What to Read in Indian Express Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

Editorial 1: Need More Than the Regulator

Context:

India, often hailed as the “pharmacy of the world,” faces a deepening crisis of counterfeit and substandard drugs that threatens both public health and the nation’s credibility. The repeated incidents of deaths caused by adulterated cough syrups across different states are not isolated accidents, but signs of a systemic failure in regulation, investigation, and prosecution.

Outdated Legal Framework and Enforcement Gaps:

• India’s current regulatory and law enforcement framework—particularly under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act (D&C Act) of 1940—is outdated and inadequate to address modern, transnational counterfeit drug crimes.
• The Drugs and Cosmetics Act, enacted in 1940, was designed for a very different pharmaceutical landscape.
• Today’s counterfeit drug operations are complex, organized, and often transnational in nature, but the D&C Act lacks the mechanisms to address such sophistication.
• The Act’s enforcement relies heavily on Drug Control Officers, who are experts in regulatory compliance but not equipped for criminal investigation.
• Compounding this weakness, the law excludes the police from directly registering cases under the Act, creating an enforcement vacuum exploited by counterfeiters.
• The Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA)has challenged this exclusion through a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court, arguing that restricting the police from initiating cases under the D&C Act weakens enforcement.
• As a result, counterfeit medicine crimes often remain uninvestigated or end with mere seizures rather than full criminal prosecutions.

Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS):

• While the D&C Act restricts police jurisdiction, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS)—India’s new criminal code—offers scope for police intervention under provisions relating to cheating, forgery, and fabrication of spurious medicines.
• Police forces in Meerut, Agra, Delhi, and Dehradun have successfully used these provisions alongside the D&C Act to prosecute counterfeiters.
• These dual investigations, combining regulatory and criminal laws, have proven effective because they merge field intelligence with legal expertise.
• There should be joint investigations by the Drug Control Department and police, enabling simultaneous enforcement of both the D&C Act and general criminal laws like the BNS, Prevention of Corruption Act, and the Indian Penal Code(now BNS equivalent).
• Such collaboration not only widens investigative scope but also improves the admissibility and credibility of evidence in court, as it is corroborated across agencies.

Fight to Financial and Organized Crimes:

• Counterfeit drug rackets are deeply intertwined with money laundering, tax evasion, and organized criminal networks.
• Thus, enforcement cannot be limited to drug inspectors alone. There is involvement of financial and investigative bodies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Income Tax Department, and GST authorities.
• Under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the ED can trace and freeze assets derived from counterfeit drug operations, dismantling the financial backbone of these syndicates.
• Similarly, the tax and GST departments can track shell companies and fake billing structuresused to legitimize illegal profits.
• Targeting the financial infrastructure ensures that counterfeiters are permanently neutralized rather than temporarily disrupted.

Lacunas in Forensic Science:

• A key weakness in India’s current approach is the lack of forensic rigor in counterfeit drug cases.
• Successful prosecution depends not only on seizing fake drugs but also on scientifically proving their illegitimacy through chemical, toxicological, and packaging analyses.
• Advanced forensic methods—such as digital footprint mapping, ink and packaging forensics, and Call Detail Record (CDR) analysis—can help trace entire supply chains and uncover international linkages.
• Institutions like Forensic Science Laboratories (FSLs) and the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU) must play a central role in capacity building, laboratory certification, and expert witness support.
• Section 111 of the BNSprovides a legal foundation for declaring large-scale counterfeit medicine operations as organized criminal enterprises, allowing for stronger penalties and the formation of Special Investigation Teams (SITs).

To achieve genuine synergy between the D&C Act, BNS, and PMLA, the authors propose a five-step reform framework:

• Amend the D&C Act to allow joint jurisdiction between Drug Control Officers and the police.
• Constitute national and state-level SITs comprising officers from the police, Drug Control Department, ED, and forensic experts to investigate counterfeit drug crimes.
• Mandate forensic analysis in every major counterfeit drug case to ensure scientific validation.
• Enable financial probes through collaboration with the Income Tax and GST departmentsto trace money trails.
• Institutionalize inter-agency training programsfocused on forensic awareness and cooperative investigation.

Way Forward:

Combating counterfeit drugs requires “the precision of science and the power of law.” India’s current approach is too reactive; focusing on regulatory action after harm is done. A coordinated, forensic-led, multi-agency investigation model, anchored in legislative reform, can transform this reactive stance into a proactive shield for public health.

 

 

Editorial 2: Understanding Climate Models: Measuring the Future of the Planet

Context:

Climate change has emerged as one of the gravest challenges facing humanity. As the impacts of global warming grow more visible from rising sea levels to frequent extreme weather events.  Climate models are used to study these changes. They are the primary tools scientists use to simulate Earth’s climate system, assess how it is changing, and predict how it might evolve in the future.

Climate Models and their use in past:

• A climate model is essentially a mathematical representation of Earth’s systems— the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and ice.
• It divides the planet into a three-dimensional grid, with equations describing how energy and matter move between these regions.
• These equations capture processes such as radiation, convection, evaporation, precipitation, and the flow of heat and moisture.
• By simulating interactions among these components, climate models can recreate past trends and project future climate conditions.
• Initially, climate models were simple tools, known as Energy Balance Models (EBMs),developed in the 1960s.
• They were designed to calculate the balance between incoming solar energy and outgoing terrestrial radiationa critical factor in determining Earth’s average temperature.
• Over time, models became more advanced, integrating more physical processes and higher computational precision.
• By the 1970s and 1980s, Radiative-Convective Models (RCMs) and General Circulation Models (GCMs)were developed.
• These models simulated the movement of air, heat, and water within the atmosphere and oceans.
• Today, Earth System Models (ESMs)represent the most sophisticated evolution — including biological, chemical, and even human (anthropogenic) influences such as carbon emissions and land-use changes.

Working of Climate Models:

• Modern models use thousands of lines of code to solve mathematical equations that describe the physics of the atmosphere and oceans.
• Each grid cellin the model interacts with its neighbors, sharing information about temperature, humidity, wind, and energy exchange.
• Scientists run simulations by altering parameters for instance, increasing atmospheric CO₂ levels or deforestation rates to study how these changes affect global temperatures, rainfall patterns, or extreme weather events.
• These models are validated by comparing their results against historical climate data.
• If a model accurately reproduces past climate variations (such as glacial cycles, volcanic eruptions, or El Niño events), scientists gain confidence in its ability to forecast future changes.

Evolution of Climate Models:

• The progression of climate modeling has been marked by increasing sophistication.
• Early models treated the Earth as a single column, averaging climate parameters globally.
• As computing power improved, models incorporated detailed grids with multiple layersof the atmosphere and ocean, enabling simulations of regional variations.
• Regional Climate Models (RCMs)emerged to focus on smaller areas such as South Asia or the Arctic — providing localized projections that global models cannot resolve.
• Coupled Models, which integrate atmosphere-ocean interactions, became standard in major scientific assessments like those by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
• Today’s models can simulate complex feedback mechanism, for example, how melting ice reduces Earth’s reflectivity, leading to more heat absorption, or how warming oceans release more CO₂, further amplifying global temperatures.

Accuracy of Climate Models:

• Accuracy remains the central concern. Climate models are not perfectbut they are remarkably effective at capturing broad trends.
• For instance, models from the 1980s predicted that doubling atmospheric CO₂ would increase global temperatures by about 1.5°C to 4.5°C — a range still consistent with the latest IPCC assessments.
• According to climate scientists such as those from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER),models are “fairly reliable” in predicting long-term global trends like temperature rise, though short-term regional forecasts are more uncertain.
• This is because local climate outcomes depend on chaotic processes such as cloud formation, ocean currents, or volcanic eruptions — all of which are difficult to simulate precisely.
• Scientists explain that while uncertainties exist, the predictive power of climate models lies in their ability to describe patterns rather than exact events.
• The key is not in predicting the exact temperature for a given year but in assessing whether the planet will continue to warm — and by how much.

The Role and Limitations of Models:

• Climate models are indispensable for global policy and environmental planning.
• They underpin international agreements such as the Paris Climate Accord, helping nations set emission targets and prepare for extreme events.
• Yet, their limitations must be acknowledged. They rely on assumptions about future socio-economic conditions, technology, and policy, variables that cannot be predicted with precision.
• Moreover, models struggle with representing small-scale phenomena like thunderstorms or ocean eddies, which significantly affect regional climates.
• Scientists therefore caution that model outputs should be viewed as scenarios rather than deterministic forecasts.

Way Forward:

Climate models are not crystal balls; they are tools of scientific reasoning, continuously refined with better data and faster computation. While uncertainty is unavoidable, the overall direction they indicate is clear that the planet is warming, largely due to human activities. The challenge lies in using these insights to make informed decisions and mitigate future risks.