Tag Archives: Comptroller and Auditor General

Drdo

CAG blows holes in DRDO’s early warning planes

Leave a comment
The auditor has said that operational requirements specified by the IAF were not met and added that there has been a 70% time overrun. (Representative image)

By Shaurya Karanbir Gurung, ET Bureau, Aug 08, 2018
After a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into corruption allegations, the Comptroller and Auditor General has also cast a shadow on an indigenous program for Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) system ordered by the Air Force.

In a detailed report, the CAG has stated that the project is yet to be fully realised even though it was conceived in 2002, leaving gaps in the IAF’s air-surveillance capability.

The auditor has said that operational requirements specified by the IAF were not met and added that there has been a 70% time overrun.

The central auditor also said selecting the Embraer aircraft as the platform created design constraints and caused the delays. It may be recalled that the CBI is probing allegations that kickbacks were paid in the Embraer aircraft deal that DRDO had struck with the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer in 2008.

The AEW&C is an airborne surveillance system which detects incoming hostile fighters, cruise missiles and drones much before ground based radars.

It also detects enemy troops build-ups, warships and directs friendly fighter jets during combat. The project for the indigenous development of the AEW&C of the IAF was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security in October 2004 at a cost of `1,800 cr. The CAG, however, said that the project’s total cost up till August 2017 was `2,425 Crore.
Under the project, two AEW&C were to be supplied to the IAF. Banglore based Centre of Air Borne Systems (CABS) of the DRDO was the nodal agency for developing the system.

The CAG says that the IAF had accepted the first AEW&C in February 2017. “However, out of the 18 operational requirements specified by the IAF, eight parameters could not be fully achieved by the AEW&C,” said the CAG report.

Some of these operational requirements are the primary surveillance radar for scanning the airspace to detect targets, the secondary radar to identify friends and foes, and the self protection suite to warn about incoming weapons. The IAF insisted that the eight parameters should be met in the second aircraft. The DRDO agreed to meet five of them, while arguing that the remaining three would not impact operations.

Comments

Drdo

Railways Mull Rs 6,250 Cr Replacement To Flawed Bio-Toilets–After Spending Rs 1,620 Cr

2 Comments

IndiaSpend Team, June 18, 2018
Mumbai: Having spent nearly Rs 1,370 crore on 136,985 railway bio-toilets–criticised for being “no better than septic tanks”–and after earmarking Rs 250 crore to install bio-toilets on remaining trains by March 2019, the railway ministry is now considering “upgraded” vacuum bio-toilets at a cost of Rs 6,250 crore.

“We have started experimenting with vacuum bio-toilets like those in an aeroplane,” Railway Minister Piyush Goyal told PTI. “Some 500 vacuum bio-toilets have been ordered and once the experiment is successful, I am willing to spend money to replace all the 2.5 lakh toilets in the trains with vacuum bio-toilets.”

Vacuum toilets, which cost around Rs 2.5 lakh per unit, will be odour-free, will cut down water use by 1/20th and have fewer chances of getting blocked, he added.

This takes the cost to Rs 6,250 crore.

In addition, vacuum toilets will need to be emptied and cleaned in rail yards.

As of May 31, 136,965 bio-toilets have been fitted in 37,411 coaches, at a cost of around Rs 1 lakh per toilet, according to railway ministry officials quoted by the PTI. This brings the expenditure to about Rs 1,370 crore.

There is a plan to install bio-toilets in around 18,750 more coaches by March 2019, when all the coaches of the Indian Railways will be fitted with such toilets, costing the national transporter around Rs 250 crore, the PTI release added.

The technology–and the criticism

Indian Railways are often described as the world’s biggest toilet: They eject around 3,980 tonnes of faecal matter–the equivalent of 497 truck-loads (at 8 tonnes per truck)–onto rail tracks every day, according to a report released by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in 2013.

Bio-toilets are small-scale sewage-treatment systems beneath the toilet seat: Bacteria in a compost chamber digest human excreta, leaving behind water and methane. Only the water, disinfected later, is let out on the tracks. That’s how they were supposed to work.

But, signs of failure came early.

In 2007, an experts committee headed by Vinod Tare, a professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, had concluded that bio-toilets developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) were not workable. “Yet, the Indian Railways went ahead with the decision to proliferate this model,” Tare told IndiaSpend in this January 7, 2018, interview.

Sanitation experts and various studies–including commissioned by the railways–have pointed out that most of the new “bio-toilets” on Indian trains are ineffective or ill maintained and the water discharged no better than raw sewage, as IndiaSpend reported on November 23, 2017.

Lokendra Singh, former director of the Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE), had, after an expedition to Antarctica, brought home psychrophilic bacteria that can survive in extremely low temperatures. The bacteria were mixed with cow dung and normal soil, which have methogens (microorganisms that produce methane) capable of breaking down human excreta. This was then supplied to the manufacturers of rail bio-digesters.

Singh’s claims of a scientific breakthrough were questioned: The bacterium did not have independent third-party certification, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) did not have a patent for the design and manufacture of bio-toilets, and once the tank is filled, human excreta is allowed to drop down onto the tracks.

A December 2017 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on these bio-toilets echoed the findings of our November 2017 investigation into their widespread malfunctioning: The CAG found 199,689 defects in 25,000 toilets. Some major issues were:

Highest number of problems/ defects (41,111) found at the Bengaluru coaching depot, followed by Gorakhpur (24,495) and Wadi Bunder (22,521);
Complaints per bio-toilet were highest at the Bengaluru coaching deport (98), followed by Wadi Bunder (32), Rameshwaram (28) and Gwalior (17);
Of the 102,792 instances of choking, 10,098 (10%) cases reported in March 2017;
Of the 102,792 cases of choking in 25,080 bio-toilets, the highest (34%) were reported from Bengaluru. This implied that one bio-toilet got choked 83 times a year;
Choking incidents have risen from 2015-16: One bio-toilet got choked four times a year during 2016-17.

Responding to the CAG findings, the railway ministry said its criticism was “not correct” and that “some problems of choking were occurring on account of misuse of toilets by passengers”. An official note from December 20, 2017, said: “These issues are being dealt with promptly.”

The denial

The railways ministry responded to our November 2017 investigation, pointing out what it calls “factual inaccuracies” and a lack of “technological understanding”. We had published the rejoinder verbatim, with our response:

The ministry said the IIT Madras study was conducted “on stationary toilets on selected 15 field installed units and 6 units installed at IIT Madras Campus with bio-digesters based on DRDO technology”, and not on railway coaches. “There is absolutely no difference,” professor Ligy Philip of IIT Madras had told us. “The same technology and the same bacteria is being used for both the land-based and the train bio-digesters.”
“It is not correct to say that bio-toilets in coaches are ineffective or ill-maintained,” the ministry said, adding that periodic tests are conducted to ensure that the discharged water meets specific norms. However, agenda papers of a Railway Board meeting in October 2017 showed that bio-toilets have not passed the performance tests.
“DRDE has more than a dozen national and foreign patents not only on the basic technology but also on the bio-digester fitted in railway coaches,” the ministry said. However, the patent is for engineering and septic tank design. There is no mention on the use of the Antarctica bacteria to aid the bio-digestion process.
The ministry said that a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed with the DRDO in March 2010. However, the patent for engineering and septic tank design was awarded in 2015–five years after the MoU for supply of bio-toilets was signed.

The policy U-turn

As a possible solution, IndiaSpend had offered the ‘zero-discharge toilets’ developed by IIT Kanpur.

“IIT Kanpur developed ‘zero-discharge toilets’ which have a separator to segregate the solid matter of human excreta from the liquid portion,” Tare, the professor, told us. “The liquid portion, after treatment, can be used for flushing, while the solid waste can be evacuated at junctions with the aid of assembly suction pumps. Human excreta–mixed with cow dung–could subsequently be used for vermi-composting.”

The railway ministry rejected this solution saying the system “involves installation of ground handling facility to evacuate retention tanks at the terminals”.

“This involves huge infrastructure cost, man-power, terminals are landlocked, inter- track distance is not uniform everywhere,” the ministry said. “Whereas, in IR-DRDO system, waste is treated on-board itself and thus no ground infrastructure is required. Thus, IR-DRDO bio-toilets being proliferated over IR, is a better solution.”

Vacuum toilets, such as those used in aeroplanes, as we said, will need evacuation facilities and treatment plants–which will come at an additional cost to the Rs 6,250 crore likely to be spent on replacing the bio-toilets.

Drdo

New toilets in trains no better than septic tanks: IIT-M study

Leave a comment

By Srinand Jha The Economics Times, Nov 23, 2017
A new kind of toilet using bacteria to break down human excreta has been deployed in Indian trains over four years to 2017, at a cost of Rs 1,305 crore, but this toilet is no better than a septic tank, the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) has concluded after a two-year long study.
As many as 93,537 “bio-digesters” — as the toilets are called –have been installed in mainline express and mail trains by the Indian Railways. These are small-scale sewage-treatment systems beneath the toilet seat: Bacteria in a compost chamber digests human excreta, leaving behind water and methane. Only the water, disinfected later, is let out on the tracks.
However, sanitation experts and various studies — including those commissioned by the railways — have pointed out that most of the new “” are ineffective or ill maintained and the water discharged is no better than raw sewage.
“Our tests have found that the organic matter (human waste) collecting in the bio-digesters do not undergo any kind of treatment,” IIT professor Ligy Philip, who headed the latest study, told IndiaSpend. “Like in the septic tanks, these bio-digesters accumulate slush (human excreta mixed with water).”
The IIT-M study was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and submitted last week to the Union Ministry of Urban Affairs.
Despite the criticism, an additional 120,000 coaches are to be fitted with these bio-toilets, jointly developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Indian Railways, by December 2018. This is likely to cost Rs 1,200 crore, the railways revealed on November 2, in response to a Right to Information (RTI) request.
The bio-digester project began during the previous United Progressive Alliance regime. But the project has been speeded up under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat campaign. The idea is to meet this target in time for the celebration of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th
Indian Railways is often described as the world’s biggest toilet: It ejects around 3,980 tonnes of faecal matter — the equivalent of 497 truck-loads — onto rail tracks every day, according to a report released by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in 2013.
The network has 9,000 passenger trains with 52,000 coaches with toilets that discharge human waste on to rail tracks. Covering 65,500 km across the country, these trains transport 24 million passengers every day, the equivalent of the population of Australia.
Since 1993, the Indian Railways have been experimenting with a host of technologies used worldwide to replace the open discharge system. This included vacuum toilets based on suction, commonly seen in aircraft; “controlled-discharge” toilet systems (CDTS) which allow waste to be dropped only after a train acquires a speed of 30 kmph, thus keeping stations clean; and “zero-discharge” toilets, in which solid waste is stored, evacuated and then dumped in pits for composting and the liquid filtered for recycling.
In 2008, the railways decided to install the bio-digester model developed by the Gwalior-based Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE).
Responding to the criticism of the bio-toilet, government officials said that the flaws are being fixed. “The issues regarding the bio-digesters are of a minor nature and are being effectively addressed. Some changes (in design or execution strategies) are inevitable, as this is a continuous process,” said Saxena.
Lokendra Singh, former director of the DRDE, had, after an expedition to Antarctica, brought home psychrophilic bacteria that can survive in extremely low temperatures. The bacteria were mixed with cow dung and normal soil, which have methogens (micro-organisms that produce methane) capable of breaking down human excreta. This was then supplied to the manufacturers of rail bio-digesters
“Because of the presence of a compound of bacteria, the bio-degradation process is set off in the toilet chambers-the bacteria eat up the organic matter (human excreta) and produce methane gas and water as byproducts,” Singh said.
But Singh’s claims of a scientific breakthrough using the bacteria from Antarctica have been questioned on several grounds, including the fact that the bacterium, as Singh admitted, has not obtained an independent or a third-party certification from an organisation such as the UIC (Federation of European Railways
Also, DRDO does not have a patent for the design or manufacture of these bio-toilets. A patent is necessary to market a commercial product. DRDO only has a patent for the design of “railway toilet tank”, as the organisation’s website reveals.
This is not the first time the railways’ bio-toilet project has been criticised. A 2009 study jointly conducted by the Lucknow-based Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) and IIT-Kanpur concluded that no treatment of human excreta was happening in the bio-digesters installed in railway toilets.
“We had found the discharge from these toilets as being no different from raw sewage,” said IIT-K professor Vinod Tare, who had headed the study, which the Railway Ministry has not made public.
On September 14, 2004, DRDO scientist Y. Ashok Babu sent a letter to the then Chief Vigilance Commissioner, Pradeep Kumar, terming the bio-toilets “farce (sic) technology”.
Singh rejected these allegations. “Frustrated scientists who have never worked on the project are raising such issues,” he said. “Of course, there are some problems but these are being addressed by the railways.”
Singh, who has assumed charge as the chairman of the Digesters and Bio-Toilet Manufacturers Association (DBMA) after his retirement from DRDE this year, said questions of “conflict of interest” did not apply in his case, as he held only an “honorary position with the DBMA”.
Documents available with IndiaSpend suggest that there are serious issues with the bio-toilet venture. These were discussed at a high-level meeting convened by the Railway Board on October 26, with functionaries from 17 zones.
During the last three years of the last government (2011-14), 9,350 bio-toilets were fitted in trains but the figure rose by 539 per cent, to 59,735, in the first three years of the NDA government (2014-17). In the current financial year (2017-18), 24,215 bio-toilets had been fitted until August 30, bringing the cumulative figure to 93,537, the railways said in its RTI reply of November 2.
In this period, the cost of manufacture and fitment of bio-toilets climbed from an average of Rs 52,000 per unit to over Rs 75,000 per unit. After the imposition of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), this cost burden has spiked further, with the railways having to absorb the 18 per cent levy.
“Cost escalation is inevitable, as manufacturing costs have been rising,” said Manoj Jha of Faridabad-based Arkin Technologies that manufactures and supplies bio-digesters to the railways.
In response to an RTI appeal from Dehradun-based activist Prabhu Dandriyal, the railways stated that the Hubli workshop of South Western Railways had been supplied 2,152 toilets at a cost of over Rs 22 crore during the financial year 2016-17. Based on this calculation, the current cost being borne by the railways works out to more than Rs 100,000 per unit.
By the time the task is completed, the railways are likely to exceed their budget of Rs 1,200 crore for additional bio-toilets. Arvind Dethe, a bio-toilet manufacturer based in Akola in Maharashtra, has been selling a similar toilet at Rs 6,000.

Uncategorized

DRDO’s Agra lab spends Rs 49.50 cr, 6 yrs, in developing surveillance system which fails Army standards

1 Comment

Arvind Chauhan | Jul 24, 2017, 10:01 AM IST
AGRA: The Aerial Delivery Research and Development Establishment (ADRDE), a laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), spent Rs 49.50 crore to develop a balloon-based platform for surveillance and communication, but failed to meet Army standards after years of work, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).
For the project, ADRDE also imported special fabric worth Rs 6.20 crore but never used it during trials of the system. Last year, CAG rapped ADRDE for failing to produce combat free fall (CFF) parachutes for special forces in more than a decade after incurring expenses of Rs 10.75 crore.
According to the report, the ministry of defence sanctioned a technology demonstration project, ‘Nakshatra’, to ADRDE in July 2011, to develop an aerostat platform with net payload capacity of 300 kg and an endurance of seven to 14 days, with balloon life of four to five years.
“Based on the earlier experience with ” — another medium-size aerostat developed by using polyurethane (PU) coated nylon fabric, the ADRDE decided to use laminated fabric, which was supposed to double the endurance of the aerostat to two weeks and shelf life from 18 months to 4-5 years. Therefore, the ADRDE imported laminated fabric at the cost of Rs 6.20 crore,” stated the report.
“Interestingly, the imported laminated fabric was never used and the DRDO lab used only PU coated nylon fabric for the balloon. Later the project was shut down in January 2017, as the Army did not accept the product, incurring a loss of Rs 49.50 crore to the exchequer,” the report added.
Speaking to TOI, public relations officer S M Jain of ADRDE said, “The project was a complete success. We tested the technology of ADRDE at Gurdaspur, Punjab, close to the India-Pakistan border in 2016. Further, the Army demanded that the trials be extended for two more years at various locations close to international borders, but they didn’t give us more funds to conduct the trials. So the operational feasibility of the system was never tested and the project was shut down.”
ADRDE officials also claimed that the balloon made of laminated fabric was kept as a spare and would have been utilised in case of any damage to PU coated nylon fabric balloon.
Army officials however said that the system trials of ‘Nakshatra’ were only carried out for three days. “So the effectiveness of the communication sets loaded on the balloon could not be ascertained. We requested ADRDE to deploy the system for three months to test its efficacy, before we could take over the system for extended trials,” an official said.
Only a few countries in the world have such systems of their own, including the US, Germany, France and Japan.

Drdo

The Missile that Cannot Fire – Long delays, cost escalation damage DRDO’s reputation

3 Comments

Amarnath K, Menon and  Gaurav C. Sawant – April 13, 2012 – India Today 

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) was set up in 1958 with a vision to “provide our defence services a decisive edge by equipping them with internationally competitive systems and solutions”. The DRDO has clearly failed in its mission.

There is no bigger indictment of India‘s premier organisation for research and development in military hardware than the fact that 54 years after its establishment, India still imports 70 per cent of its equipment requirements. In 1997, India best known defence bureaucrat and the then scientific adviser to defence minister, APJ Abdul Kalam, had said that India should bring the hare of imports in defence equipment purchases down to 30 per cent by 2005. No progress has been made. The percentage is still 70-30 in favour of imports.

DRDO`s list of successes is short-primarily the Agni and Prithvi missiles. Its list of failures is much longer.The Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) project, which was commissioned in 2001, is running late by four years. The costs have gone up from an original estimate of around Rs 3,300 crore to over Rs 5,780 crore. The Kaveri Engine for LCA is running late by 16 years and the cost has escalated by around 800 per cent.
In 2011, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) put a serious question mark on drdo’s capabilities. “The organisation, which has a history of its projects suffering endemic time and cost overruns, needs to sanction projects and decide on a probable date of completion on the basis of a conservative assessment of technology available and a realistic costing system,” its report stated.

The CAG report also revealed that not all technologies developed by DRDO were suitable for use by the armed forces. The three services have rejected 70 per cent of the products developed at the Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE), Pune, in the last 15 years costing Rs 320 crore because the products did not meet their standard and requirement, The CAG report stated that in order to form a fair and balanced view of the success of the projects undertaken by drdo, 46 completed and nine ongoing projects worth Rs 387.35 crore were scrutinised in February 2011. Of the 46 completed and closed projects, only 13 closed projects, wrapped up at a cost of Rs 68 crore, underwent production. “Without close synergy between the users and the technology development agency, much of the development efforts would go in vain, as the success rate of projects in ARDE amply demonstrates,” the report said.

The army is not impressed by DRDO`s performance either. Says Major-General S.V. Thapliyal, a former deputy director-general for perspective planning at army headquarters in Delhi, “DRDO promises to manufacture. It nixes our plans to acquire from abroad; It does not meet the deadline. Worse, it does not maintain quality either. The soldier, the end user, is the worst sufferer.”

General V.P. Malik, who was chief of army staff during the Kargil War, has an interesting incident to narrate in his book Kargil From Surprise to Victory. In 1997, the army finalized plans to acquire the AN/TPQ-37 Fire finder radars from the US. Prices were negotiated and just before purchase, drdo offered to manufacture them at half the price and within two years. The government shot down the army’s plans to buy these radars. In 1999, during the Kargil War, the radars were desperately needed. Neither had DRDO manufactured them nor could they be procured from the US (post-1998 Pokhran tests there was an arms embargo). Several lives were lost in Pakistani shelling. Wlien Indo-US relations improved, India did buy these radars in 2003, but at almost twice the initial price. “The problem with drdo is that it is big on promise and small on delivery. There is no accountability in the system,” says Malik.

DRDO continues to mislead. On April 4, it claimed it had achieved a major milestone on an “indigenous” programme to develop a sophisticated radar to monitor the Indian airspace. The aircraft on which the radar is mounted—a modified Embraer EMB 1451-is imported from Brazil. drdo had to resort to the Embraer aircraft because its own efforts at producing an indigenous carrier had ended in disaster. Project Guardian Airawat was stalled in 1999 when its HS-748 turboprop aircraft crashed, killing eight crew members-engineers, scientists and Indian Air Force (IAF) officers-on board.
Under a Rs 1,050 crore agreement, Brazil’s Embraer will now act as the pverall systems integrator for the “indigenous” project, supplying the three jets, mounting the radar and electronics onto the plane’s fuselage and ensuring that the altered jets retain acceptable flight performance.

According to its original 2004 timeline, this project was to be completed by 2011. Now the delivery of the remaining two modified Embraer aircraft is only expected by mid-2013. The project will not be complete until 2014. Even then there are serious flaws in the project. IAF has pointed out that the Embraer EMB 1451 cannot fly above 4 0,000 ft and therefore is only of limited use in surveillance. “DRDO has a history of claiming foreign designs as its own, like the Arjun tank which is a derivative of the German Leopard,” says a source in the agency. ~
The technology development agency is also largely responsible for the fact highlighted by General V.K. Singh that 97 per cent of the army’s air defence is obsolete. The CAG report lists seven requirements of the army for air defence guns and the project status report. CAG notes the end result: “Even though three R&D projects and one staff project were undertaken, the air defence gun system could not be developed by DRDO to satisfy the frequently revised requirement of the user.”

Army air defence sources say DRDO is tinkering with World War II equipment instead of working on cutting-edge technology. “The chief downplayed the state of affairs. It is in dire straits,” says a top-ranking air defence officer.

“The air defence is in a very-sorry condition,” says Air Marshal A.K. Singh, former air officer commanding-in-chief, Western Air Command. “DRDO is not able to service the equipment. Even if systems are acquired from abroad and DRDO or Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is meant to service it, it fails.This leaves critical gaps in national defence,” he says.

The Government had constituted a committee for the first-ever external review of the agency in February 2007. The committee chaired by P. Rama Rao, ex‘secreta1y, Department of Science and Technology and former director, Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory, Hyderabad, suggested that DRDO be restructured to make it a leaner organisation. It also recommended the setting up of a commercial arm of the organisation to make it a profitable entity, besides cutting back on delays in completing projects. “Delivery delayed is delivery denied,” said
Defence Minister A.K. Antony on delays in DRDO projects. But little progress has been made in the last five years on implementing the committee’s suggestions.

DRDO chief V.K. Saraswat is eager to put his house in order. He has called for the setting up of a Defence Technology DRDO chief V.K. Saraswat is eager to put his house in order. He has called for the setting up of a Defence Technology Commission as well as a bigger role for DRDO in picking production partners for products developed by the agency. Instead of the current practice of the Ministry of Defence arbitrarily nominating a defence public sector undertaking or an ordnance factory to build the product, usually when development is almost complete, DRDO would be able to select a capable partner company from the outset, from the private sector if necessary.

The defence organisation, which has an annual budget of over Rs 10,000 crore, now has no choice but to reinvent itself. The agency‘s research has drifted away from its core competence in recent times. It has been accused of “wasting time and precious resources” being engaged in research and development of technique for detection of pesticides in fruits, technology for dengue control, dental implants, foldable stretchers and berry juice.
The moribund agency is also suffering from employee attrition. Over the past five years, while the report of the Rama Rao Committee has languished, around 1,700 of its 7,900 engineers and scientists have left for better opportunities in private companies. The depletion of talent will be the last stage in what cynical insiders say is the process of converting DRDO into a dodo.