📰 India, Pak. NSAs met 4 times, are keeping phone links live: officials
Talks in Russia, Thailand not disrupted by acrimonious public statements
•Indian and Pakistani National Security Advisors Ajit Doval and Gen. (Retd) Naseer Janjua have been meeting and speaking on the telephone more regularly than they have officially confirmed. They held at least three meetings in Bangkok, and one in Russia, sources in Delhi and Islamabad told The Hindu .
•According to the sources, the NSA’s have been meeting in Bangkok, as it is a convenient hub for flights from both countries, and speaking “regularly” over the phone.
•They also held talks on the sidelines of an international security summit in the Russian town of Zavidovo in the Tver region during May 25-26, 2017. Engagements for contacts this year are still being worked out, but diplomatic sources said the upcoming Davos World Economic Forum on January 22-23, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi are scheduled to attend, could be the next venue for the NSA or other foreign office officials to meet.
•The talks in Russia were particularly significant as they came days after India moved the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav, the former Indian Navy commander arrested and sentenced to death by Pakistan, who has been denied consular access. The last known meeting between the NSAs took place on December 26, 2017 a day after Mr. Jadhav was allowed to meet his wife and mother in Islamabad.
•While the Jadhav family reunion turned into an acrimonious issue between India and Pakistan, and New Delhi expressed outrage over the insensitive treatment of his kin, the NSA meeting in Bangkok was held in a “friendly and positive” atmosphere, Pakistani officials said. The Pakistani side was unhappy over the public statements in India, as it viewed the granting of visitation to Mr. Jadhav’s family as a “constructive and humanitarian” gesture.
•India accused Pakistan of violating its commitments on access to Mr. Jadhav and of humiliating his family by making them change clothes and remove their jewellery. India’s subsequent decision to cancel grant of visas to Sufi pilgrims from Pakistan to attend the urs at the Nizamuddin shrine was seen as a response to Pakistan’s actions on the Jadhav case.
📰 Rival Koreas agree to talk on art troupe’s visit to Olympics
Seoul says North is keen on discussing logistics of performers’ trip to South
•The two Koreas will hold talks next week to discuss the North’s plan to send a performing art troupe to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said on Saturday.
•The North confirmed it would attend next month’s Olympics in the South at a rare inter-Korean meeting last week, following months of tensions over its nuclear weapons programme.
•The Ministry said the North was apparently keen to discuss logistics of the performers’ trip to the South before planning its athletes and supporters’ attendance at the Games.
•“The government informed the North that our delegation will come to Panmunjom on January 15,” the Ministry said in a statement.
•Both sides will each dispatch four delegates including art officials to the talks.
•Hyon Song-Wol, leader of the popular Moranbong band, is one of four North Korean delegates to attend the talks in the truce village of Panmunjom on Monday.
•The Moranbong band is an all-female music group performing pop, rock and fusion styles, whose members are reportedly selected by the leader Kim Jong-Un himself.
•The development comes a day after South Korea’s Vice Sports Minister Roh Tae-Kang said the South had proposed marching with the North at the Olympics’ opening ceremony and also forming a joint women’s ice hockey team during the high-level talks which took place on Tuesday.
Peace Olympics
•A joint march at the opening ceremony would be a stunning statement for the Games dubbed the “Peace Olympics”, which will open about 80 km from the heavily fortified Korean border on February 9.
•North Korea boycotted the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, meaning Pyeongchang will be the first Olympics they have attended in the South. Separately, the International Olympic Committee has proposed a meeting on January 20 in Lausanne, Switzerland, involving the two Koreas to discuss the North’s participation in Pyeongchang.
📰 Russia plants new missiles in Crimea
•Russia deployed a new division of S-400 surface-to-air missiles in Crimea on Saturday, Russian news agencies reported, in an escalation of military tensions on the Crimean peninsula.
•Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, triggering economic sanctions by the EU and U.S. and a tense stand-off in the region.
•The U.S. said in December it planned to provide Ukraine with "enhanced defensive capabilities", which officials said included Javelin anti-tank missiles.
•Moscow's latest deployment represents the second division armed with S-400 air defence systems on the peninsula, after the first in the spring of 2017 near the port town of Fedosia. The new division will be based next to the town of Sevastopol and will control the airspace over the border with Ukraine, the RIA news agency reported.
•The new air defence system can be turned into combat mode in less than five minutes, Interfax news agency quoted Viktor Sevostyanov, a commander with Russia's air forces, as saying. Russia's Defence Ministry says the S-400 systems, known as "Triumph", can bring down airborne targets at a range of 400 kilometres and ballistic missiles at a range of 60 km.
📰 Bar Association wants judges to sort out rift
PM’s aide tries to meet CJI, kicks up a political controversy
•The Supreme Court Bar Association’s executive committee on Saturday passed a resolution asking the four sitting judges of the highest court, Justices J. Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur and Kurian Joseph, who aired their differences with Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra at a press conference on Friday, to sort out the rift among themselves.
•A Full Bench of the Supreme Court, all current 25 judges of the court, should sit and resolve the issues, the resolution said.
•The association also said public interest litigation (PIL) petitions should be heard by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) or the Benches led by the four senior-most judges.
•In the midst of this, a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Principal Secretary Nripendra Misra to the residence of CJI Misra set off a political storm with the Congress questioning it, especially since the Centre had declared that it wanted to distance itself from the whole affair.
Impropriety, says Cong.
•Congress general secretary Randeep Surjewala took to Twitter to term it an impropriety. “As PM’s Principal Secretary Nripendra Misra visits the CJI’s residence at 5, Krishna Menon Marg; PM must answer the reason for sending this special messenger to Chief Justice of India,” he said. Mr. Mishra told TV channels that it was in a personal capacity and that he had been unable to meet the CJI.
•“Both Mr. Misra and the CJI had been neighbours earlier, possibly when they both resided on Tughlak Road, and the Principal Secretary went to visit the CJI after the latter moved to his new residence. In any case, he was unable to meet him,” a senior official told The Hindu .
📰 We want transparency: judge
Justice Kurian Joseph exudes confidence that the issue had been the solved
•A day after four senior-most Supreme Court judges alleged selective and irrational allocation of cases for hearing in the court, Justice Kurian Joseph, one of them, exuded confidence that the issue would have got resolved already.
•“It was for institutional introspection and correction and I hope the issue [pertaining to allocation of cases] has already been addressed,” he told presspersons here on Saturday.
•Justice Joseph said it was the prerogative of the Chief Justice of India to assign cases to judges. “He needn’t consult anyone, but there is a set procedure, convention and practice to carry out that responsibility. I believe these would be honoured from now on.”
•The judge maintained that there was nothing personal in the unprecedented gesture of senior justices going public with their concern about judiciary; nor did it smack of indiscipline.
•“It was born from our commitment to the institution and we wanted to bring these issues to the people’s notice. That has been achieved to good effect,” he said.
•Asked if there was a need for external intervention to defuse the judicial crisis, he said it was an internal issue and action had been taken from within the institution to address it. “There’s no need for any external intervention”. To another question, he said the issue had been taken up earlier, but there was no solution forthcoming, which forced them to go public. “Those who should take note of it have done so. Hence the belief that such [unsavoury] things will not happen in future.”
📰 Historians oppose Monuments Bill
They fear threat to heritage sites if it becomes law
•Historians and archaeologists have expressed concern over amendments proposed to the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act (1958). If the related Bill is passed in the Upper House, it could have disastrous consequences for historical monuments, they fear.
•The Act, which originally instituted conservation measures and banned construction activities near protected monuments, is now sought to be amended so that public works could be allowed within the 100 m prohibited zone. The Lok Sabha passed the amendments to the Act on January 3. But the Bill is yet to be cleared by the Rajya Sabha.
•“You cannot talk about conserving ancient heritage and culture and then frame laws that go against their very preservation,” historian of ancient India Romila Thapar told The Hindu.
•“A historical monument has to be conserved by leaving enough space around it; otherwise the monument itself may decay once you allow buildings to come up next to it. If you want people to appreciate the monument you should allow visitors to associate it with its neighbourhood by leaving space around the structure,” she said.
Urbanisation pressures
•Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) officials told The Hindu that the pressure to bring in this amendment came when the ASI declined permission for a six-lane highway to come up on the Delhi-Kanpur highway near Akbar’s tomb in Sikandra, Uttar Pradesh.
•An ASI official, who also teaches history at a central university, said on condition of anonymity: “The ASI always takes the blame when it comes to upkeep of historical monuments, but when such laws are passed; nobody questions their local MPs as to what they were up to when such drastic changes were being made.”
•Recounting an incident, he said that in 2010, when the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment and Validation) Act, 2010, was passed to ban constructions around monuments, residents living near protected sites in Aurangabad protested against the move, with the ASI having to take the blame for it, while the local MP remained silent.
•“The pressures of urban development have meant that more and more historical monuments are coming under threat due to development activities around them,” he said.
•The ASI official further said that rapid urbanisation also threatened many sites of historical importance, for example megalithic sites (Iron Age burials) en route Chengalpattu from Chennai.
Neolithic site missing
•“Even a Neolithic site near the Murugan temple in a hillock in Kundrathur is now missing due to urban settlements springing up there,” he said.
•In 2013, after a CAG report raised an alarm that 92 historical monuments had gone “missing” due to development activities around them, the ASI started a ground survey to verify them, and found that 21 had indeed become untraceable.
•Citing a Cabinet note, Congress leader and Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor informed Parliament recently that plans were afoot to construct a railway line next to Rani ki Vaw, an ancient step well in Patan, Gujarat, which had been recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014.
📰 Money in the bank, or for it?
Depositors need more protection, not less
•Last week, this paper’s sister publication, The Hindu Business Line, published a series of stories, based on information sourced from people close to the matter, on what the various institutional stakeholders who are likely to be impacted by the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill 2017 (FRDI Bill) actually think about it. These range from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to state-owned and private banks. The Bill was introduced in Parliament last August but is still being vetted by a parliamentary standing committee.
The elephant in the room
•To no one’s surprise, it emerges that all of them — behind closed doors and protected by parliamentary privilege — have strong reservations about it. Most want major clauses changed or dropped; some even argued for a rethink on the Bill itself. But all this was to protect their own turfs. The RBI was worried about ‘dual oversight’ and who will actually take the call on when a bank is failing. Public sector undertaking (PSU) banks wanted to protect their bailiwick. And so on. No one talked about the one provision in the FRDI Bill which has caused alarm and despondency amongst millions of bank depositors, mostly India’s much-neglected poor, and the middle class: the infamous ‘bail-in’ clause.
•This is the clause that empowers the Resolution Corporation (which will be created to handle cases of bank failure if the Bill becomes law) to either cancel, alter or modify the liability owed by a service provider. Simply put, your money in the bank — whether in a savings account or in a fixed deposit — is a liability owed by the ‘service provider’, i.e., the bank. If the bank is going belly-up, the Resolution Corporation is empowered to either use your deposit money to shore up the bank’s finances and make you suffer the losses, or convert your deposit into bonds or equity.
•Faced with mass panic and a massive social media backlash, the government has been at pains to point out that the existing protection for depositors is not being touched and that the Bill provides “enhanced protection” for depositors. This includes a clause which says that no depositor will receive less than what he/she would have got if the bank had been liquidated and its assets distributed among creditors. Further, your deposit can be cancelled or converted only if you have agreed to do so in the contract governing such debt.
Loss to depositors
•Quite apart from the fact that no one reads the fine print on fixed deposit forms, and even if they read them, no one but a trained lawyer would understand what it is they are agreeing to, the bigger issue is that the entire issue of deposit insurance is taken as read. In other words, the government just assumes that the status quo is fine and everyone will be happy if it remains unchanged.
•Wrong. Indian depositors are woefully undercovered if banks in which they are putting their money fail. The Deposit Insurance and Credit and Guarantee Corporation (DICGC), an RBI arm, insures deposits only up to ₹1 lakh — a sum unchanged since 1993. Less than a third of the deposits with banks (by value) are covered by insurance.
•The government and the RBI point out that the global average is 20-30% of deposits in the system (which India meets), but what they don’t tell you is that the quantum of cover is among the lowest in the world. In the U.S., deposits up to $250,000 are covered. Even Brazil offers coverage of over $75,000, while in India, this is a measly $1,500. Furthermore, a whopping 85% of deposits are higher than the cover limit of ₹1 lakh. So, if banks do fail, an overwhelming majority of depositors will suffer massive losses.
•Here’s another factoid — virtually every penny of the payouts that the DICGC has made so far has gone to co-operative banks. No PSU bank has failed or been liquidated so far, since the RBI has insured mergers or takeovers and thus protected depositors. The handful of private bank failures have been tiny and their impact muted.
•Meanwhile, banks are understandably reluctant to pay more premium to DICGC, since they see that as funding co-op bank failures.
What can be done
•This needs to be fixed first before tackling any major restructuring. There are multiple options for this. Co-op banks can be excluded from this (let their regulator, the Registrar of Co-operatives, figure it out). Second, deposits above a certain limit — say, ₹50 lakh, given current inflation levels — can be kept out of insurance cover, or have the option for a voluntary opt-in at a higher premium. And third, the amount of cover should be increased substantially, to at least half the average value of deposits, excluding high-value deposits of, say, above ₹5 crore.
•All this requires substantial political will. The co-op bank bit will be a hot potato, since most of the political class has a vested interest in them. Likewise, forcing higher insurance premiums on banks will only worsen their already precarious situation. But the alternative — of doing nothing, or worse, letting a loosely worded FRDI Bill with no clear-cut provisions become law — will only make the situation much, much worse.
📰 ‘Need to make our farmers a part of higher value addition’
NITI Aayog VC stresses on shift from traditional crops to those of higher value
•As part of measures to double farmers’ income by 2022, the NITI Aayog will undertake 10 pilot projects in different agro-climatic regions says Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar. Mr. Kumar, who took charge four months ago, also talks about the current loopholes in job creation. Edited excerpts:
What are your top priorities?
•One is to nurture, promote and do whatever is needed, to strengthen the recovery in the business cycle. Second is to prove that farmers’ income can be doubled. Agriculture needs a completely different approach than what has hitherto been adopted. That approach has focussed entirely on raising output and production. We need to shift that attention to farmers’ income. The third priority clearly is the health sector. I cringe every time I look at our malnutrition numbers. The Niti Aayog has come out with a strategy to combat malnutrition and I want to ensure its implementation. That will require working with state governments. I am therefore visiting all the state capitals. The other big project is rapid transformation of the 115 most backward districts. Finally, I want to at least get the employment data right. Besides, we also need to focus on energy. The issues of hugely fragmented tariff schedules, low plant load factors and share of renewables require attention. Then, there is education, improving the quality of our education especially at the primary level has been a very big challenge. There’s so much that needs doing.
What is your reaction to comments that doubling of farmers’ incomes by 2022 is all talk?
•One should not underestimate the importance of talking. At least we are talking now. And the farmers’ welfare is the focus of attention. When did that last happen? Now, we have set up a task force which is committed to setting up 10 pilot projects in different agro-climatic regions to prove that this can be done.
•We should look at finding innovative ways to get over the problem of land fragmentation and bring farmers together... give them the option of producing high value crops. We need to make them a participant in higher value addition by completing the value chain which will extend beyond the farm, to the market and then maybe to the agro-processing units.
•We also need to shift them from traditional crops to crops which are of higher value and in sync with the emerging demand patterns of our country. The demand for wheat, rice and maize is going down as incomes rise.
What is happening on the new data on employment?
•There was a task force chaired by my predecessor, and its recommendations had been accepted by the PM and now they are being implemented by the Ministry of Labour and MoSPI. By September, we are hopeful that we will get very good household data on employment. And you will get this now every year. The second part is that we may also look at employer-based data generation, like what the U.S. does.
Will this cover the informal sector?
•Probably not... Not at this stage. This itself will be a very big start, once we get started we will see. There is a huge blurring of distinction between organised and unorganised.
•For example, where would you put an Ola or an Uber driver? He is not registered anywhere, but gets his income through a bank credit. They also get loans on the basis of income track. There’s an outdated discussion that is going on which does not look at new economy jobs. With the large volumes of contract fixed term labour, is it even relevant to talk about organised and unorganised? That is a question that I am asking. What may be useful is talking about areas where working conditions may not be as you would expect.
Amid all the discussion over lack of employment, what are the current loopholes in employment generation?
•One is of course growth. The other, in my view, is this continued emphasis on giving people capital subsidy, rather than labour subsidy. Being a highly-priced and highly-valuable democracy, giving the right to the workers that they have, we may have converted into a high labour economy from a surplus labour economy.
•Given that our labour costs have increased, which is not in line in with our labour availability, I think it’s high time we thought of giving labour subsidies in some form or the other.
•All our major competitors and in developed economies, the amount of worker consumption basket that they provide as public goods is much much higher than us. For example, in Germany, Vietnam and China, every worker’s healthcare is taken care of. Our healthcare, 82% is out of pocket expenses. So, the worker must be given more income as he/she does not have access to public health or housing.
•In Germany, I think 85% of the workers are housed in public housing. My thought is that as long as you are not able to increase the share of public goods and services in the workers consumption basket, you need to compensate them for the higher cost of living. And that I think is the basic problem today in employment. And the government must rethink this.
•The other, of course, is the much focussed attention on your labour intensive, employment intensive industries, including services. That is rather simple, can be done. It just requires good governance. This government is about that.
But won’t labour subsidy put additional pressure?
•Of course it will. But that will require you to improve the government's efficiency of expenditure.
•It is not as if the government does not spend money on all this, it does.
•Through DBT and increase in efficiency, this can be done. It does not necessarily need to translate into higher revenue deficit.
•And hopefully in any case, if you have this in your focus, then as revenue increases with GST, transfer it there rather than on some other things… rather than giving capital subsidies which you give every time so far.
What is your view on the overall economy, especially in the backdrop of CSO forecast of GDP slowing to four year low of 6.5%?
•I said in August last year, that July was the month when we bottomed out. That was the first time both PMI services and manufacturing, both just ticked up. The second quarter proved me right. Further, CSO numbers prove me to be correct that in the second half growth would be 7%. Several people are saying this is probably an underestimate by CSO, I hope they are true. But even if this is 7%, we are rising. This is what I said to begin with that the economy is now on the upswing. And this will now continue and persist because the economy has now been cleaned up and is much more formalised. The rules of the game, which to a large extent eliminate crony capitalism that gave advantage to those who thought themselves to be close to the so called power to be... it is clear that this will not give you additional advantage. All of that having been achieved and the ease of doing business, transparency and digital actually making several strides, I think this upswing will continue. I am terribly optimistic about our economy, especially if we can double our farmers’ income. That is the key. If you improve rural incomes, the rest will actually get taken care of.
•Your thoughts on private sector participation in health.
•To deal with both malnutrition and primary healthcare, what we want to do there is start some sort of a competitive process whereby districts and States will challenge each other and try and improve. The instrumentality is in place, it needs to be implemented and made more effective. On the malnutrition side, it can be done through Anganwadis and ASHAs. In the primary healthcare, if there is any possibility of improving access better quality healthcare by bringing in the private sector as provider under regulations, it should be looked at. I am not at all clear on what the rules game work.
📰 Centre analyses FDI data to boost tech transfer
Exercise also aims to spur value addition, innovation
•The Centre is analysing foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to introduce specific provisions in the new industrial policy and the FDI Policy for ensuring such funds result in enhanced technology transfer, local value-addition and innovation.
•The discussion paper on a future-ready industrial policy had already recommended a review of the current FDI regime.
•“It is a little preliminary, but we are analysing the (FDI) inflows sector-wise, region-wise (within India) and country-wise,” a source, privy to the development, told The Hindu.
•“We are also looking at global practices, including regulations in countries such as Israel and China regarding transfer of technology, domestic value addition and promotion of innovation. The inputs will be fed into the concerned policies,” the source added.
•The analysis is being done with the help of ‘Invest India’ — the government’s investment promotion and facilitation agency.
•According to the August 2017 discussion paper by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, while the FDI policy had largely aimed at attracting investment, “benefits of retaining investments and accessing technology have not been harnessed to the extent possible.” It said the “FDI policy requires a review to ensure that it facilitates greater technology transfer, leverages strategic linkages and innovation.” As a long-term measure, the paper pitched for an FDI regime that balances short-term and long-term benefits of inward and outward investments. It said in the medium-term, what should be looked at is, “How can the FDI policy channelise investments into the potential sectors to increase domestic value addition, strengthen (global) linkages and enable brand building?”
•In the current FDI policy, the explicit condition specifying that “value addition facilities are set up within India along with transfer of technology” is limited to ‘mining and mineral separation of titanium bearing minerals and ores’ where 100% FDI is allowed through the government-approval route.
Capacity addition
•There have been concerns regarding an overweening emphasis on the quantum of FDI and not as much focus on the quality of the funds. A recent study initiated by the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development and conducted by K.S. Chalapati Rao and Biswajit Dhar found that “it was acquisitions which provided the sustenance for the rise in (FDI) flows during 2016-17,” raising doubts about capacity addition.
•India received record FDI inflows of $60.1 billion during 2016-17. Referring to (the Centre’s) ‘Make In India’ sectoral achievement reports, the study said they were “lacking close scrutiny of the reported (FDI) inflows or the nature of foreign investments” — including whether the inflows were for greenfield projects, mergers and acquisitions or for other purposes.
•The study said “companies have been allowed to not disclose crucial information on foreign exchange transactions, capacities, production, etc., which limits the ability to analyse corporate performance.” Instead, the potential of various filings by the corporates to different official agencies should be exploited fully, it said.
•A report in 2016 by the National Council of Applied Economic Research observed that “Judging by ministries’ responses, the principal data gaps appear to be the lack of information on FDI inflows into individual states, on the universe of foreign firms in particular states and sectors, and their contribution in terms of employment, trade, and overall economic value-addition.” It added: “Ministries were also unable to answer most of the queries about foreign firms’ share of total national investment or sales in particular sectors, and the urban-rural break-up of FDI inflows, saying that government data does not distinguish between foreign and domestic firms, or urban and rural investments.” The NCAER report said, “With no information on the exact location and operational contribution of all foreign firms in the country, it becomes impossible to accurately assess what economic difference they make.”
•The NCAER said this problem is compounded by the fact that many foreign firms do not publicly list in India, and consequently there is little public information about them. It suggested that “The simplest and most logical first step would be to establish a universal registry of foreign direct investors in the country, which could be disaggregated by location, sector, investment size, and other policy-relevant parameters. This is now standard practice in other leading FDI host economies.”
📰 Navy eyeing more ‘submarine killers’
It has already inducted eight aircraft, and placed orders for four more
•The Indian Navy is considering the acquisition of more Boeing P-8I aircraft for surveillance and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), according to Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba.
•In an interview to the magazine India Strategic, Admiral Lanba said air surveillance capability was an important subset of naval operations and that while the proposal was on the table, he could not disclose the required numbers.
•His predecessors have spoken of a requirement of 30 Long-Range Maritime Reconnaissance (LRMR) aircraft, under which the Navy has already inducted eight aircraft and placed an order for four more.
•Because of the overall tardy process of routine modernisation of the armed forces over the last 30 years, the Navy has not been able to renew its inventory of submarines but the acquisition of the P-8I (I stands for India) has given it a very strong offensive capability to hunt hostile submarines.
•In fact, in terms of contemporary weapon technologies, the P-8I, often referred to as the “submarine killer”, is perhaps the most advanced system that any of the three Indian services have acquired in recent years. The aircraft was deployed in 2013 by the Indian Navy around the same time the U.S. Navy did.
•The Defence Ministry has officially stated that the P-8I is “capable of thrusting a punitive response and maintaining a watch over India’s immediate and extended areas of interest”.
•Significantly, the agreement for the P-8Is was signed on January 1, 2009, within a couple of months of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks which exposed the vulnerability of the country’s maritime defences.
📰 Indoor air pollution linked to lung, kidney dysfunction
Air pollution can affect microvascular functions
•A cross-sectional study of over 400 kitchen workers in Lucknow and Coimbatore showed that almost 50% of them suffered from poor lung functions and microalbuminuria. They also noticed that Coimbatore workers had a higher risk of obstructive lung problems.
•The study conducted by researchers from Indian Institute of Toxicology Research (CSIR- IITR) also examined the particulate matter pollution (PM2.5 and PM1) in the kitchen environment and found high concentrations of particulate matter of both sizes, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. The study was carried out among male workers in Lucknow and Coimbatore and a control group.
Urine and lungs
•Though air pollution primarily affects the lungs, it can also affect other microvascular functions via systemic circulation. So the workers were first tested for microalbuminuria. This is a condition in which there is an excess amount of albumin in urine, and this can be used as a marker for kidney diseases. More workers from Lucknow (56%) had higher microalbuminuria than their counterparts in Coimbatore (42%). Fine particulate matter can reach the alveolar epithelium of the lungs, enter the circulatory system and increase the risk of kidney dysfunction.
•“By conducting various lung function tests, we found that lung abnormalities were higher in south Indian workers. Apart from exposure to indoor air pollutants, ethnic differences may be the reason. Previous studies have shown south Indians have lower lung function,” explains Dr C.N. Kesavachandran from CSIR-IITR and corresponding author of the paper published in Environmental Health.
•The researchers found significantly increased systolic blood pressure in the kitchen workers with microalbuminuria in both states. “But no association was observed between systolic blood pressure and microalbuminuria,” says Dr Vipin Bihari, former senior principal scientist and consultant at CSIR-IITR.
Air quality
•“We found a cocktail of different elements like carbon, magnesium, calcium, aluminium, iron in its particulate form in the air,” says Amarnath Singh, a PhD scholar at CSIR-IITR and first author of the paper.
•This study throws light on poor lung function and its inverse relationship with microalbuminuria. The authors say that a follow-up study is necessary to get a more precise measure of the association between the two.
📰 IGIB discovers a protein regulating melanoma growth, pigmentation
Calcium entry into cells can be an attractive chemotherapy target
•Researchers at Delhi’s CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) have for the first time identified a calcium sensor protein (STIM1) that independently regulates both skin cancer and pigmentation. The STIM1 protein does so by activating two independent signalling pathways.
•Interestingly, different parts of the STIM1 protein activate the two independent signalling pathways that control melanoma growth and pigmentation. This opens up the possibility of developing drug molecules that target specific sites in the STIM1 protein to control tumour growth and regulate pigmentation.
•While skin cancers account for third highest number of cancer associated deaths worldwide, perturbations in pigmentation pathways result in pigmentation disorders such as solar lentigo, melasma, vitiligo, and pityriasis alba. Current therapeutic regimes are not efficient in alleviating pigmentation disorders.
Role of STIM1
•“The role of STIM1 in breast cancer and prostrate cancer is already known. Based on this, we hypothesised that STIM1 might have a role in melanoma growth as well,” says Dr. Rajender K Motiani from the Systems Biology Group at IGIB who led the team of researchers.
•To study the role of STIM1 protein in melanoma growth in vitro, the researchers used STIM1 knockdown mouse cells and injected them into mouse models and observed the growth of melanoma. Compared with controls, melanoma growth was reduced by as much as 75% in mice that were injected with STIM1 knockdown cells.
•While trying to find novel players that could potentially regulate pigmentation, the researchers identified a few signalling pathways which were differently regulated with change in pigmentation level.
•When chemicals were used to change the levels of pigmentation of melanocytes, the researchers found that along with changes in melanin levels, other signalling modules were also changing. Similarly, melanin level reduced when pigmentation decreased. A surprising finding was that when pigmentation was decreasing, the calcium signalling pathway was also decreasing. “We got a hint that the STIM1 protein, which is a key regulator of calcium signalling pathway, would be regulating pigmentation too,” says Jyoti Tanwar from IGIB and one of the authors of the paper published in The EMBO Journal.
Zebrafish embryos
•To confirm the role of STIM1 protein in pigmentation, the researchers knocked down the protein in melanocytes. This resulted in a reduction in pigmentation levels. “We further validated the role of STIM1 in regulating pigmentation in zebrafish models,” Dr. Motiani says. “The knockdown of STIM1 significantly decreased pigmentation in zebrafish embryos. Both in vitro and zebrafish studies established the critical role of STIM1 protein in pigmentation.”
•The protein mediates calcium entry into cells and this leads to melanoma growth. “So calcium entry into cells can be an attractive chemotherapy target for melanoma,” says Dr. Motiani.
•“We will next be studying biopsy samples of human pigmentary disorders. Our research has led to identification of a novel molecular target with high translational value,” says Tanwar.
