At a stroke, PSLV C-34 lobs 20 satellites into orbit:-
In one go, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Wednesday launched 20 satellites. They include two student satellites from Indian universities and 17 of four foreign countries.
A PSLV C-34 rocket lifted off at 9.25 a.m. from the Second Launch Pad in the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, and 16 minutes later placed a Cartosat-2 Series satellite about 505 km above the Earth’s orbit. In the next 10 minutes, the remaining satellites were placed in the intended orbits.
Soon after the launch, ISRO chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said, “With this mission, we have launched the current generation Earth observation satellite along with 17 satellites from foreign countries.”
The 725.5 kg Cartosat-2 would be used for Earth observation. According to ISRO, the imagery sent by the satellite will be useful for cartographic applications, urban and rural applications, coastal land use and regulation and utility management like road networking.
It may be recalled that ISRO, in 2008, launched 10 satellites in a single rocket. On April 28, 2008, PSLV-C9 launched a Remote Sensing satellite CARTOSAT-2A along with Indian Mini Satellite (IMS-1) and eight nanosatellites.
In 2014, Russia launched 37 satellites in a single mission.
Top 10 facts:
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India’s earth observation spacecraft Cartosat-2 Series satellite and 19 co-passenger satellites together weighing about 560 kg at lift-off would be injected into a 505 km polar Sun Synchronous Orbit. |
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The primary satellite to be carried by PSLV C-34 rocket is similar to Cartosat-2, 2A and 2B satellites launched earlier. The imagery to be sent by the satellite would be useful for cartographic applications, coastal land use and regulation, utility management like road networking, water distribution, creation of land use maps, precision study, change detection to bring out geographical and manmade features and various other Land Information System and Geographical Information System applications. |
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LAPAN-A3 (Indonesia): The microsatellite is for Earth observation and is intended to be used to monitor land use, natural resource and environment. |
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M3MSat (Canada): Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Micro-Satellite is a technology demonstrator mission jointly funded and managed by Defense Research and Development Canada (DRDC) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The satellite’s primary mission is to collect and study Automatic Identification System signals from low-Earth orbit. |
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GHGSat-D (Canada): Built by Space Flight Laboratory of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, the Earth observation satellite is meant for measuring the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (Carbon Dioxide and Methane). |
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BIROS (Germany): Berlin Infrared Optical System (BIROS) is a small scientific satellite from the German Aerospace Center and its mission objective is the remote sensing of high temperature events. |
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SkySat Gen2-1 (U.S.): Designed and built by Terra Bella, a Google company based in Mountain View, California in the U.S., the small Earth imaging satellite is capable of capturing sub-meter resolution imagery and HD video. |
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Dove Satellites (U.S.): A total of 12 Flock-2P Earth imaging satellites are to be launched in this mission. They would be packed in three dispensers. |
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Sathyabamasat (Sathyabama University, Chennai): The satellite aims to collect data on green house gases. |
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Swayam (College of Engineering, Pune): The satellite aims to provide point to point messaging services to the HAM (amateur radio) community. |
The mat goes mainstream and Prevention is better than cure is the new mantra.
If India were to look for a new symbol that would be a representative of what the country stands for today, after Tuesday’s great show, it is highly likely that the many-splendoured thing, furled and unfurled with much flourish across the world — the yoga mat — would be a serious contender.
On the second International Yoga Day, the skid-free fluorescent mat became a motif of sorts, heralding a new world order of people willing to go out on to the streets, twist themselves into incredible poses, while holding their noses to regulate breath. A world that is willing to celebrate yoga, or the many versions of it anyhow. Suddenly, it is the in-thing to do; the Jane Fonda aerobics video of today, it’s callisthenics with lurid leotards done in physical training period in school. And with a day’s careful orchestration, it tends to seem exaggerated, a little fantastic, maybe like a performance, but that is not to take away from the actual benefits of doing yoga, consistently and systematically.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his pitch to the United Nations General Assembly to adopt the day of summer solstice as International Yoga Day, he said: “Yoga is an invaluable gift of India’s ancient tradition. It embodies unity of mind and body; thought and action; restraint and fulfilment; harmony between man and nature; a holistic approach to health and well-being.” He went on to emphasise that the core of the philosophy behind yoga, as outlined in Patanjali’s Yogasutra, was not just about exercise, but to discover the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and nature. “By changing our lifestyle and creating consciousness, it can help us deal with climate change,” he added.
Wellness and therapy
Yoga does mean many things for many people: for some it is exercise, it’s a tool for wellness, it’s a routine; for others it is a spiritual calling, a way of life, and for very few, it actually is therapy. While modern medicine seems to have reconciled its once stiff-backed opposition to yoga’s role in health care, there remains the reluctance to harness it as therapeutic intervention, even as a supplement. By and large, in its acceptance yoga remains on the side of ‘wellness’, seldom crossing the Rubicon on to the far lands of ‘treatment’. The messiahs of modern medicine, with their demanding touchstone of scientific validation for ancient systems of medicine, say there still is insufficient conclusive empirical evidence to show the beneficial effects of using yoga as therapy.
E.S. Krishnamoorthy, Chennai-based senior neuropsychiatrist, says there is some research of the benefits of practising yoga in certain categories of patients with certain specific ailments. He has set up “integrative therapy clinics” (Trimed) across the city that claim to combine modern medicine with ancient wisdom, ensuring that the latter is scientifically validated for use.
“The autonomic nervous system, which controls key bodily functions, seems most amenable to yoga-based intervention,” he explains. Yoga helps with restoring posture and balance, having a soothing effect on anxiety and mood. “There is also empirical research that it helps control symptoms of asthma and epilepsy,” he says.
“It has been proved that yoga has beneficial effects on the cardiovascular system and regulating blood pressure,” says V. Mohan, founder, Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre. “From a metabolism point of view, yoga is different from other kinds of exercise. When you do cardio, for instance, your heart rate increases, hormone secretion increases, the adrenalin gets going — leaving you in a hyper state. On the other hand, when someone does yoga, we notice what we call cellular silence. It puts the system in a rhythm and all vital parameters, including blood pressure, heart rate, pulse rate, and blood sugar are stabilised. However, even here, empirical proof of yoga’s impact on lowering blood sugar in a diabetic is only just emerging.”
The problem of validation
But the problem, Dr. Krishnamoorthy adds, is also with methodology: when you subject these traditional systems to modern research methods, they end up not holding up. “We use methods that are usually employed to validate pharmacological interventions [which forms the bulk of modern medicine] to evaluate non-pharmacological techniques.”
“Now, there are a few people trying to do things differently. For instance, at the Mayo Clinic [in the U.S.], yoga was used as one of a bunch of interventions including tai chi and dance therapy in a programme for patients with dementia,” he says. Published research on a pilot study conducted at the clinic indicates that such therapy could improve quality of life, cognitive and physical functions, better than ‘usual care’.
Another key hurdle might lie, ironically, in what is perceived as a strong point, traditionally — the many styles, variations and practitioners of yoga. Dr. Krishnamoorthy points out that there is no protocol for yoga postures or techniques, and this lacuna renders scientific validation difficult, if not impossible.
Meanwhile, yoga has a poster boy in the Indian Prime Minister, who, in televised relays, seems to be capable of great litheness in executing asanas. On Tuesday, he urged all practitioners of yoga to focus on diabetes prevention, again, pushing the agenda into the realm of ‘wellness’. It remains to be seen if the Indian government, with the faith it has in the ability of yoga to achieve unity of mind, body, thought and action, will ramp up its promotion of yoga, with adequate scientific proof, to a viable form of supportive therapy.
Until then, take comfort in watching a sea of vividly colourful yoga mats take over the world.
NHAI to mitigate impacts on wildlife
NHAI has approved an estimate of Rs. 58.16 Crore to mitigate impacts on Wildlife in Karnala Bird Sanctuary (KBS) for widening of part of Panvel – Indapur section of NH-17. This section constitutes the direct connectivity from Mumbai to Goa. The highway stretch passes for about 1.5 km length within the Karnala Bird Sanctuary under Thane wildlife division of West Mumbai Wildlife Circle.
Karnala Bird Sanctuary (KBS):Maharstra
The KBS is covered with moist mixed deciduous forest and falls in the Western Ghat bio-geographic zone. The sanctuary is particularly rich in climbers and as many as 11 species are recorded from KBS.
- KBS is particularly known for its rich avifauna and is home to over 146 species of resident and 37 species of migratory birds that visit during winter.
- Rare endemic birds of Western Ghats such as Malabar grey Hornbill, Ashy Minivet, three-toed Kingfisher and Malabar Trogon are reported from Sanctuary.
- Among other significant bird species the records of Malabar Whistling Thrush, long-billed Vulture, Indian Scimitar Babbler and Shaheen Falcon are significant.
Facts:-
The first Phase-1 human clinical trial of a vaccine for the Zika virus is set to begin in the coming weeks, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) green-lighting it. The DNA vaccine (GLS-5700) developed by the U.S-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals and GeneOne Life Science, South Korea, has already been tested on animals and found to elicit “robust” antibody and T cell responses
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.