📰 Navy accelerates indigenisation efforts, focus on weapons and aviation items
“Till date, Navy has indigenised around 3400 items under INIP, including over 2000 machinery and electrical spares, over 1000 aviation spares and over 250 weapon spares”
•The Navy which has taken an early lead towards indigenisation decades ago and in 2014 promulgated the Indian Navy Indigenisation Plan (INIP) 2015-2030 to enable indigenous development of equipment and systems is further ramping up indigenisation efforts especially in weapons and aviation related items. This falls in line with the Government’s push to cut down on defence imports and boost domestic manufacturing which has gained further urgency due to ingoing Russian war in Ukraine and the large scale dependency of Indian military on Russian arms and equipment.
•“Till date, Navy has indigenised around 3400 items under INIP, including over 2000 machinery and electrical spares, over 1000 aviation spares and over 250 weapon spares. The existing Naval Aviation Indigenisation Roadmap (NAIR) 2019-22 is also under revision. All fast moving aircraft mandatory spares and high cost indigenous repairs are being included in the revised NAIR 2022-27,” one official said.
•There is particular focus on the fight component (which is weapons) as there is still a long way to go compared to the float and move components, the official stated. Float consist of the ship, move comprises the propulsion and fight consist of weapons and sensors.
•“The Navy has a head start. Several initiatives have been taken early on,” a Navy official noted in this regard.
•Towards this, four in-house indigenisation committees have been formed to handle indigenisation of spares with respect to naval aircraft. In addition, the Naval Liaison Cells (NLCs) located at various places have been nominated as ‘indigenisation cells’.
•There are currently 41 ships and submarines under construction, 39 are being built in India shipyards while in principle approval from MoD exists for 47 ships to be built in India, the Navy has stated earlier. Since 2014, 78 % of Acceptance of Necessity (AoN), by value, and 68 % of contracts, by value, have been awarded to Indian vendors, officials said.
•The Navy is working with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the industry to cut down developmental timelines, the official cited above said. “Start-ups and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) are doing a great job.”
•Some of the focus areas include indigenous design and development and production of Anti-Submarine Weapons and sensors, Satcom and electronic warfare equipment, Anti-Ship Missiles and Medium Range Surface to Air Missile, combat management system, software defined radios, network encryption devices, Link II communication system, main batteries for submarines, distress sonar system, components of missiles and torpedoes etc.
•The Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Organisation (NIIO) which was launched by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in August 2020 provides a flexible and accessible interface for academia and industry with Indian Navy capability development apparatus, officials said.
•In the last two years, 36 IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) applications have been filed by Navy personnel. Over two IPR applications are filed every month since the creation of NIIO and Transfer of Technology to 12 MSMEs has already been undertaken,” another defence official said.
•Navy has now forward deployed user inputs through Naval Project Management Teams at cluster Headquarters of DRDO and two such clusters are already operational. These have interfaced with the DRDO labs and their Development cum Production Partners (DcPP) to provide user inputs at every stage to 15 futuristic Technology and 100 plus DRDO projects underway for development of Indian Navy’s combat capability, the official added.
•The Navy has more than 20 Make I & Make II cases being progressed, under various domestic development routes of the procurement procedure.
•Comparing the highly skilled and technology intense warship production compared to commercial ship building, Navy Chiefs in the past had stated that manpower employed for constructing a commercial ship of about 30,000 tonnes is less than the manpower employed in warship construction of about 6,000 tonnes. In addition, statistics show that the multiplier effect of one worker employed in a shipyard is approximately 6.4 on ancillary industries, a senior officer said in the past.
Integrated data and instant information on road accidents will bring relief to victims’ families, check fake claims
•A web portal designed by the government in consultation with insurance companies will provide instant information on road accidents with a few clicks and help accelerate accident compensation claims, bringing relief to victims’ families.
•The Ministry of Roads, Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has developed the portal named ‘e-DAR’ (e-Detailed Accident Report). Digitalised Detailed Accident Reports (DAR) will be uploaded on the portal for easy access. The web portal will be linked to the Integrated Road Accident Database (iRAD). From iRAD, applications to more than 90% of the datasets would be pushed directly to the e-DAR. Stakeholders like the police, road authorities, hospitals, etc., are required to enter very minimal information for the e-DAR forms. Thus, e-DAR would be an extension and e-version of iRAD.
•An apex court Bench led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul expressed satisfaction after technicians demonstrated the working of the portal to the court and amicus curiae, advocate N. Vijayaraghavan and advocate Vipin Nair.
•The court, in its detailed order, recorded that e-DAR portal would conduct multiple checks against fake claims by conducting a sweeping search of vehicles involved in the accident, the date of accident, and the First Information Report number.
•The portal would be linked to other government portals like Vaahan and would get access to information on driving licence details and registration of vehicles.
•For the benefit of investigating officers, the portal would provide geo tagging of the exact accident spot along with the site map. This would notify the investigating officer on his distance from the spot of the incident in the event the portal is accessed from any other location.
•Details like photos, video of the accident spot, damaged vehicles, injured victims, eye-witnesses, etc., would be uploaded immediately on the portal.
•“Apart from the state police, an engineer from the Public Works Department or the local body will receive an alert on his mobile device and the official concerned will then visit the accident site, to examine it, and feed the required details, such as the road design. Hotspots for accidents would also be identified so as to obtain solutions to avoid accidents at these hotspots,” the apex court’s order noted.
•It said that a report submitted by the government in court suggested that data with respect to motor accidents for 24 States has already been uploaded.
•The court suggested the use of artificial intelligence technology for the portal.
📰 India gets S-400 training equipment
Second regiment from Russia likely to see some delay due to Ukraine war.
•There is a delay in the delivery of the second regiment of S-400 from Russia due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. However some training equipment and simulators arrived in India, official sources confirmed.
•“Simulators and training equipment have arrived. The second operational unit is likely to be delayed by a few months,” a defence source said and this was confirmed by another official.
•Last December, India took delivery of the first S-400 regiment, five of which were contracted from Russia under a $5.43 bn deal signed in October 2018. The first unit has been deployed in Punjab and is operational, officials have confirmed.
•With the threat of U.S. sanctions under CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act), New Delhi and Moscow had worked out payments through Rupee-Rouble exchange for this deal. The two sides are now exploring the same payment route for the larger bilateral trade.
•The Defence Ministry and Services have carried out assessments and are closely monitoring the impact sanctions can have on timely deliveries and supplies from Russia. Officials had expressed concern that there could be some shipping delays given the prevailing situation.
•China also possesses the S-400 Triumf long range air defence system, currently being inducted by India, and the system remains a potent weapon for them. Countering them will be for Indian Air Force (IAF)’s tactics to take them out, based on “direct tactical planning”, an IAF representative informed the parliamentary standing committee on defence.
•“As regards S-400, you are right that they have it. But finally, it remains a potent weapon for them and it will be our tactics how to take them out. Perhaps we have better precision weapons. So, do they. That will be a direct tactical planning,” an Air Force representative had appraised the Parliamentary Committee.
📰 The food vaccine as right, more so for TB patients
Without addressing undernutrition, the goals of reducing the incidence of TB, and mortality, in India, cannot be reached
•In the past, there was a belief that every ill had a pill and the pill killed the germs that made you ill. That germ could be a bacteria, virus or a parasite. Factors such as genetic and metabolic causes, hormonal imbalance and altered neuro-chemical transmitters causing illnesses were less known then. But there was fairly good knowledge of how good air and nutrition reduced consumption illnesses such as tuberculosis (TB).
History and a perspective
•This is why sanatoriums/sanatoria were set up in mountain terrain, with fresh air, pure water and good food, in the quest for a cure for TB. There were no drugs for TB till the discovery of streptomycin in 1943. With improved wages, better living standards and the accompanying higher purchasing power for food, the TB mortality rate came down from 300 people per 1,00,000 population to 60 in England and Wales. TB disappeared from socio-economically developed countries long before the advent of chemotherapy. After the Second World War, in 1946 G.B. Leyton reported a 92% reduction in the incidence of TB among British soldiers who were fed an additional Red Cross diet of 1,000 calories plus 30 grams of protein when compared to Russian soldiers who were fed only a camp diet. This historical importance of good nutrition was ignored by the modern therapist who tried to control TB initially with streptomycin injection, isoniazid and para-aminosalisylic acid. In the ecstasy of finding antibiotics killing the germs, the social determinants of disease were ignored.
Not patient-centric
•With more drug arsenals such as rifampicin, ethambutol, pyrazinamide, the fight against TB bacteria continued, which became multidrug resistant. Sharper bullets were fired into the frail body of patients. It was bacteria targeted, not patient-centric. The regimes and the mode of delivery of drugs were changed to plug the loopholes of alleged “non-compliance of illiterate and irresponsible patients”. Blister packs of a multi-drug regime were provided at the doorstep, and the directly observed treatment/therapy (DOT) mechanism set up. There was little done to try to understand where patients lived, what work they did for a living, how much they could afford to buy food, and how much they ate.
•Many of the poor discontinued blister-packaged free drugs thinking that these were “hot and strong” drugs not suited for the hunger pains they experienced every night. They coughed up virulent bacteria from their emaciated body to infect many around them. It is no wonder that TB was never brought under control.
•Let me narrate this example. I was defending a project proposal to provide nutritional supplementation of additional rice, dhal and cooking oil for TB patients in the tribal areas of Bastar-Chhattisgarh as part of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) plan in 2009-10. But it was rejected twice by the central technical team as ‘an intervention without proven benefit’.
Nutrition status and TB risk
•“The nutrition of the individual, is the most vital factor in the prevention in tuberculous disease,” said Dr. J.B. McDougall of the World Health Organization (WHO), in1949. And, Dr. René J. Dubos in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in 1960, said, “It is most unlikely that drugs alone, or drugs supplemented by vaccination, can control TB in the underprivileged countries of the world as long as their nutritional status has not been raised to a reasonable level.”
•The fact is that 90% of Indians exposed to TB remain dormant if their nutritional status and thereby the immune system, is good. When the infected person is immunocompromised, TB as a disease manifests itself in 10% of the infected. India has around 2.8 million active cases. It is a disease of the poor. And the poor are three times less likely to go for treatment and four times less likely to complete their treatment for TB, according to WHO, in 2002. Scientists like Rudolph Virchow (before 1902), Sir William Osler (before 1919) and Dr. Dubos (from 1960) have been saying the same thing.
•The work and the findings of a team at the Jan Swasthya Sahayog hospital at Ganiyari, Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh established the association of poor nutritional status with a higher risk of TB. In the period 2004-09, among the 1,695 pulmonary TB patients they treated, men had an average body weight of 42.1 kg and a body mass index (BMI) of 16. For women, the average body weight was 34.1 kg and a BMI of 15. With these levels of undernutrition, there was a two to four-fold rise in the mortality associated with TB.
•In 2014, research led by Dr. Anurag Bhargava (professor of medicine) showed that undernutrition in the adult population was the major driver of India’s TB epidemic. Subsequently, the central TB division of the Ministry of Health came up with a “Guidance Document – Nutritional Care and Support for Patients with Tuberculosis in India” after a national workshop held in February 2016 at Yenapoya Medical College, Mangaluru, Karnataka. The 2019 Global TB report identified malnutrition as the single-most associated risk factor for the development of TB, accounting for more cases than four other risks, i.e., smoking, the harmful use of alcohol, diabetes and HIV.
•Beginning with the JSS, a number of organisations began providing eggs, milk powder, dhal, Bengal gram, groundnuts and cooking oil to diagnosed patients along with anti-TB drugs. Chhattisgarh also initiated the supply of groundnut, moong dhal and soya oil, and from April 2018, under the Nikshay Poshan Yojana of the National Health Mission, all States began extending cash support of Rs. 500 per month to TB patients to buy food; this amount needs to be raised. Without simultaneous nutrition education and counselling support, this cash transfer will not have the desired outcome.
‘Syndemics’
•According to Dr. Bhargava, “undernutrition and TB” are “syndemics”, and the intake of adequate balanced food, especially by the poor, can work as a vaccine to prevent TB. This vaccine is “polyvalent, acting against many gastrointestinal and respiratory tract infections; orally active, that can be produced in the country without patent rights; dispensed over the counter, without prescription and without any side-effects; safe for children, pregnant and lactating women, and of guaranteed compliance because it brings satisfaction and happiness”.
•The food vaccine is a guaranteed right for life under the Constitution for all citizens, more so for TB patients. Thus, the goals of reducing the incidence of TB in India and of reducing TB mortality cannot be reached without addressing undernutrition.
📰 Take two
The pursuit of two courses simultaneouslyin physical mode is problematic
•The dual degree academic programme, a work-in-progress, and the subject of much litigation for years, has finally been given legal sanctity by the University Grants Commission. The higher education regulatory body’s notified guidelines will enable students to simultaneously pursue two academic programmes at multiple levels except for PhD courses. It has projected it as a logical extension of the National Education Policy 2020, with its emphasis on facilitating multiple pathways to learning using formal and non-formal modes. The UGC has proposed a three-way choice involving a combination of offline only; offline with distance mode; and distance/online only modes for dual programmes. The UGC has done well to mandate that open/distance learning and online mode courses should be pursued only in higher education institutions recognised by statutory bodies. This would also eliminate dubious players in the online education segment.
•Granting students the liberty to enhance their skills and scope of employability through an additional degree is welcome. But the guidelines call for critical evaluation given the nature of competition, accessibility and academic-cum-physical infrastructure issues in colleges and universities. The UGC has said a student can also pursue two full-time programmes in physical mode. This is problematic as it might prompt students, who are academically proficient or with the economic wherewithal, to corner seats in two in-demand courses. Such a situation is best avoided in the context of the country’s poor college density — colleges per lakh population (in the 18-23 age group). In the All India Survey on Higher Education Report 2019-20, the national average college density stands at 30. The UGC’s Furqan Qamar Committee, which a decade ago recommended dual programmes with a second degree in open/distance mode, had ruled out offering simultaneous degree courses under regular mode “as it may create logistic, administrative and academic problems”. Against this backdrop, the UGC may reconsider its guidelines for the physical mode option, while implementing the other two choices, strengthening and streamlining the open/distance learning courses in parallel. Alternatively, it may look at its 2004 document for initiation of double/multiple degree programme in engineering disciplines, where it had proposed a “gap” before an engineering degree holder could enrol for an additional or add-on degree course. That approach is pragmatic as it also sought to reduce the duration of the add-on degree by eliminating about 33% to 38% (52 to 60 course credits) of the “common curriculum” of the BE/B.Tech course (a total of 160 credits). This logic could be applied to allied courses in arts and science and reduce the duration of the second degree for students who desire pursuing dual programmes in physical mode. The more practical a policy, the better its results.
