Nabard launches RuPay Kisan cards

National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) today rolled out RuPay Kisan Card and RuPay Debit Card here today.

"This is the first time that RuPay Card, which is in the nature of ATM cum Debit Card, is being issued by any cooperative bank in the state of Haryana," said Nabard Chief General Manager (Haryana) D V Deshpande.

He said the issue of RuPay cards by cooperative banks will enable them to improve their customer service and bring it on par with any other bank to farmers and other customers.

Meanwhile, Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda asked Nabard to increase the refinance given to cooperative banks from 50 per cent to 75 per cent.

Speaking on the occasion of its 33rd Foundation Day here today, Hooda said reducing groundwater level and shrinkage of fertile land posed big challenges which could be met by promoting piped and drip irrigation, constructing green houses, promoting dairy and techniques of vertical farming.

Hooda asked Nabard to work at the micro level for the expansion of these techniques and said it should provide finance for setting up water bodies in the state.

He said while Kisan Clubs have been set up in all sub-divisions of the state, there is a need to set up Kisan Clubs in all villages.

"Nabard should extend a helping hand in doing so. These clubs would act as a bridge between NGOs, self-help groups, farmer groups," he added.

Gene therapy to cure vision loss: Research

Researchers have created a new approach to develop personalised gene therapies for patients with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a leading cause of vision loss.

The approach, the first of its kind, takes advantage of induced pluripotent stem cell technology to transform skin cells into retinal cells, which are then used as a patient-specific model for disease study and preclinical testing.

Using this approach, researchers from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) showed that a form of RP caused by mutations to the gene MFRP (membrane frizzled-related protein) disrupts the protein that gives retinal cells their structural integrity.

They also showed that the effects of these mutations can be reversed with gene therapy. The approach could potentially be used to create personalised therapies for other forms of RP, as well as other genetic diseases.

“The use of patient-specific cell lines for testing the efficacy of gene therapy to precisely correct a patient’s genetic deficiency provides yet another tool for advancing the field of personalised medicine,” said Stephen H Tsang, the Laszlo Z Bito Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and associate professor of pathology and cell biology.

While RP can begin during infancy, the first symptoms typically emerge in early adulthood, starting with night blindness. In later stages, RP destroys photoreceptors in the macula, which is responsible for fine central vision.

In the current study, the CUMC team used iPS technology to transform skin cells taken from two RP patients – each with
a different MFRP mutation – into retinal cells, creating patient-specific models for studying the disease and testing potential therapies.

By analysing these cells, the researchers found that the primary effect of MFRP mutations is to disrupt the regulation of actin, the protein that makes up the cytoskeleton, the scaffolding that gives the cell its structural integrity.

The researchers also found that MFRP works in tandem with another gene, CTRP5, and that a balance between the two genes is required for normal actin regulation.

In the next phase of the study, the CUMC team used adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) to introduce normal copies of MFRP into the iPS-derived retinal cells, successfully restoring the cells’ function.

The researchers also used gene therapy to “rescue” mice with RP due to MFRP mutations.

According to Tsang, the mice showed long-term improvement in visual function and restoration of photoreceptor numbers.

“This study provides both in vitro and in vivo evidence that vision loss caused by MFRP mutations could potentially be treated through AAV gene therapy,” said coauthor Dieter Egli, an assistant professor at CUMC.

The paper was published in Molecular Therapy, the official journal of the American Society for Gene & Cell Therapy.

India becomes world's largest consumer of antibiotics

 India has emerged as the world's largest consumer of antibiotics with a 62% increase in popping habits over the last decade.

As the world braces for its worst ever threat in the last century - global antibiotic resistance due to unnecessary and unregulated popping of antibiotics, an average Indian has been found to be popping over 11 antibiotic pills a year.

India's antibiotic use went up from 8 billion units in 2001 to 12.9 billion units in 2010.

The study "Global Trends in Antibiotic Consumption, 2000-2010," by scientists from Princeton University has found that worldwide antibiotic use has risen a staggering 36% over those 10 years, with five countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) — responsible for more than three-quarters of that surge.

Among the 16 groups of antibiotics studied, cephalosporins, broad-spectrum penicillins and fluoroquinolones accounted for more than half of that increase, with consumption rising 55% from 2000 to 2010.

The study quantifies the growing alarm surrounding antibiotic-resistant pathogens and a loss of efficacy among antibiotics used to combat the most common illnesses.

The study has also confirmed an increasing resistance to carbapenems and polymixins, two classes of drugs long considered the last resort antibiotics for illnesses without any other known treatment.

Speaking to TOI, one of the authors Ramanan Laxminarayan said "Indians consume around 11 antibiotic tablets per year. That's five days of antibiotics for every person in the country which is much lesser than the Chinese or Brazilians. An average Chinese popped 7 antibiotic pills a year. However both India and China's numbers are lesser than the Americans who on average pop 22 antibiotic pills a year. The paper confirms that global use of antibiotics is surging and specially in India".

"This is both good news and bad news. It means that more Indians are able to access antibiotics, which are particularly important for those who previously died of easily treatable infections. However, the massive increase in use, both appropriate and inappropriate, is leading to increases in drug resistance. Antibiotic use is the single most important reason for resistance. Also use of last resort drugs like carbapenems has gone up significantly in India, and it is difficult to justify why such powerful antibiotics are being use so much more frequently".

Laxminarayan added "We have to remember that before we had antibiotics, it was pretty easy to die of a bacterial infection. And we're choosing to go back into a world where you won't necessarily get better from a bacterial infection. It's not happening at a mass scale, but we're starting to see the beginning of when the antibiotics are not working as well".

"This paper breaks new ground with the comparative antibiotic consumption data by country of the first decade of the 21st century," said Professor Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England and chief scientific adviser for the Department of Health, London. "There is a direct relationship between consumption and development of antibiotic resistance, so the data is key for us all developing a 'National Action Plans Against Antimicrobial Resistance' as set out in the World Health Assembly Resolution in May".

The study noted that antibiotic use tended to peak at different times of the year, corresponding in almost every case with the onset of the flu season.

In the northern hemisphere, for example, consumption peaked between January and March, while in the southern hemisphere it peaked between July and November. One notable exception was India, for which usage peaked between July and September, correlating with the end of the monsoon season.

The scientists said that programs promoting rational use of antibiotics should be a national and global priority. That process has to begin with the BRICS countries, which are experiencing the highest rates of increase in antibiotic consumption.

Dr Arjun Srinivasan, associate director at Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta recently said humans and livestock have been overmedicated to the point that bacteria have grown so resistant to antibiotics that we are now in "the post-antibiotic era". He has added "There are patients for whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an infection, something that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can't".

British prime minister David Cameron recently jumped into the global fight against superbugs and has warned that the world could be "cast back into the dark ages of medicine" where people die from treatable infections because deadly bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics.

Cameron has now announced an independent review led by world renowned economist Jim O'Neill to identify why the international market has failed to bring forward new antibiotics.

The PM called for governments and drug companies around the world to work together to accelerate the discovery of a new generation of antibiotics.

The review will set out a plan for encouraging and accelerating the discovery and development of new generations of antibiotics, and will examine: the development, use and regulatory environment of antimicrobials, especially antibiotics, and explore how to make investment in new antibiotics more attractive to pharmaceutical companies and other funding bodies.

About 25,000 people die annually across Europe because of infections that are resistant to antibiotic drugs, Cameron said.

"Growing numbers of bacterial and viral infections are resistant to antimicrobial drugs, but no new classes of antibiotics have come on the market for more than 25 years. Lack of new drugs which are capable of fighting bacteria has been described by the World Health Organization as one of the most significant global risks facing modern medicine," Cameron said.

The PM said "The full scale of the economic burden of drug resistant infections - and the cost of a failure to take concerted action to address it - is not yet fully understood. Resistance to antibiotics is now a very real and worrying threat, as bacteria mutate to become immune to their effects. If we fail to act, we are looking at an almost unthinkable scenario where antibiotics no longer work and we are cast back into the dark ages of medicine where treatable infections and injuries will kill once again".

Professor Davies added "The soaring number of antibiotic-resistant infections poses such a great threat to society that in 20 years' time we could be taken back to a 19th century environment where everyday infections kill us as a result of routine operations".

Resistance to antibiotics was declared a major global threat to public health by the World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO revealed that resistance is occurring across many different infectious agents specially in seven different bacteria responsible for common, serious diseases such as bloodstream infections (sepsis), diarrhoea, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and gonorrhoea.

The results are cause for high concern, documenting resistance to antibiotics, especially "last resort" antibiotics, in all regions of the world.

Antibiotic resistance causes people to be sick for longer and increases the risk of death. For example, people with MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) are estimated to be 64% more likely to die than people with a non-resistant form of the infection. Resistance also increases the cost of health care with lengthier stays in hospital and more intensive care required.

"Without urgent, coordinated action, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill," says Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO's Assistant Director-General for Health Security. "Effective antibiotics have been one of the pillars allowing us to live longer, live healthier, and benefit from modern medicine. Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods and the implications will be devastating."

Antibiotic resistance-when bacteria change so antibiotics no longer work in people who need them to treat infections-is now a major threat to public health.

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BRICS,6TH

Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves on Saturday for Brazil for attending the five-nation summit of BRICS nations on July 14 and 15 which is expected to finalise the setting up of a development bank and seek reforms of the United Nations and international financial organisations.

After a stopover in Berlin tomorrow night, he will leave for Fortaleza, the north-eastern coastal city of Brazil, on Monday for the summit of leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to be held on July 15, providing him his first opportunity at multilateral engagement.

An earlier plan to have a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin was shelved because of Germany’s entry into the Fifa World Cup final, for which she will be in Brazil.

Modi will be accompanied by a high-level delegation that includes Minister of State for Finance Nirmala Sitharaman, National Security Adviser A K Doval, Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh and Finance Secretary Arvind Mayaram.

The sixth summit of BRICS, which will follow up on the decisions of the Durban meeting last year, will provide the new Indian prime minister his first opportunity at meeting world leaders, including President Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia, and discuss bilateral issues.

A Fortaleza Declaration containing the summit outcome is also on the cards. Negotiations are already on for which Sujata Mehta, Secretary, Economic Relations, External Affairs Ministry, is Modi’s sherpa.

BRICS accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s land mass, 40 per cent of its population and a combined GDP of USD 24 trillion.

Officials say that India will be hoping for an endorsement of the need for UN Security Council reforms and also those of the Bretton Woods institutions like the World Bank and IMF.

The BRICS Development Bank is expected to take further shape with a decision to concretise its corpus at USD 100 billion, about which there was a broad agreement in Durban.

Discussions are on about the contribution from each member state and where to locate its headquarters — whether Shanghai or New Delhi.

It will be a development bank which will give concessional credit to members of BRICS and other developing countries.

There will be a ministerial meeting ahead of the summit and also a BRICS business council with businessmen from member -countries who will be meeting on July 14 and 15.

On the sidelines of the summit, he will also be meeting South African President Jacob Zuma besides host President Dilma Roussef of Brazil.

On July 16, the BRICS leaders will move to the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, where they will meet leaders of South America, who have been invited by the hosts on the lines of Zuma inviting African leaders to Durban.

The Prime Minister will get an opportunity to engage with the Latin American region through meeting the leaders of South America, including heads of state and government from countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.

BRICS of a new world

The Fortaleza summit should address the undermining of the multilateral trading system.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first major foreign visit, to the BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, is in the news for a variety of reasons. But there is little discussion on what is at stake and the possible takeaways for BRICS, and particularly India.

This is a crucial moment for the world, faced with a central European face-off, the long tail of the financial crisis, trouble in the western Pacific, a stalemate on trade and environment, new contests in cyberspace and outer space and a new irrationality in the Middle East. BRICS, particularly India, are vulnerable to downward spirals in any of these areas. India must seek to first protect and then promote its interests at this platform. The new prime minister is the right man for this task and there are five key areas he must navigate.

The first is the big-ticket BRICS-led development bank, proposed at the New Delhi summit in 2012. While China has clear ambitions, a worse outcome would be to allow the creation of a Chinese version of the Asian Development Bank. The new bank must follow a one-country-one-vote formula, and allow other states and institutions to invest capital in return for a minority controlling stake and returns commensurate to their investments. BRICS members must walk the talk on the “equity and fairness” they seek from the West. By allowing each BRICS country equal weight in ownership of the bank, they would demonstrably craft a model for other IFIs to emulate.

The second area is global trade and investment. Through the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), developed economies are seeking to redirect trade and investment flows. They will do so by instituting new rules, standards and tariffs, and by gradually dismantling the multilateral system (WTO) that India and others believe to be essential. BRICS must seek to counter the negative externalities from such mega free trade arrangements (FTAs). While it is expected that BRICS will announce export guarantees and agreements on innovation and banking, the members must also commission academic assessments of the impact of imminent mega FTAs and coping strategies.

Third, BRICS must mitigate the systemic risks posed by the imbalances in the global economic system, perpetuated by the central banks of advanced economies. BRICS leaders are expected to launch a foreign exchange reserve fund of $100 billion as a hedging mechanism. This will resemble the Chiang Mai Initiative, put in place by Asean+3 after the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. It is essentially a pooling arrangement, with China contributing $41 billion, Brazil, Russia and India $18 billion, and South Africa $5 billion.Indeed, Modi would do well to suggest that BRICS take a principled position on recent policy decisions by Western central banks, already suspected to be fuelling new asset class bubbles.

Fourth, over the years, political content in the outcome statement has increased dramatically. BRICS states will need to discover common approaches on political developments in different regions. In particular, the stability of southwest Asia is critical to India, and as the US withdraws from Afghanistan, there is bound to be a jostle for political capital. Can BRICS catalyse the RIC (Russia, India and China) into discovering a basis for meaningful cooperation in the region? Here, the bilateral meetings on the sidelines will be vital. Similarly, Russian expectations on collective support for its position on Ukraine will need to be delicately managed.

The fifth area pertains to cyber governance and cybersecurity. There are clear differences in the positions of BRICS members. Russia has passed a bill requiring all technology companies to store personal user data on domestic servers. This closely mirrors developments in China that ensure local data storage and government control. Meanwhile, the Brazilians, who hosted the “Net Mundial”, have positioned themselves alongside the US and EU, favouring a multi-stakeholder framework. India sees a greater “state” role as it seeks to connect its “next billion” to the internet. There is an opportunity to recognise these cleavages, and develop a calibrated approach for discovering common digital ground. That each BRICS member has either the US or EU as its most important economic partner in the digital world may help.

The Fortaleza summit will represent the reboot of BRICS. This is a different world altogether, with the Brazilians seemingly reasserting a “Lulaesque” style of external engagement, the Russians defiant and petulant at the same time, the Chinese testing the geographical limits of their economic and political ambitions, and the South Africans seemingly wedded to their regional aspirations. Prime Minister Modi has the biggest political mandate among his BRICS counterparts, and also the weight of the largest expectations

A leadership moment

At BRICS summit, a chance for India to start on a path that leads to the UNSC.

Next week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend his first BRICS summit. This is a historic opportunity to position India in a changing global order. India today punches below its weight on global issues. It is a member of the G-20 but plays a marginal role in guiding global discussions. A previous BJP government put India into the nuclear club, and this government could take us all the way to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The BRICS summit is an opportunity to start down that path.

The prime minister made a bold start by inviting all SAARC leaders to his inauguration. With festering problems in its own neighbourhood, India is no doubt distracted locally and thereby hobbled in projecting its power more broadly in global affairs. With a better functioning SAARC, India can speak on global issues with a stronger sub-regional backing.

India’s most clearly stated international goal is to have a seat on the UNSC. On the basis of its size as one-sixth of humanity and the third largest economy (PPP adjusted), its claim cannot be challenged. Yet, progress on this issue has been glacial. India today has very few senior positions at the UN. No Indian heads a single UN organisation. China, besides having a permanent UNSC seat, heads three UN organisations. Brazil has strong interests in trade and agriculture and now heads the FAO and WTO, positions it won with greater strategic clarity and concerted effort.

Getting a permanent UNSC seat will also require building coalitions with other key aspirants, such as Brazil and South Africa, and getting the support of China and Russia, which are permanent members. The BRICS summit is a chance to open the dialogue.

The most immediate concrete idea for discussion will be the new BRICS bank, which will rival existing multilateral banks with call-in capital of $50 billion. This is an important signal but will eventually require a bigger capital base,  which could come from increasing the contributions of the existing members to at least $100 billion or bringing in other large G-20 developing countries as contributors. For India, which has maxed out its borrowing capacity at the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, the new bank could be a great opportunity to get long-term capital for its huge infrastructure needs.

Germany and Japan are two other key aspirants to the UNSC with whom India can and must ally. The big powers must be made to realise that global peace will require India’s active participation, a position that can only be reached when India begins to play a more strategic role, especially in Africa,the Middle East and Asia, in helping broker positive solutions.

India must also show leadership in ideas. India accepted the UN’s Millenium Development Goals for 2015 with some reluctance. In the run-up to the post-2015 discussions, India again tends to make unnecessary arguments as a sanctimonious champion of the poor by arguing that it stands for poverty eradication but against objectives it characterises are Western impositions.

The new government, which won the election on a promise of better governance, must put an end to such positions. We know that better governance is the route to faster growth, job creation and poverty eradication. We know that only a fraction of development money reaches the poor. So why not contribute to  a practical way forward in building a global consensus on development and better governance?

India will also increase its chances for a permanent UNSC seat if it plays a more constructive and active role in the G-20. India had long argued that the G-7 is no longer a legitimate body. But having arrived at the high table at the G-20, it seems India is just happy to be there. It has not pushed any new initiatives, or displayed the kind of constructive role that would help its UNSC candidacy.

As the prime minister meets BRICS leaders next week, and then prepares for a series of meetings at the UN in September and the G-20 in Australia in November, he might wish to provide strategic leadership to how India approaches these vital issues. He can bring India back into active leadership positions on global issues and take us to a permanent seat on the UNSC. Now, that would be a landmark achievement. But let us start on that journey by founding the BRICS bank.