THE HINDU – CURRENT NOTE 02 APRIL
Civil-military parity row to end
Government committee to submit report to resolve issue of rank equation
•The report of a government-appointed committee is expected to put an end to the contentious issue of parity between military officers and their civilian counterparts in the service headquarters.
•The three-member committee was appointed to look into an order issued last October by the Defence Ministry “reiterating” the rank equation between civilian officers and serving military officers based on duties and functional responsibilities.
•By the order, a Principal Director is equivalent to a Major-General, a Director is equivalent to a Brigadier and a Joint Director to a colonel. This led to severe displeasure in the services, which see the order as effectively lowering the status of their officers.
•“The government has set up a three-member Committee of Officers to look into equivalence between service officers and Armed Forces Headquarters Civil Service (AFHQ CS) officers,” Union Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre told the Rajya Sabha last week.
Order questioned
•Serving and retired military officers have questioned the order, citing past orders, court orders and other reports.
•One of the communications sent to the panel said, “No equivalence can be established between commissioned officers (Group A equivalence service) and AFHD CS Officers (Group B Service) as no such precedence exists.”
Functional equivalence
•The letter pointed out that certain benchmarks can be used to arrive at “functional equivalence”.
•The letter suggested an “unambiguous” functional equivalence between Lieutenant-Colonels and Directors in the Central government based on various observations, gazette notifications, court judgments and recommendations of Groups of Ministers.
•By this, a Lieutenant-Colonel or one of equivalent rank in the Army is equal to a Director, while a Colonel has no civilian equivalent. A Brigadier is equivalent to a Principal Director.
•The communication from a retired officer noted that the junior commissioned officers in the armed forces have been accorded status of Group B-equivalent gazetted officers by Section 3 (xii) of Army Act 1950 and Para 151 of Defence Services Regulations 1987 (revised).
•“In view of foregoing, it is submitted that anything contrary to benchmarked equivalence would not only be in violation of Warrant of Precedence ... but also amount to unacceptable downgrade of the established status of armed forces officers. It is likely to result in serious resentment and court cases in future,” the letter says.
Now, China flags Tawang rail link
•China on Saturday asked India to exercise “restraint” on its plan to link the strategic border district of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh with a railway network, saying any “unilateral action” might “complicate” the unresolved border issue.
•“We hope that the Indian side can exercise caution, show restraint and refrain from unilateral actions that might further complicate the question so as to create a sound condition for enhancing mutual trust between China and India and promoting proper resolution of the boundary question,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.
•“China’s position on the eastern section of China — India boundary is consistent and clear. At present, the two sides are working to resolve the territorial dispute through negotiation and consultation,” the Ministry said in a written reply to a query about reports that India was exploring possibilities to link Tawang with a railway network.
•The Centre has asked Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha and Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju, who represents the Arunachal West Lok Sabha constituency, to explore the feasibility of a rail network.
Viability study
•The two Ministers will tour the State to study the viability of connecting Tawang with Bhalukpong, the last station of the Railways on Assam, and to start the final location survey of a new broad gauge line.
•Tawang, where the sixth Dalai Lama was born in 1683, is at the centre of Tibetan Buddhism and a friction point between India and China. China has in recent days upped its rhetoric on claims to Arunachal Pradesh, which it says is Southern Tibet, and even warned India of “serious damage” to ties if New Delhi allows the Dalai Lama to visit the State next week.
Maternal mortality rising in Gujarat, says CAG report
Lapses found in post-natal and newborn care, only 24% round-the-clock health centres started
•Disproving the Gujarat government’s claims of improving health indicators in the State, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in its report tabled in the State Assembly on Friday, revealed that maternal mortality rate (MMR) has been rising in the State since 2014, up from 72 in 2013-14 to 85 in 2015-16 per lakh.
•“The State government data indicated that the MMR changed unfavourably from 72 in the year 2013-14 to 80 in 2014-15 and finally to 85 in 2015-16.
Missing target
•Considering the pace and direction of achievement of the goals, it would be difficult for the State to achieve the target of 67 by March 2017,” the report noted.
•According to the auditor, implementation of the Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (JSSK), a Central government scheme, did not help in achieving the MMR goals in the State.
•The report stated that 15,817 newborns died in the State within the first week of birth owing to various lapses on the part of the health department in providing prescribed care and treatment to the newborns.
Audit report
•The audit further revealed that the State was required to operationalise 50% Primary Health Centres (PHCs) as 24/7 PHCs by 2010 but as of August 2016, only 24% PHCs were operationalised as 24/7 PHCs.
•“During 2013-16, 56% home deliveries were performed in the absence of skilled birth attendants, while a minimum stay of 48 hours after normal delivery for the better care and treatment of mother and child was not ensured as, after delivery, 53% to 60% women had been discharged with less than 48 hours of hospitalisation,” the report said.
Denied treatment
•In Bhuj, as many as 75 sick newborn babies were denied treatment and were not admitted to the Sick Newborn Care Unit (SNCU) due to the lack of adequate facilities and manpower.
•“There were instances of deaths of women and infants due to the non-availability of blood at health centres,” the report noted.
IISc researchers’ ecofriendly way of recycling e-waste
The low-temperature crushing reduced e-waste into metals, oxides, polymer without using chemicals
•Indian Institute of Science (IISc) researchers have found a novel way to recycle the mounting pile of electronic waste more efficiently and in an environmentally friendly manner. According to the United National Environmental Programme, about 50 million tonnes of e-waste is generated annually across the world.
•The new approach is based on the idea of crushing e-waste into nanosize particles using a ball mill at very low temperature ranging from -50 to -150 degree C.
Reduction into constituents
•When crushed to nanosize particles for about 30 minutes, different classes of materials — metals, oxides and polymer — that go into the making of electronic items get physically reduced into their constituent phases, which can then be separated without using any chemicals. The use of low-temperature grinding eliminates noxious emission. The results of the study were published in the journal Materials Today.
•“The behaviour of individual materials is different when they are pulverised at room temperature. While metal and oxides get mixed, the local temperature of polymer increases during grinding and so the polymer melts instead of breaking,” says Dr. Chandra Sekhar Tiwary from Materials Engineering Department at IISc and the first author of the paper. “The polymer starts reacting with the rest of the components and forms a chunk. So we can’t separate the individual components.”
•“The deformation behaviour at low temperature is very different from room temperature. There are two processes that happen when milling. The polymer material breaks but metals get welded, some sort of solid-state welding resulting in mixing; the welded metals again get broken during milling. At low temperature mixing does not happen,” says Prof. K. Chattopadhyay from the Materials Engineering Department at IISc and the corresponding author of the paper. There is also a lower limit to which materials can be broken into when e-waste is milled at room temperature. The maximum size reduction that can be achieved is about of 200 nanometre. But in the case of low temperature ball milling the size can be reduced to 20-150 nanometres.
Novel design
•The low-temperature ball mill was designed by Dr. Tiwary. The cryo-mill grinding chamber is cooled using liquid nitrogen and a small hardened steel ball is used for grinding the material in a controlled inert atmosphere using argon gas. “The interface remains clean when broken in an inert atmosphere,” says Prof. Chattopadhyay.
•“One of the main purposes of ball milling [at room temperature] is to mix materials. But in the case of ball milling at low temperature we did not observe any mixing; the individual components separate out really well. We wanted to use this property more constructively. So we took two printed circuit boards from optical mouse and milled them for 30 minutes,” recalls Dr. Tiwary.
•The polymer becomes brittle when cooled to -120 degree C and ball milling easily breaks it into a fine power. Metals and oxides too get broken but are a bit bigger in size.
•The crushed powder was then mixed with water to separate the components into individual classes of materials using gravity. The powder separated into two layers — the polymer floats at the top due to lower density, while metals and oxides of similar size and different density settle at the bottom. The bottom layer when diluted further separated into oxides at the top and metals at the bottom. The oxides and metals were present as individual elements.
•“Our low-temperature milling separates the components into single phase components without using any chemicals, which is not possible using other techniques,” says Prof. Chattopadhyay. “Our process is scalable and is environment friendly though it uses higher energy.”
Eclipses of binary star shed light on orbiting exoplanet
In a first, a massive exoplanet was discovered using X-ray observations
•A team of scientists from Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, and University of Delhi have seen for the first time indications of a massive planet orbiting a low mass X-ray binary star system. The technique that has been used, namely, X-ray observations, is a new way of detecting exoplanets. The results have been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The system is nearly 30,000 light years away and the planet is expected to be nearly 8,000 times as massive as the earth.
Paired with neutron star
•The star system in question, MXB 1658-298 is an X-ray binary and a part of the constellation Ophiuchus (serpent bearer). X-ray binaries consist of a pair of stars orbiting each other of which one is compact one such as a black hole or a neutron star (in this case, a neutron star). The neutron star draws matter from its less-massive companion. The mass when drawn generates X-rays which are detected by detectors placed in satellites in space.
•Discovered in 1976, this binary star system is so far and so faint that it may be observed only when it shows “outbursts” of X-rays. That is, an increase in X-ray intensity by a factor of 100 or more. Recently this system showed an outburst. “This provided us with an excellent opportunity to try to trace the orbital evolution of this system,” Chetana Jain, Assistant Professor, Hansraj College, Delhi, who is the first author of the paper, says in an email.
•As the two stars revolve around each other, the less-massive companion star hides the compact star everytime it crosses the line of sight, in between the detector and the neutron star, giving rise to eclipses. In X-ray binaries, the time in-between eclipses of the source can increase, decrease and also shows abrupt changes. This system, MXB 1658-298, is special in that the time between the eclipses increases and decreases periodically. “The eclipse first [time] arrived about ten seconds earlier and after about a year, arrived about ten seconds later that what would be expected [if these was no other body disturbing the system]” says Biswajit Paul, Raman Research Institute, who led the research, in an email. The team was surprised by this unusual behaviour.
The massive third
•This periodic variation implied that there was a third body orbiting the system. “The long-term evolution of the mid-eclipse times indicated that this orbit is shrinking. Over and above this, we found periodic variation on shorter timescale,” says Dr Jain, summarising the results.
•“Till now, there are various indirect methods [of detecting exoplanets] such as transit photometry and microlensing,” says Dr Jain. This discovery is made with a new technique, by measuring periodic delays in X-ray eclipses.
•X-ray observations are done from space observatories such as NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. “In this particular work, we have used data from XMM-Newton and archival data from RXTE (NASA) and some earlier published values of mid-eclipse times,” says Dr Paul, who has been studying this system for eight years.
The legitimation crisis of Indian democracy
Will a disgruntled populace rely on one individual to work wonders or innovate new institutions when the democratic system itself is questioned?
•For a people who have traditionally viewed the state as a spectacle and frequently turned their backs to it, Indians have rather swiftly become state-centric. We constantly talk and read about it, capture it in images and films, are lured by the magic of elections and its arithmetic, and many, including the poor, feel they have a claim on it; we expect the state to find a solution to most of our problems. This is foolhardy, because the state fails us persistently. But such is the power of the democratic imaginary that ordinary people continue to repose faith in the very idea of the state.
•To be sure, the Indian state periodically suffers from an acute crisis of legitimacy (legitimation crisis). All democracies depend for their survival on public approval and consent. Legitimacy obtains when people justifiably feel that enough is being done by the state to deliver what they need and want. It is absent when the gap widens between people’s own expectations and the actual benefits received by them. Legitimation crisis then manifests itself in the steady accumulation of public complaints and grievances, in growing discontent, widespread disillusionment and popular protest; when large numbers of people begin to feel that they are victimised by their political system.
Three moments of crisis
•Several such crises of legitimacy are seen in post-Independence India. I don’t want to go into specifics; instead, I draw attention to three distinct moments of the legitimation crisis of representative democracy in India. The first I call the crisis of procedural legitimacy. For long, our representatives were elected by a process that was neither free nor fair. Strategic violence often generated fear amongst ordinary people; booths were captured; women, Dalits, minorities, and the poor generally were prevented from voting or compelled to vote for a candidate not of their choice. The strengthening of the Election Commission and the deployment of Central paramilitary forces have, to a large degree, overcome this legitimation crisis.
•However, a second crisis of legitimation was brewing simultaneously. The electorate hopes that those chosen by free and fair elections would accurately represent their interests and deliver on their demands. When this doesn’t happen, democracies plunge into what I call a crisis of representationallegitimacy. In India, people attempted to resolve this crisis by a politics of community-based identities. Different groups, particularly the Dalits and the OBCs, decided to vote for people from their own respective castes, who they intuitively trusted, those who mirrored them.
•But at least since 2011, the failure of “mirror representation” has pushed India to a deeper questioning of the democratic system itself. Call it the crisis of democracy’s moral legitimacy. A feeling of betrayal by members of one’s own community is accompanied by severe dissatisfaction with the entire democratically elected establishment. People increasingly feel that while the Indian economy is growing rapidly with more money circulating in the system, most of it is diverted and landing mysteriously in the lap of a very tiny upper crust. All political parties seem tainted: the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, regional parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party, and even the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Ever since, the electorate has desperately looked for some political agency outside the established order to fix the system.
Individual or institutions
•To meet this crisis, two distinct responses have appeared before us. One messianic, that depends on a heroic individual rather than citizen-based institutions; the other dependent on the collective capacity of citizens to innovate new institutions. The first is embodied by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has projected himself as a larger-than-life figure: strong, decisive, ruthlessly efficient, an outsider to the establishment who, untarnished by the ‘corrupt’ capillaries of Lutyens’ Delhi, can unblock the arteries through which goods and services could flow freely from the state to the people.
•A second response emerged from a movement for greater transparency and accountability — all power-wielders must be permanently subjected to inspection, investigation and monitoring. Existing institutions of checks and balances seem insufficient to limit the power of democratically elected leaders. Citizens must take matters into their own hands, be persistently vigilant, diligently oversee government, act as watchdogs. Representative democracy can survive only with more participatory democracy. This was the promise of the UPA’s Right to Information Act and the movement that led to the formation of the Aam Aadmi Party.
•However, with the apparent seduction of large sections of the people by the first response and the AAP leadership increasingly uncertain about which of the two responses it exemplifies, several worrying questions have sprouted of which two are paramount: What demons might be unleashed if and when the first response flounders? And, which new leadership will bring the people back to the properly democratic path, one that strengthens our best institutions and helps invent new citizen’s initiatives?
