Schools run...

Besides the three schools whose heads are on the YCB, the institutions identified by YCB include the Sri Sri Ravi Shankarled The Art of Living, Bengaluru, and Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudeva’s Isha Foundation in Coimbatore, according to the official cited above. The others are Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga, New Delhi; Kaivalya Dham, Lonavla; Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, Chennai; The Yoga Institute, Mumbai; and Rama Sadhaka Grama, Rishikesh.

“YCB is working on courses specially meant for students from abroad. It has identified these as the institutes which may be able to teach them,” the official said, adding that a meeting to finalise the contours of the plan was held on January 17. The programme will be implemented through human resource development ministry’s Study in India initiative and is expected to attract around 5,000 students this year itself. Four courses will be on offer: a 200-hour yoga protocol instructor course which will take around one month; the second level or yoga wellness instructor course which will be a 400-hour or 3-4 month course; the third level yoga teacher course, which will be of 800 hours’ duration and take 6-9 months ; and the fourth level yoga master course that will take 1,600-2,000 hours.

“There is a great demand for yoga teachers across the globe. However, often what is taught in the name of yoga is merely some kind of physical exercise which has no connection to the discipline. The aim is to guide the foreign student who looks towards this branch of knowledge. Those who take these courses can also go on to teach yoga in their countries,” the official said. YCB has identified institutions that have at least 20 years of standing in education, and the required competency and infrastructure, said YCB’S chief executive officer Dr. IV Basavaraddi, explaining the choice set. “We identified, initially, 10 leading institutions with the capacity and potential to conduct Ycb-prescribed courses for foreign nationals. This will also bring some uniformity in teaching, training and curriculum,” Basavaraddi, added. All chosen institutions will now have to go through the certification process, he added. “We are open to more joining the movement. The attempt is to create an internationally recognisable Indian brand of yoga.” the fact that the older deal incorporated the cost of bank and performance guarantees on 25% of the deal value. The new deal doesn’t have any of those guarantees. That’s a saving, CAG said, but for Dassault, which hasn’t passed it on to the Indian government. Typically, such guarantees involve setting aside some money (in this case 25% of the deal value), for which there is a cost — 1.25% according to Dassault and 0.34% according to India. To understand the math, this means 1.25% of 25% of the deal value (or $3.125 million in a $1 billion deal, say) is the cost of the guarantee. The government has consistently claimed that the price of the basic aircraft under the new deal is 9% cheaper than in the old deal. CAG says this number isn’t accurate and that the price of the basic aircraft, accounting for escalation, is almost the same. The report doesn’t get into a debate on the absence of guarantees, and repeats the government’s position on them that a letter on comfort from France (which, among other things, states that it will oversee the utilisation of funds and also step in if Dassault loses an arbitration case to India but doesn’t honour the award).

The report said the fighter did not meet nine of the Air Staff Qualitative Standards and that the company was allowed to change its technology and price bid. It also said that a competing bid from the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company was also non-compliant.

Defence analysts say the fact that offsets will be looked at by CAG in a separate report, and the saving Dassault hasn’t passed on, will provide some ammunition for the Opposition, although a government official who asked not to be named said the cost of the guarantee will not materially affect the difference in the value of the two deals. Congress president Rahul Gandhi called the CAG report “a cover-up”. “It ignores the cost of the missing Bank Guarantee & glosses over the suspect costs for “India Specific Enhancements”. But even the CAG couldn’t hide that it may take upto 10 yrs. for the 36 RAFALE jets to be delivered!” he tweeted. The CAG report, however, does support the NDA’S position that the old deal was all but dead. The auditor says this was clear by the end of 2012 when the then defence minister constituted a committee of senior officials of the MOD to review the whole process. The committee submitted its report in March, 2015 and recommended that the ongoing process of procurement should be cancelled. It also mentions that the two issues regarding Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), which was to make 108 of the 126 aircraft in the old deal, were the cost of manpower (2.7 times higher than the French cost which Dassault used in its bid) and the French company’s refusal to sign off on a performance guarantee for the planes assembled locally by the Indian state-owned company.

A month after the old deal was scrapped, in April 2015, India and France issued a joint statement on the new deal.

Interestingly, while the report acknowledges the logic of the team that recommended that scrapping of the old deal, citing Rafale’s ineligibility, it doesn’t explain how the aircraft made the cut for the new deal, analysts say.

The report said following the April 2015 Indo-french joint statement, the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) decided in its meeting in August and September that year that the Indian Negotiating Team (INT) should try and get better terms related to “Price”, “Delivery” and “Maintenance”.

The objective of the performance audit taken up by CAG was to see whether these objectives set out for INT by the DAC were achieved.

On price, CAG found the new deal marginally cheaper.

On delivery, it found not much difference. In the 2007 deal, 18 aircraft were to be delivered by the 50th month of the signing of the contract. The next 18 were to be produced under licence by HAL and delivered by 49th and 72th months. In the 2016 offer, the first 18 aircraft were to delivered by between 36th and 53th months and remaining 18 by 67th month. And on maintenance, the audit found the new deal 4.77% cheaper.