📰 Statute in Braille to mark Constitution Day
First of the five-part publication to be released on November 25
•The Constitution will be made available in Braille for the first time ahead of the Constitution Day on November 26.
•In a joint project undertaken by ‘The Buddhist Association for the blind along with Saavi Foundation and Swagat Thorat, who started India’s first Braille newsletter Sparshdnyan, the Constitution will be made available in five parts in Braille for the benefit of visually challenged individuals.
Towards equal access
•“We had first published Buddhavandana in Braille script. While working among the blind population, we realised that they cannot read the Indian Constitution which gives equal right to every Indian. Since then we had decided to bring out the statute in Braille script,” said Satish Nikam, President, The Buddhist Association for the Blind, Nasik.
•Mr Nikam said the official copy of the Constitution, which has been translated into Braille, was taken from the Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Research and Training Institute (BARTI).
•“A book in Braille script cannot cross more than 150 pages due to its limitations. So we decided to publish the constitution is five parts and the first of it will be published on November 25,” said Mr. Thorat. He added that the next part of the series will be released after two months.
•“We will also be publishing booklets in Braille along with this. These will have explanations about the Schedules of the Cconstitution, additional information which can be of help of UPSC aspirants and lawyers from the blind community,” he said.
Result of collaboration
•Rashmi Pandhare of the Saavi Foundation which is organising the programme said the enormous task of publishing the Constitution in Braille would not have been possible without collaboration of different organisations. “No one had ever thought of even bringing it in Braille script,” said Ms. Pandhare.
📰 Corridor of hope: On the Kartarpur proposal
Movement on the Kartarpur proposal is timely and potentially game-changing
•The announcement by India and Pakistan of plans to operationalise a visa-free corridor between Dera Baba Nanak in Indian Punjab and Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan’s Punjab heeds a longstanding plea of Sikh pilgrims. That demand had gathered pace in 1995, when Pakistan renovated the Kartarpur gurdwara, situated on the site on the bank of the Ravi where the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, spent his last 18 years. Leaders from both sides, including Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Benazir Bhutto, had pushed for it. In their effort to facilitate travel by Sikhs to important shrines on both sides of the border, they were also alert to the potential of such a move to heal ties amongst their people, and promote dialogue between the two governments. Given its easy logistics, the 4-km-long Kartarpur corridor is a low-hanging fruit as a meaningful confidence-building measure. The announcement now is particularly timely, with the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak falling in November 2019. The initiative can also become a template for cross-border exchanges based on faith, which could provide a balm for many communities such as Kashmiri Pandits, who have long asked for access to visit the Sharda Peeth in the Neelum Valley in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir; Sufis in Pakistan who wish to visit the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer, Rajasthan; and Sikhs in India and Pakistan wanting to visit important shrines on both sides of the border.
•Much will depend on how quickly India and Pakistan act on their commitment, once President Ram Nath Kovind lays the foundation stone at the corridor’s India end on November 26, and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan does so at the other end on November 28. Even more will depend on how the two governments manage their relationship in a way that avoids making pilgrims a pawn in bilateral tensions. Recently, there was an ugly and unnecessary controversy when Pakistan Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa revived the Kartarpur proposal in a conversation with Navjot Singh Sidhu, a Minister in the Congress government in Punjab, at Mr. Khan’s swearing-in ceremony in August. This had set back bilateral ties, threatening progress on the project proposal. Going forward, it is important that issues related to the corridor are managed in a non-political manner and details left to diplomats and officials to sort out — for instance, the issue of Indian consular access to pilgrims, which flared up on Friday. Given the bilateral freeze, the Kartarpur project will compel India and Pakistan to engage in a positive and purposeful manner, at a time when few other avenues for engagement exist. It is a reminder that dialogue and search for areas of concord are the only way forward for both countries.
📰 Looking beyond the optics
Vietnam is crucial to India’s Look East Policy — bilateral ties must build on common concerns
•President Ram Nath Kovind’s choice of Vietnam as the first Southeast Asian country to visit in his capacity as the President is not surprising. A close ‘ally’ of India for over 70 years, and not limited to official diplomatic ties, Vietnam is critical for India’s foreign policy at the regional and systemic levels. While Mr. Kovind’s visit highlights the ‘normal’ trajectory of a presidential visit, there is a need to understand how Vietnam has calibrated its domestic and foreign policy shifts and where India’s relevance can fit into these policy changes.
•Domestically, since the start of its Doi Moi policy — its political and economic renewal campaign —in 1986, Vietnam has made dramatic strides. Today it is a rapidly growing, regional economic giant, showing both dynamism and pragmatism in its calculations. While earlier it imported agricultural products, today it is a major exporter. Agricultural competence has furthered Vietnam’s entry into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The Vietnam National Assembly ratified the CPTPP on November 12, asserting its growing economic impact globally, with exports increasing to approximately $240 billion for the year 2018. Membership to the CPTPP, which accounts for nearly 14% of the global GDP, will boost Vietnam’s economic growth, from 6.8 % in 2017-18, by a further 1.1% to 3.5% by 2030. One of the core areas of Mr. Kovind’s visit focussed on furthering cooperation in agriculture and innovation-based sectors, pushing the potential for increasing bilateral trade to $15 billion by 2020.
Common ground of health
•An area of potential convergence for both Vietnam and India is health care. The 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam, in 2016, highlighted the importance of linking economic growth to universal health care, whereby 80% population would be covered by health insurance. India too, since 2011, has been focussing on the need to deliver accessible and affordable health insurance to weaker sections of society. With Indonesia ratifying the India-ASEAN Services agreement on November 13, New Delhi is a step closer to signing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, bringing India to the forefront of the services sector globally. A potential area of convergence in the realm of health care through joint public-private partnership agreements can be explored by the two countries.
•Internationally, Vietnam’s foreign policy is characterised by ‘multidirectionalism’, which addresses regional asymmetries of the power balance by engaging across a broad spectrum of states to achieve its interests. Increasingly, this asymmetrical power structure in the region, offset by the rise of China, is bringing regional and extra-regional states together to address the shifts in the normative order. Within this context, Vietnam even normalised relations with the U.S., its former opponent, credit for which is given to the late U.S. Senator, John McCain.
Security concerns
•Today there is increasing commonality of security concerns between Vietnam and its ASEAN partners — as well as with Australia, India, Japan and the U.S., particularly in the areas of maritime security and adherence to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. A former Vietnamese President, Trân Đai Quang, had earlier this year endorsed the term Indo-Asia-Pacific. Similarly, Mr. Kovind’s speech in the Vietnamese National Assembly referred to a ‘rules based order in the Indo-Pacific’, reiterating India’s own concerns over troubled maritime spaces. Finding compatibility between the ‘Indo-Asia-Pacific’ and the U.S. driven ‘Indo-Pacific’ necessitates a more nuanced approach whereby regional concerns of ASEAN centrality can be assuaged while accounting for diverse approaches to maintaining regional stability. In pursuance of this, the two countries have planned a bilateral level maritime security dialogue in early 2019.
Focus on sub-regionalism
•As ASEAN continues to focus on its centrality in the region, there will undoubtedly be shifts in how smaller members of ASEAN perceive the centrifugal forces of China’s rise. Vietnam has helped to mitigate these by focussing on both sub-regionalism and regionalism as the core of its priorities. India too looks at both sub-regionalism and regionalism as priority avenues to pursue its foreign policy. The India-Vietnam Joint Statement of March 2018 reiterates the focus given to sub-regionalism and the Mekong Ganga Cooperation framework. However, another area is emerging in the CLV, or Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam growth triangle sub-regional cooperation, bringing these three countries together. India and Vietnam can jointly explore the potential for enhancing capacity building and providing technical assistance and training within this sub-regional grouping.
•The major takeaway from Mr. Kovind’s visit is the reference to the ‘cooperation model’ India offers, providing choices and opportunities for its friends. This reference highlights India’s willingness to address issues on which increasing synergies need to evolve. One such area where convergence is likely, but has been held back due to individual preference, is the $500 million line of credit offered to Vietnam. Both India and Vietnam possess the capacity to find compatibility in areas promoting defence cooperation and infrastructure simultaneously. Vietnam’s role as country coordinator for India in ASEAN will come to a close in 2018. While the ties have progressed under the Look East and Act East Policies, going forward they need to factor in pragmatism, helping relations to move forward. India’s ability to look beyond the prism of optics will remain a core challenge.
📰 India to study marijuana-derived drugs
Plan afoot to research its uses in treatment of breast cancer, sickle cell anaemia
•Three major science administrators in India — The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Indian Council for Medical Research and the Department of Biotechnolgy — are getting together to promote research in herbal drugs, some of which involve deriving new drugs from marijuana.
•Among the first such studies likely to kick off is joint investigation by the CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (CSIR-IIIM) and the Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), Mumbai.
•Here researchers will test whether strains of marijuana grown at the CSIR-IIIM campus in Jammu could be effective in the treatment of breast cancer, sickle-cell anaemia as well as be “bio-equivalent” (similar in make-up and effect) to marijuana-derived drugs already approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (U.S. FDA)
Restricted cultivation
•Marijuana (or hemp), more formally parts of the cannabis super-family, is illegal for commercial cultivation though it grows as weed in several parts of the country. Uttarakhand, Jammu and — as of this month Uttar Pradesh — have allowed restricted cultivation of the plant for medical research.
•One of the trials, said a doctor associated with the study, was to check if the “feelings of bliss” induced by cannabis could be detected at the cellular level. “The effects of bhaang (marijuana consumed orally) have been known to induce a state of bliss. What we’d like to find out if those effects in the brain travel all the way into the cancerous cell and can change its profile,” said Rajendra Badwe, Director, Tata Memorial Centre and one of the investigators of the study. The studies however are ‘long-term’ and could take 5-6 years, he said. The organisations were in the process of formally applying to the Drug Control General of India for permissions.
•“There is an unmet need for terminal cancer patients and because of restrictions we have lost 50-60 years of valuable research into the properties of these plants,” said Ram Vishwakarma, Director, CSIR-IIIM.
•The studies into the therapeutic potential of marijuana is part of a larger governmental thrust to making new drugs derived from herbs and plants that find mention in Ayurvedic and other traditional-medicine knowledge systems.
•The U.S. FDA this year approved Epidiolex (cannabidiol) [CBD] oral solution for the treatment of seizures associated with two rare and severe forms of epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome.
📰 Lunar lander faces crucial test
Chandrayaan 2’s landing sensors to be tested at artificial site at Challakere
•The Chandrayaan-2 lunar lander’s sensors are set to undergo a crucial test in the next few days as the mission races towards a planned take-off in around two months.
•The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to fly the sensors on an aircraft over its artificial lunar site at Challakere to see how they will function and guide the Chandrayaan-2 landing craft when it starts descending on the lunar terrain. The test flight is slated tentatively for November 24.
•The orbiter carrying the lander and a rover is scheduled to be sent to the Moon from Sriharikota on January 31 and expected to reach there sometime in February 2019.
•The test on ground, called the Lander Sensor Performance Test or LSPT, will be conducted at ISRO's new R&D campus in Chitradurga district, about 200 km from here, ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said.
•The highly autonomous or pre-programmed mission uses a large number of sensors. Among them are those that help the lander to precisely assess its height from the landing spot; decide its speed and help it to steer clear of any boulders or uneven surface.
•The lander is being developed and tested by the U.R. Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru. For the test, a prototype module carrying the sensors will be flown on one of ISRO's two small aircraft. As the plane descends from around 7 km to about 1 km over the artifical terrain, the sensors must show how they will guide the soft landing of the lunar craft at the right spot, speed and position.
Surface simulated
•About two years back, ISRO had started readying a part of the Challakere site to resemble lunar craters and had conducted a few preliminary sensor tests. Features of the lander have since been modified and the upcoming tests will also validate the new design. “The development and testing of the orbiter are over. Lander-related activities are going on. We will then add the rover also [to tests.] Until the mission is launched, we would be testing all systems continuously after every integration,” said Dr. Sivan.
📰 FinMin may stick to capital infusion plan for PSU banks
Ministry expected to finalise infusion of about ₹54,000 cr. in the next few weeks
•The Finance Ministry would not curtail its capital infusion plan for this financial year even as state-owned banks would be needing lesser funds following the Reserve Bank’s decision to defer the deadline to meet Basel III norms by a year, according to sources.
•Under the new dispensation, the capital infusion by the government in public sector banks (PSBs) for meeting the capital buffer norms would come down to around ₹15,000-20,000 crore, sources said. However, there will not be any reduction in the capital funding plan as announced in October last year despite a lower requirement due to the RBI extending the deadline for meeting the CCB of 2.5%, under Basel-III norms, until March 2020, sources said. The extension could reduce the burden of PSBs by ₹35,000 crore this fiscal, according to rating agency Crisil.
•After assessing the requirement of each bank, the ministry is expected to finalise capital infusion of about ₹54,000 crore by this month-end or by the first half of the next month.
‘Growth capital’
•The infusion would help improve banks’ financial health, sources said, adding that some banks would get necessary regulatory capital while others would get it for fuelling growth.
•The CCB is currently at 1.875% and the remaining 0.625% was to be met by March 2019. Generally, there is a leverage of 10 times on the capital, sources said, adding that the lending capacity would increase by ₹3.5 lakh crore.
