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The burgeoning problem of managing e-waste is a cross cutting and persisting challenge in an era of rapid urbanisation, digitalisation and population growth.
The first set of e-waste Rules was notified in 2011 and came into effect in 2012. An important component of the Rules (2011) was the introduction of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).
Under EPR compliance, ‘producers’ are responsible for the safe disposal of electronic and electric products once the consumer discards them.
E-waste rules 2016, which were amended in 2018, were comprehensive and included provisions to promote ‘authorisation’ and ‘product stewardship’.
Other categories of stakeholders such ‘Producer Responsibility Organisations (PRO) were also introduced in these rules.
In November 2022, the Ministry of Environment and Forests further notified a new set of e-waste rules, which will come into force from April 1, 2023. These rules address some of the critical issues but are silent on others.
The first main chapter of the E-Waste (Management) Rules 2022 includes the provision of an EPR framework, the foremost requirement being the ‘Registration of Stakeholders’ (manufacturer, producer, refurbisher and recycler).
The earlier rules placed importance on seeking authorisation by stakeholders, but a weak monitoring system and a lack of transparency resulted in inadequacy in compliance.
Most of the ‘refurbishers’ or the ‘repair shops’ operating in Delhi are not authorised under the Central Pollution Control Board of India.
Further, many formal recyclers undertake activities only up to the pre-processing or segregation stage, and thereafter channelise e-waste to the informal sector, which is a pure violation of law.
A ‘digitalized systems approach’, introduced in the new rules (2022), may now address these challenges. Standardising the e-waste value chain through a common digital ‘portal’ may ensure transparency and is crucial to reduce the frequency of ‘paper trading’ or ‘false trail’, i.e., a practice of falsely revealing 100% collection on paper while collecting and/or weighing ‘scrap’ to meet targets.
Opinion
We need to democratically reimagine science (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Notwithstanding the origins of India’s National Science Day, which is to commemorate the discovery of the Raman effect, instead of speaking about pre-eminent scientists and Nobel Prizes, it may be worthwhile to consider the absence of serious training in critiquing science.
Last week, an article in a mainstream publication claimed that the ‘shivling’ was proof that sages in ancient India knew of the existence of protons and electrons and that their knowledge had been forgotten because they didn’t use the same words that western scholars did.
Claims such as this have heightened our awareness of, and scepticism towards, attempts to rationalise the validity of knowledge organised in some non-science system according to the tenets of science.
But in the resulting eagerness to steer clear of this pseudoscientific blather, many have swung to the other extreme, championing scientism — the purported superiority of science and scientific knowledge — to the exclusion of other equally legitimate experiences of reality.
The adherents of these two extremes may claim to be far apart but they are still united by their inability to imagine other, better alternatives to a world in which science and non-science can only be at war — such as, for example, a world in which we make sense of reality by drawing on science, the humanities and social sciences (HSS), and lived experience at once.
Even today, keeping up the virtue in some circles of reaching for science’s take the moment anything vaguely unscientific appears on one’s Twitter feed often risks discarding more empowering alternatives.
For example, in 2020, Trisha Greenhalgh noted how waiting for evidence that scientific studies couldn’t provide could slow our response to COVID-19 in some contexts. T
his was an example of what “happens when we proffer science as a totalising system that has the superpower to transform all ignorance, all evil, and all regression,” as Gita Chadha and Renny Thomas wrote in 2022.
Relatively few tobacco users in the southern States (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
In the north-eastern States of India, consumption of tobacco among men — in both smokable and chewable forms — was higher than the rest of India in 2019-21.
If only the smokable forms were considered, the share was higher in the northern States of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, J&K U.T. and the eastern State of West Bengal.
If only the chewable forms were considered, the share was higher in the east — Jharkhand, Bihar and Odisha — and in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
In the southern States, the share was relatively low with regard to both forms of tobacco consumption. However, among those who smoked, the share of those who consumed more than five sticks a day was much higher in many southern States. So, while smokers were fewer in the south, those who smoked did so heavily.
The percentage of all men aged 15-49 who smoked cigarettes and/or bidis and/or cigars and/or pipe and/or hookah in 2019-21. The share should be read with caution as those who smoked cigarettes could also be bidi smokers, which means they were counted twice.
The share was much higher among some northern and all north-eastern States except Assam. While the share of smokers was low in the south, it was even lower in the western States of Gujarat and Maharashtra.
If only cigarette smokers were considered, Mizoram (62.4% smoke cigarettes), Meghalaya (49.6%), Manipur (36.2%) and Arunachal Pradesh (31.7%) were the top four. In West Bengal, 24.3% smoked bidis, the highest share in India. In Haryana 9.9% smoked hookah, the highest share by a high margin.
Allmen aged 15-49 who chewed gutka with tobacco and/or paan masala with tobacco and/or paan with tobacco and/or khaini and/or other forms of tobacco in 2019-21.
The share was much higher in the north-eastern, eastern, and some central, western and northern States. All the southern States and some northern States have a relatively low share.
The usage of khaini was over 35% in Bihar and Jharkhand. These two States led by a wide margin. In Gujarat, over 33% men chewed gutka/paan masala with tobacco, the second highest share, followed by Odisha (31%), M.P. (29.6%) and U.P. (27.6%).
Explainer
The New START treaty on pause (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
On February 23, on the eve of the first anniversary of his country’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow was unilaterally suspending the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty with the U.S., stating that the West was trying to destroy Russia.
Making the announcement at the end of his nearly two-hour-long state of the-nation address to Russian lawmakers, Mr. Putin said that Moscow ought to stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the U.S. does.
This move would end a global ban in place on nuclear weapons tests since Cold War times. In response, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Mr. Putin’s move was “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible”.
About half a decade before the end of the Cold War, the then leaders of the U.S. and the erstwhile Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, declared in a historic statement: “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
While both Moscow and Washington were aggressive in their one-upmanship of expanding nuclear arsenals in the initial decades of the Cold War, they have engaged in bilateral talks since, albeit rocky ones, and signed multiple treaties to shrink and keep checks on each other’s nuclear arsenals.
The first formal dialogue, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), started between the two countries under former U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1969.
The Anti-Ballistic Missile defence systems Treaty, which provided for the shooting down of incoming missiles, was signed in 1972, but the George W. Bush administration unilaterally pulled out of the pact in 2002.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), signed in 1991, expired in late 2009 and another treaty, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT or Moscow Treaty), was signed in 2002.
However, the New START treaty replaced the 2002 pact and was the last remaining nuclear weapons control agreement between the two powers who together hold 90% of the world’s nuclear arsenal.
The New START treaty was signed in 2010 by former U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and came into force in February 2011. It was extended for five years when current U.S. President Joe Biden took office in 2021.
Under the Treaty, America and Russia cannot deploy more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and more than 700 long-range missiles and bombers.
Organ on a chip’: a tech which mimics disease systems in laboratory conditions (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Last year, the U.S. government passed the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act 2.0. The move is expected to boost the research and development of ‘organ chips’ — small devices containing human cells that are used to mimic the environment in human organs, including blood flow and breathing movements, serving as synthetic environments in which to test new drugs.
Bringing a new drug into the market is an expensive process ridden with failure. First, researchers identify chemical compounds that can be used to treat a condition using modelling and other techniques.
Then they shortlist those that perform well and test them on cells grown on plastic dishes in the lab or on animals that can mimic the disease in certain conditions.
At this stage, called the preclinical trial, scientists determine whether these drugs are toxic and if they can efficaciously treat the condition. Animals used here include mice, rats, hamsters, and guinea pigs, depending on the drug being tested.
Researchers also use pigs when testing implant devices like stents. If the trial results are favourable, researchers can begin human clinical trials.
Today, fewer than 10% of new drugs complete preclinical studies and fewer than 50% of these eventually successfully complete clinical trials. Some researchers blame the use of animal models in preclinical studies for this enormous failure rate.
The current consensus is that animals can mimic some human diseases well but not others. In cases where they can’t, a new drug that seems promising in preclinical studies is almost certainly bound to fail in human clinical trials.
These challenges have led scientists to look for alternative models that mimic human diseases. One such is the organ-on-a-chip model, which has garnered a lot of attention in the last decade.
Donald Ingber, a professor of bioengineering and director of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, and his colleagues developed the first human organ-on-a-chip model in 2010.
It was a ‘lung on a chip’ that mimicked biochemical aspects of the lung and its breathing motions.In 2014, Wyss Institute members launched a startup called Emulate Inc. to commercialise their technology.
The group has since created several different chips, including of the bone marrow, epithelial barrier, lung, gut, kidney, and vagina.
Recently, Emulate’s liver chips could successfully predict the ability of drugs to cause liver injury with 87% sensitivity and 100% specificity. The researchers used liver chips to evaluate the toxic effects of 27 drugs known to be either safe or cause liver injury in humans.
News
Agnipath scheme is in the national interest, says Delhi High Court (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
he Delhi High Court on Monday upheld the validity of the Agnipath scheme launched by the Union government for recruitment in the armed forces.
Dismissing a bunch of petitions, a Division Bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad said the scheme was introduced in national interest.
It maintained that from the perusal of the material on record, the scheme was a well-thought-out policy decision of the Government of India.
We have extensively gone through the Agnipath Scheme, and can conclusively state that this scheme was made in national interest, to ensure that the armed forces are better equipped.
Responding to the petitions that challenged the constitutional validity of the scheme, the court said “it’s needless to state the four years’ training would also instil a sense of nationalism in the recruits”, which would “prompt them to use their skills and focus on the development of the country”.
Such advantages cannot be overlooked and dislodged on the basis of the apprehension that after four years such individuals may be unemployed or may take to illegal or unethical activities.
Besides the pleas challenging the Agnipath scheme, the court dismissed petitions relating to the recruitment for the armed forces under certain previous advertisements, while clarifying that such candidates do not have the right to seek recruitment.
The petitioners have no right to claim that the recruitment under the 2019 Notification and CEE Examination needs to be completed.
Furthermore, both promissory estoppel and legitimate expectation cannot be applied in the instant case to force the Government to complete the recruitment keeping in mind larger public interest.
1,300 year old Buddhist stupa found in Odisha’s Jajpur (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 1, History)
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) stumbled upon a 1,300-year-old stupa right in the middle of a mining site in Odisha’s Jajpur district from where Khondalite stones were supplied for the beautification project around the 12th century Shree Jagannath Temple in Puri.
We have managed to unearth a Buddhist stupa at the Khandolite mining site at Parabhadi in Sukhuapada hamlet in Jajpur district. Another smaller stupa has been completely destroyed due to mining at the site.
Mr. Garnayak said the stupa could be 4.5-metre tall and initial assessment showed that it may belong to the 7th or 8th century.
The archaeological asset was found at Parabhadi, which is situated near Lalitagiri, a major Buddhist complex, having a large number of stupas and monasteries.
After discovery of the Buddhist stupa from the mining site, the ASI intervened and asked the Odisha government to stop mining through its Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC). The mining has since stopped.
The newly discovered stupa was possibly disfigured in an earlier period. The ASI would now attempt to fully retrieve the structure’s archaeological heritage, restore it to its original form and undertake protection of the site.
The State government must conduct heritage assessment of a site, particularly when it is situated near any place of archaeological interest, before giving permission for mining. The smaller stupa, which was destroyed, cannot be restored.