Daily Current Affairs

MH-60 ‘Romeo’ multi-mission helicopters for Indian Navy (GS Paper 3, Defence)

Why in news?

• The Indian Navy recently received two MH-60 ‘Romeo’ multi-mission helicopters from the US.
• The two choppers were delivered at Cochin airport while another helicopter is scheduled to be delivered in August.

 

Background:

• India has been in need of the Seahawk helicopters for over a decade. The US state department under the Donald Trump administration in 2019 had approved the sale of 24 multi-role MH-60 Romeo Seahawk helicopters to India.

 

Details:

• The first three MH-60 ‘Romeo’ helicopters were delivered in the US in 2021 and are being used for training of the Indian Navy crew.
• In all, the Indian Navy is slated to receive 24 helicopters from the US, all of which will be armed with Hellfire missiles and lethal rocket systems.
• India is procuring the choppers as part of an around Rs 15,000-crore deal with the US government under the framework of foreign military sales.
• The delivery of all 24 MH-60R helicopters will be completed by 2025. The induction of state-of-the-art mission capable platforms will significantly boost the integral anti-submarine warfare capability of the Indian Navy.

 

Features of MH-60R chopper:

• The MH-60R helicopter manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corporation is an all-weather helicopter designed to support multiple missions with state-of-the-art avionics and sensors.
• The helicopters, designed to operate from frigates, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers, are the US Navy’s primary anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface weapon system for open ocean zones.
• The MH-60R is the world’s most advanced maritime helicopter.
• Over 300 MH-60R Seahawk helicopters are operational worldwide with over 600,000 flight hours accumulated, as per the website.
• The choppers are being used in international operations by the US Navy, Royal Danish Navy, Royal Australian Navy and Royal Saudi Naval Forces.

 

How will it boost the Indian Navy’s capabilities?

• Indian Navy’s first batch of MH-60R ‘Romeo’ aircrew successfully completed their training at the naval air station, North Island, San Diego, on 1 April.
• These helicopters will fulfil the Indian Navy’s requirements for anti-submarine operations amid China’s increasing forays into the waters around India.
• The navy currently uses the P-8I aircraft for this purpose.

 

Anti-Submarine Operations:

• These Romeo aircraft can detect unknown submarines and ships lurking in the waters and have the capability to launch submarine detection sono-buoys, both active and passive as part of anti-submarine (ASW) ops.
• ASW assets are vital for any fleet as they help alert about threat of a stealth submarine. These assets provide an ASW screen and will help to neutralise any hostile submarine or underwater threats.
• These can be loaded with missiles and torpedoes for ASW action

 

Anti-Submarine Warfare: 

• ‘Romeo’ choppers also have anti-surface-warfare capabilities, which means they will be capable of detecting surface threats and taking action against enemy ships too.
• These choppers can perform a slew of tasks including tracking and engaging with submarines, search and rescue ops, logistics support, personnel transport, medical evacuation, and surveillance.
• These multi-mission helicopters have command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) capabilities and are designed for anti-submarine (ASW) and Anti-Surface Warfare ((ASuW), and they are capable of engaging targets which are over the horizon.

 

Way Forward:

• It will provide India the capability to perform anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare missions along with the ability to perform secondary missions including vertical replenishment, search and rescue, and communications relay.
• India will use the helicopters as a deterrent for threats from its neighbours and for homeland security.

 

Indian Air Force to retire MiG-21 squadron, phase out by 2025

(GS Paper 3, Defence)

 

Why in news?

• Over 400 MiG-21 aircraft of the Indian Air Force have crashed in the last 60 years, claiming the lives of over 200 pilots and 60 civilians.
• Recently, two pilots were killed when a MiG-21 trainer aircraft crashed during a training sortie in Rajasthan's Barmer, putting the infamous aircraft in the spotlight once again.
• The MiG-21 has been dubbed grim nicknames, such as the “widow-maker or the flying coffin”, owing to numerous crashes since its induction into the Indian Air Force in the 1960s.

 

 

 

 

Background:

• The MiG-21 is India’s longest-serving fighter plane. India got its first single-engine MiG-21 in 1963, and since then it has inducted 874 variants of the Soviet-origin supersonic fighters to bolster its combat potential.
• Over 60 per cent of them have been built in India by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). However, half of the Made-in-India MiG-21s have crashed, killing over 200 pilots.
• In 2000, Indian MiG-21s were upgraded with new censors and weapons.
• It was in this modified MiG-21, that Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman shot down a F-16 fighter of Pakistan in 2019, a day after India had carried out air strikes in Balakot.

Why do MiG-21 fighter jets crash so much?

• MiG-21s form the bulk of the Indian Air Force's inventory and that explains why so many of them have crashed over the years.
• More numbers, more use and more years in service translate into a higher number of crashes.

 

Why are they still in service?

• Currently, the IAF has around 70 Mig-21 aircraft and 50 Mig-29 variants.
• The Indian Air Force had to keep MiGs longer in service due to delays in induction of new fighter aircraft. Due to delays, the IAF is facing a crunch to maintain a certain squadron strength to guard India's skies.
• Delays in the indigenous Tejas programme, political controversy surrounding the Rafael deal and slow-paced procurement procedure meant that MiGs had to be kept in service longer than usual.
• The MiG-21 had completed its retirement period in the mid-1990s.
• Until the government speeds up acquisition of new fighter jets, to replace the ageing MiGs, the Indian Air Force does not have the option than to use MiG-21s, piloted by young men, to bolster its squadron strength.

 

Retire & Phase out:

• In a major step to ensure flight safety, the Indian Air Force (IAF) will retire 51 Squadron based out of Srinagar air base comprising the MiG-21 Bison aircraft by September 30, 2022. The 51 Squadron based out of Srinagar air base is being number plated on September 30.
• The 51 squadron famous for shooting down an F-16 aircraft of the Pakistan Air Force in post Balakot air strike operations in February 2019 is being number plated on September 30.
• The squadron, also known as ‘Swordarms’, was part ‘ of ‘Operation Safed Sagar’ during the Kargil conflict in 1999.
• With this, only three of the MiG 21 bison squadrons would be left in the Air Force, of which one would be retired every year and the fleet would be totally gone by the year 2025.

 

What’s next?

• To help the IAF replace its ageing fighter fleet, the Defence ministry in February 2021 sealed a Rs 48,000 crore deal with the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) for the procurement of 83 Tejas fighter aircraft. The IAF is also in the process of procuring 114 Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA).
• India is also working on an ambitious USD 5 billion project to develop a fifth-generation medium-weight deep penetration fighter jet to significantly bolster its air power capability.

 

 

Education and Skill Development related initiatives to mark two years of launch of National Education Policy
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)

 

Why in news?

• To mark the completion of two years of launch of National Education Policy 2020, Union Government launched a slew of new initiatives related to education and skill development.
• The initiatives launched covered the entire spectrum of education and skill development verticals including areas like digital education, innovation, synergising education and skill development, teacher training and assessment.

 

Some of the initiatives launched are as follows:

Establishment of IKS-MIC program for technology demonstration:

• This unique initiative will promote development of products, processes inspired and developed from the Indian’s traditional knowledge systems.
• The joint program of the IKS Division and the MoE Innovation Cell will solicit proposals for the demonstration of technologies and development of prototypes in the areas of technology, engineering and sciences.
• Successful participants will be encouraged to form startups and handholding will be done through the IKS-MIC Virtual hub of Innovation.

 

Introduce 75 Bharateeya games in schools:

• The objective of these initiatives is to introduce Bharateeya games to our children. Many of the traditional games are less resource incentive and encourage creativity, camaraderie and connect with the culture of Bharata.
• Each month, a seasonally appropriate Bharateeya game will be introduced in schools through the PT teachers. The PT teachers will upload the pictures and short videos.
• Best performing schools and PT teachers will be recognized with a certificate. Simultaneously, the students will be able to participate in a quiz on the mygov.in portal and earn certificates.

 

Launch of Kalashala initiative in 750 schools to promote and support local arts:

• The goal of this initiative is to educate children about the various art forms of India and help them discover and appreciate the rich cultural heritage of India. This initiative will introduce various art forms of India to school children in India through lecture demonstrations by visiting artists.
• Such culturally aware children will grow into culturally aware citizens who appreciate, support, and practice some of these art forms. 
• The IKS Division of the Ministry of Education, seeks to implement NEP2020’s suggestions for educational institutions through the IKS Kalashala resident artist programmes.

 

Partnership with Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU)

• Partnership with IGNOU to provide upward mobility to students and help them attain higher education and more livelihood opportunities- opportunity to join the three- years degree programme of IGNOU.
• Under the partnership, 32 National Skill Training Institutes (NSTI) 3,000+ Government Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), 500+ Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendras (PMKK) and nearly 300 Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS) will be associated with IGNOU as Registration Centres, Examination Centres and Work Centres for hands on training. Also, 500 IGNOU centres have been announced.

 

Skill Hubs under PMKVY:

• Government of India has taken new initiatives in Skill Development such as the “Skill Hubs” initiative under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) which aims at creating shared infrastructure with education and skilling ecosystem, catering to local economic and skill development needs.
• Under this, higher education institutes are extending their premises as Skills Hub so as to maximize the capacity for delivering skill development courses. Under its pilot programme, close to 2000 Skill Hubs have been set up with more than 1.53 lakh candidates who have been trained till date.
• 100+ National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) aligned future skill qualifications to be developed under 6 key areas:

1. Automation in Industries (Manufacturing/Service) and Industry 4.0
2. Infrastructure Connectivity (EVs and Drones)
3. Electronics Manufacturing & VLSI
4. Technology Infrastructure including 5G & Cyber Security
5. Digital Emerging Technologies
6. Indigenous R&D

• NCVET has facilitated the development and approval of 216 NSQF aligned future skill qualifications across multiple areas spread across sectors to cater for the future skills.

 

Setting-up of virtual labs:

• In vocational courses, to promote crucial critical thinking skills, to give space for creativity, 750 virtual labs in science and mathematics, and 75 skilling e-labs for simulated learning environment, will be set-up in 2022-23.
• 200 labs already set up.
• A vertical on Virtual Lab has been created on DIKSHA portal, in the subjects of Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology for classes 9 to 12.
• Beneficiaries: Students, Teachers and Teacher Educators at Middle and Secondary stage. About 10 lakh teachers and 10 crore students will be benefitted.
• Expected Benefits: Development of skills and competencies of school students and teachers which will have impact on quality of teaching-learning and assessment process

 

NDEAR Compliant Vidya Sameeksha Kendra:

• NDEAR compliant VSK is an institutional avenue that enables integrated and shared ‘seeing’ for amplifying data-based decision making to drive action by key stakeholders for the success of their programs.
• VSK can be a “Force Multiplier” that multiplies the existing capabilities of people or systems, enabling transformative impact towards outcomes.
• Beneficiaries: Schools, Teachers, Students, Administrators across country.
• Expected Benefits: The data related to PMeVIDYA, DIKSHA, NDEAR, POSHAN, NISHTHA, NAS, PGI, UDISE etc. shall be collected, collated, analysed and showcased to facilitate policy decisions. 

 

Vidya Amrit Portal:

• To scale up the micro-improvements taking place in the school education in different parts of the country, a Digital Project is being enabled.
• Such micro improvements will be available to leaders at all levels through the National Infrastructure for Education - DIKSHA. It is aligned to the ‘Learn - Do- Practice’ of NDEAR
• Beneficiaries: Teachers, Educators, Administrators across country.
• Expected Benefits: It brings a huge opportunity to transform various ‘learning’ initiatives into ‘learning to improve’ initiatives across the country through sharing of best practices.

 

National Initiative for School Heads and Teachers Holistic Advancement (NISHTHA): ECCE

• Objective: To prepare an initial cadre of high quality ECCE Teachers in Anganwadis.
• Beneficiaries: About 90,000 including CRC and BRC Coordinators, DIET Faculty (from DRU Brach for AE&NFE), POs, CDPOs and Supervisors from ICDS set up.
• Expected Benefits: Sensitization of master trainers on developmentally appropriate pedagogy for holistic development of children which will contribute towards enhancing quality education at Foundational level.
• The training for master trainers to transact the content will be for 6 weeks (2 modules per week and assessment). Each module will be transacted through live interaction through ZOOM and DTH TV channels by the NRG from NCERT.

 

School Innovation Policy:

• National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Promotion Policy guides school education systems on various measures that may be adapted to promote a learning environment where creativity, ideation, innovation, problem-solving and entrepreneurship skills of students are nurtured, irrespective of their age.
• Six pillars under which specific actions can be taken at each stage of learning, from pre-school to higher education, to promote IIE in the school education ecosystem:

1. Mindset Change, Awareness, and Training
2. Infrastructure and Mentoring to Nurture Innovations
3. Incentivizing and Encouraging Teachers
4. Pedagogical Innovations
5. Collaborative Partnership- School & Community
6. School Entrepreneurs Led Startups
7. Beneficiaries: Schools, teachers and students.

 

Expected Benefits:

• Policy will foster the culture of Ideation, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (IIE) in schools.
• Provides for the implementation mechanism to create a culture of Innovation, Ideation, design thinking, creative thinking, entrepreneurship, and start-ups in schools.
• Advocates for measuring and enabling the ranking system for schools on the level of innovation-oriented activities.
• Provides the mechanism for mentoring and utilizing the existing infrastructure of the school to nurture innovation, ideation, and entrepreneurship in students.
• Encouraging, incentivizing, and up-skilling teachers to enhance their mentoring capabilities on ideation, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
• Provides a mechanism for creating more start-ups from school education and ensures reasonable equity sharing between the stakeholders.
• Gives guidelines on IP, revenue, and equity sharing among the stakeholders including innovators, teachers, and schools.

 

Public Consultation Survey for NCF:

• Objective: To conduct a Public Consultation survey in 23 languages to seek inputs and suggestions for the development of the NCF with a target respondents/ citizen of 1 Crore.

 

Project Scope encompasses:

• Design and Development of the Survey Application
• Design and Development of the Visual dashboard
• Minimalistic User management
• Advocacy and Promotion through multi-modal approach
• Reach: Will launched across MyGov domain, NCF portal, SMS trigger, Majority Social Media platform viz. Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, Signal and Sandes
• Target beneficiaries: Citizen of India specifically Educational ecosystem viz. Policy makers, Educators, Teachers, Students, Parents, Community workers, etc.
• Expected Benefits: It will create a value proposition towards early childhood care foundation, smart & futuristic learning, innovation, entrepreneurship and employability engulfed in overall development of the National Curriculum Framework which primarily focus on 4 curriculums i.e. Early childhood care education, Secondary education, Teacher education and Adult education.

 

How the President of Indian should be addressed?

(GS Paper 2, Governance)

Context:

• A seemingly new word has entered India’s political lexicon – “Rashtrapatni”. That’s how Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury referred to President Droupadi Murmu and it has snowballed into a war of words in Lok Sabha.
• Now the National Commission for Women has stepped in, issuing a notice to Congress MP Chowdhury and seeking a written apology against the “derogatory” remark.
• Droupadi Murmu is second first woman President of India. Pratibha Patil was the first woman Head of State and supreme commander of the armed forces.

Is Rashtrapti gender-neutral?

• The recent remark has ignited a debate over the title “Rashtrapati” and whether it is gender neutral.
• Even when Patil became President in 2007, there was a discussion on how she should be addressed. Was Rashtrapati a correct way to address a woman Head of the State or did it have a “male connotation”?
• However, it was agreed that words like Rashtrapati (President) and Sabhapati (Speaker) were gender-neutral.

 

Suggestions at the time of Pratibha Patil:

• The speculation started when Patil was nominated by the United Progressive Alliance as its presidential candidate for the 2007 election. “Rashtrapatni” was a suggestion that cropped up but it remained just that.
• “Rashtramata” was also proposed but it was reportedly objected to by activists and feminists, who thought using such terms for the post was “patriarchal” and “gender-biased”.
• Constitutional expert Subhash Kashyap suggested ‘Rashtrapati Mahodaya’” and Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray suggested the term “Rashtradhyaksh” for Pratibha Patil.
• Back then constitutional experts and litterateurs said that there was nothing wrong with the nomenclature being used, arguing that the word “Rashtrapati” is a constitutional term and does not have any gender connotations. The word president translated to Hindi means Rashtrapati and it was agreed that there was no need to change it.

 

Debate in Constituent Assembly:

• During a Constituent Assembly debate, in July 1947, an amendment called for replacing the word “Rashtrapati” with “neta” or “karandhar”. However, it was not pursued further as a committee was to look into it. Later, it was decided to continue with “Rashtrapati” as the Hindi word for President of India.
• As the debate resurfaced in December 1948, Dr BR Ambedkar referred to various terms used in the draft Constitution in different languages. While the English draft proposed the word “President”, the Hindustani draft talked about “Hind ka ek President”, using “Hind” for the name of the country and “President” for the top-most post.
• The Hindi draft, interestingly, used the word “Pradhan” and not Rashtrapati, while the Urdu draft used “Sardar”, Ambedkar had said.
• Constituent Assembly member from Bihar KT Shah, during the debate, had called for referring to the President of India as “the Chief Executive and Head of the State”. Shah’s amendment was rejected after some members vehemently opposed it.
• In his reply, Ambedkar had said, “I do not doubt what he means by the introduction of these words. Chief Executive and Head of the State is to introduce the American presidential form of executive and not the Parliamentary form of the executive which is contained in this Draft Constitution.”
• In the end, Jawaharlal Nehru suggested that the term Rashtrapati should be finalised.

 

The debate reignited:

• However, in the past 75 years, a lot has changed. After the furore over the “Rashtrapatni” remark, the call for a more gender-neutral term by women’s rights activists has started gathering steam.
• Social activist and human rights campaigner said that there should be a gender-neutral term for president like it is for a chairperson. “Mantri also doesn’t reflect gender but the moment you say ‘pati’ and ‘patni’ there are other connotations too”.
• A social activist and the director of the Centre for Social Research, said whether male or female, the president has similar power and authority.
• Author Anand Ranganathan wrote on Twitter, “Rashtrapati is gender neutral just like Governor. Ms Droupadi Murmu was not called Governess Murmu.”