📰 Iran to promote Chabahar as curbs will hit main port
Global meet on February 26 to project potential
•With U.S. sanctions threatening Iran’s main port of Bandar Abbas, the Iranian government is planning to promote the Chabahar port being developed by India in a major conference on February 26, highlighting the potential of the Indian Ocean port beyond India-Afghan trade alone.
•India is sending an official delegation to the event led by the Shipping Ministry, where about 200 guests from 35 countries have been invited, officials said.
•The event will also bring into focus a tightrope India must walk, with the U.S. tensions with Iran on one side, in order to achieve the triple aims of trade with Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan and posing a counter to the China-Pakistan developed Gwadar port nearby.
Focal point
•“The government of Iran wants to build Chabahar as the focal point with the entire coastline of 1,000 kilometres to be developed for oil refineries, petrochemical and steel factories, and other projects,” the newly appointed Iranian Ambassador to India Ali Chegeni told The Hindu in an exclusive interview. “We want to promote Chabahar as a hub where big ships can enter, offload to smaller ships that can go easily to other ports as well.”
•The potential for inland trade, according to Mr. Chegeni, goes well beyond the present plan of trade from India-Afghanistan via Chabahar, as he revealed the government’s plans to connect ‘via Turkmenistan to Central Asia, via Turkey to Europe, and via Iraq to Syria and the Mediterranean’ countries. “Once the railroad from Chabahar connects to Zahedan, many more opportunities will open up,” he said.
MoU signed
•India has committed to building the 500-kilometre $1.6 billion railway from Chabahar to Zahedan, which are both in the Sistan-Baluchistan province, and an MoU worth $2 billion was signed by the Railway Ministry last February during Iran President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to India.
•In addition, Iran is planning a second airport near Chabahar and the development of a free trade zone, while energy infrastructure of a gas pipeline has been already built up to 200 km of Chabahar.
•Asked about the impact of sanctions, re-imposed in November 2018, Mr. Chegeni pointed out that the advantage of Chabahar was that it had received a waiver from the U.S.
•“Firstly, there is a U.S. waiver for Chabahar, and it is not time-bound. In any case, we don’t care about sanctions from third parties. This is our country and our business, and we continue to do our best to develop it,” Mr. Chegeni said. “That is why Chabahar won’t be affected by these sanctions. There is now a real interest from Central Asia, countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are all contacting us despite all the restrictions, and India is continuing to develop [Chabahar port],” he added.
•MEA officials dealing with the Chabahar project are advising some caution in the plans, given that the U.S. waiver for Chabahar was given by the Trump administration to facilitate trade to Afghanistan.
•“This exception relates to reconstruction assistance and economic development for Afghanistan. These activities are vital for the ongoing support of Afghanistan’s growth and humanitarian relief,” the State Department spokesman had said, announcing the waiver on November 7 last year.
•As a result, India is hoping that the February 26 event does not turn into a confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, said a senior official of the MEA. “We want all countries, including the U.S. to understand the value of the Chabahar facility not just for trade with Afghanistan, but for soft aid and humanitarian relief for Iranians,” the official said.
Trilateral cooperation
•India, Iran and Afghanistan have also stepped up work on trilateral cooperation to facilitate trade through Chabahar, after India sent a trial shipment of 100 MT of wheat to Kabul via the port last year. Since the port was officially opened on December 3, more than 135 containers have been processed at the Shahid Beheshti and Shahid Kalantri terminals, MEA officials said.
•Officials from India, Iran and Afghanistan also opened the office of the India Ports Global Chabahar Free Zone (IPGCFZ), and India has subsequently taken over the logistics and cargo handling services of the port. Iranian bank Pasargard is expected to begin operations at a branch in Mumbai to handle transactions along with the UCO bank branch in Teheran, while the Afghan Ghazanfar Bank is in the final phase of clearances to set up a branch in Chabahar, said officials.
•The push for Chabahar, which allows India to bypass Pakistan for trade to Afghanistan is likely to be speeded up, as the government looks at all diplomatic options to “isolate Pakistan” post the Pulwama attack. On February 13, 27 border soldiers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were killed in a similar suicide car bombing in the Sistan Baluchistan province that borders Pakistan. The group identified as responsible, Jaish-e-Adl (JA), also runs bases in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
What is it?
•As Jammu and Kashmir comes under President’s rule on December 20, the State has witnessed interventions by government as well as non-governmental players with no clear picture emerging. Before and after the State came under Governor’s rule on June 20 this year, the strategy in the Kashmir Valley has mostly veered around the gun. Till December 2 this year, the State witnessed 587 terrorist-related incidents, the highest in the last six years. According to the Home Ministry, 238 militants and 86 security personnel were killed in various operations this year, again the highest in six years.
How did it come about?
•The Assembly was dissolved on November 21 by Governor Satya Pal Malik amid allegations of horse-trading. Only in Jammu and Kashmir, President’s rule is imposed after six months of Governor’s rule. The proclamation has to be ratified by Parliament within two months. When the State is under Governor’s rule, the legislative power rests with the Governor and during President’s rule it is with Parliament. The State had faced another crisis when it was placed under Governor’s rule on June 20, after the BJP pulled out of an alliance with the People’s Democratic Party after the government said on June 17 that it would not continue the ‘suspension of operations’ or ‘cease-ops’ that was announced to provide relief to people in the month of Ramzan. In May, Home Minister Rajnath Singh announced that security operations would be suspended for a month to provide relief to the people during Ramzan. A month later, the government revoked the decision after the killing of Rising Kashmir Editor Shujaat Bukhari on June 14.
Why does it matter?
•Last month, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s NGO Art of Living Foundation arranged a meeting of former Prime Minister of Norway Kjell Mangne Bondevik with hard-line separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani in Srinagar. The meeting raised eyebrows as India has always opposed intervention by a third country and insisted that all violence in Kashmir is perpetrated by Pakistan. The meeting of the NGO members and the Norwegian delegation at Hyderpora, the fortified residence of Mr. Geelani, wouldn’t have been possible without the tacit support of the Centre. Special Representative Dineshwar Sharma, who was appointed last year to carry forward the dialogue with all stakeholders in Kashmir, was not part of the meeting. After the State came under Governor’s rule, 356 people, including security men, were injured during counter-terror operations and stone-throwing incidents in the Valley. In the same period, 136 militants were killed in operations by security forces. Around 250 militants are said to be active in the Valley, an official said. Last week, Mudasir Rashid Parray, 14, from Hajin in north Kashmir, once a militancy-free area, became the youngest militant of the Lashkar-e-Taiba to have been killed after an 18-hour encounter with security forces. The police have maintained that recruitment to militant groups was at a record low and some teenagers joining terrorist ranks was not a trend but “deviant behaviour.”
What lies ahead?
•With winter setting in and the panchayat elections over, the State will now prepare for the Assembly election that is most likely to be held around the 2019 general election in March-April next year. The Supreme Court is expected to resume hearing the petition challenging Article 35A in January. The constitutional validity of Article 35A, which prohibits a non-J&K resident from buying property in the State and ensures job reservation for J&K residents and lets the legislature decide the permanent residents of the State, has been challenged through a PIL petition. The National Conference and the PDP, the two main parties, have cautioned against any tinkering with the law. The Home Ministry informed Parliament last year that there was no proposal for abolition of Articles 35A and 370, which give special status to the State.
📰 Should the state leave religion alone?
There is no simple yes or no answer to this question. Much depends on what we mean by the term religion
•The Sabarimala judgment and its aftermath have brought the issue of state intervention in religion back to the table: should governments leave religion alone, instead of interfering in it? Much depends on what one means by religion.
•In one sense, religion refers to that aspect of human life where we relate to the transcendent, through personal belief or collective practice. This transcendent entity can be seen either as existing within human persons or outside them, in the highest possible realm. Religion then largely consists of spiritual exercises by which one digs deeper or goes higher. A mind-boggling variety of ways to carry out these exercises exist — god-dependent, gods and goddesses-dependent, or entirely independent of god. Let us just call this religion faith. To the question, should governments leave faith alone, the answer simply has to be a resounding yes. Not that the government’s interference is always unwarranted. For example, if collective rituals involve human sacrifice, then states should intervene. The point is that there must be a general presumption that governments must not interfere in faith.
Intervening in organised religion
•However, it is commonplace that as faith communities become large, they feel the need to be rule-bound; in order to become stable and self-sustaining, they institutionalise themselves. But institutionalisation often involves the introduction of hierarchical relations of power and status. Some people in this relation have more power and status, are ‘more equal’ than others. They systematise beliefs surrounding spiritual exercises into explicit doctrines. They insist on doctrinal purity and lay down strict but spurious rules that split followers into the normal and the deviant. They fix violent and exclusionary penalties for the ‘deviants’ and thereby manufacture gated communities with robust notions of who is inside and who is outside. Concepts of heresy and infidelity are generated and a whole society infested with persecution comes into being. In this second sense, religion refers to institutionalised faith communities, such as the those headed by a church, math or sangha. Now, spiritual exercises cannot be undertaken without belonging to such strongly institutionalised religion. Should the state allow discrimination, exclusion, marginalisation, humiliation, oppression, or persecution by elite-controlled religious institutions, or instead ensure that those within the faith community lead a free, dignified life? My view on this is crystal clear. A government must, albeit with great care and sensitivity, intervene in organised religion to prevent any practices of domination within it. It should also inhibit any attempt on its part to dominate members of other religious communities.
•There is, however, a third sense in which the term religion is used, one that refers neither only to faith, nor to powerful institutions that order and control it, but instead to historically transmitted traditions, indeed to an entire way of life. Thus, people frequently say that Hinduism is not a religion in the conventional sense but is rather a way of life. But if religion is a whole way of life and if this entails the breakdown of the very distinction between religion and society or religion and culture, then all relations of hierarchy and domination that are found in society are also subsumed under ‘religion’. In this conception of Hinduism as a way of life, caste or gender hierarchies are as religious as they are social. Caste domination or gender violence then become integral to Hinduism. How can a state that has accepted freedom and equality as one of its founding principles turn a blind eye to these oppressive practices within the Hindu way of life? In short, if religion is conceived as a way of life, then the state is duty-bound to intervene in religion. Here, the answer to the question, should the government leave religion alone, must be an even more categorical no.
Keeping a principled distance
•It is because religion is a complex and morally ambivalent phenomenon that there cannot be a single, emphatic yes or no answer to the question raised above. In my own work over decades, I have consistently maintained that a strict separation between state and religion is not desirable. The state can neither take the view that it will control all aspects of religion, nor that it will have nothing to do with it; that no matter what happens, it will always keep religion at an arm’s length. The state must keep, what I have called, a principled distance from all religions.
•What does it entail for law and public policy in relation to religion? On the principled distance view, there is absolutely no need for a state to have any law or public policy pertaining to matters of faith untainted by control, hierarchy or exclusion. A state must not interfere in what faith we have and how it is practised. Faith in god, gods and goddesses or in god-independent human qualities such as reason must remain free from interference. But equally, a just, egalitarian, and freedom-sensitive state cannot abandon its obligation to remove the residue of intra- or inter-religious domination from its society. This is why laws that prohibit triple talaq or lift restrictions on women to enter temples such as Sabarimala must be enacted. Customs that demean or humiliate women must go.
•I have consistently argued that this is precisely how secularism is conceived in India: not as a political perspective that permits authoritarian control of religion by the state; nor one that encourages a libertarian hands-off approach towards it; but as one that promotes a nuanced and flexible policy of value-based political or legal decision on whether or not to intervene in religion. This principled distance variety of secularism is the unique ethical stance of the Indian Constitution, a gift from India to the rest of the world.
📰 The last of the elusive pangolins
Demand for scales in China has made it nearly extinct
•Obsession for its supposedly medicinal scales in China is believed to have made the ant-eating Chinese Pangolin, one of two species found in South Asia, extinct in India.
•The pangolin is the most trafficked mammal in the world. Though hunted for its meat across the northeastern States and in central India, the demand for its scales in China has made it the most critically endangered animal in less than a decade.
•On World Pangolin Day, wildlife experts mourned the “possible extinction” of the Chinese Pangolin in the northeast and the likelihood of the Indian Pangolin – found elsewhere in India – of being wiped out in a decade or so. The third Saturday of February is observed as the day of the scaly nocturnal ant-eater, which activists say is an animal very few – even forest officials – know about.
•“The Chinese Pangolin was officially categorised as critically endangered in 2014, but I think it is extinct today. The Indian Pangolin, marked endangered that year, is now critically endangered and disappearing fast,” Ritesh Sarothiya, officer-in-charge of the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department’s Special Task Force (STF), told The Hindu.
•The STF had busted one of the biggest international gangs of wildlife body parts smugglers. It arrested 159 people across 14 States and registered 12 cases, mostly for pangolin scale smuggling.
Northeastern gateway
•Investigations by wildlife crime sleuths have revealed that almost 90% of smuggling of pangolin and pangolin scales is through the northeast.
•“From elsewhere in India, the scales are smuggled out to China via Myanmar at Moreh in Manipur and Champhai in Mizoram. But there are numerous gateways along the border with Myanmar. This is why checking the smuggling network in the northeast is crucial for the survival of the last of the pangolins,” Mr. Sarothiya said.
•Dev Prakash Bankhwal, who retired a few days ago as Assam’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife), said smaller animals like pangolins get indirect benefit of the focus on larger ones such as rhino, tiger, and elephant.
Killed cruelly
•“Sadly, there is no survey of pangolin, which get smoked out of their burrows and killed cruelly by being thrown into boiling water. The animal used to be killed for meat until people learnt there was illegal money in its scales,” he said.
•“We hope the Chinese Pangolin has not gone the way of the dodo. Conservation policies have to look beyond major species, but the world needs to tell China that pangolin scales – like rhino horns – are made of keratin that produces human hair and nails and has no medicinal value,” said Firoz Ahmed, an Assam-based conservationist.
📰 Why the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme will be hard to implement
What does the scheme offer?
•The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme, announced in the Budget earlier this month, aims to give ₹6,000 a year to 12 crore farmer families who own up to two hectares of cultivable land.
What are the challenges?
•The number of beneficiaries comes from the number of land holdings of two hectares or less, according to the last agricultural land census. However, the guidelines say a single family may hold multiple land parcels, which will be pooled to determine their eligibility for the benefit. Similarly, even landholdings bigger than two hectares, if owned by multiple families, will make them eligible for the scheme. For example, if five brothers jointly own a single 10 hectare holding, each of them will be eligible for the scheme. However, if the members of a single family unit each own three one-hectare holdings, they will not be eligible. “This is a mess,” says Vikas Rawal, a professor at JNU’s Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, who specialises in agriculture economics. He says it will be difficult to use existing land records to determine beneficiaries. “Land records are held individually. How do you know which family holds how much land?” For the purposes of this scheme, family units are being defined as a husband, wife and minor children. Local administrations are more familiar with the unit of the household — which is used by most other government surveys and schemes — defined as a group living together and eating meals from a common kitchen.
What is the status of land records?
•States have been implementing the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme for more than a decade. While several States claim to have completed computerisation of their land records, others have not even begun the process. However, digitisation does not mean the data have been updated. Experts say many land records are updated only when the land is sold and only if the transaction is legally registered. Inherited land may still be registered in a parent or grandparent’s name. Multiple government departments hold the documents required to establish land ownership — the Registration Department maintains sale deeds, but maps are kept by the Survey Department, while the Revenue Department keeps property tax receipts. Verifying ownership claims is thus a daunting task. States have been asked to overhaul their land databases immediately in preparation for the scheme, which aims to pay out its first instalment of ₹2,000 by March 31, before the Lok Sabha election.
What happened in Telangana?
•However, the example of Telangana shows this may be an unrealistic time line. Despite an advanced state of progress in digitisation, the State took over three months to update its databases before implementing its own farmer income support scheme before its Assembly election last year. Since its payout was given per acre owned, rather than per family unit, it was a simpler process to identify beneficiaries on the basis of land records. Yet, researchers say almost 10 lakh beneficiaries — of a total 54 lakh — were left out of the initial instalment, as the State scrambled to update records.
What about community farmers?
•The scheme notes that land ownership rights are community-based in many northeastern States and promises that an alternative method of beneficiary identification will be developed. However, many Adivasi communities in other States also cultivate land without individual rights, and may be left out of the scheme, although they are among the most vulnerable. Tenant farmers are also not included in the scheme, as they do not own the land they cultivate. With tenancy being as high as 60% in some areas, this could lead to resentment if absentee landlords receive benefits under the scheme.
Is payment infrastructure in place?
•The government intends to pay beneficiaries through a direct transfer to their bank accounts. From the second instalment, Aadhaar numbers will be compulsory to access benefits. Previous welfare schemes requiring Aadhaar verification have faced significant hurdles in some rural areas.
📰 In Maharashtra, protecting a sanctuary
•An environment clearance to the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed train corridor has put the spotlight on the Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary (TCFS) in Mumbai.
What happened?
•A committee, chaired by Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan, has accorded wildlife clearance to the project which will encroach upon the TCFS and the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, home to leopards, in Mumbai. The proposal involves diverting 3.2 hectares of forestland from the TCFS and 97.5 hectares of land close to the boundary of the forest’s protected area. The high-speed train corridor or ‘bullet train project’ was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in Ahmedabad in September, 2017. It is expected to be ready by 2022. Ever since the project was conceived, there have been concerns about the impact of the construction, which will create enormous debris, on the sanctuary and the national park. The drilling of underground tunnels will lead to sound pollution which will disturb the tranquillity of the sanctuary. The project will entail cutting down several mangrove trees, a natural flood barrier. In the aftermath of the 2005 floods, environmentalists spoke out against the declining mangrove cover for land reclamation projects.
How big is the sanctuary?
•The TCFS consists of 896 hectares of mangrove forests and 794 hectares of waterbodies. It is on the western bank of the creek, between the Airoli and the Vashi bridges connecting Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. It came into being in August 2015 and is Maharashtra’s second marine sanctuary, after Malvan.
•The TCFS has been attracting flamingos in large numbers since 1994. By November every year, over 30,000 flamingos, along with their chicks, occupy the mudflats and the bordering mangroves. They stay till May, after which most of them migrate to Bhuj in Gujarat for breeding, leaving a small resident population. Besides supporting a large congregation of flamingos, the area is a refuge for many resident and migratory birds. In all, 200 species have been reported, even globally threatened species such as the greater spotted eagle and others such as osprey. Other birds found here are the Pied avocet, western reef heron, black-headed ibis, common redshank, marsh sandpiper, common greenshank, curlew sandpiper, brown-headed gull, whiskered, gull-billed, Caspian and little terns. The white-bellied sea eagle and Eurasian marsh harrier have been spotted too.
Are there any remedial measures?
•While according permission, the National Board for Wildlife has laid several conditions. The project developers should provide an alternate site and funds for penal plantation of at least five times the number of mangrove plants anticipated to be lost. Because the project also encroaches upon the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivili, developers have to construct under-passes to enable smooth movement of wild animals. An existing quarry would have to be closed and a natural stormwater drainage stream, passing through the culvert system, would have to be restored and kept free of any obstruction.
Are these steps adequate?
•In general, any foray into wildlife sanctuaries is pernicious. The project plan of the corridor involves drilling a 7-km-long undersea tunnel to avoid damaging the forest and several of the mitigating measures could go a long way to encourage flamingos and other birds to continue visiting the sanctuary. However environmentalists say they aren’t confident that mitigation work will be taken seriously. The ongoing Mumbai Metro Project has adversely impacted the Aarey Forest and destroyed mangroves and wetlands in Uran and the Sion-Panvel Highway, according to ecologists.
📰 Great Indian hornbills can adapt to modified habitat: study
The birds could adapt to plantations provided food, nesting requirements were met
•Amid a changing environment, with natural homes of birds getting depleted as natural forests make way for plantations and other such modified terrain, comes the good news of how the great Indian hornbill (Buceros bicornis) adapts to such change. A group of researchers from NCBS-TIFR in Bengaluru and Nature Conservation Foundation in Mysuru observed eight hornbill nests, three located in contiguous forests and five located in modified habitats such as coffee plantations. They found that the birds followed similar nesting behaviour but adapted to the changed environment. The study is published in the journal Ornithological Science.
•The team chose to study the great Indian hornbills nesting in the Anamalai hills. For comparison, the researchers located the study in the modified habitat in the Valparai plateau and the contiguous forests in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve and the Vazhachal Reserve forests. The modified habitat included tea, coffee and cardamom plantations and tribal settlements.
•“Most of the nests were known to us as we have been studying hornbills and monitoring them for many years now. Some of the nests were discovered during the study with the help of local tribal assistants,” says T R Shankar Raman of Nature Conservation Foundation and an author of the paper, in an email to The Hindu. Describing the mode of observation, he says: “We started monitoring nests from the beginning of breeding season in December. After the females had entered the nests, we conducted direct nest observations on multiple nests using standard field protocols and taking care not to disturb the birds…All observations were done manually.”
Nesting habits
•Hornbills are secondary cavity nesters and choose cavities formed in large trees for nesting. Also they are monogamous, and the female, after copulation, seals herself in the hole until the initial breeding period of two-four months is over. During this time, the female and the young ones are fed by the male bird, with fruit such as figs and animal matter. So, in principle, along with other threats such as hunting, modified land use, ensuing forest fragmentation, felling of large trees with the potential for nesting, the loss of fruit bearing trees could also affect hornbill nesting habits. “Great hornbills may adapt to habitat modification provided that their key requirements for food and nesting are fulfilled in the habitats like coffee and forest fragments,” says Pooja Pawar from NCBS-TIFR and the first author of the paper.
•Considering that hornbills use same nest over years, protection of these known nest trees and retention of large trees that can be potential nests is absolutely essential. In addition, it would be necessary to have a diversity of native tree species, particularly figs, laurels and other food plants, the study concludes. “We also highlight the potential of rainforest fragments and coffee plantation for conservation of hornbills outside of protected areas,” she adds.
📰 Mariculture is as important for India as agriculture
It will help add seaweeds to our diet
•About 37% of the area of the entire world is agricultural land, a third of which (about 11%) is used for crops. And as the population of the world rises to 9.7 billion people in 30 years, the land available for crops will reduce. Thus, there is an immediate need to try and improve the efficiency of food production. Experts predict that agricultural yield must increase by 50% between now and 2050. How to do this is the question facing agricultural scientists across the world.
•Plants use sunlight to produce energy for their metabolism and food production. This is referred to as photosynthesis (wherein sunlight is used to make energy-rich molecules needed for producing food molecules). However, the efficiency of photosynthesis is rather low, just about 5% in most land crops. The most efficient land crop with 8% average is sugarcane, which is not all that edible, except for the sugar in it. If only we can increase the efficiency of crops such as wheat, rice and other grains!
•One such attempt is through the project RIPE (Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency), undertaken by a group of scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (for some details, access Katherine Bourzac, in MIT Technology Review, August 14, 2017 issue).
Genetic engineering
•One way of achieving it has been shown in the model plant tobacco where the scientists could “engineer photosynthesis” by increasing the expression of three genes involved in processing light. This increases the tobacco yield by 20%. The team is trying to do the same genetic engineering method in other plants. One such plant is cassava (also called tapioca, sago or sabudana) whose roots are carbohydrate-rich , and eaten by over half a billion people in Latin America and parts of Africa; indeed it is eaten as staple food in parts of Andhra, Kerala and the hilly areas of Assam. Genetic engineering of this plant was done, just as in tobacco, and appears to work.
•Another way that some other scientists are trying is to reduce what is called photorespiration in plants. Here the energy and oxygen produced in the ‘light reaction’ of photosynthesis is drained by the plant to make “wasteful” products in the ‘dark reaction’, and not just carbohydrates and other food material, particularly when the plant’s leaves close in order to reduce water loss by evaporation. If we can find ways to reduce this photorespiration, edible food yields can go up.
•Many of these research attempts involve the introduction of external genes and gene products into food crops, and these are opposed by group of people who do not want genetic engineering and genetically modified plants. This is a curious situation where science finds ways to deal with genes so as to improve yields while sociology opposes it based on worries about safety, as well as monopolistic control of food material through exclusive patents and other factors. A via media solution needs to be found, failing which food production may not increase all to feed the ever growing population of the world.
Include seaweeds in our diet
•It is in this context that we need to open our minds and expand our ideas about our food habits. The most efficient use of photosynthesis is actually not by land plants but by micro and macro algae, such as seaweeds. These are the champions, contributing to about 50% of all photosynthesis in the world. And many of them, notably those with dark green, red and brown colour, are edible. They are low-calorie and nutrient-dense food items and eaten by people in most parts of South East Asia – Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Korea and Japan, and also in some in coastal Atlantic region. A site called “The definitive guide to edible seaweed” (foodrepublic.com) gives the details about several of these food items.
Seaweed research
•About 844 seaweed species are reported from India, a country with a coast line of 7,500 km. Peninsular India from Gujarat all way to Odisha and West Bengal has a coast line of 5,200 km, and Andaman and Nicobar together have a coast line of 2,500 km. Thus, while we have 63% of our land area for crop agriculture, we should not forget this vast coastal area, much of which breeds seaweeds. Research in the area of edible seaweeds in India has been going on for over 40 years. The Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI) at Bhavnagar, Gujarat has done pioneering work in the area. Dr Amitava Das, its Director, tells us that over 20 scientists there have been involved for decades in research and propagation of seaweeds as potential of foods for people, as well as for isolating important chemicals of technological importance and crop biostimulant purposes.
•Professor CRK Reddy, who was at CSMCRI for decades and currently at the Institute for Chemical Technology, Mumbai, has been an active advocate of seaweeds as food. He points out that among the seaweeds found in plenty, Ulva, Pyropia, Porphyra and Kappaphycus are edible and that it will be good to cultivate them in large scale, as is done in countries like Japan. And Dr Arockiaraj Johnbosco points out (Times of India, 12-1-2016) that, of the 306 seaweeds in the Gulf of Mannar, 252 are edible. Thus India should embark on Mariculture as vigorously as Agriculture, given its 7,500 km-long coastal line. Further, it does not require pesticides, fertilizers and water for irrigation, which is an added advantage.
•Seaweeds are rich sources of vitamins A and C, and minerals such as Ca, Mg, Zn, Se and Fe. They also have a high level of vegetable proteins and omega 3 and 6 fatty acids. Best of all, they are vegetarian, indeed vegan, and do not have any fishy smell, thus good and acceptable. For all for those who worry about this “new” introduction, let us recall that India took quickly to imports like potatoes, tea and most recently to soyabean.
📰 Decoding how leptospirosis bacteria interact with human proteins
35 pathogen-host protein interactions were identified
•By studying proteins from leptospirosis-causing bacteria and the human body, researchers have identified the key pathogen-host protein interactions that are responsible for the development of the disease.
•By using a wide range of advanced bioinformatics and mathematical models, the team was able to narrow down to 35 interactions between 13 bacterial and 35 human proteins that may hold potential for vaccine development. A total of 145 well-characterized proteins from the bacteria and 493 proteins from the human body were analysed to draw the conclusion.
•Leptospirosis is one of the emerging zoonotic diseases and causes almost 60,000 deaths every year as there is currently no preventive vaccine for humans. The researchers studied the proteome (entire protein set) of Leptospira interrogans— the most vulnerable species — and the proteome of human beings.
Interaction network
•They analysed the inter-species and intra-species protein interactions and constructed a pathogen-host interaction network which was further studied using mathematical models to identify the key interactions.
•Out of the 586 pathogen-host protein interactions, 35 were identified as key interactions. “When we get an infection, the whole protein network system in our body is disturbed. We tracked the bacterial proteins and found that they are directly attacking the proteins associated with the immune system in our body,” says Swapnil ’Kumar who is first author of the paper published in Scientific Reports.
•Also, two outer membrane proteins and two periplasmic proteins of the bacteria which take part in the interactions were found conserved. These proteins target human proteins involved in functions such as signal transduction, antibacterial humoral response, cell cycle and cell division. This signifies that these proteins can be explored further for effective and novel therapeutics and vaccine development.
•“Validations of the findings are under way in mice model,” says Dr. Jayashankar Das, the corresponding author of the paper from the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre, Gandhinagar.
