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A clause in a draft free trade agreement text being negotiated between India and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) — Switzerland, Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway — could delay access to affordable, generic versions of patented drugs in India by a minimum of six years.
A leaked draft of the Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA) says that within six months of the agreement being signed, signatories should include a “specific duration” during which applicants seeking consent from their country’s regulators to sell a drug would not rely on “undisclosed test data” to gain market approval for at least six years.
Editorial
The wrong cooks spoiling the scientific broth (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
While religion is a sacred cow that doubles up as a cash cow, science is a cash cow that can often double up as a sacred cow in India.
The popular belief is that a good dose of science in our educational system makes students intelligent, unprejudiced good citizens and inculcates objectivity and other “scientific qualities of mind” in them.
Yet, our institutions are flush with scientists with quarter-cooked scientific temper: power often has the upper hand over knowledge even within these scientific cantonments.
The only knowledge that flows freely in our country is that from the barrel of the American journal. All other knowledge remains locked up as grey matter in our human resources.
Information and knowledge want to be free, but any such ‘misadventure’ is instantly thwarted by the powers that be, brandishing a sengol in one hand and a sword in the other.
Text & Context
On the rights of forest-dwellers (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Earlier this month, the notification of the Thanthai Periyar Sanctuary in Erode district of Tamil Nadu triggered consternation among forest-dwellers around it.
They expressed fear that this is a prelude to their rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) being denied.
They have accused the district and State administrations of violating relevant laws. The Thanthai Periyar Sanctuary is constituted from the North and South Bargur, Thamarai Karai, Ennamangalam, and Nagalur reserved forests in Anthiyur Taluk.
It is located between the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve of Tamil Nadu, the Male Mahadeshwara Wildlife Sanctuary and the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary of Karnataka. Six tribal forest villages — denied basic rights and facilities because these are not revenue villages — have been excluded from the sanctuary. These settlements are confined to an arbitrary area of 3.42 sq. km.
News
New guidelines released for community radio stations (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Minister of Information and Broadcasting Anurag Singh Thakur released the revised policy guidelines for setting up community radio stations at the Regional Community Radio Sammelan (South), a two-day conference, which commenced here on World Radio Day on Tuesday.
Addressing the conference through a video message, Mr. Thakur said that the revised guidelines allowed a single institution to set up a maximum of six stations in different districts of operation, increased the advertising time for the stations from seven minutes to 12 minutes per hour, and increased the rate of advertisement from ₹52 per 10 seconds to ₹74 per 10 seconds.
He said such measures will help in financial sustainability of the stations and further growth of the community radio sector.
Pointing out that the first community radio was launched in 2004 by former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, he said the number of stations increased substantially after the present government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.
Indira Gandhi, Nargis Dutt National Film Awards renamed (Page no. 14)
(Miscellaneous)
The ‘Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film of a Director’ and the ‘Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration’, which are part of the National Film Awards, have been renamed on the recommendation of the Committee for Rationalisation of Film Awards.
The cash that goes with prizes in all categories has been increased significantly. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award winners will now get ₹15 lakh, up from the ₹10 lakh earlier.
In a report adopted by the Information & Broadcasting Ministry, the committee constituted under the chairmanship of the Additional Secretary (I&B) made several recommendations. Accordingly, changes have been incorporated in the 70th National Film Awards (2022) Regulations.
The committee recommended that the ‘Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film of a Director’ be renamed ‘Best Debut Film of a Director’, and the award money be increased to ₹3 lakh. It also said that the ‘Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration’ be clubbed with ‘Best Film on Social Issues’ and ‘Best Film on Environment Conservation/Preservation’ and renamed ‘Best Feature Film Promoting National, Social and Environmental Values’. The Best Animation Film and the Best Special Effects categories have been clubbed under a new category of Best AVGC Film.
Business
Food prices may keep inflation high (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
A slight downtick in food price inflation may have cooled retail inflation to a three-month low of 5.1% in January, but most economists don’t expect the pace of price rise faced by consumers to slip much further in the near term with prices of vegetables, cereals and pulses still elevated.
Consumer Food Price Inflation stood at 8.3% in January, a tad below the 9.5% mark of December, but still sharply above October’s 6.6% pace when retail inflation was at 4.87%.
Inflation “may not drop further from these [5.1%] levels in February, as per high frequency vegetables price data so far”, HSBC economists Aayushi Chaudhary and Pranjul Bhandari said, noting that prices of vegetables and other food items have held firm through the first ten days of this month.
World
Talks open in Cairo for truce in Gaza (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Officials from the U.S., Egypt, Israel and Qatar were meeting in Cairo to try to agree a truce in Gaza as international calls grew for Israel to hold back on its planned assault on the Palestinian enclave's southern city of Rafah.
More than one million displaced civilians are crammed into Rafah, many living in camps and makeshift shelters, having fled to there from Israeli bombardments in other areas of Gaza during more than four months of warfare.
Israel says it wants to flush out Hamas militants from hideouts in Rafah and free Israeli hostages being held there, and is making plans to evacuate trapped Palestinian civilians. But no plan has been forthcoming and aid agencies say the displaced have nowhere else to go in the shattered territory.
Israeli tanks shelled the eastern sector of Rafah overnight, causing waves of panic. Rafah neighbours Egypt but Cairo has made clear it will not allow a refugee exodus over the border.
Science
The untapped potential of stem cells in menstrual blood (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Roughly 20 years ago, a biologist named Caroline Gargett went in search of some remarkable cells in tissue that had been removed during hysterectomy surgeries.
The cells came from the endometrium, which lines the inside of the uterus. When Dr. Gargett cultured the cells in a petri dish, they looked like round clumps surrounded by a clear, pink medium.
But examining them with a microscope, she saw what she was looking for — two kinds of cells, one flat and roundish, the other elongated and tapered, with whisker-like protrusions.
Dr. Gargett strongly suspected that the cells were adult stem cells — rare, self-renewing cells, some of which can give rise to many different types of tissues.
She and other researchers had long hypothesised that the endometrium contained stem cells, given its remarkable capacity to regrow itself each month.
The tissue, which provides a site for an embryo to implant during pregnancy and is shed during menstruation, undergoes roughly 400 rounds of shedding and regrowth before a woman reaches menopause.
But although scientists had isolated adult stem cells from many other regenerating tissues — including bone marrow, the heart, and muscle — “no one had identified adult stem cells in endometrium,” Dr. Gargett says.
The role of X chromosome in auto-immune diseases (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
In recent times several international celebrities have spoken up about their diagnosis and subsequent struggles with autoimmune diseases.
A majority of these celebrities are women. This bias is not just a fluke of nature but a reflection of a worldwide phenomenon.
A 2023 study by the University of Oxford stated that about 10% of the population they had studied had autoimmune diseases of which 13% were women and 7% were men.
The higher susceptibility of women to autoimmune diseases has puzzled researchers for decades. Several factors can cause autoimmune disease such as environmental factors, genetics, hormonal imbalance and lifestyle habits.
However, since women are more susceptible to these diseases, scientists previously thought that it could be related to sex hormones or faulty regulation of the X chromosome.
Now, a group of scientists have found a molecular coating that is found in half of the X chromosomes in women might be the reason behind this phenomenon.