Ratification of the Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur supplementary protocol on liability and redress to the Cartagena protocol on biosafety by India

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister gave its approval for ratifying the `Nagoya-KualaLumpur supplementary protocol on liability and redress to the Cartagena protocol on bio-safety` by India.

The proposed approach provides for an international regulatory framework in the field of liability and redress related to living modified organisms that reconciles trade and environment protection. The Supplementary Protocol would promote sound application of biotechnology making it possible to accrue benefits arising from modern biotechnology while minimizing the risk to the environment and human health.

The proposal will protect the interests of all Indians without distinction or differentiation.

The proposal is based on the principles of the Convention on Biological Diversity and Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, both internationally negotiated and binding legal instruments. It will promote innovation in agricultural and healthcare research and development that is safe for the environment and human beings.

About the Protocol:

The Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress is a supplementary protocol to the Cartagena protocol on Biosafety. After several years of negotiations, the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety adopted the Supplementary Protocol on 15 October 2010, in Nagoya, Japan.

The Supplementary Protocol aims to contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity by providing international rules and procedures for liability and redress in the event of damage resulting from living modified organisms (LMOs).

The Supplementary Protocol fulfils the commitment set forth in Article 27 of the Cartagena Protocol to elaborate international rules and procedures on liability and redress for damage to biodiversity resulting from transboundary movements of LMOs. It is also inspired by Principle 13 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development which calls on States to “cooperate in an expeditious and more determined manner to develop further international law regarding liability and compensation for adverse effects of environmental damage caused by activities within their jurisdiction or control”.

The Supplementary Protocol takes an ‘administrative approach’ whereby response measures are required of the operator (person or entity in control of the LMO) or the competent authority if the operator is unable to take response measures. This would cover situations where event of damage to biological diversity has already occurred, or when there is a sufficient likelihood that damage will result if timely response measures are not taken.

However, countries can still provide for civil liability in their domestic law and the first review of the Supplementary Protocol (five years after its entry into force) will assess the effectiveness of domestic civil liability regimes. This could trigger further work on an international civil liability regime.

The Supplementary Protocol is the second liability and redress treaty to be concluded in the context of multilateral environmental agreements next to the 1999 Protocol on Liability and Compensation to the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes.

A new bank for Asia

A little more than a year after it was broached, a new multilateral bank in Asia — the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) — was born last week in Beijing, signalling in the process the failure of hectic lobbying by the United States against the move. The bank has 21 signatory- countries, with India being the only major backer apart from China; the rest are the smaller economies of Asia. The event was not without its share of drama as Australia, Indonesia and South Korea pulled out apparently under pressure from the U.S. Yet, it may not have been easy for them, as statements from some of their diplomats show. The three countries, which have extensive trade dealings with China, seem to be still torn between safeguarding their relations with the Asian giant and not displeasing the U.S. It should surprise no one if they decide to take the plunge after watching from the sidelines how the bank develops. The AIIB, along with the other new China-based institution, the BRICS Bank, represents the first major challenge to the U.S.-led global economic order and the 70-year uncontested reign of the Bretton Woods twins. In a way, the IMF and the World Bank have only themselves to blame if they find their dominance under threat, because the seeds of the new bank sprouted from either their inability or unwillingness, or both, to meet the growing funding needs of Asia.

As per the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) assessment, Asia needs on an average $800 billion of investment in infrastructure annually between now and 2020. Against this, the ADB, dominated by Japan which is also a founding member, lends no more than $10 billion a year for infrastructure. With the American-dominated World Bank and the Europe-led IMF also remaining hamstrung, the need for a multilateral body to finance the growth region of the world was real. The ADB has been cautious in its comments, and understandably so; it can do with support for infrastructure lending, yet needs to safeguard its turf. India, with its participation, has lent heft to the AIIB, which would otherwise have been seen as a Chinese bank backed by membership from lightweight countries of the region. India, which will be the second largest shareholder in the bank, should work with China to ensure that best practices are followed in projects for procurement and materials and in terms of labour and environmental standards. While there is without doubt a geo-political angle to the founding of the bank — which is natural, given that the economic balance of power is shifting to Asia — care should be taken to ensure that it does not become the driving factor in the bank’s functioning. The bank should do what it has been founded for — fund Asia’s infrastructure.

Conditional nod from WHO for new drug to treat MDR TB

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed a new drug to stem the global spread of multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis, but has cautioned that its use must follow a set of guidelines issued by it.

Pointing out that since information about this new drug, Delamanid, remains limited, as it has only been through Phase IIb trial [the phase specifically designed to study efficacy — how well the drug works at the prescribed dosage] and studies for safety and efficacy, the WHO has issued interim policy guidance that lists five conditions that must be in place if the new drug is used to for treatment of MDR-TB.

According to the WHO 4,80,000 people developed MDR-TB in the world in 2013 and more than half of these cases occurred in India, China and the Russian federation. Almost 84,000 patients with MDR-TB were notified to the WHO globally in 2012, up from 62,000 in 2011. The biggest increases were in India, South Africa and Ukraine. The new drug is being described as “a novel mechanism of action” for treatment of adults with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). (MDR-TB is TB that does not respond to at least isoniazid and rifampicin, the two most powerful anti-TB drugs.)

Delamanid has been granted conditional approval by the European Medicine Agency in April 2014 and can be used for the treatment of tuberculosis resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampicin, the main first-line drugs.

The WHO has advocated “special caution” for the use of Delamanid in people aged 65 and over, in adults living with HIV, patients with diabetes, hepatic or severe renal impairment, or those who use alcohol or substances.

WHO has cautioned that “When Delamanid is included in treatment, all principles on which the WHO-recommended MDR-TB treatment regimens are based must be followed, particularly the inclusion of four effective second-line drugs as well as pyrazinamide. Delamanid should not be introduced alone into a regimen in which the companion drugs are failing to show effectiveness.”

India slips further in ease of business ranking

India ranked 142 among the 189 countries surveyed for the latest World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” report released recently, a drop by two places from the last year’s ranking, as Singapore topped the list.

The fall in ranking from last year’s 140 is mainly because other nations performed much better, Bank officials said. India’s ranking originally stood at 134 last year, but was adjusted to 140 to account for fresh data.

In the 2014 report, India had 52.78 points and this year it scored 53.97 points.

The latest ranking, however, does not take into account a slew of measures taken by the New government to make India a business friendly destination.

Appreciative of the steps taken by the new government, World Bank officials said that there was a very high likelihood of India significantly jumping up the ladder in the next report

How do we know where is what? The ‘inner GPS’ in our brains

Identification of each location-specific place cell and the map built up by them was a major starting point in neural mapping

How do we know where is what? Recognize places and directions? Where do we store such information and recall them from memory? Today, thanks to the power of information technology, speedy computation and communication, we no longer need to ask a passer-by where a given place is, but use a Google Map on geographic positioning system (GPS). But how does the brain do all this? Animals such as rats or dogs, or even we humans before the computer age, did not have this facility and yet we carried on quite well. We stored such information in our brains and recalled them when needed. How does all this happen? Where is this ‘inner GPS’ in our brain?

Answers to some of these questions have come from the study of three scientists — John O’Keefe at the University College London, UK, May-Britt Moser and her husband Edvard Moser, both from Trondheim Norway — the trio whom were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

It had been known for some time that the brain’s memory centre is the hippocampus, a seahorse shaped component (hippo means horse and kampus a sea monster, hence the name) lying below the cerebral cortex. It was in the late 1960s that John O’Keefe began working in the area of how the brain controls behaviour and how rats learn to navigate across a maze in a room. He placed rats in a large cage, stuck electrodes in chosen parts of their brain, notably the hippocampus and recorded the electrical signals coming out as the rats moved across space. When a rat goes to a particular place in the cage (say a corner or a bump), certain specific nerve cells were found to be activated. When it went to another location, yet another set of cells were activated. Gradually then, O’Keefe could identify what he termed as location-specific ‘place cells’ and a map built up by such place cells in the hippocampus, each place cell activated in a specific location or environment. This was a major starting point in neural mapping.

It was during this time that the Norwegian couple May-Britt and Edvard Moser finished their PhD degrees from the University of Oslo and went first to the University of Edinburgh and then to the O’Keefe lab at London as postdoctoral fellows to be mentored by him. Here they decided to take further neurophysiology of the inner GPS in rats. Upon winning a competitive research grant from the Kavli Foundation at California, U.S., they returned to Norway to set up a research centre at Trondheim. Their aim was to find out where the signals for the firing of the place cells are located in the brain.

Towards this, they implanted electrodes directly into the hippocampus and the surrounding region of a rat that was allowed to run around freely in a large box. The signals from the electrodes were analyzed using a computer, as the rat ran around the box, thus generating a map of its movements. Next, they chemically inactivated (numbed) chosen regions of the hippocampus and the surrounding region, a thin strip of a tissue called the entorhinal cortex (ERC) and watched. To their surprise, they found that the message to fire place cells in the hippocampus actually flowed from cells in the ERC.

Studying these ERC cells and their signals as a rat goes to a specific spot in the box, they found that the signals on the computer screen were not simple but arranged in a grid-like arrangement’— a hexagonal pattern much like a honeycomb!

As Dr Alison Abbot points out in her lucid summary of the work in the 9 October 2014 issue of the journal Nature, there are no physical hexagons traced on the floor of the box; these shapes are abstractly created in the rat’s brain and imposed on the environment — the code in the brain language, using which the rat navigates space and locations.

Even more striking is the arrangement of the grid-generating cells (called the grid cells) in the ERC. AS we move from the top part of the ERC strip to the bottom, the pattern expands from narrow spacing to bigger grids in steps or modules. And they expand by a constant factor (of 1.4) in each step of the module!

The mathematical features of the hexagonal patterns and the definite modules have attracted theoreticians. Dr Alison Abbot quotes the computational neuroscientist Dr. Andreas Herz of Munich, Germany who exclaims: “It (these findings) was so unexpected that the brain would use the same simple geometric forms that we have been describing in mathematics for millennia.” It suggests also that babies, humans and rats, are born with a very primitive sense of where they are in space and that this sense develops as the brain adapts to the world. The poet talked about the “mind’s eye”. See how prescient this phrase has been.

Finally, the work also highlights how important working with animals as models is. The recent banning of animal experiments in schools and colleges has been a bad move, and needs to be rescinded.

Project 75I

Recently, a decision was taken by the Defence Minister relating to build six state-of-the-art submarines for the navy under Project 75I.

About Project 75I:

Under Project 75I India will purchase 6 next generation diesel submarines with Air Independent Propulsion System (AIP) technology for the Indian Navy by 2022.

Conventional diesel-electric submarines have to surface every few days to get oxygen to recharge their batteries. With AIP systems, they can stay submerged for much longer periods.

Project 75-I will have both vertical launched BrahMos for the sea & land targets and tube-launched torpedoes for anti-submarine warfare. The new Project 75-I submarines are huge in value, estimated at around $10 billion-plus, depending upon the offsets and transfer of technology (ToT). The defense offsets policy mandates a minimum investment of 30 per cent to be put back in a related defence industrial venture in India.

Acceptance of Necessity for acquisition of six submarines under Project-75(I) has been accorded by the Defence Acquisition Council in August 2010. The case is being progressed in accordance with the Defence Procurement Procedure.

The Indian navy requested information from firms who had independently designed and constructed a complete modern conventional submarine which is currently in service / undergoing sea trials. The submarine should be capable of operating in open ocean and littoral / shallow waters in dense environment and able to undertake following missions:-

• anti surface and anti submarine warfare.
• supporting operations ashore.
• ISR missions.    
• special force and mining ops

Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana

Centre has launched Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana (VKY) for welfare of Tribals. The scheme was launched on the occasion of the meeting of the Tribal Welfare Ministers of States/UTs. The scheme is aimed at improving the infrastructure and human development indices of the tribal population.

The scheme been launched on pilot basis in one block each of the States of AP, MP, HP, Telangana, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Under the scheme centre will provide Rs. 10 crore for each block for the development of various facilities for the Tribals. These blocks have been selected on the recommendations of the concerned States and have very low literacy rate.

This scheme mainly focuses on bridging infrastructural gaps and gap in human development indices between Schedule tribes and other social groups. VKY also envisages to focus on convergence of different schemes of development of Central Ministries/Departments and State Governments with outcome oriented approach. Initially the blocks having at least 33% of tribal population in comparison to total population of the block will be targeted.