The technology that protects rocket launch vehicles from high-temperature fire could protect the thatched roofs and even prevent water seepage in concrete buildings.

The technology that protects rocket launch vehicles from high-temperature fire could protect the thatched roofs and even prevent water seepage in concrete buildings.

The scientists of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram, have showcased the ceramic-polymer hybrid (CASPOL), a spin-off product that could protect public transport systems and poor men residing in thatched homes from fire accidents. Technology transfer is yet to be concluded. Caspol is an indigenously developed, easy-to-use flame-proof coating, from the VSSC stable. The water-based ready-to-coat product was originally developed to protect the rockets from high temperature and fire to which they are exposed during the initial moments of launch.

“Huge exhaust plumes of high temperature engulf a rocket when it lifts off from the launch pad. The protective pads that cover the rockets are coated with Caspol to save them from fire and high temperature to which they are exposed to,” explained K. Sivan, director of VSSC.

According to Dr. Sivan, Caspol can withstand up to 800 degree Celsius. Seats in automobiles, public transport system and seat cushions of railway coaches can be made fireproof when Caspol is applied. The ceramic-polymer hybrid will affect the cushioning characteristics significantly of seats once it is applied, the scientists vouched.

Besides its ability to protect against fire and high temperature, Caspol can also make surfaces waterproof. When applied over the concrete surface of buildings, fill up the micro cracks and holes on concrete to prevent water from seeping in. When applied over concrete surface of buildings, the high emissivity of the product reduces the temperature inside the building by at least 5 to 6 degree Celsius, the researchers stressed.

It can be used on a variety of substrates such as masonry surfaces, textiles, paper, thatched leaves and wood to advanced materials like polyurethane and phenolic-based thermal insulation foam pads, VSSC says.

The centre has described the product as one which is eco-friendly as it is free of toxic materials. It could be applied either by brushing or spraying on the desired surface. The economic, water-based formulation with self-extinguishing properties could cure in room temperature and has good adhesion and water repellent characteristics, according to researchers.

“The materials coated with Caspol will be self-extinguished within four seconds after removal of flame. It can adhere well with the substrate surface both in dry condition and after exposing the coated foams to water. Foam materials can be impregnated with Caspol by dip coating,” notes the centre.

India continues to be Polio-Free

India continues to be Polio-Free

Special Immunization Drive to be taken up in Hyderabad and Rangareddy Districts

India continues to be polio free as the country has eradicated wild polio virus and the last case was seen on 13th January, 2011, and it is more than 5 years that no wild polio virus has been detected.

There have been some media reports that polio virus (P2 strain) has resurfaced in India for the first time in 5 years. However, it is not true as detected polio virus strain is vaccine derived poliovirus (VDPV) in a sewage sample collected near the Secunderabad railway station. However, no children have been found to be affected by the detected VDPV isolate in the nearby areas. Last case of Wild Polio Virus Type 2 in country was reported 17 years back in 1999. The detection of vaccine derived polio virus (VPDV) does not change the polio free status. It only indicates the robustness of the surveillance system and willingness of the country to detect any kind of polio virus even from the environment (sewage). Vaccine derived polioviruses are rare strain of the polioviruses that have genetically mutated from the strain contained in the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV)

A rapid surveillance review of the area revealed that the population immunity against polio type 2 is high as trivalent oral polio vaccine (tOPV) was in use in the state until 24th April, 2016 and two mass vaccination campaign were conducted in January and February, 2016. As per recent sample survey in the area, 94% children were found to have received at least 3 doses of OPV. Therefore, chances of its transmission in concerned area is unlikely.

However, as a precautionary measure against Polio, a special immunization drive is being held, covering high-risk areas of Hyderabad and Rangareddy districts, starting from 20th June, where an estimated 300,000 children will be protected against polio using Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV). The special immunisation campaign will ensure all vulnerable children living in high-risk areas are given protection against polio.

As part of the special campaign being organised now, children between the age group of six weeks to three years will be given an additional dose of the injectable polio vaccine (IPV). Vaccination booths will be set up in the areas being covered in these campaigns. However, there will be no door-to-door vaccination campaign. Parents of children living in these areas will be encouraged to ensure that their children get the IPV dose from the nearest vaccination booth which will provide additional protection against all types of polio.

The special campaign covering Hyderabad and Rangareddy districts is yet another evidence of India’s strong commitment to remain polio-free. The last case due to wild poliovirus in India was detected on 13 January 2011 and the country was certified polio-free by WHO in March 2014. The polio-free certification pertains to the absence of wild poliovirus and thus country remains polio-free.

India continues to maintain a highly sensitive surveillance system for polio. All cases of paralysis with sudden onset in children up to 15 years (which is called Acute Flaccid Paralysis or AFP) are picked up by the polio surveillance network. Each of these cases is followed up and their stool samples tested for poliovirus in WHO accredited laboratories. In addition, sewage samples are collected from over 30 sites spread across the country for poliovirus detection at regular intervals.

Between Jan 2015 and May 2016, a total of 14 sewage samples collected from different parts of the country tested positive for VDPVs. All of these have been responded to urgently and appropriately with polio vaccination campaigns. None of these VDPVs detected in the sewage infected any children, so far.

The response by the health authorities to the VDPV in Hyderabad is in accordance with World Health Organization protocols to mitigate any risk of spreading of the virus. WHO, UNICEF and Rotary are supporting Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in rolling out the polio campaign.

Strong measures have been put in place in India to mitigate the risk of an importation and spread of poliovirus from countries with continued circulation of poliovirus. Country has done two nationwide polio campaigns this year. Polio vaccination is being carried out at international borders and is a must for people travelling to polio affected countries.

The polio eradication programme in India continues to protect children from the crippling disease by conducting two nationwide mass polio vaccination campaigns and two to three sub-national campaigns each year. Intensive efforts are also being undertaken in India to improve routine immunization coverage that involves administering polio vaccines, in addition to other vaccines, to infants under the Universal Immunization Programme (UIP). 

India records 10 year low in public private investments: World Bank

India records 10 year low in public private investments: World Bank
According to World Bank's latest annual report, global investment in 2015 decreased to $111.6 billion
India recorded a 10-year low in investments in public-private sector in the year 2015, adding to contraction that pulled down the global investment to below its five-year average of $124.1 billion, the World Bank has said.

In its latest annual report, the World Bank said global investment in 2015 decreased to $111.6 billion, below the five-year average of $124.1 billion from 2010 to 2014.

"This contraction resulted from lower investments in Brazil, China and India," the Bank said yesterday in its latest report on Private Participation in Infrastructure Database.

"India recorded a 10-year low in investments, as only six road projects - usually a rich source of PPI over the past 10 years - reached financial closure," the World Bank said.

In South Asia, there were 43 deals for a combined total of $5.6 billion that closed in the region, representing 5% of the total investment - a decline of 82% from the five-year average of $30.5 billion.

"Consistent with historical trends, India generated a majority of the projects (36 out of 43); Pakistan had four; Nepal, two; and Bangladesh, one. Notably, 26 of the 36 projects in India, amounting to $2.0 billion, targeted renewable energy, while all of Pakistan's projects, totalling $749.9 million, solely focussed on renewables," the Bank said.

Solar energy investments climbed 72% higher than the last five year average, while renewables attracted nearly two-thirds of investments with private participation, it said.

Global private infrastructure investment in 2015 mostly remained steady at $111.6 billion when compared to the previous year, it said.

Among the most notable, commitments in Brazil were only $4.5 billion in 2015 - a sharp decline from $47.2 billion the previous year, reversing a trend of growing investments, it said.

"Investment in China also fell significantly below its 5-, 10-, and 20-year averages, as the average transaction dropped to $63 million," it said.

By number of projects, however, these three historical heavyweights took the lead, with 131 of the 300 global deals, or 44% of all projects.

Still their combined investment of $11.6 billion only made up 10% of the global total, compared to 54% in 2014, which was also the annual average over the previous four years.

According to the World Bank, global private infrastructure investment in 2015, though on par with the previous year, was 10% lower than the previous five-year average because of dwindling commitments in China, Brazil, and India.

"The data finds that investments in other emerging economies increased rapidly to $99.9 billion, representing a 92% year-over-year increase," said Clive Harris, Practice Manager, Public-Private Partnerships, World Bank Group.

What is the real problem in Punjab?

The issue is not the extent of drug problem in Punjab but why the youth there are increasingly being drawn to drugs

Punjab has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. The state, once known as the pioneer of the green revolution, has been under the spotlight because of its drug problem. There may be differences in the estimates of the youth population addicted to drugs, but most agree that it is very high and the situation has reached a crisis point. The issue is, therefore, not the extent of drug addiction; it is why the youth in Punjab are increasingly being drawn to drugs.

While there have been cultural and social explanations for this tendency, the fact remains that successive governments have not only ignored the issue, but may have actively or passively contributed to this menace. This issue is not just an issue of governance failure; it is a symptom of a larger problem in rural areas. The real problem is unemployment or lack of alternative jobs for the majority of youth in Punjab.

The state, once known for its industrious and entrepreneurial farmers, was among the first success stories of the green revolution in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Since the 1980s, the state has consistently been among states with the highest per capita incomes. But the last two decades have also seen Punjab lag behind most states in agricultural growth rates. Not only have the yield and productivity of major crops stagnated, declining incomes in agriculture due to falling land holdings and a deteriorating natural resource situation have meant that few among the youth seem interested in pursuing agriculture. The deterioration of soil quality and declining water tables due to unhindered ground water extraction have led to a rise in the cost of cultivation. With mechanization almost reaching a saturation point, labour use in agriculture has declined to the detriment of workers hitherto employed in agriculture. The worsening of the agrarian situation in Punjab has also been evident from farmer suicides, still a small number but a phenomenon unheard of prior to the 1990s.

Punjab is a classic case of a state failing to diversify into the non-farm sector despite high agricultural productivity. This was partly a result of the failure of local industries in Ludhiana and elsewhere to cope with an open and liberalized Indian economy, but was aided and abetted by the failure of state governments to create and support such industries. The excessive focus on agriculture has also been evident in the state government spending more on subsidizing farming through free electricity and other incentives rather than encouraging employment diversification.

With migration abroad slowing in recent years and lack of alternative employment opportunities within the state, the problem of employment has only gone from bad to worse. There are now enough anecdotal as well as field studies documenting the crisis in Punjab’s agriculture and the associated employment problem among the youth. The process of ‘depeasantization’ has led to a situation where the farming community is increasingly moving out of agriculture and yet, only a few among agricultural labourers have managed to find some manual work. A majority of the cultivating castes and groups are still averse to manual labour and have not been able to find work in the non-farm sector.

But this problem is not unique to Punjab. While it has led to a perverse outcome in Punjab, the fact remains that a majority of the cultivating caste groups are now finding it difficult to retain the young in agriculture. The changing economic situation and the lack of employment opportunities have led to situations of unrest, for instance, in the form of campaigns for reservation in government jobs. The recent agitations demanding government job quotas by Jats in Haryana, Patels in Gujarat and Marathas in Maharashtra are a manifestation of the worsening employment and income opportunities in agriculture. Unfortunately, this has taken place in states that are among those with the highest per capita incomes, but also those that experienced a rapid transformation of their agriculture. Most of these states have failed to create enough employment opportunities in the non-farm sector despite acceleration of their economic growth rates.

This is a larger problem that the economy has been facing for the last two decades. The fact that the economy created only 2 million jobs per year between 2004-05 and 2011-12, a phase of high growth, has already been noted. This was clearly insufficient to take care of the new entrants to the labour market, combined with a 35 million strong labour force moving out of agriculture. Employment creation will remain the single biggest challenge for the economy. Even by a conservative estimate, the National Skill Development Corporation expects at least 25 million workers to move away from agriculture in the next seven years. Along with new entrants to the labour force to the tune of 85 million workers, the minimum that the government needs to do is create 20 million jobs per year. As against this, in the last two years, the economy has created only 700,000 jobs, almost 50% of which were in textiles alone.

The problem of drug addiction in Punjab is not an issue of law and order. While it certainly has been aided and abetted by the governments of the day, the issue is an economic one. This issue needs a wider debate on a strategy to gainfully employ both the youth who are moving out of agriculture and the new entrants to the labour force.

The menace of drug addiction is only a symptom of the larger malaise afflicting our economic policy which has failed to create adequate employment opportunities. Such incidents of unrest are now finding an echo in other states as well and it is high time the central government came out with a strategy to tackle the unemployment problem. Unfortunately, there is hardly a recognition of the problem, leave alone a strategy to deal with it.

Katchatheevu: The big issue over a small island

Katchatheevu, an uninhabited islet in the Palk Strait, is the centre of a long-standing dispute between the fishermen of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka

During her meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa pushed for the retrieval of Katchatheevu, the centre of a long-standing dispute between the fishermen of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.

On 26 August 2014, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, representing the Centre, told a Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha: “If you want Katchatheevu back, you will have to go to war to get it back.”

What is Katchatheevu?

According to Sri Lanka’s ministry of external affairs website, Katchatheevu is an uninhabited islet in the Palk Strait that was formed due to volcanic eruption in the 14th century. The 285-acre land, strategically important for fishing activities, was owned by the Raja of Ramnad (Ramanathapuram) and later became part of the Madras Presidency after the delimitation of Gulf of Mannar and Palk Strait during British rule between the then governments of Madras and Ceylon. In 1921, both Sri Lanka and India claimed this piece of land for fishing and the dispute remained unsettled.

Indira Gandhi’s Emergency

In 1974, Katchatheevu was ceded to Sri Lanka by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi through the Indo-Sri Lankan Maritime agreement to settle the maritime boundary in the Palk Strait with her counterpart Srimavo Bandaranaike. This forced M. Karunanidhi, then chief minister of Tamil Nadu, to write to Indira Gandhi on how the land was historically a part of Ramnad’s zamindari.

Though ceded to Sri Lanka, the agreement, which did not specify fishing rights, allowed Indian fishermen to fish around Katchatheevu and to dry their nets on the island.

During Emergency, with the Tamil Nadu government dismissed in 1976, without the consultation of the state assembly and Parliament, another agreement was finalized to determine the boundary in the Gulf of Mannar and Bay of Bengal and restricted both the countries’ fishermen from fishing in the other’s waters.

“With the establishment of the Exclusive Economic Zones by the two countries, India and Sri Lanka will exercise sovereign rights over the living and non-living resources of their respective zones. The fishing vessels and fishermen of India shall not engage in fishing in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the Exclusive Economic Zone of Sri Lanka, nor shall the fishing vessels and fishermen of Sri Lanka engage in fishing in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the Exclusive Economic Zone of India, without the express permission of Sri Lanka or India, as the case may be,” said the agreement.

Sri Lanka Civil War

In 1991, the Tamil Nadu Assembly adopted a resolution demanding the retrieval of Katchatheevu. During the civil war and with northern borders under the control of the LTTE (expand), the fishermen had easy access into the fishing grounds. Later in 2008, Jayalalithaa moved the Supreme Court to nullify the Katchatheevu agreements of 1974 and 1976.

As the war between Sri Lankan government and LTTE reached an end by 2009, the Sri Lankan government strengthened its security at maritime boundaries. When Indian fishermen crossed boundaries, arrests followed and talks for retrieval of Katchatheevu followed suit in Tamil Nadu. The Sri Lankan government claims that depletion of marine resources on its waters has affected the livelihood of fishermen.

Recent moves

2014: The Centre informed the Madras high court responding to a PIL that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty over Katchatheevu is a settled matter and fishermen from India do not enjoy any right to engage in fishing activities in the region.

2015: Sri Lanka’s prime minister Ranil Wickramasinghe stoked a controversy in an interview for Chennai-based Tamil Channel (Thanthi TV), suggesting that Indian fishermen may be shot if they intrude into Sri Lankan waters.

“Why are you coming into our waters? Why are you fishing in our waters...? Stay on the Indian side... There will be no issue... No one will shoot anyone else... You stay on the Indian side, let our fishermen stay on the Sri Lankan side... Otherwise don’t make accusations of Human rights violation by the Navy. You came in there.”

The Church

Every February, thousands of devotees from Rameshwaram visit the 110-year-old St Anthony’s Church on Katchatheevu island built by a Tamil Catholic from Tamil Nadu, Srinivasa Padaiyachi.

Last month, reports claimed that the church was going to be demolished by the Sri Lankan government, but it was clarified later by the external affairs ministry spokesperson, Vikas Swarup, that nothing of the sort would happen.

“It has been reported that the existing church will be retained unchanged and the second shrine is proposed to be constructed approximately 100 metres away from the present shrine,” he said, adding that the Sri Lankan navy has also dismissed media reports that it was planning a naval facility at Katchatheevu.

What is a vaccine-derived polio virus and why is it a threat?

In a vaccine-derived polio virus (VDPV), the source of the virus is the vaccine itself. Here are five things to know about VDPV and the concerns around it

The Telangana government on Tuesday called for a special polio immunisation drive in Hyderabad, as part of preventive action after a surveillance study conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) found traces of vaccine-derived polio virus in the city’s Amberpet nala, a major sewage canal in the city.

Here are five things to know about vaccine-derived polio virus (VDPV) and the concerns around it.

What is polio?

Poliomyelitis or polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It invades the nervous system, and causes paralysis, medically known as an acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), which is characterised by sudden muscle weakness and pain in the limbs. The disease is transmitted from person to person, mainly through the faecal-oral route, affecting children under five years of age. In the absence of wild polio virus (WPV) transmission, India was declared a polio-free country in March 2014, after years of relentless vaccination.

What does the Hyderabad study reveal?

For maintenance of polio eradication in polio-free countries, WHO conducts surveillance for cases of AFP and collects samples of sewage water to find any traces of polio viruses. In one such study in Hyderabad in April, out of 30 samples collected, one sample from Amberpet nala contained traces of type-2 VDPV. Lab tests have revealed that the virus has passed through human body and has undergone mutation or nucleotide change. Similar virus strains were detected in Delhi, Bihar and Gujarat. The Telangana government asked people not to panic, and called for a one-week special polio immunisation drive in Hyderabad, starting from 20 June, to vaccinate around 300,000 children.

What is a vaccine-derived polio virus?

In VDPV, the source of the virus is the vaccine itself. The oral polio vaccine called polio drops, which India deployed extensively to fight against polio, contain a live, attenuated or weakened polio virus. When a child is vaccinated, the weakened vaccine-virus replicates in the intestine and enters into the bloodstream, triggering a protective immune response in the child. Like wild poliovirus, the child excretes the vaccine-virus for a period of six to eight weeks. Importantly, as it is excreted, some of the vaccine-virus may no longer be the same as the original vaccine-virus as it gets genetically altered during replication. In areas of inadequate sanitation, this excreted vaccine-virus can quickly spread in the community and infect children with low immunity.

Why is VDPV a matter of concern?

The cases of paralysis due to VDPV are rare as the virus has to circulate for a long time in the community of under-immunised population before it can infect and cause paralysis in someone. Vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) occurs in an estimated 1 in 2.7 million children receiving their first dose of oral polio vaccine, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private partnership of national governments and WHO.

The aspect that is a matter of concern is that India reports high number of non-polio—AFP or paralytic—cases in children who are less than 15 years of age, which the study links to the VDPV. According to WHO, more than 50,000 AFP cases are investigated in India every year as a part of its surveillance system.

OPV vs IPV

The detection of VDPV in Hyderabad and other places has intensified the discussion on replacing oral polio vaccine (OPV) with inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). IPV given through an injection contains inactivated virus, considered to be safer than OPV that contains live virus. WHO has been advocating IPV over OPV as part of its global endgame strategy on polio eradication. India introduced IPV in the mandatory immunization programme on 1 December in six states. For the time being, IPV will be given in addition to the existing OPV. OPV has its strong advocates who believe that the vaccine is best suited for countries such as India due to its low cost, high efficacy and ease of administering, and argue that the safety concerns are overstated compared to the benefits of the vaccine.

India’s strategic gambit in Vietnam New Delhi’s abiding interest in Vietnam is focused on defence and is meant as a pressure point against China

India’s strategic gambit in Vietnam

New Delhi’s abiding interest in Vietnam is focused on defence and is meant as a pressure point against China

India under the Narendra Modi government has made no secret of its desire to play a more assertive role in the larger Indo-Pacific. As Modi himself underlined in his address to the joint session of the US Congress last week: “A strong India-US partnership can anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa and from Indian Ocean to the Pacific. It can also help ensure security of the sea lanes of commerce and freedom of navigation on seas.” Therefore, it should not be surprising that India seems now ready to sell the supersonic BrahMos missile, made by an India-Russian joint venture, to Vietnam after dilly-dallying on Hanoi’s request for this sale since 2011. Though India’s ties with Vietnam have been growing in the past few years, this sale was seen as a step too far that would antagonize China.

But now, the Modi government has directed BrahMos Aerospace, which produces the missiles, to expedite this sale to Vietnam along with four other countries—Indonesia, South Africa, Chile and Brazil. India is already providing a concessional line of credit of $100 million for the procurement of defence equipment and in a first of its kind has sold four offshore patrol vessels to Vietnam, which are likely to be used to strengthen the nation’s defences in the energy-rich South China Sea. India’s latest move comes at a time when the US has also lifted its longstanding ban on sales of lethal military equipment to Vietnam. New Delhi’s abiding interest in Vietnam too remains in the defence realm. It wants to build relations with states like Vietnam that can act as pressure points against China. With this in mind, it has been helping Hanoi beef up its naval and air capabilities.

The two nations also have stakes in ensuring sea-lane security, as well as shared concerns about Chinese access to the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Hence, India is helping Vietnam build capacity for repair and maintenance of its defence platforms. At the same time, the armed forces of the two states have started cooperation in areas like IT and English-language training of Vietnamese army personnel. The two countries potentially share a common friend—the US. New Delhi has steadily built relations with Washington in the past decade, while Vietnam has been courting America as the South China Sea becomes a flashpoint. As these three countries ponder how to manage China’s rise, they have been drawn closer together.

It is instructive that India entered the fraught region of the South China Sea via Vietnam. India signed an agreement with Vietnam in October 2011 to expand and promote oil exploration in the South China Sea and then reconfirmed its decision to carry on despite the Chinese challenge to the legality of the Indian presence. Beijing told New Delhi that its permission was needed for India’s state-owned oil and gas firm to explore for energy in the two Vietnamese blocks in those waters. But Vietnam quickly cited the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to claim its sovereign rights over the two blocks in question. Hanoi has been publicly sparring with Beijing over the South China Sea for the past few years, so such a response was expected.

What was new, however, was New Delhi’s new-found aggression in taking on China. It immediately decided to support Hanoi’s claims. By accepting the Vietnamese invitation to explore oil and gas in blocks 127 and 128, India’s state-owned oil company ONGC Videsh Ltd not only expressed New Delhi’s desire to deepen its friendship with Vietnam, but ignored China’s warning to stay away. This display of backbone helped India strengthen its relationship with Vietnam. If China wants to expand its presence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, New Delhi’s thinking goes, India can do the same thing in East Asia. And if China can have a strategic partnership with Pakistan ignoring Indian concerns, India can develop robust ties with states like Vietnam on China’s periphery without giving China a veto on such relationships.

Hanoi is gradually becoming the linchpin of this eastward move by New Delhi. Hanoi fought a brief war with Beijing in 1979 and has grown wary of the Middle Kingdom’s increasing economic and military weight. That’s why in some quarters of New Delhi, Vietnam is already seen as a counterweight in the same way Pakistan has been for China.

The Modi government’s decision to sell BrahMos missiles to Vietnam underscores the evolution in India’s policy towards the Indo-Pacific. New Delhi seems to be ready to challenge Beijing on its own turf. And for the moment at least, this stance is being welcomed by states like Vietnam, which fear the growing aggression of China. A more engaged India will also lead to a more stable balance of power in the region.