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All drugs and food for special medical purposes imported for personal use for treatment of all rare diseases listed under the National Policy for Rare Diseases, 2021 are now fully exempted from basic customs duty, the Union government declared through a general exemption notification.
The Centre has also fully exempted pembrolizumab (Keytruda), used in treatment of various cancers, from basic customs duty.
In order to get this exemption, the individual importer has to produce a certificate from the Central or State Director of Health Services or District Medical Officer/Civil Surgeon of the district.
Drugs/medicines generally attract basic customs duty of 10%, while some categories of life-saving drugs/vaccines attract concessional rate of 5% or nil.
According to a government release, while exemptions are already in place for certain drugs for treatment of spinal muscular atrophy or Duchenne muscular dystrophy, it has been receiving many representations seeking customs duty relief for drugs and medicines used in treatment of other rare diseases.
Drugs or special foods required for the treatment of these diseases are expensive and often need to be imported. Food for special medical purposes is a food formulation intended to provide nutritional support to persons who suffer from a specific disease, disorder or condition.
It is estimated that for a child weighing 10 kg, the annual cost of treatment for some rare diseases may vary from ₹10 lakh to over ₹1 crore per year, with treatment being lifelong and drug dose and cost increasing with age and weight. This exemption will result in substantial cost savings and provide much-needed relief to the patients, said the release.
States
ISRO releases images of Earth captured by its EOS¬06 satellite (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Space)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has released images of Earth captured by the EOS-06 satellite. The space agency said that the images are a mosaic generated by the ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC).
“NRSC/ISRO has generated a global False Colour Composite (FCC) mosaic from the images captured by the Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM) payload on board EOS-06,” the space agency said.
It further added that the mosaic with 1 km spatial resolution is generated by combining 2939 individual images, after processing 300 GB data to show the Earth as seen during February 1 and 15.
OCM senses the Earth in 13 distinct wavelengths to provide information about global vegetation cover on Land and Ocean Biota for global oceans.
The EOS-06 third generation satellite in the Oceansat series was launched by ISRO onboard the PSLV-C54 along with eight Nano-satellites on November 26.
EOS-06 provides continued services of Oceansat-2 with enhanced payload capability and carries four payloads OCM-, Sea Surface Temperature Monitor, Ku-Band Scatterometer, ARGOS.
The EOS-06 is envisaged to observe ocean color data, sea surface temperature and wind vector data to use in Oceanography, climatic and meteorological applications.
The satellite also supports value added products such as potential fishing zone using chlorophyll, SST and wind speed and land-based geophysical parameters.
Editorial
GPT4 - a shift from ‘what it can do’ to ‘what it augurs’ (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Do you want help to prepare for the bar examination, plan a birthday party, or even translate Ukrainian to Punjabi? A single artificial intelligence (AI) model can do it all. A U.S. company, OpenAI, has once again sent shock waves around the world, this time with GPT-4, its latest AI model.
This large language model can understand and produce language that is creative and meaningful, and will power an advanced version of the company’s sensational chatbot, ChatGPT. Currently, GPT-4 is available to try by premium subscription or by getting on OpenAI’s waitlist.
GPT-4 is a remarkable improvement over its predecessor, GPT-3.5, which first powered ChatGPT. GPT-4 is more conversational and creative.
Its biggest innovation is that it can accept text and image input simultaneously, and consider both while drafting a reply. For example, if given an image of ingredients and asked the question, “What can we make from these?”GPT-4 gives a list of dish suggestions and recipes.
The model can purportedly understand human emotions, such as humorous pictures. Its ability to describe images is already benefiting the visually impaired.
While GPT-3.5 could not deal with large prompts well, GPT-4 can take into context up to 25,000 words, an improvement of more than 8x. GPT-4 was tested in several tests that were designed for humans and performed much better than average.
For instance, in a simulated bar examination, it had the 90th percentile, whereas its predecessor scored in the bottom 10%. GPT-4 also sailed through advanced courses in environmental science, statistics, art history, biology, and economics.
However, GPT-4 failed to do well in advanced English language and literature, scoring 40% in both. Nevertheless, its performance in language comprehension surpasses other high-performing language models, in English and 25 other languages, including Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali, Urdu and Telugu.
ChatGPT-generated text infiltrated school essays and college assignments almost instantly after its release; its prowess now threatens examination systems as well.
Explainer
The piezoelectric effect in liquids (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
For the first time, scientists have reported evidence of the piezoelectric effect in liquids. The effect has been known for 143 years and in this time has been observed only in solids.
The new finding challenges the theory that describes this effect as well as opens the door to previously unanticipated applications in electronic and mechanical systems.
The effect was found in pure 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium bis(trifluoromethyl-sulfonyl)imide and 1-hexyl-3-methyl imidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide — both ionic liquids (liquids which are made of ions instead of molecules) at room temperature.
In the piezoelectric effect, a body develops an electric current when it is squeezed. Quartz is the most famous piezoelectric crystal; it is used in analog wristwatches and clocks. Such crystals are also used in other instruments where converting mechanical stress to a current is useful.
Quartz is silicon dioxide (SiO2). The quartz crystal consists of silicon and oxygen atoms at the four vertices of a three-sided pyramid; each oxygen atom is shared by two pyramids.
These pyramids repeat themselves to form the crystal. The effective charge of each pyramid is located slightly away from the centre.
When a mechanical stress is applied, that is when the crystal is squeezed, the position of the charge is pushed further from the centre, giving rise to a small voltage. This is the source of the effect.
The reason the piezoelectric effect has only been expected in solids thus far is that the body being squeezed needs to have an organised structure, like the pyramids of quartz. Liquids don’t have such structure as they take the shape of the container.
Physicists explain the effect using a combination of Hooke’s law — that the force required to squeeze an object is linearly (i.e. non-exponentially) proportional to the amount of squeezing — and the properties of dielectric materials.
These are materials that don’t conduct electricity but whose electrons are still mildly affected by an electric field. Hooke’s law is not clear when the body isn’t very compressible.
The issues with the Quality Control Orders for fibers (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Quality Control Orders (QCO) have been issued for fibres — cotton, polyester and viscose — that constitute the basic raw materials for majority of the Indian textile and clothing industry.
While the standards were available earlier too, these are now revised and made mandatory for a few, and yet to be finalised for others.
International manufacturers of these fibres, who supply to India, are also mandated to get a certificate from the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), which is the certifying authority for the QCOs.
The Indian textile and clothing industry consumes both indigenous and imported fibres and filaments. The imports are for different reasons — cost competitiveness, non-availability in the domestic market, or to meet a specified demand of the overseas buyer.
The main aim of the QCO is to control import of sub-quality and cheaper items and to ensure that customers get quality products. The entire supply chain, from the textile manufacturers to exporters, has so far focused on quality standards prescribed by the buyers.
India imports annually 50,000 - 60,000 tonnes of viscose fibre and its variants such as Modal and Tencel LF from nearly 20 countries.
In the case of polyester, almost 90,000 tonnes of polyester fibre and 1.25 lakh tonnes of POY (Polyester Partially Oriented Yarn) are imported annually.
The overseas fibre manufacturers sell not only to India but to other countries too. The supply of some fibres to India is in small quantities. Getting the certificate from the BIS involves a cost and and hence not all are interested in getting the certificate.
The Indian textile manufacturers who are dependent on these suppliers for the raw material will have to either look at other suppliers or lose orders.
For instance, a bed linen exporter in Tiruppur district imports polyester filament with functional properties from Turkey based on the demand of his European buyers.
News
Trade talks with India and diplomatic tensions are ‘unconnected’, says U.K (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The U.K. government said that the free trade agreement negotiations between New Delhi and London and the tensions in the bilateral relationship over India’s concerns around lax security at the Indian High Commission, London, were two distinct issues.
Trade talks with India continue. And both sides want to see us achieve a full free trade agreement,” the spokesperson said, adding that it would enhance the relationship between the two countries.
The eighth round of trade talks were scheduled for March 20-24. India is the U.K.’s 12th largest trading partner. Total bilateral trade value between the two countries stood at £34 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2022, according to the U.K. government.
On March 19, a pro-Khalistan protester had removed the national flag from the entrance of the Indian High Commission, during a demonstration outside the Indian mission’s building, ‘India House’. In an apparent tit-for-tat move, India lowered security cover for the British High Commissioner to India, Alex Ellis, in New Delhi.
The U.K. government was talking to its Indian counterparts to ensure that security cover is “full and appropriate”, the spokesperson said. U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly issued a statement on March 22 saying security measures for the Indian High Commission were being reviewed.
Discussions on the U.K. side are being led by Mr. Cleverly’s office — the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) — and the police. Mr. Sunak is not involved directly with the security discussions but is aware of them, according to his spokesperson.
Business
Disinvestment facing many challenges: Govt. (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Finance Ministry, which last month pared the disinvestment target for 2023-24 to a nine-year low of ₹51,000 crore, has now publicly acknowledged the multiple challenges it is facing in privatising public sector enterprises (PSEs) and raising funds through minority stake sales, a drive that has stalled since Air India’s sale.
Outlining the key obstacles, the Ministry noted that the COVID-19 pandemic seriously impacted transactions in 2020 and 2021, followed by the Ukraine conflict last year, which hurt minority as well as strategic stake sales as “financial capacity and risk-reward options of potential bidders turned worse”.
Also, “strategic disinvestment transactions have to deal with matters such as resolving land title, lease and land use issues with State government authorities, disposal of non-core assets, excess manpower and labour unions, protection of process and functionaries etc.
Multiple court cases filed by employees’ unions and other interest groups against the disinvestment policy as well as specific transactions were also hindering deals.
Challenges to disinvestment through minority stake sale include reduced availability of government stake over 51% for large listed central PSEs; relatively muted perception of investors in these stocks as compared to private sector peers; price overhang in the market due to high disinvestment target and frequent use of exchange traded funds (ETF) route for stake sale till 2019-20,” it added.
Between 2016-17 and 2019-20, the government had raised almost ₹99,000 crore from ETFs with underlying shares of CPSEs.
Disinvestment receipts so far this year amount to just ₹35,282 crore, against a Budget target of ₹65,000 crore and revised estimates of ₹50,000 crore.
The privatisation of Central Electronics and Pawan Hans had to be scrapped after being announced, owing to legal concerns about the winning bidders.
The sole strategic sale completed in FY23 is of Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd. (NINL) to a Tata group firm. NINL was a joint venture between four CPSEs and two State PSEs from Odisha, with no direct Government of India holding.