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The traditional Kalanamak rice is protected under the Geographical Indication (GI) tag system. It’s recorded in the GI application that Lord Budhha gifted Kalanamak paddy to the people of Sravasti so that they remembered him by its fragrance.
The problem with the traditional variety of Kalanamak paddy is that it’s tall and prone to lodging, which badly impacted grain filling and quality.
The yield, as a result, fell drastically, and the market for the rice dwindled, too. The traditional Kalanamak paddy’s yield is barely two to 2.5 tonnes per hectare.
IARI Director told that their objective was to bring dwarfness into the variety and make the plant sturdy so prevent lodging.
The idea was to combine the quality of traditional Kalanamak into high yielding varieties. Its grains are short. In that process, we did the breeding programme by bringing the dwarfing genes from the rice variety Bindli Mutant 68, and also the gene of Pusa Basmati 1176 was used as a parent to cross with Kalanamak, and the progenies were further back-crossed with Kalanamak to restore its quality. This is a novel mutation.
The process started in 2007, when the first cross with dwarf varieties was carried out. For the last three years, the IARI conducted extensive evaluation at 10 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK) located in the GI districts.
In this kharif season, it was given to farmers. The aroma of the new breed is higher and nutritional qualities are also excellent. Productivity has gone up to 4.5 to five tonnes per hectare as against 2.5 tonnes in the case of traditional Kalanamak.
Tilak Ram Pandey, a farmer from Sidhharth Nagar, said his family has been cultivating traditional Kalanamak paddy for generations.
We consider this rice as the prasad of Lord Buddha. He has carried out his trial with the new variety in eight acres of his farm.
For the old variety, the length of the plant is 140 centimetres, and for the new variety it is between 95-100 centimetres. I will start harvest on November 20. It will be a good yield. There was larvae attack on the paddy, but it was much less than last year.
Mr. Pandey said 75% of farmers used to grow Kalanamak in the area, but of late, the market for the variety had shrunk. Now, there is encouragement from the government. Last year also, I had joined in this experiment. I had given the rice to the scientists and officials who visited my home. The taste is very good.
‘Amended IT rules are meant to make Web safer for all’ (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Minister of State for Electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar stressed that with the new amendments to the Information Technology rules, the government’s focus is to make the Internet a safe, trusted and accountable space for users.
The amendments will ensure that platforms such as Twitter and Facebook respect the rights accorded to citizens under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution, he said.
The Minister also dismissed criticism that the Centre-appointed Grievance Appellate Committees (GACs) would give the government power to moderate content on social media, saying that content moderation is not an issue that is going to come to GACs at all.
The government, he said, had been forced to introduce GACs due to the “casual” and “tokenism” approach of digital platforms towards user complaints in the past one year.
The government had received lakhs of messages from citizens regarding the action/inaction on the part of the intermediaries on grievances regarding objectionable content or suspension of user accounts, he added.
The GAC is really a disincentive to the intermediaries to not to continue their status quo casual way of approaching grievances redressal. He highlighted that there are broadly three main additions in the amended rules.
There are two issues that we are looking at — safety and trust, and accountability. Earlier, under due diligence, intermediaries had to only broadcast to users about not uploading certain categories of harmful/unlawful content.
There was no enforcement. We have changed that to say not only shall intermediaries inform and publish, but also cause that these things don’t happen and in that we have included misinformation (in the content categories).
So there is now a definite obligation on the part of the intermediary on content moderation. Currently, users just get a ‘thank you for sending your grievance, we will revert to you’ message from these platforms. The purpose of the GAC is to address unresolved grievances.
It is not an area the government wants to get into. We are doing it very, very reluctantly because we have an obligation and duty to the digital Nagriks that someone listens to their grievances; if platforms do not, then at least the government should.
News
Terrorists using technology to harm society: Jaishankar (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
Terrorism is still one of the “gravest threats” to humanity, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said, the concluding day of the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee’s special meeting in India that sought to focus on the misuse of emerging technologies by terrorist groups. He called for “zero tolerance towards terrorism”.
Mr. Jaishankar said that new and emerging technologies had enhanced capabilities of terror groups, “particularly in open and liberal societies”. “Internet and social media platforms have turned into potent instruments in the toolkit of terrorist and militant groups for spreading propaganda, radicalisation and conspiracy theories aimed at destabilising societies.
The meeting, which was addressed by all members of the Security Council, and included ministerial-level participation from Albania, Gabon, Ghana, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, committed to ending safe havens for terrorists and countering new technologies being used for terrorism.
However, the final “Delhi Declaration” did not include the concerns of the U.S. and India concerns over China’s block on terrorist designations at the UNSC.
The U.S. and the U.K. sparred with Russian diplomats over references to a “massive” drone attack attempted in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, which the Russian army claimed to have thwarted.
The UN Security Council, in the past two decades, has evolved an important architecture, built primarily around the counter-terrorism sanctions regime.
This has been very effective in putting those countries on notice that had turned terrorism into a State-funded enterprise,” Mr. Jaishankar said in a veiled reference to Pakistan, adding that the threat of terrorism is “growing and expanding” nonetheless.
Mr. Jaishankar’s statement came a day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had referred to India-U.S. joint efforts to designate several Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists through the UN’s 1267 sanctions committee.
All Member States must cooperate fully in the fight against terrorism in order to identify safe havens, deny terrorists access to them and bring to justice any person who supports, facilitates, participates in the financing, planning, preparation or commission of terrorist acts,” stated the final “Delhi Declaration on countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes”.
The “Delhi Declaration” focused on the threat from Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) including drones, online radicalisation and recruitment as well as terrorist financing through cryptocurrencies and other virtual means, with members noting, with additional concern the increasing global misuse of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) by terrorists to conduct attacks against, and incursions into critical infrastructure and soft targets or public places, and to traffic drugs and arms.
‘China continues work to upgrade roads opposite eastern Ladakh’ (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
China is continuing to upgrade roads opposite eastern Ladakh and strengthening alternative approaches around its Moldo garrison opposite the south bank of Pangong Tso.
Moreover, as winter sets in the high-altitude areas, a series of tents and shelters are under construction along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The width of the Hot Springs-Mobda La road has been upgraded from 5 m to about 13 m since the stand-off began in 2020, one source said citing intelligence inputs.
A new road of over 1 km from Hot Springs-Mobda La is also being constructed, which is about 14 km east of Patrolling Point (PP)-17 in Gogra-Hot Springs, the source said, adding the road is likely to be an alternative approach route.
In September, India and China announced disengagement from PP-15 in Gogra-Hot Springs. The two sides have since agreed to hold the 17th round of Corps Commander talks very soon to discuss remaining areas.
Road construction and upgrading has also been reported towards the north-east of Spanggur Tso. Officials said this is part of efforts by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to reduce their vulnerability near the Spanggur Tso as noticed at the height of tensions on the south bank of Pangong Tso at the end of August 2020 when the Indian Army deployed tanks and troops on mountain peaks in the Kailash range giving it a direct view of the Spanggur gap.
In addition, construction activity in the general area of Rudok is also continuing, including near the Domar helibase. New tents and material for containerised accommodation has also been observed in Domar, the source stated. At Rudok, which is a major PLA camp, opposite eastern Ladakh and about 60 km from the LAC, there has been an addition of 80-90 tents and sheds, to the 150 existing couple of months back.
The source said that a large number of tents under camouflage have been observed just few kilometres ahead of Sirjap on the north bank of Pangong Tso as also a large number of temporary tents observed around PLA camp, Lhasa, which is just over 200 km from the border.
A large number of tents, sheds and habitat have been constructed in the last two months and more are under way. Similar expansion of habitat has been observed opposite the strategic Sub-Sector North (SSN).
Tuberculosis finds easy pickings in closed tea gardens of north Bengal (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
A tea factory and its related infrastructure lie in ruins at the Lankapara Tea Garden in Madarihat block of West Bengal. Tea plants on hectares of land have either turned brown or wilted in the garden, suggesting years of neglect.
The garden, next to the picturesque hills that separate India and Bhutan and home to thousands of tea workers, has remained closed since the spring of 2015. For workers, the closure has meant poverty, malnutrition and an unforeseen malaise — tuberculosis.
There have been 11 cases of tuberculosis at the garden since 2019, the health worker at the clinic said. Lankapara has a population of nearly 7,500 and about 30% of the people have migrated for work.
Mr. Mangar cannot go out for work to Kerala like he did a few years ago because of his illness. His father, Kancha Mangar, also unemployed, said his son did not get the Rs. 500 monthly welfare assistance given by the State to tuberculosis patients.
Since the plantation has remained closed for seven years, the workers survive on five months of plucking (April to September) and selling the leaves through various committees.
About 30 km from Lankapara is the Dheklepara Tea Garden which has been closed since 2002. At the entrance of the garden in Alipurduar district stands a dilapidated tea processing factory and a few rusted vehicles. Near the structure, a few workers of the garden are weighing a pile of tea leaves collected from plants that still survive.
A few metres away, at the workers’ quarters, Praksh Tanti, 56, lies on his bed well past afternoon. On June 15, he was released from Birpara Sadar Hospital and the diagnosis states tuberculosis pleural effusion — one of the most common kinds of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis.
He cannot work and doctors have prescribed him a high-protein diet including eggs, which he said he cannot afford. His 22-year-old son has migrated out for work and does not keep in touch with the family. Like Mr. Mangar, Mr. Tanti too does not get the Rs. 500 monthly assistance.
Anuradha Talwar of Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity, who has been working with unions of tea gardens in north Bengal, said the closed gardens provide ideal conditions for malnutrition and tuberculosis.
For workers of gardens that have been shut, the State government provides free rations, but there is no other support. Therefore, malnutrition leads to tuberculosis among the workers.
She said the government was providing Rs. 1,500 monthly to such workers under the FAWLOI (Financial Assistance to Workers of Locked-out Industries) scheme.
World
Citing attack against ships, Russia moves to suspend grain exports (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The Russian Defense Ministry said that Moscow has moved to suspend its implementation of a UN-brokered grain export deal which has seen more than 9 million tonnes of grain exported from Ukraine and brought down global food prices.
The Ministry cited an alleged Ukrainian drone attack against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet ships moored off the coast of occupied Crimea, which Russia says took place in early Saturday, as the reason for the move. Ukraine has denied the attack.
The Russian declaration came one day after UN chief Antonio Guterres urged Russia and Ukraine to renew the deal. Mr. Guterres also urged other countries, mainly in the West, to expedite the removal of obstacles blocking Russian grain and fertilizer exports.
Russian troops moved large numbers of sick and wounded comrades from hospitals in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region and stripped the facilities of medical equipment, Ukrainian military officials reported as their forces fought to retake a province overrun by invading soldiers early in the war.
Kremlin-installed authorities in the mostly Russian-occupied region had previously urged civilians to leave the city of Kherson.
The so-called evacuation of invaders from the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson region, including from medical institutions, continues,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in an update. “All equipment and medicines are being removed from Kherson hospitals.”
The military’s claims could not be independently verified. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a nightly video address on Friday that the Russians were “dismantling the entire health care system” in Kherson and other occupied areas.
At least one Russian ship suffered damage in a major port in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. Ukraine and Russia offered different versions of what happened and who was to blame.
The Russian Defense Ministry said a minesweeper had “minor damage” during an alleged pre-dawn Ukrainian attack on navy and civilian vessels docked in Sevastopol. The city, Crimea’s largest, hosts the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
Science
Effects of neural precursor cells’ abnormal migration (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Neural cells derived from patients with bipolar disorder (BD) show a difference in the way they migrate as compared to controls, finds a study. This difference may contribute in a fundamental way to brain tissue repair and assembly.
Brain development starts early during pregnancy. This starts with a single layer of cells that roll up to form a tube called the neural tube. The brain develops at one end of this neural tube. It is a process that takes up many cell divisions as well as cells migrating through large distances.
The trajectories of migrating neural precursors lay the foundation for the developing brain. The speed and direction of migrating cells can alter the regional cellular make-up, and, therefore, the wiring of cortical areas.
The key result of the work is that the neural precursor cells derived from stem cells from people with bipolar disorder showed a difference in the way they migrated as compared to neural precursors derived from stem cells of people without bipolar disorder (Controls).
Bipolar disorder is a severe disabling illness where a person’s mood, energy, activity levels and ability to carry out day-to-day acivities undergo unusual shifts over a period. The illness has a genetic basis and neurodevelopmental origin.
Many studies have documented abnormalities in the brain structure of patients with BD. Some abnormalities include smaller brain size, reduced cortical grey and white matter and decreased number of interneurons in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus regions.
The researchers write in the paper, “Systemic dysregulation may produce the aberrant cellular phenotype, which could contribute to the functional and structural changes in the brain reported for bipolar disorder.”
Roughly, this implies that if the irregularities in migration exist in the formative stage, these could form a mature brain that has the sort of abnormalities seen in people with BD.
These differences perhaps exist, but need not always convert into disease as the changes are too subtle. However, they do increase the risk in general and that is what we observe.
A new target found to combat AMR Salmonella (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
The rapid and unselective use of traditional antibiotics gives rise to the emergence of drug resistant phenotype in typhoidal and non-typhoidal Salmonella serovars, which has increased the difficulties in curing Salmonella-induced food-borne illnesses (majorly typhoid or paratyphoid fever, gastroenteritis, and diarrhoea) worldwide.
Salmonella typhimurium ST313, an invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella serovar, causes bloodstream infection in the malnourished and immunocompromised population of sub-Saharan Africa.
Recent studies have reported the emergence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) phenotype in Salmonella tphimurium DT104, which causes infection in humans and cattle.
The MDR phenotype in this pathogen was provided by Salmonella Genomic Island-1 (SGI-1), which confers protection against a wide range of antibiotics, including ampicillin (pse-1), chloramphenicol/florfenicol (floR), streptomycin/spectinomycin (aadA2), sulphonamides (sul1), and tetracycline (tetG) (ACSSuT).
Further emergence of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) S. Typhimurium ST313 (having multi-drug resistant (MDR) and resistance against extended-spectrum beta-lactamase and azithromycin) in Africa posed a significant threat to global health.
Recent studies reported an annual incidence of as many as 360 cases of typhoid fever per 1,00,000 people, with an annual estimate of 4.5 million cases and 8,930 deaths (0.2% fatality rate) in India.
The continuous adaptation of this bacteria to the available antibiotics creates a risk of developing antimicrobial resistance in the future. This is the reason why it is essential to study the effect of new drugs and find their potential targets in Salmonella in detail.
A recent study carried out by our group showed that outer membrane porins of Salmonella Typhimurium play an essential role in the survival of the bacteria in the presence of antibiotics.
In this study, we showed that deleting outer membrane protein A (OmpA) from Salmonella hampered its survival in the presence of two beta-lactam drugs — ceftazidime and meropenem. OmpA is one of the most abundant barrel-shaped porin proteins localised in the outer membrane of Salmonella.
The absence of OmpA in Salmonella hampers the stability of the bacterial outer membrane and reduces the expression of efflux pump genes.
Banana, the highly nutritious fruit (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Are bananas an essential item in South Indian pujas (prayers) and celebrations? Yes, people decorate temple entrances, weddings, and festivals with banana trees at the entrance, offer banana fruits to the deity, and during meals use banana leaves as plates (no spoons or small bowls for liquids).
It is an art to eat rasam saadam on a banana leaf. Although these days one can buy ‘modern’ banana plates in restaurants, where dry banana leaves are ‘stitched’ together for convenience.
J. Meenakshi, a science writer, writes in BBC that the banana tree is equated to Lord Brihaspati (Jupiter) for fertility and bounty. Thus, bananas are considered sacred.
Dr. K.T. Achaya, in his book, Indian Food: a Historical Companion (Oxford Univ. Press, 1994) mentions banana in Buddhist literature in around 400 BC.
He mentions that bananas came to South India from New Guinea island through the sea route. Some have claimed that it was in New Guinea that bananas have been first domesticated.
Ms. Meenakshi found during her travel from Hyderabad to Nagercoil that there are some 12-15 varieties of bananas. These plants grow in regions that are warm and humid, abutting the Western Ghats.
Given this, where all in India is banana grown? Largely in the peninsular southern coastal region, namely in parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Bengal, and in the Northeastern areas of the country such as Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
However, the central and northern regions (Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab) also grow the plant but neither in such variety nor in numbers.
India produces about 29 million tonne of banana every year, and next is China with 11 million. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) says that about 135 countries produce bananas, and banana plants like warm and wet conditions.
Of particular note are the Southeastern Asian countries, which have as many as 300 varieties of banana, many of which have visually beautiful plants.
What is it in bananas that has made them tasty, holy, of medicinal value, and nutritional value? The book Nutritive value of Indian Foods from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) points out that bananas have 10-20 mg of calcium, 36 mg of sodium, 34 mg of magnesium and 30-50 mg of phosphorous per 100 g of edible material. All these make bananas highly nutritious.
FAQ
Is the World’s Climate Action Plan on Track (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Leaders from around 200 countries will gather in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh from November 6-18 for the 27th round of the Conference of Parties, or COP27, to deliberate on a global response to the increasing threat of climate change.
The annual summit comes at a crucial juncture against the backdrop of global inflation, energy, food and supply chain crises, fuelled by an ongoing war in Ukraine and exacerbated by extreme weather events, with data showing that the world is not doing enough.
At COP27, negotiations are likely to focus on efforts to decarbonise, finance climate action measures and other issues related to food security, energy and biodiversity.
The participants at COPs are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, adopted 30 years ago. At present, the UNFCCC has 198 members.
The first COP was held in 1995 in Berlin. Since then, a few COPs have stood out with historic agreements. For instance, the Kyoto Protocol, adopted at COP3 in 1997, committed industrialised economies to limit and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
COP21, another significant conference, ended with the 2015 Paris Agreement in which member countries agreed to keep global warming below 2°C, ideally no more than 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels.
The previous summit, hosted by Glasgow, ended with the Glasgow Climate Pact that called for the ‘phasing down’ of unabated coal power.
COP27 will seek to strengthen a global response and deliberate if wealthy nations emitting carbon dioxide should compensate for the loss to developing countries with a lower carbon footprint.
Broadly, the summit seeks to “accelerate global climate action through emissions reduction, scaled-up adaptation efforts and enhanced flows of appropriate finance” through its four priority areas of mitigation, adaptation, finance and collaboration.
As per the presidential vision statement, COP27 will be about moving from negotiations and planning to the implementation of promises and pledges made.
Experts say the conference could emerge as an “in-between COP,” since climate change goals have either passed or are not due soon, giving COP27 a platform to push forward issues that developed economies pass over.
The world has changed since the last COP in Glasgow. Extreme weather events and scientific reports are a stark reminder of the devastating impact of human pressure on the climate and the inefficiency of existing plans.
These reports, likely to leave an impact on political agenda and environmental diplomacy, have built momentum for the Egypt summit.
Why has Google got a second antitrust fine? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
In the second blow to Google’s coffers in a week, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) on October 25 imposed a fine of ₹936.44 crore on the tech major for anti-competitive practices in its Play Store policies.
On October 20, the CCI had imposed a provisional fine of ₹1,337.76 crore on the company for abusing its dominant position in multiple markets in the Android mobile device ecosystem.
The new fine by the CCI pertains to one of the three antitrust lawsuits Google is facing in India. The investigation into Google’s payment system used in the Play Store began in 2020 after an individual complainant, whose identity has been kept confidential, filed an antitrust case against Google.
Indian startups and small digital companies have complained about Google’s policy of imposing the use of its own payment system on app developers. Similar probes are also on against Google in South Korea and Indonesia.
A European court recently upheld a 2018 ruling against Google saying that the company imposed “unlawful restrictions on manufacturers of Android mobile devices.” Google faces a $4.1 billion fine and plans to appeal.
The Google Play Store is a marketplace for apps and services and has a collection of more than three million applications.
In the current matter involving Google, the CCI examined if the company violated the Competition Act through its policy of requiring app developers to mandatorily use Google Play’s billing system (GPBS) not only for receiving payments for paid app downloads but also for in-app purchases.
The probe also noted that if the app developers did not comply with Google’s policy of using GPBS, they would not be permitted to list their apps on the Play Store.
The CCI thus concluded that making access to the Play Store contingent on mandatory usage of GPBS was “one-sided and arbitrary” and it also denied app developers “the inherent choice to use payment processor[s] of their liking from the open market.”
It also examined the service fee that Google charges developers of paid apps and for in-app purchases. Compared to the 0-3% fee by other payment aggregators in India, the Commission found Google’s service fee (between 15-30%) to be excessive, unfair, and discriminatory.
Google submitted that only 3% of developers on Google Play are subjected to a service fee. However, the commission found that the services provided by Google to these developers are in no way different or additional compared to services provided to developers of free apps.
Further, it found that Google does not make it mandatory for some of its own apps like YouTube to use the GPBS, exempting them from paying the service fee.