What to Read in The Hindu Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

Editorial 1: It’s Russian roulette in the skies

Context

With military conflicts and incidents of state players posing threats to civil aviation rising, the issue of training proficiency and skills assumes importance.

 

Introduction

Over 70 years ago, Ian Fleming created the fictional character of a secret service agent called James Bond, code named 007, who had the licence to kill. On September 1, 1983, a Korean Airlines jet, flight 007, on a scheduled flight from New York to Seoul via Anchorage, was shot down by a Russian Air Force Sukhoi fighter plane when the Korean flight had deviated from its flight path due to a navigational error. All 246 passengers and 23 crew were killed. One of the passengers was the daughter of Hans Ephraimson-Abt, who began an organisation to aid the victims of air accidents. His initiative resulted in a big push at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to publish rules regarding conflict risk. But this was shot down by Russia and its allies in ICAO.

 

Cases of misidentification

Iran Air Flight 655 – July 3, 1988

• On July 3, 1988, an Iran Air plane, flight 655, was shot down by a United States Navy warship, USS Vincennes, over the Strait of Hormuz.
• All 290 passengers were killed when the ship’s missile brought down the plane, which was misidentified to be a fighter plane.
• During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), U.S. patrolling required civilian aircraft to transmit the Identification Friend or Foe mode code.
• Apparently, the warship crew identified the Iranian aircraft to be a fighter and orders were issued to shoot it down.

 

DHL Cargo Plane – November 22, 2003

• On November 22, 2003, a DHL Cargo plane took off from Baghdad for Bahrain.
• As the flight was making a rapid climb out, a surface-to-air missile launched by terrorists struck the left wing between the engine and the wing tip.
• The crew lost all hydraulics, and because the fuel tank was full, there were no fuel vapors to explode in the exposed fuel tank.
• The crew controlled the flight using only differential engine thrust and managed to carry out a safe landing, displaying exceptional skill.
• This writer had the  privilege of attending a special presentation by the crew at the Flight Safety Foundation IASS 2004 seminar at Shanghai, China.

 

IAF Mi-17 Helicopter – February 27, 2019

• On February 27, 2019, just after Balakot, when fighter planes of the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Pakistan Air Force were engaged in a dogfight, an IAF Mi-17 helicopter was shot down by a surface-to-air missile of the IAF’s air defence system.
• Six personnel lost their lives in what was a serious error.
• Here again, the helicopter was wrongly identified as a foe.

 

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 – July 17, 2014

 

Post-September 11 Procedures

• Post September 11, 2001, there are specific procedures to be followed in the event of track deviation due to weather, or a failure of navigation signals.
• Specific radio procedures are implemented for crew to comply with, else air force fighter jets may shoot down a civilian aircraft if perceived to be flying in a suspicious manner.

 

Jet Airways Flight 9W 118 – February 16, 2017

• On February 16, 2017, an Indian airline flight, Jet Airways flight 9W 118, with 330 passengers and 15 crew members, from Mumbai to London, was cruising at 36,000 feet.
• It flew over a few flight information regions without maintaining radio contact with the air traffic control (ATC) of the region.
• The plane had not deviated from its assigned track.
• When it entered German airspace north of Cologne, the German Air Force deployed two of its Eurofighter Typhoons to intercept the Indian plane.
• Had the Jet Airways crew not responded to the Germans on an emergency frequency, they could have been shot down.
• India’s safety regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), did a cover-up terming it as a malfunction of the aircraft’s communication system.
• If it was really a communication failure, the aircraft crew should have been using the necessary transponder code, and ground stations would have known that it was an aircraft facing communication failure.
• Fighter jets would not have been deployed to intercept it.

 

Conflict zones, their dangers

Azerbaijani Airliner Incident – December 25, 2024

• The case of an Azerbaijani airliner, while on a flight from Baku in Azerbaijan to Grozny, in Russia, on December 25, 2024, but which crashed near the Kazakhstan city of Aktau after being diverted, has been the result of another event where a Russian anti-aircraft defence system may have caused the loss of lives.
• Of the 67 passengers on board, there were some survivors.
• For a state to get away with it by just saying ‘sorry’ does not bring back the precious lives lost.
• The aircraft had veered from its scheduled route due to fog.
• There is also the issue of GPS spoofing and false signals or a loss of signals that affect navigation.

 

Broader Concerns

• More than 500 people have lost their lives due to civil airlines being shot down.
• With growing wars and conflicts, flying over or near conflict zones is becoming dangerous, especially when there are countries which do not respect international borders and there are rogue elements who cause trouble by interfering with GPS signals.

 

The Indian regulator’s silence

Critical Training and Operational Preparedness in India

• This brings the focus on a serious issue.
• Do airlines in India have comprehensive training in place for pilots to recognize jammed signals?
• Do the airlines have standard operating procedures in place for taking over the navigation with alternate methods?
• There are reports of GPS errors or failures in the airspace over Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Myanmar.
• With a rapid expansion of flights and large numbers of aircraft being inducted, do airlines in India have enough experienced pilots?
• For example, Air India operates many of its non-stop flights to the west coast of the United States on routes that are avoided by American carriers.
• There are also reports of some leased aircraft with Air India not being equipped for extended flights over mountainous terrain.
• We hear nothing from the DGCA on what preventive measures it is taking in these cases.

 

Examples of Aircraft Shot Down

• We have had three passenger aircraft shot down by the Russians or Russian-linked agents.
• We have had the U.S. Navy shooting down a passenger airliner.
• We have had a cargo aircraft shot by a terrorist group with missiles supplied by either Russia or the U.S..
• Conflicts in West Asia have involved one or the other superpower aiding sides in the conflicts.

 

Conclusion

The large-scale use of drones and defence forces using missiles to shoot down flights make the skies really unsafe for passenger aircraft while flying over conflict regions. There is another danger. Skill levels have dropped as there is now rapid training which has resulted in degraded monitoring to assess pilot proficiency. The world has to wake up and take cognisance of this new danger. Indian aviation may be expanding rapidly but, at the same time, there is no urgency or compulsion to ensure the quality of pilots’ flying skills. As James Reason’s Swiss cheese theory explains, the holes in the cheese are lining up. Do we act now or let another disaster pass?

Editorial 2: China’s moves must recast India’s critical minerals push

Context

India’s critical minerals development plans face challenges; a way out may be to adopt the semiconductor fabrication model.

 

Introduction

On January 2, 2025, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) expanded its export control list by including 28 entities from the United States, effectively restricting their access to a swath of items classified under dual-use export controls. At the core of these restrictions lies minerals and rare and refined materials that are vital for high-technology applications such as in aerospace, semiconductors, batteries, and advanced electronics. Beijing’s list encompasses tungsten, gallium, magnesium, beryllium, hafnium, lithium-6 (isotope), and others — minerals with uses ranging from chip production to speciality alloys.

 

China's Strategic Use of Critical Mineral Exports

• This is not the first time that China has weaponised the exports of its critical minerals.
• And it is an approach that is strategic and calculated.
• Beijing primarily targets minerals that are deemed to be critical by western nations and their allies, especially those essential for semiconductors, batteries, and high-tech manufacturing.
• However, China carefully balances these decisions against two constraining factors:
  1. It avoids controlling minerals which are heavily dependent on western raw material imports.
  2. It refrains from actions that could disrupt its domestic industrial enterprises or export-dependent sectors.

 

Historical Context and Recent Actions

• This strategic calculus was evident in China’s rare earth minerals embargo against Japan in 2010.
• Recent restrictions on antimony, gallium, and germanium exports have also followed the same pattern.
• In December 2023, China imposed a ban on rare earth extraction and processing technologies.

 

The situation in India

Global Concerns

• Meanwhile, policymakers in the United States and elsewhere are becoming increasingly concerned.
• These developments underscore a larger trend: the competition for critical minerals has become a fulcrum of international economic diplomacy.
• For nations such as India, these events are also a wake-up call — to improve domestic mineral exploration and production capacity.

 

Challenges in India's Critical Minerals Development

• India’s push for critical minerals development has faced stubborn challenges.
• In 2023, lithium deposits that were found in Jammu and Kashmir’s Reasi district made headlines, hinting at a game-changer moment for India’s energy transition.
• However, a little over a year later, the story remains lacklustre: no company has shown interest in bidding for these resources, and the block remains in limbo.
• Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident.
• Government data show that only 48% (24 out of 49) of the mineral blocks available for auction in recent years have been auctioned.

 

Government Efforts and Measures

• This lack of market enthusiasm cannot be pinned entirely on government negligence.
• Over the last three years, the Union government has introduced measures to spur activity in critical minerals.
• The Ministry of Mines identified 30 critical minerals that are deemed essential for national security.
• Before that, the Union government set up a designated body, Khanij Bidesh India Ltd. (KABIL), which has been tasked with obtaining overseas investments in critical minerals such as lithium and cobalt.
• Parliament passed the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2023, lifting restrictive classifications on some rare earth elements that used to be considered ‘atomic minerals’.
• These reforms theoretically opened the door for greater private-sector investment and technology sharing.

 

Reforms and results

• A key highlight of the 2023 amendments is the introduction of an ‘exploration license’, devised to attract specialised resource exploration agencies, including foreign companies, to survey potentially rich but geologically challenging deposits.
• Instead of having to commit to a full-scale mining operation that can take over a decade or more to turn profitable, these exploratory firms can now participate in reconnaissance and prospecting alone.
• The law also promises to reimburse 50% of the exploration expenditure once mining begins, aiming to de-risk early-stage operations.

 

Challenges in Implementing Reforms

• Despite these promising reforms, the results have been tepid.
• Only a handful of exploration licences for minerals such as lithium, rare earth elements, and graphite have been cleared, and those mostly went to Indian public sector firms.
• Foreign participation is sparse, and further downstream, mining license auctions for critical minerals have largely stalled.

 

Issues Hindering Progress

• One explanation is that India’s resource classification system is outdated, leaving miners unsure about the commercial viability of mineral blocks.
• Exploration levels — often categorised under international norms as G1, G2, G3, or G4 — require progressively detailed geological data on ore grade and quantity.
• Many auctioned blocks in India have yet to reach advanced exploration status, making them riskier to prospective bidders.
• A more puzzling factor is the low demand for exploration licences themselves — an option that should, in principle, help de-risk investments but evidently has not had the intended effect.

 

Fiscal incentives may be essential

• This brings us to the essential role of high-quality data.
• Exploration is at the heart of mitigating ‘information asymmetry’, where potential buyers (mining companies) and the seller (government) do not share a clear view of the resource’s true value.
• Without robust geological surveys, many bidders discount their offers or abstain entirely.
• The result is suboptimal auctions, with some potentially valuable blocks simply overlooked.

 

Conclusion

A possible remedy is to offer larger upfront fiscal incentives during the exploration phase. In other words, the solution might be to approach critical minerals extraction as a semiconductor fabrication project. In chip manufacturing —another sector with enormous upfront costs and slow returns — India has taken an aggressive approach, pledging direct capital support early in the construction phase. A similar model could work for critical minerals, offsetting immediate exploration costs instead of reimbursing them only after production begins. Upfront capital support for exploration would resolve a market failure and help unlock value many times over in downstream mining, exploration, sales, and exports.