Daily Current Affairs : 26th April

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Khasi Kingdoms
2. Virtual Prosthetic Voice
3. Bt Brinjal
4. Cell based meat
5. Process of removal of CJI / Judge of Supreme Court
6. Municipal bond

1 . Khasi Kingdoms

Context : A federation of 25 Himas or Khasi kingdoms that have a cosmetic existence today, plan to revisit the 1948 agreements that made present-day Meghalaya a part of India.

Integration Process

Complete integration of territories into India took the form of three different kinds of legal agreements:

• Standstill Agreement,
• Instrument of Accession
• Merger Agreement.

Standstill agreement

• A standstill agreement was an agreement signed between the newly independent dominions of India and Pakistan and the princely states of the British Indian Empire prior to their integration in the new dominions
• It provided that all the administrative arrangements then existing between the British Crown and the state would continue unaltered between the signatory dominion (India or Pakistan) and the princely state, until new arrangements were made

Instrument of Accession

• Instrument of Accession(IoA), was a crucial amongst the three for it amounted to surrendering the independence and what could be called “external sovereignty”, something that deprived the “Princely State” of its Right of Belligerency and power to independently enter into any treaty with a foreign country, two crucial features of an independent and sovereign states.
• At one level, as the name of the agreement suggested, it was an act of “acceding” to the new state (India or Pakistan) which shall exercise the said powers as an independent and sovereign state in the global order of (nation-)states.
• At another, the IoA established a “treaty relation” between two states, that is India/Pakistan and the acceding princely state. 
• In this sense, the IoA signed means that he Maharajah / King did not surrender his sovereign rights over the territory of his state and also did not necessarily entail him to accept any future constitution (such as the Constitution of India which was adopted on 26 November, 1949 and came into force on 26 January 1950).
• For Example : Unlike other “princely states”, Manipur had its own constitution (1947) and a legislative assembly constituted through elections based on universal adult franchise, first of its kind in South Asia (perhaps, South East Asia as well), 1948. Legally speaking, thus, signing of IoA did not change the status of these institutions.

Merger Agreement

• Merger Agreement is the last process of integrating the “Princely States” into the new Dominion.
• It is an act of transferring whatever remaining powers that the “Princely State” had, even after signing the IoA, to another entity (existing or newly created state).
• In this third phase, some “states” were combined or merged to form a new unit (the then “native states” in present day Rajasthan were merged) or simply the power of administration was transfer to some other entity

About the Issue

• The 25 Khasi states had signed the Instrument of Accession and Annexed Agreement with the Dominion of India between December 15, 1947, and March 19, 1948. The conditional treaty with these states was signed by Governor General Chakravarty Rajagopalachari on August 17, 1948.
• The Khasi states, though, did not sign the Instrument of Merger unlike most other states in India.
• During the British rule, the Khasi domain was divided into the Khasi states and British territories. At that time, the British government had no territorial right on the Khasi states and they had to approach the chiefs of these states if they needed land for any purpose
• After independence, the British territories became part of the Indian dominion but the Khasi states had to sign documents beginning with the Standstill Agreement that provided a few rights to the states
• In 1970 Meghalaya was formed by carving out two districts from the state of Assam: the United Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills, and the Garo Hills 
• Though the Constitution has provided self-rule to a considerable extent through tribal councils, there has been an increasing demand for giving more teeth to the Khasi states.
• The revisiting in consultation with legal experts and academicians is aimed at safeguarding tribal customs and traditions from Central laws in force or could be enacted, such as the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 

2 . Virtual Prosthetic Voice

Context : Scientists have developed a virtual prosthetic voice, a system that decodes the brain’s vocal intentions and translates them into mostly understandable speech, with no need to move a muscle, even those in the mouth.

Background

• The loss of the ability to speak can have devastating effects on patients whose facial, tongue, and larynx muscles have been paralyzed due to stroke or other neurological conditions.
• Technology has helped these patients to communicate through devices that translate head or eye movements into speech. Because these systems involve the selection of individual letters or whole words to build sentences, the speed at which they can operate is very limited. Instead of recreating sounds based on individual letters or words, the goal of this project was to synthesize the specific sounds used in natural speech.
• Current technology limits users to, at best, 10 words per minute, while natural human speech occurs at roughly 150 words/minute

How sound is produced

• When we speak, brain sends signals from the motor cortex to the muscles in your jaw, lips and larynx to coordinate their movement and this produces sound.

About the recent development

• Virtual prosthetic voice is a system that decodes the brain’s vocal intentions and translates them into mostly understandable speech, with no need to move a muscle, even those in the mouth.
• The system decipher the brain’s motor commands guiding vocal movement during speech — the tap of the tongue, the narrowing of the lips — and generates intelligible sentences that approximate a speaker’s natural cadence.
• In this study, speech scientists and neurologists from UCSF recreated many vocal sounds with varying accuracy using brain signals recorded from epilepsy patients with normal speaking abilities. The patients were asked to speak full sentences, and the data obtained from brain scans was then used to drive computer-generated speech. Furthermore, simply miming the act of speaking provided sufficient information to the computer for it to recreate several of the same sounds.

Benefits

• This device doesn’t rely on signals for creating sound, but just on those for control motor functions, which are still sent even if someone is paralysed. So, this device could be useful for people who once were able to speak but lost that ability due to surgery or motor disorders like ALS, in which people lose control of their muscles.

3 . Bt Brinjal

Context : Genetically modified (GM) brinjal is being illegally grown in the Fatehabad district of Haryana, according to anti-GM activists. 

What is Genetic Modification of Crops

• GM is a technology that involves inserting DNA into the genome of an organism. To produce a GM plant, new DNA is transferred into plant cells. Usually, the cells are then grown in tissue culture where they develop into plants. The seeds produced by these plants will inherit the new DNA.  
• Genetic modification of plants involves adding a specific stretch of DNA into the plant’s genome, giving it new or different characteristics. This could include changing the way the plant grows, or making it resistant to a particular disease. The new DNA becomes part of the GM plant’s genome which the seeds produced by these plants will contain.
  

Background

• Following concerns raised by some scientists, farmers and anti-GMO activists, the government of India officially announced on 9 February 2010 that it needed more time before releasing Bt brinjal, with govt saying that there is no overriding urgency to introduce Bt brinjal in India.
• Currently an indefinite moratorium is placed on the release of bt brinjal

About Bt Brinjal

• Fruit & shoot borer-resistant brinjal or Bt brinjal was developed using a transformation process similar to the one used in the development of Bt cotton
• Bt brinjal incorporates the cry1Ac gene expressing insecticidal protein to confer resistance against fruit and shoot borer, a pest
• The cry1Ac gene is sourced from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).
• When ingested by the FSB larvae, the Bt protein is activated in the insect’s alkaline gut and binds to the gut wall, which breaks down, allowing the Bt spores to invade the insect’s body cavity. The FSB larvae die a few days later.
• Bt Brinjal was developed by the Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (Mahyco).

What should be done?

The activists demanded that the GEAC should

• Visit the farms and conduct tests
• Identify the source of seeds
• Destroy GM crops
• Compensate losses incurred by farmers
• Penalise distributing companies
• Form a mechanism to avoid such incidents in the future

4 . Cell based meat

Context : The Union Department of Biotechnology has decided to fund the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and National Research Centre on Meat for research on cell-based meat.

What is cell based meat

• Rather than raising and slaughtering animals for meat, cell-based meat is produced through cellular agriculture, wherein cells are sourced from an animal and cultivated into meat.
• Cell-based meat, also called clean meat or cultured meat, is nutritionally equivalent to conventional animal meat, and tastes, smells, looks and feels exactly the same.
• This new method of producing meat shows strong promise of revolutionising the food system in terms of tackling pressing global issues such as food security, environmental sustainability and animal welfare.

5 . Process of removal of CJI / Judge of Supreme Court

Constitutional Provision

• The Article 124(4) of the Constitution says: “A Judge of the Supreme Court shall not be removed from his office except by an order of the President passed after an address by each House of Parliament supported by a majority of the total membership of that House and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting has been presented to the President in the same session for such removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour incapacity.”

Procedure of Removal

• A notice of motion is issued by 100 MPs from the Lok Sabha or 50 MPs from the Rajya Sabha. This motion for removal can be moved in either House.
• The motion can either be accepted or rejected by the Speaker/Chairman of the House.
• If the motion is admitted, the Speaker or the Chairman of the House forms a three-member committee comprising a senior judge of the Supreme Court, a judge of the High Court and a distinguished jurist to investigate the charges. This committee would look into the alleged charges levelled against the Chief Justice of India.
• If the three-member committee decides to support the motion, it is taken up for discussion in the House, where it had been introduced and must be passed by a special majority – which means it has to be supported by a majority of the total membership of that House not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting.
• Once it is passed, it is taken up in the next House where again it needs to be passed by a special majority.
• After the motion is passed through both the Houses with two-third majority, the President of India is approached to remove the Chief Justice of India.

6 . Municipal Bonds

Context : Reserve Bank of India eased norms for foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) by allowing them to invest in municipal bonds under prescribed limits to broaden access of non–resident investors to debt instruments in India, the central bank said in a statement. The limits for investing in these municipal bonds are to be set within the limits for FPI investment in state development loans (SDLs). The limits set for SDLs amount to 2 per cent of outstanding securities.

About Municipal Bonds

• Municipal bonds are bonds issued by Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) – municipal bodies and municipal corporations to raise funds for financing specific projects in the urban landscape particularly infrastructural projects.
• Like any other bond, municipal bonds are debt instruments—a promise to repay a fixed principal amount with interest periodically, which can be paid at fixed intervals or at the end of the tenure, with the principal.
• Typically, municipal bonds have a tenure of more than 5-7 years.
• Like all other bonds, municipal bonds are also issued credit ratings. A credit rating indicates the bond’s investment worthiness
• Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation issued a first historical Municipal Bond in Asia to raise Rs 100 crore from the capital market for part financing a water supply project

Eligibility Criteria

• Accounts of Municipality shall be prepared in accordance with National Municipal Accounts Manual or in accordance with similar Municipal Accounts Manual adopted by respective State Government for at least three preceding financial years.
• Municipality shall have surplus income as per its Income and Expenditure Statement, in any of the immediately preceding three financial years or any other financial criteria as may be specified by the Board from time to time.
• Municipality shall not have defaulted in repayment of debt securities or loans obtained from Banks/Financial Institutions during the last 365 days.
• Where the issuer is a Corporate Municipal Entity, the requirements shall be complied by the Municipality which is being financed.
• The CME or its directors have not been restrained or prohibited or debarred by the Board from access
• The debt securities shall have a minimum tenure of 3 years.