Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE
Topics Covered
- Arbitration and Conciliation Amendment Act
- Separation of Power
- WHO Scientific Investigation into the origin of COVID
- Novel Genomic Regions
- Nanophotonics
- Tholpavakkoothu, Kalaripayattu
1 . Arbitration and Conciliation Amendment Act
Context : The Lok Sabha on Friday passed the Arbitration and Conciliation (amendment) Bill 2021 to replace an ordinance that enabled certain arbitral awards to be “unconditionally stayed”.
About the Amendment
- Automatic stay on awards: The 1996 Act allowed a party to file an application to set aside an arbitral award (i.e., the order given in an arbitration proceeding). Courts had interpreted this provision to mean that an automatic stay on an arbitral award was granted the moment an application for setting aside an arbitral award was made before a court. In 2015, the Act was amended to state that an arbitral award would not be automatically stayed merely because an application is made to a court to set aside the arbitral award.
- The Amendment specifies that a stay on arbitral award can be provided (even during the pendency of the setting aside application) if the court is satisfied that:
- the relevant arbitration agreement or contract, or
- the making of the award, was induced or effected by fraud or corruption. This change will be effective from October 23, 2015.
- Qualifications of arbitrators: The Act specified certain qualifications, experience and accreditation norms for arbitrators in a separate schedule. The requirements under the schedule include that the arbitrator must be: (i) an advocate under the Advocates Act, 1961 with 10 years of experience, or (ii) an officer of the Indian Legal Service, among others. Further, the general norms applicable to arbitrators include that they must be conversant with the Constitution of India. The Amendment omits the Schedule for arbitrators and states that the qualifications, experience, and norms for accreditation of arbitrations will be specified by regulations.
Difference between 2015 Amendment and the Current Amendment
- Section 36 of the Arbitration & Conciliation Act was amended in 2015 to the effect that the mere filing of a Section 34 application does not stay the enforcement of the award, and it can be stayed on an application and subject to conditions imposed by the court.
- However, the latest amendment is a slight departure from the 2015 amendment. It has the effect of unconditionally staying the enforcement of the award passed on the basis of the arbitration agreement, induced by fraud or corruption.
- The driving force behind the amendment is that the parties must get an opportunity to seek unconditional stay of the award, where there are allegations of fraud or corruption. The amendment is, in fact, in line with the judgements passed by the Supreme Court on arbitrability of fraud
2 . Separation of Power
Context : Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday told the Lok Sabha that just as independence of the judiciary is a part of the basic structure of the Constitution, the principle of separation of powers is also a part of that basic structure. He asserted that governance and lawmaking should be left to the elected members of the legislature.
About the issue
- In his reply to a debate on the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2021, Mr. Prasad also urged the judiciary to exercise its discretion in accepting public interest litigations.
- The Law Minister said that there was a “rush to file PILs on almost every issue” nowadays. He appealed to the judiciary to look at “genuine” issues such as compensation, working conditions of the working classes, and so on. The amendment to the Arbitration Act proposes to empower courts to stay arbitration awards if they have been obtained through fraud or corrupt means.
About Separation of Power
- The term “separation of powers” or “trias –politica “ was initiated by Charles de Montesquieu. For the very first time, it was accepted by Greece and then it was widespread use by the Roman Republic as the Constitution of the Roman Republic. Its root is traceable in Aristotle and Plato when this doctrine became the segment of their marvels.
- Under this rule the state is divided into three different branches- legislative, executive and judiciary each having different independent power and responsibility on them so that one branch may not interfere with the working of the others two branches.
- Basically, it is the rule which every state government should follow in order to enact, implement the law, apply to specific case appropriately.
- If this principle is not followed then there will be more chances of misuse of power and corruption
- If this doctrine is followed then there will be less chance of enacting a tyrannical law as they will know that it will be checked by another branch.
- It aims at the strict demarcation of power and tries to bring the exclusiveness in the functioning of each organ.
Definition
- The definition of separation of power is given by different authors. But in general, the meaning of separation of power can be categorized into three features:
- Person forming a part of on organs should not form the part of other organs.
- One organ should not interfere with the functioning of the other organs.
- One organ should not exercise the function belonging to another organ.
- The separation of power is based on the concept of trias politica. This principle visualizes a tripartite system where the powers are delegated and distributed among three organs outlining their jurisdiction each.
Constitutional Provisions
- Article 62 to Article 72 : The Parliament is competent enough to make any law subject to the conditions of Constitution and there are no restrictions on its law-making powers. The president power and functions are given in the Constitution itself.
- Article 226 and Article 227 : The judiciary is self –dependent in its field and there is no obstruction with its judicial functions either by Legislature or the Executive. The High Court under Article 226 and Article 227 and Supreme Court under Article 32 and Article 136 of Constitution are given the power of judicial review and any law passed by the legislature can be declared void by the judiciary if it is inconsistent with Fundamental Rights (Article 13). By going through such provisions many jurists are of opinion that doctrine of separation of powers is accepted in India.
- Article 53(1) and Article 154(1) : Executive power is vested in President under Article 53(1) and in Governor under Article 154(1) but there is no provision which talks about the vesting of legislative and judiciary power in any organ. We can conclude that there is no rigid separation of power.
3 . WHO Scientific Investigation into the origin of COVID
Context: After several months of delay, concerns over access, and bickering between China and the U.S., a 17-member team from the World Health Organization began a field visit on January 29, 2021, to unearth the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has so far spread to over 108 million people and killed nearly 2.4 million people across the globe. According to the WHO, the field visits included the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Huanan market, and the Wuhan CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) laboratory.
What are the four scenarios of virus origin that were investigated?
- The WHO team undertook scientific investigations to look at four main scenarios for the origin of the virus.
- The first possibility is that a single individual had got infected with the virus through direct contact with bats and then spread it to others before the virus made its way to Wuhan.
- The second scenario is of the virus crossing the species barrier from bats to humans through an intermediary species, which has still not been found.
- The third possibility is that the virus originated outside China and spread to Wuhan through imported frozen food
- Last scenario is that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been studying coronaviruses.
What role did the Huanan wet market play?
- Though the first cluster of cases reported in Wuhan had links to the wet market, it soon became apparent that several infected people did not have any link to it.
- There is not enough evidence to determine how the virus entered the wet market, but there are two likely possibilities — the virus was introduced into the market either through one or more infected people or through frozen food.
Has the possibility of a lab-leak been ruled out?
- The WHO fact-finding team had initially rejected the possibility of a lab-leak saying it is “extremely unlikely” and that further investigation into it was not required. However, at a press briefing on February 12, WHO Chief Tedros A.
- Ghebreyesus appeared to backpaddle, saying that upon discussing with a few team members “all hypotheses [including the lab-leak] remain open and require further analysis and studies”.
Did the virus directly jump from bats to humans?
- The investigation by the WHO team strongly suggests that though bats were the reservoirs of the virus, it is unlikely that the virus jumped directly from bats to humans.
- The virus may have crossed from bats to another animal species and finally to humans. The direct spillover of the virus from bats to humans is unlikely as Wuhan is miles away from any natural bat habitat. The team has not been able to find the intermediary host.
- The role of an intermediary host gains currency as previous coronavirus outbreaks — SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) — have occurred through civets and camels, respectively.
- The SARS-CoV-2 virus, with its distinctive spike protein that allows it to bind to human receptors and enter cells, may have either evolved in the intermediate host itself, making the virus spread readily from one person to another, or it may have gained the ability for human-to-human transmission in humans after jumping from an intermediate host.
- In the latter case, the virus may have evolved certain characteristics in the intermediate host and then gained other features within a human host.
- The virus may have been silently spreading among humans in a limited fashion before gaining the ability to cause a large outbreak, and then the pandemic.
What do the genome sequence data reveal about the virus origin?
- Based on the analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses, scientists have not found any evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or engineered by humans.
- Based on genome sequence data, there are no signatures of the virus being altered or manipulated in a lab. Although showing differences in sequence similarity, SARS-CoV-2 looks very much like a natural virus transferred from the same horseshoe bat species as the first SARS virus, and is now evolving as would be expected in the human population
4 . Novel Genomic Regions
Context : A team from the University of Cambridge set out to find whether new genes emerge in the genome of living organisms, and if they do, how they do so.
Background
- The Human Genome Project helped map our genes, strengthened the study of human diseases and aided new drug discovery.
- The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international programme that led to the decoding of the entire human genome. It has been described as “one of the great feats of exploration in history. Rather than an outward exploration of the planet or the cosmos, the HGP was an inward voyage of discovery led by an international team of researchers looking to sequence and map all of the genes — together known as the genome — of members of our species”.
- Beginning on October 1, 1990 and completed in April 2003, the HGP gave us the ability, for the first time, to read nature’s complete genetic blueprint for building a human being.
- Even after two decades, the number of ‘known’ genes – encoding around 20,000 ‘known’ proteins – has remained constant. It is also a conundrum why only 1.5% of the entire human genome codes for proteins.
- In the last seven years, the team extensively studied the human genome and has now catalogued 1,94,000 novel regions.
About Novel regions
- Nnovel genomic regions cannot be defined by our current ‘definition’ of a gene. Hence, we call these novel regions – novel Open Reading Frames or as nORFs.
- Mutations in nORFs do have physiological consequences and a majority of mutations that are often annotated as benign have to be re-interpreted.
Key Observations
- The team found that these regions are also broadly involved in diseases.
- The nORFs were seen as dysregulated in 22 cancer types. Dysregulated is a term which means that they could either be mutated, upregulated, or downregulated, or they could be uniquely present.
- These regions were uniquely present in the cancer tissues and not present in the control tissue. They found that some nORF disruptions strongly correlated with the survival of patients. “More importantly, we show that nORFs proteins can form structures, can undergo biochemical regulation like known proteins and be targeted by drugs in case they are disrupted in diseases,”
- The researchers also identified these nORFs in Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite which causes the deadliest form of malaria. This shows that there is an urgent need to redesign our existing drugs that target only the known proteins in the parasite.
Genome India’ Project
- Its aim is to ultimately build a grid of the Indian “reference genome”, to understand fully the type and nature of diseases and traits that comprise the diverse Indian population. For example, if the Northeast sees a tendency towards a specific disease, interventions can be made in the region, assisting public health, which make it easier to battle the illness.
- Project is being spearheaded by the Centre for Brain Research at Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Science as the nodal point of about 20 institutions, each doing its bit in collecting samples, doing the computations, and then the research.
5 . Nanophotonics
Context : Crystals are normally rigid, stiff structures, but researchers from University of Hyderabad have shown how crystals can be sliced and even bent using atomic force microscopy. Manipulating them with precision and control comes in very useful in the field of nanophotonics
About Nanophotonics
- Nanophotonics is a qualitative, emerging field where the aim is to go beyond electronics and build up circuits driven entirely by photons (light).
- If the technique can be successfully developed, this can achieve an unprecedented level of miniaturisation and pave the way to all-optical-technology such as pliable, wearable devices operated by light entirely.
Need of the new technology
- Light, when left to itself moves along straight paths, so it is crucial to develop materials and technology that can cause its path to bend along what is required in the circuits. This is like using fibre optics, but at the nanoscale level using organic crystals.
- The Hyderabad group has demonstrated how such crystals can be lifted, bent, moved, transferred and sliced using atomic force microscopy. They add a crucial piece to the jigsaw puzzle of building an “organic photonic integrated circuit” or OPIC.
Mechanophotonics
- Recently, the group has extended the atomic force microscopy technique to deliberately move, bend, slice or cleave and transfer (from one substrate to another) micro-sized waveguiding crystals, and the results were published in Angewandte Chemie. Not stopping with this, they have also shown how other crucial elements needed for nanophotonics can be developed using this technique. “Not only crystals but also polymer microcavities or microresonators (light-trapping elements) can be precisely manipulated to create photonic structures,” says Prof. Chandrasekar.
- The researchers have named this technique “mechanophotonics” as this method can be used to generate the basic elements needed to build up a photonic integrated circuit.
- Usually photonic integrated circuits are made using silicon, silicon-based and metallic materials using electron beam lithography. This group on the other hand uses organic materials and atomic force microscopy to manipulate them.
6 . Facts for Prelims
Tholpavakkoothu
- Tholpavakoothu or shadow puppetry is a temple art form which is prevalent in the Bhagavathy temples (mother Goddess) in Palakkad district and nearby regions in Kerala.
- Tholppava (Thol means leather, Pava means puppet) are moved with the help of strings, and their shadows are depicted on a screen with the help of a row of oil lamps in the background. The story of Tholppavakoothu performance is from the Indian epic, Ramayana. In the olden days it was performed elaborately over a period of forty-one days. The narrative used for the performance is a mixture of prose and poetry called Adalpattu.
- Tholppavas are made of the skin of deer and the puppet forms are made by making small holes in the leather that is then attached vertically to a bamboo stick.
- Accompanying instruments include Ezhupara, Chenda and Maddalam. The artists have to undergo several years of rigorous training to master this art form. The puppetry is staged on a special structure in temple premises called Koothumadam.