India still needs Russia

India still needs Russia

The kernel of relations between India and Russia (and earlier the USSR) over the past 50 years has been defence cooperation. This resulted from a synergy of political and strategic interests between the two countries, starting in the mid-1960s. It was at this time that the erstwhile Soviet Union had begun to have serious differences with China and India had its own conflict with that same country which had left it devastated. India's defence relationship with the United Kingdom was on the wane following the Indo-Pak War of 1965 in which that country seemed to side with Pakistan while the USSR, confronted by the United States, had to back down in Cuba. India's request for submarines, first to the UK and then to the US, had been declined by those countries, while Pakistan was provided one by the latter. This is the context in which the defence relationship between India and Russia began, and strengthened steadily in the decades that have since elapsed.

This situation has begun to change. The last 15 years have seen increasing closeness between India and the US, flowing from a changed geopolitical environment in which the two countries see a mutuality of interests in the Indo-Pacific theatre. Defence cooperation between them has spurted. Initially, it began with joint exercises between the armed forces of the two countries and their navies in particular. The Malabar series of exercises, as these were termed, have grown in content as well as in participation of forces. This cooperation has, in the last seven years, moved on to supply of military hardware; platforms, primarily aircraft such as the C-130J, the C-17, and the P8I, costing $13 billion in all, have been purchased. More items carrying a price tag of over $2 billion (M77 guns, Chinook and Apache helicopters) are about to be contracted, making for a total of $15 billion or about Rs 1 lakh crore. The US is now our foremost supplier of military equipment.

At the same time, France has become a major player too. It is assisting an Indian shipyard in the construction of Scorpene submarines for the navy and is slated to supply 36 Rafale multi-role aircraft to the air force; it is certain that more of these will be ordered and the Air Chief has hinted as much in a recent interview. Israel has also supplied some sophisticated systems for early detection of aircraft and anti-aircraft missiles; more advanced versions are under joint development. In short, from being an almost monopolistic supplier of military hardware to India, Russia has now been relegated to one of the several who do and the relationship stands in danger of turning insipid.

There are reasons which have occasioned the change. As stated earlier, the developing international political environment is one. At this same time, facing pressure and economic sanctions from the US-led West following its involvement in Ukraine and the Crimea, Russia has been forced to move closer to China - and this is reflected in the type of military hardware it is supplying to that country, such as sophisticated aircraft and missile systems. It has not protested that country's clearly disconcerting acts in the South China Sea. Russia is also now offering military helicopters to Pakistan and supply of other systems, including multi-role aircraft, is being talked about; such supplies would not have been in the realm of possibility a few years earlier. It may be recalled that conventional submarines like the 877 EKM were sold by Russia to China in the late 1990s, a good 10 years after they had been made available to India.

So, where do we go from here? As far as purchases from the US are concerned, the huge investment has not led to a single rupee worth of 'Make in India'; some insignificant offsets being not much to write home about. Similarly, the purchase of Rafales from France at a cost that may reach over Rs 60,000 crore will not create manufacturing capabilities or jobs at home. Producing Scorpene submarines is essentially putting together of imported assemblies without much of technology transfer. The joint venture with Israel will give some value-addition but its extent will be small.

As against this, from the very beginning, cooperation with Russia has led to acquisition of broad spectrum capabilities at home. Starting with manufacture of MiG 21s and their airframes and engines in earlier years to that of the Su-30MKI today, it has been a significant learning curve indigenously - and co-development of the fifth generation fighter aircraft will add to it. Mechanised vehicles like BMPs, T-72 tanks and their modernised versions, and the T-90s are all being built in India with incremental improvements and indigenised content.

The story is even more satisfying in ship building. From the first ship starting in 1980 - the Godavari-class frigate - to the latest commissioned only a week ago - the 7,500-tonne INS Kochi - Russian weapons, sensors and design assistance have helped India acquire increasing competence. In this process, both public and private sectors have acquired strengths which they did not earlier have. INS Arihant, our own nuclear submarine, could not have been built without Russian assistance; the same goes for the vessels that will follow it.

So, in terms of acquiring indigenous capabilities, the gap between what has come from the Russians and what has come from all others put together is huge; in many categories, these technologies are what can be termed "cutting-edge". INS Vikramaditya, the aircraft carrier, and INS Chakra, the nuclear submarine that the navy operates today, have both come from Russia; no other country could or would supply such platforms. It is necessary to recognise these ground realities.

It is in this background that we should look at the defence interface between our two countries. At one level, we should tell the Russians that any military linkages with Pakistan will act to the detriment of the relationship. As far as its growing engagement with China is concerned, where our leverages are more limited, we must stress the negative implications of a bipolar world in which the US and China would be the two major players. We must focus on a strong defence relationship even as we diversify our sources, recognising that the 'Make in India' dream and access to critical military technologies is best possible through the Russian route and with governmental interface. We should seek cooperation in deep-sea mining and in defence-impacting space and nuclear technologies, where Russia's expertise is well known. Finally, we should enhance the scope of joint exercises between the two militaries - in particular, at sea, where the engagement while ongoing, could be further strengthened.

In brief, there is a need for India to take a fresh look at its defence relationship with Russia. Proactive military engagement between the two countries will also contribute towards their mutual goal: a world order that is not a de facto G-2 under the US and China, but a multi-polar one in which both Russia and India will be powers of consequence.

Belarusian writer and journalist ‪#‎SvetlanaAlexievich‬ has won the 2015‪#‎NobelPrize‬ for literature.

Belarusian writer and journalist ‪#‎SvetlanaAlexievich‬ has won the 2015‪#‎NobelPrize‬ for literature.
The prize committee called her writing a monument to courage and suffering in our time.
The 67-year-old author is the 14th woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in its history.
Her best known works in English translation included Voices From Chernobyl, an oral history of the nuclear catastrophe; and Zinky Boys, a collection of first-hand accounts from the Soviet-Afghan war. Alexievich is a political writer who is critical of her home country's government.

SC refers Aadhaar privacy issue to Constitution Bench

SC refers Aadhaar privacy issue to Constitution Bench

The Supreme Court on Wednesday referred to a Constitution Bench the question whether a person can voluntarily shed his right to privacy by enrolling for Aadhaar to easily access government welfare services.

A three-judge Bench led by J. Chelameswar, however did not modify its August 11, 2015, order restricting the use of Aadhaar to only public distribution system (PDS) and LPG connections. Instead, it left the order open for the Constitution Bench to consider it and take a call.

In its August interim order, the apex court had held that the “balance of interest” is better served if obtaining Aadhaar is neither mandatory nor a condition for accessing benefits one is already entitled to.

A flurry of applications had followed from various government bodies, including the Reserve Bank of India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the Pension Regulatory and Development Authority, NGOs and several State governments.

Toeing the Centre's line, they argued in one voice that the Supreme Court order stood in the way of crores of Aadhaar holders, who wanted easy access to other social benefits schemes and services by restricting Aadhar to PDS and LPG schemes.

"Can you speak for 100 crore people? If a person has a problem with using Aadhaar, don't use it. People, who survive on daily wages, people who don't have food to eat need a foolproof mechanism like Aadhaar. But here you are speaking of apprehensions of a few on privacy rights... you are not speaking for the country," Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi asked in court.

The government claimed that a poor starving man would have no second thoughts about shedding his privacy rights to enrol for Aadhaar.

This saw Justice S.A. Bobde, one of the judges on the Bench, retort by asking whether "just because somebody is poor and starving, he should not have his privacy".

Mr. Rohatgi said the Supreme Court cannot shut its doors on 50 crore people suffering because of its interim order confining the use of Aadhaar to PDS and LPG schemes.

All the applications have now been referred to the Constitution Bench for final decision.

As India stays away

Trade is almost never just about trade. Trade has always been about geopolitics. Trade also defines the nature of states. The recently concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), if ratified, could potentially be a milestone in the way trade shapes global politics. Sceptical economists suggest that the economic gains of the TPP are not as dramatic as its proponents suggest. There are other criticisms: In legal matters, it seeks to enhance the power of corporations against that of states. The secrecy with which these agreements are negotiated raises questions over their democratic legitimacy. They eventually have to be ratified. There is a difference between a process that is somewhat participatory and one where democratic publics are handed a fait accompli. But there is no question that the TPP will have huge ramifications. India will ignore its consequences at its own peril.

India has been complacent about the TPP. Various numbers crunched argue that its effects on Indian trade will be relatively small. Projections of effects on trade tend to be sensitive to minor changes in assumptions. This is a debate trade economists can carry out. But looking at this just in terms of contingent numbers is to take a narrow perspective. What is at stake is the terms of the global order itself, and the prospects of India’s integration into the world economy.

The TPP may end up being one of US President Barack Obama’s enduring foreign policy successes. It rests on certain basic truths about power that India has often ignored. Even if you have power, you can enhance it by building effective institutions that lock in countries. American hegemony and effectiveness were not just functions of its raw power, but of its ability to create enduring institutions. Creating institutions requires long-term vision, capacity, power and some normative underpinnings.

Institutions serve the interests of power. But they do much more: They set the rules of the game, even the rules of legitimacy. China is taking tentative steps in thinking institutionally. Faced with the challenge of a rising China, the Americans have quickly moved to create new institutions and structures that will give them greater ability to set the rules. The TPP is a gambit in that movement. In pure realpolitik, it is a win-win: If it is able to successfully set the rules, and China has to adapt to them, it is a win. If China does not, locking in many more economies into the rules you prefer is a good idea. But for institutions to succeed, they have to appear to be more than transactional. You have to focus on the long-term framework and rules, not get bogged down in haggling over the worth of every single transaction. India’s approach to trade, often within our own region, has been so transactional that it can miss the forest for the trees.

The TPP has profound implications for development. It can be debated whether the deep regulatory harmonisation that it requires on a range of things — labour and environmental standards, intellectual property, subsidies to state-owned enterprises, legal systems — is good. But if regulatory harmonisation is increasingly becoming the norm, it will have huge implications for India. The impact of the TPP will have to be measured in terms of its consequences for setting standards. If India is to integrate more into the global economy, what regulatory frameworks will it have to comply with? Can we hope to promote manufacturing without participating in global supply chains? And does that participation require harmonising our standards with global ones? What implications do these treaties have for India’s competitiveness as an investment destination? If countries like Vietnam offer more robust investor protection, better arbitration and dispute-resolution, will we lose our competitive edge?

These questions need to be discussed with greater urgency. But we are not clear on where we want to head in terms of integration with the global economy. India has a big domestic market, and we should leverage its power. But what will be the relationship between leveraging our domestic demand and our orientation to the outside world? There is a trivial anecdote but quite revealing. Prime MinisterNarendra Modi’s visit to Silicon Valley was important and overdue. But when we stand up in front of the world and are proud of the fact that Google will wifi 500 stations in India, you begin to wonder what the Make in India story is about. Wifi-ing stations is not exactly rocket science; dozens of Indian companies could have done it. But if we think we need Google to do it for us, we are projecting a rather curious view of our own capacities. In short, the relationship between our strengths, needs and external engagement has no strategic framework behind it.

India’s development realities straddle many worlds: Parts of Indian capital will want to integrate; parts of rural India may not be ready or may be at great risk from misjudged integration. So both the politics and economics of our orientation to the external world are more complicated. In some areas, like intellectual property rights, India’s independent voice has historically been of great value. We have to think carefully about our development needs. But we also need to be clear about the global strategy that arises from those needs. An important aspect of that strategy is not just what we can get from whom and where: It is about what institutional architecture it is in our interest to promote. But we cannot be an effective voice or build effective coalitions if we are so relatively disengaged from the big architectural transformations happening across the world.

Most countries, including China have used external engagement to prepare for domestic reform. We do the opposite: We hide behind our international disengagement to disguise the incapacities of our own state. Part of our resistance to being ahead of the curve is that we know that external engagement will require major domestic institutional transformation: First turning India itself into a single market and then creating a new kind of state attuned to 21st century realities. Our exceptionalism often provides a cloak for not making these changes.

We have to think of what the TPP means for the Indian state, situated at the cross currents of global power and global capitalism. India describes itself as a “leading power”. But through its diffidence, one hopes it does not become a “misleading power”.

Historic Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal

Historic Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal
Twelve Pacific Rim countries on Monday reached the most ambitious trade pact in a generation, aiming to liberalize commerce in 40 percent of the world’s economy in a deal that faces skepticism from US lawmakers.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact struck in Atlanta after marathon talks could reshape industries, change the cost of products from cheese to cancer treatments and have repercussions for drug companies and automakers.
Tired negotiators worked round the clock over the weekend to settle tough issues such as monopoly rights for new biotech drugs. New Zealand’s demand for greater access for its dairy exports was only settled at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT) on Monday.
If approved, the pact would cut trade barriers and set common standards from Vietnam to Canada. It would also furnish a legacy-shaping victory for U.S. President Barack Obama, who will promote the agreement on Tuesday in remarks to business leaders in Washington.
The Obama administration hopes the pact will help the United States increase its influence in East Asia and help counter the rise of China, which is not one of the TPP nations.
Lawmakers in the United States and other TPP countries must approve the deal. Five years in the making, it would reduce or eliminate tariffs on almost 18,000 categories of goods.
Initial reaction from U.S. Congress members, including Democrats and Republicans, ranged from cautious to skeptical.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, warned the pact would cost jobs and hurt consumers. “In the Senate, I will do all that I can to defeat the TPP agreement,” he tweeted.
Many of Obama’s Democrats, as well as labor groups, fear the TPP will cost manufacturing jobs and weaken environmental laws, while some Republicans oppose provisions to block tobacco companies from suing governments over anti-smoking measures.
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who heads the Senate Finance Committee, was wary. “I am afraid this deal appears to fall woefully short,” said Hatch, who had urged the administration to hold the line on intellectual property protections, including for drugs.
U.S. lawmakers can approve the deal or vote it down, but not amend it.
CURRENCY, DRUGS, DAIRY, AUTO POLICIES
Ministers said the agreement would include a forum for finance ministers from participating countries to discuss currency policy principles. This takes into account, in part, concerns among U.S. manufacturers and critics who suggest Japan has driven the yen lower to benefit its car exporters and other companies.
But Democratic Representative Debbie Dingell from Michigan, home of the U.S. auto industry, said currency has not been fully dealt with. “Nothing that we have heard indicates negotiators sufficiently addressed these issues,” she said.
The United States and Australia negotiated a compromise on the minimum period of protection to the rights for data used to make biologic drugs. Companies such as Pfizer Inc, Roche Group’s Genentech and Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical could be affected.
The agreed terms fell short of what the United States had sought. Under the deal, countries would give drugmakers at least five years’ exclusive access to clinical data used to win approval for new drugs. An additional period of regulatory review would likely mean drug companies would have an effective monopoly for about eight years before facing lower-cost, generic competition.
Politically charged dairy farming issues were addressed in the final hours of talks. New Zealand, home to the world’s biggest dairy exporter, Fonterra, wanted increased access to U.S., Canadian and Japanese markets.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said the deal would cut tariffs on 93 percent of New Zealand’s exports to the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico and Peru. “We’re disappointed there wasn’t agreement to eliminate all dairy tariffs but overall it’s a very good deal for New Zealand,” Key said.
The United States, Mexico, Canada and Japan agreed to auto trade rules on how much of a vehicle must be made within the TPP region to qualify for duty-free status.
The TPP would give Japan’s automakers, led by Toyota Motor Corp, a freer hand to buy parts from Asia for vehicles sold in the United States, but sets 25-30 year phase-out periods for U.S. tariffs on Japanese cars and light trucks.
The deal between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam also sets minimum standards on issues ranging from workers’ rights to environmental protection.
Trade ministers said the TPP would in future be open to other countries, including potentially China.
“There is a real opportunity for China to be a part of this,” Malaysian Trade Minister Mustapa Mohamed said.
Though Obama painted the deal in part as a way of stopping China from writing the rules of the global economy, China’s Ministry of Commerce broadly welcomed the agreement in the hope it would “promote and make common contributions to Asia-Pacific trade, investment and economic development”.


Should India be worried about Trans-Pacific Partnership?
Overall, the pact’s major impact on India would be through standards, or non-tariff measures, according to experts
A group of 12 Pacific rim nations led by the US on Monday hammered out the largest mega regional trade agreement which is expected to set higher standards for goods and services.
Although the deal aims at sidestepping China in setting rules of international trade, it is also expected to impact India.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade agreement under negotiation among 12 nations: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam, which comprise 40% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).
The other two large regional trade agreements being negotiated are the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and the European Union, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and its four free-trade partners, including China and India.
In addition to greater market access for goods and services, the areas of negotiations covered by TPP include intellectual property rights, foreign investment, competition policy, environment, labour, state-owned enterprises, e-commerce, competitiveness and supply chains, government procurement, technical barriers to trade, transparency in healthcare technology and pharmaceuticals, and regulatory coherence.
Most experts, however, say that overall, a much larger impact of TPP would be through standards or non-tariff measures. Harsha Vardhana Singh, former deputy director general of the World Trade Organization, in a discussion paper on TPP last year, said the inclusion of two of the largest economic markets (the US and Japan) in this group implies these norms will effectively become global standards.
“In this situation, to adequately benefit from international markets, other countries such as India will have to improve their capacities both for developing policies and the capabilities of their producers to upgrade standards in line with the higher requirements. Some other countries have already begun to do so,” he added.
Speaking at an event in April, Sujata Mehta, economic relations secretary in the foreign ministry, had said that agreements like TPP and TTIP will have huge implications for India.
“From an Indian perspective, we would hope that the result would not be states accepting restrictions through trade instrumentality which they otherwise would not be willing to accept in the relevant forum or relevant discipline,” she said. “In other words, trade should not be an arena for settlement of debates on other issues which are not strictly related to trade.”
“They may endanger food safety, they may curb access to medicines by putting constraints on the pharmaceuticals sector and eventually may have an impact on sovereign issues. The net outcome will be blurring the local, domestic, regional and global,” she added.
The big regional trade deals are expected to allow foreign investors to have their grievances against governments arbitrated by dispute-specific panels under the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism clause, she said. “What impact it would have on other investment promotion agreements is a matter of grey area,” she said.
There are different estimates on the material impact on India not being part of the TPP.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) in a report released in September said that if China and the rest of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum join a second stage of the TPP that continues to exclude India, India’s annual export losses will approach $50 billion. However, many analysts claim such projections are exaggerated.
Quoting a study by the East-Centre, Abhijit Das, professor at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, said trade diversion as a result of India not joining the TPP will not be more than $4-5 billion over 10 years. “India is not in a position to undertake obligations finalized under TPP with respect to intellectual property rights such as evergreening of patents,” he added.
Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance secretary general D.G. Shah said the branded medicines industry will be a major beneficiary of the trade pact, while the generic drugs industry in India will suffer. “It (branded medicines industry) will be able to improve its price realization in the low-priced markets. It will be able to delay generic competition in all markets, including the US and the EU. The generics decline will be discernible from the end of 2017. The full-blown impact of these mega trade deals will be felt by 2020,” he added.
D.K. Nair, secretary general of the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry, said the TPP will adversely impact the textiles industry because of the yarn forward provision. The yarn forward rule requires clothing to be made from yarn and fabric manufactured in one of the free trade partners to qualify for duty-free treatment under the trade pact. “At present, we export yarn and fabric to Vietnam which then makes the textiles and exports to countries like the US. Now, because of the yarn forward rule, they will be under pressure to develop local production,” he added.
While Vietnam will have zero-duty access to the US market for textiles, Indian players will have to pay 14-32% duties, which will make them uncompetitive, Nair said. “We are in favour of India joining TPP. We should also fasttrack the RCEP negotiations so that the textiles industry can have some advantages in the Asian region,” he added.
Lobby group Confederation of Indian Industry in a statement on 1 September said India should join the Apec forum, which accounts for nearly 60% of global GDP. This, it said, would provide a pathway for greater integration into the region’s economy.

India’s credible offer on climate change

India’s credible offer on climate change
India has sent a strong signal by announcing efforts to curb climate change
ndia has done well to send a strong signal that it will actively join global efforts to contain climate change despite its other development goals that require an increase in energy use.
In its voluntary commitment submitted ahead of the international negotiations on climate change in Paris, India has said it will, by 2030, seek to cut the emissions intensity of its gross domestic product by around a third, increase the share of non-fossil fuel based installed electricity capacity to 40% and create an additional carbon sink to absorb 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by increasing forest cover.
Since the current share of the non-fossil fuel electricity capacity is already 30%, the target of 40% appears very much achievable. The more ambitious, and perhaps unrealistic, goals had been announced soon after Narendra Modi came to power—to reach 100 gigawatts (GW) of solar power and 60GW of wind power by 2022. Two facts will put these targets in perspective. One, India’s current solar and wind installed capacity are about 4GW and 24GW, respectively. Two, Germany, the world leader in solar power, has a much more subdued goal—it aims to achieve 66GW of solar power by 2030.
Such aggressive framing of targets helps in a couple of ways. One, they help assert India’s seriousness in addressing a global crisis which it has done little to bring about. Second, such high targets are a clear signaling instrument to attract firms which can invest in India’s renewable energy. India will need the partnership, finance and technology of the private sector if it has to reach anywhere close to its declared targets. Global giants like SoftBank and Foxconn have come together with Bharti Enterprises to invest as much as $20 billion in solar projects in India. Many global green energy firms want to make hay while the sun shines in India, quite literally. All such enthusiasm notwithstanding, the targets are a tad too high to be met on the back of public subsidy in the absence of a clear market-based model.
The more important question is whether India should commit itself to such high targets. The burden of fighting climate change should primarily fall on developed countries not just because they are responsible for it in first place but also because they are equipped with the wherewithal—the finance and technology—to deal with the problem much more adequately. India has therefore, justifiably, insisted on the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” and transfer of capital and technology to meet its goal. Even holding India to the standards of China’s commitments is unfair. But pressure is invariably put on India immediately after China—the world’s biggest polluter—announces any significant domestic milestone. With China’s announcements, which have been widely appreciated, its emissions intensity will exceed India’s by about two-thirds in 2030. It is clear that India’s peak emissions intensity will never be close to what China or developed countries have been culpable of.
All the heat and fury of target-setting notwithstanding, little can be achieved without a coherent set of policy and financial instruments. China has announced a clear policy instrument in the form of cap-and-trade to achieve its emissions target. On the other hand, India has a potpourri of regulatory and fiscal measures with different government departments accountable for them. The hike in fuel taxes in the expedient environment of low crude oil prices has been sold as carbon tax. With little available out of the Green Climate Fund, providing subsidies for investment in renewables, in the long term, is impractical, inept and ill-advised.
The sum total of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions by all the countries is, by all accounts, unlikely to keep the global temperatures below the targeted 2 degree Celsius rise. It could be far worse if China and developed nations fail to meet their share of obligations—not an unlikely prospect. This would require the international community to frame a legally binding arrangement in Paris, and India should insist on an appropriate differentiated accountability mechanism for the same. Otherwise, with more than 1,200 islands, a coastline of more than 7,000km, one of the world’s most disaster-prone landscape and two-thirds of the population dependent on agriculture fed by erratic monsoons, India will be left vulnerable to recklessness, followed by inaction, of richer countries.

The 2015 ‪#‎NobelPrize‬ in Chemistry has been awarded to Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for discoveries in DNA repair.

इस वर्ष रसायन शास्त्र का नोबेल पुरस्कार तीन वैज्ञानिकों - टॉमस लिंडल, पॉल मॉडरिश और अज़ीज सैंकर को दिया जाएगा।
The 2015 ‪#‎NobelPrize‬ in Chemistry has been awarded to Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for discoveries in DNA repair.
Their work uncovered the mechanisms used by cells to repair damaged DNA - a fundamental process in living cells.

Nobel Committee said today in Stockholm, Sweden that the recipients had explained the processes at the molecular level that guard the integrity of our genomes.
The prize money of eight million Swedish kronor will be shared among the winners
The Nobel was awarded “for mechanistic studies of DNA repair”.
Mr. Lindahl is from the Francis Crick Institute. "He demonstrated that DNA decays at a rate that ought to have made the development of life on Earth impossible. This insight led him to discover a molecular machinery, base excision repair, which constantly counteracts the collapse of our DNA," said the Nobel Institute in a statement. Mr. Lindahl is also the 29th Nobel Laureate born in Sweden.
Mr. Modrich is from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine. "He demonstrated how the cell corrects errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division. This mechanism, mismatch repair, reduces the error frequency during DNA replication by about a thousandfold. Congenital defects in mismatch repair are known, for example, to cause a hereditary variant of colon cancer," added the release.
Mr. Sancar is from the University of North Carolina. "He has mapped nucleotide excision repair, the mechanism that cells use to repair UV damage to DNA. People born with defects in this repair sstem will develop skin cancer if they are exposed to sunlight. The cell also utilises nucleotide excision repair to correct defects caused by mutagenic substances, among other things," said the release.
"Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments," said the press release.
The winners will share the 8 million Swedish kronor (about $960,000) prize money. Each winner will also get a diploma and a gold medal at the annual award ceremony on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of prize founder Alfred Nobel.
This year’s medicine prize went to scientists from Japan, the U.S. and China who discovered drugs to fight malaria and other tropical diseases. Japanese and Canadian scientists won the physics prize for discovering that tiny particles called neutrinos have mass.
The Nobel announcements continue with literature on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics award on Monday.