Kala-Azar

Context:

• Kala-Azar cases under control for two years: India gears to apply for elimination certificate

News:

• India could be at the threshold of eliminating Kala-Azar as a public health problem with the country having managed to keep the number of cases under one in 10,000 as per the World Health Organization (WHO) parameters for elimination certification for two consecutive years now.
• Kala-Azar is the second deadliest parasitic disease after malaria in India.

More info:

• If India can maintain the figures for another year India will become eligible to seek the elimination certificate from WHO making it the second country in the world after Bangladesh which in October became the only country to have eliminated Kala-Azar, also known as visceral leishmaniasis, as a public health problem.
• A disease is certified as eliminated as a public health issue when a country can prove that local transmission has been interrupted for a set period, and that there is a system to prevent the disease from re-emerging.
• WHO assesses countries’ submissions to determine if they meet the criteria for elimination.
• India’s Kala-Azar programme focuses on active case detection, effective vector control, and raising community awareness.
• Achieving a low case of Kala-Azar to less than one case per 10,000 population at the sub-district (block PHCs) for two straight years puts India on track to earn WHO certification for eliminating Kala-Azar as a public health problem.
• Historically, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and parts of Uttar Pradesh have seen the highest number of Kala-Azar cases, with Bihar alone accounting for over 70% of India’s cases.
• These areas offer ideal sandfly breeding conditions due to poor sanitation and climate factors.
• Despite this, these regions have made huge progress in recent years by increasing awareness, controlling vectors, and ensuring quick diagnosis and treatment.
• India is moving closer to Kala-Azar elimination.
• It’s also important to address the root causes, like poverty and inadequate sanitation that allow diseases like Kala-Azar to spread.
• India must keep improving surveillance, expanding access to rapid diagnostic tools, and making treatments readily available to sustain these gains.
• For a long-term solution, we should focus on better vector control, address social and economic conditions, and invest in research for vaccines and new treatments.
• For elimination of Kala-Azar, the Health Ministry had adopted strategies including – early diagnosis and complete case management, integrated vector management and vector surveillance, supervision, monitoring, surveillance, evaluation, and advocacy, communication and social mobilisation for behavioural impact and inter-sectoral convergence.

About Kala-Azar:

• Kala-Azar is a disease caused by a protozoa parasite that is transmitted by the bite of an infected female sandfly.
• Symptoms include – irregular fevers, weight loss, enlarged spleen and liver, and anaemia.
• Kala-Azar is fatal if left untreated in more than 95% of cases.
• India’s National Health Policy (2002) initially set a target of eliminating Kala-Azar by 2010, but this was later revised to 2015, 2017, and then 2020.
• The WHO’s Neglected Tropical Disease roadmap set a goal of eliminating Kala-Azar by 2020, but the target was not achieved.
• The WHO is now accelerating work to achieve the target by 2030.

Tea  

• Tea plants came to India from China and Southeastern Asia about three centuries ago, brought here by the British colonialists.
• While experimenting to introduce tea in India, they noticed that tea plants with thicker leaves also grew in Assam, and these, when planted in India, responded very well.
• Tea is also grown in some areas in Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, though not in amounts comparable to that in the Northeast.
• Recently, Uttarakhand and U.P. have also started growing tea.
• Today, India has the largest total consumption of tea.
• And India is the world’s fourth largest exporter of tea.

Chemical components:

• Tea leaves are rich in aroma, which gives tea its fragrance.
• Tea leaves are also rich in vitamins, and protective compounds that help in improving blood pressure, and cardiovascular health, reducing diabetes risk, improving gut health, alleviating stress and anxiety, improving attention and focus.
• When compared to coffee, tea has less caffeine, which is a nervous system stimulant.
• This is also why children are not advised to drink either of these.
• Tea has more antioxidants than coffee beans, but some scientists claim that coffee is better against diabetes than tea.
• The aroma of tea leaves is due to the presence volatile compounds called carotenoids such as lycopene, lutein, and Jasmonate.
• On the other hand, the taste of food is due to non-volatile compounds such as sugar, salt, iron, and calcium.
• In daily food cooked and made at home, these flavours come by using iron, salt, calcium, and sugar on one hand, and vegetables such as carrots, sweet potatoes, and fresh vegetables on the other.
• In India, the Central Food Technology and Research Institute (CSIR-CFTRI), is involved in studying antioxidants, polyphenols, and other health-promoting molecules in Indian food.

Mining dust

Context:

• A Darjeeling-based company is transporting basalt dust from Jharkhand and using it as an organic fertiliser to enrich soil and accelerate carbon sequestration.

Rock weathering:

• All rocks naturally break down into minerals over thousands of years.
• This happens mainly due to being exposed to rain and heat, and the consequence of this process is that atmospheric carbon reacts with these minerals (calcium and magnesium largely) and becomes bicarbonates.
• Eventually through aquifers, or underground streams and rivers, they make their way into the oceans where the carbon is locked in for aeons.
• The oceans, thus, are the major carbon sinks and capture about 30% of the CO2 from human activities.
• Left to nature, this process takes aeons.
• However, with the levels of carbon dioxide building up in the air and a consensus by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that some amount of carbon dioxide already present in the air needs to be removed by 2050, for keeping temperatures from exceeding 2 degree Celsius by the end of the century, governments as well as businesses are experimenting and investing in schemes to accelerate natural carbon removal processes.
• This is where ‘enhanced’ rock weathering comes in.

Basaltic rock and carbon sequestration:

• Basaltic rock, a kind of volcanic rock, is rich in minerals such as calcium and magnesium.
• Many parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat, where the volcanic Deccan Traps are located, are rich in such basaltic rock as parts of Jharkhand and West Bengal where the Rajmahal Traps are situated.
• The latter are regularly mined for construction.
• Once such basaltic rock is crushed into a fine powder, its effective surface area is greatly increased.
• This accelerates the formation of bicarbonate anywhere from ten-fold to a hundred-fold and can be flushed into the ocean – depending on the soil, temperature and rivers – within a month.
• Being an organic fertiliser, the basaltic dust enriches the soil as well as accelerates carbon sequestration.
• Factors such as rock, the kind of agricultural fields, climate significantly influenced weathering.

Stress factors for Indian Railways

Why has there been a spate of accidents across railway zones? Will ‘Kavach’ coverage and overhauling of signalling systems help? Is it earning enough from passenger and freight services to plough back profits for upgradation, maintenance and paying salaries?

Introduction:

• Indian trains have been involved in multiple accidents of late.
• The Balasore accident in 2023, had the greatest death toll, more than 275, yet pressure on the Railways to improve safety competes with pressures straining its subsistence.

Number of accidents:

• The number of railway accidents dropped from 1,390 per year in the 1960s to 80 per year in the last decade.
• There were still 34 consequential accidents in 2021-2022, 48 in 2022-23, and 40 in 2023-2024.
• A consequential accident injures and/or kills people, damages railway infrastructure, and disrupts rail traffic.
• According to public records, 55.8% of all accidents involving trains have been due to the failure of Railway staff and another 28.4% due to failures on the part of non-staff people.
• Equipment failure accounted for 6.2%.
• In both the Balasore and the Kavaraipettai accidents, officials blamed the signalling system.

Kavach:

• The ‘Kavach’ automatic train protection system is designed to prevent collisions using devices that allow pilots to track the relative location of their vehicles and which can actuate alarms and automated braking protocols.
• By February 2024, the Railways had installed ‘Kavach’ on 1,465 route km, or 2% of its total route length.
• After the Balasore accident, Union Railway Minister said ‘Kavach’ would be implemented in “mission mode”.
• An analysis found the all-inclusive cost of implementation over a decade to be less than 2% of the Railways’ annual capex.
• When faced with criticism of the slow implementation, officials have deferred to declines in accident incidence and mortality over the years.
• But experts have said comparing current and past accident rates is misguided because advanced safety technologies didn’t exist earlier and that the government has the means today to eliminate collisions.
• Since 1990-1991, the Railways has classified nearly 70% of all major accidents as derailments, but only 2% of them were due to collisions.
• ‘Kavach’ also may not have prevented the Kavaraipettai accident because the relevant error happened beyond the minimum margins ‘Kavach’ requires to assist.

Operating ratio:

• The operating ratio (OR) – the amount the Railways spends to earn ₹100 – in 2024-2025 is estimated to be ₹98.2, a small improvement from 2023-2024 (₹98.7) but a decline from ₹97.8 in 2016.
• A higher OR leaves less for capex and the Railways more dependent on budgetary support and Extra-Budgetary Resources (EBRs).
• In 2016-2017, the government brought the railway budget under the regular budget after nine decades of separation.
• One outcome was easier access for the Railways to gross budgetary support.
• As for EBRs: the Railways’ dues have ballooned to 17% of its revenue receipts today from 10% in 2015-2016.

Freight services:

• The Railways’ two main internal revenue sources are passenger services and freight.
• The latter accounts for 65%.
• While revenue from both sources is increasing, freight rates increased more than thrice as fast as passenger rates in 2009-2019, NITI Aayog has estimated.
• According to the draft National Rail Plan, nearly 30% of the railway network is utilised to more than 100% capacity.
• This has translated to slow freight movement – around 26 km/hr in 2016 – and slower revenue growth.
• Of the Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) the government mooted in 2005, only the eastern DFC is fully operational.
• The western DFC is partly ready; the east coast, east-west sub-corridor, and north-south sub-corridor DFCs, are still in planning.
• Freight revenue also depends on the freight basket.
• Coal accounted for half of the freight revenue and 45% of volume in the 2024-2025 budget estimates.
• However, the government has been adding more renewable energy sources while pushing industries to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, including coal.
• The Railways also needs to keep up existing equipment, including replacing tracks and wagons and maintaining trackside infrastructure.
• But in the 2023-2024 budget, capital outlay for track renewal dropped to 7.2%.
• Appropriations to the Depreciation Reserve Fund also fell 96% in the BJP’s first term; the government had moved these resources to the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh safety fund created in 2017-2018.
• The Standing Committee on Railways said then the latter wouldn’t be able to pay to repair or replace depreciating assets.

Passenger services’ revenue:

• The Railways’ freight profit is offset significantly by passenger losses.
• In 2019-2020, the revenue from passenger services was a little over ₹50,000 crore and loss, ₹63,364 crore.
• In 2021-2022 – a pandemic year in which many trains had to be cancelled – passenger services incurred a loss of ₹68,269 crore.
• In a July 2024 analysis, PRL Legislative Research estimated the revenue from passenger services was ₹80,000 crore in 2024-2025.
• PRL also estimated the Railways had a passenger traffic of 11 lakh passenger km, expected to increase to 12.4 lakh in 2024-2025 thanks to the addition of new trains – including the Vande Bharats – on high-traffic routes.
• The Railways has also replaced many of the more affordably ticketed sleeper and second-class coaches with the more expensive AC coaches, all to increase passenger revenue.
• However, it last rationalised passenger fares in 2020.

Safety:

• For a long time now, the Railways has been caught between two aspirations: providing an affordable travelling option to the Indian people versus being a profitable business.
• The Railways’ losses are compounded by growing wage and pension bills and fuel costs.
• Locomotive pilots have also reported stressful working conditions, including 12-hour shifts, especially in zones with large freight volumes, and shifting standard operating procedures.
• The high network congestion is likewise exemplified by the limited utility of ‘Kavach’ as well as the failure of a homegrown system, based on walkie-talkies, to alert trackside workers to oncoming trains.
• The system does not work fully … where a number of trains ply in a single block section at close intervals and signals are placed 1 km apart.
• In sum, the Railways’ inability to generate revenue to plug gaps in the gross budgetary support, burgeoning demands on its revenue receipts, and growing pressure to ease congestion and improve physical capacity mean it’s constantly playing catch-up.