📰 Nod for defence acquisition procedure
It involves making communication gear, light tanks
•The Defence Ministry has Accorded In–Principle (AIP) approval to four projects under Make–I, government funded, and five under Make-II, industry–funded, categories of Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020 which includes development of a light tank for the Army and communication equipment for the Indian Air Force.
•“The industry will be provided financial support for prototype development of these projects,” the Ministry said on Thursday.
•The projects which were accorded the AIP by the Collegiate Committee of the MoD include IAF Communication Equipment with Indian security protocols (routers, switches, encryptors, VoIP phones and their software), airborne electro-optical pod with ground-based system, airborne stand-off jammer and light tank for the Army.
•This is for the first time since the launch of the industry-friendly DAP-2020 that the Indian industry has been involved in development of big-ticket platforms such as light tank and communication equipment with Indian security protocols, it said.
•The AIP has also been accorded to the following five projects under industry–funded Make-II procedure which include full motion simulator for Apache and Chinook helicopters and wearable robotic equipment for aircraft maintenance for the IAF.
•The Army’s projects include integrated surveillance and targeting system for mechanised forces and autonomous combat vehicle. Projects under ‘Make-II’ category involve prototype development of equipment, system, platform or their upgrades or their sub-systems, sub-assembly, assemblies and components primarily for import substitution and innovative solutions, for which no government funding will be provided for prototype development, the Ministry said.
India must pursue schemes for rehabilitation of children orphaned by the pandemic
•Numbers can often be hustled to tell many tales; but it is the story that is picked on the basis of the desire to do what is morally right that sets the course for meaningful action. The recent Lancet estimates of COVID-19-associated orphanhood, which put the number at over 19 lakh children orphaned as a result of COVID-19, has raised India’s hackles. The Lancet study generated numbers based on modelling, and therefore only estimates and not actual numbers are available. Globally, it estimated that 52 lakh children had been rendered orphans by the pandemic. The study, in its original period, March 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021 was revised, with updates based on excess mortality and fertility data used to model increases in estimates of COVID-19- associated orphanhood between May 1 and October 31, 2021 for 21 countries. Orphanhood was defined as the death of one or both parents; or the death of one or both custodial grandparents. The authors claimed their findings showed that numbers of children orphaned by COVID-19 had almost doubled in six months compared with the data after the first 14 months of the pandemic. India has objected strongly to the estimate of 19 lakh, terming it as “sophisticated trickery intended to create panic among citizens”. As per data collected by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and collated on the Bal Swaraj portal, the number of children orphaned during COVID-19 in India was far lower, at 1.53 lakh.
•While the study does include revised estimates for all the nations, the message that it seeks to convey is the absolute urgency with which governments must incorporate childcare into any COVID-19 management programme. The state should proactively draw such children into the umbrella of care to save them from numerous adversities — poverty, violence, destitution, and lack of access to education and health care. The Indian government, to its credit, announced a grand plan of support for children forced into orphanhood by COVID-19. Many States announced rehabilitation plans, including provisions for adoption, foster care, education and health care; some admittedly more progressive than others, but the momentum was certainly built up in the country. It is time to update the status of such programmes, and information on the number of cases where intervention has occurred, and where it is pending, must be put out in the public realm. Well begun is half done, but the Centre and the States must expand efforts. The Government would do well to allow interventions for children to be informed by a ‘whole-life” care paradigm, and fresh data from time to time, especially in a pandemic that is not only rapidly evolving, but by all accounts, is nowhere near ending.
📰 Not taking sides: On India and the Ukraine conflict
India might have to engage more deeply with the Ukrainian war as the conflict deepens
•With a convincing majority of 141 of 193 countries, the UN General Assembly voted on Wednesday for a resolution that deplored in the “strongest terms” Russia’s attack on Ukraine and demanded an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops. The resolution, which was discussed in a rare special emergency session and under the rubric of the “Uniting for Peace” resolution invoked after decades, came as a result of an aborted resolution at the UN Security Council, which Russia, as a permanent member, had vetoed. While the UNGA resolution carries little teeth, it does represent a common stand taken by the international public commons, with 96 countries signing up as co-sponsors of the resolution. Russia rejected the outcome as a political vote that came of severe “pressure” from the U.S. and European countries that were the drivers of the resolution, but it seemed clear that it was isolated on the global stage. Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea and Syria voted against the motion, and 35, including India, abstained. While the resolution also decried the Russian decision to recognise Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, representatives of member states made it clear that it was the relentless bombing of Ukrainian cities that they could not turn a blind eye to.
•India’s abstention, not a surprise, disappointed many western countries that have been lobbying for a shift in the Indian position. In the past week, India has abstained from three votes (including two procedural ones) at the UNSC where it is an elected member, one at the UN Human Rights Council, and another at the IAEA on resolutions critical of Russia. In an explanation of vote (EOV), India’s UN representative said that India is calling for dialogue, while officials say that India’s abstention has given it room to play a role in diplomacy with Russia and Ukraine. In a sign of some discomfort with Russian actions, the EOV also dropped the earlier references to the “legitimate security interests”, and included language on respecting the “territorial sovereignty” of members. India has also sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine although its vote of abstention indicates the Modi government still has many reasons not to vote against Russia, a strategic and defence partner that has stood by India. As the conflict continues, and the global community expresses its disapproval, however, India’s desire to remain an “abstentionist” power is being called into question. The Government has also said that it needs to remain on good terms with both sides as its primary focus remains the safe exit of Indians from the conflict zone. While evacuating Indians is an important priority, it cannot be India’s only focus in this crisis, given its aspirations for global leadership and the oft quoted motto of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”. It may become necessary for India to engage more deeply with the conflict in Europe, which is now a global concern.
📰 Can you make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?
In election-obsessed India, there is hardly any time to discuss the advances of modern science and their repercussions
•In India, because of the election cycle, and because political events oscillate between their significance for an electoral democracy or their implications for an electoral autocracy, we spend little time discussing the advances of modern science and their repercussions for public life. There have been such fascinating developments in science and in technology, such as in artificial intelligence, but these have merely been reported and then have quietly faded from public view.
For India to ponder over
•For example, there has been little discussion on the privacy implications of the new Ray-Ban/Facebook smart glasses/spectacles branded as ‘Stories’. These allow the wearer to video record or take photos of events and conversations without the permission or knowledge of those in the wearer’s vicinity. She has only to press an unobtrusive button and the recording starts. Each video recording can last 30 seconds. It is an elegant device that combines both high technology and high fashion. Reviewers of the glasses were unsure whether to regard the glasses as creepy or as cool. What are their implications for state interference in our privacy?
•In India, such advances of science and technology get adopted without even a boo. They soon get normalised without their ethical implications even being debated. This is because the election cycle, a low hanging fruit, dominates our attention. We do not have to, therefore, deal with complex ethical questions that result from advances in science and technology. And yet we need to.
Direction of medical science
•The advances in science that I would like to place for public debate come from the field of medical sciences. It is an area labelled ‘Xenotransplantation’, to refer to its technical name. I am a student of the human sciences and not of medicine and so I shall place the facts as I understand them, which I have culled from popular news forums such as BBC, Nature, The New York Times, and The Guardian.
•In the last four months, three news reports have caught my attention. The first case comes from a successful experiment, in September 2021, at the NYU Langone hospital in New York, one of the most advanced research hospitals in the field of medical sciences. A medical team there attached a kidney from a gene-edited animal to a person declared brain dead to see if the animal kidney was able to do the job of processing waste and producing urine. It did. The details are in the NYT, January 20, 2022.
•The family of the person had given its permission for this experiment since the individual had donated her body for medical science. In the United States there are apparently 90,000 persons waiting for a kidney transplant and this successful experiment would go some way towards meeting that need ( The Guardian, October 20 2021); another estimate is that there are 1,21,678 people waiting for lifesaving organ transplants in the U.S.).
•The second case, reported on January 14, 2022, is from the University of Maryland where a team of doctors used the heart of an animal, which had genetically modified features, as a replacement heart on a patient who had run out of available options. By all accounts the operation seems to have been successful. The Director of the Cardiac Xenotransplant Program of the University of Maryland, Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, (originally from Pakistan) had this to say about the significance of the operation. “This is a game changer because now we will have these organs readily available … and the technique of genetically modifying them… We can thereby customize the heart or the organ for the patient” (the BBC, January 15, 2022).
•The third case is the news report that a doctor in Germany, who has been working in the area of xenotransplants, plans to develop a farm to cultivate genetically modified organs for such transplants. In his view, this will ease the pressure on the medical system. In Germany alone there are 8,500 patients waiting for organ transplants ( The Guardian, February 3, 2022) In all three cases the animal from which the tissue or organ had been taken was the pig. It is regarded by medical science as the animal whose organs are currently best suited for humans.
Moral and social issues
•At the very least there are three ethical issues that these medical advances raise for human societies. In India these developments carry an additional sting. Should we discuss them or, given that they involve community sensibilities, should we pretend they are not there? Do these ethical issues pertain only to the individual or do they also concern the community? Which gets precedence? Are we obliged to discuss them, because Article 51A of the Constitution requires us “to develop scientific temper”, or can we ignore them?
•The animal rights movement has objected to these advances in medical science, of xenotransplantation, because it ignores the rights of animals. They are hostile to the idea of animal farms with genetically modified animals for the purpose of harvesting organs for humans requiring transplant. Animals, they argue, also have rights and it is our moral responsibility to support these rights. We must, therefore, not walk down the road of organ farms. Such thinking, they argue, stems from a philosophy of anthropocentrism which places human beings at the centre of nature and regards all other living creatures as having only value if they can be of use to humans. Such anthropocentric thinking, they rightly declare, has been the basis of the ecological crises of climate change. Mahatma Gandhi, they add, was opposed to the practice of vivisection.
•The animal rights perspective places on us the classic utilitarian dilemma of whether it is better to kill an animal and save a human being or to save an animal and let the human die. Medical science is having to work though such moral dilemmas. In India, where such questions do not even enter the portals of regulatory bodies, such as the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), I think the time has come for us to ask such questions ( Nature, January 14, 2022).
•But it is the third set of questions that is so incendiary in India. In a society where the pig is considered a dirty animal, where eating pork is considered disgusting, where those who deal with pigs are given low social status, where even asking such questions is taboo, what should the medical fraternity do? If global advances in medical research are moving towards a consensus on the suitability of a pig’s heart for patients suffering from terminal heart decline, what should the medical authorities recommend to the government? Imagine that such a patient is a Jain, or a Jew, or a Muslim or just a vegetarian. Should they be allowed to die since their belief system forbids them to have anything to do with a pig, or should they be offered a choice of life?
•Further, would not the wide adoption of xenotransplant procedures diminish the illegal and immoral market in human organs, where people, even children, are abducted so that their organs can be harvested? In school we were taught to memorise proverbs. I never quite understood the saying, ‘You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’. Now I do. You can.
