Two entry packet-deal of India news

[Saddle Bronc 124]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af9a4f8a-6bcc-11...00779e2340.html

India to launch first indigenous nuclear submarine

By Varun Sood in Mumbai and James Lamont in New Delhi

2009/07/08 15:55

India is expected to launch a locally built nuclear-powered submarine later this month, making it one of only a handful of countries with the technology to produce such a vessel.

Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, is scheduled to visit the Visakhapatnam naval base in Andhra Pradesh on July 26 to inspect the submarine before it is launched from its dry dock for sea trials, senior government officials told the Financial Times.

The deployment of a nuclear-powered submarine would be a major step for the Indian navy, which is anxious to maintain its authority in the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. The submarine could allow New Delhi to develop a nuclear weapon strike capability from the sea.

The submarine, the INS Chakra, has been produced at a cost of $2.9bn under the country’s Advanced Technology Vessel Programme and is expected to go into full service in two years’ time. The vessel is based on the Russian Akula-I class submarine, and is powered by a single pressurised water reactor. Its nuclear reactor has been developed at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

India’s government is channelling spending towards the modernisation of India’s armed forces, to the ire of development agencies, who say the money would be better spent on poverty alleviation. The finance ministry raised military spending by 25 per cent in the national budget earlier this week.

Naval forces

• India
  • 55,000 troops (including 7,000 naval aviation and 1,200 marines)
  • 16 submarines
  • 8 destroyers
  • 14 frigates
• China
  • 255,000 troops (including 26,000 naval aviation, 10,000 marines, 40,000 conscripts)
  • 62 submarines
  • 28 destroyers
  • 50 frigates

Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies

India has plans to lease an Akula-class nuclear submarine from Moscow. It is also awaiting the delivery of a 30-year-old refitted Russian aircraft carrier, the Admiral Gorshkov . Additionally, India is building six French-designed Scorpene diesel submarines.

The country lags behind China’s naval might in the region. C. Uday Bhaskar, director of the Delhi-based National Maritime Foundation and a respected military analyst, said Beijing had a fleet of eight nuclear submarines, some with ballistic missile capability, although it lacked an aircraft carrier.

The Chinese navy has three times the number of combat vessels (about 630) as Indiaand a personnel strength of 225,000 — five times that of the Indian navy.

“This [the building of the nuclear submarine] is a historic and big step forward,” said C. Raja Mohan, professor of South Asian studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “The project is quite indigenous and it opens the door for deploying nuclear weapons in the ocean.”

An official spokesman declined to confirm that Mr Singh, who is currently attending the Group of Eight summit in Italy, would visit Visakhapatnam.

But K. Santhanam, former chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, a state defence contractor, said: “This [visit] is partly a public relations exercise and partly to give a fillip to the [submarine] project.”

India embarked on its quest for a nuclear submarine in 1982. They are considered better than conventional diesel counterparts as they can go deeper and faster and spend lengthy times at sea.

Defence industry experts stressed that the commissioning of the INS Chakra may still have some way to go.

“The technology required to build a small but powerful and safe reactor that can perform through the difficulties of a wartime environment is no easy task,” said one. “Some of India’s great projects in defence have gone on for decades and been unbelievably costly.”

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India in drive to end slum dwelling

By James Lamont in New Delhi

2009/07/09 15:58

India’s newly elected government has proposed an ambitious drive to rid the country of its slums within five years in an effort to improve urban infrastructure and raise standards of living.

India has some of the biggest slums in the world. An estimated 60.2m people live in informal settlements in the country’s cities, as much as a quarter of the urban population, according to the 2001 census. The slum population has been rising as more people migrate from India’s rural areas to cities in search of jobs and higher incomes.

In this week’s national budget, Pranab Mukherjee, the finance minister, earmarked Rs40bn ($821m, £506m, €587m) for spending on housing and the provision of basic services. This included money for a new scheme, the Rajiv Awas Yojana (Rajiv Gandhi housing plan), aimed at making the country “slum-free”.

The extra spending came alongside an almost 90 per cent increase in financial support for the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, a scheme to improve urban infrastructure.

Following the Congress party’s victory in parliamentary elections in May, Pratibha Patil, the president, pledged to address the plight of slum dwellers by building more low-cost housing.

“My government’s effort would be to create a slum-free India in five years,” she told the nation.

But Jockin Arputham, president of the National Slum Dwellers Federation in Mumbai , was doubtful. “It’s unfortunate to say that our system is not equipped to deliver that [target],” he said.

“This kind of political statement that the government delivers is not the best. Some of my slum people told me: ‘What a wonderful joke!’ If he had said 20 years, I would say it is worth doing.”

Although India’s economy is one of the fastest growing of any in the world, much of its 1.2bn population lives on under $2 a day. A third of Indians live in cities, rising to an estimated 50 per cent over the next 20 years. About 81m people subsist below the poverty line in India’s cities.

In a recent report, the government acknowledged that people in slums suffered “inhuman conditions that breed tensions, crime, ill health and disease”.

But development experts say city planning is almost impossible in India’s cities and recommend the building of new metropolises to ease overcrowding and provide better infrastructure.

“Between China and India, the difference is tremendous. The political system has something to do with it. In India there is democracy and decentralisation, and the local people have power. But it’s a nightmare for urban planners,” said one who asked not to be named.

“In China, the cities are really competitive. It’s an urban planner’s heaven. You just bring a map and draw a line and put infrastructure there, or an industrial zone there.”

(ending Indian slums in 5 years--when they are still around after 5+ centuries?)