IAF PROCUREMENT : :Latest Indian, French Rafale Deal Runs Into Problems

SOURCE
http://www.msn.com/en-in/news/national/latest-indian-french-rafale-deal-runs-into-problems-sources/ar-BBlFSrT







Latest Indian, French Rafale Deal Runs Into Problems







New Delhi

12 Aug 2015



 India's order of 36 French-made Rafale fighter jets has run into trouble with government officials struggling to agree sales terms, sources said, four months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi intervened to break a logjam in previous commercial negotiations.


Two senior Indian defence officials said that both sides were wrangling over the unit price of the aircraft and a condition that plane maker Dassault Aviation invest a big percentage of the value of the multi-billion dollar contract in India.

The problems threaten to further delay the modernization  of India's ageing air force.

Military officials have warned of a major capability gap opening up with rivals China and Pakistan without new Western warplanes or if local defence contractors cannot build what the military needs in a timely manner.


Modi and French President Francois Hollande announced the government-to-government deal for the sale of the off-the-shelf Rafale fighters on April 10.

That followed three years of commercial negotiations with Dassault for 126 aircraft that stalled due to disagreements over assembling most of the aircraft in India.


Citing India's urgent defence needs, Modi chose to deal directly with Paris for a smaller order, saying officials would work out the details.

On May 16, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar told local media that negotiations over pricing would be finished in a "month or two".

But those talks were bogged down over India's insistence on a lower price for the frontline warplanes than the roughly $200 million each that was discussed with Dassault during the commercial talks, said the two defence officials, who have been briefed on the new negotiations.

Under the previous proposal, Dassault was to assemble 108 of the aircraft in India, a move New Delhi hoped would help boost a high-tech local aerospace industry. There is no production in India in the new arrangement.

"Since there is no technology transfer, the price that was on the table during the commercial talks cannot stand," said one of the officials, who declined to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The Indian Defence Ministry said negotiators were in talks to produce a draft agreement, but declined to give details. Parrikar said last week that New Delhi had told Paris in April it wanted the jets as soon as possible.


A Dassault spokesman declined to comment, as did the French defence procurement agency.


DEBATE OVER OFFSETS



The two Indian officials said another sticking point was New Delhi's standard requirement that arms makers invest a percentage of the value of any deal above $50 million in India.


Such so-called offset policies are not unusual in the developing world, where Western defence firms have invested in local technology and jobs in return for sales.


In this instance, India wants Dassault to invest at least 30 per cent of the contract value in India through activities such as the sourcing of components for future French operations, the setting up of manufacturing facilities in India or by providing high-tech job training, the officials said.

France has said it was ready to meet the offset obligations, but that it would take time to set up a vendor base in India for components for example and that this could push up the deal's cost, the first defence official said.


"Unless this is waived at the highest levels, the Defence Ministry is proceeding on the basis that offset requirements have to be met," the official said.


During the commercial negotiations, India had set the offset bar at 50 percent of the contract, the official added.


"This issue has become bigger than the procurement," said Amit  Cowshish, a former financial advisor on arms purchases to the Indian Defence Ministry, who has been tracking the negotiations.




DIFFERENT PRIORITIES

Complicating matters, the Indian Air Force (IAF) had asked for technical modifications so the latest weapons could be fitted to the jets, the second defence official said.

Initial technical specifications, which were part of the commercial negotiations, were outlined a decade ago when India began the process of seeking new fighters.

A French source familiar with the matter said differing priorities within India were delaying matters, with the air force focused on weaponry and the Defence Ministry on offsets.

"All along the IAF has asked for more armaments than what Dassault has offered while the Indian administration has demanded offsets," the source said.

The air force declined to comment, saying the deal was in the government's hands.
The Rafale fighters are meant to fill a gap in an air force deployed for a two-front war against China and Pakistan.

A domestic programme to build a light combat aircraft to form the backbone of the air force is 19 years behind schedule, with the first plane due for final operational clearance in March 2016.
Meanwhile, nearly 260 MiG 21 and MiG 27 Cold War-era fighter jets are due to be phased out in about eight years.


"Even with the entry of the Rafales, the air force has reconciled itself to depleted aircraft strength over the next decade," said retired air vice marshal Kapil Kak.


PHOTOS: India's military might packs a mean punch

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A CONGRESS OF RASCALS DETERMINED TO RAPE DEMOCRACY

SOURCE:
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/lock-up-the-doors-time-for-them-to-depart/295017


            A CONGRESS OF RASCALS 

                        DETERMINED

                  TO RAPE DEMOCRACY




In Short


Opinion of a Learned Judge
 

Lock Up The Doors, Time For Them To Depart

                                      By
                        Markandey Katju
             

           
This is an absolutely brilliant piece by Justice Markandey Katju a former Supreme Court judge and ex-Press Council of India, Chairman. Appears in OUTLOOK Magazine 17 August issue.

We have heard his scathing comments on various issues periodically. Never known to mince words, this is perhaps very timely 'food for thought'-

                          Deserves serious contemplation.


Lock Up The Doors, Time For Them To Depart  

Our state Institutions are dilapidated, our Leaders a bunch of Rogues.

The time for tinkering is over, drastic measures are required.
                                                                        
                                                                            Markandey Katju

I do not want to sound alarmist, but it looks to me that some kind of French Revolution is inevitable in India.

Consider the facts: all our state institutions have become hollow and empty shells, and the Constitution seems to have exhausted itself. The last two weeks have shown that we have a Parliament that hardly functions—what with its members shouting and screaming all the time—and hardly any meaningful debate held or business transacted. When the UPA was in power, the BJP members were always disrupting the House, and now when the NDA is in the saddle, the Congress and others are paying it back in the same coin. It seems the same will be repeated in the winter session of Parliament, then in the budget session, and so on ad infinitum. To add to this is the criminal antecedents of a large number of our MPs.

​  ​

We have Politicians who are mostly incorrigible RASCALS who have no genuine love for India, are bent on looting the country, squirrelling away its wealth to secret foreign banks and havens, and manipulating caste and communal votebanks, often by inciting caste or religious riots.




 Our bureaucracy has largely  become corrupt, and alas so has a section of the judiciary, which anyway takes an inordinate time to decide cases.
 

Our democracy has been hijacked by the feudals, and now elections in most places are on the basis of caste and religious votebanks, and no one bothers about the candidate’s merits.


There is massive poverty in India, massive unemployment, massive malnourishment etc. It is estimated that ten million youth enter the job market every year, but only half a million jobs are created in the organised sector of the economy. So what do the remaining youth do? They become hawkers, street vendors, stringers, bouncers, criminals, prostitutes or beggars.


Healthcare is almost non-existent for our masses. There are no doubt some very good hospitals and clinics in India, but most are exorbitantly expensive. So what does a poor man do when he or a family member falls ill? He goes to a quack.

 

Half of our children are malnourished. A UNICEF report says one out of three malnourished children in the world are Indian. Meanwhile, the prices of foodstuffs are skyrocketing. There are numerous farmer suicides in many parts of India, eg. Vidarbha, Gujarat, etc. There is covert and overt discrimination against minorities, Dalits and women. Honour killings, dowry deaths, female foeticide etc are a fact of life in many regions. Meanwhile, astrology and other more superstitious practices run rampant—even among many so-called ‘educated people’—and fake godmen and babas befool a gullible people.
 

In most Western countries there is very little air or water pollution. This is because there are very stringent rules against it, and violations entail heavy penalties. There you can safely drink the water from the taps in the house. It is as clean as mineral water. In India, on the other hand, almost everything is polluted. There are no doubt anti-pollution laws—for instance, the Environment Protection Act, Air Pollution Act, Water Pollution Act, Food Safety and Standards Act etc. But no one complies with these laws (the lead content found in Maggi noodles is but the tip of the iceberg).

Menwhile, our politicians, our “rahbars” are behaving like Neros fiddling while Rome is burning.

If you have an industry discharging toxic effluents into rivers, you find it easier to give a few thousand rupees every month to the pollution inspector who turns a blind eye to it than set up an effluent treatment plant which is capital-intensive. For our industrialists, this is cost-effective, the public be damned. When I visited Varanasi a couple of years back, I was told by the late Veer Bhadra Mishra, the bade mahant of Sankat Mochan temple (who was a professor of engineering at BHU and whose son, also a professor of engineering, is now the mahant) that there are 30 canals discharging sewage into the Ganga, in the city. I was told by a friend in Allahabad (my hometown) that the Sangam area, where pilgrims coming from all over India bathe, is highly polluted.

 

Most cities in India are becoming hellish and practically unlivable. There is congestion and traffic jams regularly and building laws are openly flouted. Even in “posh” areas in Delhi like Defence Colony, South Extension, Greater Kailash etc, cars are parked all day on the roads—thus turning them into garages. The situation is the same in all our big cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Calcutta, Hyderabad and Lucknow, where living and travelling on the roads is like going through Dante’s purgatory. Soon it will become like the Inferno.

​​

And our politicians, our “rahbars”, are behaving like Neros fiddling while Rome burns, or like the Bourbons before the French Revolution.


I am reminded of what happened on April 20, 1653, when Oliver Cromwell entered the British Parliament with his soldiers and said to the members assembled there:

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.

“Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your god for a few pieces of money.

“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your god; which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

“Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately.

Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

The soldiers then made the MPs get out of the Assembly hall, and locked it up.


I wonder whether India’s Parliament is heading for the same fate.


 A drastic and total change in the system is now essential. Tinkering here and there will not do. The Constitution has exhausted itself. The whole system in India, including our state institutions, is like a building which is totally dilapidated. Renovation and repairs will achieve nothing. It calls for demolition and fresh construction. We have to create a new, just social order in which everyone, not just a handful, get a decent life.

But it is not possible to achieve this within the system. The solutions to our country’s problems lie outside the system.

Which means we have to have some kind of French Revolution.

---

(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Supreme Court judge and ex-Press Council of India chairman)























 

 

 

VIKINGS : A PERFECT FUNERAL

              


                   A PERFECT  FUNERAL
                                        from
                      The Edge of the World
                                        By
                                Michael Pye






                              WARNING



            PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU

                                       ARE
 
                            THE LEAST BIT

                            " SQUEAMISH " 


 A description of a Viking burial from around 800 CE by the Arab merchant Ibn Fadlan (the far-ranging Vikings had established a trade route to Istanbul).

Please do not read if you are the least bit squeamish:


"Hardly anybody had yet seen the Norsemen up close by 800 CE, but they could be beautiful, they could be terrifying and quite often they were simply repellent. They had the habits of men cramped together on long voyages with little water, little shelter and absolutely no idea of privacy; they knew what it was to be bored through long idle winters so they drank; they had the perpetual traveller's passion for the rituals away from home that make him feel he might still have a home. They carried absolutely all of their culture with them. And curiously, at least in Hedeby on Danish soil, they all wore some kind of indelible cosmetic, which may have been a tattoo, to draw attention to their eyes: men and women alike. They wanted people to be afraid of their gaze.


"The Arab merchant Ibn Fadlan said he met them in a Bulghar encampment on the Volga, far east of Kiev. He was there on a mission: to make proper, settled Muslims of a people with shamans, horses and a tendency to wander about the place. He was startled and impressed when the Rus, the Vikings living in the East [and partial forbears of modern day Russians], arrived to do business. 'I have never seen bodies more perfect than theirs. They were like palm trees,' he wrote. They were tattooed all over with intricate designs in dark green. They were dirty, they hardly washed except in filthy communal bowls, they were 'like wandering asses'; they had companionable sex with their slave girls in full view of all their companions, and if a buyer arrived at such an inconvenient moment, 'the man does not get up off her until he has satisfied himself'. Naturally, they drank; and what they drank was probably mead, although it may have been fermented mare's milk. They knew very well 'the heron of forgetfulness that hovers over ale-gatherings and steals the wits of men'. ...


 
"If one of the Vikings fell sick, he was put out in a tent far away from the others and left alone; he was welcome back, if he happened to survive. If he died, and he was poor, the Rus built him a boat and burned him in it; if he was rich, they made sure he was known to be rich and a Viking in their own way, which meant a ceremony of fire, sex and murder.



"They found a volunteer among the dead man's slave girls (or slave boys) to die with him. The slave drank and sang, drank and sang, in a perfect show of joy. The man's boat was dragged onshore, and onto a wooden frame. His body was dug up and uncovered when everything was ready, smelling good but turned quite black, and put into the boat along with a dog cut in two and horses which had been run to exhaustion and butchered.

The slave girl had sex with the master of each of the pavilions built around the boat, and the men all said: 'Tell your master I only did this for your love of him.' Since the girl, according to Ibn Fadlan, could just as well have been a boy, it seems the Vikings followed the rules of the sea: the best sex is available sex.

They certainly had the half-joshing insults to go with the habit: the great god Thor was dressed up in women's clothes to steal back a magic hammer, of all things, and terribly afraid he'd be thought a 'cock-craver'; a rude ogress in the song of Helgi Hjorvardson tells the princeling Atli that

 'though you have a stallion's voice' his heart is in his arse.


"Evening came. There was a frame like a doorway, and the girl was hoisted up to look over it as though it was the door to Paradise: to see first her parents waiting for her, then all her relatives waiting for her, and then the third time her master calling to her. She drank until she did not know what she was doing. On the boat, six men raped her, and then two men caught her with ropes tight around her neck.

An old crone came forward, the Angel of Death, and stabbed her until she died. The men kept banging furiously on their shields so nobody could hear the girl's cries, especially not any girls (or boys) who might one day think of dying with their masters.



"The man's closest male relative now stripped naked and walked backwards towards the boat, covering his arse with one hand, holding a piece of flaming wood in the other. He threw the wood onto the boat and he was followed by the crowd, each with a piece of burning wood.

The boat caught, the tents caught, the bodies burned in a violent wind."






























 

How to feel safe at home !!! ‏

                 How to feel safe at home !!! ‏

Now that I'm on a Pension income, I've disconnected my home alarm system , turned off my external lights and de-registered from the Neighbourhood Watch.

I've got two Pakistani flags raised in the front garden, one at each corner, and the black flag of ISIS in the centre.

Local Police, IB, CBI, the MI and all my neighbours are watching the house 24/7. I am watched everywhere I go.

I've never felt safer, and I'm saving fortune every  month! 

 

Have a great day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O.R.O.P. :NON IMPLEMENTATION OF OROP RELAY HUNGER STRIKE AT JANTAR MANTAR NEW DELHI AND OTHER LOCATIONS

Satbir <satbirsm@gmail.com>
to iesm_group

                                                                                                Dated: 10 Aug 2015

UNITED FRONT OF EX SERVICEMEN 

                   

 NON IMPLEMENTATION OF OROP

RELAY HUNGER STRIKE AT JANTAR MANTAR NEW DELHI AND OTHER LOCATIONS

 

Dear Friends,

 

1.      Today we enter 57^th Day of our Relay Hunger Strike at Jantar Mantar New Delhi and at many other locations in the country.  There has been no visible movement forwarded by the Govt to ensure implementation of the already sanctioned schemes of OROP.

 

2.    The Govt, can, on the drop of a Hat, talk to the militants but it is not ready to speak with erstwhile soldiers and give them justice by implementing OROP.  All details had been finalized with the service HQs by mid Feb 15 and proposal duly approved by the RM was forwarded to the Finance Ministry in mid-March 2015.  It is here where the file is learnt to find its “Road Block”. The assurances by the PM have not been honoured.

 

“JIS DESH KE SAINIK SARHKON PAR,

 US DESH KA DURBHAGYA HAI”

 

3.    Friends, in order to intensify our Protest Movement, all ESM, our members of the families and our supporters are requested to daily visit Jantar Mantar and other locations in large numbers to showcase solidarity to the cause of soldiers.

 

4.    We, the Sainik Samaj have resolved to continue our peaceful Agitation being conducted in a most dignified manner across the country, till such time the Govt letter to implement the OROP is issued.

 

 “Heads, Hands & Shoulder………..Together”

 

With Regards,    

Yours Sincerely,

Maj Gen Satbir Singh, SM (Retd)                                                                                   

Advisor United Front of Ex Servicemen & Chairman IESM                                                                                                                      

Mobile: 9312404269, 0124-4110570                                 

Email:satbirsm@gmail.com