Rafale- What?? How?? When??

"India & France signed the deal for 36 Rafale jets. Rafale will significantly improve India's strike & defence capabilities" thus posted defence minister Manohar Parrikar on 23/09/16(Friday) in Facebook

What makes this single largest deal in Indian defence important to  world's fourth largest airforce with a strength of more than 1,500 aircraft are many.

Dassault Rafale namely Rafel aircraft is built by Dassault a french aviation firm which has a very great history since first world war, and has delivered more than 8000 aircraft since 1945 in which 71% of them are business jets

India's bid to buy Rafel aircraft started long back when India decided to allocate 55,000 crores for 126 MMRCA( Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft) back in 2010, based on which more than 2 years of evaluation by IAF happened . On 31st January 2012, it was announced that Dassault Rafale won the tender. Major things that made Dassault get this deal in spite of 6  strong contenders are.The IAF had around 600 technical specifications out of which around 590 were met by the Rafale . Fighters from the USA, the F16 Super Viper and F18 Super Hornet are outdated. Sweden's Gripen is single engined jet so it is at a disadvantage too. Getting MiG 35 means putting too much dependence on only one country Russia.

Snecma M88is afterburner turbofan engine specially built for Rafel aircraft which made the aircraft have good maintainability,upgrade potential (73 kN to 105 kN using the same core(kN:kilonewton) ),high thrust to weight ratio, low fuel consumption in all flight regimes, and a long engine life.

   

Qatar air force and Egyptian airforce are some of the users of Rafael aircraft. 

The major thing that strikes our mind is when the deal was to get 126 aircraft for 55,000 crores why did Indian Mod has restricted to signing a deal for 36 aircraft and a subclause to buy 18 more in future  with a price tag of Rs 1,600 crore per aircraft which is more than double of the decided cost.

If not for Rafel India's choice is to buy more su-30 aircraft which is double the time cheap than Rafel,but keeps breaking and cost a lot in maintenance and spare parts too and being readily available,or to buy indigenous aircraft which has a short range and cannot compete with high range aircraft like Rafel. India's Indigenous aircraft Tejas is IAF primary layer of defence is light combat aircraft and not medium combat aircraft.  

Highly expensive 1,600 aircraft contract include elements that were not there in the 126 fighter MMRCA tender -- including a superior weapons package with Meteor missiles; and performance-based logistics, which bind Dassault to ensure that a stipulated percentage of the Rafale fleet remains combat-ready at all times. The percentage is guessed to be about 75 to 80%, an unchallenging target for Western fighter types

When we started to look in another side of the deal France’s desperation is understandable. Absent the India deal, the Rafale production line will close down, the future of its aerospace sector will dim, and the entire edifice of French industrial R&D sector based on small and medium-sized firms—a version of the enormously successful German “Mittelstand” model—engaged in producing cutting-edge technologies could unravel, and grease France’s slide to second-rate technology power-status 

Indian parliamentary panel last December reported that India's fighter strength is down to 25 squadrons with the requirement of 45 squadrons,India also has few of its early Mig aircraft retiring at early months of 2017, and out of the 25 squadrons 14 are equipped with Russian-made mig-21 and mig-27

Considering all these things Rafel being delivered to IAF in 36 months from now in on-ready condition with entire support and logistics will help boost IAF power but is 36 high-cost aircraft and 18 other aircraft that may be bought by India's MOD in future will be enough for rising India's IAF power is still questionable,one thing is sure that we will have a better hand when compared to our neighbours in presence of Rafel.

Akshayaram Viswanathan
Jai hind 

Cauvery -The tale of two states

Cauvery as a river starts from Karnataka Kodagu Malai and runs towards the Bay of Bengal. Its course covers the KSR dam and Kabini dam and on reaching Tamilnadu it enters a point called Billikundalu. It is only in Tamilnadu that the river Cauvery covers more distance and splits into various sub-branches. This is the main reason why Tamilnadu demands more control on Cauvery.Five crore people in the southern part of Tamilnadu depend on the Cauvery for livelihood purposes and more than 24 lakh hectares of land is dependent on the Cauvery river in Tamilnadu for irrigation.

                 

Major international committees set up for solving international river disputes have declared that greater control over a river should be provided to the region where the river has more presence geographically, rather than considering the origin of the river. For example, Sudan has more control over the Nile river since it is where the river Nile covers more distance. This may also be one of the reasons why the Supreme Court Order or the Cauvery Water Tribunal report will not be in favour of Karnataka. 

Cauvery problem occurs when there is the shortage of rainfall for a season in both the states, hence this important factor should be taken into consideration while discussing farming solutions.
There are three major solutions suggested here which the Tamilnadu government can implement for solving this conflict to a considerable extent.

I. Setting up of desalination plants in Tamilnadu along all the coastal areas, which will massively reduce the use of river or lake water for consumption. In fact, Tamilnadu has the largest desalination plant in India at Chennai inNemeli, which produces about 100 MLD (Million Litres per day). However, it is just sufficient to satisfy South Chennai’s drinking water requirement alone. Hence separate budget has to be allocated by Tamilnadu government for the setting up, working and maintenance of more such desalination plants which will make Tamilnadu self-dependent for all future drinking water needs.  

 

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II. Removing the"Seemai karuvelai" plant (Biological name: ProsopisJuliflora):

This plant is absolutely useless except for its wood and will deplete the soil in which it is grown to a large extent by consuming more water from the land and as atmospheric moisture. The plant will bear no fruit which is human consumable. When cattle consume too much of the plant, they are affected due to the presence of a harmful particle in the seed called "Tunlin".

III. Construction of more check dams in large numbers:

 A single small check dam can meet the requirement equivalent of 10 villagers. The best example is Gujarat, which has more than 500 check dams and has unified the river at the inter-state level which has changed the scenario of the state from being water scarce to having surplus water. Such innovative methods have to be followed in Tamil Nadu as well to conserve existing water resources.In Chennai floods, Tamilnadu lost 7Tmcof water which ended up in Bay of Bengal, but until now the quantity of water released from Karnataka after endless chaos is only close to 9 Tmc.

Hope this information has helped you to understand the Cauvery river problem better.

Akshayaram Viswanathan
Jai hind