Lt Gen Ravi Shankar (Retd.) on Strategic independence and how India can achieve it

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• As usual very good hangout indeed on strategic independence and Aatmanirbharta with a five points framework in which Agriculture and “Education segment” is missed out. Education gives us “samaskara” without samaskara it is not possible to achieve strategic independence and Aatmanirbharta. Further it’s not possible for the next one decade due to opaque and hoodwinking way of governance from State and Central Governments. If we are economically and defence wise are not strong everything under the proposed five strategic segments goes kaput.

  To implement and achieve the proposed thought process with five strategic needs and get going we need to spend at least “5% each” of the GDP on Health, Water, Energy, Data (sarkari data truths or cooked by W/U/ K shape growth economists or what? And who will guarantee data privacy and security? ) segments and Cyber/ Drone based Defence systems sector.How about Atomic Energy only PM and President can have a say on this if s/he is like late Manohar Parrikar or Dr.S.Swamy (some may not like him).

  During the course of hangout, both had good comments on photovoltaic cells and mirrors, In this connection few days ago there was a news item on Fox News about Bill Gates proposing to blind the Sun with a liquid spray thus “dimming the Sun” with US $4 Bn funded project! Is Bill Gates the owner of our Mother Earth?

  India and USA alone cannot succeed just to achieve five proposed targets. We need Japan and Israel on board. But the USA’s 75 years plus supremacy on everything is going southwards.

  Linking of rivers was first proposed by ex-serviceman Dastur, if i am not wrong and as a minister for Irrigation and Electricity and as union minister for water resources proposed to his Govt by KL Rao (three times MP from the Vijayawada constituency) worked under Nehru, L B Sastry and Indira Gandhi's cabinets.

  Wuhan Virus seems to be related to SARs and our Ancient Shastras told us that if certain planetary positions occurs in certain star constellations we get virus like China Virus for three years duration or may be less this time due to playing with Mother Nature and its variants spouts just like daughter nuclei having various strains and if two planets meet for at least 86 hours (we had this in Nov/Dec 2020 ) and surprise us with a dozen variants and confuses the learned and here pharma mafia makes a fast buck!! Janma and Karma theory comes into play....Karma Sutra...Chemistry!

  Lastly, family based political outfits must be defanged. Of course all these family based parties in our country have been stinking up to the heavens with massive frauds and laws of the land are yet to catch them /lock them up even though prima facie evidences are floating around like planets around the Sun! Deals are made to sustain each other and to meet election expends/spends!! There is no point in having large bureaucrats.

  How one deals with massive unemployment if things are automated including machine feed humans with breakfast /tiffin/nastah, lunch and dinner and thereby licking the fingers of the robot also at the end!! Today Petrol pumps are tax collection centres, selling of fuel is just an incidental.

  I do not think the Mother Nature allows India to have 160 crores population by 2050 out of which 40 crores will be aliens/illegal immigrants/ fatwas. And 7.5 Bn population one third is malnourished and hungry. And by 2035 food production gets reduced by 12% who will address this?

• Once again a fantastic FOCUS sir. Salute to you.

  Coming to Energy & Water. I have a suggestion (Two birds with one shot) Coal based Power Plants EMISSIONS. Govt. now made it mandatory to install FGD plants (Flue-gas desulphurization) in all thermal power plants. This involves dry and wet technologies of using milk of lime to mix with flue gas to remove sulphur content from the gas which is being let off in to the atmosphere. Issue is there is no revenue generated by the power plants even though they get GYPSUM as a product (Low monetary value)

  However all those power plants which are on the coast (Chennai, Nellore, Visakhapatnam, Mangalore, Gujarat, etc) can go for sea water desalination using the latent heat as well as the active heat present in the flue gas (120-180 deg C) to generate large quantities of pure water at very low cost. My good friend Mr. Subrahmanyam Kumar patented this PSC TECHNOLOGY WORLD-WIDE. DST partially funded pilot plant at DCW, Tuticorin which was successful. Funds are available for putting up COMMERCIAL SCALE PILOT PLANT from Green climate Fund-Singapore (Indian Nodal Agency is NABARD) or even DST

  The power plants will generate revenue by selling this water and also mitigating pollution & there is an ROI.