Indian agriculture has for long suffered from apathy and policies rigged to benefit others at the cost of the farmer. Under successive Congress governments, ringing tributes were ritualistically paid to the industry of “kisan”, but the loudly declared intent to help farmers never translated into ground reality. Committees were formed with the avowed objective of developing agriculture and improving farmers’ lot, only to consign the recommendations of experts commissioned for the job to the growing pile of files never acted upon.
The sickeningly dishonest and dreary pattern was junked in 2014, with the BJP government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi determinedly trying to remove the fetters which kept farmers from fully harnessing the potential of Indian agriculture. From the focus on improving the acreage under irrigation and encouraging farmers to diversify into allied activities such as dairying and beekeeping, to hikes in MSP and direct financial assistance worth thousands of crores, a series of measures have marked a fresh approach which stands out from the false, populist pronouncements made by previous governments.
This approach has now seen the passage of two landmark bills by Parliament: Agricultural Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Simplification) Bill and Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Price Assurance Bill. The protests against them represent political dishonesty and the influence of middlemen, considering that they together with changes in Essential Commodities Act to remove cap on stock holdings can herald a New Deal for the agriculture sector.
The first bill is aimed at liberating the farmer from the oppressively unjust situation he had been locked in. He was forced to sell his produce at the local market, where factors such as the domination of a cartel, price information asymmetry, and poor infrastructure worked to his detriment. If the ordeal of having to wait endlessly in adverse and humiliating conditions forced him to submit to the ruthless mandi mafia, high transportation costs ate into his already meagre profit. This virtually amounted to a state sanctioned heist.
Once the first legislation is enacted, farmers will be freed from the grip of the middleman, and able to sell their produce to buyers from across the country at a price they deem to be fair and at a time of their choosing. Freedom to sell at the farm gate will do away with transportation expenses, and thus boost incomes. This is a giant stride towards the fulfilment of the dream of ‘One Nation, One Market’ 73 years after Independence.
The second soon-to-be enacted law will help farmers go for contract farming with agriculture trade firms, wholesalers, big retailers and exporters. The provision of market linkages at the sowing stage itself will insulate them from production and price vagaries. It will also lead to introduction of better technologies, technical assistance, crop insurance and credit facilities. Contract farming will also encourage private investment in the financially starved sector and open the way for growth of agro-based industries and better storage, thus removing shackles which caused stagnation. This will lead to higher income for farmers who will be able to modernise farming methods and innovate to suit the demand for cash crops and agro-industry.
In many states, affluent farmers have already been reaping the benefits of collaboration with the corporate sector. This law will help small farmers derive similar gains. They will have the freedom to withdraw from this agreement at any point without penalty, while sale, lease and mortgage of the land will be completely prohibited.
The allegations that the twin legislations are anti-farmer are baseless and have been raised by Congress and others as a smokescreen to cover their failures. Congress promised to repeal the APMC Act in its 2019 manifesto, but is now putting the interests of middlemen over those of farmers.
The conduct of these political parties in Rajya Sabha during passage of these bills is a dark blot on Indian democracy and parliamentary decorum. It reflects their frustration over loss of support and anti-farmer mindset. That alone can explain the propaganda that has been unleashed that enactment of the two laws will lead to abolition of MSP. The lie has already been exposed with the announcement of MSP for rabi crops this week and with the government’s solemn declarations inside and outside Parliament that MSP will continue.
Since 2013-14, MSP for wheat and paddy has increased by 41% and 43% respectively, while there has been up to 65% rise in MSP for pulses and oilseeds. The quantity of wheat and paddy procured has also increased by 73% and 114% respectively, compared to 2014. In the case of pulses, the increase has been a staggering 4,962%. Increased agriculture credit, higher loan subsidy, soil health card to 16.38 crore farmers, increased support for mechanisation and launch of the Rs 1 lakh crore Agriculture Infrastructure Fund etc have been hallmarks of the Modi government’s effort to help farmers. During this government’s tenure, production of foodgrain has increased by 7.29%, horticulture by 12.4% and pulses by 20.65% respectively. The Modi government has also provided security cover to 13.26 crore farmers under PM crop insurance scheme and direct cash benefit of Rs 94,000 crore to 10.21 crore farmers through PM Kisan Samman Nidhi.
Sardar Patel had famously said, “If anyone has the right to walk on this earth with their head held high, it is the farmer of the country, who produces the wealth of the earth.” Today, I feel proud to say that BJP government under Modi’s leadership has taken historic and bold initiatives to empower the country’s farmers and make them ‘Atmanirbhar’.
( b ) https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&rlz=1C1ZKTG_enIN928IN928&sxsrf=ALeKk01He9GvE8biWfqgWIN9KsG42566hw:1607665137141&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=he+SMASH+2000+gunsight,&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj52aqrm8XtAhUDzjgGHajuCnEQjJkEegQIDBAB&biw=1536&bih=780
INDEX
( B)SER 2 - ASSASSINATION PART 2 :-https://bcvasundhra.blogspot.com/2020/12/assassination-part-2-assassinated-by.html
( A) SER 1 - ASSASSINATION PART 1 :- https://bcvasundhra.blogspot.com/2020/12/assassination.html
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ASSASSINATION PART - 2
Assassinated By Remote Control : Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: Father of Iranian N-Bomb :
How a Nissan pickup with enough explosive in it to kill 150 metres away (besides a remote controlled machine gun with ammunition that could be accurately aimed and used) was positioned at the exact spot on one of many routes Fakhrizadeh could have taken definitely suggests local collaborators within Iran. The full details will emerge months and years later, if at all. Luck, bad for the victim and good for the perpetrator is also a factor, If Fakhrizadeh had not got out of his armoured vehicle, the outcome could have been different.
This is the second killing of Iranian leadership this year by Israelis/ US using remotely controlled devices.
On 9 January 2020, Qassem Soleimani, a General of Iran Revolutionary Guards stepped off a Cham Wings flight at Baghdad airport, He was paranoid about security for months if not years, being on US kill lists. He was met by a familiar face, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of the Hashd al-Shaabi Iraqi paramilitary, a long standing ally of the Iranian general and a close friend.
With him was a small reception party and two vehicles, ready to whisk the head of Iran's Quds force back to Muhandis' Green Zone home, his usual address when on one of his frequent visits to the Iraqi capital. This time, something was very different. A US Reaper drone was hovering and ready to strike, and within minutes the two men would be dead on a road right next to Baghdad airport.
Such folks do not pass through the regular formal channels and get their passports stamped at airports. They do not use smartphones. They move in ordinary cars with the fewest possible number of people knowing date of time of their arrival or routes they would take. Obviously, there were fatal security leaks which allowed precise and exact knowledge of not just their whereabouts but also their intended and real-time movements. Occasionally, as on this Friday, Soleimani would land at Baghdad International Airport. Sometimes he would arrive at Najaf's instead, or cross from Iran at the Munthiriya border crossing in Diyala governorate, some 120km east of Baghdad. Increasingly, he flew into northern Iraq's Kurdistan region, before travelling south to Baghdad by car. Sensible precautions that ensure security. From analysis of experts none of those other routes would have saved Soleimani as per a leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement. "He had been betrayed by his itinerary during the final 36 hours of his life".
Overall, it was extremely difficult to track them. But Damascus and Baghdad airports are full of pro-American intelligence sources, and because of this they were located by the metre and by the minute. Either through a planted tracker or an on-ground observer or both. A Reaper has 14 hours endurance and has to be 'on target' for a designated window of no more than a few hour or so, suggesting use of multiple drones in a relay deployment.
Graphic is clearest and best viewed when enlarged on a laptop or desktop screen
The method used last week is different than the January killing. Instead of using Drone(s) flying thousands of feet above ground, the killer device was located on ground. In both instances the cost, time and effort is huge because of the kind of intelligence needed/ used. Over weeks and months security measures, movement and habit profiles of the victim are developed. Finally intelligence assets have to be present physically on ground near the intended target to locate and track the target of assasination.
Defence against such attacks will rarely come from physical measures like bodyguards or convoys of (armoured/ protected) vehicles. The targets will, like Osama bin Laden, will have to change routine and habits and be in deep protection. That too as in OBL's case did not work in the end.
Let's Talk About Remote-Controlled Gun Turrets And The Killing Of Iran's Top Nuclear Scientist
The scenario sounds like something straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster, but lightweight remote-controlled gun turrets do indeed exist.
A senior Iranian official has now claimed that Israel killed top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh last week using a gun in either a remote-controlled or entirely automated mount on a pickup truck and that no actual human assassins were involved. No hard evidence has been provided to substantiate this assertion, which sounds like it was ripped straight from the 1997 action movie The Jackal, but it's not entirely implausible. In July, an Israeli company unveiled a man-portable gun turret that it says can scan for and lock on to targets automatically and then be fired by an operator using a wireless, tablet-like device.
Ali Shamkhani, a General in Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC) who serves as Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, made the claim during the funeral procession for Fakhrizadeh earlier today. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency, which has ties to the IRGC, appears to have first reported these details about the purported remote assassination yesterday. The attack that killed the Iranian nuclear scientist, himself an IRGC officer and who U.S. and Israeli intelligence have assessed to have been in charge of Iranian nuclear weapons development efforts for decades, took place in the city of Absard, less than 50 miles east of the Iranian capital Tehran, on Nov. 27. You can read more about what was known at that time in The War Zone's initial reporting on this incident.
"The enemy used a completely new method, style, and professional and specialized way to succeed in reaching its goal," Shamkhani subsequently declared at Fakhrizadeh's funeral.
IRGC General Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
Per Shamkhani's remarks and Fars' report from Sunday, as well as other news stories from Iranian outlets, Fakhrizadeh was headed with his wife for a weekend in Absard at the time of the attack. The black Nissan sedan they were driving in was part of a four-vehicle convoy.
Shortly after the convoy made a turn, an electronically-controlled gun turret located inside a parked blue Nissan pickup truck shot at the sedan carrying Fakhrizadeh. The car came to a stop and the scientist is said to have gotten out, apparently unaware that the sounds he heard of objects hitting the vehicle were actually gunfire.
The gun then continued to fire, with bullets hitting Fakhrizadeh in the side and back, including at least one that left his spine severed, according to Fars. A bodyguard, who may have also been in the car, tried to save him by jumping on top of him and was also wounded, per the report.
The pickup truck then exploded.
It's unclear how many other casualties there may have been in total. Fakhrizadeh was reportedly rushed to a local medical clinic before being flown by helicopter to a military hospital in Tehran, where he succumbed to his wounds. Other reports have asserted that the gun turret was “controlled by satellite" and that the weapon was recovered and had "the logo and specifications of the Israeli military industry." No pictures have been released, so far, claiming to show any remains of the gun or its automated mount.
What is absolutely important to note here is this version of events almost entirely contradictsFars' own initial reporting of the incident, which said that the explosion had occurred first and that a team of gunmen had then killed Fakhrizadeh. This scenario seemed to suggest a complex attack in which the explosive-laden truck was used to first bring the convoy to a halt.
That report also claimed that three to four people had died at the scene, including all of the attackers. Other Iranian media reports later said that a dozen gunmen had been involved in the assassination and that a 50-person support team had also been in the country to help carry out the attack. Previous assassinations, including of other Iranian nuclear scientists, attributed to Israel have involved a mixture of bombs mounted on cars and other vehicles, as well as gunmen on motorcycles.
The gun turret story feels better suited to a Hollywood blockbuster. It is perhaps most reminiscent of 1997's The Jackal, in which the titular hitman, played by Bruce Willis, attempts to assassinate the First Lady of the United States using a remote-controlled heavy machine gun concealed inside a minivan.
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At the same time, as already noted, in July, Israeli company Smart Shooter debuted the newest addition to its SMASH product family, the SMASH Hopper, also known as the Light Remote-Controlled Weapon Station (LRCWS). This system combines a gun equipped with the SMASH 2000 computerized gunsight and a remotely operated mount that the company says can be installed on a tripod or a pedestal mount on the ground or on a vehicle. You can read more about this system in this past War Zone piece all about it.
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( https://youtu.be/DNej1dwTjW4
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The SMASH 2000 Computerized Gunsight and a Remotely Operated Mount
The SMASH 2000 gunsight, which doesn't require an automated gunmount, already has the ability to automatically detect targets and lock on to them, only allowing the operator to fire when they are most likely to score a hit. You can read more about this sight in this previous War Zone story
What are the anti-drone Israeli SMASH 2000 Plus systems Navy has ordered?
SMASH Hopper builds on the inherent capabilities of the SMASH 2000, giving an operator the ability to set the turret to automatically scan and then lock on to targets and then giving the command to fire. The user can also manually operate the turret, if desired. All of this can be done using a tablet-type device either physically connected to the turret via a wire or through a wireless connection.
An even lighter weight remotely-operated system, SMASH Hopper Light, is also available with many of the same capabilities. It uses a special, proprietary tripod and has a more limited field of fire than the standard SMASH Hopper when deployed, but it can be carried and emplaced by a single person.
Smart Shooter's promotional images show SMASH Hopper and SMASH Hopper Light fitted with 5.56mm AR-15/M16 pattern carbines. Its product material says that the full-size system, at least, can also accommodate 7.62mm caliber weapons based on the Stoner SR-25 pattern rifle.
As such, it's certainly possible that the hit team could have set up a remotely-operated turret, such as SMASH Hopper, in the Nissan pickup and operated it remotely from somewhere nearby, or even set it to function in a semi-autonomous fire mode, although that seems less likely. Of course, it's equally possible, if not far more plausible, that Iran, embarrassed that a top nuclear scientist was killed in broad daylight in the middle of the country, is effectively asserting that the assassination succeeded only because its enemies employed "a completely new method" as Shamkhani put it.
It's also possible that both scenarios are partially true. That this new technology was leveraged as part of the hit, but that actual hitman also took part in making sure Iran's prized scientist didn't live to see another day. Often times, some sort of diversion can be beneficial in these types of attacks. Having a vehicle ahead open fire with a remote gun turret would certainly qualify for such a diversion.
All this being said, the Iranian government has yet to provide any hard evidence to support any of the reported chains of events that led to Fakhrizadeh's death, whether the attack involved some kind of remote-controlled turret or not. It remains to be seen whether or not any such additional information, including supposed pictures of any weapons used in the attack, will emerge given the broad consensus, inside Iran and elsewhere, that Israel was responsible, regardless of the method.
It's still important to note that the idea that Fakhrizadeh was killed in a remote-controlled ambush of some kind is not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Precisely this type of capability does exist, and not in a big heavy form, and it is indeed manufactured in Israel. This could be all the more reason for Iranian officials to point to this technology as the culprit of the assassination, regardless of any proof it was actually present or not.
Using sophisticated algorithms, the technology calculates the movement of a target and predicts where it is likely to be via advanced image processing.
The theatre of modern warfare is constantly evolving with today's infantryman facing a whole host of new threats that never existed previously. Drones, for instance, have revolutionised the ways in which states carry out attacks, often offering inexpensive and highly effective solutions to undertake strikes without the need to risk personnel.
But in the same way that nation-states can use drones, adversaries may also benefit. Weaponised drones pose an increasingly clear and present threat to soldiers stationed at sensitive or vulnerable locations. Identifying and taking out a fast-moving unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can prove a futile challenge even for the greatest of sharpshooters.
In order to address this threat, weapons designers across the world have developed a whole slew of solutions ranging from the use of trained eagles to locate and latch on to drones in mid-air to radio jamming technology.
