MUMBAI: Former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh criticised his successor Narendra Modi’s government in a rare interview, saying it has failed to capitalise on lower commodity prices to propel growth and is inconsistent in its policy towards Pakistan. 

Speaking to the India Today magazine, he said Mr Modi should focus on improving relations with neighbouring countries, adding that the government had not succeeded in making headway with Pakistan. 

“Certainly relations with major powers have improved... But I would say that the real test of foreign policy is in the handling of your neighbours. And here I would say that the Modi government’s handling of Pakistan is inconsistent,” he told the magazine. 

“It has been one step forward, two steps back.” 

He said the Modi government should use improving fiscal balances to raise investment in the economy and increase the availability of credit to businesses. 

“In the hands of a purposeful government, this could be an opportunity to step up investment in the economy in a big way,” said Mr Singh, who left the office in 2014. 

Regarded as the architect of economic reforms that led to years of rapid growth, Mr Singh said the government had not been able to take advantage of falling oil and commodity prices that had lowered India’s import bill. 

Sharp falls in import prices have reduced the trade deficit, raising hopes that it will boost economic activity. But “turbo-charged” growth figures have been criticised by many analysts for giving too flattering a view. 

The economy expanded 7.3 per cent in the quarter through December, but consumer inflation inched up unexpectedly last month and capital goods production, a proxy for investments, fell nearly 20 per cent in December. 

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley wants to present a credible budget on Feb 29, people involved in the process say, but the government may end up breaking its budget deficit targets to stimulate demand. 

In a rebuttal on his website and social media accounts, Mr Jaitley blamed Mr Singh’s administration for mismanaging the economy, adding that the opposition Congress has been unwilling to support reforms in parliament. 

“Both the parliamentary affairs minister and myself have discussed the GST with every senior Congress leader in parliament,” he said, responding to Mr Singh’s criticism that the government had not consulted the opposition. 

The proposed goods and services (GST) tax, India’s biggest revenue shake-up since independence, has been stuck in the upper house where it needs support from Congress to make it a law.

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2016

WASHINGTON: The United States expressed concern on Friday over the security of Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons. The statement followed the US announcement about its intention to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.

At a State Department news briefing, Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said that tensions between India and Pakistan were equally worrying and urged the two nations to continue their dialogue to alleviate some of those tensions.

“We’re concerned both about the security of those nuclear weapons, and that’s been a common refrain in our discussions with Pakistan,” said Mr Toner while responding to a question about the alleged increase in Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons.

“But we’re also concerned, clearly, about tensions between India and Pakistan in the region, and we want to see a dialogue between those two countries, clearly, to help alleviate (کم کرنا)some of those tensions,” he said.

Earlier this week, Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry dismissed claims that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal programme was the world’s fastest growing, and repeated Islamabad’s demand for induction into a club of nuclear trading nations.

The foreign secretary also said that the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s “discriminatory waiver” (امتیازی بنیادوں پر رعایت) to India and the Indo-US nuclear deal had allowed New Delhi to increase its fissile material and disturb the strategic stability in South Asia.

A recent joint study by the Carnegie and Stimson research organisations estimates that Pakistan has the capability to produce 20 nuclear warheads annually while India appears to be producing about five warheads.

“Pakistan only goes for credible minimum deterrence. Our nuclear deterrence is for self-defence. It is not status driven,” he said.

He also dismissed safety and security concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, saying the United States “in unambiguous terms” (غیر مبہم الفاظ میں)has appreciated the safety measures Islamabad has taken over the past 15 years to prevent proliferation.

The US Defence Intelligence Agency director, Lt Gen Vincent Stewart, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week that Pakistan continued to take steps to improve nuclear security and was aware of the threat presented by extremists to its programme.

But the general also said that Islamabad’s nuclear stockpile continued to grow.

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2016

Karachi-born quantum astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala, Associate Department Head of Physics at MIT is a member of the team of scientists that announced on Thursday the scientific milestone of detecting gravitational waves, ripples in space and time hypothesised by physicist Albert Einstein a century ago.

Professor Mavalvala, whose career spans 20 years, has published extensively in her field and has been working with MIT since 2002.  

Mavalvala did her BA at Wellesley College in Physics and Astronomy in 1990 and a Ph.D in physics in 1997 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Before that, she was a postdoctoral associate and then a research scientist at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), working on the Laser Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO).

Nergis Mavalvala, speaks,Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016, about an experiment at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO. — AP

She has been involved with LIGO since her early years in graduate school at MIT and her primary research has been in instrument development for interferometric gravitational-wave detectors.

She also received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Award in 2010.

The girl from Karachi

Born to a Parsi family in Karachi, Mavalvala received her early education from the Convent of Jesus and Mary school, an administration official from the educational institute confirmed to Dawn.com.

She later moved to the United States as a teenager to attend Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she is said to have a natural gift for being comfortable in her own skin, according to an article published on the sciencemag.org website.

“Even when Nergis was a freshman, she struck me as fearless, with a refreshing can-do attitude,” says Robert Berg, a professor of physics at Wellesley.

"I used to borrow tools and parts from the bike-repair man across the street to fix my bike,” Mavalvala says.

In an earlier report, Mavalvala's colleague observed that while many professors would like to treat students as colleagues, most students don’t respond as equals. From the first day, Mavalvala acted and worked like an equal. She helped Berg, who at the time was new to the faculty, set up a laser and transform an empty room into a lab. Before she graduated in 1990, Berg and Mavalvala had co-authored a paper in Physical Review B: Condensed Matter.

MIT Quantum Astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala in an MIT lab, September 20, 2010 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.— Courtesy MacArthur Foundation

Her parents encouraged academic excellence. She was by temperament very hands-on. “I used to borrow tools and parts from the bike-repair man across the street to fix my bike,” she says. Her mother objected to the grease stains, “but my parents never said such skills were off-limits to me or my sister.” 

So she grew up without stereotypical gender roles. Once in the United States, she did not feel bound by US social norms, she recalls.

Her practical skills stood her in good stead in 1991, when she was scouting for a research group to join after her first year as a graduate student at MIT. Her adviser was moving to Chicago and Mavalvala had decided not to follow him, so she needed a new adviser. She met Rainer Weiss, who worked down the hallway.

Nergis Mavalvala, center, celebrates with Rebecca Weiss, left, wife of MIT physics professor Rai Weiss, following an update by MIT scientists on gravitational waves, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016, at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. — AP

“What do you know?” Weiss asked her. She began to list the classes she had taken at the institute—but the renowned experimentalist interrupted with, “What do you know how to do?” Mavalvala ticked off her practical skills and accomplishments: machining, electronic circuitry, building a laser. Weiss took her on right away.

Mavalvala says that although it may not be immediately apparent, she is a product of good mentoring. 

From the chemistry teacher in Pakistan who let her play with reagents in the lab after school to the head of the physics department at MIT, who supported her work when she joined the faculty in 2002, she has encountered several encouraging people on her journey.

Landmark discovery

Although the discovery of gravitational waves, that opens a new window for studying the cosmos, was made in September 2015, it took scientists months to confirm their data. 

The researchers said they detected gravitational waves coming from two black holes - extraordinarily dense objects whose existence also was foreseen by Einstein - that orbited one another, spiraled inward and smashed together. They said the waves were the product of a collision between two black holes 30 times as massive as the Sun, located 1.3 billion light years from Earth.

Nergis Mavalvala, center, takes questions from members of the media as MIT physics professor Matthew Evans, left, and MIT research scientist Erik Katsavounidis, right, look on during a presentation on the discovery of gravitational waves, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016, on the school's campus, in Cambridge, Mass.— AP

The scientific milestone, announced at a news conference in Washington, was achieved using a pair of giant laser detectors in the United States, located in Louisiana and Washington state, capping a long quest to confirm the existence of these waves.

The announcement was made in Washington by scientists from the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

“We are really witnessing the opening of a new tool for doing astronomy,” MIT astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala said in an interview. “We have turned on a new sense. We have been able to see and now we will be able to hear as well.”