Consumer Protection Links

This post is dedicated to provide links to consumer protection as advertised by concerned agencies. 

1. If the fine print doesn't match the bold-lettered claims:

When you go through the 'conditions' which apply, the offer may not be as tempting and beneficial as it appeared to be. So, the next time you see an offer/festive period bargain deal, check the hidden aspects under star ("conditions apply").

For online complaint filing, log on to: www.core.nic.in or call 1800-1804566

Consumers can call:

National Consumer Helpline: 1800-114000 (Toll free from BSNL/MTNL lines)

011-27662955, 56, 57, 58 (Normal call charges apply) - 9.30 am to 5.30 pm mon-sat

Illustrious days ahead for Indian science

Indian ministry of Environment and Forests has finally accorded sanction to the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) to be built in the Bodi West Hills (BWH) in Tamil Nadu. The project will be implemented in the reserve forest area with minimal damage to the tree cover. The primary goal of the observatory is to study the properties and interactions of weakly interacting, practically massless subatomic particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos are produced abundantly in nuclear reactions like in the sun, supernovae and as such, but thanks to being massless, it simply passes through earth and sun, making it difficult to detect. Billions of neutrinos stream through our bodies every second, yet only a handful will be scattered by our bodies in our entire lifetime. That’s why they are often called ‘ghost particles’.

Schematic of Neutrino observatory under Bodi West Hills

The neutrino was proposed by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930, but it took 26 years to detect it experimentally. In 1956, Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan found evidence of neutrino interactions by monitoring a volume of cadmium chloride with scintillating liquid near to a nuclear reactor. Reines was jointly awarded the Nobel prize in Physics in 1995 for this work. There are three types of neutrinos, named electron-neutrino, tau-neutrino and muon-neutrino. They are denoted by the greek letter v (nu) and are affected only by the ‘weak nuclear force’, one of the four fundamental forces in nature. Raymond Davis Jr. and Masatoshi Koshiba were jointly awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics; Davis for his pioneer work on cosmic neutrinos and Koshiba for the first real time observation of supernova neutrinos. The detection of solar neutrinos, and of neutrinos of the SN 1987A supernova in 1987 marked the beginning of neutrino astronomy of which the INO to be installed in India is a part of. The detection and study of these tiny particles assumes significance when we consider the fact that even though possessing a very small mass, the enormous number of them makes the total mass a prominent place in the study of the evolution of the universe.

Detection of neutrinos is one of the most technically challenging activities in science. Because they are very weakly interacting, detectors must be very large to detect a significant number of them. They are often built underground in order to isolate the detector from cosmic rays and other background radiation. The overburden provided by the earth matter is transparent to neutrinos whereas most background from cosmic rays is substantially reduced due to their absorption by the earth. The INO will be built in a cavern set in massive charnockite rock (group of igneous rocks found in South India with those in Tamil Nadu known to be the hardest). The cavern will be excavated by drilling a tunnel of 2 km in length under the peak designated as 1589 so that there is vertical overburden of about 1300 m. The minimum vertical cover required is 1000 m to filter out unwanted radiation. The actual site is 2 km from Pudukkottai, 14 km from Bodi and 110 km from Madurai.

Location of the observatory which will be beneath the peak

The primary research instrument will consist of a 50,000 kg magnetized iron particle physics calorimeter with glass Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC) technology as the sensor elements. A prototype of the INO detector with 14 layers, measuring 1m x 1m x 1m is already operational in the VECC, Kolkata. The 35 ton prototype is set up over ground to track cosmic muons. In 2008, INO started a graduate training program leading to Ph.D. Degree in High Energy Physics and Astronomy to deal with the shortage of particle physicists. The Primary goals of the INO are the following.

1. Unambiguous and more precise determination of Neutrino oscillation parameters using atmospheric neutrinos.
2. Study of matter effects through electric charge identification, that may lead to the determination of the unknown sign of one of the mass differences.
3. Study of charge-conjugation and charge parity (CP) violation in the leptonic sector as well as possible charge-conjugation, parity, time-reversal (CPT) violation studies.
4. Study of Kolar events, possible identification of very-high energy neutrinos and multi-muon events.

The INO includes nearly 90 scientists from 25 institutions, with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) as the nodal institution. The construction is expected to start in 2011 and the first module of the detector will start taking data by 2016. Immediately after that, the subsequent modules will be constructed. The present cost estimate is Rs. 1200 crores (US $ 273 m), including Rs. 950 crores (US $ 216 m) for the facility and the remaining for providing infrastructure arrangements.

There are four major neutrino detecting laboratories in the world: Sudbury in Canada, Soudan mines in the USA, Kamioka in Japan and under the Gran Sasso mountains in Italy. The first two are located in mines and house relatively much smaller detectors than the other labs that are accessed by a road tunnel. One of the earliest laboratories created to detect neutrinos underground in the world was located more than 2000 m deep at the Kolar Gold Field mines in India. The first atmospheric neutrinos were detected in this facility in 1965. The lab was closed due to the closure of the mines. So, India is very much experienced in this field.

With such a state-of-the-art subatomic lab, India can confidently step into the high-energy nuclear research arena dominated by CERN. It’s high time that India build a particle accelerator comparable to the Large Hadron Collider and put Indian science at the forefront of world science. We can hope that this INO will be the first confident step India makes in scientific world after a long time of hibernation.

Victory for Engineering and Technology

October 13, 2010 was just an ordinary day for most people, but for the 33 miners who were trapped inside the San Jose gold and copper mine in Chile, it was the day of deliverance, when they awoke from a nightmare which lasted 68 days. On Aug 5, a mine shaft caved in 300 metres below, blocking the escape route of the people working down under. New cave-ins in the following days made the rescue effort difficult. 17 days later, a drill probe reached the emergency shelter area 624 metres below, to which the miners attached a hand-written note saying that "All 33 of us are well inside the shelter." Once contact was established, food and life support systems reached them and they were kept on tenterhooks as the rescue effort was first estimated to be a long drawn-out one which threatened to go until Christmas. Chile stood solid behind the rescue efforts and experts from about a dozen countries were called in to support the effort. NASA's help to keep up the morale of the people trapped in humid and lone conditions truly helped.

On Aug 29, the miners first talked to their relatives from a radio telephone which reached the shelter and several days later, could establish video conferencing and enjoy Chile's soccer match. A powerful drill started on Sep 19 and reached the miners on Oct 9, ending the stalemate. Four days later, all of them were rescued using a capsule named Phoenix. Luis Urzua, who was the shift boss emerged last on the line, creating a Guiness record for the longest underground stay.

This was a great feat for Chilean engineering and technology. They've brought out their best and pleasantly surprised the world by their steadfast determination to bring their colleagues back to life. I'm sure, if this incident had happened in China, they'd have been entombed alive in the deep mine. China is notorious for the languid safety in its mines and the scant regard it holds for the lives of its workers! As per mine safety reports, in 2004, there were 6,027 mining deaths in China whereas in the U.S, only 28 died. Even in India, only 99 workers perished in the same year. Every death is a permanent blotch on the image of the industry, and no effort should be spared to implement new technology and safe practises to bring the workers back to ground level safely.

The long night is past, for the Chilean miners and a new dawn awaits them. How many of them will be willing to go back to mines for a living? They had had the scare of a lifetime during these 68 days and the civil society should ensure that they be given alternate employment in which such a harrowing experience is not likely to recur.