberculosis, later learnt that she had lost her hearing due to the side-effects of the drugs. She is now part of a sisterhood of TB patients, revolutionising TB support in India.
•The small band of female TB survivors have come together to start the “Bolo Didi” campaign to support female patients, who invariably have little support navigating India’s labyrinthine, capricious, health-care system.
A lonely battle
•India shoulders the highest TB burden in the world, with over two million of the 10 million cases reported here. It also accounts for the maximum drug-resistant (DR) patients.
•At the 48th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Guadalajara, Mexico, Dr. Saurabh Rane, a TB survivor, spoke about the struggles unique to Indian TB patients. “In a country with the world’s most TB patients, it is tragic that each of us feels so alone,” he said highlighting the complete lack of support for patients in a health system struggling to diagnose and treat patients.
Seeking peer support
•In such a system, there is no redress for social stigma, misinformation and the abuse that patients have to often cope with. This is a reason why patients are starting to form informal networks using social media. Patients are finding peer support to deal with issues that the medical system does not fully address such as stigma, marital issues, sexual health and depression.
•“It is impressive that female TB survivors in India have stepped up to fight stigma. It is clear from research that too many patients are falling through the cracks in the Indian health system (both public and private), and patients, particularly women, are seeking support from their peers to make up for inadequacies in the health system,” said Prof. Madhukar Pai, Associate Director, McGill International TB Centre., Canada.
•“I would like to see these informal networks become more organised, with adequate training for survivors on technical issues, and clear protocols to link patients to the medical system for complex or life threatening issues (for example, suicidal thoughts),” he added.
•The “Bolo Didi” campaign came about when film-maker and TB survivor Rhea Lobo decided to set up what she calls a ‘pay-it-forward’ programme for women TB patients. Her two minute film, on the stories of fellow survivors, was screened at the Union conference. “Women find my film on YouTube and start contacting me via Facebook or WhatsApp. The conversations invariable start with, “Didi, can you please help me?” Some cries are more desperate. There was a woman who once messaged me in panic asking for help as her husband and family did not (and could) know she had TB. She wanted contacts of doctors and counsellors — basic information that should, ideally, not be this hard to access.”
•Rhea soon realised other survivors like Nandita were also getting similar messages. “The stigma associated with it doesn’t allow patients to openly talk about their struggles. As a woman and TB survivor, I feel it is a social responsibility towards these women... like a pay-it-forward concept. This is a treatable, bacterial infection and women should not be made to feel guilty about contracting an infectious disease and be forced to hide it from their families. We reassure them that TB is completely curable and guide them through the process of navigating India’s health system,” Rhea added.
Government’s stand
•While patients are banding together, the government is digging in its heels further. Dr. Sunil Khaparde, head of the Ministry of Health’s TB division, said that the “government was an enabler but not solely responsible for [the] care of patients.” At international conferences, the Indian government has faced serve criticism for the glacial pace at which access to newer TB drugs has been scaled up. The government has maintained that it is doing the best it can. Given the lack of support for patients, Dr. Khaparde added that it was “good that patients are coming together”. “Our government plan is talking about community participation. We will try to involve them in policy implementation,” he said.
•Meanwhile, Rhea and Nandita are not waiting. “We are trying to organise patient groups and start a virtual institution for women. This could be a game changer in India’s TB response. I came up with the name ‘Bolo Didi’ over coffee with a couple of friends because that is how every message to me ends: “Didi, please reply”. We will be applying for grants in the coming months to fund the “Bolo Didi” campaign.
📰 Paper industry hit by duty-free imports
Imports have grown 40% in April-July
•A sharp increase in import of paper and paperboard, especially writing and printing paper, this financial year has turned into a matter of concern for the domestic industry.
•Import of coated paper, which totalled 45,492 tonnes in February this year, shot up to 73,792 tonnes in July. In the same period, import of uncoated paper too rose from 13,347 tonnes to 32,887 tonnes, according to data with Indian Paper Manufacturers Association (IPMA).
Impact of trade pacts
•Import of paper and paperboard [excluding newsprint] has been steadily on the rise for the last six years,” said Rohit Pandit, secretary general, IPMA. “Import of these items from ASEAN countries have grown almost 43% in volume in the last six years. Imports from South Korea alone have risen 58%.”
•Since 2014, there has been no import duty on paper and paperboard from ASEAN countries. Under the India-Korea CEPA, the basic customs duty has been reduced gradually with a 0% target by January 1. Between April and July this year, the growth in imports has been more than 40%, he said. In the writing and printing paper segment, import of coated, uncoated, and copier papers is significant, he added.
•“The domestic industry in India has started feeling the impact and the government should increase import duty on paper and paperboard to 20%,” the Indian Agro & Recycled Paper Mills’ Association has demanded.
•R. Krishnaswamy, vice-president of the association, said that for wood-based paper mills in India, the cost of wood is ‘very high’. If it is $100 a tonne in India, the price of wood in Indonesia, with which Indian suppliers compete, is only $40 a tonne. Hence, the price of paper is also lower, he said.
📰 More species of snakehead fish found
There could be 53 or more species
•Confusions over snakehead fish species identity need not bother ichthyologists any more, as a global digital database of the species has been developed.
•A global collaborative initiative involving as many as 10 scientific institutions has barcoded these freshwater fish varieties, which got their name from their unique snakelike snout. The members of the species are found distributed from the Middle East to eastern Asia, Central and West Africa and the Nile.
•Earlier, it was widely believed that there were 38 species in this group. However, DNA-level analysis showed that there were several more species than first thought. The species strength of snakeheads could be 53 or even more, said Rajeev Raghavan, Assistant professor of the Kerala University for Fisheries and Ocean Studies, Kochi, which is one of the partnering institutions in the project. The research findings were recently published in PLOS ONE.
New species
•Snakeheads are of great demand in the domestic market for food as well as for ornamental purposes. Since these species are mostly found in the inland waterbodies, no data on their catch is available. It’s mostly the brightly coloured ones from northeastern India that find their way into aquaria.
•The barcoding also succeeded in identifying new species Channa from Assam, foothills of Bhutan, Myanmar and another one from Congo.
•The analysis of the data revealed that the eastern Himalaya and the adjoining region of Myanmar were hotspots for snakehead diversity, as up to 10 snakehead species described during the last quarter century originated from this region, explained Dr. Raghavan.
Current status
•India is currently home to 15 species of Channa and the species diversity could go up as more studies would be undertaken.
•Four currently known species — Channa bankanensis found in Indonesia and Malaysia, Channa marulius, Channa striata and Channa gachua — found in the Indian subcontinent and parts of southeast Asia, are considered species complexes, where different species are currently known under a single name because their taxonomy is poorly known or studied, he explained.
•More taxonomic studies on the species complexes are required for conservation purposes as many of the currently wide ranging species are listed as of “least concern” in the Red List of IUCN.
•One of the criteria for assessing a species as of least concern is its wide distribution. The breaking down of the species complex into individual species may have a different story to tell about its distribution which may prompt the scientific community to think for more species-specific conservation programs, felt researchers.
📰 IIT Hyderabad uses activated jamun to remove fluoride from water
The activated jamun powder can be reused up to five times by heating it to 50 degree C
•Now, while removing excess fluoride from drinking water, the usual problems such as high operational costs and getting rid of toxic sludge will be a thing of the past. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad have used activated jamun seed powder to bring the fluoride content in drinking water to less than the WHO limit of 1.5 mg per litre. The results were published in the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering.
•The team led by Dr. Chandra S. Sharma from the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Hyderabad mixed the jamun seed powder thoroughly with potassium hydroxide and heated it to 900 degree C for an hour to produce activated jamun powder. The activation increases the pore volume several times and the surface area by more than 50 times. As a result, the fluoride adsorption efficiency increased several times compared to samples that were not treated with KOH but heated to 900 degree C.
•The fluoride ion removal increases with a decrease in pH, with maximum adsorption found at pH 3. The activated jamun seed acquires a positive charge at low pH and the positive charge attracts the fluoride ions while the negative charge in an alkaline medium repulses the fluoride ions.
•With fluoride adsorption capacity of 3.65 milligram per gram, activated jamun seed was close to tea ash (3.75 milligram per gram) but much higher than other substances such as banana peel, coffee husk, and coconut shell.
•“Besides testing the activated jamun seed powder in the lab we also tested it using groundwater taken from Nalgonda village, which is one of the worst fluoride-affected villages in India. After two hours of contact time, we were able to reduce the fluoride content from 3.2 milligram per litre to less than 1.5 milligram per litre, which is the WHO limit,” says Dr. Sharma.
•On heating the activated jamun powder to 50 degree C, the fluoride gets desorbed and the jamun powder can be reused up to five times. “About 96% of the fluoride can be desorbed. So there is a loss of only 4% efficiency after each desorption,” he says.
Disposal of sludge
•Disposal of the fluoride sludge is another area that the team is working on. “The fluoride ions desorbed from the activated carbon will be present in very small quantity of water. We can add sodium hydroxide to this water to produce sodium fluoride,” he says. The major objective of the current study was to evaluate the fluoride removal efficiency using a novel, low-cost activated carbon.
•“We will next be testing the efficiency of the activated jamun powder in water containing multiple ions such as fluoride, arsenic and heavy metals,” says Ramya Araga the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Hyderabad and the first author of the paper.
•“We have so far carried out all tests in batches. We need to now undertake column studies,” says Araga. The continuous flow parameters have to be optimised to achieve best results; during the batch studies, two hours of contact time was needed for the fluoride to be removed.
📰 IISc: new tool to diagnose malaria
The tool tests the rigidity of the cell
•By studying the properties of normal red blood cells (RBCs) and parasite-infected RBCs, scientists at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, (IISc) have developed a new diagnostic tool for early detection of malaria.
•Currently, visual microscopic identification of the malarial parasite Plasmodiuminside red blood cells (RBCs) is used, but the new tool can detect the disease even in RBCs that do not themselves host the parasite but lie near the infected ones. RBCs that lie close to the infected ones appear rigid much like the affected ones and this helps in easy diagnosis. The results were recently published inBiomedical Journal.
Optical-tweezers
•Blood samples with malaria infections caused by P. falciparum and P. vivax were collected from the Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute and studied. RBCs were separated out from the blood, and a single RBC was trapped in an optical tweezer trap. In this technique, laser beams are focused at the micron-sized RBC (like tweezers holding the RBC) under a microscope and imaged with a video camera.
•The Brownian motion (random movement of particles) of the normal RBC was found to be different from the infected ones.
•A photodetector was used to measure this motion of the trapped particle. The researchers quantified the fluctuations using the ‘corner frequency’ measurement. The corner frequency of normal cells was 25 hertz whereas it was 29 hertz for infected cells. The change in frequency was due to the difference in the rigidity of the cells; the infected cells were more rigid compared to the normal ones.
•When trapped, the RBC gets folded as it is biconcave in shape and the time taken for folding inside the trap was measured. As the infected cells were more rigid they took about 1.33 seconds to fold whereas normal cells took only 0.8 seconds. A measure of folding time can also be used to determine whether a cell is infected.
Bystander effect
•“Only 2-5% of the RBCs host the parasite. But we can see the rigidity in other RBCs in the infected pool also. This is called the bystander effect and it is very helpful in our tweezers study. P.vivax infects mainly the immature RBCs (reticulocytes) but due to this effect we could see changes in the mature RBCs not hosting the parasite too. We are yet to understand what exactly is released into the blood stream that causes rigidity even in the non-hosting cells,” says Apurba Paul from the Department of Physics at IISc and first author of the paper.
•According to the researchers, the tweezers technique can be used as a general screening tool for all stages of malarial infection. “The technique is very easy and does not require trained personnel as it is fully automated. Very little blood is needed, and it can be drawn at any time of the day. The changes can be seen in the blood even when the parasite count is very low due to the bystander effect,” Paul adds.
