📰 New freight corridor a big boost: PM
He flags off world’s first 1.5 km-long electrified double stack container train
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday inaugurated the New Rewari-New Madar section of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor and flagged off the world’s first 1.5-km-long electrified double stack long haul container train.
•Mr. Modi said the project was part of the mission to modernise the country’s infrastructure and was being seen as a game changer for the India of 21st century. The section, which became operational after a hard work of five to six years, would be beneficial to farmers, industrialists and businessmen in the National Capital Region, Haryana and Rajasthan.
More jobs, investment
•The corridor would lead to the development of growth centres and points in several cities, creation of job opportunities and conditions attracting more investments. It would give a new fillip to the local industries and manufacturing units by providing them faster and cheaper access to the national and international markets. They would get easy access to the ports in Gujarat and Maharashtra, he noted.
•A portion of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor, the New Bhaupur-New Khurja section, was started last month and through it, farm produce were being transported from Punjab and coal from Jharkhand was being supplied to the National Capital Region, Haryana and Punjab. Compared to the previous freight train average speed of 25 km/hour, the maximum of 90 km/hour had now been achieved, Mr. Modi pointed out.
•In all, 133 railway stations in nine States would be impacted by the Dedicated Freight Corridor. New multi-model logistic parks, freight terminals, container depots/terminals and parcel hubs would be developed at these places. It would not only benefit villages, farmers, the poor and the small businesses, but also attract big manufacturers, he said.
•With the launch of the double stack long haul container train between New Ateli in Haryana and New Kishanganj in Rajasthan, India had also entered the club of nations with such high capabilities, he stated.
Northeast link
•Given the rapid infrastructural expansion, all the Northeast State capitals would soon be linked to the national rail network. The work of indigenously developing high-speed tracks was also under way.
•Earlier, Mr. Modi listed several initiatives, including a digital payment of Rs. 18,000 crore to farmers under the direct benefit transfer scheme, taken by the government in the past couple of weeks, to highlight the speed with which important projects were being implemented despite the COVID-19 induced crisis.
USTR, releasing the findings of its “Section 301” investigations into the digital taxes, said it was not taking specific actions at this time, but “will continue to evaluate all available options.”
•Digital services taxes adopted by India, Italy and Turkey discriminate against U.S. companies and are inconsistent with international tax principles, the U.S. Trade Representative's office said on Wednesday, paving the way for potential retaliatory tariffs.
•USTR, releasing the findings of its "Section 301" investigations into the digital taxes, said it was not taking specific actions at this time, but "will continue to evaluate all available options."
•The probes are among several still open USTR Section 301 investigations that could lead to tariffs before President Donald Trump leaves office or early in the administration of President-elect Joe Biden. Among these is a more advanced probe into France's digital services tax.
•USTR had set a Jan. 6 deadline for implementing 25% tariffs on French cosmetics, handbags and other imports valued at around $1.3 billion annually in retaliation against the French digital taxes.
•But it was unclear late on Wednesday whether collections of those duties would begin as scheduled. Spokesmen for USTR and Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for tariff collections, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
•USTR has concluded the digital taxes imposed by France, India, Italy and Turkey discriminate against big U.S. tech firms, such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.com
•In the latest report, it also said the Indian, Italian and Turkish taxes were "unreasonable" because they are "inconsistent with principles of international taxation, including due to its application to revenue rather than income, extraterritorial application, and failure to provide tax certainty."
📰 Flu in full flight: On the avian flu outbreak
The avian flu must be stopped before sustained transmission among humans
•Just three months after India declared itself to be free of the avian influenza outbreak, the highly pathogenic avian influenza subtypes, H5N1 and H5N8, have been reported from a dozen epicentres in four States — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala. In addition, thousands of poultry birds have died in Haryana, while Jharkhand and Gujarat, too, have sounded an alarm; the cause in these three States is still unknown. The two subtypes have targeted different birds — crows in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, migratory birds in Himachal Pradesh, and poultry in Kerala. While tests have confirmed H5N1 for causing the deaths of over 2,000 migratory birds in Himachal Pradesh, H5N8 has been identified for killing thousands of poultry in Kerala, and hundreds of crows in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. In a bid to stop the spread, as on Wednesday over 69,000 birds, including ducks and chickens, were culled in Alappuzha and Kottayam as per India’s 2015 National Avian Influenza Plan. Other States have been asked to be vigilant of any unusual deaths or disease outbreak signs amongst birds, particularly migratory ones. Migratory birds have been largely responsible for long-distance transmission of the virus into India during winter. It then spreads through local movement of residential birds and poultry. Movement of men and material from poultry farms too has been a cause for further spread. This is why States have been asked to strengthen biosecurity of poultry farms, disinfection and proper disposal of dead birds. With backyard rearing of poultry birds common, the task of elimination will be particularly difficult.
•A recent European Food Safety Authority report says 561 avian influenza detections were made between August-December in 15 European countries and the U.K. The virus was predominantly found in wild birds, and a few in poultry and captive birds. H5N1 and H5N8 were two of three subtypes found in Europe. Genetic analysis helped confirm the spread from Asia to west-central Europe, suggesting a “persistent circulation of this virus strain, likely in wild birds in Asia”. While avian influenza virus crossing the species barrier and directly infecting humans happens occasionally, human-to-human spread has been rare. But mutations or genetic reassortment of an avian influenza A virus and a human influenza A virus in a person can create a new influenza A virus that could likely result in sustained transmission between humans, thus increasing the risk of a pandemic influenza. Hence, all efforts should be directed at stamping out the outbreaks in the affected States. It is also important to undertake genome sequencing of virus samples to track the evolution of the virus.
📰 Fruits of incitement: On the mob attack on U.S. Capitol
After the Capitol breach, the task of building bipartisan consensus is that much harder
•If the history of nations is replete with ironies, nowhere were they more evident than in the U.S., when the “greatest nation on earth” became hostage to an ugly attempted coup led by a mob, bearing slogans of support for outgoing President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, hundreds of them stormed the Capitol building, as police appeared to be overwhelmed, and members of Congress, who were gathering to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, cowered behind benches or were evacuated. Although the mob was eventually ejected, lawmakers went on to reconvene and formally certify the results, and Mr. Trump finally committed to an “orderly transition,” major social media platforms locked his accounts for violating their civic integrity policies, namely inciting violence with months of contentious posts that made baseless allegations about electoral fraud. The immediate trigger for the mob, said to have been methodically planned online via social media, was the surprise victory of two Democratic candidates, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, in the January 5 run-off election in Georgia. That election was necessitated by the fact that no candidate won 50% of the popular vote in the November 3 general election. Their win gives Democrats 50 seats in the Senate, which is tantamount to control of the upper chamber of Congress, because the incoming Vice-President, Kamala Harris, will cast a deciding vote in a tie.
•To say that the incoming and 46th U.S. President, Joe Biden, has a tough job on his hands after his inauguration on January 20, would be an understatement. The sheer viciousness of the January 6 mob attack, and more than two months of hateful vitriol online and offline following the 2020 election, is proof that political America is deeply polarised, brimming with anger and disenchantment at the ground realities. The “unprecedented assault” on the very soul of democracy (as Mr. Biden put it) has been in the making for more than four years. At the heart of the tsunami of angst that was evident throughout the election campaign is a sense of frustration that grips middle America, including the white middle class and blue-collar workers, over the inevitable changes to the U.S. economy and society. There is a view that the forces of immigration and globalisation have lit the fuses on this explosive combination of racial prejudice and economic insecurity. In reality, Mr. Trump’s strident rhetoric exploited this sense of alienation and socioeconomic dysfunction for narrow political and personal gains. Now Mr. Biden has an opportunity to strike a more balanced note by, on the one hand, seeking to revive the moribund spirit of bipartisan consensus and expediently tackling the thorny issue of comprehensive immigration reform, and, on the other, redressing the ills of runaway free-market liberalisation and forging a post-COVID-19 economic vision that can truly deliver on the American dream.
📰 Getting ready for vaccination
Training more and more healthcare workers to become COVID-19 experts is the way forward
•With the announcement that India has approved two COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use, we may finally be seeing some light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. That’s good news.
•But India is also at a fork in the road: are we prepared to dramatically increase the number of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who are trained for immunising and treating us? If not, none of these advances will matter for millions of our citizens.
•This is a problem that can be solved. If we do it right, we will not only be able to provide care for 1.6 billion people, but also have a model to show to the world on how vaccination and treatment can be done quickly and skillfully. If the world’s second-most populated nation can vaccinate and treat its people, other countries with far fewer daunting challenges can learn from India and save millions of lives.
•Over 4,00,000 frontline workers in India have been trained to respond to COVID-19. This number represents a massive ramping up of skills for many professionals who had never had this training. Thousands have learned about contact tracing, quarantine strategies, ventilator management, personal protective equipment, and psychological issues.
Learning from one another
•India was a beneficiary of a successful global innovation called Project ECHO. It’s a low-cost solution for increasing the capacity of health workers in underserved communities to provide patients with the best possible care. Using videoconferencing technology, community health workers, nurses and doctors — generalists by training — learn specialty care from subject matter experts and from each others’ community informed knowledge. ECHO started as a strategy for treating Hepatitis C, and is now responsible for newly trained experts in HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, addiction, mental health, and many other conditions.
•The number 4,00,000 is impressive, but it’s not enough to meet the demand in India. There are many States, particularly rural ones, where we are gravely understaffed for the needs of our people. ECHO gives us the ability to reach healthcare workers in the most remote areas and afford them training comparable to what a healthcare worker in one of our largest cities would receive.
•The fact is that India, led by the Serum Institute of India, has the largest vaccine manufacturing capacity in the world. We need to plan smartly before COVID-19 vaccines become widely available. Who will deliver these vaccines? How do we store and handle the vaccines? How do we overcome cultural and religious barriers for those who are reluctant to accept a vaccine? How do we counsel people about side-effects so that they come to embrace the vaccine even if they start out with reservations? Knowing how to answer these questions requires cultivating real skills.
•And beyond vaccines, new treatments are on their way. As of last August, there were more than 20,000 peer-reviewed publications on COVID-19, and more than 100 are coming out every day. Who can make sense of this avalanche of knowledge? How will healthcare workers — many new to COVID — keep track of the most important information?
More training
•Training more workers to treat more people is the best solution — for our personal and economic health. Simply put, we need more health experts to support vaccination and treatment. The ECHO model is worth ramping up even more to identify new healthcare workers who can be trained to be COVID-19 experts.
•At the end of the day, our personal, community, and national health hinges on a trained and plentiful workforce that is constantly up to date with the right knowledge and skills to care for all of us. We now have the model for successfully addressing not only this pandemic but future ones. Let’s build on what we have accomplished so far.
