Pipe dreams: barriers to civic and social rights in an unauthorised colony

Manisha Priyam draws on ethnographic research over eight months to highlight experiences of citizens on the urban periphery. She argues that it is not lack of money but rather desperation for water and the lack of ability to make the state hear their grievances that constitutes ‘poverty’ in Delhi’s unauthorised colonies

Draining a nation’s wealth? Coal denationalisation in India

Manisha Priyam analyses the Indian government’s decision to allocate coal resources to private players after three decades of state control and identifies reasons why a reasonable policy led to irregularities

Aligning opportunities and interests: the politics of educational reform in India

Manisha Priyam finds that state-level political strategies and the contested interaction of interest groups and institutions are important elements in determining the outcome of educational policy reforms

Political economy of a tragedy: why deaths followed mid-day meals in Bihar

In a two-part series, Manisha Priyam analyses the gruesome tragedy of 23 children who died in a Bihar village, Gandaman, after consuming a school lunch served under India’s flagship mid-day meal scheme. In part one, Priyam provides a narrative account of the tragedy, including voices from the grieving poor. In part two, she analyses the local political economy in areas where schools for India’s most poor and vulnerable people are located as well as the formidable challenge in realising rights as entitlements

We stand at a ‘critical juncture’ when questions of inequality have come to foreground public life

Recent events in Delhi have been at the forefront of reshaping the national imagination. There is now visible a new assertion of citizen power, where the margins have begun to question the power and authority of the centre. Manisha Priyam argues a less conventional “vari-focal” lens is needed to interpret this new urban moment

Political economy of a tragedy: why deaths followed mid-day meals in Bihar – Part 2

In the second of this two part series, Manisha Priyam analyses how realising the right to schooling is a struggle for Bihar’s poor children, particularly in the face of elite capture of state institutions. She calls for systematic attention to policy implementation to enable India’s poor to claim entitlements and prevent tragedies such as the death of 23 children after they consumed a school lunch served under India’s flagship mid-day meal scheme. Click here for part one

Aligning opportunities and interests: the politics of educational reform in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar

This thesis investigates the role of politics in implementing educational reform in India during the period 1994 to 2011. Much of the recent research on politics and educational reform has been dominated by the analytical framework of formal political economy, but this framework has not been able to explain how reforms are successfully adopted. Also, the main focus has been on the negative role of politics, controlled by powerful interest groups and biased institutions, in constraining changes likely to benefit poor people. I focus instead on understanding the political dynamics in cases of success. In particular, why do political leaders and public officials support educational reform even though this does not suit their political calculations, and is likely to encounter resistance from teacher unions and educational bureaucracies? To understand these dynamics, I use the framework of comparative institutionalism, and examine the contested interaction of ideas, interests, and institutions, leading to success or failure. To analyse the process of reform implementation, I have selected two Indian states—Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. Both were educationally backward at the beginning of the 1990s and were confronted with a common agenda for reform established by the federal government. However, they pursued divergent trajectories over the next decade, with the former state achieving higher levels and reduced disparities in primary school participation. I compare the political dynamics in three important arenas: the management of teacher interests and their unions, educational decentralisation, and the daily interactions between poor households, schools, and the local state. I find that political strategies are important in determining variations in outcomes. In Andhra Pradesh, the political leadership found an alignment between the new opportunities provided by the federal government and its own agenda for development; it created new allies for change by reducing discretion in teacher policies, playing on interunion rivalries, and creating a local cadre of party loyalists. However, a wider agenda of development was missing in Bihar, and even successfully designed school decentralisation policies could not be implemented due to weak support from political leaders, and because of local elite capture. In both the states, however, the interaction of the poor with schools and the local state was a process of struggle, indicative of the challenges that lie ahead

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

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Not AvailableMicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that control the expression ofgenes by targeting specific mRNAs. Data related to miRNAs are limited for fishspecies, with only 16 out of the 30 000 fish species enlisted in miRBase. In the pre-sent review, we have summarized the recent findings on the implication of miR-NAs in the teleost reproduction with an emphasis on commercially importantcandidates. The information related to various miRNAs and their roles duringdifferent developmental stages of gonads in nine important species has been com-piled. We have focused on the trend of sexual dimorphism in the gonadal miRNArepertoire of teleost species. Species-specific variability is observed in the expres-sion pattern of gonadal miRNAs in both male and female fish. It is noteworthythat our summarization of teleost miRNAs in reproduction has highlighted thegaps in functional information on the identified miRNAs (both conserved andnovel). It is only after functional validation of the miRNA targets, one can usethese findings to enhance reproductive health and production of the commercialteleost species to boost overall aquaculture sector.Not Availabl

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The research was supported by the Institutional Fund (Project code-IXX12206) of ICAR-Indian Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, Ranchi. Authors are indebted to the staff of the school of molecular diagnostics and prophylactics of IIAB for their research cooperation and technical assistance.An experiment was conducted to study the effect of microbial levan supplemented diet on innate and adaptive immune responses as well as stress biomarkers of pathogen challenged Labeo rohita fingerlings. Fish were randomly divided into two groups in triplicates and fed with a pre-standardized dose of 1.25% (w/w%) levan and without levan (control group) for 60 days. Post completion of the feeding trial, fish from both treatment groups were challenged with a pathogenic strain of A. hydrophila and samples were collected on different time points fill 96 h. The results of the study showed that supplementation of microbial levan significantly upregulated the mRNA levels of TLR22, beta-2 M and IFN-gamma, and downregulated TGF-beta in the intestine, gill, kidney and liver in a time-dependent manner. Significant decrease in the expression of TGF-beta in the hepatic cells was noticed at later time points of 24, 48 and 96 h post-challenge with the highest of 2.66 fold at 48 h. Upregulation of the beta-2 M gene at 48 h and 96 h was noticed in the intestine, gill, liver and kidney. Maximum expression of IFN-gamma was observed at highest time points of 96 h in both intestine and gill, whereas 3.4-fold in the liver at 6 h and 2.6-fold in the kidney at 24 h was noticed. TGF-beta expression analysis displayed the significant downregulation with a maximum decrease of 2.6 fold in the gill at 12 h, while a 2.3-fold and 2.5-fold decrease were noticed at 48 h in the kidney and liver, respectively. Total immunoglobulin level and myeloperoxidase content of A. hydrophila infected rohu increased upto 24 h in the levan-fed group compared to the control. Remarkable decrease of stress biomarkers such as serum cortisol, blood glucose, and HSP70 in the liver, muscle and gill, was observed due to dietary feeding of levan at 24 h. In totality, the present study revealed the significant upregulation of immune responsive genes (TLR22, beta-2 M and IFN-gamma), downregulation of regulatory gene (TGF-beta) and decrease of HSP70, cortisol and blood glucose with dietary microbial levan supplementaion in infected Labeo rohita fingerlings. These findings on the modulation of immune responsive gene and stress parameters provide an understanding about the molecular basis of the function of prospective prebiotic, microbial levan.ICAR-Indian Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, Ranchi [IXX12206