Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 16 September 2013

Agni-V test-fired successfully again

• In a milestone in defence capability, the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Agni-V was successfully test-fired for its full range of 5,000 .
• This is the second successful launch of the nuclear-weapons capable missile in 17 months
• India staked claim to a place in the elite group of nations that possesses the technology to develop ICBMs, launching Agni-V for the first time with a huge success.
• Tracking a near parabolic trajectory, the missile reached an altitude of more than 400 km and descended swiftly as its three stages got ignited on time and were jettisoned at altitudes of 40 km, 140 km and 260 km.

• The nose-cone, made up of composite materials and carrying a dummy warhead, re-entered the atmosphere, withstanding temperatures of more than 3,000 degrees Celsius, and hurtled at 6 km a second, splashing down near the target point in the Indian Ocean in just 20 minutes.

• Radars along the East Coast, including those at Sriharikota and telemetry stations, and electro-optical tracking systems monitored the trajectory of the system.
• Three ships, one in mid-range and two near the target point, tracked the missile.
• Soon after the launch, Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister and DRDO Director-General Avinash Chander said the success of the mission established the ICBM capability of the country.
• “Now, the missile is ready for production.” The next step would be to endow it with canister-launch capability, and the first trial would be carried out in a few months.

An official vote of no confidence

• The Government of India’s Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has decided to reimburse approved expenditure on treatment abroad, for a defined range of medical conditions, for officers of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS).
• In doing so, it is extending to them a benefit available to Members of Parliament and officers of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) when posted abroad.
• In addition, the travel and treatment costs for the officer and an attendant will be borne by the government.
• The order confers benefits over and above the entitlements under the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS).
• At a time when the government is concerned about a high and rising fiscal deficit, and the rupee has steeply depreciated, this additional benefit to government officials appears doubly bizarre.
• The “fiscal constraint” argument has been repeatedly made by officials who have been critical of ideas pertaining to universal health-care provisioning.

• The Plan discussions on universalising health care have required a substantial increase in outlays for health for strengthening public health services. However, the constant refrain of the Planning Commission and the government has been that the required amount could not be allocated due to budgetary constraints.

• As there have been competing priorities, a balance has had to be maintained. Ministers and bureaucrats have made this case forcefully and silenced academic and activist communities who have demanded increased funding.

• It is ironic that the same constituency is not worried about using the taxpayer’s money to give itself additional privileges.

• Apart from the fiscal ramifications of this bureaucratic generosity, this decision, as indeed the existing privilege enjoyed by MPs, raises several other questions about the political signals such a decision would send about the policy on public health care in India.

• Existing rules permit civil servants to secure reimbursement for medical treatment abroad or at a private hospital in India based on what it would cost to secure the same treatment in a private ward at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.

• The revised rules entitle all IAS, IPS and IFS officials to seek the same level of reimbursement for treatment abroad that IFS officers are entitled to when on a foreign posting.

• Just as MPs have to get such expenditure approved by the Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, government officials have to secure the approval of a committee of specialists in government hospitals. Which group of MPs would deny another MP such a benefit?

• It would be interesting to see if any MP has ever been denied this request.

• Given the relationship between officers of the IAS and IPS and government doctors at the State and Central levels, how many specialists in government hospitals would have the courage to reject any application from a government official? Professional scrutiny of such applications would then become a mere formality.

Voyager’s voyage

• On August 25, 2012 and around 18.78 billion km from Earth, the Voyager 1 space probe became the first human-made object to breach the interstellar medium (ISM), the matter that exists between stars in the universe.
• The primary reason it has taken a year for astrophysicists to deem this event as having happened is that the signs of breaching the ISM were not all detected simultaneously nor have they been understood fully.

• In fact, as if playing on their confusion, Voyager 1 beamed home a series of signals in October-November, 2012, that have been studied for their meaning since then. In three papers published in Science in June this year, scientists deduced that the probe had stumbled into a region — lying on the cusp of the ISM — astronomers didn’t know existed. Finally, and with the help of a natural disturbance promulgated by our Sun, astronomers from NASA and several universities, led by the University of Iowa, detected signals from Voyager 1 in April, 2013, that implied the incidence of cosmic rays and the density of ionized gas around the probe had increased, and the direction of the magnetic field in the space around the probe had changed: all signs of Voyager 1 becoming humankind’s first eyes and ears in the world between stars.

• When the twin Voyager probes were launched in 1977, the space age was only two decades old. Those who built and now operate them, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, had the audacity to equip the probes to function for almost four decades (Voyager 2 is currently 15.3 billion km from Earth).

• The durability of the probes and the careful management of resources have awarded us with the chance to directly study the outermost reaches of the Solar System, within which great astronomical observations are being expected.

• This attitude of careful management has also paid off with other NASA missions, such as the WISE asteroid-hunter and the Spitzer space telescope before, and should once again with the Kepler space telescope.
• And while nobody is sure of what to expect from Voyager 1, that the probe is now bathed in particles arising from stars other than just the Sun is opportunity enough.
• Its particles and fields science experiment will function till 2020, until when the small nuclear battery on-board will be able to power them.
• After that, the Golden Record, a gold-plated disc containing photos of and sounds from Earth, added to the payload just in case other life-forms encounter the probe, will preserve Voyager 1’s ambassadorship.
• This second Sputnik moment in the history of human exploration has rightly rekindled the awe humans felt when they first looked into the night sky.

Sources: Various News Paper