Context: 

The rapidly rising Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) rates need an accelerated, multi-sectoral, global and national response.

About AMR:

• It is the resistance acquired by any microorganism (bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasite, etc.) against antimicrobial drugs that are used to treat infections.

Reasons for the occurrence of multidrug resistance:

• Unnecessary and injudicious use of antibiotic fixed dose combinations.
• Include self-medication.
• Lack of knowledge about when to use antibiotics.
• Antibiotics which are critical to human health are commonly used for growth promotion in livestock and poultry.
• The wastewater effluents from the antibiotic manufacturing units contain a substantial amount of antibiotics.
• Mass bathing in rivers, etc.

• • The death due to AMR is now a leading cause of death worldwide, higher than HIV/AIDS or malaria.
  • Most of the deaths from AMR were caused by lower respiratory infections, such as pneumonia, and bloodstream infections, which can lead to sepsis.

Concerning Issues:

• Global public health response has been threatened due to rising misuse and overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals.
• Microbial resistance to antibiotics has made it harder to treat infections such as pneumonia, tuberculosis (TB), blood-poisoning (septicaemia) and several food-borne diseases. 
• AMR also imposes a huge health cost on the patient in the form of longer hospitalisation, health complications and delayed recovery. 
• Many times, patients recover from advanced medical procedures but succumb to untreatable infections.

Concerning Facts:

• In 2019, AMR was associated with an estimated 4.95 million human deaths. 
• A 2018 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned of a phenomenal increase, by 2030, of resistance to back-up antibiotics (second and third-line).
• An Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) study in 2022 showed that the resistance level increases from 5% to 10% every year for broad-spectrum antimicrobials. 
• An Indian Network for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (INSAR) study indicated a high rate of resistance to commonly used drugs.

India and the Muscat conference:

• India’s commitment to the cause was evident at the Third Global High-Level Ministerial Conference on Antimicrobial Resistance .
• The Muscat Manifesto recognised the need to accelerate political commitments in the implementation of One Health action for controlling the spread of AMR. 
• It also recognised the need to address the impact of AMR not only on humans but also on animals and in areas of environmental health, food security and economic growth and development.

• Focus areas of Conference:

The conference focused on three health targets:

• • Reduce the total amount of antimicrobials used in the agri-food system at least by 30-50% by 2030
  • Eliminate use in animals and food production of antimicrobials that are medically important for human health
  • Ensure that by 2030 at least 60% of overall antibiotic consumption in humans is from the WHO “Access” group of antibiotics.

• India has committed to strengthening surveillance and promoting research on newer drugs. It also plans to strengthen private sector engagement and the reporting of data to the WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) and other standardized systems.
• The manifesto encourages countries to prioritise their national action plans for AMR keeping the One Health approach.

The One Health Approach:

• It requires all stakeholders to work together towards an integrated programme linking challenges of humans, terrestrial and aquatic animal, plant health, food and feed production and the environment. 
• This approach will enable the world to effectively prevent, predict and detect the health crisis induced by AMR. 
• Tackling AMR requires constant monitoring of antibiotic consumption, identifying the types and quantities of antibiotics being used.

Need to reduce the Antimicrobial Usage:

• There is an urgent need to reduce the usage of antimicrobials in the agri-food system. 
• Scientific evidence suggests that the less antimicrobials are used, it is less likely that there will be an emergence of drug resistance. 
• Countries such as the Netherlands and Thailand have decreased their usage by almost 50%. 
• In China, the consumption of antibiotics in the agricultural sector has fallen substantially. 
• The use of antibiotics in healthy animals to boost growth has also been reduced in the last decade in many countries.

From policy to the ground level:

• The National Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance (2017-21) emphasised the effectiveness of the government’s initiatives for hand hygiene and sanitation programmes such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Kayakalp and Swachh Swasth Sarvatra. 
• The National Health Policy 2017 also offered specific guidelines regarding use of antibiotics, limiting the use of antibiotics as over-the-counter medications and banning or restricting the use of antibiotics for growth promotion in livestock. 
• It also called for scrutiny of prescriptions to assess antibiotic usage in hospitals and among doctors.

Conclusion: 

• As the current G-20 president, and as a country vulnerable to this silent pandemic, India’s role is critical in ensuring that AMR remains high on the global public health agenda.

                                                                                                                                                                 News Source: The Hindu

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Context:

The article is about the judges who have received a high-profile political appointment soon after retirement.

• Within a month of retiring from the Supreme Court of India, Justice S. Abdul Nazeer was appointed Governor of Andhra Pradesh. 

Issues with these High-Profile Appointments:

• Biasness: These appointments are all signaling on the part of the government, letting the members of the higher judiciary know that they will be suitably rewarded if they issue favorable decisions. 
• Corruption: Dangling such a proverbial carrot is akin to corrupting the judges, and encouraging a culture of sycophancy even, as we are seeing among some judges in the apex court. 
• Faith losing: Worse, this also makes the public have less faith in the judiciary itself. 
  • In 1980, Justice V. D. Tulzapurkar had said that “if judges start sending bouquets or letters to legislators on assumption of high office in adulatory terms, the people’s confidence in the judiciary will be shaken.”

Chipping away at Judiciary:

• Weakening of Judiciary: While a Governor’s position may seem largely ceremonial, it is in fact a squarely political appointment by the ruling party. Similarly, such steps of high profile appointments are slowly but surely being subtly weakened the judiciary.
• Ensuring Independence: The appointment and issue discussed is not for a very first time but rather to question who and when appointed, the larger objective, for any reasonable executive, should be to ensure the independence of the other arms of the governing mechanism and that democratic values are preserved. 

Hypocritical Behavior:

• The government’s behavior is also hypocritical for it is deliberately paying no heed to its own manifesto articulated by its late leader.
• The judiciary is no less culpable in this situation. Judges should show moral responsibility and character.
• The Indian judiciary must distinguish between political favors and other post-retirement employment opportunities.

Demarcation of roles:

• There needs to be a demarcation between roles where the presence of a judicial authority is clearly valuable and even necessary, such as in a tribunal or a commission, and where it is not. 

Examples:

• Justice Gogoi, upon his appointment to the Rajya Sabha, had famously proclaimed that he intended to bridge the gap between the judiciary and the legislature, but his attendance record and public participation in parliamentary affairs suggest nothing of the sort. 
• Justice Sathasivam had said he had wanted to serve the people in his role as Governor, but the wanted thoughts couldn’t take shape in practice.

Steps can be Considered:

• Ideally, the judicial community should take a concerted decision on this.The plenary should agree that judges should not take up any appointments upon retirement stemming from political patronage.
• A cooling period of about two years should be considered a mandatory minimum before a judge agrees to take on any post-retirement adjudicatory role.

Conclusion:

• Justice Y.V. Chandrachud had said that the greatest danger to the judiciary lies within. 
• Members of the judiciary cannot compromise independence by trading it for a plum post-retirement sinecure. 
• Judges need to be gently reminded of this unwritten contract they have with the Indian people.

News Source: The Hindu

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Context: 

• The Geological Survey of India established 5.9 million tonnes of inferred lithium resources in the Salal-Haimana area of Reasi District in Jammu and Kashmir.

Characteristics of Lithium:

• This gray, shiny, non-ferrous metal is the lightest and the least dense of all metals. 
• Being the third element in the periodic table after gases hydrogen and helium, the alkali metal lithium is highly reactive.

Other Potential Sites in India:

• The major mica belts in Rajasthan, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.
• Pegmatite (igneous rocks) belts in Odisha and Chhattisgarh.
• Brines of Sambhar and Pachpadra in Rajasthan, and Rann of Kachchh in Gujarat.

Related Government Initiatives:

• India, through a newly state-owned company Khanij Bidesh India Ltd, had signed an agreement with an Argentinian firm to jointly prospect lithium in Argentina.
• Khanij Bidesh India Ltd has a specific mandate to acquire strategic mineral assets such as lithium and cobalt abroad.

Significance of Lithium:

• In 2019, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for their contributions to the development of the lithium-ion battery. 

Uses:

• Lithium is used in electric car batteries because of its properties— lightness and energy density.
• While lithium is also used in ceramics, in industrial grease, and in the pharmaceutical sector, its potential demand is expected to be largely driven by batteries. 

Status in the World:

• Currently, India is import-dependent for many minerals like lithium, nickel and cobalt.
• Most of the lithium reserves are concentrated in South America; especially in countries such as Argentina, Chile and Bolivia. These three countries are called the Lithium Triangle and are concentrated in various salt pans present in the Atacama desert and neighboring arid regions.
• Multiple countries have ramped up efforts to find reserves of lithium, sometimes dubbed ‘white gold’, in what has been called the “new era gold rush”.The demand for lithium is expected to reach three million to four million MT in 2030.

Significance:

• Employment Generation 
• Import & self sufficiency 
• Strength given India’s National Mission on Transformative and Battery Storage as well.

Concerns:

• Geopolitical: Although Reasi is in the relatively more stable Jammu region, the Union territory of J&K has been the site of historical cross-border tensions between India and Pakistan, domestic insurgency, and terrorism. 
• Environmental: Industry estimates suggest that this process consumes 170 cubic meters of water and releases 15 tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of Li extracted.
• The Geographically Unstable Region of Himalayas for exploration is a big concern, as it can cause natural disasters.

Way Ahead:

• Though, a happy moment of all but don’t forget the environmental consequences of exploration in geographically unstable regions. 
• Steps should be taken by undertaking the needs to address energy poverty and sustainable development. 

News Source: The Indian Express

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Context: 

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in a report flagged the “inhuman and deplorable” condition of all 46 government run mental healthcare institutions across the country. 

Related Facts:

• According to WHO, the burden of mental disorders is maximal in young adults. India being a young country (nearly 50% of its population below the age of 25) will face increased burden of mental illness in the short term.
• An estimated 150 million people across India are in need of mental health care interventions, according to India’s latest National Mental Health Survey 2015-16.

Mental Healthcare Act, 2017:

• The Act lays down that every person shall have a right to access mental health care and treatment from mental health services run or funded by the appropriate government. 
• The right to access mental health care and treatment shall mean mental health services of affordable cost, of good quality, available in sufficient quantity, accessible geographically, without discrimination on the basis of gender, sex, sexual orientation, religion, culture, caste, social or political beliefs, class, disability or any other basis.
• Healthcare service to be provided shall be in a manner that is acceptable to a person with mental illness and their families and care-givers.
• The range of services specified in the Act includes outpatient and inpatient services, half-way homes, sheltered accommodation, supported accommodation, and provisions for child and old-age mental health services. 
• The Act also contains a provision for the notification of a list of essential medicines, providing which will be the obligation of the relevant government.
• The Act also discourages using physical restraints (such as chaining), unmodified electro­convulsive therapy (ECT), and pushes for the right to hygiene, sanitation, food, recreation, privacy, and infrastructure.

Challenges:

• Poor Governance: In a majority of States, State Mental Health Authority and Mental Health Review Boards (MHRBs) are yet to be established or remain defunct.
• Quality: Further, many States have not notified minimum standards which are meant to ensure the quality of MHEs.
• Poor budgetary allocation: Poor budgetary allocation and utilization of funds creates a scenario where shelter homes remain underequipped, establishments understaffed, and professionals and service providers not adequately trained to deliver proper healthcare, she added. 
• Rehabiliatation: The dearth of alternative community based services further complicates access to rehabilitation.

Way Forward: 

• Raising Awareness: Stigma and Awareness need to be addressed in parallel in order to tackle the burden of mental illness in India.
• Deploy Community Health Workers: There is a need to deploy community health workers who, with appropriate training and supervision, effectively deliver psychosocial interventions for the needy.
•  Psychosocial interventions: State governments need to scale up their psychosocial interventions through community health workers.
• Scaling up initiatives: There is a need for scaling up initiatives like Schizophrenia Research India’s (SCARF) mobile bus clinic  through public-private collaboration.                                                                                                                                

News Source: The Hindu 

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Context: 

Recently, the Union government hiked the windfall profit tax levied on domestically produced crude oil as well as on the export of diesel and aviation turbine fuel (ATF).

About Windfall Profits:

• ‘Windfall profits’ refer to an unanticipated spike in earnings of an entity resulting from an exogenous event (which could be one-off and/or prolonged) and not resulting from a business decision. 
• The B.K. Chaturvedi committee’s report on the Financial Position of Oil Companies (2008) had stated that taxing of these windfall gains has been seen as a prerogative of governments, in part to meet fiscal needs and in part to pursue redistributive justice. 
• The central idea here is for governments to capitalize on the lofty profits made by the entities and use it for specific domestic pursuits.
• Windfall taxes spur collections of revenue to guard against the consequences of a larger geopolitical event or redistribute them for it to be used for domestic social service schemes. 
• Windfall taxes are reviewed on a fortnightly basis and are subject to factors such as international oil prices, exchange rate and quantity of exports.

Reasons for Windfall Gains: 

• Russia’s actions in Ukraine created the volatility observed in the oil market in the previous calendar year.
• Russia was among the major players in the global oil market and among the largest producers alongside Saudi Arabia and U.S. 
• As a response to Russia’s actions, several Western countries moved to stop or curtail their energy imports from Russia. 
• This led to sharp increases in fossil fuel prices as sovereigns went to look for other suppliers for its energy needs, culminating in major profits for oil companies.

News Source: The Hindu 

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Context: 

Recently, Telangana CM said that the State had resorted to off ­Budget borrowings to complete irrigation projects in the shortest time but the Centre had imposed borrowing limits.

About Off ­Budget Borrowing:

• Off Budget borrowings are loans obtained by government entities, such as PSUs or special purpose vehicles, on behalf of the government to finance its expenditure. 
• According to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, these borrowings are not included while computing the debt and the fiscal deficit of the State governments. This helps keep the country’s fiscal deficit within acceptable limits.
• However, the State government is responsible for repaying the loan and servicing the debt from its Budget. 
• As extra­Budgetary borrowings find no mention in the Budget documents, one has to rely on the CAG reports to ascertain the figures. 
• Five Southern States — Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka — accounted for around 93% of the total off Budget liabilities of eleven major States analyzed. 

Concerns:

• The CAG’s contention is that resorting to extra­budgetary resources will lead them to a debt trap.
• Fiscal rules related threshold deficit ratios and increasingly volatile intergovernmental transfers have affected the fiscal space of States. Hence,  they resort to OBB for financing.
• In almost all States, if the off Budget loans were added to their declared debt, it can take their debt to GDP ratio even further away from State targets.

How are off-budget borrowings raised?

• The government can ask an implementing agency to raise the required funds from the market through loans or by issuing bonds. 
  • For example, Food subsidy is one of the major expenditures of the Centre. In the Budget presentation for 2020-21, the government paid only half the amount budgeted for the food subsidy bill to the Food Corporation of India. The shortfall was met through a loan from the National Small Savings Fund. This allowed the Centre to halve its food subsidy bill from Rs 1,51,000 crore to Rs 77,892 crore in 2020-21.
• Other public sector undertakings have also borrowed for the government. For instance, public sector oil marketing companies were asked to pay for subsidized gas cylinders for Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana beneficiaries in the past.
• Public sector banks are also used to fund off-budget expenses. 
  • For example: Loans from PSU banks were used to make up for the shortfall in the release of fertilizer subsidies.                                                                                                                              

News Source: The Hindu 

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Context: 

It will soon be 14 years since the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka. The three decade war that ended in May 2009 caused to seek protection in India, among a population of identical ethnicity in Tamil Nadu. 

Background of Civil war:

• During British Rule the pattern of Tamil favoritism left Sinhalese people feeling isolated and oppressed. Soon after British occupiers left the island in 1948, these patterns of Tamil dominance changed dramatically.
• After independence, many Sinhalese gained power and went on to gradually pass acts effectively disenfranchising their Tamil counterparts, which led to the creation of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1976.
• The conflict then escalated into civil war in 1983, leading to riots targeting Tamils in Colombo.
• The fighting lasted just under three decades and ended in May 2009, when the Sri Lankan government announced that they killed the LTTE leader.

Humanitarian assistance by India: 

• Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in its 2021-22 Annual Report states that 3,04,269 Sri Lankan refugees entered India between July 1983 and August 2012 and were provided relief including shelter, subsidized ration, educational assistance, medical care and cash allowances, access to public education and health facilities.
• The Government of India provided ₹1,226 crore for the relief and accommodation of refugees from July 1983 to March 2022. 
• However, the objective of the Government of India remains the repatriation of refugees to Sri Lanka; 99,469 refugees were repatriated to Sri Lanka up to March 1995 and no organized repatriation was done thereafter.

The issue of voluntary return:

• Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India who wish to return voluntarily are being facilitated by the Government of Sri Lanka. Over the last year, 208 individuals have returned voluntarily, supported by the Government of India, bilateral donors and the UNHCR.
• However, there is a significant population which may not wish to return, preferring to call India home. This is a cohort born and educated in India with no knowledge or experience of their country of origin. 

Conclusion:

• A solution that provides relief from enduring refugee status is the need of the hour. 
• India possesses the capacity and the legal framework to find durable solutions to the refugee situation in Tamil Nadu. 
• In line with the Global Compact on Refugees, India along with the international community has significantly contributed to building conditions within Sri Lanka for a safe and durable return.
• There is a need to devise a solution for the group which may consider India to be their home after a stay of decades. 

                                                                                                                       News Source: The Hindu 

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Context: 

While the world is emerging from the acute phase of the COVID­19 pandemic, the very harmful but invisible pandemic of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is unfortunately here to stay. The rapidly rising AMR rates also need an accelerated, multi­sectoral, global and national response.

Threats posed by AMR:

•  Global public health response has been threatened due to rising misuse and overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals.

•   Microbial resistance to antibiotics has made it harder to treat infections such as pneumonia, tuberculosis (TB), blood poisoning (septicaemia) and several food­borne diseases.

• AMR also imposes a huge health cost on the patient in the form of longer hospitalization, health complications and delayed recovery.

• It puts patients undergoing major surgeries and treatments, such as chemotherapy, at a greater risk.

• Many times, patients recover from advanced medical procedures but succumb to untreatable infections.

 Facts related to AMR:

•  In 2019, AMR was associated with an estimated 4.95 million human deaths.

• A 2018 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned of a phenomenal increase, by 2030, of resistance to back up antibiotics.

•  ICMR study in 2022 showed that the resistance level increases from 5% to 10% every year for broad spectrum antimicrobials.

Muscat conference:

• At the Third Global High­Level Ministerial Conference on Antimicrobial Resistance, over 30 countries adopted the Muscat Ministerial Manifesto on AMR.

• The Muscat Manifesto recognised the need to accelerate political commitments in the implementation of One Health action for controlling the spread of AMR.

• The manifesto encourages countries to prioritize their national action plans for AMR keeping the One Health approach.

• It also recognised the need to address the impact of AMR not only on humans but also on animals, and in areas of environmental health, food security and economic growth and development.

• The conference focused on three health targets:

• •  reduce the total amount of antimicrobials used in the agri­food system at least by 30­-50% by 2030;

• • eliminate use in animals and food production of antimicrobials that are medically important for human health;

• • ensure that by 2030 at least 60% of overall antibiotic consumption in humans is from the WHO “Access” group of antibiotics.

One Health approach:

• The One Health approach requires all stakeholders to work together towards an integrated programme linking challenges of humans, terrestrial and aquatic animals, plant health, food and feed production and the environment.

• This approach will enable the world to effectively prevent, predict and detect the health crisis induced by AMR.

India’s efforts against AMR:

• India has committed to strengthening surveillance and promoting research on newer drugs.

• The National Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance (2017­-21) emphasised the effectiveness of the government’s initiatives for hand hygiene and sanitation programmes such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Kayakalp and Swachh Swasth Sarvatra.

•  The government has also attempted to increase community awareness about healthier and better food production practices, especially in the animal food industry.

• The National Health Policy 2017 also offered specific guidelines regarding use of antibiotics, limiting the use of antibiotics as over the counter medications and banning or restricting the use of antibiotics for growth promotion in livestock.

• It also called for scrutiny of prescriptions to assess antibiotic usage in hospitals and among doctors

• India also plans to strengthen private sector engagement and the reporting of data to the WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) and other standardized systems.

Measures needed:

• Phenotypic and genotypic surveillance of priority pathogens and sharing of data, including through WHO’s GLASS platform.

•   Regulatory and policy action to stop use of antibiotics that are important for human health in animals.

•  No use of antibiotics for growth promotion in animals; more government investment in research and innovation for new antibiotics.

• Explore use of vaccines to prevent certain infections due to AMR organisms in humans and animals.

• Special focus on combating TB and drug­ resistant TB.

Countries such as the Netherlands and Thailand have decreased their usage by almost 50%. In China, the consumption of antibiotics in the agricultural sector has fallen substantially.  

News Source: The Hindu

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