Ahaar Kranti Movement:
- Aahaar Kranti” a mission aimed at spreading the message of the need for a nutritionally balanced diet and to understand the importance of accessibility to all local fruits and vegetables.
- Vijnana Bharati (Vibha) and Global Indian Scientists’ and Technocrats’ Forum (GIST) have come together to launch the mission with the motto of “Good Diet-Good Cognition”.
- The Aahaar Kranti movement is designed to address the peculiar problem being faced by India and the world called “hunger and diseases in abundance”.
- Studies estimate that India produces as much as two times the amount of calories that it consumes.
- However, many in the country are still malnourished. The root cause of this strange phenomenon is a lack of nutritional awareness in all sections of our society.
- There is also a need for a nutritionally balanced diet in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic. A healthy body would be able to handle the infection much better with greater immunity and higher resilience.
- The movement proposes to address the current situation of hunger in abundance by working to rouse the people to the values of India’s traditional diet, to the healing powers of local fruits and vegetables, and to the miracles of a balanced diet. It will renew the focus on nutritionally balanced diets (Uttam Evam Santulit Aahaar) replete in locally sourced fruits and vegetables.
- The programme will focus on training teachers, who, in turn, will pass on the message to the multitudes of students, and through them to their families and finally the society at large.
Thematic Luni Solar Calender launched at CSIR NISCAIR:
- If we talk about food, we find a number of nutritional and medicinal values and in our ancient knowledge depicts it tremendously. Such traditional knowledge with their scientific facts are required to be disseminated to masses for scientific awareness.
- Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (CSIR-NISCAIR) and VijnanaBharati (VIBHA) on released a Thematic Luni-Solar Calendar.
- This thematic wall calendar is based on the theme ‘Food as Medicine’. The aim of this effort is to make the calendar more user friendly based on Science. Since 2019, the whole world is facing the acute challenge of COVID pandemic and it is very much related with our food habits and resultant immunity. During present health crisis, the theme has a direct relevance to the common man, wherein, it becomes important to understand the correlation between the diets, health and time that is what to eat and when to eat!
- This is a Luni-Solar Calendar, prominently displaying the ‘Tithi’ and ‘Paksha’. It also displays the corresponding date as per the Indian National Calendar of Government of India and the Gregorian system, highlighting the scientific basis of Indian calendar system.
- The calendar features significant information on Fruits and Vegetable from India. Fruits and vegetables possess great nutritional and health values. Keeping this in view, the United Nations has declared the year 2021 as “International Year of Fruits and Vegetable”.
- In this context, calendar has depicted the important seasonal Fruits and Vegetables, its nutritional and medicinal value, and its Indian names wherever possible. All other features of regular calendar such as the national holidays, festivals, birthdays of Indian scientists, etc. are also included. The calendar includes the dates of the Indian National Calendar as well as Shalivahan Shaka.
HGCO19:
- The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science & Technologyhas announced that it has approved additional funding towards clinical studies of India’s’first of its kind’ mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine – HGCO19, developed by Pune-based biotechnology company Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd.
- HGCO19 has already demonstrated safety, immunogenicity, neutralization antibody activityin the rodent and non-human primate models.
- The neutralizing antibody response of the vaccine in mice and non-human primates was comparable with the sera from the convalescent patients of COVID-19.
- mRNA vaccines are considered safe as mRNA is non-infectious, non-integrating in nature, and degraded by standard cellular mechanisms.
- They are highly efficacious because of their inherent capability of being translatable into the protein structure inside the cell cytoplasm. Additionally, mRNA vaccines are fully synthetic and do not require a host for growth, e.g., eggs or bacteria.
- Therefore, they can be quickly manufactured inexpensively under cGMP conditions to ensure their “availability” and “accessibility” for mass vaccination on a sustainable basis.
- The establishment of such a technology platform will empower India to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure the preparedness for any future pandemic or endemic stage that will follow (mutation in the virus, unvaccinated low-risk population, newborns,etc.)by utilizing its rapid development path. Speed of this platform technology has been already proven during the COVID-19 outbreak as mRNA candidate was the first to enter the human trails globally.
