Unrest in Myanmar

Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists:

Ø Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for decades, they are largely viewed domestically as land-hungry intruders who came illegally from neighboring Bangladesh.

Ø Earlier Military regime excluded them from 135 ethnicities in 1984 , denying them the rights of citizenship and other rights

Ø The Burmese government classifies the Rohingya as "immigrants" to Burma, and thus not eligible for citizenship.

Why Govt. should Act?

Ø Myanmar is an emerging country; hence the reputation of the country is on the stake.

Ø To facilitate the large flow of foreign capital into the country for development

Ø Myanmar heading towards democracy, trade partnership with neighboring countries.

Ø To ensure law and order in the country

Reactions- Domestic:

·       National League for Democracy – The NLD appealed to the rioters to stop

·       88 Generation Students Group – 88 Generation Students leaders called the riots "acts of terrorism" and acts that have "nothing to do with Islam, Buddhism, nor any other religion

·       All Myanmar Islam Association – All Myanmar Islam Association, the largest Islam association in Myanmar, condemned the "terrorizing and destruction of lives and property of innocent people", declaring that "the perpetrators must be held accountable by law

·       In August 2012 President Thein Sein announced the establishment of a 27-member commission to investigate the violence

Reaction: International:

·       Bangladesh – Bangladesh, which borders Burma, increased border security in response to the riots. Numerous boat refugees were turned aside by the Border Guard

·       Iran – Members of Iranian society condemned the attacks and called on other Muslim states to take a "firm stance" against the violence; protests also took place in Iran

·       Pakistan – Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Moazzam Ali Khan said during a weekly news briefing: "we are concerned about the situation, but there are reports that things have improved there." He added that Pakistan hoped Burmese authorities would exercise necessary steps to bring the situation back to control

·       Saudi Arabia – The Council of Ministers of Saudi Arabia says that it "condemns the ethnic cleansing campaign and brutal attacks against Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya citizens" and it urged the international community to protect "Muslims in Myanmar".[53] King Abdullah ordered $50 million of aid sent to the Rohingyas, in Saudi Arabia's capacity as a "guardian of global Muslim interests

·       United Kingdom – Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne told reporters that he was 'deeply concerned' by the situation and that the UK and other countries would continue to watch developments closely

·       United States – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday called for "all parties to exercise restraint", adding that "the United States continues to be deeply concerned" about the situation

·       Organization of Islamic Cooperation – On 15 August, a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation condemned Myanma authorities for the "violence" against Rohingyas and the denial of the group's citizenship, and vowed to bring the issue to the United Nations General Assembly

Malaria and Dengue, Difference, Symptoms, Prevention

	Malaria	Dengue
Cause	Caused by parasite- Plasmodium Falciparum	Viral Infection
Transmission	Mosquitoes- Anopheles	Mosquitoes- Aedes
Incidence	Sub-Sahanran, Asia, Latin America, Europe (Decreasing order)	Tropical and Sub-tropical areas worldwide- mostly in urban and semi-urban areas
Symptoms	Like regular influenza- Fever, Headache, Chills, Vomiting	High fever, headache, muscle pain, possibly rashes Severe Dengue- Plasma leaking, fluid Accumulation, Respiratory distress, severe bleeding, organ impairment
Incubation Period	10-15 days	4-10 days
Prevention	Avoid Mosquito Bites, No Vaccine Available- Only anti-malarial drugs	Avoid Mosquito Bites, No Vaccine Available
	Ø Wear clothing that exposes as little skin as is practicable Ø Apply a repellent containing the insecticide DEET (concentration 30 to 35%) or picaridin (concentration 20% or greater for tropical travelers). Picaridin has a pleasant smell, an advantage over DEET Ø Ensure that all open windows have insect screens Ø Use an aerosol insecticide before going to bed and a vaporizer device throughout the night Ø bednets and clothing may be soaked in or sprayed with permethrin. Permethrin is an insecticide licensed for use on clothing
UN Report on health dangers posed by Climate Change: o  Global warming will put millions more people at risk of malaria and dengue fever o  Droughts, floods and storms will worsen unless measures are taken to cut emissions in half by 2050 relative to 1990 levels o  Changes in weather patterns may also increase the number of people exposed to dengue fever to 3.5 billion from 1.5 billion by 2080 o  A major public health threat is coming from the vector- borne diseases that depend on temperature and on humidity o  World temperatures have increased by about 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) since industrialization intensified the use of coal and other carbon-emitting sources of fuel

India-US civil Nuclear Deal and other related issues

1      Chronological events:

Ø 1968: India refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) on the grounds that it is discriminatory.

Ø May 18, 1974: India conducts its first nuclear test.

Ø March 10, 1978: US President Jimmy Carter signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, following which US ceases exporting nuclear assistance to India.

Ø May 11-13, 1998: India tests five underground nuclear tests.

Ø July 18, 2005: US President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh first announce their intention to enter into a nuclear agreement in Washington.

2      India-US Nuclear Deal (Also called 123 agreement)

Ø India agreed to separate its civil and military nuclear facilities and to place all its civil nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards and, in exchange, the United States agreed to work toward full civil nuclear cooperation with India.

Ø US- Amended its domestic law, Atomic Energy Act of 1954, grant of an exemption for India by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an export-control cartel that had been formed mainly in response to India's first nuclear test in 1974

Ø India prepared separation plan for Civil Military Nuclear Separation, India-IAEA safeguards (inspections) agreement and the

Ø The implementation of this waiver made India the only known country with nuclear weapons which is not a party to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but is still allowed to carry out nuclear commerce with the rest of the world

3      Why India does not sign NPT:

Though neither India, Israel, nor Pakistan have signed the NPT, India argues that instead of addressing the central objective of universal and comprehensive non-proliferation, the treaty creates a club of "nuclear haves" and a larger group of "nuclear have-nots" by restricting the legal possession of nuclear weapons to those states that tested them before 1967, who alone are free to possess and multiply their nuclear stockpiles. India insists on a comprehensive action plan for a nuclear-free world within a specific time-frame and has also adopted a voluntary "no first use policy".

4      India’s Quest to International Groups:

The Indian quest for membership to the four non-proliferation regimes - NSG, Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group - took on a serious tone after the US President Barack Obama formally committed US support to helping India get into these regimes, during his visit to India in November, 2010.

However, the NSG itself took a massive beating when China announced that it would transfer two more nuclear reactors - Chashma III and IV - to Pakistan, without bothering to go to the NSG for a waiver, like the US and India did for their nuclear deal in 2008.

The Chinese transfer went through the NSG, despite some dissenting voices, and China actually got away with its "explanation" that these reactors had been "grandfathered", in other words, signed before China acceded to the NSG.

4.1   Missile Technology Control Regime:

The Missile Technology Control Regime is an informal and voluntary association of countries which share the goals of non-proliferation of unmanned delivery systems capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction, and which seek to coordinate national export licensing efforts aimed at preventing their proliferation. The MTCR was originally established in 1987 by Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Since that time, the number of MTCR partners has increased to a total of thirty-four countries, all of which have equal standing within the Regime.

4.2   The Wassenaar Arrangement:

The Wassenaar Arrangement (full name: The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies) is a multilateral export control regime(MECR) with 41 participating states including many former COMECON (Warsaw Pact) countries.

It is the successor to the Cold war-era Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM), and was established on July 12, 1996, in the Dutch town of Wassenaar, near The Hague. The Wassenaar Arrangement is considerably less strict than COCOM, focusing primarily on the transparency of national export control regimes and not granting veto power to individual members over organizational decisions. 

Food Security Bill

Important Provisions of the Bill:

Ø The Bill proposes food grain entitlements for up to 75 percent of the rural and up to 50 percent of the urban population.  Of these, at least 46 percent of the rural and 28 percent of the urban population will be designated as priority households.  The rest will be designated as general households.

Ø Priority households will be entitled to 7 kg of subsidized food grains per person per month.  General households will be entitled to at least 3 kg.

Ø The central government will determine the percentage of people in each state that will belong to the priority and general groups.  State governments will identify households that belong to these groups.   

Ø The Bill proposes meal entitlements to specific groups.  These include: pregnant women and lactating mothers, children between the ages of six months and 14 years, malnourished children, disaster affected persons, and destitute, homeless and starving persons.

Ø Grievance redressal mechanisms will be set up at the district, state, and central levels of government.

Challenges for the Food Security Bill:

Ø The Bill proposes reforms to the Targeted Public Distribution System.

Ø The Bill classifies beneficiaries into three groups. The process of identifying beneficiaries and placing them into these groups may lead to large inclusion and exclusion errors.

Ø Several entitlements and the grievance redressal structure would require state legislatures to make adequate budgetary allocations.  Implementation of the Bill may be affected if states do not pass requisite allocations in their budgets or do not possess adequate funds.

Ø The Bill does not provide a rationale for the cut-off numbers prescribed for entitlements to priority and general households.

Ø The grievance redressal framework may overlap with that provided in the Citizens’ Charter Bill that is pending in Parliament.

Ø Schedule III of the Bill specifies goals which may not be directly related to food security.  It is unclear why these have been included in the Bill.

Ø The Bill provides similar definitions for starving and destitute persons.  However, entitlements to the two groups differ.

What is the Need of such a bill?

Ø there is more than 8 crore tons of cereals in the FCI godowns which will increase to become 10 crore ton after the Kharif crops are harvested and procured. On the other hand, there are children, adults and aged people who are hungry and malnourished.

Ø Activists of an organisation working for food security, Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan appealed the government to provide subsidised cereals for all and asked for an effective National Food security legislation.

Ø Demanded from the government to remove the distinction of APL-BPL and open the doors of the godowns to distribute the grains to needy.

INCLUSIVE PDS

Ø Tamil Nadu has gone all the way to a universal PDS, every household there is entitled to 20 kg of rice every month, that too free of cost.

Ø Other States that have made significant moves towards a universal or near-universal PDS (at least in rural areas) include Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Orissa, and Rajasthan.

IMPACT ON POVERTY:

Ø Based on these implicit subsidy calculations, it is possible to estimate the impact of PDS on rural poverty — by adding the implicit subsidy to the explicit NSS estimate of Monthly Per Capita Expenditure (MPCE) for each sample household.

Ø Using NSS data for 2009-10, it turns out that the PDS (more precisely, the foodgrain component of the PDS) reduces the Tendulkar poverty gap by around 18 per cent at the national level. This is a moderate achievement, but what is more interesting than the national average is the contrast between States.

Ø In Tamil Nadu, the PDS reduces the Tendulkar poverty gap by more than 50 per cent. Other States where the PDS has a large impact on rural poverty include Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh (about 40 per cent), and also Himachal Pradesh and Kerala (around 35 per cent).

Clinical Trials

What is a clinical Trial?

It is a way to determine the safety and efficacy of a drug by seeing the effect on participants. All the drugs from a simple cough to life threatening cancer are outcome of painstaking clinical trials.

Why we need it?

·       For development of cheaper and effective drugs for poor people

·       For advancement of pharmaceutical research

·       To develop the drugs for life threatening disease such as cancer, HIV-AIDS etc.

·       Efficacy of drug also depends on the ethnicity of population. For example cancer drug Iressa, effective of Japanese population but not on Caucasian population. Hence, India too has its representation in clinical trials. (India- 2%, China- 9%)

·       USA-FDA has approved the outcomes of foreign clinical trials valid. Hence keeping in view the cost and efficiency, a lot of drugs will be tried in India. (Diverse population hence a large genetic pool)

Why Clinical Trials in news?

Ø More then 500 people died in year 2012 due to clinical trials, so NGO, PIL and other has started their crusade again clinical trials. They only seeing the dark side of clinical trials and portraying it as the pharma company are using poor people as a tool to test their drugs and then make profit. In response to this controversy, SC has asked government the details of clinical trials in India.

Ø Lack of regulation of clinical trials has lead to some lapses, however public is painting the whole trials industry with same brush.

Regulators for Clinical Trials:

Ø Contract Research Organization (CRO)

Ø Central Drug Standard Control Organization (CDSCO)

But CDSCO allegedly in collusion with drug companies/ doctors give approval to drugs without testing and verifying the safety and efficacy through clinical trials. So we need transparency, accountability and accessibility in the process of approval of new drugs.

(USA- FDA, UK- Medical Commission)