Speed, scale, skill... solar?

Ionce asked a rural bank officer how he managed to convince farmers to take large loans to install solar panels. He replied, "I remind them that they use two units of electricity a day (60 a month, 730 a year). This country has given you so much. Won't you install solar power, reduce your consumption from the grid and give back to the country?" This Kennedy-style pitch to market solar in India was heart-warming, even inspiring. But to reach 100 gigawatts (GW; which the government plans) by 2022, more than inspiration will be needed. In line with the prime minister's mantra, the solar sector has to match ambition with speed, scale and skill.

India has a little over 3 GW of installed solar power capacity. In order to reach 100 GW, installed capacity has to double every 18 months or at a compounded annual growth rate of 62 per cent, a tall ask by any standard.

The speed of execution depends on several factors. Delays in announcing policies create uncertainties. If developers do not know the tariffs for even the next financial year, how can they secure long-term, low-interest debt finance? Alongside, a roadmap for enforcing renewable purchase obligations (as Rajasthan has done) is urgently needed. A third issue is land availability. Less than 1 per cent of the barren and uncultivated land in the country would be sufficient for 80 GW of grid-connected projects. But land acquisition is not easy. Land accounts for 3.5 per cent of project costs but could increase with rapid deployment and price speculation. State governments could create land banks (Gujarat, Karnataka), lease government land for 25 years or less (Rajasthan), offer exemptions on stamp duties on sale of private land (Madhya Pradesh), or ensure a small share per unit of electricity to the landowner. Whatever the solution, it has to be implemented quickly.

There is no use investing in solar projects if the infrastructure to evacuate power to the grid does not keep pace. The Ministry of Power must provide detailed roadmaps for building new substations. The Green Corridors being implemented in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu could be further expanded. Electricity regulatory authorities must also consider exemptions from wheeling charges. With net metering policies, grid-connected rooftop projects should be accorded priority in dispatching power.

With speed comes scale but there is more than one route. Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) researchers have proposed three alternatives: "utility heavy" (80 GW of utility scale projects), "rooftop heavy" (45 GW of rooftop projects), and "rural decentralised heavy" (20 GW of solar irrigation pumps). It might be tempting to dream of mega solar parks but they also bring with them the challenges of land acquisition and dispatch. If 15 per cent of irrigation pumps were converted to solar they would amount to 20 GW capacity. Similarly, one-fifth of the 31 million households with roof cover sufficient for 3 kW systems could add 20 GW. Scale can also have strong developmental co-benefits.

All three scenarios would need investments of about $140-$160 billion. These estimates include the costs of energy balancing, with storage equivalent to half of utility scale capacity. The costs increase by over 50 per cent when solar is balanced with gas-based backup. In order to absorb investments at this scale, new institutions and innovative finance would be needed. A Green Bank, initially capitalised via the National Clean Energy Fund, could offer low-interest loans with long-term tenure. It could help to channel infrastructure debt funds and investments from insurance and pension funds, as well as large overseas investors. Risk insurance (to ensure bankable projects), exchange swaps (to mitigate foreign exchange risk) and green bonds could reduce cost of capital and leverage more private financing. Housing finance companies could provide loans to property developers for rooftop systems.

The scale of ambitions will also impact manufacturing and imports. At current prices and with no expansion of domestic manufacturing capacity, India would need solar imports worth Rs 2,14,000 crore ($35.7 billion) for 100 GW. If every year domestic production grew 1 GW and international panel prices fell 6 per cent, imports could fall to Rs 96,000 crore ($16 billion). Reducing import dependence means much greater domestic competitiveness, as well as targeted investments in energy storage R&D.

For speed and scale, skills will be in demand. CEEW and the Natural Resources Defense Council found that between 2011 and 2014, the solar sector created at least 24,000 full-time equivalent jobs across the value chain from business development to design and construction, commissioning, operations and maintenance. If 100 GW were installed, as many as 1 million short-term and about 3,00,000 long-term FTE jobs could be created. These would be over and above any created in manufacturing. Nationwide training programmes, under the National Skills Development Agency, would have to be delivered through a network of trained entrepreneurs (for both grid-connected and decentralised energy projects).

Today, the largest investor conference for renewable energy in India, Re-Invest, will conclude. Up to 266 GW of renewable energy has been committed but financing commitments are less than 30 per cent of these numbers. The roadmap for a significant role of solar in India has many milestones. Speed, scale and skill are needed; there is little time to waste.

How Rafale is killing the air force's future

The priceless Indo-Russian project to co-develop the eponymous Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) is dying of neglect. With the Indian Air Force (IAF) brass focused single-mindedly on procuring 126 Rafale fighters, the air marshals fear that an FGFA on the horizon would undermine their argument that the Rafale is essential. With the costly Rafale procurement imploding in slow motion, the FGFA is becoming collateral damage.

In October 2012, then IAF boss, Air Chief Marshal N A K Browne, announced the IAF would buy only 144 FGFAs instead of the 214 that were originally planned. Having cut down the numbers, the IAF is now undermining the FGFA project itself.

After the apex Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission for Military Technical Cooperation (IRIGC-MTC) met on January 22 to discuss military cooperation, IAF officers whispered to a gullible media that the FGFA was dead. It was reported that Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had told his Russian counterpart that joint research and development (R&D) was a waste of time. This was factually incorrect. What is true is that the IAF - for reasons that can only be guessed at - is scuttling a project to develop a fighter that would rank alongside the world's best.

Why is the FGFA important, more so than the Rafale? It is a fifth-generation fighter, which makes it operationally more capable than contemporary fourth-generation fighters like the Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon. Gen-5 fighters are designed to be stealthy, which means enemy radar cannot detect them until it is too late. They "supercruise", i.e. fly at supersonic speeds without lighting engine afterburners (the Rafale can do this too); and Gen-5 aircraft have futuristic avionics and missiles. In a war with China, stealthy Gen-5 aircraft would be ideal for missions deep into Tibet, evading China's radar network, to destroy the Qinghai-Tibet railway and roads leading to the Indian border - to prevent China from quickly switching troops around on its superior border infrastructure.

So vital was the FGFA considered to India's aerospace capabilities that, in October 2007, New Delhi and Moscow signed an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) to co-develop the fighter, which placed the project above defence ministry procurement rules. The IGA states that Hindustan AeronauticsLtd (HAL) would partner Rosoboronexport, Russia's defence exports agency, in co-developing the fighter. Furthermore, Indian engineers say the expertise gained from the FGFA would be valuable in building the planned indigenous Gen-5 fighter, designated the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA).

Following the IGA, New Delhi and Moscow signed a General Contract in December 2008, stipulating general principles of cooperation such as the share of work and cost, and the sale of the FGFA to third countries. In December 2010, a Preliminary Design Contract was signed in which both sides contributed $295 million towards finalising the fighter's basic configuration, systems and equipment. With that completed in June 2013, the central R&D Contract is now being negotiated. This will govern the bulk of the work - the actual design and development of the FGFA.

Even as the IAF stonewalls the R&D contract negotiations, the need for India to come on board grows ever more pressing. Russia has already designed, built and flown the first prototypes of a Gen-5 fighter they call the PAK-FA (Perspektivny Aviatsionny Kompleks Frontovoy Aviatsii, or "Prospective Airborne Complex of Frontline Aviation"). The PAK-FA, built to Russian Air Force specifications, has already completed 650 test-flights. India's work share will lie in adapting this fighter to the IAF's requirements - which include advanced capabilities like all-round radar that can detect threats in a 360-degree envelope, and voice recognition software that allows the pilot to call out commands. In all, the IAF has specified some 40-45 improvements that they want over the PAK-FA. Indian designers, who will have to integrate these improved capabilities with the existing PAK-FA, are losing out by not participating in the on-going design and test flying in Russia.

The IAF's objections to the FGFA are (a) The Russians are reluctant to share critical design information; (b) The fighter's current AL-41F1 engines are inadequate, being mere upgrades of the Sukhoi-30MKI's AL-31 engines; and (c) It is so expensive that "a large percentage of IAF's capital budget will be locked up." It is ironical that an air force that is eager to spend an estimated $20 billion on the entirely foreign, Gen-4 Rafale is baulking at spending a fraction of that on co-developing and indigenously manufacturing a Gen-5 fighter, which can be maintained and upgraded cheaply for decades to come.

An entire mythology has come up around the cost with even senior air marshals incorrectly stating that India will spend $11 billion on the FGFA. Even this inflated figure would be modest compared to the $40 billion that America spent in the 1980s and 1990s to develop the Gen-5 F-22 Raptor. Yet, in fact, this $11 billion figure was a defence ministry estimation in 2010, which included numerous items that have nothing to do with R&D. Firstly, the amount included both Russian and Indian expenditure; second, it included several options that India may not require, e.g. $1.5 billion for developing a twin-seat FGFA (which the IAF now says it does not want), and $1.5 billion for a new engine. Third, this included the cost of infrastructure that India must establish to manufacture the aircraft in large numbers for the IAF.

Since India urgently needs to start participating in the flight-test programme, of which the PAK-FA has already completed some 20 per cent, Sukhoi would have to build another prototype for India. That cost too is included in the estimation, along with the ground support equipment and training needed for a full-fledged Indian flight-test programme. With all of this factored in, officials closely involved in the negotiations say that India's share in the project could be about $3.5 to 4 billion.

Both sides have already talked around the R&D contract in such detail that it can be concluded in one sitting, provided Indian negotiators are given the green light from a clear-minded political leadership. The FGFA perfectly fits the "Make in India" idea; the strategy of being ready for a two-front conflict; and the IAF force structure of the future. From the standpoint of negotiation strategy, the timing is perfect. The rouble has plummeted more than 60 per cent against the dollar and the rupee in the last five months after the Ukraine crisis. The Russians will agree to the lower dollar rate that New Delhi has been proposing. The time to strike is now.

India, Lanka ink civil nuclear pact, agree to expand defence ties

Sri Lanka's President Maithripala Sirisena, left, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands as they pose for photos before their meeting in New Delhi, India, Monday, Feb. 16, 2015. Sri Lanka's new leader is underlining India's importance as a regional ally by making it his first official foreign destination as president, following years of uneasy relations with New Delhi and international pressure to speed up post-civil war reconciliation efforts at home. AP photo

Taking the ties to a new level, India and Sri Lanka today inked a civil nuclear pact besides deciding to expand defence and security cooperation.

This was announced after the talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena during which both the leaders expressed commitment to find a solution to the emotive fishermen issue by adopting a constructive and humanitarian approach.

"The bilateral agreement on civil nuclear cooperation is yet another demonstration of our mutual trust. This is the first such agreement Sri Lanka has signed. It opens new avenues for cooperation, including in areas like agriculture and healthcare," Modi said in a joint press interaction with Sirisena.

Sirisena, who arrived here yesterday, has chosen India for his first foreign trip after assuming charge of the country. He had dethroned Mahinda Rajapaksa from his 10-year rule after a bitter Presidential poll.

The nuclear pact would facilitate cooperation in the transfer and exchange of knowledge and expertise, sharing of resources, capacity building and training of personnel in peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including use of radioisotopes, nuclear safety, radiation safety and nuclear security.

It would also facilitate cooperation in radioactive waste management and nuclear and radiological disaster mitigation and environmental protection.

The two countries also signed three other pacts, including cooperation in the field of agriculture. Another MoU was signed to enable Sri Lanka to participate in the Nalanda University Project.

The Prime Minister said he and the Sri Lankan leader also agreed to expand the defence and security cooperation.

"We welcomed the progress in our maritime security cooperation, including in the trilateral format with the Maldives," he said.

Modi said he believed that destinies of both the countries are "inter-linked" and that "our security and prosperity are indivisible".

Modi said they had "excellent discussions" on bilateral relations and international issues and added that India was honoured that Sirisena had chosen the country for his first overseas destination after assuming charge.

On the fishermen issue, Modi said he and the President attached the "highest importance" to it.

"It affects livelihoods on both sides. We agreed that there must be a constructive and humanitarian approach to the issue.

"We will encourage the fishermen's associations on both sides to meet again soon. They should find a solution that can be taken forward by both governments," he said.
The Sri Lankan President expressed happiness over the outcome of the talks and said the friendship between the two countries was not only important to each other but was significant for the region as well.

"I really appreciate Prime Minister Modi's efforts (to improve ties). Relations between the two countries will be strengthened further," he said.

Modi also thanked Sirisena for inviting him to visit Sri Lanka and said he was "eagerly looking forward to visiting the country in March".

"We are at a moment of an unprecedented opportunity to take our bilateral relations to a new level. His visit today has set us firmly in that direction," the Prime Minister said while congratulating Sirisena for his historic victory in the recent elections in the island nation.

On the fishermen issue, Modi said fishermen's associations on both sides will be encouraged to meet again soon while noting that that they should find a solution that can be taken forward by both governments.

Modi said India was Sri Lanka's closest neighbour and friend and the goodwill and support of the people of India will always be with it.

"We also share a broad range of interests - economic development for our countries; peace and prosperity in South Asia; maritime security in the region," he said.
On the economic engagement, Modi said both the countries are committed to "unlock" the vast potential of the economic cooperation.

"We are pleased to be Sri Lanka's largest trading partner. I know that India enjoys a huge trade surplus. I expressed my support for a more balanced growth in trade in both directions," he said.


The Prime Minister said he had conveyed to Sirisena India's readiness to promote greater flow of Indian investments and tourists into Sri Lanka.
"We also intend to further improve air and sea connectivity between India and Sri Lanka," he said.

Modi said they discussed expansion of cooperation in energy sector, both conventional and renewable, and that Commerce Secretaries of both the countries will meet soon to review trade ties.

Talking about the Indian assisted projects for internally- displaced persons in Sri Lanka, Modi said they have made excellent progress.

"This includes the Housing Project, under which more than 27,000 houses have already been constructed. The President and I expressed satisfaction with the progress.
"I assured President Sirisena of India's commitment to its development partnership with Sri Lanka. This will continue to cover a broad range of areas, including infrastructure," he said.

Referring to a pact on cultural cooperation, Modi said that like cricket, culture provides a strong bond between the two countries.

"Sri Lankan nationals visit the National Museum in New Delhi in large numbers to pay homage to the Kapilavastu relics. We have decided to reduce the fees for them," he said.

The third National Lok Adalat was organised on 14 February 2015

The third National Lok Adalat was organised on 14 February 2015 throughout India involving the Supreme Court, high courts, districts courts and taluka-level courts, except in Assam and Uttar Pradesh.

It was organised under the patronage of Chief Justice of India (CJI) H L Dattu and the leadership of Supreme Court Judge Justice T S Thakur.

Nearly 56,000 cases were disposed of by the third National Lok Adalat in a single day. It also saw disbursal of Rs 265 crore as claims towards final settlement in bank recovery and cheques bounce cases.

Third Lok Adalat was organised by the National Legal Service Authority (NALSA) to disburse cases related bank recovery, cheques bounce cases, particularly under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881. Several banks, financial institutions and others had participated in it.

First National Lok Adalats was held in November 2013 and had settled a record 71.50 lakh cases pending in various courts. The second National Lok Adalat was held in December 2014 and had disposed of over 1.25 crore cases.

About Lok Adalats

• Lok Adalats (people’s courts) settle dispute through conciliation and compromise. The First Lok Adalat was held in Una city in Junagarh district of Gujarat in 1982.
• Generally, Lok Adalat accepts the cases pending in the regular courts within their jurisdiction which could be settled by conciliation and compromise.
• The decision of the Lok Adalat is binding on the parties to the dispute and its order is capable of execution through legal process. No appeal lies against the order of the Lok Adalat.

India bucks the trend

Unless the world goes on a frenzy of new construction, for which there is no evidence, nuclear power will vanish from the face of the earth by 2059, according to World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2014. In 1996, nuclear power accounted for 17.6 per cent of the world’s electricity. Today it has come down to 10.8 per cent and could drop further in the coming years. Fukushima put paid to Japan’s nuclear power industry. All the 48 nuclear reactors in Japan have been closed down. Germany closed eight of 17 nuclear reactors in 2012 and is in the process of phasing out the remaining nine between 2015 and 2022. Since the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown of 1979 in Pennsylvania, the USA has not commissioned a single nuclear power plant, but closed five nuclear power plants since 2012 ~ Florida, Wisconsin, Vermont and two in Canada. The few reactors now under construction from Finland to Vietnam have been bogged down by inordinate delays and cost overruns and their future is uncertain.

China, Russia and India are the only countries where nuclear power has not yet gone out of style. It is therefore not surprising that India signed an agreement with Russia to build 12 nuclear reactors during President Vladimir Puttin’s one-day visit to New Delhi on 11 December. This was coupled with the signing of a contract by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited to start construction of Koodankulam 3 and 4 units. It is not clear whether the 12 include Koodankulam 3 and 4 for which the Congress-led UPA government had already signed an agreement with Russia two years ago.

Any person would normally place a repeat order if satisfied with the outcome of the first order. India entered into an agreement for Koodankulam 1 and 2 way back in 1988 with the erstwhile Soviet Union which was firmed up subsequently with Russia. It is neither possible nor expected of the Prime Minister to keep track of the progress and working of each and every project in the country. But he has the benefit of a high-power 24-member Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, the brain child of the late lamented Rajiv Gandhi. When Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister he thought having SAC to the PM was not sufficient as critical decisions were the collective responsibility of the Cabinet and he wanted a scientific and technology advisory body for his Cabinet colleagues as well. Hence the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet comprising 45 members was constituted. The chairman of the SAC to the PM is not a member of the SAC to the Cabinet but the chairman of the latter is also a member of the former. The SAC to the PM is said to be the “uppermost body that deliberates on various policy issues pertaining to science and technology,” and based on its recommendations discussed with the Prime Minister policies are implemented. The SAC to the Cabinet claims to be the “apex advisory body” on science and technology policies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had the benefit of both the advisory bodies before he entered into an agreement with President Putin to set up 12 nuclear power plants in the country in the next two decades. The sarkari scientists of the two committees have been issuing “the best and the safest” certification to the Koodankulam nuclear power project for the last two years notwithstanding the fact that the first unit continues to limp and tumble while the second unit has been cannibalised to coax the first unit produce some electricity before the 11 December summit. What is surprising is that despite the well-demonstrated appalling performance of the Koodankulam project, any further order, and that too of this magnitude, is being placed on Russia.

The first unit of the Koodankulam nuclear power plant attained criticality on 15 July 2013 and was grid-connected 69 days later. During the last 400-odd days since the grid connection, the reactor was under outage for more than 100 days and on maintenance shut-down for another 60 days. The first outage on the day of grid connection was caused due to ‘reverse power’ which means the generator instead of producing electricity became a consumer of electricity. When the Information and Control system detects a defect in the reactor system which has the potential to result in an accident, a trip is actuated leading to the release of all control rods within three seconds. Too many trips, also known as scrams, place unnecessary strain on plant components. Plant managers announced commercial generation would begin on 22 April 2014. It was postponed twice. Since 25 September the reactor has been shut down indefinitely for replacement of turbo-generator and some other repairs. There is no knowing when commercial generation will start.

The Koodankulam reactors are certified as Generation-3 and are said to be inherently safe. A study by an international team including academics from the Cochin University of Science and Technology, Bremen University, Germany, and Sussex University, the United Kingdom, based entirely on official documents from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, NPCIL and their Russian counterparts, came to the conclusion that major equipment like the reactor pressure vessel and the polar cane were obsolete and counterfeit. The polar crane, a safety related equipment, was found to have only 80 per cent of its rated capacity. Many of the equipment rendered surplus post-Chernobyl and post-Soviet cancellation of more than 25 VVER-1000 reactors had been incorporated in the Koodankulam power plant.

Dr BK Subbarao, nuclear physicist who designed a pressurised water reactor for Indian Navy’s nuclear submarine, in an article described the Koodankulam reactor as a speaking tree. “Since her marriage with the grid, KKNPP-1 has spoken for 4,701 hours in 14 episodes. She spoke for 56 days during the first 90 days. Her eloquence is being progressively replaced by silence. During the past 90 days, we heard her speak only during nine days. The officials of Rosatom and NPCIL are busy in finalising the deal for the fifth and sixth reactors, while the commissioning crew at Koodankulam is experiencing the worst nightmares in their lives. In spite of all the postponements, unmet deadlines, a major accident and very high trip rates unheard of during the commissioning of any modern reactors, it is business as usual. This cannot go on. KKNPP has all the ingredients of a perfect disaster and is a global catastrophic risk. The people of the world, their children and their children’s children to be born yet, expect more proactive decisions from the Government of India at the highest level. All deals should be frozen; the fuel assemblies must be removed from the reactor core and placed in the spent fuel tank immediately before it is too late. This must be followed by an impartial safety audit by a body of independent scientists and a thorough financial audit by the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India.”

The most important issue is the very decision of India to push ahead with the nuclear power programme despite it being, as of now, uneconomic compared to conventional and renewable sources of power and intrinsically hazardous as it deals with radioactive substances and there is as yet no foolproof method of waste disposal and decommissioning and disposal of obsolete plants. Globally, nuclear power is on the wane despite vigorous lobbying by the nuclear industry and its cohorts. India should not attempt to swim against the current.

A business plan for space

Who can own the moon? Or an asteroid? Or a homestead on Mars? According to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, no nation can claim sovereignty over any part of any celestial rock. But the treaty is less clear on what a company or an individual can do in space—possibly because in the 1960s, the drafters of the treaty might have thought it hard to imagine a space race led by entrepreneurs rather than governments.

For companies today hoping to set up a moon colony or to mine asteroids for platinum, the ambiguity is one more hurdle in attracting investors.
“There has been a chicken-egg conundrum to create a lunar legal framework,” says John Thornton, the chief executive of Astrobotic Technology, a Pittsburgh company that hopes to become the first private company to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon and win the Google Lunar X Prize. “How do you get businesses to invest in the moon if there is no legal framework versus how do you get a legal framework if there are no business operations?”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which licenses private space launchings in the United States, has now provided some clarity.
In reply to a request by Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas, Nevada, one of those space entrepreneurs, the FAA said it would make sure that American companies did not interfere with one another on the moon or elsewhere.

“We recognise the private sector’s need to protect its assets and personnel on the moon or on other celestial bodies,” wrote George C Nield, the agency’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation, in a letter dated December 22. The Reuters news service reported on the letter earlier this month.

Bigelow is developing inflatable habitats for outer space, and this year, a small Bigelow structure is to be added to the International Space Station. In the coming years, it plans to launch larger inflatables as private space stations to be leased by companies or nations.

In December 2013, Bigelow asked the FAA to review a proposal for landing one of its habitats on the moon for use as a lunar base. Bigelow said it might conduct scientific research or commercial endeavors like mining. Robert Bigelow, the company’s founder, has said he is aiming to establish his lunar base around 2025, and the company wanted to start clarifying issues.

“It’s best to avoid these problems now, before operations begin,” says Michael Gold, Bigelow’s DC director of operations and business growth.
In its proposal, Bigelow suggested that the FAA leverage its authority to review payloads and license launchings. In essence, Bigelow requested that the FAA agree not to issue a license to another American company that would land at the same place.

The action does not bestow ownership of the moon on Bigelow or anyone else, and the FAA does not have jurisdiction over foreign companies. But with the FAA’s issuing licenses to American companies, Gold says the state department could more easily work out agreements with other countries regulating their private companies.

“If you don’t have that agency and that paper, then it becomes a Wild West scenario,” Gold says. “This decision has real immediate and real impact on investors who require security and predictability.”

Gold says the FAA’s decision did not violate the Outer Space Treaty and actually helped fulfill the United States’ obligations under the part of the treaty that states, “The activities of nongovernmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate state party to the treaty.”

What is less clear is whether private companies can profit from the moon or other places in space. A follow-up international agreement in 1979, the Moon Treaty, emphatically said no, banning ownership of the moon and other celestial bodies, and declaring that the moon’s riches were to be shared among nations, especially developing countries. But many nations, including the United States, Russia and China, have not signed the treaty.

In Congress last year, Representatives Bill Posey, Republican of Florida, and Derek Kilmer, Democrat of Washington, introduced a bill called the Asteroids Act, which would give companies ownership over any material they mined from asteroids. At least two American companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, have announced plans to mine asteroids. After a House sub-committee hearing in September, the bill did not progress, but a spokesman for Posey says it would be reintroduced this year.

Not measure for measure

With a plethora of government departments and international organisations putting out so much statistical data in the public space, often contradicting one another, it is the government’s duty to clear the air with up-to-date and coherent statistical data linking social and economic indicators

Purchasing Power Parity or PPP has validated a long held surmise that the poorer countries are not as badly off as they are made out to be nor the richer ones as well off as they seem. A nominal GDP ranking puts India at tenth place while a PPP one pushes it up to third, behind the United States and China. The Big Mac Index of The Economist loosely corroborates. Travelling to expensive parts of the world from our country brings this home to us tellingly.

A 2011 issue of The Economist published a controversial piece — “Comparing Indian states and territories with countries: An Indian Summary” — which purported to show that for all its size and population, the economy of Uttar Pradesh was roughly just that of Qatar, and Maharashtra’s no bigger than Singapore’s, while that of Tamil Nadu was no larger than Angola’s — all very confusing and probably wrong when in PPP terms, India as a whole is placed third in the world. So, where do we stand and what standard should one pitch for to measure ourselves against the rest of the world?

A land of opportunities

We would be wise to guardedly settle for PPP. The world too has done likewise. India, like those of several other similarly placed countries, does have an economy worth several times larger than its nominal GDP indicates. This fact has not gone unnoticed where it matters, especially in the boardrooms of multinationals or corporate India which indefatigably seek to “add an inch to every Indiaman’s shirt tail”. Some strong endorsement for this comes from the management guru, the late C.K. Prahalad. Unsurprisingly, for companies like Suzuki and Honda, India has emerged as their largest market for cars and two-wheelers and Vodafone, despite an unresolved retrospective tax issue, is very much here to stay. India of course enjoys the sheer strength of numbers. Everything that happens here, as in China, has to necessarily be on a gargantuan scale — invariably in several millions. It takes an outsider to marvel at our scale and make us conscious of it. But the scale exists!

“The game changer will be when India configures the internal rankings of its States for global consumption.”

After China, India has more mobile owners than any other country. The smartphone revolution has just hit us big and India is more likely than not to emerge as the second largest market for that too. India is also one of two largest motorcycle manufacturers. The country continues its run as one of two largest producers of rice and a third of wheat as well as fruits and milk. Of course we know that in per capita in agro and dairy products, we are still way behind much smaller producers but are likely to get “there” thanks to developments in science technology. In all these segments India is sitting on the cusp of an opportunity. If the green revolution surprised us, managed right, the future growth in agriculture will astound the world.

E-commerce is another area we mistakenly thought we had lost out on. Just as we were despairing at the success of Alibaba in China, we now see serious investment coming into e-retailing. It is not for nothing that Japan’s SoftBank is investing heavily in Snapdeal; Ratan Tata, ever ready to spot an emerging opportunity, had bet on it much earlier. The best known of India’s e-retailers, Flipkart, has attracted significant investors too. Meanwhile, Amazon, even as it threatens to leave, is expanding its footprint here. India, it turns out, is a glass half full and filling rather than half-empty and emptying.

Social indicators and evidence

But before we start rejoicing we need to reconcile flattering national economic indicators with some very odious social ones. India’s ranking in the UNDP’s Human Development Report (2011) is 134. In gender inequality, it comes out marginally better but still a rotten 129th out of 187 countries. Then on the ease of doing business, India is a miserable 134th, pretty much at the bottom of the heap. So things are that horrible. Or are they only being made out to be terrible?

Given the scale of poverty in India, it is very difficult not to make these rankings stick and lot of visual evidence exists. Mukesh Ambani’s massive residence in Mumbai coexists with a sea of slums nearby. Get out of many of India’s airports, and most especially Mumbai, and one is confronted with every kind of misery one can think of. Stop at the traffic lights and the poor of India come knocking on your car window. The better off in our country live in sanitised islands of relative calm defended by the very kind drawn from the ranks of those it seeks to keep out. But as we all know, visuals, even powerful ones, do not so much reflect reality as point out the shocking that we tend to ignore or deliberately disregard.

Statewide indices for the world

The country as a whole is nowhere as bad as these indices show but together they do bring out that India is a poor bet only because we have been inept at better stating our strengths while unfailingly adept at inviting attention to our weaknesses. The question to ask is “should India be taken as a country at all for such indicators to stick”? India is more populous than the whole of Africa and roughly equal to Europe and the Americas combined on that count. We need a better way of being compared — clearly, it is absurd to rank the country alongside say Lesotho or Guinea Bissau — the first has a population of less than three million and the other two. Singapore, for all its achievements, is about the size of Bengaluru and its suburbs.

Apart from the absurdity of comparing apples with ladoos, such indices, as The Economist notes, “blacken a country’s name”. It can, as it states, also “spread like wildfire on the web”. India needs to proof itself against this by coming up with some convincing measures of its own that attract rather than turn away potential investors using available data without tweaking. A start can be made by leaving the country’s PPP ranking alone while more effectively highlighting and deploying region-wise as well as State-wise indices for everything, from gender inequality to ease of doing business as well as infrastructure and migration.

Internal rankings of States, as what a leading Indian magazine brings out annually, is so much like water off a duck’s back, that the game changer will be when the country configures the rankings for global consumption. This will become particularly important now when States are competing with each other for investments. This should also make State governments sit up and take note that governance matters. Chhattisgarh is an early mover here. It is carpet bombing the print and television media with advertisements that project it as an investment destination of choice, with a visionary Chief Minister as its efficient CEO. States with poor social indices will strive to match and possibly overtake the better off ones, creating a virtuous circle. Then, there is something called shaming that every State would like to avoid.

Migrant labour

The debt the richer parts of the country owe to its poorer places is one of the dirty secrets we hardly talk about, but look at the vacant eyes of an emaciated young security guard in Kochi or the young woman at a construction site carrying material up precarious ladders in Bengaluru, and you immediately connect to their homes far away.

Millions are spilling out of India’s poorer States to run services in the better off ones. Mumbai would not run for a day without migrant workers and Kerala — the entire State — would come to a grinding halt if the near three million from Assam and Bengal as well as U.P., Odisha and Bihar were to en-masse go elsewhere. The Government of India would therefore do well to bring out an annual State-wise status report on migrant labour detailing where they come from and the jobs they do and how much they contribute to State economies rather than ungratefully treat them as parasites. This should cool rampant xenophobia of the kind the Shiva Sena promotes and make us grateful for a borderless India.

We now learn that the government is about to release the religious mix of the country as brought out by the 2011 census. Leaks indicate that the number of Muslims has gone up marginally, but where? In its most miserable parts, where along with a majority of Hindus, most lead ultra squalid lives and are crying to get better. The most important message, that the Muslims even in very backward parts constitute the underclass, cannot be overemphasised though of course some migration from Bangladesh into Assam and West Bengal cannot be discounted.

We need statistics we can trust and be informed. Unfortunately, with a plethora of agencies, government departments and international organisations putting out so much statistical data in the public space, often contradicting each another, we have very little chance of being properly informed. It is the government’s duty to clear the air with up-to-date and coherent statistical data linking social and economic indicators. Only this can lead to more mature public understanding and reaction than one which suggests that Hinduism is in danger or Muslims are consciously having more children. In the noise, one can ignore that fertility rates have fallen among the Muslims too and if they too could derive the benefits of economic development through education, their numbers will fall just as fast. The last especially deserves to be widely known. In context, statistics can lead to better understandings; deployed out of context, they can kill.