📰 Hybrid model of ‘smart’ fence being tested along the LoC
Work is also on to convert the existing border fence into a ‘hybrid’ barrier
•The Army has significantly improved its electronic surveillance along the Line of Control (LoC) to check infiltration, and work on converting the existing border fence into a smart fence integrated with several sensors is under way, several officers have said.
•However, there is a rethink on converting the entire fence over a 700 km stretch into a smart one due to the high cost. A hybrid model is now being adopted.
•“The new hybrid model of the smart fence being tested will cost around ₹10 lakh per km and 60 km is being attempted this year,” a senior officer on the ground said. “This has some rudimentary smartisation. The earlier proposal for a hi-tech fence was to cost around ₹10 crore for 2.4 km. A ₹10 crore type trial was done in the Army’s 19 Division last year, but it was too expensive so no more contracting was done,” the officer said.
•The fence will be integrated with LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors, infrared sensors and cameras among others.
•In recent months, the Army has beefed up troops close to the LoC to plug gaps and it has resulted in a drop in infiltration this year. Lt. Gen. B.S. Raju, General Officer Commanding, 15 Corps, said that while the multi-tier anti-infiltration grid remains in place, the first tier has been strengthened. Troops have also been given drones, both big and small, to monitor the ground.
•The existing fence called the Anti-Infiltration Obstacle System (AIOS) is located about 700 m from the LoC. The double row fence consisting of concertina wire was constructed between 2003 and 2005. With its high rate of degradation every year due to snow, the Army came up with a proposal to install a smart fence with various sensors integrated into it and a pilot project was subsequently taken up.
•For instance, Tangdhar sector gets 10-15 feet snowfall in peak winters, which means in some places the entire fence gets buried. Due to snow, the iron fence becomes brittle and consequently 60-70% of the fence has to be repaired every year, a second officer on the ground said. “Every year, there is a major exercise over four months from March to June to bring that fence up,” he said.
•The fence is present along most of the around 740 km long LoC. While the damage to the fence is less south of Pirpanjal due to less snow, heavy snowfall in North Kashmir causes big damage, officials said. In addition to the fence, the Army has deployed long range surveillance systems to detect people and small vehicles, both during day and night. The fence too has been integrated with various sensors.
📰 Wildlife Institute of India scientists anxious after Finance Ministry recommends funding cut
Review of 194 autonomous bodies across 18 Ministries says 109 bodies must be merged into 26, and government must ‘disengage’ from 23
•A recommendation by the Finance Ministry to divest the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) of its status as an autonomous body of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has triggered anxiety among scientists at the organisation.
•A letter by the WII Director to the Environment Ministry says that the directive was “unviable” and would affect the institution’s ability to be seen as an “unbiased opinion generator” that both government and public sector units consulted for assessing the impact of development projects on wildlife.
•The institute has an annual expenditure of ₹34 crore that was sourced from the Environment Ministry. It generated only ₹3.5 crore from consultancy and advisory services, which went towards paying pensions to employees appointed before 2004.
•“The major responsibility of this Institute is to provide advice to MoEFCC based on scientific information on policy and management of the country’s Wildlife Resources. This role can only be performed and remains relevant as long as the institute remains a part of the MoEFCC,” says the letter signed by institute Director, Dhananjai Mohan. The Hindu has viewed this letter.
•A scientist with the institution, who declined to be identified, said that the proposal if implemented would be “the death knell” of the organisation that has 112 employees.
•The Finance Ministry moves follows a review by its Expenditure Department of 194 autonomous bodies across 18 Ministries. Of them, 109 bodies must be merged into 26, and government must “disengage” from 23, one which is the WII.
•In the case of WII, the government will cut funding to the institute by 25% every year, and it could become a ‘Deemed University’ engaged in teaching and research. The Central government could continue to access WII advisory and training services as a “client.” Dr. Mohan’s letter, however, said that there were too few students and courses offered by the institute for it to qualify as a Deemed University, and it had twice been rebuffed by the University Grants Commission on these grounds.
•Along with the WII, other autonomous bodies that have been recommended to be disengaged are the Indian Institute of Forest Management, and the Indian Plywood Industries Research and Training Institute. Other Environment Ministry organisations, such as the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History will be subsumed within the activities of the Environment Ministry. Still others, such as the Society of Integrated Coastal Management and the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management, will be merged.
📰 Punjab passes its own three agriculture Bills
First State to formally reject Centre’s 3 farm legislations
•Punjab on Tuesday became the first State in the country to formally reject theCentral government’s three agriculture sector legislations, with its Legislative Assembly on Tuesday unanimously passing three Bills to negate the Union laws.
•The Assembly passed a resolution rejecting the Central legislations and the proposed Electricity Amendment Bill and demanding their immediate annulment. It also sought an ordinance to protect the Minimum Support Price (MSP) and ensure the continuance of procurement by the Centre.
•The three State Bills provide for imprisonment of not less than three years and fines for sale-purchase of wheat or paddy under a farming agreement below the MSP, besides prevention of hoarding and black-marketing of agricultural produce, among other things.
•The provision of punishment for sale-purchase below the MSP has been incorporated in The Farmers' (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services (Special Provisions and Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2020.
•The Bill provides that no sale or purchase is done below the MSP and violation of the same shall invite imprisonment of three years besides fine. It seeks to ensure that no sale or purchase of wheat or paddy under a farming agreement shall be allowed below the MSP. It also seeks amendment to sections 1(2), sections 19 and 20 of the Centre’s Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020. It proposes to add new sections that are section 4, 6 to 11.
•The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) (Special Provisions and Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2020, seeks to amend sections 1(2), 14 and 15 of the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020 to ensure that sale or purchase of wheat or paddy in the State is not allowed below the MSP. The amendment Bill also seeks to provide for punishment for harassment of farmers or payment of less price to the farmers by inserting new sections 6 to 11.
•The Essential Commodities (Special Provisions and Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2020, seeks to amend the Centre’s ‘The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020’ by amending section 1(2) and section 3(1A) of the Essential Commodities Act, 1955. It seeks to ensure status quo ante as on June 4, 2020 with regard to implementation of the Central Act namely, ‘The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020’.
Fourth Bill
•A fourth Bill - The Code of Civil Procedure (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2020 was also passed, which seeks to insert a provision for exemption of agriculture land not exceeding 2.5 acres from Section 60 of The Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, which provides for attachment or decree of various properties - moveable and immoveable. Proviso-b to this Section states that the properties of the farmers such as cattle, implements, cowsheds, etc, would be exempt from attachment, but as on date agriculture land can be attached. Given the farmers’ apprehension about attachment-decree of their land as a consequence of enforcement of farming contracts or otherwise, the State government is seeking, through this Bill, to give full exemption to small farmers and others from attachment or decree of land up to 2.5 acres.
•All MLAs unanimously voted in favour of the resolution and the Bills, except the two BJP members who were absent from the House during the second day of the special Assembly session. The resolution, which was passed, described the Centre’s farm laws and the proposed Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020 as ‘anti-farmers’ and demanded that they be scrapped.
•Chief Minister Amarinder Singh informed the House that he had sought time from the President of India to raise Punjab’s concerns on the farm laws. He appealed to farmers’ unions to allow movement of trains for the transportation of coal, urea and grains. He pointed out that the State government has already lost ₹40,000 crore in revenue due to the ongoing “rail roko” agitation. Industry and business was as much the responsibility of the State government as was agriculture, he said, adding that the farmers’ fight was against Delhi, not against Punjab.
•Earlier, responding to a suggestion from Leader of the Opposition Harpal Singh Cheema, on MSP guarantee by the State government, the Chief Minister asked the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader if he had any idea about the financial implications of such a move. In any case, where would the State sell the produce even if it purchased the same, he added, terming the suggestion impractical.
Amarinder meets Governor
•Later, the Chief Minister, along with Congress, AAP and Shiromani Akali Dal MLAs met Governor V.P.S Badnore and submitted the House resolution.
•Talking to journalists, Capt. Amarinder said his government was all set to take legal recourse if the Governor did not sign the amendment Bills.
•Asked about the possibility of the Centre imposing President’s rule in the State to scuttle the attempts to negate the farm Laws, he said, “Let’s wait and see... we will move step by step.” However, if the situation came to such a pass, the Centre would not need to dismiss him as he was carrying his resignation in his pocket and would give it willingly, rather than compromise on the interests of Punjab and its farmers, he said.
📰 Environmental clearance to Kaleshwaram given in violation of law: NGT
Tribunal directs Centre to appoint expert panel on remedial measures
•The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has held that environmental clearance (EC) to Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP) was granted ex post facto, after completion of substantial work, by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) “in violation of law”.
•It has also observed that accountability needs to be fixed and remedial measures be taken. For that purpose, it has directed the MoEF&CC to constitute a seven-member expert committee preferably out of expert appraisal committee (EAC) members with relevant sectorial expertise to go into the matter in light of the observations in the present case.
•In the judgment posted on its website on Tuesday in a petition filed by one Md. Hayath Udin, a resident of Siddipet district, who is also a farmer affected directly by the project, the Principal Bench of NGT asked the Ministry to constitute the expert committee within a month and it may complete its exercise within six months thereafter shouldering the responsibility of monitoring the panel work to the Secretary of MOEF&CC.
•The petitioner moved the NGT with a contention declare the EC granted to KLIP as invalid since substantial work was done by the State Government, project proponent, prior to filing application with the Ministry for clearance.
•“We find that in spite of finding illegality in granting EC, it is neither possible nor desirable to undo what has happened, but accountability needs to be fixed and remedial measures taken,” the Bench comprising Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, Judicial Member Justice S.P. Wangdi and Expert Member Dr. Nagin Nanda said their judgement.
•The NGT Principal Bench suggested that the expert committee could assess the extent of damage caused in going ahead with the project without EC – the period from 2008 to 2017 — and identify the necessary restoration measures. Further, it could look into relief and rehabilitation measures adopted and required to be further adopted, examine effective implementation of environmental management plan (EMP) submitted by the project proponent as also compliance of EC conditions.
•“Any affected party will be at liberty to make representation to the MoEF&CC within three weeks along with suggestions and grievances, which may be taken into the account by the expert committee”, the NGT said in its judgement. It has further asked MoEF&CC to consider measures to prevent recurrence of such violations where EC is sought ex post facto.
•It is particularly required when the projects are multi-purpose and part of it requires EC, so that such requirement is not defeated on specious plea that the project was partly not covered by the schedule Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification as has happened in the present case, the NGT observed. Instead of confining consideration merely to documentary support, a mechanism is required to be evolved and followed whereby physical verification of material particulars can be undertaken, wherever necessary, it suggested.
•In the matter of expansion of the project scope to draw 3 tmc ft of water a day from the present 2 tmc ft, the NGT observed that directions of the Centre are binding on the State unless challenged and set aside.
📰 The many bright spots on India’s innovation horizon
Recognising the potential, the government is putting in place a framework of collaboration, facilitation and regulation
•Innovation rearranges existing elements into permutations and combinations that benefit society. In his Brāhmaphutasiddhānta, Brahmagupta’s marvellous take on his innovation of zero was, “A debt minus zero is a debt. A fortune minus zero is a fortune. A debt subtracted from zero is a fortune. A fortune subtracted from zero is a debt. The product of zero multiplied by a debt or fortune is zero.” The Indian innovation of zero fundamentally reordered history. The novel coronavirus pandemic provides an opportunity for similar reordering for posterity.
Realistic potential
•India is a fertile ground to be a technology-led innovation garage. It is the fastest growing country in terms of Internet usage, with over 700 million users and the number projected to rise to 974 million by 2025. The JAM trinity (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) trinity has 404 million Jan Dhan bank accounts with 1.2 billion Aadhaar and 1.2 billion mobile subscribers. There is a potential to add over $957 billion to India’s GDP by 2035 with artificial intelligence (AI), according to a recent report by Accenture.
•Innovation in India is being structured around the triad of collaboration, facilitation and responsible regulation. It is advanced by cross-disciplinary collaboration. In his famous essay, ‘I Pencil’, Leonard Read brings forward the wonder of collaboration between people cutting trees, mining graphite, working in factories, marketing, designing and managing, just to produce a single pencil.
•Innovation is a recombinant and brings tangential benefits through products and services that may not even have been its initial purpose. The founders of Twitter had set out to make a platform for people to find podcasts; Instagram was first intended to be a sign-in application; CRISPR, or the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, which is the transformative gene editing tool, was partly being researched for fixing problems in the yoghurt industry. It won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The realistic potential of technology for India resonates in the ‘Amara law’ named after Roy Amara, a Stanford computer scientist, who said that “People tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short run, but to underestimate it in the long run.”
•October 2020 saw two disruptive events that were organised by the Government of India for collaborative knowledge creation. At the Vaishvik Bharatiya Vaigyanik (VAIBHAV) summit (https://bit.ly/35aC3O8), which was inaugurated on October 2, more than 3,000 overseas Indian-origin academicians and scientists from 55 countries, and about 10,000 Indians participated to ideate on innovative solutions to our challenges. The Prime Minister articulated this spirit of knowledge sharing while inaugurating the summit; he called it “a true sangam or confluence of great minds” where “we sit to form our long-lasting association for empowering India and our planet”. The concluding session has been planned on October 31. This has been concomitant to the Responsible AI for Social Empowerment (RAISE) 2020 summit (https://bit.ly/2IN0Dx4), which was from October 5-9. It was to charter a course to effectively use AI for social empowerment, inclusion, and transformation in key sectors such as health care, agriculture, finance, education and smart mobility.
Start-up disruptions
•This focus on celebrating innovation has led to several start-ups disrupting the Indian market. The recent winners of the ‘Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge’ (https://bit.ly/3jer2QV) Chingari with its video communication tools and MapMyIndia with its elaborative maps, ‘Logically’, with its news delivery features are becoming household names. Furthermore, Setu, true to its name, is building a bridge to bring banks to people. It has built an application programming interface which allows customers to make small ticket payments without going to the bank. Yelo is offering neo-banking payment and money transfer services online for workers in the gig economy. Niramai (or Non-Invasive Risk Assessment with Machine Intelligence) uses an AI-based thermal imaging portable tool that carries out non-invasive breast cancer screening for women for early detection. This intervention is of great importance as an estimate suggests that one in two affected women in India die due to late detection. Qure.ai uses AI for health-care diagnostics in rural India, tackling challenges such as tuberculosis and now COVID-19. Gramophone offers pricing information from mandis, advice on soil and crop health and access to agricultural inputs via micro-entrepreneurs to farmers in Madhya Pradesh, aiding their operation efficiency. Vernacular.ai offers a voice-based AI product that can understand up to 10 Indian languages and around 160 dialects. It is helping build virtual, smart, responsive and effective chat assistants suitable for diverse Indian consumers.
Many incentives
•Innovation needs risk capital in terms of resources and psychological security for researchers. It needs an environment where it is safe to fail. The government has been building a comprehensive framework to this end. It is incentivising research and development with several schemes such as Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) scholarships, the Ramanujan Fellowship, the Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN) scheme, Smart India Hackathons (SIH), Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), the Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) scheme, setting up of the Future Skills PRIME (Programme for Reskilling/Upskilling of IT Manpower for Employability) capacity building platform and also the triad of Scheme for Transformational and Advanced Research in Sciences (STARS), Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) and Impactful Policy Research in Social Science (IMPRESS). The National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems aims to ‘catalyse translational research across “Al, IoT or the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Big Data Analytics, Robotics, Quantum Computing, Data Science”.
•Furthermore, the government has been actively facilitating collaborative and light touch regulatory practices to promote innovation and incentivise risk-taking. It has increasingly relied on collaboration, communication and creativity, taking the route of standard and principles adherence. The Reserve Bank of India, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India allow for regulatory sandboxes for piloting new ideas. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recently introduced recommendations for regulating cloud services in India, suggesting a light-touch regulation in collaboration with industry, balancing commercial freedom and principles adherence.
A better life
•Walter Isaacson once cited this: “Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how to live without deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for past ages.” Innovation has the potential to build a future where AI will transform education and health care, machine learning and blockchain will make commerce robust and resilient, clean energy will drive our economy, gene-drives would exterminate invasive and harmful species, gene-editing would help us bring back extinct species and reinvigorate depleted ecosystems, quantum computing will raise our processing capability to resolve challenges which seem insurmountable and augmented, and virtual reality will optimistically change the way we interact with the physical world.
•Steam engines made us understand thermodynamics, flights made us understand aerodynamics. There is ‘in-deed’ merit in relentless focus on innovation as it essentially augments ease of living for citizens, dematerialising and democratising products and services.
📰 Offset dilution in defence, a flawed policy turn
As an episode in India’s aerospace industry shows, it can succeed if it is designed and executed correctly
•Recently, the government diluted the “offset” policy in defence procurement, reportedly in response to a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India’s report tabled in Parliament last month. Many contend that the move is a setback for augmenting domestic capabilities or for realising the goal of Atmanirbhar Bharat. But why is it a setback for the goals under Atmanirbhar Bharat? The experience with the procedure in the aerospace industry since 2005 seems to offer useful lessons in redesigning defence offsets.
•What is an offset policy? And how is it expected to boost domestic capabilities? What lessons can we draw from a similar system in the aerospace industry? These questions are addressed below.
Offset ties up the ends
•Most countries restrict trade in defence equipment and advanced technologies in order to safeguard national interest. Yet, for commercial gains and for global technological recognition, governments and firms do like to expand the trade. Negotiated bilateral sales between countries are a way out of the dilemma. Soft credit often sweetens the deals, with restrictions imposed on use, modification and resale of such equipment and technologies, to protect the proprietary knowledge and expertise embedded in them.
•In such trade negotiations, the price of the product is one of the many other factors. Geopolitics and the technical knowhow involved in the equipment weigh-in considerably since the contracts are for the long term, with technological fixities. The product and technology compel buyers to stick to them for: the advantages of bulk purchase, and dependence on the supplier for spares and upgrades. In other words, there is considerable “path dependency” in such choices, rendering the decisions difficult to reverse.
•Developing country buyers often lack an industrial base and research and development (R&D) facilities (which take a long time to mature). The price and the terms of the contract often reflect the government’s relative bargaining strength and also domestic political and economic considerations.
•Large buyers such as India seek to exercise their “buying power” to secure not just the lowest price. They also try to acquire the technology to upgrade domestic production and build R&D capabilities. The offset clause — used globally — is the instrument for securing these goals.
A number of changes
•Initiated in 2005, the offset clause has a requirement of sourcing 30% of the value of the contract domestically; indigenisation of production in a strict time frame, and training Indian professionals in high-tech skills, for promoting domestic R&D. However, the policy has been tweaked many times since.
•As of November 2019, as in a reply to a parliamentary question, the Defence Ministry had signed 52 offset contracts worth $12 billion via Indian offset partners, or domestic firms. The duration of these contracts extends up to 2022.
•According to the recent CAG report mentioned above, between 2007 and 2018, the government reportedly signed 46 offset contracts worth ₹66,427 crore of investments. However, the realised investments were merely 8%, or worth ₹5,457 crore. Reportedly, technology transfer agreements in the offsets were not implemented, failing to accomplish the stated policy objective. We are unable to verify the claim as the government has not put in place an automatic monitoring system for offset contracts, as initially promised.
•On September 28, the government has diluted this policy further. Henceforth, the offset clause will not be applicable to bilateral deals and deals with a single (monopoly) seller, to begin with.
Setback for defence
•Most defence deals are bilateral (as stated above), or a single supplier deal (given the monopoly over the technology). The dilution means practically giving up the offset clause, sounding the death knell of India’s prospects for boosting defence production and technological self-reliance. The government, however, has defended the decision by claiming a cost advantage. It is a lamentable excuse for the reported policy failure. Price is but one of many factors in such deals, as explained above. The higher (upfront) cost of the agreement due to the offset clause would pay for itself by: reducing costs in the long term by indigenisation of production and the potential technology spill-overs for domestic industry. Hence, giving up the offset clause is undoubtedly a severe setback.
Shortlived in aerospace
•The offset policy can, however, succeed, if it is designed and executed correctly, as a parallel episode in aerospace industry demonstrates. Despite the heft of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, India is a lightweight in global civilian aircraft manufacturing, as the public sector giant mostly devotes itself to defence production. The much-touted National Civil Aircraft Development (NCAD) project — to come up with an indigenously designed Regional Transport Aircraft (RTA) — has remained a non-starter from day one.
•However, with the introduction of the offset policy in 2005, things changed dramatically. For contracts valued at ₹300 crore or more, 30% of it will result in offsets, implemented through Indian offset partners. As aerospace imports rose rapidly, so did the exports via the offsets, by a whopping 544% in 2007, compared to the previous year. By 2014, exports increased to $6.7 billion from a paltry $62.5 million in 2005, according to the United Nations Comtrade Database. The offset clause enabled India to join the league of the world’s top 10 aerospace exporters; the only country without a major domestic aerospace firm. The success was short-lived, however. Exports plummeted after the offset clause was relaxed, primarily when the threshold for the policy was raised from the hitherto ₹300 crore to ₹2000 crore, in 2016. The offset exports fell to $1.5 billion by 2019. The 2005 policy helped promote a vibrant aerospace cluster, mostly micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) around Bengaluru. The policy dilution undid success. The moral of the story is there for everyone to see.
Aiding self-reliance
•Reportedly because of the CAG’s critical remarks in its latest report tabled in the Parliament, the government has virtually scrapped the defence offset policy. Thus, India has voluntarily given up a powerful instrument of bargaining to acquire scarce advanced technology — a system that large and politically ambitious nations seek to exercise. There are successful examples to draw lessons from, as the aerospace industry episode demonstrates. India needs to re-conceive or re-imagine the offset clause in defence contracts with stricter enforcement of the deals, in national interest, and in order to aim for ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan’, or a self-reliant India.
