India’s kidney transplant deficit

Why in the News?

India’s organ shortage has increased alarmingly, for which government’s recent reforms (February 2023) allow more flexibility in age and domicile requirements while registering to obtain an organ.

Kidney transplantation in India:

1. There is a high prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in India, affecting about 17% of the population, due to
   1. the prevalence of diabetes, malnourishment
   2. overcrowding and poor sanitation
2.  CKD often leads to end-stage renal disease (ESRD), for which kidney transplant is often the best treatment in terms of almost all dimensions that matter: 
   1. Quality of life, patient convenience, life expectancy, as well as cost-effectiveness
3. In 2022, over two lakh patients needed a transplant, but there were only about 7,500 transplants (about 3.4%). 
4. The United States and other developed countries carry out about 20% transplants compared to India.
5. Stringent regulations in India is the main cause for the gap in transplants.
6. Ways to obtain a Kidney by the Patient:
   1. Get a kidney from a deceased person.
      1. It is constrained due to a lack of donations, the particular conditions required on the nature of death, and the infrastructure needed to collect and store kidneys.
   2. To request a relative or friend to donate.
      1. However, compatibility in terms of blood type and tissue type, between the donor and recipient acts as a constraint.
   3. Kidney ‘swaps’
   4. Kidney ‘chains’

Need for change in regulations:

1. Kidney exchange regulations, though required to encourage kidney exchange across family units, change is required to bolster two innovative kidney exchange methods: kidney ‘swaps’ and kidney ‘chains’.
2. India has barely any kidney swaps and almost no chains due to legal roadblocks.

   1. 

      Swap transplants are legally allowed in India with due permission, but only near-relatives are allowed as donor-recipient pairs. 
   2. If a recipient’s donor is not a near relative (such as spouse, parents), she and her donor cannot participate in a swap.
   3. Exceptions to this restriction are Kerala, Punjab and Haryana, where High Court judgments have recently allowed non-near-relative donor-recipient pairs after verification.
   4. But it is legal for a recipient’s non-near-relative to donate to him/her.
   5. Therefore, there are double standards across swaps and direct donations are questionable.
3. Lack of national coordinating authority for swaps unlike that available for national, regional, and State lists for direct transplant from cadavers.
4. There are no kidney chains in India, as it is illegal (except in Kerala) to donate a kidney out of altruism. 
   1. A chain cannot be started since one cannot donate without getting a kidney (for a family member) in return.
   2. Also, kidneys from the deceased or brain dead are only used for direct transplants, not for chains or cycles.
   3. Kidney chains involve significantly lower hospital resources and uncertainty for participants, as each patient first receives a kidney and only then does their relative donate.
   4. This is better than swaps where families demand nearly simultaneous operations of all donors and recipients since no one wants to lose a kidney without gaining one. 

5. Stringent have led to a proliferation of black markets for kidneys.
   1. It majorly involves ‘Selling a kidney’ to relieve financial distress.
   2. black markets endanger participants as these operations are conducted without due legal and medical safeguards.
6. The Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act 1994:
   1. It recognises transplant possibility from brain-stem death.
   2. In the 2011 amendment, swap transplants were legalised.
   3. A national organ transplant programme was initiated. 

Way forward:

1. Laws for swaps to make them on a par with direct donations is necessary.
2. Inadequate kidney supply largely unaddressed.
3. Sufficient precedents have been set globally can be adopted
   1. Australia, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands and the United States (among others) now allow altruistic donations. 
   2. Spain and the United Kingdom have national-level registries for kidney chains and swaps.
   3. Spain even has international collaborations for kidney exchange.

The digital world of cookies

What are cookies?

1. These are bits of code, stored on a device when one visits websites online.
2. Cookies help in personalisation and user convenience and therefore, play a pivotal role in shaping any online experience.

How do cookies work?

1. Cookies remember a user’s login information on websites, which prevents the need to repeatedly enter the credentials every time revisiting the site, making it convenient for use.
2. The cookies are used to provide recommendations and content based on personalised user experience.

• For instance, Amazon’s cookies shall remember products browsed to purchases made by the user.
• This knowledge helps it to give product recommendations and content, making the online shopping feel like a personalised boutique experience.

3. Cookies are also employed to track online behaviour for extracting commercial benefits.

• Platforms like Facebook and Google track online behaviour using cookies to align the ads encountered by the user with his/her preferences.

What are the types of cookies?

1. Session cookies
   1. They are temporary cookies like post-it notes for websites.
   2. It is stored in the user’s computer’s memory only during your browsing session and vanishes on closing them.
   3. It helps the websites remember actions as the user navigate, like items in the shopping cart.
2. Persistent cookies
   1. They are the digital equivalent of bookmarks.
   2. Stays on the device even after the browsing session ends
   3. They remember login information, language preferences, and even the ads interacted with to provide a more personalised web experience.
3. Secure cookies
   1. It is only sent over encrypted connections, making them safer.
   2. They are often used for sensitive data like login credentials.

What are the uses of cookies?

1. They act as digital ID cards, aiding in user authentication by allowing websites to recognise and keep the user logged in during their visit.
2. They foster a sense of personalisation, recalling users’ preferences such as language choice or website theme.
3. They act as digital equivalent of a persistent shopping cart, ensuring that items added online remain there when the user return.
4. It facilitates website owners to gather data about user interactions, enabling them to make enhancements and customise content.
5. They play a pivotal role in targeted advertising, as advertisers use them to display ads that align with the users’ interests and browsing history, making online shopping more enticing. 

Challenges associated with cookies:

1. It pitches privacy concerns as it tracks the user’s online behaviour, which can sometimes encroach upon the user’s digital privacy.
2. When cookies are nor secure, it can raise security concerns as cybercriminals can pilfer user’s personal information. 
3. Third-party cookies (cookies from a domain other than the one visited by the user) have sparked debates, prompting many web browsers to curb their usage to safeguard user privacy.
4. The data deluge generated by the multitude of cookies can potentially clog the user’s browser, leading to a sluggish web experience.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 recently enacted necessitates websites to acquire explicit consent from users prior to collecting or processing their personal data via cookies.  This has rendered obsolete the concept of implied consent as satisfactory, highlighting the significance of transparent and well-informed consent.

Maldives Election and India

Why in the News?

Maldives is set to face the second round of Presidential election very soon, after no candidate secured more than 50% of the votes in the first round on September 9.

Maldives Election:

1. Maldives’ electoral system is similar to France, where the winner has to secure more than 50% of votes.
2. If no one crosses the mark in the first round, in the second round, the top two candidates go head-to-head.
3. In the first round of polling, Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih secured 39% of the votes, while the Opposition alliance candidate Mohamed Muizzu got 46%.
4. Maldives has a population of about 5.2 lakh people, among which 2.8 lakh are eligible voters, of which about 1.6 lakh are members of various political parties.
5. The multi-party system was adopted after a new Constitution adopted in 2008, that mandated Presidential elections after every five years, contrary to earlier method of electing President through a referendum.
6. The opposition party candidate is Muizzu, seen as a proxy of Yameen has threatened to terminate agreements with foreign countries and expel foreign companies if they are not beneficial to Maldives and its people (hinting at India).

Engagement between the two nations:

1. India worked with Abdul Gayoom closely for three decades (1978-2008).
2. After Nasheer was elected as the President, he soon began courting China and cancelled the GMR contract for the Maldives airport in 2012.
3. In 2013, Maldives joined President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.
4. In 2018 elections, Solih won which led to strengthening of relationship.
5. India has reached out to Maldives on various occasions, say from providing vaccines to building infrastructure to helping with debt relief assistance.
   1. India’s swiftly dispatched 30,000 doses of measles vaccine in January 2020.
   2. Rapid and comprehensive assistance during the Covid pandemic has reinforced India’s credentials of being Maldives’ “first responder”.
   3. India was the first to assist Maldives during the 2004 tsunami as well as the water crisis in Malé in Dec 2014.
   4. Current Projects of India at Maldives include road and land reclamation under the Addu development project, water and sanitation in 34 islands, the Greater Male connectivity project with bridges, renovation of a mosque, building the national college for police, among others.
6. Trade relations:
   1. Trade between the two countries was about Rs 50 crore last year, of which India exported commodities worth Rs 49.5 crore and imports primarily scrap metals, and is exploring seafood products.

Why Maldives in important for India:

1. Maldives's location and its position at the hub of commercial sea-lanes running through the Indian Ocean makes it strategically important to India.
2. Maldives’ proximity to the west coast of India led to enhanced defence ties between India and Maldives, especially since the 26/11 attacks, for coastal surveillance and maritime cooperation.
3. India has trained over 1,500 Maldivian defence and security personnel in the last 10 years, meeting around 70% of their defence training requirements.

Though India is viewed as a development partner, a large section of Maldivians, particularly the youth, are getting attracted to the ‘India Out’ movement propagated by the opposition party of Maldives.

Reservation can help women to improve their economic prospects

Why in the News?

The Women Reservation Bill, 2023 was recently passed by the Parliament with a near unanimous support of all members of the Parliament, providing a third of parliamentary and assembly seats for women.

Statistics of Women representation in politics in India:

1. India has one of the lowest women’s representation in politics compared to other countries in the world.
2. The Election Commission of India reveals that women accounted for only 10.5% of all members of Parliament in 2021, lower than in sub-Saharan Africa (26%), and neighbours such as Nepal (34%) and Pakistan (20%). 

Low women’s economic engagement in India:

1. Indian women’s engagement in the labour market (the labour force participation rate) stands at 25%, which is much lower than the global average of almost 50% (as per World Bank estimates).

• Only 11 countries such as Yemen, Iran and Iraq show lower female labour force participation rates than India. 

2. Factors for the low economic engagement of women in India:
   1. The gendered division of labour within the household placing disproportionately high burden of domestic work on women.
   2. Social norms emphasise marriage rather than careers for women.
   3. Restrictions on women’s physical mobility such as absence of reliable and safe public transport infrastructure compounded by high risk of sexual violence.
   4. Though recent structural shifts away from agriculture have pushed women out of farms, absence of alternative opportunities in the non-farm sector have pushed women to drop out of the labour market entirely.
3. How political representation of women can increase women’s labour participation?

Direct benefits:

1. 1. It can make political and administrative careers for women more viable in the longer term.
   2. It will increase women participation in politics to address issues of essential public services (sanitation, education and health) which shall reduce women’s time in the drudgery of daily domestic work and enable them to take up productive work opportunities.
   3. Women leaders can voice public safety and law and order concerns better, which can potentially improve women’s physical mobility and thereby improve access to work opportunities further away from their homes.

Indirect impacts:

• 1. Reservation for women in panchayats have indicated that exposure to women political leaders weakens traditional gender stereotypes of their role in society and within the home.
  2. Greater public visibility of women creates a role model effect for younger women.
• This can increase the intrinsic value of having a girl child and thereby raising parental investments in their human capital — education, skills and health.

M.S. Swaminathan: Man of Science & Humanity

Why in the News?

The Father of Green Revolution of India, Dr.M.S. Swaminathan passed away recently.

Green Revolution (GR) in India:

1. M S Swaminathan worked closely with Norman Borlaug to usher in the Green Revolution in India in the mid-1960s.
2. India’s food insecurity in the 1960s:
   1. India was facing back-to-back droughts
   2. The country was termed as a “ship to mouth” economy, as it was importing 10 million tonnes from the US under P.L.480 scheme.
   3. The then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri gave a call to the nation to “skip a meal in a week”.
3. Swaminathan convinced the political leadership to import 18,000 tonnes of seeds of high-yielding dwarf wheat varieties, Lerma Rojo and Sonora-64, from Mexico. 
4. The new indigenised wheat varieties, Kalyan Sona and Sonalika, adapting to local conditions changed the agriculture paradigm of India.
5. Outcome of GR in India:
   1. India experienced a wheat and rice revolution. 
   2. India became self-sufficient in food production attaining food security in very few years, which later aided India’s export potential.
      1. In the last 3 years (2020-21 to 2022-23), India exported 85 million tonnes of cereals contributing to global food security.
      2. 40% of global exports of rice come from India.
6. He also recognised the adverse side effects of the Green Revolution.
   1. He acknowledged that the rapid replacement of locally adapted varieties with 1-2 high yielding strains in large contiguous areas can lead to poor soil fertility leading ultimately to the springing up of deserts, indiscriminate use of pesticides, fungicides and herbicides and unscientific tapping of groundwater.
   2. He thus, proposed for a shift in converting the Green Revolution into an “Evergreen Revolution”, an improvement of productivity in perpetuity without ecological harm.

National Commission on Farmers (NCF) report:

1. NCF was chaired by Swaminathan and 5 reports were submitted.
2. One of the key recommendations was to have minimum support prices (MSP) for farmers based on the cost of production plus 50 per cent return. 
   1. The comprehensive cost can be interpreted as which includes not only out-of-pocket expenses of farmers (Cost A2) but also imputed wages of family labour (FL), imputed rent on owned land and imputed interest on owned capital. 
   2. This is known as the “Swaminathan formula”
   3. Currently, MSP of at least a 50% return over Cost A2+FL has been made operational.

About:

M S Swaminathan

1. He was a geneticist as well as an administrator. 
2. He headed the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).
3. Later, became the Director General of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.
4. He was awarded the first World Food Prize in 1987, an award set up by Norman Borlaug as there is no Nobel Prize for Agriculture.
5. He was conferred the Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan for his outstanding contributions.

MGNREGA: the shrinking safety net

Why in the news?

The budget estimate of MNREGA dropped from Rs 98,000 crore in FY 2022 to Rs 60,000 crore in 2023, that has led to shrinking of safety net to MGNREGA workers.

MNREGA as a safety net:

1. It has the participation of 26 crore workers under the scheme acting as a key driver of alleviating poverty in rural India.
2. With the unemployment rate hovering around 8%, MNREGA has been pivotal in providing employment opportunities to rural households, especially landless labourers, minorities and women.
3. The Situation Assessment Survey of Farmers highlights that:
   1. 40% of Indian farmers do not consider farming to be their principal source of income.
   2. They disliked farming as a profession.
   3. Farmers wanted to transition from farming to rural non-farm (RNF) jobs to mitigate the risks associated with agriculture.
4. Decline in real wages
   1. Construction sector is acting as one of the major drivers of RNF employment since 2011-12.
   2. The growth rate of real wages in the construction sector between 2014-15 and 2021-22 was less than 1% per year.
   3. The gradual shift in employment from wage labour in the agricultural sector to non-agricultural wage labour in rural areas can be attributed to significant decline in real agricultural wages.
5. Institutional barriers:
   1. MNREGA, which provides regular salaried employment to rural households acts as a choice between starvation and work stability for landless people.
   2. Problems simmering includes:
      1. The number of workdays have gone down from 100 to 31 days
      2. Poor administrative rationing of jobs among job seekers
      3. Delay in wage payments act as institutional barriers for the rural poor.
      4. The roll out of National Monitoring System App to monitor attendance and Aadhaar-based payment system (ABPS) has raised concerns of leaving out beneficiaries, as nearly 11 crore (40 per cent) workers do not possess Aadhaar-linked bank accounts.

About:

MGNREGA:

1. The MGNREGA was passed in 2005 with an aim of enhancing the livelihood security of households in rural areas
2. It is a demand-driven scheme that guarantees 100 days of unskilled work per year upon demand for every rural household.
3. It covers all districts in the country except those with a 100% urban population.
4. If the worker is not provided work within 15 days from the date of demand, he/she has to be given a daily unemployment allowance as compensation.
5. The wages of unskilled workers should be paid within 15 days and in case of a delay, it has to be compensated by the centre.
6. The Economic Survey 2022-23 stipulates that 6.49 crore households have demanded work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and 5.7 crore actually availed it.

7. Achievements of the scheme so far:
   1. Positive impact on income per household, agricultural productivity, and production-related expenditure.
   2. Income diversification
   3. Infusion of resilience into rural livelihoods
   4. Acts as a form of insurance or safety net for the country’s poorest rural households.
   5. Provided a critical lifeline for ~11 crore workers during the covid-19 pandemic.
8. Challenges to its implementation:
   1. PRS Legislative Research: since 2016-17, less than 10% of the households completed 100 days of wage employment on an average.

1. 2. Delay in payment of wages.
   3. Fake job cards
   4. Widespread corruption
   5. Late uploading of muster rolls
   6. Inconsistent payment of unemployment allowance

Mahendragiri stealth frigate

1. It is the 7^th stealth frigate under the Indian Navy's Project named after Mahendragiri mountain peak of the Eastern ghats, located in Odisha.
2. It is also the last Nilgiri-Class stealth frigate for Indian navy.
3. It was built by Mazagaon dock shipbuilders Ltd. as a part of achieving the goal of AtmaNirbhar Bharat and propels India’s future to indigenous defence capabilities.
4. It is a technologically advanced warship with advanced weapons and sensors and platform management systems.

Kakrapar Atomic Power project (KAPP3)

1. It is the largest indigenously developed 700-megawatt electric (MWe) nuclear power reactor unit in Gujarat attained it first criticality in 2020, has started operations in 2023.
2. First criticality signifies the initiation of a controlled, but sustained nuclear fission reaction in the nuclear power plant.
3. It is a variant of the Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) which uses natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as the moderator.
4. The power plant also addresses the excess thermal margins
5. Thermal margins refer to the extent to which the operating temperature of the reactor is below its maximum operating temperature.

Monoclonal Antibodies

1. Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-made proteins that mimic the behaviour of antibodies produced by the immune system to protect against diseases and foreign substances
2. It attaches itself to an antigen such as Glycoproteins (a foreign substance, usually a disease-causing molecule) and helps the immune system eliminate it from the body.
3. They are specifically designed to target certain antigens.
4. Principle of generation of monoclonal antibodies for use in humans was described using hybridoma.
   1. Hybridoma is a fusion cell made up of B cells (white blood cells that produce antibodies) and myeloma cells (abnormal plasma cells). 
   2. These hybrid cells allowed the researchers to produce a single antibody clone, which came to be known as a monoclonal antibody.
5. m102.4
   1. It is a potent, fully human monoclonal antibody that neutralises Hendra and Nipah viruses, both outside and inside of living organisms. 
   2. The drug is used on a ‘compassionate use’ basis (use of an unauthorised medicine under strict conditions among people under absence of no other alternative).