Daily Prelims Notes 21 February 2024

Daily Prelims Notes

21 February 2024

Table Of Contents

1. Everything that happened at CMS COP14
2. Maharashtra Assembly clears 10% Maratha quota
3. Art 142, why SC quashed Chandigarh mayor’s election, and why it matters
4. The brightest object in the universe is a black hole that eats a star a day
5. African Union imposes historic ban on cruel donkey skin trade
6. Tatas, Tower apply to set up chip foundries in India
7. Amount of tiny plastic particles in bottled water underestimated: study
8. Lab-grown diamonds put natural gems industry under huge pressure
9. Keep it wholesome

1. Everything that happened at CMS COP14

Subject: Environment

Sec: Int. conventions

Context:

• The COP14 of the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS COP14) — the first to happen in Central Asia — concluded in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

Outcomes of the summit:

• Some of the species included in the CMS Appendices were the Eurasian lynx, sand tiger shark, Pallas’s cat, and magellanic plover, among others.
• The summit gave added safeguards to species such as blue sharks, chimpanzees and straw-coloured fruit bats through New Concerted Actions adopted by range states (states whose territory is within the natural range of distribution of a species).
• The State of Migratory Species Report 2024 identified 399 species that could be listed in either the Appendices of the CMS-listed species.
• The COP14 played a key role in giving recognition to the Central Asian Flyway for migratory birds that stretches from Siberia to the Maldives.
  • It also tabled a new science-based strategic plan for migratory species extending from 2024 to 2032.
• For migratory aquatic species, it introduced a new mandate on understanding the impacts on migratory species, their prey and ecosystems due to deep-seabed mining.
  • The COP also introduced three action plans for aquatic species.
  • Action plans for the Atlantic humpback dolphin were also adopted.
• Uzbekistan also announced plans to introduce cheetahs in the country.
• The CMS COP14 also saw new guidelines presented for mitigating the impacts of light pollution on migratory species. It also strengthened measures for the illegal and unsustainable killing of migratory species and resolutions and endorsements on climate change and its effects on migratory wildlife.

Global Partnership on Ecological Connectivity (GPEC):

• Initiative by: Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals
• Launched at: COP14 of the CMS, Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
• Aim: To “protect and connect natural areas” to ensure that key areas of migratory species are identified, protected and connected.

One Health Central India Project:

• Launched by: CMS under the leadership of IUCN.
• Launched at: COP14 of CMS, Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
• Aim: To address the concerns about zoonotic diseases — diseases transmissible to humans from animal contact — from the COP14, under the leadership of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, saw the launch of the One Health Central Asia project.
• To prevent the emergence and spread of zoonotic diseases, the five central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — would implement actions for the same.

2. Maharashtra Assembly clears 10% Maratha quota

Subject: Polity

Section: Constitution

Context:

• Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his Cabinet approved a Bill to provide a 10% quota for the Maratha community in education and government jobs, which was later passed unanimously by all parties during a special session of the Maharashtra legislature.

Background of Marathas:

• The Marathas are a group of castes comprising peasants and landowners among others constituting nearly 33% of the state’s population.
• While most Marathas are Marathi-speaking, not all Marathi-speaking people belong to the Maratha community.
• Historically, they have been identified as a ‘warrior’ caste with large land holdings.
• However, over the years, due to factors such as land fragmentation, agrarian distress, unemployment and lack of educational opportunities, many Marathas have faced social and economic backwardness. The community still plays an important role in the rural economy.
• Therefore, they have been demanding reservation in government jobs and educational institutions under the category of Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC).

Status of the Maratha Reservation Demand:

2017:

• A 11-member commission headed by Retired Justice N G Gaikwad recommended Marathas should be given reservation under Socially and Educationally Backward Class (SEBC).

2018:

• Maharashtra Assembly passed a Bill proposing 16% reservation for Maratha community.
• The Bombay High Court while upholding the reservation pointed out that instead of 16% it should be reduced to 12% in education and 13% in jobs.

2020:

• The Supreme Court of India stayed its implementation and referred the case to the Chief Justice of India for a larger bench.

2021:

• The Supreme Court struck down the Maratha reservation in 2021 citing the 50% cap on total reservations it had set in 1992.
• The Maratha reservation of 12% and 13% (in education and jobs) had increased the overall reservation ceiling to 64% and 65%, respectively.
• In the Indira Sawhney judgment 1992, SC had categorically said 50% shall be the rule, only in certain exceptional and extraordinary situations for bringing far-flung and remote areas’ population into mainstream said 50% rule can be relaxed.
• The Supreme Court said that there were no “exceptional circumstances” or an “extraordinary situation” in Maharashtra for the state government to breach the limit.
• In addition, the court ruled that the state had no authority to accord socially and economically backward status to a community: only the president can tweak the central list of socially and backward classes, said the court. States can only make “suggestions”.
• The Bench unanimously upheld the constitutional validity of the 102nd Constitution Amendment but differed on the question of whether it affected the power of states to identify SEBCs.
• The Supreme Court highlighted that a separate reservation for the Maratha community violates Articles 14 (right to equality) and 21 (due process of law).

2022:

• In November 2022, after the SC upheld the 10% quota for the Economically Weaker Sections, the state government said that until the issue of Maratha reservation is resolved, economically weaker members of the community can benefit from the EWS quota.

3. Art 142, why SC quashed Chandigarh mayor’s election, and why it matters

Subject: Polity

Section: Local government

Context:

• The Bench, comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, while setting aside the result as “contrary to law” and declaring Kuldeep Kumar as the “validly elected candidate”, refused to quash the election process itself.

More on news:

• The Supreme Court has quashed the result of the January 30 election for the Mayor of Chandigarh after finding that presiding officer Anil Masih had deliberately invalidated eight ballots cast in favor of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-Congress candidate Kuldeep Kumar ‘Tita’.
• The court used its power under Article 142 of the Constitution to do “complete justice” and protect the sanctity of electoral democracy.

On what grounds did the court strike down the result?

• “Allowing such a state of affairs…would be destructive of the most valued principles on which the entire edifice of democracy in our country depends,”-the court said.
• The Bench said it was evident that “while the petitioner is reflected to have polled 12 votes, the eight votes which are treated as invalid were wrongly treated to be so”, and “each of those invalid votes were in fact validly cast in favor of the petitioner”.
• It follows that Kuldeep had in fact received 20 votes, while Manoj Sonkar, the BJP candidate, had won 16.
• “We accordingly order and direct that the result of the election as declared by the presiding officer shall stand quashed and set aside,” the court said.

Why was this mayoral election important?

• The powers of the Mayor of Chandigarh Municipal Corporation are limited to calling meetings and deciding the agenda.
• Although the corporation has a five-year term, the Mayor is elected for only one year. 
• The post is reserved for a woman candidate in the first and fourth year of each corporation.
• The last election to the corporation was held in 2021..

What happened after the mayoral election?

• After videos showed Masih marking ballot papers so they could be declared invalid, Kuldeep moved the High Court and then Supreme Court.
• CJI Chandrachud observed that it was obvious that Masih had defaced the ballots, and that “this man has to be prosecuted”.
• The court said it was “appalled” at the “mockery” and “murder” of democracy.

Constitutional Status of Municipalities in India:

• This Act has added a new Part IX-A to the Constitution of India. 
• It is entitled ‘The Municipalities and consists of provisions from Articles 243-P to 243-ZG.
• In addition, the act has also added a new Twelfth Schedule to the Constitution. 
• This schedule contains eighteen functional items of municipalities. It deals with Article 243-W.
• The act gave constitutional status to the municipalities. 
• It has brought them under the purview of justiciable part of the Constitution.
• The act aims at revitalizing and strengthening the urban governments so that they function effectively as units of local government.
• The salient features of the act are:
  • Three Types of Municipalities: The act provides for the constitution of the following three types of municipalities in every state :nagar panchayat, municipal council and municipal corporation
  • Composition: All the members of a municipality shall be elected directly by the people of the municipal area. For this purpose, each municipal area shall be divided into territorial constituencies to be known as wards. The state legislature may provide the manner of election of the chairperson of a municipality.
  • Reservation of Seats :The act provides for the reservation of seats for the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes in every municipality in proportion of their population to the total population in the municipal area. Further, it provides for the reservation of not less than one-third of the total number of seats for women.
  • Duration of Municipalities: The act provides for a five-year term of office for every municipality. However, it can be dissolved before the completion of its term.
  • State Election Commission: The superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of all elections to the municipalities shall be vested in the state election commission.
  • Finance Commission: The finance commission (which is constituted for the panchayats) shall also, for every five years, review the financial position of municipalities and make recommendation to the governor as to:
• The principles that should govern:
  • (a) The distribution between the state and the municipalities, the net proceeds of the taxes, duties, tolls and fees levied by the state. 
  • (b) The determination of the taxes, duties, tolls and fees that may be assigned to the municipalities. 
  • (c) The grants-in-aid to the municipalities from the consolidated fund of the state.
• The measures needed to improve the financial position of the municipalities.
• Any other matter referred to it by the governor in the interests of sound finance of municipalities.
• District Planning Committee: Every state shall constitute at the district level, a district planning committee to consolidate the plans prepared by panchayats and municipalities in the district, and to prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole.

What is Article 142?

• Article 142 provides discretionary power to the Supreme Court (SC). 
• Subsection 1 of Article 142 states that the SC in the exercise of its jurisdiction may pass such decree or make such order as is necessary for doing complete justice in any cause or matter pending before it.
• Any decree so passed or order so made shall be enforceable throughout the territory of India.
• If at times law or statute did not provide a remedy, the Court can extend itself to put an end to a dispute in a befitting manner.
• An order to do complete justice must be consistent with the fundamental rights and cannot be inconsistent with the substantive provisions of the relevant statutory laws.
• Used in judgements related to cleaning of Taj Mahal, release of A.G. Perarivalan, Bhopal gas tragedy case, etc.

4. The brightest object in the universe is a black hole that eats a star a day

Subject: Science and tech

Section: Space tech

Context:

• In a new paper in Nature Astronomy, described  a black hole surrounded by the largest and brightest disc of captive matter ever discovered.
• The object, called J0529-4351, is therefore also the brightest object found so far in the universe.

About Supermassive black holes:

• Astronomers have already found around one million fast-growing supermassive black holes across the universe, the kind that sit at the centers of galaxies and are as massive as millions or billions of Suns.
• To grow rapidly, they pull stars and gas clouds out of stable orbits and drag them into a ring of orbiting material called an accretion disc. 
• Once there, very little material escapes.
• The disc is a mere holding pattern for material that will soon be devoured by the black hole.
• The disc is heated by friction as the material in it rubs together. 
• Pack in enough material and the glow of the heat gets so bright that it outshines thousands of galaxies and makes the black hole’s feeding frenzy visible to us on Earth, more than 12 billion light years away.

The fastest-growing black hole in the universe

• The accretion disc of J0529-4351 emits light that is 500 trillion times more intense than that of our Sun. 
• Such a staggering amount of energy can only be released if the black hole eats about a Sun worth of material every day.
• It must also have a large mass already. 
• Our data indicate J0529-4351 is 15 to 20 billion times the mass of our Sun.
• There is no need to be afraid of such black holes.
• The light from this monster has taken more than 12 billion years to reach us, which means it would have stopped growing long ago.
• In the nearby universe, we see that supermassive black holes these days are mostly sleeping giants.

Black holes losing their grip

• The age of the black hole feeding frenzy is over because the gas floating around in galaxies has mostly been turned into stars.
• And after billions of years the stars have sorted themselves into orderly patterns:
  • they are mostly on long, 
  • neat orbits around the black holes that sleep in the cores of their galaxies.
• Even if a star dove suddenly down towards the black hole, it would most likely carry out a slingshot maneuver and escape again in a different direction.
• Space probes use slingshot maneuvers like this to get a boost from Jupiter to access hard-to-reach parts of the Solar System. 
• However, if space were more crowded, and our probe ran into one coming the other way:
• The two would crash together and explode into a cloud of debris that would rapidly fall into Jupiter’s atmosphere.
• Such collisions between stars were commonplace in the disorder of the young universe, and black holes were the early beneficiaries of the chaos.

Accretion discs — a no-go zone for space travelers

• Accretion discs are gateways to a place whence nothing returns.
• They are also profoundly unfriendly to life in themselves.
• They are like giant storm cells, whose clouds glow at temperatures reaching several tens of thousands of degrees Celsius.
• The clouds are moving faster and faster as we get closer to the hole, and speeds can reach 100,000 kilometers per second.
• They move as far in a second as the Earth moves in an hour.
• The disc around J0529-4351 is seven light years across.
• That is one and a half times the distance from the Sun to its nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri.

Why only now?

• The world’s telescopes produce so much data that astronomers use sophisticated machine learning tools to sift through it all.
• Machine learning, by its nature, tends to find things that are similar to what has been found before.
• This makes machine learning excellent at finding run-of-the-mill accretion discs around black holes — roughly a million have been detected so far – but not so good at spotting rare outliers like J0529-4351.
• In 2015, a Chinese team almost missed a remarkably fast-growing black hole picked out by an algorithm because it seemed too extreme to be real.
• Our work also depended on Australia’s current 10-year partnership with the European Southern Observatory, an organization funded by several European countries with a huge array of astronomical facilities.

5. African Union imposes historic ban on cruel donkey skin trade

Subject: Environment

Section: Species in news

Context:

• A historic ban on the trade in donkey skin has been agreed upon by the African heads of state.

More on news:

• This agreement is announced on the concluding day of the African Union summit in Ethiopia, outlawing the killing of donkeys in the African continent for their skin.
• This is a significant outcome following the Dar es Salaam declaration adopted at the first AU-IBAR Pan-African Donkey Conference in December 2022. 
• It had demanded for an African Union Commission (AUC) resolution to be passed in favor of a 15-year ban on the commercial killing of donkeys for their skin.
• Other demands included the creation of an Africa donkey strategy for donkey production and productivity, and the inclusion of donkeys in the global development agenda.
• In September 2020, the pan-African animal conference, also, had urged African governments to take immediate action to protect donkeys, including the creation and successful application of laws and policies that will support them, and to outlaw the sale of donkeys and the trade in their skin, as these activities pose a major socioeconomic threat to communities that depend on them.
• In June 2021, a ministerial meeting during the ECOWAS Regional Donkey Skin Trade Conference also raised concerns over the devastating impact of the donkey skin trade on donkey populations and the communities across Africa.
• With increasing demand, at least 6.8 million donkeys are projected to be killed every year in 2027.
• The number of donkeys in Africa has decreased dramatically over the past 10 years.
• This translates to a decrease in the donkey’s population by around 44 per cent in just seven years.
• The population of donkeys in Botswana declined from 493,000 in 2003 to 125,000 in 2021.

Agreement to protect donkeys & equid owners:

• The landmark moratorium on skin trade in donkeys agreed upon at the AU summit has been welcomed by wildlife conservationists .
• This agreement from leaders of the African Union strikes at the heart of the brutal skin trade.

Why donkey skin is traded

• Donkey skin is used to make the traditional Chinese medicine ejiao.
• It is in constant demand, fueling a global trade that is vicious, unsustainable and opportunistic.
• In five years between 2016 and 2021, ejiao production is estimated to have increased by 160 per cent,  the Donkey Sanctuary estimated in a paper Donkeys in global trade released this year.
• The ejiao industry now requires a minimum of 5.9 million donkey skin annually to keep up with the latest Chinese demand.
• The demand for donkey skin reduced the donkey population in China from 11 million in 1992 to just under two million. 
• The demand for ejiao, a gelatine manufactured by boiling donkey skin, is met primarily by imported skin sourced from South America and Africa.
• Africa is particularly affected by this, as it is home to over two-thirds of the 53 million donkeys estimated to exist worldwide.
• Farmers who depend on donkeys for their livelihoods have seen theft and cruel treatment of animals as a result of the increased demand.
• The countries where donkeys are being traded illegally for their skin include Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Kenya and Egypt.
• The historic pan-African agreement will protect 33 million donkeys that are on the continent from being stolen, trafficked and killed.
• This will also save tens of thousands of African communities who depend on donkeys for their well-being and means of subsistence.
• Donkeys are critical to millions of people and the global trade in donkey skin undermines efforts to achieve at least nine of the 17 United Nations-mandated sustainable development goals.
• These include the goal to end poverty (SDG1), since equid ownership represents the only viable escape from extreme poverty.
• This landmark decision needs to be implemented and enforced by every country that makes up the African Union, stated Otieno Mtula, regional campaigns and advocacy manager for The Donkey Sanctuary.
• Brazil is also likely to impose a ban on illegal donkey skin trade. 
• This may disrupt the supply chain and the ejiao industry in China, experts predicted.

About African Union:

• The African Union (AU) is a continental body consisting of the 55 member states that make up the countries of the African Continent.
• It was officially launched in 2002 as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU, 1963-1999).
• The AU is guided by its vision of “An Integrated, Prosperous and Peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena.”
• The African Union (AU) was officially launched in July 2002 in Durban, South Africa, following a decision in September 1999 by its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity(OAU) to create a new continental organization to build on its work.
• The most important decisions of the AU are made by the Assembly of the African Union, a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of its member states.
• The AU’s secretariat, the African Union Commission, is based in Addis Ababa.

Various Breeds of Donkeys In India:

6. Tatas, Tower apply to set up chip foundries in India

Subject: Science and tech

Section: Awareness in Computer and IT

Context:

• Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar recently confirmed that the Tata Group and Israeli chip company Tower Semiconductor have applied to set up foundries in the country.

More on news:

• India is competing with some of its key allies – the US and Europe – to attract chipmakers. 
• It is offering a 50% capital expenditure subsidy to successful applicants at the central level under its $10 billion incentive scheme, with state governments sweetening the deal further at their own end.
• The two fab proposals that have been received by India, and represent a total investment of about $22 billion, are one from Tata and the other from Tower Semiconductor.
• Tower’s proposal to set up a plant worth $8 billion where it aims to produce 65 nm, 40 nm and 28 nm chips. 
• The Tata Group is understood to be partnering with Taiwan based United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) or the Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC).

What are the proposals currently on the table?

• India’s chip incentive scheme broadly covers three aspects of the ecosystem –
  • full-blown foundries that can manufacture chips; 
  • packaging plants called ATMP facilities; and 
  • assembly and testing projects called OSAT plants. 
• So far, US-based Micron Technology has cleared its proposal to set up a $2.75 billion ATMP plant, with the facility coming up in Gujarat.
• In the OSAT space, CG Power and Industrial Solutions has said it has entered into a joint venture (JV) agreement with Renesas Electronics America and Thailand-based Stars Microelectronics to set up a semiconductor assembly and testing plant in India.
• Kaynes Technology has also sent a proposal to set up an OSAT plant.

What had happened to the earlier fab proposals?

• A joint venture between Foxconn, best known as the manufacturer of iPhones, and Vedanta to set up a $19.5 billion chip plant came to an abrupt halt last year.
• Foxconn announced it was pulling out of the joint venture with Vedanta. 
• While government sources maintain the two could apply separately, there has been no movement so far.

Why India’s semiconductor manufacturing industry is yet to take off?

• The planned merger between Intel and Tower, announced in February 2022, passed an antitrust review in the United States and several other geographies. 
• There was a third fab proposal by Singapore-based IGSS Venture, but it was not found up to the mark by the advisory committee of the government.

Why is India focusing on semiconductor manufacturing?

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made chip manufacturing a top priority for India’s economic strategy as he wants to “usher in a new era in electronics manufacturing” by luring global companies.
• Building semiconductors domestically is crucial for the government’s vision to develop a domestic electronics supply chain and eventually reduce its imports from foreign countries, especially China – which despite its own challenges remains to be the number one destination for such manufacturing.
• It is a pressing time for India to venture into electronics manufacturing, with chips being an important part of the puzzle – all electronics items have semiconductor chips in them, and as more companies try to diversify their bases from China, India has an opportunity to emerge as a reliable destination.

7. Amount of tiny plastic particles in bottled water underestimated: study

Subject: Environment

Section: Pollution

Introduction:

• As per Columbia University in New York study, published in the National Academy of Sciences:
• A litre of bottled water can contain more than one lakh particles of micro-and nano-plastics(90%) [Nanoplastics are minute, with dimensions ranging from 1 nanometre to 1 micrometre].
• Also much greater concentration than earlier estimated.

Significance of Nano-plastics presence in bottled water: 

• Bridge the knowledge gap in analysis of nano plastics
• Providing information about plastic pollution at the nanometre level.

Analysis of Nano-plastics:

• Nano plastics are difficult to analyse due to their size and inability of different diagnostic techniques to identify them.
• Diagnostic technique adopted: 
• A custom hyperspectral stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) imaging platform is a solution.
• With the use of the SRS platform, fragmentation of the plastic content of real-world water samples beyond the micrometre scale, even smaller that was unable to be detected by conventional imaging techniques.
• SRS can capture multiple images of an object’s molecules at different wavelengths, leading to a comprehensive picture.

SRS Microscopy:

SRS microscopy uses the Raman effect, a.k.a. Raman scattering.

Raman scattering: 

• When light of a certain frequency is beamed at a group of atoms or molecules, the latter both absorb some of the energy in the beam and scatter it to different direction.
• This is a form of inelastic scattering. (In elastic scattering, the scattered light still has the kinetic energy and the atoms or molecules haven’t absorbed any)

Adoption by research team: 

• The research team used the SRS imaging platform along with an automated algorithm to identify plastics.
• The algorithm extracted detailed information — i.e. at the single-particle level — about the chemical makeup from the data produced by the SRS platform.
• After test and verification researcher used combined apparatus to detect plastic particles quickly and accurately.
• Researcher used bottled water as a model system to look for micro- and nano-plastics.

Which plastics are in the water?

-In bottled water following types of plastics are found: polyamide 66, polypropylene (PP), polyethylene, polymethyl methacrylate, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polystyrene, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

Interesting revelation: 

According to research, counting the plastic particles in the model system revealed

-For example, polystyrene particles are around 100-200 nanometres in size whereas PET particles have a size of around 1-2 micrometres.

Thus, PET is a more significant component when measuring [the particles] in mass while Polystyrene clearly dominates when counting the number of particles.

Relevance of study:

-In present era of Plastic pollution concern, The study has been published.

Why plastic pollution is a concern:

Microplastics is being found in all ecosystems from ocean trenches to the tops of Himalayan mountains.

-Also plastic items can break down into sub-micrometre pieces, meaning they can breach biological barriers and enter different parts of the bodies of living beings.

What were the findings?

The investigation revealed the presence of around 2.4 lakh micro- and nano-plastic particles per litre of bottled water – that is two to three orders of magnitude more than the previously reported results and as per paper —experts may have been underestimating the concentration of microplastics in bottled water.

Various particle-type analysis: 

As per research paper, obtained values are substantially higher than those currently reported-due to newly detected nano plastic part of plastic particulate, previously invisible under conventional imaging, are 90%of the entire population of plastic particles detected.

The remaining 10% identified as microplastics have a concentration of around [30,000] particles per litre with the majority of them in the size below 2 m.

Larger particles (2 m), which are easier to identify under regular optical microscopy, are in the same order of magnitude as the reported.

Technology adopted : 

Traditional single particle chemical imaging techniques like Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and Raman microscopy have lower instrumental resolution and detection sensitivity.

These have a limited ability to study the chemical composition of a material beyond the microscopic scale.

Also sophisticated techniques like electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy (that can track and study individual particles such as atoms and molecules) can’t differentiate between different compositions and thus uniquely identify the material.

Other particles presence: 

As per study, presence of particles that did not match any standards (international rules that classify different plastic materials based on their physical and chemical properties)-i.e. the presence of other particulate inhabitants is also obtained.

8. Lab-grown diamonds put natural gems industry under huge pressure

Subject: Science and tech

Section: Msc

Introduction:

• The Lab-grown diamonds sparkle the same as mined natural gems.
• Mined natural gems are more than a billion years old and laboratory-made rocks are new and cost less than half the price of natural gems.
• “Lab-grown diamond (LGD)’s the same product, same chemical and the same optical”
• Machine-made diamonds, first developed in the early 1950s,later due to technological advancement commercially-able process is developed less than a decade ago.

Global share and export stats:

• $89 billion global diamond jewellery market is being reshaped by Manmade gems, especially in the west Indian city of Surat where 90% of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished.
• As per Industrial data- Lab-grown diamond exports from India tripled in value between 2019 and 2022, while export volumes rose by 25% between April and October 2023 from 15% earlier.
• The global market share by value of lab-grown gems sharply increased from 5% in 2018 to 18.5% in 2023, and will likely exceed 20% this year.
• This increased pressure on natural gems industry already affected by geopolitical turmoil and slumping demand.

Humanitarian and environmental factors: 

• “Conflict diamonds” from war zones are kept off the market through the international Kimberley Process certification scheme. It leverages Lab-grown diamond producers.
• -Natural gems uses energy intensive process having environment concerns and electricity derived from carbon-heavy sources, though gradual green energy shift like solar is occurring at low scale.
• Such environmental and humanitarian claims have helped make lab-grown stones a popular choice for engagement rings.

Justification: 

In February 2023,17% of diamond engagement rings sold in the U.S. — the world’s biggest consumer of natural stones — used lab-grown gems and now to 36%.

Perfect storm:

• According to India’s Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC)– Indian lab diamond makers exported 4.04 million carats between April and October 2023, a 42% year-on-year increase, while natural diamond companies in India reported a more than 25% drop, to 11.3 million carats, over the same period.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, natural gems demand surged due to  luxury purchases but after reopening of economies it dropped due to excess stock and different kind of lack of demand.

Factors for decline in natural gems are as follows: 

• Competition from lab-grown rivals .Slowing economic growth in the all-important U.S. and China markets

Oversupply

• Sanctions against Russian rough-cut diamonds.
• Moreover, India’s natural diamond industry was forced into a rare voluntary import ban on rough diamonds in October.

No monopoly:

Problems of lab-grown industry:

• Supply has skyrocketed
• prices have dropped drastically, with wholesale prices down by 58% in 2023 alone.

Justification: The price of a lower-quality one-carat polished stone had fallen from $2,400 in 2022 to a little over $1,000 in 2023.

However, falling prices will spur demand and prices would come down, because there’s no monopoly in this industry.

9. Keep it wholesome

Subject: Science and tech

Section: Health

Context:

National cervical cancer control scheme must be made accessible to all.

Cervical Cancer:

• Cancer of the cervix (i.e. neck of the womb) is unique among cancers because almost all the cases (99%, according to the World Health Organization) are linked to infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV), a common virus transmitted through sexual contact.
• While most HPV infections resolve spontaneously and women remain symptom-free.
• However persistent infection can lead to cervical cancer.

Present status of cervical cancer: 

It is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women in India (over 77,000 annually), and is estimated to be the second most frequent cancer among Indian women between 15 and 44 years.

Approach needed:

Health is seldom uni-dimensional and Government policy must fathom the entirety of the issue and assimilate multiple aspects in a field strategy, for optimum realisation of the intended goal.

Issues involved: 

The average national prevalence of cervical cancer screening hovers at just under 2% and outcomes depend on the stage of detection.

Solution of issue:

Early diagnosis:

Cervical cancer can be easily diagnosed in a public health setting with minimal tools —

1. The human eye, a dilution of white vinegar
2. A dab of Lugol’s iodine.

These are known as VIA and VILI tests.

Benefits: 

• Precancerous lesions and cancer can be seen much before an advanced stage of the disease along with cytology.

Next step: 

• Simple, short procedure, cryotherapy
• can then be done to destroy the abnormal growth.
• But given that it is easy to prevent, identify and treat cervical cancer.

It is unacceptable that so many women are dying of the disease

The availability of a vaccine as pre-cautionary measure. 

• Interim Budget announcement:
• The government plans to encourage vaccination against cervical cancer for girls aged nine to 14, is a step in the right direction.
• It is unlikely that vaccination of young girls alone will have a far-reaching impact in the short and medium term.
• Along with Vaccinating. Govt must also mandate screening right at the primary health centre, and if abnormalities are identified, offer cryotherapy right then.

Need of the hour: 

A detailed programme is still awaited, A wholesome programme must include assimilate screening aspect.

Long-lasting solution (way ahead):

• The only way to prevent deaths is to deploy the entire assembly of tools as part of a national cervical cancer control programme, accessible to all women, irrespective of age, education, affordability or social status.