📰 U.S. expels 60 Russians, shuts consulate in Seattle
Officials and their families have been given seven days to leave the country
•The U.S. on Monday expelled 60 Russian officials and ordered the closure of the consulate in Seattle, as ties between the nuclear powers continue to deteriorate. Of the 60 being asked to leave, 48 are posted at the Russian embassy and 12 are at the Russian mission to the United Nations in New York. U.S. administration officials said the officials and their families have been given seven days to leave the U.S.
Close to base
•“…President Donald J. Trump ordered the expulsion of dozens of Russian intelligence officers from the United States and the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle due to its proximity to one of our submarine bases and Boeing,” a statement said. Russia is required to close the consulate by April 2.
•“The U.S. takes this action in conjunction with our NATO allies and partners around the world in response to Russia’s use of a military-grade chemical weapon on the soil of the United Kingdom. Today’s actions make the United States safer by reducing Russia’s ability to spy on Americans and to conduct covert operations that threaten America’s national security.”
•The statement said, “With these steps, the U.S. and our allies and partners make clear to Russia that its actions have consequences. The United States stands ready to cooperate to build a better relationship with Russia, but this can only happen with a change in the Russian government’s behavior.”
📰 India, China plan FTA breakthrough
Chinese Commerce Minister says the two countries will build a closer partnership in development
•Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu and his Chinese counterpart, Zhong Shan, met here on Monday for the first high-level contact between both sides that decided to “reset” their ties this year in the run-up to a Xi-Modi summit meeting in China.
•In exclusive written replies to The Hindu , Mr. Zhong, who co-chaired the 11th meeting of the India-China Joint Group on Economic Relations, Trade, Science and Technology with Mr. Prabhu, said a free trade agreement (FTA) between India and China would be negotiated in due course, which would be a breakthrough in ties.
On economic ties
•Since 2014, President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have met on several occasions. Mr. Zhong said they had decided that the two countries would build a closer partnership in development and deepen cooperation in all areas. With the care and personal support of the Chinese and Indian leaders, the trade and economic ties between the two countries had kept a fast-growing momentum.
•In 2017, the bilateral trade reached $84.4 billion, registering a growth of 20.3% from the year before and a record high. In particular, China’s import from India soared by 40%, helping ease the bilateral trade imbalance. China remained India’s largest trading partner. India had become one of the most important overseas investment destinations for Chinese companies.
Talks with Prabhu
•Mr. Zhong said that at the 11th session JEG meeting, he and Mr. Prabhu had in-depth discussions and the two sides had reached a series of important consensus. First, the two sides would jointly promote the synergy between China’s Belt and Road initiative and India’s development strategies, including the “15-year Development Agenda”, “Make in India” and “Digital India” to deepen mutually-beneficial cooperation and share development experience. Second, the two sides would promote India’s exports to China so as to address the trade imbalance between the two countries.
•China welcomed the participation of Indian businesses in the agricultural, pharmaceutical and IT sectors, and the participation of producers of manufactured goods. China would provide Indian participants with preferential arrangements. Third, the two sides agreed to set up a special working group to draw a road map for developing two-way trade ... The two sides supported the multilateral trading system and safeguard the interests of developing members. Both sides would demonstrate flexibility to reach at an early date a modern, comprehensive and mutually beneficial RCEP agreement of high standards.
•The two sides are also considering positively launching in due course negotiations on a regional trade arrangement or free trade agreement between China and India.
📰 U.S., India hold naval training
INS Tarkashcarries out ‘greeting and training’ withUSS Theodore Roosevelt
•Indian Navy’s Talwar class frigate INS Tarkash carried out a “greeting and training” exercise on Sunday with the U.S. Navy’s Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group (TRCSG) which was until now involved in operations against the Islamic State in the Arabian Gulf.
•INS Tarkash sailed in formation with aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt , guided-missile destroyer USS Preble (DDG 88) and other ships on March 25 as part of the exercise, the U.S. Embassy said here in a statement.
•During the exercise, personnel from both sides “practised working together and strengthened their crews’ ship handling,” the embassy said. “Exercises included drills in communications and navigating in several close formations,” it said.
•“This exercise offered a unique opportunity to further our capabilities to operate with and learn from one another,” Commander Allen Maxwell Jr., Commanding Officer of USS Preble , which is part of the TRCGS, was quoted as saying.
•Ten Indian sailors toured spaces aboard Preble such as a combat information centre, a central control station and the bridge, while 10 Preble sailors visitedTarkash , the statement said.
•USS Preble is currently deployed to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations with the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt , the flagship of Carrier Strike Group 9, along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill , and guided-missile destroyers USS Halsey , USS Higgins and USS Sampson .
•The TRCSG will now be in the U.S. 7th Fleet area responsible for counter-piracy, freedom of navigation operations and training.
📰 SC to examine polygamy in Muslim marriage
Issues notices to Centre, LawMinistry on a batch of petitions
•Seven months after it declared instant triple talaq unconstitutional, the Supreme Court on Monday decided to look into the constitutional validity of the prevalent practices of polygamy, ‘nikah halala’, ‘nikah mutah’ and ‘nikah misyar’ in the Muslim community.
•A Bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, issued notices to the Centre and the Law Ministry on a bunch of petitions that have challenged the practices claiming they degrade women to a position inferior to that of men.
Constitution Bench
•The Bench, also comprising Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud, agreed to set up a five-judge Constitution Bench that will decide whether certain sections of the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act go against the Constitution.
•In its landmark verdict of August last, which had struck down instant triple talaq, the court had kept open the issue of polygamy, ‘nikah halala’, ‘nikah mutah’ and ‘nikah misyar.’
Status reduced
•The petition said the Muslim Personal Law allows a man to marry up to four wives, which it said “treats women as men’s chattel, and reduces their status to an object of desire to be possessed by men.”
‘Offensive to equality’
•Contending that the practice “offends the core ideal of equality of status,” the petition filed by Hyderabad-based social activist Moullim Mohsin Bin Hussain Bin Abdad Al Kathiri sought to quash polygamy. Another plea was made by a Delhi woman against the Muslim Personal Law.
•It has contended that the prevalent Muslim Personal Law rendered Section 494 of IPC (which prescribes punishment for marrying again during lifetime of husband or wife) as inapplicable. Her plea also claimed that the Muslim wife does not have avenue to complain against her husband for the offence of bigamy.
•Delhi BJP leader Aswini Kumar Upadhyay has also filed a plea seeking to ban polygamy and ‘nikah halala.’
📰 Principle & procedure
The court ruling on AAP MLAs isa scathing indictment of the EC’s functioning
•The Delhi High Court verdict setting aside the disqualification of 20 Aam Aadmi Party MLAs in Delhi is a searing indictment of the manner in which the Election Commission handled the complaint that they held offices of profit while serving as parliamentary secretaries. For a body vested with the crucial power to determine whether lawmakers have incurred disqualification in certain circumstances and advise the President or the Governor suitably, this is an embarrassing moment. The court has not reviewed its decision on merits. Rather, it has ruled that the EC violated the principles of natural justice while adjudicating a lawyer’s complaint against the legislators. It failed to offer an oral hearing on the merits of the complaint and chose to hide under the specious argument that notices had been issued to the MLAs to respond to documents that the EC had summoned from the Delhi government. After saying in its order of June 2017 that it would fix a date for the next hearing, the commission issued two notices seeking replies but fixed no date; instead, it proceeded to give its decision on January 19, 2018. Further, Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat, who had recused himself at an earlier point, rejoined the process without intimation to the legislators. And another vitiating factor was that Election Commissioner Sunil Arora, who had not heard the matter and assumed office only in September 2017, had signed the order. It is a basic feature of judicial or quasi-judicial processes that someone who does not hear a matter does not decide on it.
•The high court order scrupulously adheres to the core principles of judicial review of decisions made by a duly empowered adjudicatory body. Courts do not normally plunge into the merits of such a decision, but examine whether there has been any violation of natural justice, whether sufficient opportunity has been given to the parties and whether the proceedings were vitiated by bias, arbitrariness or any extraneous consideration. That a pre-eminent constitutional body should be found wanting in ensuring natural justice while answering a reference from the President is a sad comment on its functioning. It ought to have treated the matter with abundant caution, given the ease with which political parties tend to question the EC’s impartiality. The EC has an opportunity to redeem its name by more carefully considering the same question that has now been remanded to it for fresh adjudication. It could appeal to the Supreme Court, but a better course would be to hold a fresh and fair hearing. The high court has acknowledged the EC’s “latitude and liberty” in matters of procedure, but cautioned that any procedure should be sound, fair and just. In proceedings that may result in unseating elected representatives, fairness of procedure is no less important than finding an answer to the question whether they have incurred disqualification.
📰 A perfect storm in the cotton field
Why India is the only Bt cotton-growing country facing the problem of pink bollworm infestation
•Earlier this month, the government cut royalties that local seed companies pay to Monsanto, for the second time in two years. This follows previous attempts to defang Monsanto. In February, for instance, the anti-trust regulator, the Competition Commission of India, decided to probe into anti-competitive practices by Monsanto. At the centre of all this is the pink bollworm infestation plaguing cotton farmers. Even though Bollgard 2, or BG-2, Monsanto’s second generation insecticidal technology for cotton, was supposed to protect crops against the pink bollworm, the pest has grown resistant to the toxins produced by this trait. As a result, farmers now spend more on pesticides to control infestations. This, along with the high cost of Bt seeds, is driving farmers to indigence.
•One solution suggested by the National Seed Association of India is for the government to encourage a move back to Bollgard, the first iteration of Bt cotton, as Monsanto hasn’t patented BG in India. Both BG, which has a single bacterial gene called CryA1C, and BG-2, which has CryA1C and Cry2AB2, are designed to protect against pink bollworm. BG began failing against the pest in 2009, while BG-2 began failing in 2014.
•Interestingly, none of the other 14 Bt cotton-growing countries have seen this resistance. China still successfully controls pink bollworm with first-generation Bt cotton. The U.S. and Australia are moving on to third-generation BG-3 without having faced this problem. Why did India suffer this unique misfortune?
A unique problem
•Cotton researchers broadly agree on the reason: the pink bollworm grew resistant because India restricted itself to cultivating long-duration hybrids since the introduction of Bt cotton in 2002. Hybrids are crosses between two crops that often see higher yields than their parents, in a genetic phenomenon called heterosis. All other Bt cotton-growing countries mainly grow open-pollinated cotton varieties rather than hybrids.
•A couple of factors led to India’s unique trajectory. First, when Monsanto licensed its BG and BG-2 traits to Indian seed companies, the agreement restricted the introduction of these traits to hybrids only. Second, hybrids are financially more attractive to Indian seed companies because they offer a “value capture mechanism”. India is the only country whose intellectual property laws have never prevented its farmers from either saving or selling seeds, says K.V. Prabhu, chairperson of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority of India. Other countries restrict saving and selling of seeds in various degrees. Over 70 countries that are members of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, for example, allow farmers to reuse seeds from a protected plant variety, but not to sell them. In the U.S., where plant varieties are patented, the patented seeds cannot even be reused. Without such protections, several seed companies in India prefer hybrids because unlike o
pen-pollinated varieties, hybrids lose their genetic stability when their seeds are replanted. This compels farmers to repurchase seeds each year, protecting corporate revenues.
•When Monsanto introduced Bt cotton in India, the technology was so popular that cotton farmers shifted to it en masse. But because there was no open-pollinated Bt option, they were also forced to shift en masse to hybrids. From 2002 to 2011, the area under cotton hybrids rose from 2% in north India and 40% elsewhere to 96% across the country. This shift had consequences, says Keshav Raj Kranthi, former director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research and currently at the International Cotton Advisory Committee in Washington, DC. Not only are hybrids expensive, they are also bigger and bushier, forcing farmers to cultivate them at low densities — 11,000 to 16,000 crops per acre. This is suboptimal — countries like the U.S. and Brazil plant cotton at 80,000 to 100,000 per acre. What’s more, to make up for the low densities, Indian farmers grow them longer so that they produce enough cotton.
•Mr. Kranthi also says that the introduction of the Bt gene into only one parent of Indian hybrids, as is the practice, is itself a problem. The resulting hybrids are hemizygous, which means that they express only one copy of the Bt gene. So, they produce cotton bolls that have some seeds toxic to the pink bollworm and some that are not. This can be contrasted with the homozygous seeds of open-pollinated varieties in the U.S., China or Australia, which have 100% toxic seeds. The problem with hemizygous hybrids is that they allow pink bollworms to survive on toxin-free seeds when they are vulnerable newborns. This is only a hypothesis, but other pink bollworm experts say it’s reasonable. Bruce Tabashnik, at the University of Arizona, who studies pest resistance, adds that experiments are needed to confirm this.
•When all these factors combine with the pink bollworm’s biology, this creates a perfect storm of conditions for resistance. The pest does its most damage in the latter half of the cotton-growing season and does not consume any other crop that grows then. So, the long duration of Indian cotton crops, between 160 and 300 days, allows this pest to thrive and evolve resistance more quickly than it can for short-duration crops. Contrast this with other cotton-growing countries which strictly terminate the crop within 160 days.
•Mr. Kranthi says the only solution to the problem is to move swiftly to short-duration varieties. This is where Monsanto’s first-generation Bollgard comes in. Seed companies cannot develop open-pollinated varieties with BG-2, but they can with BG, since Monsanto didn’t patent BG in India.
Step forward or two steps back?
•However, not everybody agrees with this strategy. Govind Gujar, who retired as the head of entomology at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, says moving back to BG is a bad idea because the problem was not with the BG trait but with long-duration cotton. And even if BG-2 doesn’t fend off the pink bollworm, it still protects against other pests like the tobacco cutworm and the American bollworm. The presence of two Bt genes in BG-2 means it will be more effective than BG in delaying resistance against these pests. He asks: “When the whole world is moving to BG-3, why do we want to go back in time?”
•The more critical question is, even if the government incentivises a return to BG, will all seed companies stop making BG-2 seeds? Some, like the Hyderabad-based Nuziveedu Seeds, say they will. But others, like the Aurangabad-based Ajeet Seeds, prefer BG-2 because of the superior stacked gene technology. If India cultivates both BG and BG-2, simultaneously, that can accelerate resistance among pests, studies predict. This could trigger the emergence of new cotton pests. India erred by not clamping down on long-duration crops when Bt cotton was first introduced. At least now it must base its policy on sound science and implement it stringently.
📰 Residue of doubt
A rare instance of a herbicide being detected in people
•Glyphosate is arguably the most popular herbicide in the world. Since the 1970s, Monsanto has been marketing it to farmers under the trade name Roundup. While glyphosate was initially welcomed by farmers because it saved them the cost of employing labourers to pluck out weeds, its popularity grew exponentially after Monsanto developed genetically engineered seeds that were resistant to the herbicide. That is, farmers could blanket-spray their fields with Roundup and be rest assured that it wouldn’t harm their cotton or corn. On the other hand, several environmentalists argue that exposure to glyphosate is harmful to humans. There have been tests carried out on mice and rabbits to determine the doses at which glyphosate can be dangerous. There have been studies to show that key biochemical pathways in human cells are disrupted when exposed to glyphosate. There have also been studies to determine if glyphosate can find its way into the skin of farmers and gardeners who use them, and affect their health. So far, there’s been no conclusive evidence that it does.
•Earlier this month, however, a study, ‘Glyphosate exposure in pregnancy and shortened gestational length: a prospective Indiana birth cohort study’, in the peer-reviewed Environmental Health, proffered evidence for glyphosate in the urine samples of 71 pregnant women in Central Indiana. Of the women, 93% had glyphosate “above the limit of detection” in their urine. An earlier study in Germany had reported finding glyphosate in the urine of some people who consumed non-organic meat. However in all these studies, the glyphosate levels were extremely low and below toxicity levels. The women in the study didn’t contract it through drinking water (pesticides used in agriculture can sometimes make their way into drinking water). So, the only way the glyphosate had made its way was through their diet. Indiana is known for heavy cultivation and consumption of genetically modified corn.
•The researchers also report another intriguing observation: “We observed no correlations with foetal growth indicators such as birth weight percentile and head circumference. However, higher glyphosate urine levels were significantly correlated with shortened gestational lengths.”
•What makes the study significant is the fact that this is a rare instance of a common crop chemical being detected in people. The Indiana study shouldn’t set alarm bells ringing in India yet, but it certainly merits an equivalent follow-up here.
📰 The non-politics of outrage
We need a white paper on the extensive data markets that currently exist in India
•We are witnessing mass outrage over certain actions or non-actions of Facebook (FB) and a British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica (CA), regarding the use of personal data for political messaging during the U.S. presidential elections. But digging into the issue, it is difficult to see what is really novel in the current disclosures that was previously not known. It is also unclear why the facts that these disclosures centre on are more important than many other well-known facts about the underlying issue of data, digital controls and exploitation. It is not evident what the real concerns underlying the outrage are. And lastly, there is the important question of what it really means for countries such as India.
•CA’s role in the U.S. elections has been known for quite some time. So now after a whistle-blower’s account and an undercover investigation, if those responsible for data and digital policies behave as if any of this is news to them, it is either disingenuous or unacceptably naive and incompetent.
•As FB has clarified, the only illegal element here is that a research company transferred data to CA against FB policies. But both the company concerned and FB itself could have legitimately used the same user data for the same purpose of psychometrics-based micro-targeted political messaging for any of their paying clients. What exactly do we then have a problem with? Just with violation of FB’s policies, or with psychometrics-based political messaging and the collective national damage that it causes? Is it, for instance, alright if FB itself did similar things for its paying clients, which it has provisions for?
Digital controls
•Meddling in elections is a most serious issue, but there are other equally important data-centric threats — from complete data-based control over all activities and actors in a sector by platform companies (think Uber, but the process will soon reach as afar as agriculture and manufacturing) to that of actual informational warfare, by name, which can wreck countries. Interestingly, CA’s parent company also offers data-intelligence services to militaries, and indeed countries such as the U.S. have extensive informational warfare projects based on social media and other micro-informational sources for various countries. Global digital companies such as Microsoft and Google are known to cooperate closely with the American establishment, and, when insisted upon, prioritise the latter’s interests even over their own economic ones.
•Developing countries like India must realise that they do not have the kind of leverage that the U.S. or even the European Union (EU) have over global data giants, and will never have it, whatever be their boasts. A specific privacy shield arrangement with the U.S., for instance, ensures special protection just to EU data in the U.S. All data collected in India and transported abroad (data laws being nearly non-existent), on the other hand, remain largely out of our control or influence.
•As this data gets converted into digitally-intelligent services in all sectors — from transport, commerce and tourism, to education and health, to agriculture and manufacturing, we are getting structurally sucked into foreign-controlled digital value chains from which any attempts to escape may soon become too difficult and costly. At that stage, whether they influence and control our elections, or economics, or culture, or internal and external security, manoeuvring space for resistance will be limited. All these data-based controls need to be seen as of one kind, and common strategies urgently devised for India to remain free — free not just in the much-vaunted “consumer choice” sense, which is mostly the Trojan Horse, but also free collectively, as a nation and a community.
•It may sound rhetorical but such is the vastness and depth of new global digital controls that digital freedom from them is becoming close to being as important as freedom from physical and legal controls was in the middle of the 20th century.
Political response needed
•First of all, we need to recognise the ignored collective aspects of data, and the potential of collective damage or gains from it, which the CA issue most clearly demonstrates — and focus on the related concepts of collective (not just personal) data protection and collective data rights and ownership. The current exercise by the Srikrishna Committee on data protection seems centred entirely on personal data rights, which is insufficient.
•Considering it of strategic value, India is currently devising regulation for digital geospatial data, putting many public interest checks on its various uses, including it being taken abroad. The problem is, even from a security point of view, geodata is perhaps no longer the most strategic. Social data of various kinds and sectors may be of greater strategic value. Advanced militaries like in the U.S., Russia and China know this and are investing in large-scale informational warfare and insurgency projects. Evidently, all or much of Indian social data, in various sectors, including even granular data of consumer behaviour (which provides much detailed psychometric information with cross-sectoral application) need some protections, although of varying kinds taking into account legitimate economic and global integration issues.
•As with geospatial information, all critical data and digital intelligence about various sectors must be designated as collective national assets, and the collective rights to them instituted. This does not mean that all such data will necessarily be prevented from being taken abroad, or being used by foreign companies. It basically means an enabling cover of jurisprudence and political economy being thrown over such data, which ensures assertion of collective rights to it, and, where needed, the corresponding laws and regulation.
•Platform companies such as FB, Amazon and Uber are key sites of data collection and expropriation, and its conversion into digital intelligence (to influence elections, or whatever else they wish to do). They form the intelligence infrastructures of the sectors concerned, acting like their “brains”. Such platform companies, when exceeding certain data sizes, need to be closely regulated like utility companies.
•Within such a cross-cutting framework of data laws, regulation and policies, specific sectors need their own regulation. In the case of election manipulation, for instance, rather than just giving notice to CA to explain matters, it will be much more appropriate to route the current outrage to undertaking a thorough assessment of the role of digital data in elections over the last few years in India, and presenting it to the nation.
•Forget CA and FB, an extensive data market with data brokers exists in India as everywhere else, and almost all important data of Indians can be bought in this market. Even in the case of CA and the U.S. elections, apparently only a seventh of the budget that CA spent on acquiring personal data was used for FB data that is currently under micro-examination. Where was the remaining 85% of the money spent? CA’s chief executive officer has claimed that it had “profiled the personality of every adult in the United States of America — 220 million people” which is considerably more that the 50 million profiles being reported as harvested from FB in the current controversy.
Compulsory reporting
•Is the Indian government willing to come up with a white paper on such extensive data markets that also exist in India? The U.S. is considering legislation for compulsory reporting of all social media-related spendings by political agencies, which is also a good area for India to explore.
•A data-based digital society and economy are a completely new reality. The question is, are we as a nation ready to develop the needed political response to it? The biggest roadblock in this necessary direction is the same upper middle-class that is currently outraged on the CA issue, but resists due regulation of the digital sector because it threatens its hyper consumptive culture and runs counter to its anti-political biases. It still wants to savour for some more time the utopian dream that the Internet finally delivers them of governments.
📰 South Asia, a fertile ground
The Islamic State has weakened, but it continues to expand
•Does the rise of the Islamic State have anything do with Islam? What does it want and what is its strategy? In The ISIS Caliphate: From Syria to the Doorsteps of India , Stanly Johny, International Affairs Editor of The Hindu , explains what makes it stand apart from other jihadist groups and why it continues to inspire Muslim youth from different parts of the world, including India. An extract:
•What makes ISIS different from other jihadist groups is that it’s an insurgency as well as a proto-state at the same time. The way it operates is different from other organisations. Al-Qaeda, the most powerful force in the global jihadist landscape till the rise of ISIS, is largely a hit-and-run outfit. Osama bin Laden didn’t create a state. Nor did he declare himself as the Caliph of the world’s Muslims. He was always at the mercy of foreign governments or intelligence agencies — Saudi Arabia and Pakistan during the Afghan civil war, Sudan in the early days of al-Qaeda, Taliban during the most important operational phase and again Pakistan in his final years. They operated from caves and deserts and used asymmetric forces against those whom they deemed enemies. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on the other side, established a proto-state that at one point of time was as big as the United Kingdom, ruling over about 2 million people. ISIS used both asymmetric and conventional warfare tactics in the battlefield.
•This unique positioning is the key reason ISIS managed to attract more foreign fighters than any other jihadist group. It looks at the world through a core and periphery prism. It doesn’t believe in nation states, but only in a perpetually expanding Caliphate. The territories which the Caliph has direct control over make up the core of the world system, according to ISIS. The rest is periphery from where it will attract fighters and resources to enrich the core and expand it beyond the boundaries “created by men”. This theory of expansion has been the fundamental foreign policy doctrine of Baghdadi’s Caliphate. Despite large-scale military setbacks at the core, ISIS still remains a global terrorist force. In Nigeria, Boko Haram, the jihadist group that controls parts of the country, has declared allegiance to ISIS. In Libya, a branch of the Islamic State controlled Sirte, the assassinated former dictator Moammer Gaddafi’s home town, for months and has presence in other cities and the country’s deserts...
•In Afghanistan, ISIS members and sympathisers have already set up a wilayat called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — Khorasan Province in the eastern Nangarhar province. The group has carried out several suicide attacks, mainly targeting Shias in the already troubled country. It’s from Khorasan that ISIS is handling its South Asia operations, including in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. ISIS hasn’t carried out any major terror attack in India, nor does the group have any organisational presence in the country. But it has lured dozens of Indians into its fold.
•It’s evident from its actions that the ISIS leadership has seen South Asia as a fertile ground for the organisation. The history of jihadist insurgency, high Muslim population and growing tensions between communities may all have prompted the group to focus on the region in its quest for expansion. Understandably, it chose Afghanistan, which has been at war with itself for decades, as its operation centre...
•India has also been high on the group’s agenda. In the 13th issue of ISIS’s online English magazine Dabiq , Hafiz Saeed Khan, the Wali of Khorasan [who was later killed], said it won’t be long before Kashmir is run by the organisation.
•From across India dozens were attracted by ISIS. Some have gone from India to Khorasan, while some others travelled from the Gulf countries they were working in to Iraq and Syria to live under the Caliphate. Indian authorities have arrested several people who they say were part of ISIS cells from different parts of the country. But surprisingly, one of the most-affected States by this ISIS influence was India’s most socially advanced one. In fact, ISIS’s India connect became national headlines when 21 people, including women and children, from the southern State of Kerala went missing in 2016. Most of the youth who went missing are educated professionals hailing from middle class or upper middle class families, nullifying the argument that lack of education and poverty drive extremist ideas among the youth. All these developments, from establishing wilayats in Afghanistan and Libya to attracting youth from India and Pakistan, suggest that ISIS may have been weakened at its core but it’s far from defeated.
📰 Gene panel challenge
India still depends on European genetic panels. This has to change
•In Nalgonda district of Telangana, Sai Chaitanya, 21, has been waiting for advancement in Indian genetic research. He has Ichthyosis, a condition caused by the mutation of a single gene, which has led to the growth of fish-like scales on his skin. Like him, many others are virtually locked into disease-prone gene pools and yearn for early detection and treatment.
•In India, private enterprises engaged in genome mapping now offer testing for relative genetic risks, which effectively predict the risk of diseases such as cancer and diabetes. The costs involved vary from Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 50,000. The not-so-apparent factor in genetic test results is that they do not guarantee comprehensive or accurate prognosis for individuals.
•Across India, screening for genetic diseases is a painstaking, expensive, and less-than-efficient process. This is because the country has not yet developed indigenous genetic panels specific to its native populations but continues to depend on European genetic panels, except for prenatal genetic testing, which is specific to Indian populations.
•A genetic panel is developed when scientists identify mutant genes that cause diseases in specific populations. Each panel comprises already identified genes that mutated in patients, causing specific health conditions, say, a type of diabetes. Once the panel is created, screening any number of individuals for specific diseases becomes cost-effective and efficient. However, the European panels against which Indian DNA is screened mostly prove ineffective because genes that mutate and cause abnormalities are not the same among the two geographical-genetic regions. Also, about 60-70% of the mutations found in European population clusters, with reference to a single disease, might not occur among Indian people. What India needs is a pan-Indian, whole-genome sequencing exercise that will determine the genetic types which exist within its geographical boundary.
•Genetic research so far has identified four linguistically defined whole population groups in India: Indo-European (North), Dravidian (South), Tibeto-Burmese, and Austroasiatic (Northeast). Each of these is further divided into 4,635 identified social groups with a specific genetic make-up, thanks to endogamy. Senior Principal Scientist at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, Dr. Kumarasamy Thangaraj, who studied 263 Indian populations, said that India should develop a baseline genetic data for each of its social groups. His colleague, Giriraj Chandak, found differences in the basic disease characteristics among European and Indian patients of chronic pancreatitis and neural tube defects. An initial investment for whole genome sequencing would be Rs. 1,000 crore, he estimated. Further sequencing for genetic panels would increase the cost by 10 to 100 times, which may be a small price to pay for considerable dividends. Once Indian panels are made, Dr. Kumarasamy predicted a dip in cost for screening individual patients, ranging from Rs. 100 to Rs. 1,000 as against the initial sum of Rs. 5 to Rs. 10 lakh required for sequencing a family of four.
