NASA rover clicks stunning selfie on Mars

The selfie scene is assembled from dozens of images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager camera on the rover’s robotic arm.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has clicked a selfie showing the vehicle at the “Mojave” site on the Red Planet where its drill collected the mission’s second taste of Mount Sharp.

The latest self-portrait shows a sweeping view of the “Pahrump Hills” outcrop on Mars where NASA’s Curiosity rover was working for five months.

The selfie scene is assembled from dozens of images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover’s robotic arm.

“Compared with the earlier Curiosity selfies, we added extra frames for this one so we could see the rover in the context of the full Pahrump Hills campaign,” said rover team member Kathryn Stack at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

“From the Mojave site, we could include every stop we have made during the campaign,” he added.

Pahrump Hills is an outcrop of the bedrock that forms the basal layer of Mount Sharp, at the centre of Mars’ Gale Crater.

The component images for this self—portrait were taken in late January, while Curiosity was at a drilling site called “Mojave 2”.

At that site, the mission collected its second drilled sample of Pahrump Hills for laboratory analysis on Earth.

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions.

Save lives, fight air pollution

The alarming level of air pollution in Indian cities, highlighted in reports from academia across the world and global agencies, has at last woken up people who matter in India. What has struck home is that Beijing, till now widely reported as among the most polluted cities in the world, has been overtaken by Delhi, which has risen to the top of the poor air quality league.

The most alarming is a recent report in The Economic Timesby Urmi Goswami citing research by environmental economists from Chicago, Harvard and Yale that finds that well over half of the Indian population may be set to lose three years of their lives due to the adverse effects of breathing air with highly excessive levels of pollutants.

It has been known for some time that the air that people breathe in Indian cities is among the worst in the world. Over half of the most polluted cities in the world are in India, said aWorld Health Organization report released in the middle of last year. Later in the year, the Union environment ministry announced the launch of an air quality index, so that citizens can make sense of complex air quality data covering several measures. But India still remains severely lacking in monitoring and instant transmission of air quality data that people can access and decide, for example, whether to send children to school, or even for adults to go out on a particular day.

Those who can afford it are taking precautions. Embassies are buying air purifiers for their staff to install in their homes. At least one has advised diplomats to consider if they should bring their children to India or not. Private companies have begun to install air purifiers in their offices. It is boom time, say people who are in the air-purification business.

Some action, with the right approach, may be on the way. The new chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, is reported to have asked his environment and forest department officials at their first review meeting to set aside all their prepared presentations and come up with "offbeat" ideas on how to quickly get to work on the city's air pollution.

Things have come to such a pass because there has been a conscious attempt by politicians across the spectrum and businessmen to reduce pollution issues to being merely the pet concern of "environmentalists", whereas it is they who articulate the concerns of the majority that is to raise incomes and remove poverty. The Left in West Bengal chalked up a miserable environmental record during its three-decade rule because "class struggle" came before "fraternity" - the need to unitedly look after the environment, a public good that affects all.

The current rulers, the National Democratic Alliance, following the same tradition, have promised to see through the clearances for mining and power projects that were held up because of the perceived damage they would cause to the scant forest cover of the country and its environment. And businessmen have cheered them along the way.

"Air pollution is an urgent public health problem that deserves policy attention," Michael Greenstone of the University of Chicago, who led the study, is quoted in the news report referred to earlier. "In approaching the issue of air pollution as one of public health, it would be possible to break the perception and understanding that addressing environmental issues like air pollution and economic growth/development are somewhat opposed to each other."

There is no trade-off between environment protection and development. The only development that works is "sustainable development". This has to be appreciated by politicians, businessmen and economists.

Here is a short list of offbeat solutions that can be quickly adopted. First, sharply ramp up clearing solid waste in urban areas, so that municipal sweepers and also the public do not have to burn garbage that is not collected. A big change can be brought about in this area in weeks.

Second, sharply increase the number of buses that run on compressed natural gas, so that clean and comfortable buses are regularly available to people who would like to stop taking out their cars for routine journeys like office commutes. The timing, route and frequency of bus services can be monitored by fitting them with GPS sensors and a stick-and-carrot approach adopted to ensure compliance while allowing the buses to be privately run and operated. This system has already been adopted in Indore.

Third, once a vastly improved bus service is in place in a year or two, economic disincentives can be put in place to discourage the use of private cars by raising the tax on them and introducing a congestion surcharge in inner city areas. This has been done in many cities in the world.

Fourth, in central and eastern India, coal continues to be used to light household fires, severely affecting air quality, particularly in winter. This can be discouraged by ensuring the supply of low-emission briquettes in three to four years, and subsidising their price.

A watershed 14th #FinanceCommission

It is clear that the far-reaching recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, along with the creation of NITI Aayog, will radically alter Centre-state fiscal relations

The report of the Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC) was tabled in Parliament yesterday. The government has accepted its far-reaching, indeed radical, recommendations that have the potential to redefine Indian federalism in a long overdue and desirable manner. This piece describes the key recommendations and highlights some of their major implications. It is based on updating assumptions in the FFCreport, which is the only source of data used in the numbers presented below. The discussion below, especially the estimates, should be seen as illustrative at best.

Vertical and horizontal devolution
The FFC has increased the amount that the Centre has to transfer to the states from the divisible pool of taxes by 10 percentage points, from 32 per cent to 42 per cent. Its radical nature is indicated by the comparison with the previous two Finance Commissions (FCs) that increased the share going to the states by 1 and 1.5 percentage points, respectively. So, the FFC recommendations represent a ten and six-and-a-half fold increase, respectively relative to the previous two FCs. Had the new share been implemented in 2014-15 (Budget estimates), the Centre’s fiscal resources would have shrunk by about 1.20 lakh crore (0.9 per cent of gross domestic product or GDP). If the comparison were to be in terms of overall (tax plus non-plan grants) devolution, the increase would be roughly comparable to that in tax devolution.

In addition, the FFC has significantly changed the sharing of resources between the states — what is called horizontal devolution. The FFC has proposed a new formula for the distribution of the divisible tax pool among the states. There are changes both in the variables included/excluded as well as the weights assigned to them. Relative to the Thirteenth Finance Commission, the FFC has incorporated two new variables: 2011 population and forest cover; and excluded the fiscal discipline variable.

Several other types of transfers have been proposed, including grants to rural and urban local bodies, a performance grant, and grants for disaster relief and reducing the revenue deficit of eleven states. These transfers total approximately 5.3 lakh crore for the period 2015-20.

Uniformly large addition to states’ resources
The impact of FFC transfers to the states needs to be assessed in two ways: gross and “net” FFC transfers will clearly add to the resources of all the states in absolute terms and substantially. They will also increase resources when scaled by states’ population, net state domestic product, or own tax revenues, with the latter connoting the addition to fiscal spending power.

Implementing the FFC recommendations alone would undermine the centre’s fiscal position substantially. The philosophy of the FFC report is that there should be some corresponding reduction in the central assistance to states (CAS, the so-called plan transfers). Thus, greater fiscal autonomy to the states would be achieved both on the revenue side (on account of states now having more resources and more untied resources) and on the expenditure side because of reduced CAStransfers. The exact mechanism for implementation will be discussed in the months ahead but the legally backed schemes as well as flagship schemes that meet core objectives, such as rural livelihoods and poverty alleviation, will be, and need to be, preserved.

The net impact on the states will depend not just on the transfers effected via the FFC, but also the consequential alteration of CAS. Under some simple assumptions about how the latter will be distributed, we find that all states will end up better off than before, although there will be some variation amongst the states.

Increase in progressivity of overall transfers
The FFC transfers have a more favourable impact on the states that are relatively less developed, which is an indication that they are progressive, that is, states with lower per capita net state domestic product (NSDP) are likely to receive on average much larger transfers per capita . The correlation between per capita NSDP and FFC transfers per capita is -0.72 based on some broad assumptions about FFC transfers. This indicates that the FFC recommendations do go in the direction of equalising the income and fiscal disparities between the major states.

In contrast, CAS transfers are only mildly progressive: the correlation coefficient with state per capita GDP (over the last three years) is -0.29. This is a consequence of plan transfers moving away from being formula-based (Gadgil-Mukherjee formula) to being more discretionary in the last few years. Greater central discretion evidently reduced progressivity.

A corollary is that implementing the FFC recommendations would help address inter-state resource inequality: progressive tax transfers would increase, while discretionary and less progressive plan transfers would decline.

Weakening fiscal discipline?
Will FFC transfers lead to less fiscal discipline? There are two reasons to be optimistic. First, in the last few years the overall deficit of the states has been about half of that of the Centre: in 2014-15 (Budget estimates) for example, the combined fiscal deficit of the states was estimated at 2.4 per cent of GDP compared to 4.1 per cent for the Centre. So, on average, states, if anything, are more disciplined than the Centre.

Based on analysing recent state finances, we find that additional transfers toward the states as a result of the FFC will improve the overall fiscal deficit of the combined central and state governments by about 0.3-0.4 per cent of GDP. Moreover, nearly all the state governments have enacted fiscal responsibility legislations (FRLs), which requires them to observe high standards of fiscal discipline such as keeping the deficit low.

Further, as part of the new Centre-state fiscal relations, for example, under the NITI Aayog, mechanisms for peer assessments and mutual accountability could be created, and incentives could be provided for maintaining fiscal discipline. This is becoming routine practice in many federal structures where sovereignty is shared between the members. The FFC recommendations and the consequences they entail offer an opportune time for instituting such mechanisms.

Conclusions
With the caveats noted earlier, the main conclusions are that the FFC has made far-reaching changes in tax devolution that will move the country toward greater fiscal federalism, conferring more fiscal autonomy on the states. This will be enhanced by the FFC-induced imperative of having to reduce the scale of other central transfers to the states. In other words, states will now have greater autonomy both on the revenue and expenditure fronts.

This, of course, is in addition to the benefits that will accrue from addressing all the governance and incentive problems that have arisen from programmes being dictated and managed by the distant central government rather than by the proximate state governments.

To be sure, there will be transitional challenges, notably how the Centre will meet its multiple objectives given the shrunken fiscal envelope. But there will be offsetting benefits: moving from CAS to FFC transfers will increase the overall progressivity of resource transfers to the states. Another is that overall public finances might actually improve by more than suggested by looking at the central government finances alone.

In sum, it is clear that the far-reaching recommendations of the FFC, along with the creation of the NITI Aayog, will radically alter Centre-state fiscal relations, and further the government’s vision of cooperative and competitive federalism.

The necessary, indeed vital, encompassing of cities and other local bodies within the embrace of this new federalism is the next policy challenge, a change that we would like to see.

More like a flood than a leak

It is akin to an organised industry. The systematic “pilfering” from the Petroleum Ministry’s office in the heart of New Delhi of documents which were then handed over to “consultants” and interested corporate entities for a price, has revealed a frightening nexus. One account says that a night guard would “steal” the documents while a peon would switch off CCTV cameras to facilitate the alleged acts of corporate espionage, some details of which are now in the public domain. In addition to some low-ranking staff members of the Ministry, two “consultants” and representatives of five top business houses have been arrested by the Delhi Police in the case. Budget inputs, minutes of a Cabinet meeting on disinvestment and detailed documents on the petroleum sector, were among the documents that were allegedly stolen by the ring. The brazen manner in which these were pilfered from Shastri Bhavan in Lutyen’s’ Delhi goes to show that government departments can easily be subverted by vested interests for corporate gains.

This rot might well extend to other ministries and departments. While the facts of the present case will have to be established in a court of law, it is unlikely that company representatives were acting in their personal capacity. If it is proved, the top corporate groups who are alleged to have benefited from the documents that they procured through this organised system of espionage will have much to answer for. It is likely that the Delhi Police crackdown on the ring was triggered by the concern expressed by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in October 2014 at how “secret” information made its way to the media. Mr. Doval’s letter spoke of the need for firm action to prevent the media from publishing secret documents that impinged on the country’s national security. The NSA pointed out in his letter, which was published in the media, that leaks often emanated from government departments. While a distinction must be made between this kind of pilferage and documents being leaked to the media in the public interest by whistleblowers, corporate espionage must be dealt with in a strong manner. Public interest journalism and corporate theft of government information cannot be weighed on the same scale. In a statement, the Aam Aadmi Party pointed out that the actual beneficiaries were still to be identified by the police. The party hoped that the culprits “who subverted the system to get undue benefits will be booked and interrogated in custody”. The Modi government must be commended for the actions taken by the Delhi Police. But it will be closely watched, on whether or not this investigation is taken to its logical conclusion. For far too long, the big fish have escaped criminal justice

Education for Differently Abled

Education for Differently Abled

The Scheme of Inclusive Education for Disabled at Secondary Stage (IEDSS) is being implemented by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of School Eduction & Literacy. This Scheme provides assistance for the inclusive education of the disabled children in classes IX-XII. This scheme is now subsumed under Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) from 2013.1)   Inclusive Education for Disabled at Secondary Stage (IEDSS) The Scheme of Inclusive Education for Disabled at Secondary Stage (IEDSS) is being implemented by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of School Eduction & Literacy. This Scheme provides assistance for the inclusive education of the disabled children in classes IX-XII. This scheme is now subsumed under Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) from 2013. Aims To enable all students with disabilities, to pursue further four years of secondary schooling after completing eight years of elementary schooling in an inclusive and enabling environment. Objectives The scheme covers all children studying at the secondary stage in Government, local body and Government-aided schools, with one or more disabilities as defined under the Persons with Disabilities Act (1995) and the National Trust Act (1999) in the class IX to XII, namely blindness, low vision, leprosy cured, hearing impairment, locomotory disabilities, mental retardation, mental illness, autism, and cerebral palsy and may eventually cover speech impairment, learning disabilities, etc. Girls with the disabilities receive special focus to help them gain access to secondary schools, as also to information and guidance for developing their potential. Setting up of Model inclusive schools in every State is envisaged under the scheme. Components ·         Student-oriented components, such as medical and educational assessment, books and stationery, uniforms, transport allowance, reader allowance, stipend for girls, support services, assistive devices, boarding the lodging facility, therapeutic services, teaching learning materials, etc. ·         Other components include appointment of special education teachers, allowances for general teachers for teaching such children, teacher training, orientation of school administrators, establishment of resource room, providing barrier free environment, etc. Implementing Agency The School Education Department of the State Governments/Union Territory (UT) Administrations are the implementing agencies. They may involve NGOs having experience in the field of education of the disabled in the implementation of the scheme. Financial Assistance Central assistance for all items covered in the scheme is on 100 percent basis. The State governments are only required to make provisions for scholarship of Rs. 600/- per disabled child per annum. (2) Scholarship Scheme being implemented by Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities Pre-Matric Scholarship and Post-Matric Scholarship for Students with Disabilities This scheme has been launched in October, 2014. The objectives of the schemes are to provide financial assistance to the parents of students with disabilities for studying in the pre-matric level (class IX and X) and post-matric level (Class XI, XII onwards). The financial assistance includes scholarship, book grant, escort/reader allowance, etc. Number of scholarships to be granted every year is 46,000 for pre-matric level and 16,650 for post-matric level. 50% of the scholarships are reserved for girls. Parental income ceiling is Rs.2.00 lakh per annum for pre-matric and Rs.2.50 lakh per annum for post-matric scholarship. Selection of the beneficiaries under these two scholarship schemes is on the basis of merit after the recommendation of the Governments of State or Union Territories.  These schemes will be implemented on-line basis through a web-portal National e-Scholarship Portal which will be ready in the year 2015-16. The web portal is being prepared by Deptt. of Electronics & Information Technology. Since there is no web-portal during the current year (2014-15), the scheme is being operated off-line through the respective State Governments. From the next year onwards the scheme will be operated through National e-scholarship portal being developed by DEITY. (3) Deendayal Disabled Rehabilitation Scheme (DDRS) Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities is implementing a Scheme, namely, Deendayal Disabled Rehabilitation Scheme (DDRS) under which   grant-in-aid is provided toNon-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)   for their projects relating to rehabilitation of persons with disabilities aimed at enabling persons with disabilities.  There are 18 model projects under the Scheme including programmes for pre-school and early intervention and special education. Up to 90% of the project cost is provided under the DDRS scheme.

Power that pollutes

In the midst of triumphalism from the government aboutauctions of coal mines, an assessment of the performance of India's coal-based power sector by the Centre for Science and Environment comes as a sobering reality check. The plants studied, which account for around half of the country'sthermal power capacity in 2011-12, have scored an abysmal average of 23 per cent on a scale that rates plants following global best practices at 80 per cent. No Indian plant does so, the best scoring around 50 per cent in terms of their energyand environmental performance. As much as 40 per cent of the plants studied score a very low rating of less than 20 per cent. As the quality of Indian coal is poor, the need is to make up the deficit through better technology and performance. But the opposite is the case. The worst offenders appear to get away with their way of working as it is difficult for a power-starved country to close down a plant for polluting too much or being inefficient.

In the fallout of the coal auctions, many senior officials have insisted India plans to massively raise its coal-based power-generating capacity even as the poor quality of its coal, with low calorific and high ash content, is going to go down further with increasing exploitation of known reserves. Coal demand for power is set to nearly double in the 2012-22 period. Right now, a billion tonnes of fly ash already generated remain unutilised. It is difficult to imagine what will happen when there are plans to generate more, but none to reduce the backlog of what is already there on the ground. The increase in generation will also lead to greater water consumption, which, too, is set to double in the same period.

It is imperative to devise a range of integrated policies that will reduce the pressure created on natural resources and minimise the amount of pollution caused, as it results in considerable health costs. For example, the power regulator that sets tariffs and the environment regulator that sets permissible emission levels must work in concert - so that a power producer that spends more on doing a cleaner job not just gets these costs recognised in the tariffs allowed to it, but is also rewarded. The mandated use of large super-critical capacity must be raised, and coal-based power must be used more and more to meet the base load demand (excluding peak demand). The additional power demand for peak periods must increasingly be met by renewable sources like solar and wind power, or by gas-based units that can be started and shut down quickly and are less polluting than coal-based power plants. Most of the additional thermal power-generating capacity will come up in eastern and central India, which are not as economically secure. As the communities around projects do not typically benefit the most from the economic activity, it is at least necessary to reduce the environmental costs that they bear above all.

Waiting for the PM's word on #GM

Agricultural scientists are being driven to frustration, thanks to the government's lingering indecision on the #geneticallymodified (GM) crops technology. They now intend to apprise Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the scientifically validated facts about the GM technology and its potential benefits to let him take a call on the issue. But the requests to this effect conveyed to him through a series of letters sent by groups of scientists from India and abroad, as well as by the prestigious science academies and the Indian Science Congress, have gone unheeded so far.

The latest communication to the PM is signed by the country's 50 topmost farm scientists, most of whom are recipients of coveted national and international awards. Among them are four former and current director-generals of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), M S Swaminathan, R S Paroda, V L Chopra and S Ayyappan, and winners of the World Food Prize (equivalent to the Nobel Prize in agriculture) -Gurdev Khush, S Rajaram and S K Vasal. There are also some 12 Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri awardees.

They have argued that the country has already lost considerable time in bringing this useful technology to the farmers' fields and further delay would be detrimental to agriculture. Apart from private biotechnology companies, public sector research bodies, too, have made significant advances in the development of GM products that can improve farm production and productivity. Unless these are field-tested and put to gainful use, the creative work of the scientists would remain confined to laboratories. They have also emphasised that the state governments' prior approval for conducting confined field trials of GM seeds is unwarranted and should be dispensed with. Such permission is needed, under the national seeds Act, only for allowing commercial cultivation of new seeds, not for their field testing.

This letter, dated February 12, 2015, was preceded by a communication on January 5 from the organisers of a symposium on GM crops at the Indian Science Congress held in Mumbai last month. It had endorsed the advantages of the GM technology. Written by Asis Datta, a well-known biotechnologist and former vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Paroda, chairman of the Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences, this communication also outlined the other recommendations of the symposium regarding the GM technology.

Prior to that, as many as 750 scientists from different countries had sent a joint message to the PM in August 2014 in which they vouched for the biosafety and utility of GM crops. This initiative was led by C S Prakash, professor of crop biotechnology at the Tuskegee University in the US.

To follow it up, Manju Sharma, head of the Allahabad-based National Academy of Sciences, India, and Ayyappan, chief of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, jointly wrote to the PM on this issue. They also sent him a detailed and thoroughly debated status paper on all aspects of the GM technology, brought out by the country's science academies.

The common refrain of these communications is that there is no evidence of any adverse impact of the GM products either on human health or on environment since their inception in the US 35 years ago. They have also pointed out that certain objectives of breeding superior crop strains can be achieved only through GM technology.

Regrettably, the sane and well-founded counsel of the scientific community is being largely disregarded. The government's policies, on the other hand, are being guided - or misguided - by the relatively more vociferous but unsubstantiated propaganda against the GM technology. The scientists are, therefore, hoping that at least the PM, who often talks about putting science, technology and innovation on the top of the national agenda, would one day respond positively to their prudent pleas. Otherwise, the future of the GM technology in India would be in peril.

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