GS Analyst
Daily Current Affairs

The Centre has tweaked the surrogacy rules, bringing relief for married couples aspiring to become parents.

What is Surrogacy?

• Surrogacy is a method of assisted reproductionwhere intended parents work with a gestational surrogate who will carry and care for their baby(ies) until birth.
• In the practice, one woman carries the child for another with the intention that the child should be handed over after birth.
• Such a surrogacy arrangement may be altruistic or commercialin nature.  
• Intended parents use surrogacy to start or grow their families when they can't do so on their own.

Who regulates surrogacy?

• The Centre and State governments are expected to constitute a National Surrogacy Board (NSB) and State Surrogacy Boards (SSB) respectively, within 90 days of the passing of the Act.
• This body is tasked with enforcing standards for surrogacy clinics, investigating breaches and recommending modifications.

What are the new Rules (Surrogacy (Regulation) Amendment Rules, 2024)?

• The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has amended the Surrogacy (Regulation) Rules, 2022 to allow the use of a donor gamete – ova or egg cells and sperm – if one of the “intending couple” has a medical condition.
• The notification comes nearly a year after the Centre banned the use of donor gametes in surrogacy.
• Changes in surrogacy rules
  • The notification by the Centre states that both gametes need not come from the “intending couple” in case the husband or the wife have a medical condition.
  • In case when the District Medical Board certifies that either husband or wife constituting the intending couple suffers from medical condition necessitating use of donor gamete, then surrogacy using donor gamete is allowed subject to the condition that the child to be born through surrogacy must have atleast one gamete from the intending couple.
• However, the Surrogacy (Regulation) Amendment Rules, 2024 will not be applicable for widowed or divorced women.
  • Indian laws bar single unmarried women from having children through surrogacy.

What earlier surrogacy rule said?

• In 2023, the Centre through Rule 7 under the ‘Consent of the Surrogate Mother and Agreement for Surrogacy’ of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act had mandated that both the egg and the sperm should come from the intending couple.

• The latest amendment came after the Supreme Court last year received petitions from women across the country after it allowed a woman with a rare MRKH syndrome to avail surrogacy with a donor egg.

What will be the impact of the new rules?

• The new rules will relief to couples struggling with infertility problems.
• While very few people need surrogacy — it is only meant for those who do not have a uterus, have a damaged uterus, or have a thin uterine lining — among those who do, the women are likely to be older, having tried other methods of getting pregnant before considering surrogacy.

What are the challenges to Surrogacy?

• Unawareness:A surrogate mother is largely unaware of existing legal or medical procedures and the risks involved in the process.
• No legal recognition:Perhaps the most awful disadvantage is that surrogate mother is not legally recognized as “workers” in India since they do not sell mental or manual labour in the traditional sense of the term. Consequently, they do not have any legal rights.
• No international recognition:There are no internationally recognised laws for surrogacy, so many parents and children can be left vulnerable - or even stateless.
• Profit-making profession:In India, surrogacy is a $2.3-billion industry which allowed medical practitioners to earn huge profits, without any rules and regulations governing their practice.
• Risk to life:Surrogacy puts the lives of poor women, who rented out their wombs to a surrogate couple to earn a living, at great risk due to repeated pregnancies. 
• Exploitation of Fundamental Rights:The practice destroys the surrogate mother’s fundamental rights. While the surrogate mother gets a very small amount, doctors and other professionals thrive on huge profits.
• Injustice:While the surrogate mother could not refuse to give up the child, the intended parents had the right to refuse the child.

Internet shutdowns in India have escalated dramatically, resulting in the country recording the highest number of internet cut-offs in the last five years. In the latest scenario, the Haryana state government, in the wake of the ongoing farmer protests, has been issuing orders for internet shutdown from time to time.

Internet Shutdowns in India:

• Internet Shutdowns may be defined as any disruption in access to the internet services most of which deals with mobile internet.
• India has recorded the highest number of internet cut-offs in the last five years, according to one study

Who Governs Internet Shutdowns in India?

• Internet shutdown orders are governed under the Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services (Public Emergency or Public Safety) Rules, 2017, under the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.
• The 2017 Rules provide for temporary shutdown of telecom services in a region on grounds of public emergency and give senior bureaucrats from the Home Ministry at the central and state levels the power to order shutdowns.
• The 1885 Act empowers the Central government to regulate various types of telecom services including internet services and grant licenses for them.
• Using Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure: It justifies the communications blockade and the continuance of it, has been a rising trend.
  • Section 144 gives a magistrate the powers to enforce a general shutdown of the area if he or she believes that there could be violence in the area.

How vulnerable is the situation in India?

• Internet cut-off:India has ranked first in the world for shutting off the internet over the past five years.
• Content blocking: In addition to cutting off the internet, the government also routinely blocks specific websites or successfully pushes social media platforms to block content in India.

How this repetitive actions are contradicting in nature?

• Contradicting freedom of expression and information:India’s situation is especially concerning given that in 2013 it joined many countries to proclaim, under Article 19 of the U.N.’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, that the right to freedom of expression and information “must also be protected online.”
• Contradicting vision of digital India: The shutdowns contradict India’s vision of a ‘digital India’.

How does it violate fundamental Rights?

• The Internet plays a crucial role in realizing numerous Fundamental Rights beyond Freedom of Speech and Expression.
• Article 19 of the Constitutionmentions freedom of speech and freedom to practise any profession.
• Article 21protects the right to life and liberty, which also encompasses the right to education and the right to exercise one’s freedom to access the Internet.
• In the digital age, people utilize it for essential activities such as accessing rations, conducting card transactions, communicating with relatives, managing healthcare, and more, all of which are vital for their daily functioning.

Supreme Court’s View on Internet Shutdown

• The Supreme Court has held in various decisions, including in AnuradhaBhasinand Faheema Shirin, that access to the Internethas to be preserved.
• Shutdowns should be exercised only in situations which require exceptional control and surveillance.
• The Court has said a shutdown needs to be temporary, limited in scope, lawful and proportionate.

The increasing demand for donkey gelatin in China has led to a significant decline in donkey populations across Africa, prompting African governments to address the issue through regulation.

The Species

• The donkey is a domesticated equine.
• Family: It belongs to the horse family, Equidae, and descended from the African wild ass (Equusafricanus).
• Donkeys are highly resistant to harsh climate conditions and can carry heavy loads for a sustained period of time, making them a prized resource in some areas in Africa.

• What is the issue? Millions of donkeys, especially in Africa, are being smuggled and slaughtered every year.
• What for? A traditional Chinese medicinal remedy that uses gelatin from donkey skin has seen rising demand in recent years. The population of donkeys has plummeted dramatically in China and now those in Africa stare at a crisis. Watch this report for details.

China’s Donkey Trade

• China’s donkey skin trade is the key component of a multibillion-dollar industry for what the Chinese call ejiao, or donkey gelatin.
• It is a traditional medicine recognized by China’s health authorities, but whose actual benefits remain debated among doctors and researchers in China.
• Vendors of traditional Chinese medicine and health food companies have marketed ejiao as having potential benefits for people with circulatory, gynecological or respiratory issues.
• Ejiao-based food products have flourished: pastries made with ejiao, walnuts, sesame and sugar have become a popular snack across China; a well-known brand of a tea beverage has targeted young consumers with ejiao milk tea.

Key-decision taken by Africa

• The African Union, a body that encompasses the continent’s 55 states, adopted a continentwide ban on donkey skin exports this month in the hope that stocks will recover.
• Some African countries, like Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Tanzania, have already implemented nationwide bans on donkey skin exports.

Why the trade is still prevalent EVEN after ban?

• Porous borders and lax implementation of fines have made it difficult to stem the trade.
• For instance, in West Africa, donkeys are being trafficked from landlocked countries before they are slaughtered in often gruesome conditions in border areas with nations that have access to the sea. The pelts are then exported through cargo ports.

The United States have achieved first moon landing in half century with private spacecraft.

• A spacecraft built and flown by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines landed near the moon's south pole.
• It is the first U.S. touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever achieved by the private sector.
  • The landing represented the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft since Apollo 17 in 1972, when NASA's last crewed moon mission landed there with astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.
• Spacecraft: six-legged robot lander, dubbed Odysseus.
• Landing:As planned, the spacecraft was believed to have come to rest at a crater named Malapert A near the moon's south pole.
• Instruments:The vehicle is carrying a suite of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations for NASA and several commercial customers designed to operate for seven days on solar energy before the sun sets over the polar landing site.
• Objective:The NASA payload will focus on collecting data on space weather interactions with the moon's surface, radio astronomy and other aspects of the lunar environment for future landers and NASA's planned return of astronauts later in the decade.
• The arrival of Odysseus also marks the first "soft landing" on the moon ever by a commercially manufactured and operated vehicle and the first under NASA's Artemis lunar program, as the U.S. races to return astronauts to Earth's natural satellite before China lands its own crewed spacecraft there.

What is soft landing?

• A soft landing entails a successful landing by a spacecraft without sustaining any significant damage to itself or its payloads.
• Whereas, in a hard landing, the probe suffers damage which may result in the failure of the mission.

Why is landing on Moon challenging?

• Less gravity than Earth:The Moon has much less gravity than the Earth. Its thin and tenuous atmosphere, along with lunar dust, also makes it tough for spacecraft to land.
• Dust:The presence of dust, even in very small quantities, can have a significant effect on temperature control and optical performance of hardware on the lunar surface.
• Deep space communication also poses a challenge as the “large distance from the Earth and the limited on-board and radio signals are weak with heavy background noises that need to be picked up by large antennas”.

The Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA) payload onboard the Aditya-L1 has been operational and performing nominally. Its advanced sensors have successfully detected the impact of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) including those that occurred recently.

What is PAAPA?

• PAPA is an energy and mass analyzer designed for in-situ measurements of solar wind electrons and ions in the low energy range.
• It has two sensors:
  • the Solar Wind Electron Energy Probe (SWEEP, measuring electrons in the energy range of 10 eV to 3 keV)
  • the Solar Wind Ion Composition Analyser (SWICAR, measuring ions in the energy range of 10 eV to 25 keV and mass range of 1-60 amu)
• The sensors are also equipped to measure the direction of arrival of solar wind particles.

Important Observations

• The SWEEP and SWICAR sensors on PAPA-Aditya-L1 are currently making continuous observations of solar wind electrons and ions in the default mode, demonstrating that they are performing as per the design in all modes of operations.
• The observations made by PAPA emphasise its effectiveness in monitoring space weather conditions and its capability to detect and analyse solar phenomena.
  
  

Aditya-L1

• The launch of Aditya-L1 by PSLV-C57 rocket was successfully accomplished by ISRO.
• Aditya-L1 spacecraft carried seven payloads to study the Sun — four to observe the light from the Sun and the remaining three to measure in situ parameters of the plasma and magnetic fields.
• Aditya-L1 was placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrangian Point 1 (L1), which is 1.5 million km from the Earth in the direction of the Sun.
• It revolves around the Sun with the same relative position and hence can see the Sun continuously.

International Relations

US targets Russia with new sanctions

The US has announced more than 500 new sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Key-highlights

• These sanctions include measures against Russia's main card payment system, financial and military institutions, and officials involved in Navalny's imprisonment.
• The newly-announced US measures also include nearly 100 firms and individuals which will also face export restrictions.
• The EU has also announced new sanctions on access to military technology.

Impact

• The sanctions are unlikely to have an impact on Russia's economy.
• It is already the most sanctioned country in the world, and there are very few key entities or sectors that are not already subject to US and European restrictions.
• Russian banks and military-industrial enterprises have adapted, and developed workarounds to evade existing sanctions.

International Relations (GS-II)

Grey-zone warfare

Growing concerns over "grey-zone" warfare tactics amid tensions with China highlighted by Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Anil Chauhan.

What is grey-zone warfare?

• The grey zone describes a set of activities that occur between peace (or cooperation) and war (or armed conflict).
• A multitude of activities fall into this murky in-between—from nefarious economic activities, influence operations, and cyberattacks to mercenary operations, assassinations, and disinformation campaigns.