The race for leadership in supercomputers – does India stand a chance?

In June 2016, a significant and unusual event occurred in the world of supercomputing – the sector that specializes in very high speed computers that are used for applications such as weather forecasting and advanced weapons design. It was announced that the fastest supercomputer in the world was now the Sunway TaihuLight, a Chinese machine, which had performed at a speed of 93 petaflops – three times faster than the previous leader.1 Chinese supercomputers have been leading the field since 2011, but until now had depended to a large extent on key hardware components from American companies. What made the June 2016 event unusual was the announcement that, in a first for the industry, the Sunway TaihuLight was powered entirely by Chinese-designed and Chinese-manufactured processor chips. In other words, the new machine was evidence that China had mastered the entire computer engineering cycle, from conceptualization to detailed design and manufacture of individual semiconductor components. For the first time in the history of computing, the leadership at the cutting edge of a strategic technology – supercomputers – had passed from the United States to China.

Brief History of Supercomputing

To understand how this happened, and why countries like Japan, India, and many in the European Union have been overtaken by China, it is useful to understand the history of supercomputing, or High Performance Computing (HPC) as it is also referred to. The idea of HPC – specialized machines designed to operate at ever faster speeds to solve the most complex of real world problems – is universally credited to Seymour Cray, the legendary American computer designer. In 1964, the world’s first supercomputer, the Control Data Corporation CDC 6600, was designed and manufactured under Cray’s supervision and leadership. For almost the next 50 years, with a few exceptions, it was always a US-built supercomputer that set the trend.
Within that half century were contained two stages, or eras, in supercomputer development. The first era is usually referred to as the Monocomputer Era, and this lasted from around 1960 to 1995. The Monocomputer architecture utilized a single high speed processor accessing data stored in a single memory stack. Since this architecture was first developed by Seymour Cray and was used by all supercomputers in this era, the first era is also sometimes referred to as the Seymour Cray era of hardware.
In the early 1980s, a radically different approach began to be adopted. This new approach, or architecture, used the idea that many computers or processors operating in parallel could do the job faster than a single computer using the single processor Cray architecture. Thus began the Multicomputer Era, which overlapped with the first era starting around 1985, and is continuing till date. The Multicomputer era places far greater emphasis on the software that distributes the work between different processors, and is thus also sometimes referred to as the Multicomputer Era of the programmer.2
One very unusual feature of the early days of supercomputing was that developments took place entirely in the American private sector. It was only when the Europeans and the Japanese also started work on their own supercomputers that the US government began to take an active interest. Nevertheless, it was only in 1995 that the first formal US government policy – called the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative or ASCI – was announced. The European and Japanese initiatives, in contrast, were driven by their governments and universities.3
The chart below tabulates the progress of supercomputers through the two eras. On the X-axis is plotted the year of introduction of the captioned machines; and on the Y-axis the speed of each machine in Gigaflops, measured by the industry standard Linpack Benchmark. As the chart shows, speeds of supercomputers have been doubling every two years.

India’s Supercomputing Efforts

The supercomputer effort in India began in the late 1980s, when the US stopped the export of a Cray supercomputer because of continuing technology embargoes. In response, the Indian government set up the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) with the mission of building an indigenous supercomputer. In 1990, C-DAC unveiled the prototype of the PARAM 800, a multiprocessor machine, the first outcome of the new programme. PARAM was benchmarked at 5 Gflops, making it the second fastest supercomputer in the world at that time.

How China Achieved Dominance in Supercomputing

What, meanwhile, of China? Historical records show that China had developed an interest in HPC as early as the 1950s and 1960s. During the Mao era, even at the height of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, and in spite of the removal of Soviet assistance after the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese computer programme proceeded without let up. By the end of the 1960s, China was manufacturing its own integrated circuits and integrating them into indigenous third generation computers, making China in some respects even more advanced than the USSR.
In July 1972, barely four months after the epochal visit of US President Richard Nixon to China, a delegation of American computer scientists visited China at the invitation of the Chinese government, and spent three weeks with their Chinese counterparts. While they were suitably impressed by the strides made by the Chinese in mastering the technology, it was the perspective and objectives of the Chinese technology programme that really gave them pause.
The Chinese, it turned out, were not interested in the small and inexpensive “minicomputers” which were at that time taking the US and Europe by storm. What they were really interested in were the high speed machines such as the CDC Star, which were considered the state of the art in the early 1970s. It was evident to the American delegation that matching US capability in this area was a major objective of the Chinese. The delegation made this observation in the report they subsequently published in the journal Science.4
The Chinese interest in supercomputing thus seems to have been established very early and remained constant during the decades of political turmoil in the 1960s and 1970s. This interest was institutionalized very substantially in March 1986, when Deng Xiaoping initiated the famed ‘863’ programme to acquire parity with the US, and with the rest of the world, across a range of high technology sectors. For supercomputing to develop, a host of other industries and sectors had to develop as well, such as semiconductor manufacture, design of integrated circuits, expertise in the mining and refining of rare earths, etc. All of these were integrated well into the 863 programme.5
It took two decades for these efforts to bear fruit. In 2006, Chinese supercomputers entered the Top 500 list for the first time. At that point, India had eight supercomputers on the list, which was otherwise dominated almost entirely by the Americans, albeit with strong competition from the Japanese at the top of the list. 10 years later, in 2016, China leads the Top 500 list with 169 machines, including the Sunway TaihuLight, the world’s fastest at 93 petaflops as mentioned earlier. The US comes second, with 165 machines. Europe as a whole has about 110 machines, and Japan barely 40, although it is to the Japanese credit that the average speed of their supercomputers is the highest. India, unfortunately, has stayed nearly static with only nine systems in the Top 500 list.
Supercomputers are the second sector where China has established global leadership, the first being rare earths mining and refining, in which it holds a 95 per cent market share. But China’s growing dominance in the supercomputer sector displays capabilities that go well beyond the specialized mining and refining technologies that characterize the rare earths sector.

Prerequisites for Making the Fastest Supercomputer

Developing the world’s fastest supercomputer requires capabilities that start with pure science – specifically quantum physics and the electrodynamics of semiconductors. Allied with this is the requirement of a highly educated and competent cadre of computer scientists who understand the complexities of such abstract computer science concepts as the ‘theory of computation’ and are able to apply these concepts to developing efficient algorithms that can solve very complex real world problems. Building up a cadre of scientists with such specialized knowledge requires decades of effort, which the Chinese have systematically put in. This needs to be combined with the capacity to design Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) integrated circuits, including complex microprocessors that are as good as, if not better than, American products.6 A host of networking and connectivity technologies that enable large numbers of processors to operate efficiently in parallel – the Sunway has over 10 million parallel processors – need to be mastered for the design to even reach the prototype stage.
Many seemingly unconnected technologies are associated with supercomputers. For example, HPC machines consume enormous amounts of power – the Sunway alone consumes as much as 28 MW. It is to the credit of Chinese scientists that the home-grown processors used in the Sunway are actually three times as energy efficient as the nearest American equivalents. The physical design of the machine, including the cooling system, is itself a mechanical and metallurgical engineering challenge.
Finally, for supercomputers to be effective, they need to be loaded with a large suite of specialized software packages, ranging from operating systems that cater for the multiprocessor environment to the application suites capable of executing algorithms that help solve the truly complex real world problems such as weather forecasting, very big data analysis, biomedical modelling, and of course security-related applications such as cryptography, advanced aerospace engineering and weapon systems design.

Future Trends in Supercomputing

This raises the questions: Do countries like India stand a chance in this race? And, what can they do? The answers may lie in a careful analysis of future trends.
The Chinese mastery of the wide range of technologies positions them well for winning the next race in supercomputers, which is breaking the “exascale barrier”. In simple terms, this is the race to determine who first succeeds in constructing a supercomputer that is capable of a speed of one exaflop per second, or one thousand million Gigaflops, one Gigaflop itself being one thousand million floating point operations per second. There are four countries in the race – China, the US, France and Japan. China looks well set to win the race in the year 2018.7 France and Japan have both indicated that they would achieve the objective by 2020, and the US has conservatively indicated 2023. But the US has also stated that it expects to regain long term leadership.8
The exascale barrier is a landmark for supercomputers for reasons that go beyond the mere desire to be the first. Supercomputers operating at such incredible speeds will encounter a variety of barriers that previous generations of designers did not have to contend with. For example, the network and interconnectivity hardware that allows millions of processors to operate in parallel will have to speed up by an order of magnitude to accommodate exascale performance. Similarly, the cooling system will become a central design constraint – a statement that supercomputer engineers are wont to make is that future HPC machines may need their own independent nuclear reactor for power supply and cooling!

What India Needs to Do

All this brings back into focus the need for innovation. One outstanding feature of the supercomputer sector is that innovation is always taking place across the entire cycle, from new theories of computation to the design of chips and to new forms of software. Unlike other sectors which stabilize based on commercial considerations sooner or later, the innovation pot is always boiling over in the case of supercomputers. This is both a daunting barrier and an exciting opportunity for countries like India. There are several imperatives if India is to regain some measure of competitiveness in this strategically vital sector.
First, India must move away from the perspective which it has allowed to dominate, namely, that the application of supercomputers is more important than supercomputer technologies themselves. In this perspective, it does not matter whether an HPC machine is indigenous or imported, as long as it is usefully applied. This perspective ignores the strategic importance of supercomputers and the abundant evidence that all major countries view these technologies as critical.
Second, India must understand that it is possible to start from the current state of the art itself. There is no need to entirely retrace the path already taken by China and the other countries. Using technological expertise that is available with the global network of Indian and Indian-origin scientists and engineers, it is possible to start from a baseline which is already advanced. In addition, the software skills and personnel base that India has built up in the public and private sectors can be effectively leveraged to propel innovation on the software components of supercomputer technology.
Third, India has to understand that supercomputer research always requires fundamental research into the next stages of computing. Thus, going beyond the exascale barrier might require new approaches that are right now only in the theoretical stage – quantum computing, for example, has been only spoken about in research forums, but may well turn out to be the basis of the next leap forward. The time frames required to operationalize and commercialize nascent technologies are shrinking, and this is something that needs to be factored into the Indian approach.
Fourth, India should set itself clear objectives of what it wants to achieve in this strategically significant sector. The Chinese perspective is telling – over 50 years ago, China set itself the clear objective of parity with the United States. While the setting up of the National Supercomputer Mission in 20159 is a laudable first step, it needs to be followed up by the identification of clear objectives and allocation of adequate resources. Within a Mission perspective, it should be possible to cut down bureaucratic red tape and allow scientists and engineers to take bold and radical steps without fear of reprisal.
Finally, it needs to be appreciated that supercomputers are strategic in the most important sense, namely, the creation of an ecosystem that extends well beyond the boundaries of science and technology and has the capacity to transform the country. A strong supercomputer sector leads to capability in a variety of other fields, from semiconductor manufacturing and precision engineering to optimal strategies for agricultural production, urban planning and the like. All this would be in addition to the national security related applications where India cannot afford to be dependent on foreign expertise. Building up capability in this sector requires active government leadership to catalyse the establishment of a vibrant academic infrastructure where research at the frontiers of physics and material sciences, computational mathematics and computer science are encouraged, to establish strong partnerships with industry for technology transfer and commercial exploitation, and finally to create widespread awareness of the possibilities and potential of supercomputers. In the more advanced countries, using supercomputer resources has become routine for a large and increasing percentage of Fortune 500 companies. In China, the Sunway TaihuLight installation is intended to function as a public service, with access available to all. It may be simpler for India to catch up with these countries than is commonly imagined. What is required are bold decisions that aim at reaching comparative parity within the next decade.

Pakistan’s Tactical Nuclear Warheads and India’s Nuclear Doctrine

In an endeavour to preserve strategic stability, India, a reluctant nuclear power, has demonstrated immense restraint despite grave incitement from Pakistan. In stark contrast, ever since it became a nuclear-armed state, Pakistan’s behaviour has been marked by brinkmanship, with provocation bordering on actions that could lead to large-scale conventional conflict with nuclear overtones. Recent developments in Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal have been of the same destabilising pattern.
As part of its quest for ‘full spectrum deterrence’, Pakistan has developed the Hatf-9 (Nasr) short-range ballistic missile (SRBM). Pakistan claims the Hatf-9 is equipped with a tactical nuclear warhead (TNW) and is intended for battlefield use as a weapon of warfighting. The Pakistan Army appears to believe that a few TNWs can stop the advance of Indian forces across the International Boundary (IB) into Pakistan. By employing TNWs on the battlefield, the Pakistan Army hopes to checkmate India’s ‘Proactive Offensive Operations’ doctrine, which is colloquially called the ‘Cold Start’ doctrine.
This brief analyses the efficacy of TNWs as weapons of warfighting. It examines the likely impact of its use by Pakistan on the columns of the Indian Army advancing across the IB and, consequently, on India’s nuclear doctrine.

Major Shortcomings of TNWs

The term TNW is a misnomer as the employment of nuclear weapons on the battlefield will have a strategic impact and geo-strategic repercussions. A more appropriate term for these low-yield short-range weapons would be ‘nuclear weapons designed for battlefield use’. As a class of weapons, TNWs are extremely costly and complex to manufacture and also difficult to transport, store and maintain under field conditions due to their intricate electronic components. As missiles capped with TNWs may be required to be fired at short notice, the nuclear warheads have to be kept in a fully assembled state and ‘mated’ with the missile. Due to the short range of SRBMs – Hatf-9 has a maximum range of 60 km – the authority to fire has to be delegated at an early stage in the battle.
These two factors lead to the dilution of centralised control and create a proclivity to ‘use them or lose them’. TNWs are also vulnerable to battlefield accidents and are susceptible to unauthorised use, or what Henry Kissinger had called the ‘Mad Major Syndrome’. SRBMs are normally dual-use missiles and, as these have to be forward deployed because of their short range, they are likely to be targeted during war with conventional missiles, by fighter-ground attack (FGA) aircraft on search-and-destroy missions and, in the case of Hatf-9, by long-range artillery. This could lead in rare cases to sympathetic detonation of a nuclear warhead resulting in unintended consequences, especially if one-point safety capability is not the norm. Together, all of these disadvantages lower the threshold of nuclear use and make TNWs a dangerous class of weapons.
While the Nasr SRBM is technically capable of being capped with a nuclear warhead, whether this has actually been done is not known in the public domain. The warhead is likely to be based on a linear implosion plutonium design and is likely to have been cold tested. Pakistan’s plutonium stocks are limited. The four Khushab reactors can together produce plutonium that is sufficient for only 10-12 nuclear warheads per year. Considering the low level of damage that TNWs cause, the decision on how much of the plutonium stock should be allocated for TNWs vis-à-vis strategic warheads would be a difficult one to make. Hence, it maybe deduced that Pakistan is unlikely to have a large stockpile of TNWs in its nuclear arsenal.
As evident from the experience of the NATO-Warsaw Pact of the Cold War, the term ‘limited nuclear exchanges’ is an oxymoron. Nuclear exchanges cannot be kept limited and are guaranteed to escalate rapidly to full-fledged nuclear war with strategic warheads designed to destroy large cities and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties. Hence, India has very correctly refrained from adding the TNW class of weapons to its nuclear arsenal. As TNWs lower the nuclear threshold and are, therefore, inherently destabilising, it is necessary that international pressure be brought to bear on Pakistan to eliminate these weapons from its nuclear arsenal.

Strategic Stability

Strategic stability is a product of deterrence stability, crisis stability and arms race stability in the context of a hostile political relationship between two nations. In the South Asian context, the hostile political relationship stems from the unresolved territorial dispute over Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) with an active Line of Control (LoC). The state of strategic stability in South Asia has for long been a cause of concern for the international community. Pakistan’s proxy war against India is now in its third decade despite several peace overtures made by India. Waged primarily by Pakistan’s ‘deep state’ – the Pakistan Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) – through terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Jaish-e Mohammad (JeM) and the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), it is showing no signs of tapering off. In fact, the unrest in Kashmir Valley in the summer of 2016, terrorist strikes at Udhampur, Gurdaspur, Pathankot and Pampore and the interception of infiltration attempts across the LoC once again indicate an increase in the intensity of the proxy war.
Despite grave provocation, including the terrorist strikes at Mumbai in November 2008, India has shown immense strategic restraint and has limited its counter-insurgency operations on its own side of the LoC in J&K. Another ‘major’ terrorist strike sponsored by the Pakistani ‘deep state’– on a sensitive target, causing large-scale casualties and extensive damage to critical military or civilian infrastructure –is likely to result in Indian military retaliation against the Pakistan Army and its organs with a view to raise the cost of waging a proxy war.
Pakistan’s ‘first use’ doctrine, quest for ‘full spectrum deterrence’, development of TNWs as weapons of warfighting, army’s control over nuclear decision making and the risk of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the jihadis are all potential threats to regional stability. Pakistan views India’s ‘Cold Start’ doctrine as being de-stabilising. Overall, the state of relations between the two countries may be described as ‘ugly stability’, a term coined by Ashley Tellis in the mid-1990s. It is at best a tenuous stability that could evaporate very quickly in the face of a prolonged crisis.

Possibility of Limited War

As per the Indian conventional wisdom, there is space for limited war below the nuclear threshold. Though Indian military retaliation to a major terrorist strike would be carefully calibrated to avoid threatening Pakistan’s nuclear red lines, under certain circumstances the exchanges could escalate into a war in the plains. For example, Pakistan may launch pre-emptive offensive operations across the IB, including strikes on Indian air bases or naval assets. Such a response from Pakistan will force India to launch counter-offensive operations with a view to destroying as much as possible of Pakistan’s war waging capabilities and, in the process, simultaneously capturing a limited amount of territory as a bargaining counter. The capture of territory is unlikely to be a primary aim as territories captured across the IB will have to be returned.
The Pakistan Army seeks to convince India that it has a low nuclear threshold and that its nuclear red lines are fairly close to the IB. The proximity of nuclear red lines to the IB would vary from sector to sector and would be a matter of careful assessment based on intelligence inputs. In keeping with its behaviour as a responsible nuclear power, India would like to keep the scale and the intensity of the conflict low so as not to threaten Pakistan’s nuclear red lines. However, if Pakistan’s defensive operations do not proceed as planned and it perceives the ‘space’ red line as threatened at one or more places, the Pakistan Army may deem it necessary to use TNWs on its own soil to contest India’s offensive operations, in keeping with its clearly stated intention to do so.
Pakistani analysts (senior retired armed forces officers as well as diplomats and academics) appear convinced that no Indian prime minister will authorise massive retaliation with nuclear weapons if Pakistan uses ‘a few’ TNWs against Indian forces on its own soil – on the grounds that such use does not constitute ‘first use’ for India. Presumably, a similar belief is held by Pakistan’s senior commanders who are in positions of authority in the nuclear chain of command. Such a belief, though falsely held, lowers the threshold of use of nuclear warheads as weapons of warfighting. Also, though such a belief questions the credibility of India’s doctrine of massive retaliation, it does not address the issue of the consequences that Pakistan will suffer in a contingency where the Indian prime minister, heading the Political Council of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA), actually approves massive retaliation. Deterrence is ultimately a mind game.

Efficacy of TNWs as Weapons of Warfighting

Given the low casualty rates and minimal material damage if TNWs are employed on the battlefield against mechanised forces, the Pakistan Army’s faith in their ability to bring Indian offensive operations to a grinding halt is questionable. Simple calculations on the efficacy of TNWs against a mechanised combat group (roughly comprising an armoured regiment and a company of mechanised infantry) advancing in desert or semi-desert terrain are revealing. The combat group (60 armoured fighting vehicles – AFVs) would normally advance with two combat teams forward over a frontage of 10-12 km and depth of 8-10 km. In a nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) environment, AFVs generally move forward in buttoned-down condition (cupolas closed, full NBC protection). A reasonable assumption would be that the civilian population of the sector in which TNWs are intended to be employed would have been evacuated.
If a nuclear warhead of 8-10 kt is detonated over a combat group (low air burst explosion, with the ground zero close to the centre), the initial casualties would be in the range of 20-30 personnel killed or wounded and 10-12 AFVs destroyed or damaged. While the leading combat group would need to regroup (undertake casualty evacuation, repair and recovery and decontamination), the reserve combat group of the combat command/ armoured brigade could resume the advance in six to eight hours. In the case of an Indian bridge head across a water obstacle being hit, the casualties would be a hundred times greater, but in a bridge head the adversary’s troops would be in contact with Indian troops and, hence, a bridge head is a much less likely target.1
By employing TNWs against the Indian forces, even if Pakistan does it on its own soil, the Pakistan Army would have broken the nuclear taboo without achieving anything substantive by way of influencing the course of an ongoing military operation. In the process, it would risk the destruction of its major cities and strategic reserves as well as nuclear forces should India choose to retaliate massively. The leadership of the Pakistan Army must also have done these calculations. Therefore, their advocacy of the Indian disinclination to retaliate massively in response to their use of TNWs on their own soil indicates either a flawed analysis or a bluff that the Indian armed forces would be inclined to call.

Doctrinal Challenges

During a crisis, if deterrence breaks down, the essence of nuclear strategy would lie in minimising civilian and military casualties and material damage and preventing escalation, while ensuring the survival of the state. If Pakistan detonates TNWs on Indian forces on its own soil, the major options available to India are:

• A massive retaliation to inflict unacceptable damage, in keeping with India’s stated doctrine. The adoption of this option would very seriously threaten to cripple Pakistan as a functional nation state.
• A flexible response (quid pro quo or quid pro quo plus response) in order to minimise the probability of further nuclear exchanges and keep the level of casualties and destruction as low as possible. For example, in retaliation for the use of two 8-10 kt warheads against the Indian forces on the Pakistani soil, India may employ four or five or even six nuclear warheads to target Pakistan’s strategic reserves and nuclear forces, while ensuring that only those forces are attacked which are well away from civilian population centres.
• Refraining from retaliating with nuclear weapons, but warn Pakistan of dire consequences if any more nuclear strikes are launched and increase the scale and the intensity of conventional offensive operations. (This is the least likely option and is not discussed further.)

Once deterrence breaks down, a publicly declared doctrine becomes irrelevant. In such a scenario, the political council of the NCA will have to decide as to how to retaliate based on the advice given by the executive council, of which the three services chiefs are members. The method and the mode of retaliation will be based on the prevailing operational-strategic situation and the likely reactions of the Pakistani armed forces, especially the probability of further nuclear exchanges. The assessment will also include the likely reactions of the international community – the threats held out, the appeals made and the course of the discussions at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
India’s nuclear doctrine clearly states that “nuclear weapons will only be used in retaliation against a nuclear attack on Indian territory or on Indian forces anywhere.” This debunks the Pakistan Army’s belief that its use of TNWs against Indian forces on its own soil will not constitute ‘first use’. A widely held belief among members of the Indian strategic community is even if the Pakistan Army employs TNWs against the Indian forces on the Pakistani soil, the most appropriate option will be massive retaliation to inflict unacceptable damage on Pakistan.
Though such a decision will not be made lightly, from the Indian point of view, massive retaliation is the only suitable option as anything else will run the risk of lowering the nuclear threshold and encouraging the Pakistan Army to continue to bank on the early use of TNWs to counter operational reverses. Also, breaking the nuclear taboo would be considered unacceptable and flexible response would run the risk of continued and repeated nuclear strikes. A decision to approve massive retaliation would be far easier to reach in case Pakistan uses TNWs against the Indian forces, but on the Indian soil.

Recommendations for Change in India’s Nuclear Doctrine

As 12 years have passed since India’s nuclear doctrine was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) in January 2003, and many new developments have since taken place, a review of the doctrine is necessary. In fact, a review should be carried out every 10 years. Recommendations for continuity in some provisions and changes in other provisions of India’s nuclear doctrine are given below:
India’s nuclear doctrine premised on ‘credible minimum deterrence’ and posture of ‘no first use’ has stood the test of time and no change is necessary.
India’s declaratory strategy is that of ‘massive retaliation’ to a nuclear first strike and is ‘designed to inflict unacceptable damage’. This was enunciated in the statement issued by the Government of India on January 04, 2003, after the CCS had reviewed the progress in the operationalisation of India’s nuclear deterrence.
Ideally, the retaliatory strategy should have been that of ‘flexible response’ that results in ‘punitive retaliation… to inflict unacceptable damage’, as envisaged in the Draft Nuclear Doctrine of August 17, 1999, prepared by the first National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) headed by K.Subrahmanyam. However, as the strategy of ‘massive retaliation’ is a viable deterrence strategy that has served India well, no change is recommended. It would work well even in a contingency where the Pakistani planners may consider using TNWs against the Indian forces on the Pakistani soil as they cannot possibly risk massive Indian retaliation.
The credibility of massive retaliation needs to be enhanced through a carefully formulated signalling plan. Signalling should be based on an elaborate plan designed to showcase the preparedness of India’s nuclear forces and the firmness of its political will. For example, information about regular meetings of both the political and the executive council of the NCA should be made public (without disclosing the agenda).
India’s nuclear doctrine states that India will retaliate with nuclear weapons in case chemical or biological weapons are used against India. This is neither credible nor desirable as chemical or biological weapons may be used by non-state actors or by a state through proxy non-state actors with easy deniability. In either case, it would not be appropriate to retaliate with nuclear warheads. Hence, this formulation should be dropped from the nuclear doctrine.
Despite its costs and the risk of endangering arms race stability, ballistic missile defence (BMD) provides major advantages to a nation that follows a ‘no first use’ strategy. The government should consider sanctioning a phased BMD project to protect major cities and strategic forces
As TNWs are extremely destabilising, Indian diplomacy should ensure that international pressure is brought to bear on Pakistan to eliminate TNWs from its nuclear arsenal. A sustained campaign needs to be mounted by strategic analysts, scholars and academics to apprise the policy community and the public of the risks associated with TNWs.
It is in India’s interest to discuss nuclear confidence building measures (CBMs) and nuclear risk reduction measures (NRRMs) with Pakistan in greater depth than has been the case till now. Back channel diplomacy can also play a useful role in promoting confidence and reducing the risk of inadvertent escalation to nuclear exchanges.

 

PARAM ISHAN

PARAM ISHAN
The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar has inaugurated the super computer PARAM ISHAN at IIT Guwahati campus. PARAM ISHAN is the fastest and most powerful computer in North East, Eastern and Southern region of India outside Bengaluru (Karnataka). Key features of PARAM ISHAN PARAM ISHAN has been jointly developed by IIT Guwahati and C -DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing). It has a peak computing power of 250 Teraflops and three hundred tera bites capacity. It will help to augment the research initiatives and also in creating an ecosystem for attracting right talents to the field of research. Potential applications: It can be used research initiatives such as computational chemistry, computational electromagnetic, computational fluid dynamics, civil engineering structures, nana-block self-assemble, optimization etc. It can be also used for Weather, climate modeling and seismic data processing.
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Indian Navy’s indigenously built most Advanced Guided Missile Stealth Destroyer ‘Mormugao’ was launched in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The bedecked ship was launched by Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba’s wife Reena at a function at Mazagaon Docks. Key Facts It has been Christened ‘Mormugao’ after the Mormugao port of Goa, the home State of Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. The stealth vessel was built by government-run Mazgaon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd and belongs to Visakhapatnam class of ships being constructed under Project 15B

What’s in a NAM? Not much

The location—Margarita Island, a Venezuelan island resort— and the long list of absentees at the recently concluded NAM summit argue for the group’s dissolution 

It is time to put the Non-Aligned Movement out of its misery. It was never more than a talking shop, and there’s little to suggest anyone’s listening—not even among its 120 members.
The NAM summit in a Venezuelan island resort is of less consequence, if such a thing is even conceivable, than the 2012 gathering in Tehran. And nothing symbolizes its irrelevance than the statement issued at the end of the proceedings: an appeal for the United Nations to be more inclusive. Plainly, the delegates could come up with nothing to discuss in Margarita Island that could not have been more usefully discussed on another island where most of them are headed this week: Manhattan, home to the UN General Assembly.
Indeed, the two most salient things about the NAM summit both argue for the group’s dissolution. First, the location: Venezuela, one of the world’s most repressive states, where a corrupt and inept dictator, Nicholas Maduro, had managed to impoverish a small population, despite having access to vast petroleum resources. No self-respecting world leader would attend a $120-million party designed to aggrandize this odious man, which may explain why the most prominent head of state present was Iran’s Hassan Rouhani. (Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe kept him company.)
Which brings me to the second damning aspect of the summit: the long list of absentees. Only eight heads of state bothered to show up, down from an already embarrassing 35 in Tehran. The absentee-in-chief was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who correctly decided he had more important things to do.
This may seem like a sad decline for a noble idea: NAM was conceived in the atmosphere of excitement and possibility that characterized the 1950s, when the world was emerging out of the long, dark period of colonialism. Newly independent nations dreamed they could make their way in this new world without hewing to either of the big powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, eschewing the icy hostilities of the Cold War and bask in the warmth of Third World (as it was then known) cooperation. The co-founders were India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Egypt’s Gemal Abdel Nasser, Yugoslavia’s Josep Broz Tito, and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah were all figures of international consequence, and their collective charisma attracted lesser lights from around the world.
But by the time NAM actually got off the ground, in 1961, the idea had already been undermined. Tito, host of the very first summit, was for all practical purposes aligned to the Soviets. Many members would go on to pick sides in the Cold War, including India.


Thus born under an ill omen, NAM grew into a forum where developing nations could blame all their problems on the big powers, pretending that much of the membership survived on the dole or protection of those very same powers. Long before Margarita Island, the triennial summits were exhibitions of shameless hypocrisy by American and Soviet puppets, all professing complete independence.
Worse still, NAM became a platform for some of the world’s most despicable leaders to preen and posture: the list of secretary-generals includes Fidel and Raul Castro, Mugabe, Hosni Mubarak, and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. This effectively denied the movement any kind of moral high ground, and rendered risible its rhetorical broadsides against the inequities of the US and the USSR. Nor could it claim, with a straight face, to represent peoples freed from colonial servitude when so many of those people found themselves enslaved by homegrown tyrants.
NAM’s reason to exist ended in 1989, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War. The world was left with a single superpower, the US, but quickly became multipolar, with China and India emerging as strong magnetic forces in their own right. There would be new kinds of alignments, more likely to be defined by economics and geography than by ideology. To be aligned is now a virtue, a sign of good leadership. Countries, especially small ones, can and should aim for multiple alignments of their interests. There is now no country in the world that can claim to be non-aligned, not even North Korea, which is in many ways a Chinese protectorate.
The oldest joke about NAM is that it was always aligned, and never a movement. But we’ve laughed at this anachronism long enough. The vast bureaucracy that supports the institution is a waste of and manpower, and most members could use those resources more gainfully elsewhere. If there are issues that unite the member nations, these would be better pursued by forming lobbying block within the UN.
As for the pious pablum that passes for the collective statement of resolve at the end of each summit, that too can just as easily be issued from the UN.
Let Margarita Island be the last exhibition of this nonsense. NAM is dead. Let’s have a moment’s silence, not for the useless institution but for the noble idea that died at its birth, and then move on.

India slips 10 notches in World Economic Freedom Index 2016

India slips 10 notches in World Economic Freedom Index 2016

The Economic Freedom of the World: 2016 Annual Report has been released worldwide by the Centre for Civil Society, a public policy think tank, along with Canada’s Fraser Institute.

• The report measures the degree of economic freedom in countries in five broad areas based on 2014 data – size of government: expenditure, taxes and enterprises; legal structure and security of property rights; access to sound money; freedom to trade internationally and regulation of credit, labour, and business.

Highlights:

• Hong Kong topped the index, followed by Singapore and New Zealand among 159 countries.
• India has been ranked 112^th. India has slipped 10 positions and ranks behind Bhutan (78), Nepal (108) and Sri Lanka (111) but stood higher than China (113), Bangladesh (121) and Pakistan (133).
• India has fared badly in all categories i.e. legal system and property rights (86), sound money (130), freedom to trade internationally (144) and regulation (132) except the size of the government (8),” as per the report.
• The 10 lowest-ranked countries are Iran, Algeria, Chad, Guinea, Angola, Central African Republic, Argentina, Republic of Congo, Libya and lastly Venezuela.
• Other notable countries include the United States (16), Germany (30), Japan (40), France (57) and Russia (102).
• In the top quartile, the average income of the poorest 10% was $11,283, compared with $1,080 in the bottom quartile in 2014. Interestingly, the average income of the poorest 10% in the most economically free nations was twice the average per capita income in the least free nations, says the report.
• Life expectancy was 80.4 years in the top quartile compared with 64 years in the bottom quartile, while political and civil liberties were also considerably higher in economically free nations.

Successful Flight Tests of LRSAM

Successful Flight Tests of LRSAM

Long Range Surface to Air Missile System (LRSAM) for Indian Navy successfully flight tested against Pilotless Target Aircraft (PTA) on 20th Sept 2016 at 10:10 hrs and again at 14:25 hrs from Interim Test Range (ITR) at Balasore, Odisha, yesterday. The LRSAM has been developed through a joint venture between DRDO India and IAI of Israel. The naval version of the SAM system, this time was tested from land and the earlier was flight tested from Naval Ships, at ITR. Both missiles directly hit their respective targets at different ranges and altitudes. The trajectory of the flight of missiles was throughout tracked and monitored by the radars and electro-optical systems installed at ITR.

Many industries viz. BDL, MIDHANI, TATA, GODREJ, SEC, PEL, ADITYA and others have contributed towards the development of Missile systems. Both Israel and Indian scientists and technicians have been involved in the launch campaign. The Israel team was led by Mr. Boyes Levy, Vice President, IAI of Israel, whereas the Indian Team by Mr Patrick D’Silva, Project Director, Mr. MSR Prasad, Director DRDL and Dr. BK Das, Director ITR. Dr. G Satheesh Reddy, DG (MSS) & SA to RM witnessed the launches
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Cabinet approves merger of rail budget with general budget

Cabinet approves merger of rail budget with general budget; advancement of budget presentation and merger of plan and non-plan classification in budget and accounts

The Union Cabinet has approved the proposals of Ministry of Finance on certain landmark budgetary reforms relating to (i) the merger of Railway budget with the General budget, (ii) the advancement of the date of Budget presentation from the last day of February and (iii) the merger of the Plan and the Non-Plan classification in the Budget and Accounts. All these changes will be put into effect simultaneously from the Budget 2017-18.

Merger of Railway Budget with the General Budget:

The arrangements for merger of Railway budget with the General budget have been approved by the Cabinet with the following administrative and financial arrangements-

(i) The Railways will continue to maintain its distinct entity -as a departmentally run commercial undertaking as at present;

(ii) Railways will retain their functional autonomy and delegation of financial powers etc. as per the existing guidelines;

(iii)The existing financial arrangements will continue wherein Railways will meet all their revenue expenditure, including ordinary working expenses, pay and allowances and pensions etc. from their revenue receipts;

(iv)The Capital at charge of the Railways estimated at Rs.2.27 lakh crore on which annual dividend is paid by the Railways will be wiped off. Consequently, there will be no dividend liability for Railways from 2017-18 and Ministry of Railways will get Gross Budgetary support. This will also save Railways from the liability of payment of approximately Rs.9,700 crore annual dividend to the Government of India;

The presentation of separate Railway budget started in the year 1924, and has continued after independence as a convention rather than under Constitutional provisions.

The merger would help in the following ways:

·         The presentation of a unified budget will bring the affairs of the Railways to centre stage and present a holistic picture of the financial position of the Government.

·         The merger is also expected to reduce the procedural requirements and instead bring into focus, the aspects of delivery and good governance.

·         Consequent to the merger, the appropriations for Railways will form part of the main Appropriation Bill.

Advancement of the Budget presentation:

The Cabinet has also approved, in principle, another reform relating to budgetary process, for advancement of the date of Budget presentation from the last day of February to a suitable date. The exact date of presentation of Budget for 2017-18 would be decided keeping in view the date of assembly elections to be held in States.

This would help in following ways:

·         The advancement of budget presentation by a month and completion of Budget related legislative business before 31^st March would pave the way for early completion of Budget cycle and enable Ministries and Departments to ensure better planning and execution of schemes from the beginning of the financial year and utilization of the full working seasons including the first quarter.

·         This will also preclude the need for seeking appropriation through 'Vote on Account' and enable implementation of the legislative changes in tax; laws for new taxation measures from the beginning of the financial year.

Merger of Plan and Non Plan classification in Budget and Accounts:

The third proposal approved by the Cabinet relates to the merger of Plan and Non Plan classification in Budget and Accounts from 2017-18, with continuance of earmarking of funds for Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan/Tribal Sub-Plan. Similarly, the allocations for North Eastern States will also continue.

This would help in resolving the following issues:

·         The Plan/Non-Plan bifurcation of expenditure has led to a fragmented view of resource allocation to various schemes, making it difficult not only to ascertain cost of delivering a service but also to link outlays to outcomes.

·         The bias in favour of Plan expenditure by Centre as well as the State Governments has led to a neglect of essential expenditures on maintenance of assets and other establishment related expenditures for providing essential social services.

·         The merger of plan and non-plan in the budget is expected
to provide appropriate budgetary framework having focus on the revenue, and capital expenditure.