India's Mars mission a step closer to success with engine test
India’s ‘Untouchables’ Are Still Being Forced to Collect Human Waste by Hand
1 OF 2. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) scientists and engineers monitor the movements of India's Mars orbiter at their Spacecraft Control Center in Bangalore November 27, 2013.--------Devi Lal, a 43-year-old manual scavenger, cleans drains in New Delhi on July 13, 2012
<2 2.="" nbsp="" of="" span="">An Indian security personnel officer walks in front of the India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25), carrying the Mars orbiter, before its launch at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, More...
(Reuters) - Indian scientists successfully tested the main engine of a spacecraft bound for Mars on Monday and performed a course correction that puts the low-cost project on track to enter the red planet's orbit.
(Reuters) - Indian scientists successfully tested the main engine of a spacecraft bound for Mars on Monday and performed a course correction that puts the low-cost project on track to enter the red planet's orbit.
The $74-million mission will attempt to enter orbit around Mars early on Wednesday. If successful, it will be the first time a mission has entered Mars' orbit on its first attempt, enhancing India's position in the global space race.
"Main liquid engine test firing successful ... we had a perfect burn for four seconds as programmed," the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on its social media sites.
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The engine was tested after being idle for 300 days and will be used with eight small thrusters during orbit entry. Reducing the craft's speed from its current rate of 22 km (13.7 miles) per second would be a key challenge, experts say.
The spacecraft, called Mangalyaan, was launched in November last year.
The project has been embraced by new Prime Minister Narendra Modi who aims to establish India as a bigger player in the more than $300 billion space technology market, even as neighbouring China gives stiff competition with its bigger launchers.
Modi will sit next to scientists at ISRO's command centre in the city of Bangalore on Wednesday during the last phase of the mission, the space agency's scientific secretary V. Koteswara Rao told Reuters.
Rao said a group of about 100 scientists celebrated when the communication signals from craft, that take 12 minutes to reach Earth, showed the engine test was successful.
"It was a joyous moment," Rao said.
Success would make India the fourth space power after the United States, Europe and Russia to orbit or land on the red planet.
"This was a critical test we had to overcome. The mission appears to be near successful now," said Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, an expert on space security at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think-tank.
The Mangalyaan aims to study Mars' surface and mineral composition, and scan its atmosphere for methane, a chemical strongly tied to life on Earth. It cost roughly a tenth of NASA's Mars mission Maven that successfully entered Mars orbit on Sunday.
Indians have started praying for the mission's success. On Sunday, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an affiliate group of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, offered ritual prayers in the capital, New Delhi.
(Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Robert Birsel)
India’s ‘Untouchables’ Are Still Being Forced to Collect Human Waste by Hand
They face violence, eviction and withheld wages if they do not take on the hazardous job of emptying private and public latrines
Aug. 25, 2014The practice of forcing low-caste people in Indian communities to removeaccumulated human waste from latrines is continuing despite legal prohibitions and must be stopped, says a leading advocacy group.
In a report released Monday, the New York City–based Human Rights Watch (HRW) detailed the practice of “manual scavenging” — the collecting of excrement from latrines by hand. The job is done by those considered to be of the lowest birth. These Dalits, or untouchables, often face threats of violence, eviction and withheld wages if they attempt to leave the trade.
“The first day when I was cleaning the latrines and the drain, my foot slipped and my leg sank in the excrement up to my calf,” Sona, a manual scavenger in Bharatpur, a city in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, told HRW. “I screamed and ran away. Then I came home and cried and cried. I knew there was only this work for me.”
Laws exist to curb this form of subjugation, yet it remains widespread across India. Dalit women typically collect waste from private homes, while the men do the more physically demanding, and hazardous, maintenance of septic tanks and public sewers. Many suffer injuries and serious health problems.
“The manual carrying of human feces is not a form of employment, but an injustice akin to slavery,” says Ashif Shaikh, founder of Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan, a grassroots campaign to end manual scavenging. “It is one of the most prominent forms of discrimination against Dalits, and it is central to the violation of their human rights.”
HRW’s 96-page report, Cleaning Human Waste: ‘Manual Scavenging,’ Caste, and Discrimination in India, is based on more than 100 interviews with manual scavengers, and documents how these wretched people are coerced to collect human excrement on a daily basis, carrying it away in nothing more protective than a cane basket.
“People work as manual scavengers because their caste is expected to fulfill this role, and are typically unable to get any other work,” says Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at HRW. “This practice is considered one of the worst surviving symbols of untouchability because it reinforces the social stigma that these castes are untouchable and perpetuates discrimination and social exclusion.”
HRW called on the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to enforce existing legislation aimed at assisting manual scavengers to find alternative, sustainable livelihoods.
“Successive Indian government attempts to end caste-based cleaning of excrement have been derailed by discrimination and local complicity,” adds Ganguly. “The government needs to get serious about putting laws banning manual scavenging into practice and assisting the affected caste communities.”
