Uniform Civil Code
In News
- Recently, the Law Minister said that the States can enact laws on uniform civil code too.
More about the news
- States are empowered to enact personal laws that decide issues such as succession, marriage and divorce.
- Uttarakhand was the first state to set up a panel to explore the possibility of a common civil code in the State.
What Is Uniform Civil Code?
- Meaning
- The Uniform Civil Code (UCC) calls for the formulation of one law for India, which would be applicable to all religious communities in matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption.
- Article 44 of the Constitution
- The code comes under Article 44 of the Constitution, which states that the state shall endeavour to secure a Uniform Civil Code for the citizens throughout the territory of India.
- The objective of Article 44 of the Directive Principles in the Indian Constitution was to address the discrimination against vulnerable groups and harmonise diverse cultural groups across the country.
- Part IV (Articles 36-51) covers a wide range of principles, including apart from the UCC:
- The securing of equal justice and free legal aid to citizens (Art 39A)
- Participation of workers in the management of industries (Art 43A)
- Organisation of agriculture and animal husbandry (Art 48)
- Protection and improvement of the environment and safeguarding of forests and wildlife (Art 48A)
- Promotion of international peace and security (Art 51)
- What will Uniform Civil Code do?
- When enacted the code will work to simplify laws that are segregated at present based on religious beliefs like the Hindu code bill, Sharia law, and others.
- The code will simplify the complex laws around marriage ceremonies, inheritance, succession, adoptions making them one for all.
Arguments For UCC
- Uniformity and reduced discord:
- Common Code would enable uniform civil principles to be applied to the entire Nation.
- When the whole population will start following the same laws, chances are there that it would bring more peace to the living and reduce riots.
- Secularism and Women’s Rights:
- UCC would help end gender discrimination and overall discrimination on religious grounds and strengthen the secular fabric of the nation.
- Therefore, UCC could bring all communities together to ensure Women the Right to a dignified life and control over their life as well as body.
- Ending unjust customs and traditions:
- A rational common and unified personal law will help eradicate many evil, unjust and irrational customs and traditions prevalent across the communities.
- For example, Law against Manual scavenging. It might have been a custom in the past but in a mature democracy like India, this custom cannot be justified.
- Ease of Administration:
- UCC would make it easy to administer the huge population base of India.
- Historically, not all Muslim communities were demanding separate laws:
- Few the Muslim communities like the Khojas and Cutchi Memons did not want to submit to separate Muslim Personal Law.
- Global Scenario:
- The personal laws of minorities were not recognised in any of the advanced Muslim countries.
- E.g., in Turkey and Egypt, no minority in these countries were permitted to have their own personal laws.
- Many countries have common civil codes.
Arguments Against UCC
- Hampering diversity and multiculturalism:
- Indian society has a unique identity in the form of its being diverse and multicultural, and unified law might do away with these unique characteristics of this nation.
- Violation of fundamental rights:
- Religious bodies oppose a uniform civil code on the ground that it would be interference in religious affairs which would violate fundamental rights guaranteed under Article 25 of the constitution.
- May lead to communal unrest:
- It would be a tyranny to the minority and when implemented could bring a lot of unrest in the country.
- The All-India Muslim Personal Law Board stated that the laws pertaining to marriage and inheritance were part of religious injunctions for ages.
Way forward
- The Supreme Court in 2019 hailed Goa as a shining example of an Indian State which has a functioning UCC.
- The Supreme Court in various judgments has called for the implementation of the UCC.
- In its Mohd. Ahmed Khan vs Shah Bano Begum judgement of 1985, where a divorced Muslim woman demanded maintenance from her former husband, the apex court while deciding whether to give prevalence to the CrPc or the Muslim personal law, called for the implementation of the UCC.
- The Court also called on the government to implement the UCC in the 1995 Sarla Mudgal judgement as well as in the Paulo Coutinho vs Maria Luiza Valentina Pereira case (2019).
- The Law Commission said that a unified nation did not necessarily need uniformity, adding that secularism could not contradict the plurality prevalent in the country.
- Israel, Japan, France and Russia are strong today because of their sense of oneness which we have yet to develop and propagate.
| Constitutional Provisions dealing with Civil Code in India: Schedule Seven:Many of the matters pertaining to the UCC are present in item five of the Concurrent List in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.This part demarcates the legislative powers of the Union government and the states.Under the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937: Issues such as marriage, maintenance, dower, divorce and inheritance come within its purview. Many of these also find a place in item five of the Concurrent List.The Hindu Succession Act, 1956:It originally did not give daughters inheritance rights in ancestral property. They could only ask for a right to sustenance from a joint Hindu family. This disparity was removed by an amendment to the Act in 2005.Hindu Code Bill: The purpose of the bill was to reform Hindu laws, which legalised divorce, opposed polygamy and gave rights of inheritance to daughters. Amidst intense opposition to the code, a diluted version was passed via four different laws.Dr. B R Ambedkar drafted the Hindu Code Bill |
Draft Cybersecurity Strategy
In News
- The National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) has formulated a draft National Cyber Security Strategy which looks at addressing the issue of security of national cyberspace.
- The timeline for its implementation and other details are not yet mentioned.
About National Cyber Security Strategy
- Headed by: Lt General Rajesh Pant.
- Aim: It proposes a separate legislative framework for cyberspace and the creation of an apex body to address threats, responses and complaints.
- The policy will focus on both threat assessment and response.
- Need: The existing legal and regulatory frameworks do not address the evolving threat scenarios or processes to combat the cyber incidents.
- There is no dedicated body to look after cyber security at present and no one that you can hold accountable.
- Currently, the response to cyber security threats can be taken under the information technology act and the Indian Penal Code.
- Other provisions:
- It aims to create a comprehensive system with both state-owned and private companies having to comply with cybersecurity standards.
- It provides for a periodic cyber audit and recommends annual reviews by the apex body that will be created.
- A centre of excellence will also be set up in Bangalore to further innovations in the area.
| Data/ FactsTill November 2022, a total of 12,67,564 cyber security incidents were reported. In 2021, the authorities had recorded 14,02,809 such events compared to 11,58,208 in 2020 and 3,94,499 in 2019.Ransomware attacks jumped 51% in 2022. Maharashtra was the most targeted state in India facing 42% of all ransomware attacks.Cyber thieves also exploited legitimate tools like “AnyDesk” used for remote administration. |
Reasons for increasing Cyber Attacks
- Adverse relations with China:
- China is considered one of the world leaders in information technology.
- Therefore, it is expected to have capabilities to disable or partially interrupt the information technology services in another country.
- Combined with the recent border standoff and violent incidents between the armies of the two countries, the adversity in relations is expected to spill over to attacking each other’s critical information infrastructure.
- Asymmetric and covert warfare:
- Unlike conventional warfare with loss of lives and eyeball to eyeball situations, cyber warfare is covert warfare with the scope of plausible deniability, i.e., the governments can deny their involvement even when they are caught.
- Similarly, even a small nation with advanced systems and skilled resources can launch an attack on a bigger power, without the fear of heavy losses.
- Increasing dependency on technology:
- As we grow faster, more and more systems are being shifted to virtual space to promote access and ease of use.
- However, the downside to this trend is the increased vulnerability of such systems to cyber-attacks.
Issues with Cyber Security
- Low digital literacy among the public: While India is considered the world leader in the technology industry, the general level of awareness in India about internet etiquette is low.
- Vulnerable points in the system: sometimes the third-party apps have built-in back door entry or may have malware attached to their installation file. Such issues can be addressed by effective user account control and careful monitoring of the system.
- State-sponsored Cyber Attacks: The problem with such state-sponsored attacks is the unlimited funding received by the hackers to break into the foreign systems.
- It is a continuous process: Cyber-attacks, by their very nature, are innovative and creative. They continue to evolve, and the next attack is more advanced than its previous version.
- Novel issues: Because of the ever-changing and fast evolving nature of technology, new issues keep creeping up in the IT sector.
Way Forward/ Steps taken by the Government
- The government aims at ensuring an open, safe, trusted and accountable Internet for the users.
- The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issues alerts and advisories regarding latest cyber threats/vulnerabilities and countermeasures to protect computers and networks on an ongoing basis.
- CERT-In operates the Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) to detect malicious programmes and free tools to remove the same, and to provide cyber security tips and best practices for citizens and organisations.
- Security tips have been published for users to secure their desktops and mobile phones and to prevent phishing attacks.
- CERT-In and the Reserve Bank of India [RBI] jointly carry out a cyber security awareness campaign on ‘Beware and be aware of financial frauds’ through the Digital India Platform.
- The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has been designated as the nodal point in the fight against cybercrime.
- Pursuant to the United Nations General Assembly resolution 75/282: an ad-hoc committee to elaborate a ‘Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes’ was established with all the member states.
- India being the member of the committee has proposed criminalisation of cyber terrorism under the said Convention.
- The MHA has issued National Information Security Policy and Guidelines to the Central Ministries as well as State governments and Union Territories with the aim of preventing information security breaches and cyber intrusions in the information and communication technology infrastructure
Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) Report
In News
- Recently, the Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) report was released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN-Water.
Key Findings
- WASH:
- The increasing frequency and intensity of climate-related extreme weather events continue to impact universal access to safe and sustainably managed water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH).
- Less than one-third of countries reported maintaining enough human resources to manage essential WASH tasks.
- Poor access to WASH claims millions of lives each year.
- SDG 6:
- In many countries, progress must be accelerated to meet United Nations-mandated (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) six — ensuring universal access to water and sanitation by 2030.
- National Water Targets:
- While 45 percent of countries are on track to achieve their nationally-defined drinking-water coverage targets, only 25 percent of countries are on track to achieve their national sanitation targets.
- Better performing countries are more likely to have:
- Higher utilization of domestic capital commitments and recovery of operations and maintenance (O&M) costs from tariffs;
- Regulatory authorities that carry out key regulatory functions;
- Human and financial resources in place to implement their WASH plans.
- WASH and health:
- Implementation of policies and plans on WASH in health care facilities and on hand hygiene is constrained by a critical lack of financial and human resources.
- The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has also provided a reminder of the importance of hand hygiene to health and infection prevention.
- Climate resilience of WASH systems:
- The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events caused by climate change continue to hamper the delivery of safe WASH services, thus affecting the health of users.
- Despite the World Health Organization (WHO) identifying the impacts of climate change as the biggest health threat facing humanity, the latest GLAAS data show that most WASH policies and plans do not address risks of climate change to WASH services, nor the climate resilience of WASH technologies and management systems.
- Leaving no one behind:
- Measures to reach vulnerable populations and settings with WASH services lack monitoring and financial resources.
- The governments must target underserved populations and settings – such as people living in poverty or in remote or hard-to-reach areas – to ensure they also have access to safe, sustainable WASH services.
- Human resources:
- Insufficient human resources are limiting WASH service delivery
- Less than one third of countries reported they have more than 75% of the human resources needed to carry out key functions to deliver WASH services.
- Human resources are limited by workers not wanting to live or work in rural areas and insufficient financial resources.
- Over 80% of countries reported having an insufficient supply of trained professionals graduating annually from WASH training institutions that meet the needs for on-site sanitation and small drinking-water systems.
- Gender:
- Increased inclusion, financial support and monitoring are needed to ensure women are considered in WASH decisions and services
- Gender and WASH are connected in many ways – from menstrual health and hygiene to local participation and women working in WASH.
- In almost a quarter of countries, women hold less than 10% of government jobs, and less than a third of countries reported high women’s participation in rural drinking-water planning and management.
- This means that women’s voices are not being heard.
- Regulation:
- Regulatory authorities often do not fully perform their functions
- A majority of countries have regulatory authorities for drinking-water and sanitation; however, those authorities often do not fully perform their functions, especially for sanitation.
- These key functions range from collecting data and publishing reports to strengthening service providers by recommending planning and actions and enforcing the implementation of the recommendations.
- Climate:
- The increasing frequency and intensity of climate-related extreme weather events continue to hamper the delivery of safe WASH services.
- Nearly two-thirds of countries have WASH strategies that target communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change. However, only approximately a third track advancement or specifically finance these populations.
| About GLAAS ReportPublished by: the World Health Organisation and UN Water on Water, Sanitation, Hygiene (WaSH).The report provides the most up-to-date information on WASH systems in more than 120 countries and 23 external support agencies (ESAs), making it the biggest data collection ever.It provides policy- and decision-makers at all levels with reliable, easily accessible, comprehensive data on WASH systems, including on governance, monitoring, human resources and finance. It monitors elements of WASH systems that are required to sustain and extend WASH services and systems to all, and especially to the most vulnerable population groups.The WASH vision and missionThe attainment by all peoples of the lowest possible burden of water and sanitation-related disease through primary prevention, as guided by the 2018-2025 WASH Strategy..Providing leadership in Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene related issues (by making authoritative statements, influencing policy and coordinating networks of partners and collaborating centres)Normative work (mainly on water quality, but also on monitoring approaches and interventions, usually resulting in guidelines and best practice texts)Providing evidence (through various monitoring activities, but also through commissioned research)Supporting Member States (through technical cooperation and capacity building)Responding to emergencies (the role in the Health Cluster – WASH in healthcare – and in the WASH cluster – restoring safe water supplies and adequate sanitation)Knowledge management (through analysis, synthesis and dissemination of reliable and credible information) |
Issues
- Most WASH policies and plans do not consider climate change threats to WASH services, nor do they take the climate resilience of WASH technology and management systems into account.
- Billions of people are dangerously exposed to infectious diseases, especially in the aftermath of disasters, including climate change-related events.
- While WASH budgets in some countries have increased, a significant portion — more than 75 percent of them — reported having inadequate resources to carry out their WASH plans and objectives.
- Data is not sufficiently used in decisions on planning or resource allocation for WASH. Barriers to data use include lack of human and financial resources, fragmentation of data collection and processing, poor reliability and quality of data, and lack of coordination of WASH actors in collecting and sharing data.
Way Ahead
- Urgent action is required at global and local levels to ensure universal access to WASH in order to avert catastrophic effects of infectious diseases on health of millions of people
- Governments and development partners should strengthen WASH systems and dramatically increase investment to extend access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation services to all by 2030, beginning with the most vulnerable.
- WASH must be seen through a gender lens. Policies and action plans must respond to the needs of women and girls by involving them in the planning, decision-making and governance of services.
- Hand hygiene must be recognized as a fundamental behaviour. The transformative health benefits of improved water and sanitation services can only be fully realized when good hand hygiene behaviours are practised. This simple act is proven to dramatically reduce the spread of deadly diseases.
- Governments must take a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to water and sanitation. States are duty-bearers of providing water and sanitation services to people, who are rights-holders. Rights-holders can claim their rights and duty-bearers must guarantee the rights to water and sanitation equally and without discrimination
Striving for Clean Air: Air Pollution and Public Health in South Asia
In News
- Recently, the World bank (WB) released a report titled “Striving for Clean Air: Air Pollution and Public Health in South Asia”.
Key Findings
- India:
- India has six large airsheds, some of them shared with Pakistan, between which air pollutants move.
- Even if Delhi National Capital Territory were to fully implement all air pollution control measures by 2030 while other parts of South Asia continued to follow current policies, it wouldn’t keep pollution exposure below 35 µg/m3.
- South Asia:
- Currently over 60% of South Asians are exposed to an average 35 µg/m3 of PM2.5 annually.
- In some parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) it spiked to as much as 100 µg/m3 – nearly 20 times the upper limit of 5 µg/m3 recommended by the World Health Organisation.
- The six major airsheds in South Asia where air quality in one affected the other were:
- West/Central IGP that included Punjab (Pakistan), Punjab (India), Haryana, part of Rajasthan, Chandigarh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh.
- Central/Eastern IGP: Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bangladesh;
- Middle India: Odisha/Chhattisgarh;
- Middle India: Eastern Gujarat/Western Maharashtra;
- Northern/Central Indus River Plain: Pakistan, part of Afghanistan; and
- Southern Indus Plain and further west: South Pakistan, Western Afghanistan extending into Eastern Iran.
- Persistently hazardous levels of air pollution have caused a major public health crisis in South Asia that demands urgent action.
- Bhutan:
- Bhutan isn’t protected from the air pollution we see in the IGP, and Thimphu sees worse pollution than before.
- If there is particulate pollution in the mountains, they will come down when the glaciers melt, and then go into the oceans – hence no one in the region is spared, and we are seeing pollutants from elsewhere.
- South Asia is home to 9 of the world’s 10 cities with the worst air pollution, which causes an estimated 2 million premature deaths across the region each year and incurs significant economic costs.
- Particulate Matter:
- The concentrations of fine particulate matter such as soot and small dust (PM 2.5) in some of the region’s most densely populated and poor areas are up to 20 times higher than what WHO considers healthy (5 µg/m?).
- Sources of air pollution:
- Large industries, power plants and vehicles are dominant sources of air pollution around the world, but in South Asia, other sources make substantial additional contributions.
- These include combustion of solid fuels for cooking and heating, emissions from small industries such as brick kilns, burning of municipal and agricultural waste, and cremation
- Wind direction and pollution:
- When the wind direction was predominantly northwest to southeast, 30% of the air pollution in Indian Punjab came from the Punjab Province in Pakistan
- 30% of the air pollution in the largest cities of Bangladesh (Dhaka, Chittagong, and Khulna) originated in India.
- In some years, substantial pollution flowed in the other direction across borders.
- Airshed approach:
- This is how the problem has been tackled in other regions, like ASEAN, Nordic regions, and across China.
- States need to stop blaming and go for a collaborative approach if they wish to reduce air pollution for their citizens.
Impact
- Stunting and reduced cognitive development in children,
- Respiratory infections and chronic and debilitating diseases.
- Rising healthcare costs,
- Lowering a country’s productive capacity.
Way Ahead
- While existing measures by the government can reduce particulate matter, significant reduction is possible only if the territories spanning the airsheds implement coordinated policies
- A modelling approach over South Asia as a whole, multiple scenarios are possible and should be applied
- Interdependence in air quality within airsheds in South Asia is necessary to be accounted for when weighing alternative pathways for pollution control.
- The scientists of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and other South Asian countries must establish a dialogue on air pollution to tackle it with an ‘airshed approach’.
- Curbing air pollution requires not only tackling its specific sources, but also close coordination across local and national jurisdictional boundaries. Regional cooperation can help implement cost-effective joint strategies that leverage the interdependent nature of air quality.
Solution by World Bank: 3 Phase Roadmap
- The report analysed multiple scenarios to reduce air pollution with varying degrees of policy implementation and cooperation among countries.
- The most cost-effective one, which calls for full coordination between airsheds, would cut the average exposure of PM 2.5 in South Asia to 30 µg/m³ at a cost of $278 million (?2,400 crore) per µg/m? of reduced exposure, and save more than 7,50,000 lives annually.
- Roadmap:
- Phase 1: Sets the condition for airshed wide coordination by expanding the monitoring of air pollution beyond the big cities, sharing data with the public, creating or strengthening credible scientific institutes that analyze airsheds, and taking a whole-of-government approach.
- Phase 2: Abatement interventions are broadened beyond the traditional targets of power plants, large factories and transportation. During this phase major progress can be made in reducing air pollution from agriculture, solid waste management, cookstoves, brick kilns, and other small firms. At the same time, airshed-wide standards can be introduced.
- Phase 3: Economic incentives are fine tuned to enable private-sector solutions, to address distributional impacts, and to exploit synergies with climate change policies. In this phase trading of emission permits can also be introduced to optimize abatement across jurisdictions and firms.
| National Clean Air Campaign (NCAP)The Centre in 2019 launched a programme called the National Clean Air Campaign (NCAP) that aims to reduce air pollution in 131 of India’s most polluted cities. The target was initially to cut pollution by 20%-30% by 2024 over 2017 levels but has now been revised to cutting it by 40% by 2025-26 |
Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm
In News
The soccer journalist Grant Wahl collapsed and died suddenly while covering the World Cup in Qatar.
- The autopsy found that Wahl had an “ascending thoracic aortic aneurysm.
About Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm
- An aneurysm is a localised weakening of the wall of a blood vessel, which causes the vessel to bulge in that area — as a result of which the vessel may widen to more than 50 percent of its usual diameter.
- Aneurysms are more commonly seen in arteries than in veins.
- The aorta is the main artery that carries oxygenated blood from the heart to the rest of the body; it is also the body’s largest blood vessel.
- An aortic aneurysm is a weakening and bulging in a portion of the aorta; “thoracic” refers to that section of the blood vessel that passes through the chest.
Causes
- Degenerative disease that causes breakdown of the aortic wall tissue
- Genetic disorders
- Family history
- Vasculitis, or inflammation of the arteries
- Atherosclerosis, or the build-up of plaque on the walls of the artery.
- In rare cases, an infection can also trigger an aneurysm.
Symptoms
- Pain in the jaw, neck, chest, or upper back
- Wheezing, coughing, or shortness of breath (due to pressure on the trachea)
- Hoarseness (due to pressure on the vocal cords); and
- Trouble swallowing due to pressure on the oesophagus.
Threats
- An aneurysm increases in size over time, and the wall of the blood vessel gets progressively weaker in that area.
- The vessel may ultimately burst or separate, triggering a bleeding rush that can be life-threatening, and potentially lethal.
Diagnosis and treatment
- Treatment may include monitoring the size and rate of growth of the bulge through an MRI or CT, and managing risk factors such as quitting smoking, controlling blood sugar (for diabetics), losing weight (if overweight), and eating healthy.
- Surgical intervention may be needed if the aneurysm is large
Agni-V ballistic Missile
In News
- India successfully test-fired nuclear-capable ballistic missile Agni-V .
Key Features of Agni-V ballistic missile
- It is an ingeniously built advanced surface-to-surface ballistic missile developed under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP).
- The missile has a three-stage solid-fuel engine and can strike targets with a high degree of precision at distances up to 5,000 kilometres. Agni-5 can cover a range of even 8000 kms.
- The missile can reach an exceptional Mach 24 speed and has a very high degree of accuracy to hit targets.
Significance
- The Agni-V project is aimed at boosting India’s nuclear deterrence against China which is known to have missiles like Dongfeng-41 having ranges between 12,000-15,000 km.
- Agni-V can bring almost the entire Asia including the northernmost part of China as well as some regions in Europe under its striking range.
No First Use
- The successful test of Agni-5, according to the Indian Defense Ministry, is in accordance with India’s policy of having “credible minimum deterrence,” which supports the commitment to “No First Use.”
- This comes days after Indian and Chinese troops clashed in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh, an incident which became the topic of a heated debate in Indian Parliament.
Agni Class of Missiles
- They are the mainstay of India’s nuclear launch capability.
- The term Agni means “fire” in Sanskrit, and its meaning is understood in the context of Agni being one of the Pancha Mahabhutas, the five basic elements. Others are Prithvi (Earth), Aapa (Water), Wayu (Air), Akash (Space).
- Range:
- Agni I: Range of 700-800 km.
- Agni II: Range more than 2000 km.
- Agni III: Range of more than 2,500 Km
- Agni IV: Range is more than 3,500 km and can fire from a road-mobile launcher.
- Agni-V: The longest of the Agni series, an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) with a range of over 5,000 km.
- Agni-P (Prime): It is a canisterised missile with a range capability between 1,000 and 2,000 km. It will replace the Agni I missile.
- Very few countries, including the US, China, Russia, France and North Korea, have InterContinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM).
Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP)
- The Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) was conceived by renowned scientist Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam to enable India attain self-sufficiency in the field of missile technology.
- The missiles developed under the programme were:
- Short-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile (Prithvi)
- Intermediate-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile (Agni)
- Short-range low-level surface-to-air missile (Trishul)
- Medium-range surface-to-air missile (Akash)
- Third generation anti-tank missile (Nag)
- The Agni, which was initially conceived as a technology demonstrator project in the form of a re-entry vehicle, was later upgraded to a ballistic missile with different ranges.
India’s Nuclear Triad
- Nuclear Triad essentially has three major components-the strategic bombers, Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) for the purpose of delivering a nuclear weapon.
- The reason for having such three branches capability is to significantly reduce the possibility of the destruction of the entire nuclear architecture of the state in the first nuclear strike by the enemy itself.
- The triad provides the potency to the country which has been under the nuclear attack to respond swiftly by nuclear means.
