shutterstock_794528251 Courtesy: Shutterstock
29 April 2020

Satellite tech for India’s agriculture

The COVID19-caused migration of India’s large workforce to their rural roots holds immense promise for the country’s agriculture productivity and farmer incomes. Precision agritech and satellite-as-a-service (SAAS) can reduce the urban-rural skill, remuneration, and digital divide. Time to privatize space technology for agricultural benefit.

shutterstock_1042736410 Courtesy: Shutterstock
11 July 2019

Chandrayaan-2: presaging private participation

On 15 July, the Indian space programme will achieve a feat with the Chandrayaan-2 mission. Two challenges lie ahead: the speedy construction of Chandrayaan-3 and the development of a public-private ecosystem of space capabilities

MzExMjcwMA Courtesy: IEEE Spectrum
6 June 2019

BECA and the 5G-weather clash

The Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Cooperation (BECA), the last of the India-U.S. foundational agreements, will enable India to avail of U.S. expertise on geospatial intelligence and to sharpen the accuracy of weapons and automated hardware systems used for military purposes. But the over-emphasis on imaging in the agreement overlooks the likelihood of a clash between the telecom and meteorological technologies, which can hurt India’s crucial capabilities in space-based weather forecasting and disaster management

41608961145_bcfb0f1515_o Courtesy: MEA Flickr
26 February 2019

Indo-Pacific, the contested theatre

The key global powers are redefining their roles in the Indo-Pacific to promote national interest. China’s rise and increased activism in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region is an uncontested reality even as Asian countries worry about the new cold war in which the U.S. and China are locked. The Quadrilateral Dialogue has reemerged to prevent a unipolar Asia — these are some of the trends unfolding in this arena

46658837911_46b856f8ef_o Courtesy: MEA Flickr
10 January 2019

India, Norway and the Blue Economy

Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg’s visit to India earlier this week had a central focus: strengthening economic and technological cooperation in the Blue Economy. This is an area in which her country has considerable expertise and with which Indian business needs to collaborate in managing industries, such as oil, shipping, fisheries and aquaculture in a ‘green’ way

b52-bomber-over-ocean-600x400 Courtesy: Competitive India
29 November 2018

Maritime security: a decade after 26/11

Ten years after the 26/11 terror attack, India’s maritime security is much stronger, with better inter-agency coordination and improved security structure. The Indian Navy was made responsible for maritime security overall, but no fool-proof and unambiguous command and control structure exists as yet.

NTNU_blacksmokers_800x300 Courtesy: NTNU
22 November 2018

Oceanic Industry 4.0

The emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution depends on the availability of rare- earth minerals, which occur extensively on the ocean floor of the Indo-Pacific. The technology to exploit this is available only to some countries currently: the global agreement on this must be fair and safeguard India’s future interests, says the author of this blog

Capture Courtesy: Swarajya
3 October 2018

Putting an Indian on the moon

A grand achievement is a series of smaller, well-defined, and precise accomplishments. If the vision of putting an Indian on the moon has to materialise, it should be preceded by several smaller projects and diverse institutions meeting definite targets. What would these targets be? Where does India’s scientific community stand in meeting them as of this day? What kind, and how much, additional capacity needs to be added to the Indian science sector to put an Indian on the moon?