#India Eyes 100 GW #Solar #Power #Capacity By 2022

While we have reported recently that India has hiked its solar power capacity target by five times and seeks to install 100 GW capacity by 2022, we’ll now consider some of the aspects of this enormous target.

India’s recently announced target to install 100 GW solar power capacity by 2022 could make it one of the largest solar power markets in the world and put it in direct competition with China, which has also announced a target to achieve an installed solar power capacity of 100 GW by 2020. Essentially, India wants to do in five years what China plans to do in 10 years! While many believed that the initial target of 22 GW by 2022 would be difficult to achieve, there is an increased optimism regarding the new target. So what has changed?

A simple answer to that question is, the government. Following the world’s largest democratic elections earlier this year, the man who pioneered solar power in India ascended to the post of Prime Minister of India. Narendra Modi previously initiated the Gujarat solar power policy that attracted some of the leading global solar power companies to the Indian state. The policy led to Gujarat becoming the leading state in India in terms of installed solar power capacity, an achievement it has consistently maintained for the last five years.

Narendra Modi was clear from the word go that his government would significantly enhance the National Solar Mission. He has taken several measures to ensure that significant demand is generated and hurdles in investments are removed.

The Prime Minister has promised access to electricity for every household in the country by the end of the decade. India already has an installed capacity of 250 GW, dominated by fossil fuels, the additional electricity demand creates a massive opportunity for renewable energy resources.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India has already increased the solar power capacity it plans to auction and get installed over the next three to four years. The additional capacity is expected to come from state solar power policies. The recent state solar power auctions have attracted active participation from global leaders including First Solar and SunEdison.

The government is set to push for ultra mega solar power projects with capacities of up to 4 GW. A number of such projects are currently in various stages of development.

On the other side of the project size spectrum, things are looking good too. Small-scale projects that would cover thousands of kilometres of canals and millions of roofs are also catching up fast. State governments are trying to emulate the success achieved by Gujarat under Narendra Modi while he was the chief minister. A number of states are considering implementation of net-metering regulations to increase adoption rates in the domestic sector.

While policies and regulations are in place and the industry is also responding positively to the increased installation targets, whether the 100 GW target will be achieved or not would also depend on the removal of bureaucratic hurdles, availability of low-cost and sustained finance, and attractive tariffs.

Are #Gujarat's '#toiletpolitics' #democratic?

Is banning a person from contesting for public office if he or she does not have a toilet at home a good idea?

India's western state of Gujarat certainly believes so. Earlier this week, the state's legislators passed a bill which makes it mandatory for candidates to have toilets in their homes to qualify for contesting elections to local municipalities and village councils. Existing elected members will also have to declare within six months that they have toilets at home, failing which they will face disqualification.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who ruled Gujarat for over a decade before he swept to power in Delhi in May, has made abolishing open defecation a top priority of his government. It is a laudable aim, though critics believe it does not appear to link what is largely an individual-driven campaign to the appalling practice of manual scavenging. Clearly legislators belonging to Mr Modi's ruling BJP in Gujarat have enthusiastically backed their leader's call.

Surely, there is nothing wrong in that. Open defecation blights the lives of millions of Indians and is an enduring health hazard. Nearly half of Indians continue to defecate in the open. Gujarat, one of India's most prosperous states, is in a hurry to build more toilets; the state has a spotty record here. Its new Chief Minister Anandi Patel says she wants the state to be "open defecation free" in two years. A recent report said more than 70,000 people defecate in the open in the main city of Ahmedabad alone. Good economics does not always lead to good sanitation.

But is the latest move linking a democratic right to building a private utility such a good idea?

Some 40% of people in Gujarat live in its 159 municipalities and eight municipal corporation areas in what is one of India's most urbanised states. There are some 13,500 village councils in its more than 18,500 villages. Elections to these bodies are critical to the health of Gujarat's democracy and development. The freedom to contest the polls is also an inalienable right of every citizen living in their cities and villages.

That is why critics like economist Hemant Shah feel that the bill is essentially "undemocratic and discriminatory", and should be challenged in the courts.

Tens of thousands of people in Gujarat's teeming cities live in sprawling chawls - densely packed buildings with more than a dozen tenements - where many families share a single toilet. Will a chawl resident be barred from contesting because he does not have his private toilet? What happens to the political aspirations of a resident of a grubby shantytown home so small that his living space is sometimes equal to the non-existent toilet?

"The government should first provide space and money to build toilets for the poor. The poor are most affected by urban planning because it has always excluded them. Now they can't dream from standing for public office just because they don't have the space or money to build their own toilets?" ask Professor Shah. It's a valid question.

Cosmic first: European spacecraft lands on comet (@ESA_Rosetta)

For the first time in history, a spacecraft from Earth has landed on the face of a comet speeding through deep space. The European Space Agency's Philae lander on the Rosetta spacecraft made its nail-biting, history-making touchdown on the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko today (Nov. 12). Mission controllers are still trying to determine whether Philae's harpoons fired to anchor it to the surface of the comet. 

The landing ended what some scientists had dubbed "seven hours of terror" - the time it took for Philae to descend from Rosetta as the spacecraft and comet flew through space about 317 million miles (510 million kilometers) from Earth. 

People started hugging, cheering and celebrating as soon as mission controllers got confirmation that the lander successfully touched down on the surface of the comet. Officials are now trying to determine whether they need to re-fire the probe's harpoons to be sure it stays in place on the comet. ESA officials confirmed that the spacecraft made its soft landing on the comet at a little bit after 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) today.

"We definitely confirm that the lander is on the surface," said flight director Andrea Accomazzo.

While further checks are needed to ascertain the state of the lander, the fact that it is resting on the surface of the speeding comet is already a huge success. It marks the highlight of the decade-long Rosetta mission to study comets and learn more about the origins of these celestial bodies.

The head of the European Space Agency underlined Europe's pride in having achieved a unique first ahead of its U.S. counterpart NASA.

"We are the first to have done that, and that will stay forever," said ESA director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain.

Scientists have likened the trillion or so comets in our solar system to time capsules that are virtually unchanged since the earliest moments of the universe.

"By studying one in enormous detail, we can hope to unlock the puzzle of all of the others," said Mark McCaughrean, a senior scientific adviser to the mission.

#Germany marks #25years since #BerlinWall's fall

Germany on Sunday celebrates the 25th anniversary of the night the Berlin Wall fell, a pivotal moment in the collapse of communism and the start of the country's emergence as the major power at the heart of Europe.

A 15-kilometer (nine-mile) chain of lighted balloons along the former border will be released into the air early on Sunday evening - around the time on November 9, 1989 when a garbled announcement by a senior communist official set off the chain of events that brought down the Cold War's most potent symbol.

The opening of East Germany's fortified frontier capped months of ferment across eastern and central Europe that had already ushered in Poland's first post-communist prime minister and prompted Hungary to cut open its border fence. The hard-line leadership in East Berlin faced mounting pressure from huge protests and an exodus of citizens via other communist countries.

The collapse of the Wall, which had divided the city for 28 years, was "a point of no return...from there, things headed toward a whole new world order," said Axel Klausmeier, the director of the city's main Wall memorial.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, is opening an overhauled museum on Sunday at the site - home to one of the few surviving sections of the Wall.

Merkel, 60, who was then a physicist and entered politics as communism crumbled, recalls the feeling of being stuck behind East Germany's border.

"Even today when I walk through the Brandenburg Gate, there's a residual feeling that this wasn't possible for many years of my life, and that I had to wait 35 years to have this feeling of freedom," Merkel said last week. "That changed my life."

The future chancellor was among the thousands who poured westward hours after the ruling Politburo's spokesman, Guenter Schabowski, off-handedly announced at a televised news conference that East Germans would be allowed to travel to West Germany and West Berlin.

Pressed on when that would take effect, Schabowski seemed uncertain but said: "To my knowledge, this is immediately, without delay." Soon, Western media were reporting that East Germany was opening the border and East Berliners were jamming the first crossing.

Border guards had received no orders to let anyone cross, but gave up trying to hold back the crowds. By midnight, all the border crossings in the city were open.

East Germany's then-leader, Egon Krenz, later said the plan was to allow free travel only the next morning so citizens could line up properly to get exit visas. But with the leadership's control over the border well and truly lost, Germany was soon on the road to reunification less than a year later, on Oct. 3, 1990.

Since then, some 1.5 to 2 trillion euros ($1.9 to $2.5 trillion) has gone into rebuilding the once-dilapidated east.

Much has changed beyond recognition, though some inequalities persist.

Wages and pensions remain lower, and unemployment higher, in the east than the west. Many eastern areas saw their population drop as people headed west for jobs, something that is only now showing signs of turning around.

There are cultural differences too: a higher proportion of children are in daycare in the east, a legacy of communist times, and the opposition Left Party - partly descended from East Germany's communist rulers - remains strongest in the east.

But the progress toward true unity is seen in Germany's top leadership: Not only is Merkel from the east, but so is the nation's president, Joachim Gauck, a former Protestant pastor and pro-democracy activist.

Germans today can be grateful to have lives and opportunities, Gauck said, "that endless numbers of people in the world can only desire and dream of."

Bipin Chandra Pal 156 Birth Anniversary

Born - 1858

Died - 1932

Achievements - With the other two members - Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak - from the Lal Bal Pal team, Bipin Chandra Pal doled out a number of extremist measures like boycotting goods made by British, burning Western clothes and lockouts in the British owned businesses and industrial concerns to get their message across to the foreign rulers of India. 

Bipin Chandra Pal was a teacher, journalist, orator, writer and librarian. But above all, he was the one of the three famous leaders called "Lal Bal Pal" who comprised the extremist wing of the Indian National Congress. It was these three leaders who started the first popular upsurge against British colonial policy in the 1905 partition of Bengal. This was before Mahatma Gandhi had entered the fray of Indian politics. Bipin Chandra Pal recognized the positive outcome of the British kingdom, but at the same time upheld India's federal idea. 

Read on about the biography of Bipin Chandra Pal, who was born on 7 November 1858 into a wealthy Hindu family at Habiganj, which is now in Bangladesh. He was a staunch radical in both public and private life. He was also among the first who openly rebuked Mahatma Gandhi and his followers because they sought to reinstate the current government with no government or by the priestly tyranny of Gandhiji. It was, however, his coalition with pan-Islamism during Khilafat movement due to which he was cast off from the Congress till his death in 1932. 

With the other two members - Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak - from the Lal Bal Pal team, Bipin Chandra Pal doled out a number of extremist measures like boycotting goods made by British, burning Western clothes and lockouts in the British owned businesses and industrial concerns to get their message across to the foreign rulers. Later on during the course of his life history, Bipin Chandra Pal came in contact with prominent Bengali leaders like Keshab Chandra Sen and Sibnath Sastri, but not as one looking for a teacher for guidance. Pal died in the year 1932.

Dr. Venkata Raman( #CVRaman) 126 Birth Anniversary

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born at Tiruchirappalli in Southern India on November 7th, 1888. His father was a lecturer in mathematics and physics so that from the first he was immersed in an academic atmosphere. He entered Presidency College, Madras, in 1902, and in 1904 passed his B.A. examination, winning the first place and the gold medal in physics; in 1907 he gained his M.A. degree, obtaining the highest distinctions.

His earliest researches in optics and acoustics - the two fields of investigation to which he has dedicated his entire career - were carried out while he was a student.

Since at that time a scientific career did not appear to present the best possibilities, Raman joined the Indian Finance Department in 1907; though the duties of his office took most of his time, Raman found opportunities for carrying on experimental research in the laboratory of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science at Calcutta (of which he became Honorary Secretary in 1919).

In 1917 he was offered the newly endowed Palit Chair of Physics at Calcutta University, and decided to accept it. After 15 years at Calcutta he became Professor at the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore (1933-1948), and since 1948 he is Director of the Raman Institute of Research at Bangalore, established and endowed by himself. He also founded the Indian Journal of Physics in 1926, of which he is the Editor. Raman sponsored the establishment of the Indian Academy of Sciences and has served as President since its inception. He also initiated the Proceedings of that academy, in which much of his work has been published, and is President of the Current Science Association, Bangalore, which publishes Current Science (India).

Some of Raman's early memoirs appeared as Bulletins of the Indian Associationfor the Cultivation of Science (Bull. 6 and 11, dealing with the "Maintenance of Vibrations"; Bull. 15, 1918, dealing with the theory of the musical instruments of the violin family). He contributed an article on the theory of musical instruments to the 8th Volume of the Handbuch der Physik, 1928. In 1922 he published his work on the "Molecular Diffraction of Light", the first of a series of investigations with his collaborators which ultimately led to his discovery, on the 28th of February, 1928, of the radiation effect which bears his name ("A new radiation", Indian J. Phys., 2 (1928) 387), and which gained him the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Other investigations carried out by Raman were: his experimental and theoretical studies on the diffraction of light by acoustic waves of ultrasonic and hypersonic frequencies (published 1934-1942), and those on the effects produced by X-rays on infrared vibrations in crystals exposed to ordinary light. In 1948 Raman, through studying the spectroscopic behaviour of crystals, approached in a new manner fundamental problems of crystal dynamics. His laboratory has been dealing with the structure and properties of diamond, the structure and optical behaviour of numerous iridescent substances (labradorite, pearly felspar, agate, opal, and pearls).

Among his other interests have been the optics of colloids, electrical and magnetic anisotropy, and the physiology of human vision.

Raman has been honoured with a large number of honorary doctorates and memberships of scientific societies. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society early in his career (1924), and was knighted in 1929.

#Blackmoney holders emptying #Swiss accounts : SIT

Black money account holders seem to be ferreting out money from their overseas accounts even before the Government of India can act against them, according to the first report of the Special Investigation Team on black money, which was accessed by Headlines Today.

The report was submitted by SIT members Justices MB Shah and Arijit Pasayat to the Supreme Court in August this year. The Supreme Court is directly monitoring the case.

Some of the startling facts are:

1. There is no money left in 289 accounts in the list of 628 furnished by multinational bank HSBC. This means that almost half the account holders may evacuated whatever funds they had parked in these accounts before the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) could access their account statement.

2. Almost 20 per cent of the total entries, 122 cases, are joint account holders further pruning the HSBC list to only 217 cases that can be investigated.

3. Of these accounts, the SIT report said, search and seizure operations have been carried out in 142 cases, survey in 8 cases, suo moto action in 17 cases.

4. A total of 319 account holders admitted to having accounts with HSBC. Though the Switzerland government has not handed over any information about the total 628 accounts despite efforts by the SIT and the CBDT.

5.The SIT report said a consent waiver exercise was necessitated after Swiss authorities refused to share information and consent to secure account details was obtained in 174 cases and sent to HSBC. The CBD has completed tax assessment in 65 of these cases. And a concealment penalty has been initiated in many of these cases.

6. Listing details, the SIT report said prosecution proceedings for not furnishing account details have been launched in 27 cases so far, and in one case, the matter has already reached the courts.

7. Apart from the HSBC list, the SIT report provides status reports on the alleged black money cases being investigated by the CBI. In the STC export-import case, the CBI found that the modus operandi was to show remittance for non-existent imports. The matter pertains to Rajat Pharmachem which in collusion with STC remitted Rs.259 crore to Singapore. But the investigation showed import and export had not taken place.

8. In the NAFED case, export of commodities to different countries was carried out between Renfrew Security Bank and Trust through NAFED. CBI investigation shows that the sellers and buyers were bogus companies. It is suspected that Rs.233 crore was laundered here.

9. The highest amount being investigated by the CBI is in a Ponzi scheme. In this scheme, PACL Limited allegedly defrauded investors across the country of Rs.650 crore in the sale and development of agricultural land. This money was routed to two Australian companies -- Pearl Australasia and Pearl Australasia Miraj.

10. In all the cases under investigation, the amounts being probed do not exceed Rs.650 crore. This shows that the astronomical sum of US $ 1 trillion being bandied by the likes of Baba Ramdev is highly unlikely to be realised.

The Global Financial Integrity Foundation presented the analysis of a report on illicit financial flows from developing countries before the SIT. It estimated that India stands at number 5 among 142 countries in illicit financial flows and pegged the average flow of illegal funds in India at US $ 34,393 million. Over the past 12 years, a total US $ 3,43,922 million dollars of illegal funds have been routed through India, says the report.