THE HINDU – CURRENT NOTE 19 February
Indigenous towed artillery now in advanced stage of trials
Nearly
three decades after the controversial Howitzers, manufactured by Bofors, became
the mainstay of heavy artillery for the Indian Army, two indigenously developed
towed artillery are now in advanced stages of trials to replace them.
The
Dhanush, developed by the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), and the towed artillery
gun — Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System (ATAGS), which has achieved the
parameters specified by the Armament Research and Development Establishment,
will undergo advance trials soon.
Both
are expected to meet the army’s requirement of about 1,800 towed guns by
2018-19, sources said, adding that both guns have been developed in less that
six years.
“We
have made 12 guns that have been used extensively, and six guns will undergo
further trials at Pokhran before it’s fully ready. A few more trials have to be
done to get final clearance,” S.K. Chourasia, Additional Director-General of
Ordnance Factory, and a member of the OFB, told The Hindu.
Dhanush
is a 155 mm/45 caibre gun, which has a range of 40 km, with higher accuracy
than Bofors, he said.
Of
the total 414-guns order from the army, 114 would be supplied in the first
phase. “Though there is enough supply requirement for the army, the gun is an
exportable product too,” Mr. Chourasia said.
The
155mm/52 calibre ATAGS, a project started by DRDO to supplement Dhanush, is
expected to undergo trials in deserts and high altitude range and accuracy
trials soon. ATAGS, which has a range of 46 km, was successfully integrated at
Tata Power SED’s facility in Bengaluru recently, before being tested at
Balasore in Odisha, said a Tata Power SED in response to an email query by The
Hindu. The induction of ATAGS into the artillery regiment is expected to
start in 2019-20.
Cost-effective
exercise
To
reduce cost of production, the Ordnance Factory Board is also looking at
replacing 130 mm guns of the Russian-supplied field guns. The board plans to
use the chassis of this field gun supplied in 1960s that are in good condition
and fit them with new guns. “These guns have become obsolete. We intend to
mount Dhanush guns on the chassis. Our estimation is that the exercise could
cost us about ₹3 crore to ₹4 crore per gun, whereas it would cost us ₹15 crore to ₹20 crore if a new
gun is produced,” said Ordnance Factory Board Additional Director General S.K.
Chourasia.
‘Smart drugs’ a step closer, says study
First
DNA computer, capable of detecting several antibodies in the blood, developed
Scientists
have developed the first DNA computer capable of detecting several antibodies
in the blood, paving the way for smart drugs for better delivery of medication
for conditions such as rheumatism and Crohn’s disease, with fewer side-effects
and at lower cost.
Researchers
at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands said the method
works in a similar manner as a security system that opens the door depending on
the person standing in front of it.
If
the camera recognises the person, the door unlocks, but if the person is
unknown, the door remains locked. “Research into diagnostic tests tends to
focus on the ’recognition’, but what is special about this system is that it
can think and that it can be connected to actuation such as drug delivery,”
said Maarten Merkx, professor at TU/e.
To
be able to perform such an action, ‘intelligence’ is needed, a role that is
performed in this system by a DNA computer.
DNA
is best known as a carrier of genetic information, but DNA molecules are also
highly suitable for performing molecular calculations. The sequence within a
DNA molecule determines with which other DNA molecules it can react, which
allows a researcher to programme desired reaction circuits.
To
date biomedical applications of DNA computers have been limited because the
input of DNA computers typically consists of other DNA and RNA molecules.
To
determine whether someone has a particular disease, it is essential to measure
the concentration of specific antibodies — agents that our immune system
produces when we are ill. Mr. Merkx and his colleagues are the first to have
succeeded in linking the presence of antibodies to a DNA computer.
China building floating nuclear reactors
To provide power to offshore projects
With an eye on the South China Sea and offshore oil and gas exploration, China is stepping up construction of floating nuclear reactors.
A top Chinese official has told the Science and Technology Daily that China will prioritise the development of a floating nuclear power platform in the coming five years, in an effort to provide stable power to offshore projects and promote exploration of oil and gas in the ocean, the People’s Daily online reported.
Wang Yiren, vice director of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, said diesel generators are currently the main power source for China’s offshore operations, and the daily lives of residents on the Nansha and Xisha Islands. These are the Chinese names of for the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea, which are at the heart of a maritime dispute between China and other countries in the region.
In 2015, China’s National Development and Reform Commission — the country’s main planning organisation — had approved floating reactor project, steered by the China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN). CGN had then said that project ACPR50S could provide “electricity, heat and desalination” to islands and offshore energy exploration.
Mr. Wang highlighted that maritime nuclear power plants had already been standardised. Earlier, media reports said the power unit was based on Small Modular Reactor design, capable of generating 60-MW of electricity.
We need democracy because people can be wrong
The people are always right. No? Ah, but then they vote for leaders like Donald Trump and… Oh well, we can add to the list, internationally and nationally!
Does this mean that democracy is a mistake? No, quite the contrary! But we have to hack away at some stubborn centuries-old shrubbery in order to see the foundation of this clearly enough.
One of the greatest myths about democracy — started largely by the Left in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and continued with a twist by the Right into the 21st — relates to the most common rationale behind it. The people are always right, claimed the Left in the past. The market, or the consumer, is always right, claims the capitalist Right today, tweaking the Leftist argument cleverly.
Between them, they justify democracy as a form of political organisation based on human beings being basically ‘always right’. Very little in the past — from the picnics at public hangings outside London jails to the genocides of colonisation and Nazism — justifies such confidence in people being always right. Over centuries, people have been horribly wrong at times.
Majority’s mistrust
Way back in 1882, Henrik Ibsen, the great Norwegian playwright, wrote An Enemy of the People (adapted into a film, Ganashatru, by Satyajit Ray in his last years) around one aspect of this perception, arguing that one needs to be morally and intellectually ahead of ‘people’ in order to be right. Ideas and ‘truths’, Ibsen suggests in this play, get dated, habitual and platitudinous, and hence the majority, which lives habitually by grasping on to platitudes, tends to mistrust the truly ethical and intellectual individual. In other words, if you are Jesus, you risk getting crucified.
But even this argument is faulty: a lot of intelligent people can go horribly wrong. Cleverness does not necessarily save you from mistakes, and even ethics can be twisted in painful ways: there are many in the U.S. who claim to be ‘pro-life’ and hence will criminalise abortions, but they spare little thought (and no money) for the plight of women forced into unhappy pregnancies or the future of poor, abandoned and unwanted children.
History is full of brilliant people — ‘great’ leaders, scientists, thinkers, planners — who helped destroy a village, a nation or an age. Sometimes it appears that intelligence, on its own, merely provides a person with an easier ability to make excuses for his or her mistakes, and hoodwink others in the process.
So if people — whether as individual or group, entrepreneur or consumer, tribe or republic, nation or political party, king or voter — seem to make horrible mistakes much of the time, what hope is there for democracy? Why believe in democracy at all?
Actually, one can argue that the main justification of democracy is exactly this: that anyone — ordinary voter or monarch — can be wrong about any given matter. The ability to make mistakes is human — neither power nor riches nor education can eradicate it, though self-awareness might help. A king or dictator can make a mistake as well as the majority of voters in an election who vote in a party or a leader with bad plans. But in a democracy, after a period, during the next elections, such mistakes can be corrected.
A democracy, in other words, allows us to regularly check the mistakes we make — bloodlessly — and correct them when their disastrous consequences become finally clear to us. This is far more difficult, and costly, to do in any other kind of (autocratic) regime, whether justified in worldly or ‘divine’ terms.
Living with one’s opponents
Democracies are not necessary because people are always right: if we were certain of being right all the time, we would not need any political organisation at all, let alone a democracy. We would be gods. Democracy is necessary because people — groups and individuals — can be wrong. Hence, in a democracy one learns to live with one’s opponents, not exile or murder them. This is a political version of the fact that in life we always live with others — or with the Other, the self who is not and cannot be (by definition) entirely yourself.
Democracy is the only political option that allows us to mitigate the effects of our own mistakes, and the mistakes of others. Democracy is necessary not because the people are always right, but because human beings are often wrong. We forget this only at great peril to ourselves and others.
Walk like a Mughal in the Qila that was
Envisaged as a piece of paradise, the Qila-e-Mubarak has borne the brunt of history
On April 17, 1648, Shah Jahan ‘illuminated’ the new Qila (fort) he had ordered to be built on the banks of the Yamuna in Delhi with his ‘blessed presence’ and celebrations began.
The Qila-e-Mubarak, or blessed fort as it was named, was indeed like an octagonal flower in full bloom and had taken 10 years to build. The master architects Ahmed and Hamid had envisaged it as a piece of paradise and perhaps that is why the famous Persian couplet was inscribed here: Gar firdaus bar ru e zameen ast/ Hamin ast-o, hamin ast-o, hamin ast (If there is a paradise on earth/ It is this, it is this, it is this).
This was in keeping with the paradisiacal theme with rivers and gardens that were laid in the Qila by the architects. A Nahr-e-Bahisht, or stream of paradise, originating near Shah Burj and designed to flow into the row of palace buildings in beautifully carved channels, connecting them to the gardens, further heightened the effect. This was interspersed with marble fountains of outstanding beauty, inlaid with jewels and pietra dura in the palace complex and silver fountains in the gardens.
Transported to history
Now close your eyes and come for a walk with me in the Qila that was. The winter sun is pouring in, and this is just the right time to walk in the Bagh-e-Hayat Baksh, or life-bestowing garden. The Bagh is planted with fragrant and colourful flowers, flowering bushes and trees.
The dew is still damp under our feet and the flower buds are slowly opening up, giving out their fragrance. I can imagine what went through Sir Syed Ahmad’s mind when he described it in his book on Delhi’s monuments, Asar-us-Sanadid: “This garden is a sign of God’s Divine Grace and rejuvenates the heart of the onlooker and makes him ecstatic and cheerful… The gardens of Heaven come up in front of the eyes. The height of the trees can make men envious of its stature and every flower can make a fair maiden blush and its tendrils put to shame the beloved’s curls.”
The sound of gently running water, the flow of a thousand fountains and the heady smell of camphor incense rejuvenate me. In my mind I can see the Nahr-e-Bahisht flowing over the marble niches in the two identical pavilions built facing each other in the Bagh-e-Hayat Baksh. The northern pavilion is Sawan and the southern one is called Bhado’n. They were so named because they recreated the effect of monsoons when the Nahr-e-Bahisht flowed through them and onto the gardens.
There are small arched niches made in the pond and the chutes of this building in which flower bouquets were placed during the day and camphor candles lit at night. The cascading water over these candles and flowers created an unbelievable feeling.
Let’s keep walking and enter the Mehtab Bagh, or moonlit garden. For heavenly evenings and nights, the scent from the flowers overpowered the senses and the camphor lamps and candles from the Sawan and Bhado’n pavilions made one dreamy and languorous. This was planted only with those flowers, bushes and trees which had white blossoms. They exaggerated the effect of moonlight.
Perhaps the Badshah walked here with his begums, the prince and princesses dreamt of crowns and palaces.
Back to reality
I am rudely awakened from my dream by loud voices. Who is this who shouts out and disturbs the emperor’s entourage in the Bagh? Oh! It’s a group of tourists and I am back with a thud in the 21st century. There is no Mughal Bagh, just some very English-looking manicured lawns and shrubs.
During the 1857 uprising, this Qila saw much action by the Indian sepoys who had risen up against the British East India Company rule. As a result, once the British crushed what they termed a mutiny, they exiled the Mughal emperor and demolished 80% of the Qila.
In 1902, the remnants of Bagh-e-Hayat Baksh was found buried deep in debris: that is, those portions which had not become part of the roads, which the British had built for their convenience inside the Mughal Qila.
Ugly army barracks replaced the Mehtab Bagh and its fountains silenced forever. Its nahr, waterfalls, water channels, flower and footpaths for roaming in the garden were all destroyed. Whatever we see today are the portions that were preserved and repaired by George Curzon. He replanted lawns and trees in the portion not occupied by the barracks.
The Qila-e-Mubarak is now the Red Fort, a symbol of India’s independence, from where the Prime Minister addresses the nation every August 15.
Poor connectivity hits border trade
Bangladesh border situation yet to improve, 20 months after ‘historic’ visit by PM
India-Bangladesh trade ties are troubled by “poor” rail- and river-connectivity at the region bordering Assam as well as a delay in the operationalisation of four “new” ‘border haats’ (or border markets) at the area bordering Meghalaya.
This is the situation even 20 months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bangladesh visit that paved way for, among other things, the “historic” ceremony of exchange of instruments of ratification of the India-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement, 1974 and its 2011 Protocol. It also resulted in an agreement on several measures to “widen bilateral trade, investment and economic cooperation in a balanced and sustainable manner to mutual benefit but also open up opportunities for regional trade.”
Bangladesh was India’s largest South Asian trading partner in 2015-16 — with bilateral trade worth $6.8 billion that fiscal.
The trade balance was heavily in favour of India, with its exports of $6.03 billion to Bangladesh in FY’16 being $5.3 billion more than imports from that country during that fiscal period.
Mankachar border trade
Assam, during a meeting with the Centre last month, said road connectivity in the Bangladesh side for Mankachar Border Trade Point (BTP) “is very poor, and trade is possible only in summers.”
The Centre responded by stating that the issue may be included in the agenda of the next meeting of the Joint Working Group on Trade and also at the meeting of the subgroup on infrastructure. It wanted Assam to provide more details on issues of road connectivity for Mankachar BTP.
Assam also said dredging of the Brahmaputra River on the Bangladesh side was “essential” to make river vessels route navigable. According to the Centre, talks are on to augment National Waterway-2 (on the Brahmaputra River at the India-Bangladesh border) and the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route (related to inland water transit and trade).
Though India wants this proposal to be formulated under South-Asia Sub Regional Economic Cooperation, it has not yet been done due to lack of details on dredging under the Protocol Routes on the Bangladesh side and the funds required. On Bangladesh’s proposal for a Regional Waterway Project-1 (Chittagong-Dhaka-Ashuganj Corridor) for dredging of rivers with World Bank assistance, India has said it will lend support provided Bangladesh promises that in the said proposal, development of India-centric Protocol Route under Indo-Bangladesh Protocol on Inland Water Transit and Trade (PIWTT) would also be considered.
Bangladesh has sought guidance and help from Dredging Corporation of India, the Centre said.
Meanwhile, Meghalaya has informed the Centre that joint inspection for operationalisation of six “new” ‘Border Haats’ was pending due to an inadequate response from Bangladesh. The Centre said, two of these new border haats are operational and the remaining four are under implementation stage.
Border haats
It said Bangladesh has informed that since the Memorandum of Understanding and Mode of Operation on Border Haats have expired in 2013, discussions on the issue should be made only after their renewal. The Centre said India has taken up with Bangladesh the issue of holding the meeting of the Joint Border Haat Management Committees.
The Indian Commerce Ministry, in December 2016 said currently, four border haats are operational, along the India-Bangladesh border (two each in Meghalaya and Tripura). The trade at border haats is allowed in Indian Rupees/Bangladesh Taka and on a barter basis, and trade worth ₹16.86 crore was carried out at the four border haats in the five-year period ending 2015-16.
Source The Hindu
