Daily Current Affairs : 16th, 17th and 18th November

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Finance Act 2017
2. Mangroves and Sunderbans
3. ESSAR Steel Case
4. New IBC rules for financial firms
5. Selection for the Gaganyaan mission
6. Surface and atmospheric temperature of Sun
7. Black hole Mimickers
8. Places of Worship Act
9. Srilanka Presidential Election
10. Surveillance Law, Diabetics and Insulin, SeeTB

1 . Finance Act 2017

Context: The Supreme Court on Wednesday referred to a larger constitution bench the issue of whether the Finance Act 2017 could be passed as a money Bill.

About Finance Act 2017

• Finance Act 2017 included rules on appointments to 19 different tribunals,and was passed as a Money Bill.
• Part XIV of the Finance Act 2017 had amended various Acts to provide for new rules and appointments to various tribunals, including the industrial tribunal, Railway Claims Tribunal, National Green Tribunal, Armed Forces Tribunal, appellate tribunals for sectors such as telecom, aviation, highways, taxation, company law, and others.
• Section 184 of the same Act gave the Central government the powers to frame rules regarding the tribunals.

About the Petition

• Pertitioner challenged the constitutional validity of certain provisions of the Finance Act, 2017.
• The Bench has examined various questions including the legality of Sections 156 to 189 of the Finance Act, 2017. These sections had introduced the reorganistion of key tribunals, including bringing them under the Law Ministry.
• The petitions had also challenged the passage of the Finance Act as a Money Bill.

About the Judgement

• Issue has been referred to a larger bench of seven judges in the apex court with respect to the Finance Act 2017 and whether it could be passed as a money bill
• Government’s 2017 rules on tribunals were struck down by the constitution bench which held them to be violative of parents laws.
• Till new rules are framed, the appointments to tribunals will be made as per existing statutes and rules and regulations prescribed under them.
• Judicial impact assessment of tribunals to be done too.

2 . Importance of Mangroves

Context : Mangroves had saved the Sunderbans from the Cyclones

About Mangroves

• Mangroves are a group of trees and shrubs that live in the coastal intertidal zone.
• It is usually found within the tropic or subtropic latitudes. In fact, the various species of mangroves aren’t necessarily closely related to one another, but they do share the unique capability of growing within reach of the tides in salty soil.
• Some mangrove species live so close to the shoreline that they are flooded with salt water every day as the tide comes in and submerges their roots. All mangroves have evolved special adaptations that enable them to live in salty, oxygen-poor soil.
• Rising temperatures and sea level due to climate change are allowing mangroves to expand their ranges farther away from the equator and encroach on temperate wetlands, like salt marshes.

Adaptation and Distribution

• To differentiate species that use different methods for dealing with salt, scientists categorize mangroves as either secretors—those that actively rid their tissue of salt—and non-secretors—those that block the salt from entering their tissue.
  • In species from the genera Rhizophora (the red mangrove) and Bruguiera, the plants create a barrier and can almost completely exclude the salt from entering their vascular system—over 90 percent of the salt from seawater is excluded.
  • This barrier acts against osmosis, a process where water moves from areas low in salt concentration to areas high in salt concentration. If the mangrove didn’t have such a barrier, the salty ocean water would suck the mangrove dry. 
• For many mangroves, however, the salt is dealt with after it enters the plant.
  • Mangroves categorized as secretors, including species in the black mangrove genus Avicennia, push salt from the ocean water out through special pores or salt glands within their leaves. As the salty water evaporates, noticeable salt crystals often form on the surface of the leaves. The leaves of some mangrove can also store unwanted salt. Since leaf cells can hold a large volume of water when compared to all other cells, salt is drawn to the leaves as a mechanism to balance the salt concentration. As the leaves age, the cells grow in size since more water is needed to dilute the accumulating salt. This hoarding of water creates thick and fleshy leaves, a characteristic called succulence. Eventually, the leaves age and fall off the tree, taking the salt with them.

Types

A mangrove forest is categorized into five types of forest-based upon its surrounding geography. 

• Mangrove forests along open bays and lagoons that experience full sun are considered to be mangrove fringe. These forests are dependent upon the regular tides that flush leaves, twigs, and mangrove propagules out into the open ocean. 
• An overwash forest is similar to a fringe forest except the entire forest is an island that becomes flooded at high tide. Isolated from the main land and terrestrial predators, it is a popular place for birds to nest. 
• Riverine mangrove forests are within river floodplains by the coast and are heavily influenced by the changing seasons. Sometimes they are inundated with fresh river water, while during summer droughts the soil can become exceptionally salty when the fresh river water is almost nonexistent. 
• Basin mangrove forests extend far inland and occur in inlets, deep bays, and coves. 
• Dwarf, or scrub, mangrove forests only attain canopy heights of less than 5 feet (1.5 meters) although they contain the same species as the other types of forest. The stunted growth is often attributed to a lack of nutrients, high salinity, and rocky soils. 

Importance

• Carbon storage. Mangroves “sequester carbon at a rate two to four times greater than mature tropical forests and store three to five times more carbon per equivalent area than tropical forests” like the Amazon rainforest. This means that conserving and restoring mangroves is essential to fighting climate change, the warming of the global climate fueled by increased carbon emissions, that is already having disastrous effects on communities worldwide. At the same time, mangroves are vulnerable to climate change as sea level rise pushes ecosystems inland.
• Water. Mangroves are essential to maintaining water quality. With their dense network of roots and surrounding vegetation, they filter and trap sediments, heavy metals, and other pollutants. This ability to retain sediments flowing from upstream prevents contamination of downstream waterways and protects sensitive habitat like coral reefs and seagrass beds below.
• Fisheries: Mangrove forests are home to a large variety of fish, crab, shrimp, and mollusk species. These fisheries form an essential source of food for thousands of coastal communities around the world. The forests also serve as nurseries for many fish species, including coral reef fish. A study on the Mesoamerican reef, for example, showed that there are as many as 25 times more fish of some species on reefs close to mangrove areas than in areas where mangroves have been cut down. This makes mangrove forests vitally important to coral reef and commercial fisheries as well.
• Timber and plant products: Mangrove wood is resistant to rot and insects, making it extremely valuable. Many coastal and indigenous communities rely on this wood for construction material as well as for fuel. These communities also collect medicinal plants from mangrove ecosystems and use mangrove leaves as animal fodder. Recently, the forests have also been commercially harvested for pulp, wood chip, and charcoal production.
• Biodiversity. Home to an incredible array of species, mangroves are biodiversity hotspots. They provide nesting and breeding habitat for fish and shellfish, migratory birds, and sea turtles. 
• Coastal protection: The dense root systems of mangrove forests trap sediments flowing down rivers and off the land. This helps stabilizes the coastline and prevents erosion from waves and storms. In areas where mangroves have been cleared, coastal damage from hurricanes and typhoons is much more severe. By filtering out sediments, the forests also protect coral reefs and seagrass meadows from being smothered in sediment.
• Tourism: Given the diversity of life inhabiting mangrove systems, and their proximity in many cases to other tourist attractions such as coral reefs and sandy beaches, it is perhaps surprising that only a few countries have started to tap into the tourism potential of their mangrove forests. Places as diverse as Bonaire and offer snorkelling expeditions in and around mangroves to witness a marvellous variety of baby fish, jellyfish, and urchins against a magical background of interwoven roots delving deep into the sandy substrate. Great potential exists elsewhere for revenue generation in this manner, which values the mangroves intact and as they stand.

3 . ESSAR Steel Case

Context : The Supreme Court on Friday accepted ArcelorMittal’s offer to pay an aggregate ₹42,000 crore as an upfront amount to the secured financial creditors of bankrupt Essar Steel. This paves the way for Arcelor to take over Essar and enter the world’s second-biggest steel market.

Background of the Case

• Essar Steel’s Committee of Creditors (CoC) had sought the quashing of NCLAT’s July 4 order that approved the Rs 42,000-crore bid for the debt-laden firm by ArcelorMittal. This was to be divided between the financial creditors who are owed Rs 30,030 crore and the operational creditors who are owed Rs 11,969 crore.
• A consortium of banks led by the SBI had moved the Supreme Court against a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) order in the case.
• The NCLAT had held that Essar Steel’s operational creditors be treated on par with financial creditors when settling the claims.

Issue with Financial Creditors

• The financial creditors — in this case state-run banks — comprise the committee of creditors. While financial creditors are secured creditors, the operational ones are not. That’s why financial creditors are up in arms against the NCLAT’s equal status order, which they say is a disincentive to lenders and investors.
• According to the lenders and the CoC, the IBC framework does not envisage such a parity between the two categories — operational creditors are expected to be paid only after ..

About the Judgement

• Three-judge Bench upheld the “commercial wisdom” of the Committee of Creditors (CoC) to accept Arcelor’s offer and set the ball rolling for the takeover.
• The court set aside a judgment of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), which held that the amount ought to be shared equally between financial creditors and operational creditors.
• As per the judgement “The equality principle cannot be stretched to treating unequals equally. That will destroy the very objective of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) — to resolve stressed assets. Equitable treatment is to be accorded to each creditor depending upon the class to which it belongs: secured or unsecured, financial or operational,”
• The Supreme Court has also done away with the “mandatory” clause for resolving IBC cases within a 330-day deadline, which was brought in with the July amendments. 

Importance of Financial Creditors

• Explaining why financial creditors are favoured over operational creditors of a bankrupt company in a corporate resolution process, Justice Nariman said financial creditors were capital-providers for companies, who in turn were able to purchase assets and provide a working capital to enable such companies to run their business operations. Operational creditors, on the other hand, were beneficiaries of amounts lent by financial creditors.
• “If an ‘equality-for-all’ approach, recognising the rights of different classes of creditors as part of an insolvency resolution process is adopted, secured financial creditors will, in many cases, be incentivised to vote for liquidation rather than resolution… This would defeat the entire objective of the IBC,” Justice Nariman observed.

4 . Rules to bring Financial firms under IBC

Context : The Centre has issued rules that provide a framework for bringing ‘systemically important financial service providers’ under the purview of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).

Section 227 of IBC

• “Section 227 of the [Insolvency and Bankruptcy] Code enables the Central government to notify, in consultation with the financial sector regulators, financial service providers (FSPs) or categories of FSPs for the purpose of insolvency and liquidation proceedings, in such manner as may be prescribed
• Ministry of Corporate Affairs has notified the Insolvency and Bankruptcy (Insolvency and Liquidation Proceedings of Financial Service Providers and Application to Adjudicating Authority) Rules, 2019 today to provide a generic framework for insolvency and liquidation proceedings of systemically important FSPs other than banks.”

About the New Rules

• As per the new rules, only a regulator will be allowed to refer a non-bank lender or housing financier to a bankruptcy tribunal, unlike in the case of companies that can approach a tribunal on their own, or can be dragged into one either by lenders or operational creditors such as material suppliers.
• The bankruptcy tribunal will appoint an administrator who will try to stitch together a turnaround plan.
• The administrator will be nominated by the regulator, such as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in the case of non-bank lenders and housing financiers.
• The registration or the licence of the financial services provider will not be suspended or cancelled during the bankruptcy resolution process.
• In case a turnaround of the financial institution is not possible, before deciding to liquidate it, the tribunal will listen to the views of the regulator.

5 . Selection for the Gaganyaan mission

Context : Indians in space: 12 of 60 IAF test pilots in shortlist, many out due to dental defects

Selection Process

There are four levels in selection for the Gaganyaan mission

• “The first level is the candidate’s physical prowess and medical history
• Level 2 involves medical tests and psychological tests
• Level 3 involves complex aero medical stresses and grading of the physiological responses
• Level four is the final selection of the individual from the cohort of people who are fit to be astronauts

Who is Conducting it

• Under a cooperation agreement signed in 2018, Russia is helping India with its first human space mission — specifically, selection and training, and supply of technical equipment like support systems for the Gaganyaan crew module.

About the medical issues faced by IAF pilots

• Dental problems and other aspects like minor hearing and visual shortcomings were used to sort the candidates.
• According to space agencies like Europe’s ESA, “astronauts need good teeth because acceleration forces and vibrations during a space flight can be very strong” and “ill-fitting fillings could become loose or fall out, and the atmospheric pressure change may be painful when cavities are present”.

6 . Surface and atmospheric temperature of Sun

Context : The Sun is one of the most familiar celestial objects – it is on the sky everyday. Yet, it harbours many a puzzle for the solar physicist. One of the puzzles concerns its surface and atmospheric temperature. An international team of researchers including one at Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, has had a go at this question. These observations may have unravelled why the Sun’s atmosphere is hotter than its surface.

About Suns Temperature

• The temperature at the core of the Sun is nearly 15 million degrees Celsius, while that at its surface layer, known as the photosphere, is merely 5,700 degrees C.
• The natural thing to expect is that still further outwards, in its atmosphere, known as the corona, the temperatures would be comparable to that at the surface (photosphere).
• However, the temperature of the corona is much higher.
• It starts increasing outside the photosphere, reaching a value of about one million degrees or more in the corona.
• Generally when there are no extra sources of heat, when you move away from a hot object, the temperature steadily decreases. However, with respect to the Sun, after dropping to a low, the temperature again rises to one million degrees in the corona which stretches over several million kilometres from the surface of the Sun. This implies there should be a source heating the corona.

About the Study and Key Findings

• The puzzle of coronal heating has been tackled by many theories. Now, in a paper published in Science, the team of solar physicists has made observations and matched it with an analysis that explains this conundrum.

Solar Spicules

• The key to the puzzle lies in geyser-like jets known as solar spicules that emanate from the interface of the corona and the photosphere.
• While in a photograph these look like tiny hairlike projections, they are in fact 200-500 kilometres wide and shoot up to heights of about 5,000 km above the solar surface.
• It has been suspected that these spicules act as conduits through which mass and energy from the lower atmosphere bypass the photosphere and reach the corona.
• The present study has deciphered how these spicules form and also shows that they act as conduits through which hot plasma is carried into the corona region.

Observations

• The team did their observations using the 1.6-metre Goode Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO), the world’s largest solar telescope, with the NIRIS instrument.
• Observations show that these spicules heat up while propagating upward, reaching the coronal temperature.
• They are made of plasma – a mixture of positive ions and negatively charged electrons,”
• Objects at different temperatures emit light of different wavelengths.
• The coronal plasma emits light in extreme ultraviolet. There is an increase in coronal intensity (emission) as spicules propagate upwards
• The researchers also matched these observations with simultaneous observations form the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly in NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft.
• The research involved taking many high-spatial-resolution images of the same region of the Sun within a short time. This is known as high-cadence. “Since spicules have a very short lifetime – from 10 to 100 seconds – to understand their dynamics a higher cadence was required.

Key Findings

• The key findings are that bursts of spicules originate from the boundaries of web like networks of magnetic structures in the surface.
• Near their footpoints, there emerge magnetic elements that have opposite polarity to the existing magnetic network.
• When the structures with opposing polarity run into each other, they cancel out.
• This was seen at the footpoints of some spicules.
• Exactly at the time of cancellation, the presence of spicules was found , which are also responsible for heating the upper atmosphere

7 . Black hole Mimickers

Context :

About the Recent Findings

• In September 2015, the LIGO detectors in the US detected for the first time the merging of two black holes.
• Since then, LIGO, joined by other detectors around the world, has gone on to detect eleven events of which one is the merger of two neutron stars and the remaining ten, of pairs of black holes (binary black holes).
• As they spiralled in towards each other and merged, the binary black holes let off characteristic gravitational wave signals.
• The properties of the merging black holes, namely the masses and spins could be arrived at by looking at the initial part of the signal waveform.
• Similarly, by carefully looking at the tail end – also known as the ring down part of the signal, the mass and spin of the final merged state (black hole) can be inferred.

Black hole Mimickers

• Black hole mimickers are other exotic objects exist that may act as black hole and give off similar signals.
• Gravastars and boson stars are black hole mimickers.
• A gravastar is a strange object that would have a core of exotic matter resembling dark energy with an external shell of normal star-like matter.

Spin induced Multipole Moments

• The spinning of the compact object has a different effect on it whether it is a black hole or, for instance, a gravastar.
• Since the gravastar is filled with dark energy, it exerts a negative pressure on the outside. So when it spins it behaves differently from normal stars and black holes.
• When a normal star spins about an axis, it tends to bulge about the equator and get compressed at the poles.
• However, for a gravastar this effect is just reversed – It gets compressed near the equator and bulges out at the poles. Thus their shapes change differently when spinning.
• Any compact object, in general, can undergo deformations due to its spinning motion and these deformations are expressed in terms of what is called spin-induced multipole moments
• For black holes, due to the existence of event horizon, any property we measure from outside will depend on only its mass and spin, unlike other compact objects

How to Distinguish between Black hole mimickers and Black hole

• One property that can distinguish between a black hole and exotic object is known as spin-induced quadrupole moment. This parameter takes the value 1 for a black hole. “For other compact objects, the value of this parameter is different from 1 and will vary depending on the internal structure,

8 . Places of Worship Act

Context : When the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute was at its height, in the early 1990s, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and other Hindu organisations also laid claim to two other mosques — the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi and the Shahi Idgah in Mathura. In this backdrop, the P.V. Narasimha Rao government enacted, in September 1991, a special law to freeze the status of places of worship as they were on August 15, 1947. The law kept the disputed structure at Ayodhya out of its purview, mainly because it was the subject of prolonged litigation.

Objective of the Act

• The aim of the Act was to freeze the status of any place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947.
• It was also to provide for the maintenance of the religious character of such a place of worship as on that day.
• It was intended to pre-empt new claims by any group about the past status of any place of worship and attempts to reclaim the structures or the land on which they stood.
• It was hoped that the legislation would help the preservation of communal harmony in the long run.

Main features

• The Act declares that the religious character of a place of worship shall continue to be the same as it was on August 15, 1947.
• It says no person shall convert any place of worship of any religious denomination into one of a different denomination or section.
• It declares that all suits, appeals or any other proceedings regarding converting the character of a place of worship, which are pending before any court or authority on August 15, 1947, will abate as soon as the law comes into force. No further legal proceedings can be instituted.
• However, there is an exception to the bar on instituting fresh proceedings with regard to suits that related to conversion of status that happened after August 15, 1947. This saves legal proceedings, suits and appeals regarding chance of status that took place after the cut-off date.
• These provisions will not apply to ancient and historical monuments and archaeological sites and remains that are covered by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958; a suit that has been finally settled or disposed of; and any dispute that has been settled by the parties or conversion of any place that took place by acquiescence before the Act commenced.
• The Act does not apply to the place of worship commonly referred to as Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. 

Penal provision in the Act

• Anyone who defies the bar on conversion of the status of a place of worship is liable to be prosecuted.
• The Act provides for imprisonment up to three years and a fine for anyone contravening the prohibition.
• Those abetting or participating in a criminal conspiracy to commit this offence will also be punished to the same extent, even if the offence is not committed in consequence of such abetment or as part of the conspiracy.

Ayodhya judgment

• In its verdict, the Supreme Court commended the enactment as one that preserved the constitutional value of secularism by not permitting the status of a place of worship to be changed.
• The state has, by enacting the law, enforced a constitutional commitment and operationalised its constitutional obligations to uphold the equality of all religions and secularism, which is a part of the basic features of the Constitution.
• It said the Places of Worship Act “imposes a non-derogable obligation towards enforcing our commitment to secularism.”
• The court observed that “non-retrogression is a foundational feature of the fundamental constitutional principles, of which secularism is a core component.”
• It took note of attempts to change the character of places of worship by people taking law into their own hands, citing historical events. “Historical wrongs cannot be remedied by the people taking the law in their own hands. In preserving the character of places of public worship, Parliament has mandated in no uncertain terms that history and its wrongs shall not be used as instruments to oppress the present and the future,” it observed.

9 . Srilanka Presidential Election

Context : Gotabaya Rajapaksa, opposition candidate in Sri Lanka’s presidential contest, on Sunday emerged winner securing 52.25 % of the mandate, and marking the return of the Rajapaksa family to power.

About the President of Sri Lanka

• President is the Executive head of state and head of government of Sri Lanka and commander-in-chief of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces.
• The President is elected to office in a presidential election held nationwide for a term of maximum of five years. An elected president can serve a maximum of two terms, with each term taking effect from the date of taking a public oath of the office for the elected term.

Structure of Government

10 . Issues in Conversion of wasteland into productive uses

Context : India’s conversion of more than 14,000 square km of ‘wasteland’ — mostly dense scrub, glacial areas, sands or marshland — into productive use between 2008-09 and 2015-16, and the government’s target to restore 26 million hectares of wasteland and degraded land by 2030 risks affecting the livelihoods of pastoralists, fishermen and nomadic farmers who are often dependent on these traditional “commons” lands, caution environmental policy researchers and social activists.

Background

• The Wastelands Atlas, prepared in collaboration with the National Remote Sensing Centre and released recently by the Land Resources Department uses satellite data to measure the extent of 23 different types of wastelands and tracks the impact of reclamation efforts.
• While 14,536 sq. km of wasteland were converted to productive use, the country saw a net conversion of 8,404 sq. km. Over half that land lies in Rajasthan, where a net change of 4,803 sq. km was seen, with large areas of scrub and sands brought under the plough and converted to cultivated cropland.
• The State also has extensive solar parks set up in its wastelands, thus converting them to industrial use in the production of renewable energy. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar also saw high levels of net conversion.
• The government has been encouraging wasteland conversion, pointing out that while India has 18% of the world’s population, it only has 2.4% of the land area.
• “In order to ensure food security, there is an urgent need to improve the productivity of existing cultivated lands and to bring additional land under plough.

Importance of wastelands

• Conversions could impact livelihoods. Pastoral communities depend on common grazing land, gatherers and nomadic farmers depend on scrub forest and open scrubland for shifting cultivation, while fishermen can make a living off waterlogged and marshy areas.
• These areas sometimes protect unique biodiversity resources, which could be destroyed when development occurs.
• These ‘commons’ also act as a buffer against floods, droughts and pollution for a wider population, they point out.
• In southern India, these areas have traditionally been called ‘poromboke’ land which is communally owned, cannot be bought, sold or built on. In Karnataka, the gomal lands are common grazing areas. In other regions, village forests and pastures, or gram panchayat lands, have played a similar role from medieval times.

11 . Facts for Prelims

Legal Routes to Surveillance

• Legal routes to surveillance that can be conducted by the government. The laws governing this are the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, which deals with interception of calls, and the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, which deals with interception of data.
• Under both laws, only the government, under certain circumstances, is permitted to conduct surveillance, and not private actors. Moreover, hacking is expressly prohibited under the IT Act.
• Section 43 and Section 66 of the IT Act cover the civil and criminal offences of data theft and hacking respectively. Section 66B covers punishment for dishonestly receiving stolen computer resource or communication. The punishment includes imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years.

Diabetics and Insulin

• Diabetes is a disease that occurs when your blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high. Blood glucose is your main source of energy and comes from the food you eat. 
• Insulin, a hormone made by the pancreas, helps glucose from food get into your cells to be used for energy. Sometimes your body doesn’t make enough—or any—insulin or doesn’t use insulin well. Glucose then stays in your blood and doesn’t reach your cells.
• The most common types of diabetes are type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes.
  • Type 1 diabetes : If you have type 1 diabetes, your body does not make insulin. Your immune system attacks and destroys the cells in your pancreas that make insulin. People with type 1 diabetes need to take insulin every day to stay alive.
  • Type 2 diabetes : If you have type 2 diabetes, your body does not make or use insulin well. You can develop type 2 diabetes at any age, even during childhood. However, this type of diabetes occurs most often in middle-aged and older people. Type 2 is the most common type of diabetes.
• As per Diabetics Atlas published by International Diabetes Foundation One in six people with diabetes in the world is from India. The numbers place the country among the top 10 countries for people with diabetes, coming in at number two with an estimated 77 million diabetics. China leads the list with over 116 million diabetics.

SeeTB

• SeeTB a small device that can be attached to a simple optical microscope to convert it into a fluorescence microscope, thus enabling better TB diagnosis at the point-of-care.
• The device is battery operated and allows quick identification of the bacteria.
• The team has also developed a clearing reagent called CLR which helps in thinning the collected sputum thus enhancing the bacteria detection.
• Currently used fluorescence microscopy requires infrastructure, an air-conditioned room, trained professionals and is functional only in tertiary health care centers. SeeTB can be used at the primary health care centres in the villages, and once diagnosed, the treatment can be started.