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The Indian Air Force formally inducted the indigenously developed multi-role Light Combat Helicopter (LCH), Prachand, which is suitable for operating in high-altitude battlefields, and capable of destroying enemy air defence and engaging in counter-insurgency operations.
The first batch of 10 LCH —four arrived Monday — is being inducted into the IAF’s 143 Helicopter Unit at the Jodhpur Air Force Station. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh presided over the induction ceremony along with the new Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan and Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari. The name, Prachand (fierce), was announced during the ceremony.
The LCH is a 5.5-tonne class dedicated combat helicopter designed and developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). According to the IAF, the induction marks India becoming the seventh country to make attack helicopters.
Taking to Twitter, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the induction as “a special moment for the collective resolve of 130 crore Indians to make our nation strong and self-reliant in the defence sector”.
Speaking at the ceremony in Jodhpur, Rajnath Singh said the induction illustrates that “the way the nation trusts the Indian Air Force, the Air Force too trusts indigenously developed weapons and systems”. The Defence Minister also went on a sortie in the helicopter after the induction.
For a long time after Independence, indigenous technology for the development of the attack helicopter was not given enough attention. As a result, the IAF had to depend on foreign-origin attack helicopters, not just for our own operations but also for UN peacekeeping missions in other countries.
Singh said the need for indigenous attack helicopters was felt “even more intensely” during the 1999 Kargil War. “LCH is a result of the two-decade-long research and development since then.
And its induction is an important milestone in our journey of indigenous defence production. LCH’s glorious flight is not just powered by rotors, engines and blades but also by the dedication, courage and patriotism of the scientists, engineers and others who worked on it.
The Limited Series Production version of the light combat helicopter has around 45 per cent indigenous content by value. In due course, it will increase to more than 55 per cent for the Series Production version.
Express Network
Sugarcane arrears to farmers at 5-year low, govt data shows (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Agriculture)
With a jump in sugar exports and a spike in diversion for ethanol production, sugarcane arrears to be paid by mills to farmers for 2021-22 have come down to Rs 5,910 crore at end of the season on September 30, which is the lowest in five years, according to the latest data available with the Department of Food and Public Distribution.
The data shows that sugarcane worth Rs 1.18 lakh crore was procured from farmers during the 2021-22 season, of which Rs 1.12 lakh crore has been paid till September 30 — leaving Rs 5,910 crore in dues, which is five per cent of the amount payable.
This assumes significance as the amount of sugarcane procured in the 2021-22 season was “historically” high, according to the Government. During the 2020-21 seaon, mills procured sugarcane worth Rs 91,676 crore.
Subodh Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution, attributed “the lowest level” in arrears to “record production of ethanol and export of sugar”.
This is despite the historically record procurement — Rs 1.18 lakh crore — of sugarcane by mills in the country. The cane arrears are about Rs 6,000 crore, which is the lowest as compared to the arrears as on September 30 during the previous years.
Apart from this, the Agriculture Ministry has improved varieties of sugarcane due to which yield and recovery have improved. Now, the recovery is about 11 per cent.
“The Government’s policies regarding sugarcane have been very stable. Now, we are surplus in sugar. Therefore, if the sugar stock is higher and does not get liquidated, then the sugar mills face problems in clearing dues to farmers.
For this, the Government has launched an ethanol blending programme. Under this programme, last year (2020-21), sugarcane equal to about 22 lakh metric tonnes sugar was diverted for ethanol production, this time (2021-22), we have diverted about 35 lakh metric tonnes.
Besides, there is…sugar export. Last year, about 70 lakh metric tonnes of sugar was exported, this year it is going to be about 112 lakh tonnes.
The data shows that the quantity of ethanol supply has increased to 302 crore litres during the supply year (2020-21, December to November) from 173 crore litres in 2019-20.
Sugar exports have also increased in recent years — from 58.59 lakh metric tonnes in 2019-20 to 70 lakh metric tonnes in 2021-22. In the season 2021-22, sugar exports have already crossed the 109 lakh metric tonnes mark. This is the provisional figure which may go up when the final data is available.
However, while the overall sugarcane arrears have come down, it is still higher in states like Uttar Pradesh, the data show. In UP, out of the Rs 35,201 crore payable to farmers by mills during the 2021-22 season, Rs 31,258 crore has been paid, leaving arrears of Rs 3,943 crore (12.6 per cent), which is the highest across the country.
Explained Page
Light Combat Helicopter inducted into Indian Air Force: its features, Capabilities (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The indigenous Light Combat Helicopter (LCH), capable of destroying enemy air defence, conducting counter insurgency strikes and much more, was formally inducted into the Indian Air Force (IAF) at the Jodhpur air base on Monday.
The fleet of four helicopters was inducted at a ceremony in presence of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari and other senior military officials. The helicopter will be called ‘Prachand’, which means fierce.
According to its makers, the LCH is the only attack helicopter in the world which can land and take off at an altitude of 5,000 meters with a considerable load of weapons and fuel, meeting the specific requirements laid out by the Indian Armed Forces.
Here is the story of its development by state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), its unique features, its importance as a strategic asset and the road it faces ahead.
It was during the 1999 Kargil war that the need was first felt for a homegrown lightweight assault helicopter that could hold precision strikes in all Indian battlefield scenarios.
This meant a craft that could operate in very hot deserts and also in very cold high altitudes, in counter-insurgency scenarios to full-scale battle conditions.
India has been operating sub 3 ton category French-origin legacy helicopters, Chetak and Cheetah, made in India by the HAL. These single engine machines were, primarily, utility helicopters. Indian forces also operate the Lancer, an armed version of Cheetah.
In addition, the Indian Air Force currently operates the Russian origin Mi-17 and its variants Mi-17 IV and Mi-17 V5, with maximum take off weight of 13 tonnes, which are to be phased out starting 2028.
But the requirement was for a more agile, multi-role dedicated attack helicopter. After the initial deliberations, the government sanctioned the LCH project in October 2006, and HAL was tasked to develop it.
The HAL’s Rotary Wing Research and Development Centre, which had already worked on the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) Dhruva and its weaponised version ALH Rudra, embarked upon the project.
The LCH has been designed as a twin-engine, dedicated combat helicopter of 5.8-ton class, thus categorised as light. It features a narrow fuselage and tandem — one behind the other — configuration for pilot and co-pilot.
The copilot is also the Weapon Systems Operator (WSO). While LCH inherits many features of the ALH, it mainly differs in tandem cockpit configuration, making it sleeker. It also has many more state-of-art systems that make it a dedicated attack helicopter.
Mapping Neanderthal genome (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The analysis of DNA to create genetic profiles of an organism sounds like a relatively unremarkable exercise these days. But that is when the DNA samples are readily available.
Obtaining genetic information of organisms that went extinct thousands of years ago can be extremely difficult, mainly because of the complications in collecting their DNA.
While it is possible to extract DNA samples from fossil and remains, it is not as straightforward as getting it from organisms that inhabited the earth in more contemporary times.
This year’s Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to a scientist who is credited with developing new and innovative methodologies to extract ‘clean’ DNA from human fossil tens of thousands of years old, and reading the genetic information contained therein.
These methodologies enabled the 67-year-old Svante Paabo, a Swedish scientist based in Germany, to piece together the genome sequence of the Neanderthal, modern human’s cousin species that went extinct about 30,000 years ago, and offer new evidence on the interactions of Neanderthals with ancestors of modern human beings. What Paabo had accomplished was ‘seemingly impossible’, the Nobel Prize committee said in its citation.
In the process, Paabo, who runs the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, also discovered the existence of an unknown sub-species of the human family, now called Denisovans, who lived around the same time as the Neanderthals.
In fact, the ancestors of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans co-existed for about 20,000 years, during which they not only interacted with each other, but also inter-bred, Paabo’s research has shown.
In some populations of modern human beings, between one and three per cent of the genome has been found to originate from the Neanderthals.
His main contribution has been in developing the research methodologies to extract DNA samples from very old remains.
By that time, we had already been collaborating with a research team at Harvard led by David Reich.
ButPaabo has been extremely interested in Rakhigarhi and has closely followed the work there. The Nobel Prize to Paabo is a much-needed recognition for the kind of scientific investigations we indulge in.
RSS alarm: Status of poverty, inequality and unemployment (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
In a webinar organised by RSS-affiliate Swadeshi JagranManch, RSS general secretary DattatreyaHosabale flagged issues of poverty, unemployment and rising inequality in the country.
The poverty in the country is standing like a demon in front of us. It is important that we slay this demon. That 20 crore people are still below the poverty line is a figure that should make us very sad.
As many as 23 crore people have less than Rs 375 income per day,” he said on poverty. Quoting United Nations observations on poverty and development, Hosabale said: “A large part of the country still does not have access to clean water and nutritious food. Civil strife and the poor level of education are also a reason for poverty”.
One figure says that India is among the top six economies of the world. But is this a good situation? Top 1 per cent of India’s population has one-fifth (20%) of the nation’s income. At the same time, 50% of the country’s population has only 13% of the country’s income.Lastly, he also highlighted the widespread unemployment in the country.
There are four crore unemployed people in the country. The labour force survey says we have an unemployment rate of 7.6 per cent.
Both official (when available) and unofficial estimates suggest that India has been sliding on these key metrics — poverty, inequality and unemployment — for a while now. However, the incumbent BJP government has more often than not chosen to either deny such reports or ignore them.
For instance, when in early 2019, it was reported that the government’s own Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for 2017-18 had found that unemployment hit a 45-year high of 6.1%, the government flatly refused to accept the findings. For the longest time everyone from then Finance Minister ArunJaitley to CEO of NitiAayog Amitabh Kant kept arguing that India cannot be growing at over 7% without creating jobs. After the general elections of 2019, however, the government accepted the very same findings.
The truth is that India’s growth process has failed to create a commensurate number of jobs and that is why the stress of unemployment keeps rising each passing year.
Not to mention that India’s GDP growth itself had decelerated sharply since the start of 2017; notably in 2019-20, that is, just before the Covid pandemic, India’s GDP grew by just 3.7%.
The rosy growth numbers — India’s GDP grew by 8.7% in the last financial year and is expected to grow at 7% in the current year — benefit from the low base effect thanks to the contraction in GDP during 2020.
Similarly on inequalities, too, the government has chosen to question the findings. The World Inequality Report 2022 released in December last year found that India is one of the worst when it came to rising inequalities and stated the following: “India stands out as a poor and very unequal country, with an affluent elite”.
Editorial Page
Putin in a corner (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The war in Ukraine has entered a more dangerous phase after last week’s formal annexation of four districts of eastern Ukraine — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — by Russia. Vladimir Putin’s decision presents new challenges for Russia, Ukraine, Europe, the US and the non-Western world, including India.
For Putin, the real test begins now. The triumphant ceremony in Moscow last Friday to mark the incorporation of eastern Ukrainian territories was marred by the fall of Lyman — an important logistical hub in the region.
Ukraine’s armed forces are poised to make further advances all across the military front stretching well over 1,000 km. Putin’s claim to incorporate the four districts was strained by the fact that Russia did not have full military control over these territories.
As the gap between Putin’s political claims and the military reality on the ground widens, the Russian leader’s choices become narrower and will necessarily involve further escalation.
His decision to mobilise new troops through conscription was an important step in that direction. But the resistance to the draft is real and many men of fighting age are fleeing the country.
Russia will eventually throw thousands of new troops into the battle. Greater fighting mass could help build a credible Russian line of defence in eastern Ukraine and provide a better military basis for Putin’s diplomatic strategy.
But the performance of the Russian armed forces so far does not necessarily inspire optimism about the country’s prospects in eastern Ukraine. If Kyiv’s counteroffensive notches up new victories, the military and political pressure on Putin can only mount.
If the general mobilisation does not halt Ukraine’s counteroffensive, what options for escalation might Putin have? While global attention is focused on the potential use of nuclear weapons by Russia, it is unlikely that Putin would immediately turn to nuclear weapons.
The Biden administration has said it has seen no signs of preparation to use nuclear weapons. Washington has warned Russia of catastrophic consequences if Moscow resorts to nuclear weapons.
Putin might want to raise the scale and scope of the conventional attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine that he has already begun.
Full view the court (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
On September 27, the Supreme Court enabled the live streaming of the hearing of cases. The Court’s original decision of September 27, 2018, allowing the live telecast of important proceedings paved the way for this outcome.
The bench of the then Chief Justice DipakMisra, Justice A M Khanwilkar and Justice D Y Chandrachud had held that the live-streaming of court proceedings is in the public interest.
The telecast, they pointed out, will enliven judicial labour for the public at large to strengthen constitutional values, democracy, and citizenship. Their vision had the full support of Chief Justices M V Ramana and U ULalit.
Four years later, on September 20, a full court of all Supreme Court judges under the leadership of Chief Justice U ULalit took the unanimous decision to live-stream constitutional bench proceedings.
Justice Chandrachud, the Chairperson of the Supreme Court’s E-committee and the driving force behind the live streaming initiative, began the hearing in his courtroom by announcing, “We are virtual”.
The Indian Supreme Court has done, in letter and spirit, what the former Master of the Rolls of the Court of Appeals Lord Denning had said many decades ago: “If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand still while the rest of the world goes on, and that will be bad for both.”
The chief justices (past and present) and the judges of the Supreme Court deserve to be congratulated for enabling a path-breaking and democratic decision that allows the people of India to be able to watch the live proceedings of the Constitutional Bench.
The decision will go down in the annals of Indian legal and constitutional history as one of the most important and influential decisions for the following reasons.
One, enabling the ordinary people of the country to view, without any barrier, the workings of the highest court of the land will go a long way in instilling faith in the judiciary as well as fostering a critical dialogue with judicial functionaries. Transparency and accessibility of the process of justice delivery will strengthen the country’s democracy. Enabling citizens to watch the live proceedings of the Supreme Court is also an important step toward developing an informed citizenry.
Two, the decision will enable people to understand the importance of the rule of law. The move will help people appreciate that the judiciary is firm in protecting the rights of the impoverished, historically marginalised and disempowered sections of society.
There is no better way to “speak truth to power” than in a dignified and self-effacing manner. The direct impact of this decision may not be measured immediately, but it has the potential to build a culture of respect for the rule of law.
Idea Page
Goodwill over reciprocity (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Indonesia has just reached an important milestone of its G20 Presidency – the Think20 Summit that took place in Bali on September 4-6. The Think 20 (T20) is the “ideas bank” for the G20 – a key mechanism through which G20 policymakers engage the pooled resources of the global academic, research and think tank community to solve global problems.
As co-chairs of T20 Taskforce 1 on Open Trade and Sustainable Investment, we hope G20 governments will take notice of the many common sense recommendations in the T20 Communique.
The G20 – the Group of 19 countries plus the EU – is a unique grouping, where developed and developing countries share a common platform to discuss proposals for improving global economic governance.
2022 kicks off a first-ever occurrence — a series of developing countries taking on the Presidency for four years consecutively. Indonesia, followed by India, then Brazil, and South Africa.
The extended leadership opportunity for the global South is obvious: A chance to bring forward G20 promises on economic equity for developing countries, and to lead the world out of recession by implementing policies that are inclusive, accessible and adaptable.
India needs to reflect on its own strengths and weaknesses as it readies for its presidency year starting December 2022.
Hosting the G20 should not be seen merely as a giant tourism and investment promotion opportunity. It requires dedicated and consistent policy engagement at every level, including the academic and business community.
There is an external perception that India has not invested sufficiently in global multilateral engagement, including the G20 and the WTO. As the world’s fifth largest economy, exhibiting the relatively rare positive rate of growth, India needs to engage more fully.
First, Indonesia’s achievements are testimony to the virtues of not going it alone. Irrespective of its own large, expanding domestic market, Indonesia is a trading nation.
It participates actively in most of the regional trade and economic cooperation groupings across East Asia and the Pacific: ASEAN and ASEAN’s own embedded network of FTAs, the ASEAN + 6 East Asian Summit, the 15-member mega-regional Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the 21-member economic cooperation grouping under APEC.
Economy
UNCTAD: India’s GDP growth to fall to 5.7% 2022 (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
India’s growth will likely ease to just 5.7% in 2022 from 8.2% in the previous year, as economic activity is “being hampered by higher financing costs and weaker public expenditures”, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in its Trade and Development Report 2022 on Monday. The country’s growth will further drop to 4.7% in 2023.
With this, among all the agencies, Unctad has firmed up the most conservative forecast for India (although it’s on a calendar year basis).
It’s way lower than Moody’s latest forecast of 7.7% for the calendar year 2022. Various other agencies have projected India’s growth to be in the range of 6.7% to 7.4% in FY23. The RBI last week cut its FY23 real growth forecast for the country by 20 basis points to 7%.
Going forward, the government has announced plans to increase capital expenditure, especially in the rail and road sector, but in a weakening global economy, policymakers will be under pressure to reduce fiscal imbalances, and this may lead to falling expenditures elsewhere.
The report predicted China’s economic growth to be 3.9% in 2022, down from 8.1% in 2021. However, it will touch 5.3% in 2023, which means China’s growth with beat India’s in the next calendar year.
India, the report said, had recorded real GDP growth of 8.2% in 2021, the strongest among G20 nations. “(But) As supply chain disruptions eased, rising domestic demand turned the current account surplus into a deficit, and growth decelerated.
The report acknowledged that various PLI schemes is incentivising corporate investment. However, rising import bills for fossil energy are deepening the trade deficit and eroding the import coverage capacity of foreign exchange reserves.