Today’s Mint has an article on the Indian Met department purchasing Doppler weather radars from a Chinese firm. Now these radars are basically and upgraded version of the NEXRAD system being used in the USA. One of the reasons this deal is being touted as a technologically advanced one for India is the fact that this system is being used in the US currently. Coincidentally there is an article on the Slashdot front page today proclaiming that the US is about to replace the very same NEXRAD technology because it is old and deeply flawed in the eyeys of the meteriologists in US.
This again put in the context of the following comment makes the new deal an act of dumping old technology in third world countries!
“While our technical evaluation company is certainly competent, I hope they have not compromised on quality for cost,” says an IMD scientist not connected with the technical evaluation and selection of firms to supply the radars and who didn’t want to be named.
If the scientists themselves don’t trust the technical evaluation with all their knowledge, what do we make out of this purchase?
