Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 06 August 2013

Foreign telecom vendors hang up on testing lab

• Two years after the Department of Telecom (DoT) decided to set up a telecom equipment testing lab at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore,
• It will address security issues, foreign vendors have now refused to share their design details with the premier academic institute as it could hurt their business interests.
• This sudden turn of events will now further delay the setting up of a full-fledged ‘Telecom Testing and Security Certification Centre’ (TTSCC), which should have become fully operational by April 2013. It will also hurt India’s preparedness towards creating the ‘Telecom Security Directorate’ as mandated by the National Security Council.
• Cochin shipyard to float out Vikrant on August 12

• The State-owned Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) will use a pontoon-assisted method, designed in-house, to float out India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC-I)— to be named INS Vikrant — on August 12, four years after its keel was laid.

• “Additional pontoons have been welded to the underwater hull of the IAC, which will increase the buoyancy of the vessel and overcome the limitation on the launching weight,”
• The launch marks the end of the first phase of carrier construction with nearly 75 per cent of the vessel structure, including the ski-jump and most underwater equipment in place.
• It will be redocked again for completion of superstructure and extensive outfitting, slated to be attained by 2016.
• The revised schedule for induction of the home-made carrier into the Navy is 2018, four years later than planned.

Food security

• The government hopes to secure in this session of Parliament, approval for the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) so that it can replace the food security ordinance.

• The NFSB, on which the ordinance is based, guarantees supplementary nutrition services through anganwadis for all children under six, midday meals for schoolchildren, and, very importantly, maternity entitlements for all pregnant women.

• But before the draft legislation is approved, some aspects of it could benefit from further discussion.

• These include the proposed transition from per household to per capita entitlements under the Public Distribution System (PDS), the identification of “eligible households,” and the provision for cash transfers, among others.

• According to the current version of the NFSB, 75 per cent of the rural population (and 50 per cent in urban areas) will be entitled to a monthly quota of 5kg of grain from the PDS. Currently, each Below Poverty Line (BPL) household is entitled to 35kg per month as per Central norms (many States, however, have reduced this to 25 or even 20 kg per BPL household to enable wider coverage) irrespective of the number of household members.

• The main argument for per capita entitlements is equity — that larger families get their fair share. The per capita approach (5kg/capita/month), if implemented, will benefit families with more than seven members.

• According to National Sample Survey (NSS) data for 2009-10, only 10 per cent of rural families have more than seven members!

Crude oil and geopolitics

• That China has embarked on an aggressive acquisition spree of hydrocarbon assets in every corner of our planet seems to have convinced us that this is indeed the way to go and that we must ‘catch up’ with China if we are to be energy secure.

• In the public perception, it is almost axiomatic that overseas oil assets constitute energy security. It assumes that ownership confers rights of unqualified access.

• There is a belief that if you own hydrocarbon assets in any corner of the world, it automatically and ineluctably entitles you to physically access those resources as and when you need them; in fact, especially when you need them in the event of a sudden disruption in global oil supply arising from natural disasters, terror strikes or political disturbances.

• It is instructive to note that neither ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) nor its Chinese counterpart actually brings any significant quantities of oil from any of its overseas assets.
• Most of OVL’s overseas oil production is sold in the local or international markets and the company is compensated in cash payments.

• As for gas, OVL does not bring to India even a molecule of gas produced in its own fields in Sakhalin, Vietnam or Myanmar although China fares better in this regard, primarily because it has had the foresight to build transnational gas pipelines.

• While India does not have a single transnational gas pipeline yet and therefore cannot access its own equity gas, what about oil which is fungible and can be brought in tankers from anywhere? Why are we not bringing our own oil from our overseas acreages? Does mere ownership confer any degree of energy security on the country?

Sources: Various News Papers