📰 India backs FATF’s grey-listing of Pak.
Move keeps Islamabad under lens while accessing funds
•India on Saturday welcomed the step by an international organisation that placed Pakistan on a special list of countries that are kept under watch in a move to counter international terror financing.
•In a statement, the External Affairs Ministry welcomed the grey-listing of Pakistan by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and expressed hope that Pakistan would prevent terror acts emanating from its territory.
•“We hope that the FATF action plan shall be complied with in a time-bound manner and credible measures would be taken by Pakistan to address global concerns related to terrorism emanating from any territory under its control,” said the Ministry spokesperson in a statement after Islamabad was placed on the grey list of the FATF on Friday.
•Being on the grey list will require Pakistan to meet additional guarantees while borrowing finance from international donors such as the International Monetary Fund.
Global pressure
•Pakistan had been on the grey list between 2012 and 2015 but was taken off the list. But subsequent terror attacks on Indian targets by groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), headed by Hafiz Saeed, and Jaish-e-Mohammed, led by Masood Azhar, revived the international demand to place the country back on the list.
•“Pakistan has given a high-level political commitment to address the global concerns regarding its implementation of the FATF standards for countering terror financing and anti-money laundering, especially in respect of UN-designated and internationally proscribed terror entities and individuals. The freedom and impunity with which the designated terrorists like Hafiz Saeed and entities like Jamaat-ud-Dawaa, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed continue to operate in Pakistan is not in keeping with such commitments,” said the Ministry spokesperson.
•The decision to place Pakistan back on the grey list was taken following the plenary session of the FATF in February and it finally came into force on Friday. Pakistan had activated diplomatic channels to prevent the listing but Islamabad could not stop the move.
📰 Karnataka decides to challenge Cauvery water authority in SC
All-party meeting resolves to seek legal redress and debate in Parliament
•The Karnataka government on Saturday decided to file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the setting up of the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) on the grounds that the formation should have been discussed in Parliament.
•The decision was taken unanimously at an all-party meeting on Saturday, convened by Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, to plan the State’s next move on the Cauvery issue.
•The meeting also resolved that two senior officials — nominated by the State government as its representatives to the Authority and the Committee — would participate in the CWMA’s first meeting to be held on July 2 to present Karnataka’s views, said Water Resources and Medical Education Minister D.K. Shivakumar. The participants also resolved to raise the issue in Parliament. Karnataka had initially not nominated its representatives, as it opposed any move to form the Authority.
📰 Hindu Rohingya refugees also wait for a home
Their camp is outside world’s largest refugee settlement
•Less than a kilometre from the gates of the world’s largest refugee settlement, in southeast Bangladesh, 101 Hindu Rohingya families wait to be rescued from their status as the “minority” within the world’s most persecuted minority community — the Muslim Rohingyas.
•The Hindu Rohingya families — nearly 410 people, most of them children — live in a ‘Hindu Camp’, located just outside Camp 1, the first of 27 refugee settlements that make up the Kutupalong-Balukhali camps, the largest in the world.
•Over 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims live here after being forced to flee Myanmar following the brutal campaign of violence by the Myanmar army that began on August 26, 2017.
Visibly different
•The Hindu Camp stands out from the rest of the sprawling refugee settlement.
•It is the only camp with round-the-clock police presence. The women, wearing colourful saris and bangles, and sporting a vermillion sindoor , are visibly different. The camp is built around a small bamboo and tarpaulin temple to Lord Krishna and his consort Radha. The families have been segregated from the main camp, as a measure of “abundant caution”, says Mohammad Reza, in-charge of the oldest refugee camps that came into existence after the first wave of violence against the Rohingyas in 1991-92.
•“The Bangladesh government decided to place them outside the main camp because, inside the camps, if something went wrong, we wouldn’t be able to provide them security,” Mr. Reza explained.
Controversial law
•Tensions between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar’s Rakhine state have existed for decades. The inflection point came in 1982, when Myanmar passed the controversial Burmese Citizenship Law. It stripped eight ethnicities of citizenship. Even though the Rohingyas were not among them, almost overnight, the community lost its freedom and, over decades, has been violently persecuted.
•In the 1991 violence, only six affected families were Hindu, among the 30,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled to the refugee camps. “Those families were integrated with the Rohingya Muslim community. They continue to have good relations but we do not want to take a chance with the refugees who have arrived since August 2017,” said Mr. Reza, explaining that when everyone is fighting for resources — land, food and shelter — tensions can intensify.
•The ‘majhi’ or camp leader for the Hindu Rohingya families is 32-year-old Shishu Sheel, who was forced to flee from his home in the Maungtaw district in Rakhine on August 28 last year. “When neighbouring Hindu villages were attacked, my wife, two children and I decided to leave before the army attacked our village. My parents stayed back,” Mr. Sheel says. His entire village, Chikanchari, decided to evacuate after ‘clearance operations’ by the Myanmar army in the neighbouring Hindu village of Fakirabazaar, where 86 persons were allegedly killed.
📰 Anti-conversion law must stay: tribal groups
They say repealing the legislation will threaten the indigenous culture and marginalise ethnic communities
•Followers of indigenous faiths in Arunachal Pradesh have resented Chief Minister Pema Khandu’s move to repeal an anti-conversion law that they say is necessary to save traditional belief systems and local cultures.
•Mr. Khandu, who heads the BJP government in the frontier State, had on Thursday said the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act framed in 1978 would be repealed in the next Assembly session.
•The law undermines secularism and is probably targeted at Christians, Mr. Khandu said at a function organised by the Arunachal Pradesh Catholic Association (APCA).
•In statements issued on Friday evening, the Indigenous Faith and Cultural Society of Arunachal Pradesh (IFCSAP) and the Nyishi Indigenous Faiths and Cultural Society (NIFCS) slammed the move as “minority appeasement and detrimental to the growth of indigenous people of the State”.
Fight for preservation
•The Nyishi, belonging to the Tani group, is the largest ethnic community in Arunachal Pradesh. The IFCSAP and the NIFCS are major organisations that fight for preservation of indigenous faiths such as Donyi-Polo and Rangfra.
•These organisations believe the growth of Christianity in the State — from none in 1951 to being the largest religious group at 30.26% in 2011 — has been at the expense of the followers of indigenous faiths.
•“We condemn the statement of the Chief Minister as the anti-conversion law, if repealed, would threaten the indigenous culture of the State. There is also the apprehension among the people that the Chief Minister is bringing the denizens of Arunachal Pradesh under the minority or general category and stripping the special privileges which we have been enjoying as Scheduled Tribes,” Bai Taba, IFCSAP general secretary, said.
•Repealing the law that safeguards the indigenous people would open the floodgates of poaching and it would lead to marginalisation of the indigenous people, he said, urging Mr. Khandu to withdraw the move.
•The NIFCS said scrapping the anti-conversion law would extensively damage the basic structure of indigenous faiths and cultures that are still languishing from the persistent and aggressive influence of foreign cultures.
•“The Chief Minister is undermining the sentiments and emotions of the indigenous faith believers of the State by making such a statement,” Pai Dawe, president of NIFCS, said.
📰 Aiming to be like Sikkim
Without social change, banning plastic won’t work
•After the Maharashtra government’s ban last month on several consumer items made of plastic, an environmentally conscious friend in Mumbai decided to clean out her apartment and throw out every piece of plastic she found in her home. She ended up with two giant bin bags (also made of plastic ironically) full of the stuff. And imagine, this was just from a tiny apartment of a single professional.
•Looking around at the amount of plastic that fills our homes and surroundings, it is difficult to believe that as many as 18 States have some kind of ban on plastic in place. The Maharashtra Plastic and Thermocol Products (Manufacture, Usage, Sale, Transport, Handling and Storage) Notification, 2018, issued under a 2006 State law, the Maharashtra Non-Biodegradable Garbage (Control) Act, is just the latest in a series of attempts by various State governments as well as the Centre to curb the growing menace of virtually indestructible plastic waste that is choking our planet.
Imposition and dilutions
•The fight against plastic goes as far back as 1999 in India, when the Centre notified rules controlling the manufacture, sale and usage of plastic. The rules have been amended since then. Changes introduced in 2016 were considered the most environment friendly, extending responsibility to producers and generators of plastic, and imposing responsibilities on industry, consumers and civic bodies (up to and including the village level) for segregating, managing, recycling and reducing the usage of plastic.
•So, why are the rules not working? For starters, every attempt to impose some kind of control by fiat has immediately been met with huge lobbying by those with a key stake in the plastic industry. And almost invariably, the government has caved. For instance, the Maharashtra ban has been diluted several times within a week of being introduced. First, after imposing a ban on single-use plastic across the State, the government has now given a three-month extension to small retailers to phase out single-use plastic. Then, with Ganesh Chaturthi looming, the government hurriedly exempted thermocol, which is used to decorate Ganapati pandals, from the ban, while also throwing a lifeline to the fishing community by exempting that near-indestructible material for storing fish.
•A string of other exemptions have followed — plastic medical packaging, food grade plastic, plastic used for handling solid waste, plastic bins, plastic used in exports, plastic “integral to manufacturing” (whatever that is), bags for agriculture (allegedly degradable), and so on. Under pressure from e-tailers like Amazon and Flipkart, the State government is also reportedly considering allowing them to continue, provided they set up a mechanism to collect the waste.
•This has pretty much been the story of India’s attempts to impose legal controls on plastic. Two years after the Centre’s 2016 plastic control rules, implementation has not even started, but dilution has. In amendments issued in 2018, multilayered plastic, of the kind you find in juice cartons, which was earlier banned (except of the recyclable variety, a rare and expensive type) is now allowed provided energy can be recovered from it or it can be put to “alternative use”. How all this is to be done is not specified. Likewise, the 2016 rules which made retail establishments start charging for plastic carry bags (by making them register with the local civic body and pay Rs. 4,000 a month as fees) has been reworded so that the explicit charge for plastic bags (which was beginning to encourage reuse) is no longer there. And so on.
•The trouble is, Indians love plastic. India’s per capita, per year consumption of plastic is around 11 kg per year, while the average American consumes over 100 kg. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. In total, India is one of the largest consumers and generators of plastic in the world. According to Central Pollution Control Board data, India generates nearly 26,000 tonnes of plastic waste a day. But the availability of data is poor and this volume doesn’t correlate with India’s annual plastic production, expected to cross 20 million tonnes per year by 2020. The plastic industry generates over Rs. 1 lakh crore per year, has more than 30,000 processing units and generates 11 lakh jobs, according to a 2017 FICCI study. Given this huge economic impact, there is bound to be pushback against any attempt to control the manufacture, sale and usage of plastic.
The way forward
•What is needed is firmness of resolve in committing to reducing plastic usage, imposing responsible behaviour on producers and consumers of plastic, especially at the industry level, and a focussed search for alternatives. India, in fact, is home to jute, one of the world’s best natural packaging materials, but the jute industry has been sent into terminal decline by cheaper plastic and policy decline.
•Above all, we need social change. Sikkim has shown the way. Massive awareness campaigns backed with policy change has led to a noticeable decline in plastic use in the tiny State. Unless India does a Sikkim, the dystopian earth of Wall-Ewill be the home of future generations.
📰 Turning the tables on TB
•Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious cause of deaths worldwide. Over the last few decades, the emergence of TB strains that are resistant to first-line medication has alarmed doctors and public health experts. Some forms of drug-resistance — especially to the two first-line drugs (referred to as multidrug-resistant TB or MDR-TB) — require a longer duration of therapy that is more expensive and toxic. Therefore, MDR-TB and other advanced forms of drug resistance have the potential to undermine global TB elimination efforts. These concerns are particularly relevant for India which has the world’s largest TB epidemic and the largest number of individuals with MDR-TB.
•On World TB Day this year (March 24), the Government of India released the country’s first national TB drug-resistance survey— an important effort that substantially advances our understanding of the epidemic. It found that 6% of patients seeking care in the government sector have MDR-TB; this includes 3% of patients diagnosed with TB for the first time and 12% of patients with a prior history of TB treatment. Recent modelling studies predict that the percentage of patients with MDR-TB in India is only likely to rise over the next two decades.
•As of 2013, the outcomes of patients with MDR-TB in the government TB programme were dismal. Of the 61,000 patients estimated to have reached government diagnostic centres that year, 14% were successfully diagnosed and have completed therapy. To its credit, since 2013, the government has made efforts to improve diagnosis and treatment of such patients. The findings of the survey highlight an urgent need to accelerate these efforts.
•Drug susceptibility testing (DST) is used to determine if a patient has MDR-TB, thereby enabling prompt diagnosis and treatment. In previous years, the government had restricted use of DST to patients at higher risk for MDR-TB (those with a history of TB treatment). As a result, patients diagnosed with TB for the first time had to fail the first-line regimen before being screened with DST, resulting in prolonged delays in diagnosis. Last year, the government introduced universal DST in 19 States. It needs to be rapidly rolled out in the States with the highest TB burden if there is to be a meaningful impact in India’s MDR-TB epidemic.
•Further, strict adherence to medication can lower the chances of developing drug resistance and reduce TB deaths. Improving pill-taking by patients, however, is easier said than done. The MDR-TB drug regimen is demanding and can have severe side-effects (loss of appetite and hearing loss) if patients are not closely monitored. Enhanced counselling and access to patient support groups may help patients stick to their treatment. In addition, innovative treatment-monitoring technologies such as digital pillboxes may assist in improving patient outcomes.
Engaging the private sector
•While the national drug resistance survey was a laudable effort, the findings of the survey are limited by the fact that it was conducted using a sample of a little over 5,000 patients from the public sector. This is a significant shortcoming as about 50% to 60% of patients in India are being treated in the private sector. Recent studies have found very poor quality of TB care in the private sector. It is quite common for patients to first consult a private or informal health-care provider when they develop symptoms, and initial contact with a private provider which has been shown to increase delays in diagnosis. Also, patients often do not have access to support systems that are in place in the public health system and as a result are more likely to default on their treatment. Engaging with the private sector is therefore crucial to address the challenge of drug resistant TB (DR-TB). Innovative models for private sector engagement in Mumbai, Patna (Bihar), and Mehsana (Gujarat) have proven to be successful in connecting with large numbers of private providers and increasing notifications to the TB programme. These models can serve as a starting point for conducting a drug resistance survey in the private sector and extending universal DST to the private sector.
•While the government is employing some of these strategies, the pace and scale of implementation have been slower and smaller than will be needed to turn the tables on DR-TB.
•Dr. Ramnath Subbaraman, infectious disease specialist, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, U.S.
📰 A hundred and beyond
The limit to how long we can live has not been reached, a study in Italy suggests
•Since 1900, average life expectancy around the globe has more than doubled, thanks to better public health, sanitation and food supplies. But a new study of long-lived Italians indicates that we have yet to reach the upper bound of human longevity.
•“If there’s a fixed biological limit, we are not close to it,” said Elisabetta Barbi, a demographer at the University of Rome. Ms. Barbi and her colleagues have published their research in the journal Science .
Critiquing the data
•The current record for the longest human life span was set 21 years ago, when Jeanne Calment, a Frenchwoman, died at the age of 122. No one has grown older since — as far as scientists know.
•In 2016, a team of scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, U.S., made the bold claim that Calment was even more of an outlier than she seemed. They argued that humans have reached a fixed life span limit, which they estimated to be about 115 years.
•A number of critics lambasted that research. “The data set was very poor, and the statistics were profoundly flawed,” said Siegfried Hekimi, a biologist at McGill University, Canada.
•Anyone who studies the limits of longevity faces two major statistical challenges.
•There aren’t very many people who live to advanced ages, and people that old often lose track of how long they’ve actually lived. “At these ages, the problem is to make sure the age is real,” said Ms. Barbi.
The hunt in Italy
•Ms. Barbi and her colleagues combed through Italy’s records to find every citizen who had reached the age of 105 between 2009 and 2015. To validate their ages, the researchers tracked down their birth certificates.
•The team ended up with a database of 3,836 elderly Italians. The researchers tracked down death certificates for those who died in the study period and determined the rate at which various age groups were dying.
•It’s long been known that the death rate starts out somewhat high in infancy and falls during the early years of life. It climbs again among people in their thirties, finally sky-rocketing among those in their seventies and eighties.
•If the death rate kept exponentially climbing in extreme old age, then human life span really would have the sort of limit proposed by the Einstein team in 2016.
•But that’s not what Ms. Barbi and her colleagues found. Among extremely old Italians, they discovered, the death rate stops rising — the curve abruptly flattens into a plateau.
•The researchers also found that people who were born in later years have a slightly lower mortality rate when they reach 105.
•“The plateau is sinking over time,” said Kenneth W. Wachter, a demographer at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-authored the new study. “Improvements in mortality extend even to these extreme ages.”
•“We’re not approaching any maximum life span for humans yet,” he added.
‘Just a segment’
•Brandon Milholland, a co-author of the study who found a limit to human life span, questioned the new paper. The research, he noted, was limited to just seven years in one country.
•“You’re reducing yourself to a narrow slice of humanity,” he said.
•Mr. Milholland also took issue with how the team analysed their data. They only examined two possibilities: that the death rate continued its exponential climb, or that it turned into a flat plateau.
•The truth might be somewhere in between, he said: “It seems rather far-fetched that after increasing exponentially, the chance of dying should suddenly stop in its tracks.”
•Mr. Hekimi, on the other hand, praised the study for the quality of its data and called its conclusions, “very interesting and surprising.”
•The new research doesn’t explain why death rates flatten out in the oldest of the old.
•One possibility is that some people have genes that make them more frail than others. Frail people die sooner than more resilient ones, leaving behind a pool of tough seniors.
•But Mr. Hekimi speculated that there might be other factors at play.
•Throughout our lives, our cells become damaged. We only manage to partially repair them, and over time our bodies grow weak.
•It’s possible that at the cellular level, very old people simply live at a slower rate. As a result, they accumulate less damage in their cells, which their bodies can repair.
•“This is a reasonable theory for which there is no proof,” Mr. Hekimi said. “But we can find out if there is.”
•A flat death rate doesn’t mean that centenarians have found a fountain of youth. From one year to the next, the new study suggests, they still have a much higher chance of dying than someone in her nineties.
•Exactly how long centenarians live may simply be a roll of the dice each year.
•But even if this turns out to be the case, Jeanne Calment’s age won’t be easily matched, said Tom Kirkwood, associate dean for ageing at Newcastle University, who was not involved in the new study.
📰 ‘Economic growth in FY19 will be better’
GST helps avoid tax evasion; those unable to evade taxes complaining, says Godrej group chairman
•The Indian economy is on a sound footing and with consistent growth, India will emerge as the world’s largest economy by 2050, surpassing the U.S. and China, according to noted industrialist and chairman of the Godrej group Adi Godrej .
•In an interview, Mr. Godrej described the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as the best reform since 1991 when the Indian economy was opened up by P.V. Narasimha Rao and Dr. Manmohan Singh. Excerpts:
What is your assessment of the GST roll-out so far?
•It is very good. It is a major economic reform. I think it is the most important economic reform of India since the opening of the economy in 1991.
•It has been extremely successful. GDP growth has improved. The GST Council had met many times to take quick decisions on issues in their horizon and they had resolved many.
•This has led to better growth now. Many of the rates are lower than they were before GST. They have been passed on to consumers. For example, Godrej soaps have become cheaper by 9%. Consumers are benefiting from lower rates. And, tax collections have gone up.
There is a perception that the implementation was poor, resulting in flip-flops?
•I don’t agree with that at all. For such a major reform, it was implemented very well. The GST Council had sat very often, taken decisions. People who don’t like change will always complain.
•And in this case it has not been good for people who used to evade taxes. With GST, it is very difficult to evade taxes.
•So those who were evading taxes are the main ones complaining and making excuses. They were the same ones who delayed GST by 10 years.
•Did job losses occur due to GST implementation as some small companies could not cope?
•Not at all. How can they [experience] job loss? Who says that there has been job loss? Who has given these statistics? I have not seen [this] in any official statistical survey.
Are multiple rates in GST creating problems? Should there be a maximum of two rates?
•You cannot have one or two rates in a country like India. You cannot have similar rates for essentials and luxury and ‘sin’ items. So in a country like India, there are bound to be multiple rates.
•Earlier, there were infinite number of rates, not just multiple rates. There were different rates of excise duty and different rates of VAT by the States. Now at least, there is a standard rate for India.
•Initially, GST collections were not as per expectation. Now it is growing...
•Collection has been growing, that is correct. But it was quite good in the first month of July, which was higher than what was the collection earlier.
What is the overall state of the economy?
•It is very good. We have had 7.7% growth in January-March. It has been growing every quarter and in 2018-19, I expect much better growth than 2017-18.
•The economy is on a very good footing. We must aim to continue to be the fastest-growing economy in the world. In my estimate, by 2050 India will become the largest economy in the world overtaking first the U.S. and then China... because of our demography and because of our democracy.
This government came to power by making many promises. Have changes happened as expected?
•Many changes have been made. Many good things have happened. Black money has reduced. Corruption at high levels has reduced.
•The economy is on a very good path. The whole world recognises it. All people including foreign leaders are coming to India. FDI in India is the highest in any country in the world. We are the fastest-growing economy in the world.
Major concerns for the economy now are rising oil prices and hardening of interest rates. How does industry handle this situation?
•Oil rates were $ 150 a barrel. Then they came down. We [enjoyed the] advantages of that. Now they are at a middle level of $75 a barrel.
So is it a matter of concern?
•What can one do? It is a commodity. India has to produce more oil and reduce dependency.
What is your view on the ongoing trade wars started by the U.S.? How does one counter the impact of such developments?
•That I can not say. Politicians have to decide and international relations experts will have to decide. But it is not a good thing for the world. Countries which start trade wars are doing the world a disservice.
When do you think private sector investment will pick up?
•It has already started because demand has improved. More production is required.
What is your view on the NPA clean up exercise?
•To my mind, it is a good thing. We should do it faster. We should not [allow] too many appeals. If people don’t pay up their debts, we should take immediate action.
•Why are you waiting? Why are you letting them run away from the country? The moment they don’t pay the debt, immediately stop them. We are too liberal with defaulters in every field.
📰 Rural India is buying more packet tea: study
Tea Board may draw strategy to boost per capita consumption which now stands at a low 700 gm
•Rural India is now buying more packet tea, especially in the southern and western markets, with taste and strength of the liquor being important factors, according to a study commissioned by the Tea Board.
•The preference for dark colour teas, especially in the south, is also leading some packet tea players to use colouring agents at a time when tea is being promoted as a health drink.
•Tea consumption in India is skewed towards the northern and the western parts which together consume 63 % of the beverage, south accounted for 18 % of the domestic consumption and east and north-east had 19 % share while accounting for 75% of the annual output. Awareness about Assam teas is highest across India followed by Darjeeling tea. The trend to drink tea outside home, too, is increasing in western and southern states led mainly by urbanisation and industrialisation. Neighbourhood kirana s tores are still the point of purchase with modern retail being the second largest channel for tea purchase. However indications were that with many supermarkets in tier 2 and 3 cities, it may become the biggest source of packet teas for a majority of the people covered by the study.
Promoting consumption
•Industry and trade expects to get some cues from the study to promote per capita consumption in India which is low at about 700 grams. India is the second-largest producer of tea after China with an average output of 1,200 million kg and domestic consumption of about 80% of the output. However this translates to about one cup a person daily, Indian Tea Association officials said. Presently, only about 64% of India’s total population drinks tea, according to the report.
•Although India is among the highest consumers of tea (backed by its population), it has now become important to bring the millennials into the tea-drinking fold. The report is important for the Tea Board which plans to rest its tea-promotion strategy on the findings. Industry and trade hopes to get cues from this to sell more teas by distributing more packets to rural areas or introducing targeted promotion schemes.
•A 2016 industry campaign in college campuses and malls generated enthusiasm among the youth with tea being promoted as a “cool” beverage while awakening the industry to offer the traditional brew in non-traditional forms to woo the young population. Awareness about green tea as a wellness product is also growing, the study showed.
📰 University of Hyderabad increases bioavailability of harpin biopesticide
Up to 90% reduction in severity of fungal infection in tomato plants was seen
•Researchers at the University of Hyderabad have found that harpin biopesticide brought about 80-90% reduction in severity of fungal infection in tomato plants when it is encapsulated in chitosan nanoparticles. The fungal infection was caused by Rhizoctonia solani. The reduction in disease severity is only about 50-55% when the biopesticide is used without loading it in nanoparticles. The results were published in the journal Carbohydrate Polymers.
•Though harpin is used against several bacterial, fungal and viral infections, poor bioavailability is a major hurdle when harpin protein, taken from the bacteria Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae, is just sprayed on the leaves like any other pesticide.
Chitosan to the rescue
•To address the issue of poor bioavailability of harpin arising from the inability to permeate into plants, the researchers led by Prof. Appa Rao Podile from the Department of Plant Sciences turned to nanotechnology. They used the biocompatible and biodegradable chitosan in nanoparticle size to encapsulate the biopesticide. Chitosan nanoparticles are capable of getting into the plant through the stomata (pores on the leaves through which gas exchange takes place) and then diffuse through the cell wall to enter the cells. The team found that chitosan nanoparticles containing harpin pass through the cell wall and end up in the chloroplast of tomato plants.
•As a result, bioavailability of harpin inside tomato plants increases sharply when loaded in chitosan nanoparticles. Also, less amount of harpin will have to be sprayed on leaves when it is contained in nanoparticles.
•Chitosan by itself has another advantage. “Chitosan’s antifungal property and its role in triggering plant defence responses are already well known. Its ability to biodegrade inside the plant without harming the plant cells is why we chose it for encapsulating harpin,” says Prof. Podile.
•The disease severity in tomato reduced significantly and there was fivefold decrease in fungal biomass in the case of harpin encapsulated in nanoparticles compared with bulk harpin sprayed on leaves. While the fungus failed to colonise and infect tomato leaves upon extended incubation, it completely destroyed the leaves used as controls.
•Laboratory studies found harpin was released from the nanoparticles in two phases. “The biopesticide adsorbed on the nanoparticles gets released in a burst in the first 48 hours followed by slow release up to 120 hours,” says Dr. Sandhya Rani Nadendla from the Department of Plant Sciences at UoH and first author of the paper.
•Currently, the shelf-life of harpin nanoparticle is limited to 30 days as the encapsulation loses its efficiency. “The nanoparticles are currently stored in a liquid phase. We are trying to make some chemical changes at the time of preparation of chitosan nanoparticles to make it more stable. We are also trying to make it in a powder form by spray drying to further increase the shelf-life,” says Prof. Podile.
•Tomato plants and R. solani fungal infection were only used as a model system to test the efficacy of chitosan nanoparticles containing harpin in controlling the disease. “The objective was not to develop an exclusive disease control method. We used this particular fungal infection as an index,” he says. “The plant defence activated by harpin is broad-spectrum so can control even bacteria.”
•The team is planning to test harpin-containing chitosan nanoparticles on a large-scale on four different crops and at least two pathogens per crop. Two of the crops to be tested will be grown in fields and two others will be greenhouse crops.
📰 Bacteria develop resistance even without exposure to antibiotics
The IISER Pune team found E. coli coped better when exposure to complex, unpredictable environment continued for 100 days
•The environment where bacteria such as E. coli thrive can be complex with different stresses being present at the same time and changing unpredictably at different time scales — daily or seasonal. Researchers at Pune’s Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) found exciting results when they replicated these conditions in the lab — E. coli developed resistance to antibiotics and heavy metals even when the bacteria were not exposed to them.
Study design
•When exposed to a combination of stresses — salt, pH and oxidative stress — that varied unpredictably on a daily basis, E. coli did not show statistically significant adaptability at the end of 30 days (170 generations). But bacteria did show improved fitness and better growth rate at the end of 100 days. Thirty days produce 170 generations of E. coli while 100 days produce 900 generations.
•To make the environment complex, the researchers led by Sutirth Dey from IISER Pune’s Biology Division exposed the bacteria to one or two factors (says pH and salt) that were kept normal while one or two factors were abnormal and caused stress. Unpredictability was brought in by randomly changing the three factors that caused stress on a daily basis. Totally, 30 combinations that make the environment complex and unpredictable were used for the study.
•“At the end of 30 days when compared with ancestors [or controls], the bacteria exposed to complex, unpredictable environment did not develop statistically significant advantage in terms of improved fitness,” says Shraddha Karve from IISER Pune’s Biology Division and first author of a paper published in theJournal of Evolutionary Biology.
Surprise finding
•“But what came as a surprise was that the bacteria evolved the ability to tolerate novel stresses that they were not exposed to, such as antibiotics (norfloxacin) and heavy metals (cobalt and zinc),” says Dr. Karve. “We repeated the experiment all over again as the result was so surprising, and we got the same outcome.”
•Another study in the Journal of Biosciences by the team confirmed that efflux pumps in bacteria show greater efficiency in throwing out antibiotics from inside (the bacteria) though they have not been able to precisely find out why and how the exposure to complex, unpredictable environment causes this.
•The researchers also studied resistance at the population level. The bacteria that have already been exposed to 30 days of stress (pH, salt and oxidative stress) were then exposed to antibiotics or heavy metals. The whole population showed better growth rate than controls and could better resist antibiotics and heavy metal stress.
•“What we found was that the bacteria had much better efflux efficiency than the ancestors [controls]. It could be that during the 30 days of evolution the efflux pumps had greatly evolved either by working continuously or by becoming more efficient,” she says.
•“Once the efflux pumps’ efficiency has been increased by exposure to other stresses, the ability to resist multiple drugs is only to be expected,” adds Prof. Dey.
Implications for public health
•“It’s alarming that bacteria exposed to complex, unpredictable fluctuations can lead to resistance to antibiotics or heavy metals, and it could happen in about 30 days,” says Dr. Karve.
•“Climatology studies have shown that variability in the environment has drastically increased in many parts of the world, India included. As a result, there is a possibility that bacteria could show increased efflux activity and greater resistance to antibiotics even when not exposed to them,” says Prof. Dey.
•The isolated Amazonian tribe that had no contact with civilisation till recently showed drug resistance can arise even when not exposed to antibiotics. The gut bacteria of this population showed resistance to latest antibiotics, including synthetic antibiotics, which are not found naturally in soil.
•Another study (Journal of Evolutionary Biology) by the team found that unlike bacteria which had not evolved to handle stress in 30 days, the ability to cope with stress was significantly better when the exposure to complex, unpredictable environment continued for 100 days. “Besides better growth rate and greater ability to tolerate stresses, the bacteria showed no variation in their ability to handle different stresses compared with ancestors,” she says.
•In the latest study paper published a few days ago in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, they investigated whether complexity or unpredictability that hinders adaptation over short term. And they found that bacteria could adapt to unpredictability when complexity was absent. They also found E. coli shows little adaptation to acidic pH as it is already very well adapted to it. In contrast, the bacteria show significant adaptation to salt, a stress for which it is poorly adapted to begin with.
📰 Decreasing ‘greenness’ in India’s forests
This degradation is highest in 'core’ forest tracts
•Most forests are green. But a recent study finds that this ‘greenness’ is consistently decreasing across more than 46 lakh hectares of various types of forest in India, particularly in core protected areas. This indicates that our forests are vulnerable, write scientists.
•India's diverse forests face several threats including forest degradation, as the loss of greenness signifies. Scientists at Hyderabad's National Remote Sensing Centre analysed NASA’s MODIS satellite images of India’s forests at eight-day intervals for 15 years (2001 to 2014) and assessed the persistent decreases in greenness. Using an index that determines the amount forest “vigour,” they assessed the seasonal greenness of 14 different forest types: the negative the trend of greenness over years, the more degraded and vulnerable the forest.
•They found that the highest degradation is in moist deciduous forests (more than 20 lakh hectares), especially in the states of Chhatisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Wet evergreen forests – including those in the Western Ghats and Eastern Himalayas – are also affected, with the major changes observed in Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh, followed by Kerala and Meghalaya. More than 15% of India’s total mangrove forests also showed a decrease in greenness. Nearly 80% of these changes occurred in ‘core’ forests like protected areas.
•Using statistical analyses, the team determined the ‘spots’or areas where the decrease in seasonal greenness were high and spatially contiguous. West Bengal was a major hotspot of mangrove degradation. Arunachal Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Meghalaya were hotspots of decreasing greenness of wet evergreen forests while Manipur, Tamil Nadu, Mizoram, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh showed degraded montane (high-elevation) wet forests.
•According to the authors, the result of this study could provide first hand information to prioritise and plan conservation of these areas or restore them to their original glory. However, while the study identifies the hotspots where decreasing greenness is a worry, it does not identify what caused this problem.
•“This decreasing greenness could be due to natural or anthropogenic factors that we have not identified in the study,” said Abhishek Chakraborty, lead author of the study published in Ecological Indicators. “It could be due to changing climates, shifts in monsoon patterns, decreasing soil fertility or the impact of human activities.”
📰 Using multiple sclerosis drug to treat pancreatic cancer
•An FDA-approved drug currently used for treating multiple sclerosis has been found to be effective for pancreatic cancer. Researchers from Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB), Thiruvananthapuram, in collaboration with Regional Cancer Centre in the city and NIMHANS, Bengaluru, found that the drug was also able to increase the efficacy of gemcitabine, the current standard drug for pancreatic cancer. The results of the study have been recently published in Theranostics.
•The drug used to treat multiple sclerosis was found to act through a receptor called S1PR1 that is involved in lipid signalling and which regulates numerous cellular events such as cell growth, migration and vascular integrity.
•“The precise role of the receptor in pancreatic cancer is still not clear and our study has brought out its importance. We found that the [multiple] sclerosis drug can bind to the receptor and alter the key cellular events and prevent the progression of pancreatic cancer,” explains Dr. K.B. Harikumar, from the Cancer Research Program at RGCB and corresponding author of the paper. The sclerosis drug was also found to be a potent inhibitor of NF-kappaB, a transcription factor that helps in tumour progression.
•The effectiveness of the multiple sclerosis drug when used together with the current pancreatic cancer drug was checked in mice models. The combination drug treatment was able to control various signalling molecules, thereby decreasing cancer cell proliferation and increasing apoptosis. It also helped produce higher levels of reactive oxygen species and inhibited the migration of the cancer cells. They also studied the genes involved in inflammation and immunity in pancreatic cancer and found that the combination drug regime activated a tumour-suppressor gene and downregulated another that is involved in drug resistance and decreased immunity.
•Better clinical outcome
•The team also addressed one of the major problems in pancreatic cancer known as desmoplasia, which is the presence of a rich collagen deposition around tumour. Collagen deposition leads to poor clinical outcome due to decreased delivery of the drug to tumor. “In fact, gemcitabine itself leads to desmoplasia thereby reducing its own effect. We found that the combination drug therapy reduced desmoplasia. The [multiple] sclerosis drug loosens up the tumour and aids gemcitabine to penetrate into the tumour thereby increasing the bioavailability of the cancer drug,” adds Dr. Harikumar.
•The combination strategy showed no toxicity to the normal human and mouse cell lines thereby pointing towards the promising possibility of using this for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.
📰 Astronomers puzzled by ‘cow’ in the sky
The new phenomenon has inspired a spate of papers trying to nail it down
•Astronomers across the world are puzzled by a new phenomenon — a very bright celestial object seen close to the very small galaxy CGCG 137-068 — reported in The Astronomer’s Telegram on June 17. Since then, the journal has been receiving a spate of communications, from Indian astrophysicists, too. A fast-brightening spot, initially thought to be a bright transient astronomical event lying close to the galaxy CGCG 137-068, was spotted by the ATLAS telescope. Named AT2018cow, the transient was soon given the nickname ‘cow’. This is not due to any resemblance to the quadruped but a mere coincidence of letters in the way of naming such transients.
•The cow proved to be suitably interesting, because though it was initially thought to be a nova, later analysis showed that it was more like a broadline supernova of the type Ic. Transient astronomical events last from a few seconds to several weeks and may have several causes. Specifically, a Type Ic supernova is caused by the explosion of an extremely massive star which has lost its outer layers of hydrogen and helium.
•“As part of the GROWTH collaboration, we are keeping an eye on the mysterious transient AT2018cow using the 2-metre Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) at Hanle, Ladakh,” says Shubham Srivastav, a post-doctoral fellow at IIT Bombay, in an email to The Hindu. The HCT observations indicate that the transient is steadily fading in all optical bands. Although spectroscopic features indicate a tentative similarity with broad line Ic supernovae, its true nature remains a puzzle, he adds.
•A.J. Nayana, a research scholar at National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Pune (NCRA) says: “We observed AT2018cow with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) on June 28 and reported our first results on June 29 in The Astronomers Telegram .” Since there are many transients being discovered each day, the researchers had to wait and decide if this object was worth the effort. Also, as Prof Poonam Chandra at NCRA, Pune, explains, “Radio frequencies are the lowest energy of the electromagnetic spectrum and the object evolves much later at radio frequencies. The GMRT results tell us that the radio-frequency radiation is still absorbed, most likely, by the relativistic electrons themselves which are responsible for the radio emission.”
•Astronomers are in a frenzy trying to figure out what this is. “Even if it is finally a Type IC supernova, it will not be a conventional one,” says Varun Bhalerao from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, who is involved in analysing data received from the GMRT as well as the Himalayan Chandra Telescope. “The images and spectrum were obtained by the Hanle facility and GMRT. We have requested Astrosat to observe and it will start on July 3,” he adds.
•In particular, AT2018cow’s fast rise time and high luminosity are unprecedented for a supernova. Hence it seems like nothing that was known before. “Anything in the unknown territory becomes exciting, and hence currently difficult to explain. However, I am confident that as astronomy community collects more data in multiple wavelengths, we will be able to nail down this exotic supernova,” says Prof. Chandra.
