Topic 1 : On the rights of forest-dwellers
Context
The notification of the Thanthai Periyar Sanctuary in Erode district of Tamil Nadu triggered consternation among forest-dwellers around it as they expressed fear that this is a prelude to their rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) being denied.
Thanthai Periyar Sanctuary
- The Thanthai Periyar Sanctuary is constituted from the North and South Bargur, Thamarai Karai, Ennamangalam, and Nagalur reserved forests in Anthiyur Taluk.
- It is located between the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve of Tamil Nadu, the Male Mahadeshwara Wildlife Sanctuary and the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary of Karnataka.
- Six tribal forest villages — denied basic rights and facilities because these are not revenue villages — have been excluded from the sanctuary.
Forest villages
- In 1990, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had ordered that all forest villages be converted to revenue villages.
- The FRA, enacted 18 years ago, also required all forest villages to be converted to revenue villages.
- During conversion, “the actual land use of the village in its entirety, including lands required for current or future community uses, like schools, health facilities and public spaces,” were to be recorded as part of the revenue village. These rights continue to be denied to date.
- The notification that created the sanctuary concedes that the rights admitted under the Tamil Nadu Forest Act 1882.
- The issue here is that Tamil Nadu has been one of the most laggard States in implementing the FRA in the country.
The rights in the new Sanctuary
- Cattle-grazers can no longer graze in the Thanthai Periyar Sanctuary.
- Bargur cattle, a traditional breed native to the Bargur forest hills, may now be prevented from accessing their traditional grazing grounds.
- In March 2022, the Madras High Court revised an older order imposing a total ban on cattle grazing in all the forests of Tamil Nadu and restricted the ban to national parks, sanctuaries, and tiger reserves. Tamil Nadu is the only State in the country where there is such a ban.
- This order is despite the FRA, which, aside from other community rights, recognised “grazing (both settled or transhumant) and traditional seasonal resource access of nomadic or pastoralist communities” in all forests, including in national parks, sanctuaries, and tiger reserves.
- Grazing rights are community rights of the habitation-level villages and are to be regulated by their gram sabhas.
The say of WLP Act 1972
- Sanctuaries and national parks are notified under the Wildlife (Protection) Act (WLPA) 1972.
- People inside sanctuaries continue to enjoy all their rights unless prohibited, but they don’t in National Parks.
- The Collector is to inquire into the rights of all persons, their nature and extent, in the proposed sanctuary or national park.
- Then, the Collector’s office has to decide whether to admit the claims in sanctuaries and to acquire all rights in national parks.
- While courts routinely condone these violations, they have become entrenched within the forest department since the start of the colonial era, with the forest bureaucracy inheriting the same tendencies.
- In addition, the Indian Forest Act 1927 and its clones, such as the Tamil Nadu Forest Act 1882, the WLPA, the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980, and the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 are all erected on this colonial edifice.
FRA and WLPA comparison
- Being a later law, the FRA overrides the WLPA. All provisions in the WLPA that contravene provisions in the FRA are null and void.
- As a result, when notifying a Protected Area under the WLPA, the government needs to determine rights under the FRA and acquire the consent of the gram sabhas.
- The FRA violations, in the case of Scheduled Tribes, are also crimes under the 2016 amendment to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Conclusion
Tamil Nadu is not an exception. The same pattern, more or less, runs across the country: the Environment Ministry and the forest bureaucracy continue to defy the laws, Parliament, and the will of the people, leaving forests, forest-dwellers, and wildlife in peril.
Topic 2 : The role of X chromosome in auto-immune diseases
Introduction
In recent times several international celebrities have spoken up about their diagnosis and subsequent struggles with autoimmune diseases. A majority of these celebrities are women. This bias is not just a fluke of nature but a reflection of a worldwide phenomenon. A 2023 study by the University of Oxford stated that about 10% of the population they had studied had autoimmune diseases of which 13% were women and 7% were men.
Autoimmune diseases
- Autoimmune diseases are conditions in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the body. The immune system can typically distinguish between its cells and foreign cells.
- The immune system misidentifies a portion of the body, such as the joints or skin, as alien in an autoimmune illness.
- Autoantibodies, which are proteins released by the body, assault healthy cells.
- Some autoimmune disorders exclusively affect a single organ. The pancreas is harmed by type 1 diabetes.
- Other illnesses, such as lupus or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), can have a total body impact.
Susceptibility of women
- The higher susceptibility of women to autoimmune diseases has puzzled researchers for decades.
- Several factors can cause autoimmune disease such as environmental factors, genetics, hormonal imbalance and lifestyle habits.
- However, since women are more susceptible to these diseases, scientists previously thought that it could be related to sex hormones or faulty regulation of the X chromosome.
- Now, a group of scientists have found a molecular coating that is found in half of the X chromosomes in women might be the reason behind this phenomenon.
- Human females (and most mammals) contain two X chromosomes while the males of of the species contain one X and one Y chromosome.
The molecular coating
- The molecular coating of the X chromosome is a combination of RNA and proteins and is crucial to a process called X-chromosome inactivation which ensures that one set of X chromosomes in females remains active and functional in all the cells of the body while the other is muffled.
- The chromosome is wrapped in long strands of RNA called XIST that attract proteins and tamp down the expression of the gene inside.
- However, not all genes are muffled in this manner and the ones that escape the X inactivation process are thought to be the cause of autoimmune diseases.
- Not only this, the XIST molecule too has been known to elicit inflammatory immune responses.
- Additionally, one of the scientists noted that many of the proteins that are attracted to the XIST also induced the response of autoantibodies, a type of antibody that reacts with self-antigens.
XIST
Xist (X-inactive specific transcript) is a non-coding RNA transcribed from the X chromosome of the placental mammals that acts as a major effector of the X-inactivation process. It is a component of the Xic – X-chromosome inactivation centre – along with two other RNA genes
Conclusion
Since XIST is expressed only in cells with two X chromosomes, women are more susceptible to autoimmune diseases and attacks. Further studies in this field would help in determining exactly which XIST-related antigens contribute to sex-biased immunity resulting in expedited detection and diagnosis, the authors noted.