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The appeal filed in the appellate court in Qatar against the death sentence awarded to eight former personnel of the Indian Navy has been accepted, sources said. This took place almost two weeks after the Indian government had said that the appeal had been filed in the case.
The eight former personnel of the Indian Navy, arrested in an alleged case of espionage, were handed the death sentence by Qatar’s Court of First Instance last month.
India had got a round of consular access to the detainees on November 7. However, the judgment remains confidential, according to the Ministry of External Affairs, and has been shared with the legal team.
The Indian nationals, all employees of Doha-based Dahra Global, were taken into custody in August 2022. The charges against them were not made public by Qatari authorities.
But sources said the Indian nationals had been working in their private capacity with Dahra Global to oversee the induction of Italian small stealth submarines U2I2.
Govt takes apex cyber security agency out of public’s right to know (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
The centre has exempted the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the national nodal agency to deal with cyber security threats like hacking and phishing, from the purview of the Right to Information Act, 2005.
A notification of this effect was issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT). The Centre has used its powers given under sub-section (2) of Section 24 of the RTI Act to exempt CERT-In from the purview of the transparency law. Using those powers, the Centre has included CERT-In at serial number 27 in the Second Schedule of the RTI Act.
The CERT-In comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. In March this year, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar had informed Rajya Sabha that the “procedure of inter-departmental consultation” was on to discuss exemption of the CERT-In from the RTI Act.
The Right to Information Act, 2005 is administered by the Department of Personnel and Training, which has apprised that a proposal of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for exemption of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) from the said Act by way of inclusion of CERT-In in the Second Schedule to the Act, was received and the procedure of inter-departmental consultation, including with the Ministry of Law and Justice was undertaken in respect of the same,” Chandrasekhar said in written reply to a question asked by BJD member Amar Patnaik.
Express Network
Domestic production brings down cost of rare disease drugs (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
With cost being one of the major hurdles in treatment of rare diseases, Indian drug companies have started manufacturing medicines for at least four conditions — Tyrosinemia Type 1, Gaucher’s Disease, Wilson’s Disease and Dravet-Lennox Gastaut Syndrome — bringing down the cost by up to 100 fold.
Four more medicines — cheaper than their imported counterparts —are likely to become available in early 2024.
In addition to rare diseases, the government has also urged the industry to produce an oral solution for hydroxyurea needed for the treatment of children up to the age of 5 years suffering from sickle cell disease.
While the capsule or tablet for hydroxyurea is readily available, an oral solution is not. The oral suspension costs about USD 840 or Rs 70,000 for a 100 ml bottle.
Akums Drugs has already applied for an approval from the drug regulator and is likely to come into the market from March 2024 onwards. It will cost around Rs 405 a bottle.
Editorial
Forgotten citizens (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
We build statues, name stadiums and write hagiographies to honour Bollywood stars, cricketers, politicians and a pantheon of celebrities.
But for the human infrastructure of the nation — the women and men who build tunnels and highways, run factories, service middle-class homes — there are only obituaries of anonymity.
The hapless migrant worker is truly the forgotten citizen, mainly breaking the surface of national consciousness as a figure in televised tragedy.
“National greatness” is attributed to the products of migrant exertion — shiny new expressways and gigantic statues — but is never expressed in the vocabulary of care and policy requirements for those who make the nation great.
Flung from the abjection of village life into the hostility of their new, distant environments, migrant workers largely exist in the national consciousness as dispensable life.
They are driven out of cities during periods of health crises, crushed under collapsed buildings, mutilated through lack of industrial safety mechanisms and stare out of steel pipes from inside collapsed tunnels.
There are a variety of strands of internal migration in India, including long distance and short distance, rural to urban, rural to rural, intra and interstate, intra and inter-district and circular and seasonal.
And there are also a number of data sources that tell us about the sea of people that move across local and regional boundaries, seeking livelihoods, leaving behind families and, just as frequently, suffering the ignominy of being perpetual outsiders in their host societies.
Ideas Page
A constitution for all seasons (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
On Samvidhan Diwas (Constitution Day), which falls on November 26 — commemorating the adoption of the Indian Constitution by the Constituent Assembly in 1949 — we hear paeans to it from scholars and constitutionalists. But, of late, we are also hearing voices asking for it to be replaced with a new Constitution.
Rewriting of constitutions is not an unusual thing. There is an old joke: A reader walks into a library and asks for a copy of the French Constitution.
The librarian tells him that they don’t keep periodicals. Jokes apart, it is a fact that France has had over a dozen constitutions between 1791 and 1958, the last one credited with creating the Fifth Republic.
In our neighbourhood, Nepal had six constitutions between 1948 and 2007, before finally settling for the present one in 2015. Chile in South America embarked on rewriting its constitution in 2021, while the president of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, secured a thumbs up for the same in a referendum a few months ago.
But none of these countries is comparable to India. Political expediency or lack of consensus over principles were largely responsible for them to undertake such exercises.
Explained
Sickle cell breakthrough (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
The UK drug regulator last week approved a gene therapy for the cure of sickle cell disease and thalassaemia, seen as a landmark breakthrough by many.
This is the first licensed therapy in the world based on the gene editing technology Crispr-Cas9 that earned its innovators a Nobel Prize in 2020.
The “genetic scissors” that became available for the first time in 2012 have revolutionised the field of biotechnology.
Called Casgevy, the therapy edits the faulty gene that leads to these blood disorders, potentially curing the person for life. So far, the only permanent treatment has been a bone marrow transplant, for which a closely matched donor is needed.
Both sickle cell disease and thalassaemia are caused by errors in the gene for haemoglobin, a protein in the red blood cells that carry oxygen to organs and tissues.
Why a NASA spacecraft fired a laser at Earth and why it is a big deal (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, currently over 16 million kilometres away in space, successfully fired a laser signal at Earth on November 14.
The spacecraft is on its way to a unique metal-rich asteroid, orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe this asteroid is the nickel-iron core of an early planet, studying which could provide unique insights into the impenetrable iron core of our own planet.
Simultaneously, it will also carry out another mission that might hold the key to future space exploration. What is this mission, and what does it have to do with ‘space lasers’
Communicating with spacecraft far away from Earth poses many challenges, of which the problem of data rates might be the most critical.
Simply put: how does a spacecraft transmit vast amounts of data over extremely long distances, all while itself moving at rapid speeds?
Economy
RBI supersede board of cooperative bank over poor governance (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) superseded the board of Mumbai-based Abhyudaya Cooperative Bank Ltd for a year over poor governance standards.
The regulator has appointed Satya Prakash Pathak, former chief general manager of State Bank of India as administrator to manage the affairs of the urban co-operative bank (UCB) during the 12-month period.
“Action is necessitated due to certain material concerns emanating from poor governance standards observed in the bank. No business restrictions have been placed by RBI and the bank shall continue to carry on its normal banking activities as is hitherto, under the guidance of the Administrator.
A committee of advisors consisting of Venkatesh Hegde, former general manager of SBI; Mahendra Chhajed, chartered accountant; and Suhas Gokhale, former MD, COSMOS Co-operative Bank Ltd, have also been appointed to assist the administrator, the release said.
India – EU sign semiconductor pact (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India and the European Union signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation on the semiconductor ecosystem which will facilitate investments, joint ventures and technology partnership including manufacturing facilities.
The move is in sync with India’s plan to provide incentives worth $10 billion for chip manufacturing in the country.
The MoU was signed at the second India-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) meeting held virtually is for deepening cooperation on semiconductors ecosystem, supply chain and innovation.
The TTC meeting also reviewed the progress achieved by the working groups of the council particularly in the areas of high-performance computing, digital public infrastructure, EV batteries and its recycling, waste to energy, resilient supply chains and FDI screening.
World
No unusual pathogens found in latest pneumonia outbreak: China to WHO (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Claiming no unusual or novel pathogens other than the seasonal ones were detected, China has sought to play down the global concerns amid surging cases of mycoplasma pneumonia and influenza flu, especially among children, in its southern and northern provinces.
Even when China’s widely-publicised exchange with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in response to the queries over the reports of surging cases of mycoplasma pneumonia and influenza flu triggered the worldwide alert, including in India, China said the spike in respiratory diseases was due to an ‘immunity gap.’
Both WHO and China have received global criticism for their non-transparent data/information sharing about COVID-19 and the world still has apprehensions over the emergence of the deadly virus in the Chinese city of Wuhan in 2019 which later spiralled into a massive pandemic resulting in deaths of and ill-health to millions of people across countries.
In response to the media reports in China about a spike in children’s hospitalisation, the WHO on Thursday made an official request to China for detailed information.