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India in the South Asian Neighbourhood: Friendship or Friction?

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Published in Frontline dated January 26. 2024

The economic shock of COVID-19 in 2020-21 and subsequent escalating debt burdens, the ongoing Ukraine war now in its third year, and, in 2023, the eruption of the Gaza conflict, repeatedly jolted the economies of all countries in South Asia. The smaller and more vulnerable economies of all of India’s neighbours have been hit hard, leading to countrywide protests and, in some instances, even street violence in 2023. Maldives just had its election in September and in 2024, all South Asian countries (except Afghanistan and Nepal) are scheduled to go to the polls, adding a degree of political uncertainty to the mix.  

Of all the forthcoming elections, perhaps the Indian election is the most predictable. Most political pundits concur that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is headed for a historic third term though opinions differ on how many seats the BJP will win in the Lok Sabha and whether it will need coalition partners. In January, Bhutan is heading for a change of government; Sheikh Hasina is likely to stay put in Bangladesh though polarisation has risen significantly; Pakistan’s outcome in February is more uncertain given the role that the courts and the military may play; and in Sri Lanka, elections will only take place in September or later.

This churn in the region is occurring when there are fundamental structural shifts underway. Three relationships will be observed carefully by the neighbours: first, the US-China rivalry at the global level; second, the India-US emerging partnership; and finally, India-China relations that have not recovered since the nosedive it took in 2020 following Galwan. How these evolve and how India’s neighbours respond will influence India’s neighbourhood policies.

Legacy of British India

Historically, India has had difficult relations with its neighbours, in large part because of the legacy of the multiple partitions that it went through. Following three Anglo-Burmese wars over a span of nearly sixty years, from 1886 to 1937 Burma became a province of British India and thereafter a separate colony till its independence in 1948. The British East India Company’s conquest of Sri Lanka began during the last decade of the 18th century with the coastal areas and in 1802, it became a Crown colony, administered from Madras. Over the next two decades, the British gained control over the entire island introducing plantation crops like tea, coffee, and rubber for which large numbers of indentured Indian labour were brought in. Eventually, Sri Lanka became an independent country in 1948. The most traumatic partition was in 1947 that led to the creation of Pakistan in the name of a separate homeland for the Muslims of the sub-continent. Even after East Pakistan seceded in 1971 to become Bangladesh, Pakistan remains the second largest country in the region and remains locked in a hostile relationship with India. Lasting hostility has in turn cast a shadow on any developments at a regional level.  

Afghanistan, Bhutan, and Nepal were always independent and had a long tradition of trade relations and people-to-people exchanges with the neighbouring Indian states over the centuries. However, all three kingdoms had run-ins leading to wars with British India during the 18th and early 19th centuries. These conflicts ended with the establishment of boundaries between the three kingdoms and British India and in the process, the three relinquished sovereignty over their ‘defence and foreign affairs’ by accepting British ‘guidance’ through the appointment of plenipotentiary Political Agents, who in turn reported to the Viceroy in India.

This is the legacy that India inherited in 1947 as all the newly independent states struggled to consolidate their new found sovereignty.

Independent India’s challenges

As a buffer state between India and Afghanistan, Pakistan inherited the borderlands with Afghanistan and the problems of the Durand Line that divided the Pashtun homelands. The treatment of Hindu, Madhesi, and Tamil minorities with Pakistan (and post-1971 Bangladesh), Nepal, and Sri Lanka respectively, often became a domestic preoccupation for India. In the northeast, the restive tribes often sought to set up camps across the border in Myanmar as the Indian state sought to integrate these into the national mainstream, an unfinished exercise as recent developments in Manipur have shown. What this means is that India’s neighbourhood policies were, and remain, more intimately connected with our domestic policy than is often appreciated. On the flip side, societal and identity conflicts in India’s border states aroused interests in these countries that caused resentment in Delhi. Merely drawing lines on maps does not create sovereignties. British India was the paramount military power in the region and could enforce its will; a fragmented independent India, preoccupied with consolidating its own sovereignty over the 500 plus princely states and a war with Pakistan in 1947, has never enjoyed that unquestioned authority.  

The partitions also divided the economic space for a newly independent India. The creation of East Pakistan made India’s north-eastern states more distant and remote while the jute-based economy of the region was shattered. In the west, the sources of all the rivers flowing through Pakistan lie in India (and for the Kabul River, in Afghanistan) creating dependencies. India’s northern rivers basins of the Ganges and Yamuna are almost entirely fed by the rivers originating in the Nepal Himalayan ranges flowing southwards and then eastwards into the Bay of Bengal.

This legacy meant that Indian diplomacy in the neighbourhood lacked both the economic and the military resources to deliver on its policy objectives that it inherited as the successor state to British India. As these countries struggled with their own sovereignty issues, their internal political squabbles often attracted Indian involvement. These involvements also left long term scars on the relationships. The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 would not have happened without Indian political and material support and yet, less than five years after, there was a growing anti-India sentiment that was exploited by the military regimes that succeeded Sheikh Mujibur Rehman.

The struggle by the Tamils for their rights in Sri Lanka led to a violent insurgency, and the ill-advised deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka (from 1987-90 following the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord) still rankles deeply. In Nepal, every political movement towards democracy has somehow involved India because it was the natural refuge for the asylum seekers, from King Tribhuvan in 1950 to the Nepali Congress leaders seeking democratic reform. None of the Maoists who waged a decade-long insurgency from the mid-1990s onwards ever sought refuge in China but took advantage of the open border with India. And yet, there remains an anti-India sentiment that surfaces repeatedly, stoked, and exploited by local politicians to demonstrate their nationalist credentials. Events like the 2015 economic squeeze by India (Nepalis call it a blockade) after Nepal adopted its new constitution leading to protests by the Madhesis in the Terai will remain a lasting pain point. Indian diplomats are often accused of arrogance and lacking empathy, earning them the unflattering sobriquet of a Viceroy or Pro-Consul.

The near-permanent hostility with Pakistan has meant that proposals for regional cooperation that are floated by India’s neighbours (SAARC was proposed by Bangladesh Gen Ziaur Rehman) often arouse Indian apprehensions. Even when India has overcome its reservations (especially under the Gujral Doctrine of “non-reciprocity”) and offered constructive proposals, these have often floundered, leaving India to come up with sub-regional initiatives. It is a good reminder of Tulsidas’s line from Ramcharitmanas when Lord Ram realises and declares: Bhay bin hoye nahin preet (there cannot be love/respect without a modicum of fear).

Modi’s India and ‘neighbourhood first’

On taking over as Prime Minister a decade ago, Modi declared a “neighbourhood first” foreign policy. He followed it up with his first two foreign visits to Bhutan and Nepal. These visits were successful but follow-up and economic delivery was lacking. Modi’s personalised diplomacy with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan and President Xi Jinping soon ran aground and since then, India’s neighbourhood policy has been episodic. The sole definitive action with respect to the neighbourhood from the Modi government has been the repeated postponements of the SAARC summit since 2016 after the Uri attack. However, the sub-regional initiatives like BIMSTEC (The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) and BBIN The Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal Initiative) promoted by India have been neither particularly noteworthy nor majorly successful.

One key reason is that India has not put forward a coherent policy for South Asia in any consistent fashion, preferring instead to deal with each neighbour bilaterally as this put India at an advantage. For the neighbours too, there were not many options. India was wary of any superpower presence in the region though Pakistan had joined SEATO and CENTO, two U.S. led military alliances. Development projects funded by India proceeded at the same leisurely pace as in India. The situation began to change with the growth of regionalisation, followed by globalisation. More significantly, China began to emerge as a global economic power and its footprint expanded, including in South Asia.

China had enjoyed close strategic ties with Pakistan since the 1960s but it also began to emerge as an economic investor. Now the other neighbours had a choice. A decade ago, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to fund strategic infrastructure like roads, railways, ports and power stations and transmission networks. Its deeper pockets and more efficient implementation made it an attractive partner. The economic presence was soon followed by political influence. During the Cold War, India had practised its own variant of the Monroe doctrine in the region but it becomes more difficult when its own neighbour that shared land borders with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar emerges as an economic superpower. Further, China did not have the complicated legacy of British India in the region and the intertwined minority ties with South Asia. This enables it to have a less emotive and a more transactional approach towards the region. In the last three years, there is a noticeable backlash against BRI in South Asia and elsewhere but Chinese presence in the region is now a reality.

During the last decade, Modi has been changing India’s image and how it is perceived. From kinetic retaliation for terrorist attacks originating from Pakistani territory to the alleged targeted assassinations of Khalistani terrorists on foreign soil, from doing away with Article 370 to an open espousal of majoritarianism and Hindutva, Modi wants to be the architect of transforming a soft, indecisive India into a more self-confident, assertive, and muscular Bharat. A third Modi term will sharpen and strengthen these trends. India’s neighbours are sensitive to the changes, as these are filtered through our neighbourhood policies.

Election season in 2024

The Maldives election last September brought in for President Mohamed Muizzu who had fought on an “India out” platform to distinguish him from his predecessor Ibrahim Solih, who had governed with an “India first” policy. Muizzu’s first announcement was to seek removal of the 70-odd Indian military personnel deployed there to maintain and operate two helicopters and a Dornier aircraft gifted by India. In December, he decided to pull out of the 2019 bilateral agreement for cooperation in hydrology, following it up by skipping the Colombo Security Conclave that includes India, Sri Lanka and Mauritius. Since the introduction of multiparty democracy in Maldives nearly two decades ago, every elected President’s first foreign visit has been to Delhi; Muizzu has already visited Turkey and Dubai and is now scheduled to visit China. Parliamentary elections due in 2024 might offer India some comfort, but it is too soon to predict.

Sheikh Hasina is poised to win a historic fourth term in Bangladesh in the elections scheduled on January 7. The main opposition party BNP is boycotting the polls and has mounted street protests. A harsh government crackdown has provoked criticism in the West. India has three key demands – protection of minorities’, no support to anti-India elements, and connectivity. Sheikh Hasina has been responsive, in varying degrees, on all three. At the same time, she has maintained close ties with China. As India-China rivalry sharpens, her challenge will be to avoid too close an embrace with either while not crossing India’s red lines.

The final round of Bhutan’s parliamentary elections is due on January 9 and the options will be between former PM Tshering Tobgay (2013-18) or former civil servant-turned-politician Dasho Pema Chewang. The question here is the progress in boundary talks with China that resumed last year after being frozen since the Doklam crisis. October also saw the first ever visit by the Bhutanese Foreign Minister to China. Meanwhile, Bhutan is also strengthening economic ties with India by planning a 1,000 sq km international city on the Assam border, connected by road and rail links. Gelephu is expected to be a green township with zero-emission industries. Bhutan’s opening to the world has so far been calibrated but there appears to a slight quickening of the pace to create economic opportunities for its youth who have been migrating out in recent years.

Pakistan has been grappling with multiple challenges that have forced it to turn inwards. Imran Khan remains behind bars and his party has seen many departures. Conventional wisdom indicates that Nawaz Sharif, who returned from exile with the blessings of the Army should get his fourth term. His earlier terms were cut short each time because of deteriorating relations with the Army. Has he mellowed and will the Army trust him are questions that will be clearer after the elections on February 8. Mr. Sharif will be keen to improve relations with India but the Modi government’s interest is limited to managing relations rather than moving towards resolution of historical issues.

Sri Lanka’s elections, in the last quarter of 2024, will take place in a polarised atmosphere. President Ranil Wickremesinghe, sworn in last year after President Gotabaya Rajapakse was forced to quit after a historic aragalaya (struggle) that galvanised the country, is his party’s sole MP and continues only with the support of the Rajapakse’s SLPP (Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna). SLPP is adept at whipping up nationalist sentiment among the majority Sinhala middle class but the current preoccupation for the people is the economic challenges. Mr. Wickremesinghe is pushing for reforms and favours talks with minorities to bring about devolution that makes SLPP uncomfortable. The other two mainstream parties SJB (Samagi Jana Balawegaya) and SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party) are mired in internal disarray.

Relations with the Taliban regime in Kabul are limited after India reopened its embassy in 2022, calling it a technical mission to coordinate Indian humanitarian assistance. The Afghan embassy in Delhi is shuttered and so far, India has not agreed to let Taliban post people to man it. Visas remain suspended. In Nepal, elections are due in 2027. The Maoist-UML coalition that took power in end-2022 proved short-lived. Within three months, Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) or the UML, had quit and Maoist Prime Minister Prachanda found a new coalition partner in the NC. Under the constitution, there cannot be a vote of confidence for the first two years and any political jockeying is likely to begin only towards end-2024.

Myanmar is caught up in its internal struggles after the military takeover in February 2021. The pushback this time has been much stronger in the past, possibly because even the limited political, economic, and social freedoms that had existed for a decade prior enabled the emergence of a middle class. The resistance this time cuts across ethnicities and in the north, has support from China. India has continued to work with the junta to promote its connectivity projects.

Regional elections are not the only source of uncertainty for South Block. On January 13, Taiwan elects a new president and another DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) victory will sharpen tensions with Beijing, impacting US-China relations. In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be struggling to win a third term in June and towards the year end, the UK will have a new Prime Minister. The US election on November 5 remains the most anticipated, especially if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination. Election forecasters have their hands full in 2024, as do Indian diplomats.

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It’s Time to Tweak the Nuclear Policy

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Published in Hindustan Times on May 15, 2023

India’s nuclear tests on May 11 and 13, 1998, stunned the world. This was not the first; in 1974, India had tested but called it a peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE). This time, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee declared that India was now a nuclear-weapon-state. Addressing parliament on the subject on May 27, he also placed a paper – “Evolution of India’s Nuclear Policy” – that provided the rationale for the tests and spelt out the elements of India’s doctrine that defined India as a reluctant but responsible nuclear power.

When India refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968, its “nuclear option” was born. In subsequent decades, preserving the option became the primary political and diplomatic objective. Through more than three decades of domestic political changes, policy continuity was sustained.

Meanwhile, Pakistan pushed ahead with its programme and by early 1980s, it was enriching uranium at Kahuta and by late 1980s, had weaponised its deterrent with Chinese help. As the frontline state in the United States’ covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Pakistan managed to make the U.S. turn a blind eye to its nuclear developments.

There was a growing realisation that given technological advances since the 1974 PNE, the “nuclear option” could no longer remain viable and needed to be exercised. Post Cold War global developments with tightening dual-use export controls were also squeezing the Indian option. In 1995, the NPT was extended into perpetuity, freezing a nuclear order that India had long considered arbitrary and discriminatory. Negotiations on a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) began in 1994 with the Clinton administration pushing to complete it in 1996.

In 1995, France and China were still undertaking tests to validate designs and acquire data that would help sustain their capabilities with ‘zero-yield’ tests in their laboratories. Prime Minister Narsimha Rao gave the green light for tests and preparatory work began at Pokhran. In early December, days before the tests were scheduled, U.S. satellites picked up imagery of activity at Pokhran. The tests were postponed till after the general elections and meanwhile, Indian stand on the CTBT negotiations hardened.

Prime Minister Vajpayee toyed with the idea of the tests in 1996 but decided against it as his tenure was a mere 13 days. The next opportunity arose when he became PM again in 1998, and the die was cast.

The 1998 declaration of India as a nuclear-weapon-state marked a decisive break. It generated its own challenges, both domestic and external. A new kind of policy continuity was crafted. Domestically, it related to the nuclear doctrine and the configuration of the nuclear arsenal into the defence and decision-making structures. Externally, it was to gain acceptance as a responsible nuclear power and second, to stabilise deterrence relations with India’s adversaries.

After 25 years, the domestic challenge is still a work in progress. To maintain a credible minimum deterrent, a nuclear triad was considered necessary. The land-based missile force has now inducted Agni IV with an estimated range of 3500 kms. Agni V and Agni VI are expected to extend the ranges to beyond 6000 kms. The nuclear submarine programme has made slow progress with Arihant having undertaken its firs patrol last year. However, it currently carries K-15 (Sagarika) missile that has a limited range of 700 kms. Longer range missiles are under development.

Though India has no intention of embarking on a nuclear arms race with any other country, it must factor in technological developments that can have an impact on the credibility of its deterrent. Increasing use of dual use systems like hypersonics and cruise missiles, conventional precision global strike weapons blur the dividing line between nuclear and conventional systems. Digitisation renders both early warning systems and command and control systems vulnerable to counter-space and offensive cyber action.

These developments have led to questions as to how to define the ‘minimum’ and whether the no-first-use policy needs review. Some critics point to Kargil in 1999 and the Mumbai attacks in 2008 as evidence of failure of nuclear deterrence and would advocate a more robust posture. However, such criticism is ill founded. Indian doctrine is intended to deter threat and use of nuclear weapons. Dealing with Kargil-type attacks or terrorist strikes requires building conventional and intelligence capabilities that can offer a range of response options.

The external diplomatic challenge of gaining acceptance as a responsible nuclear power has been achieved in great measure. The Vajpayee government was proactive in reaching out to key countries, particularly the U.S. since it had taken the lead in condemning the tests and calling for sanctions.

The dialogue between Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh between 1998 and 2000 remains the most intense phase of bilateral engagement with 18 rounds of talks in 24 months. It remained inconclusive in not meeting either side’s stated objectives; yet, it was immensely productive in clearing the path towards the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership and eventually the India-U.S. Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement following the exceptional waiver by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in 2008 – another milestone that completes 15 years in 2023. The NSG waiver legitimised India’s civilian nuclear trade and has enabled over a dozen cooperation agreements to be concluded.

This has been possible because the post-1998 policy too has been marked by a similar continuity that characterised it in its early years. Today, changing geopolitics has revived rivalries among major nuclear powers even as the geopolitical centre of gravity has shifted from Euro-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific. Navigating these challenges may need policy adjustments that will be strengthened by consensus and continuity.

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A Ground View of the Indian Space Policy 2023

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Published in the Hindu on May 11, 2023

On April 20 this year, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) released the Indian Space Policy 2023 that had been in the works for some years. The document has been received positively by industry; however, it needs to be followed up with suitable legislation, accompanied by clear rules and regulations. Just preceding this, this writer wrote the article, “Awaiting lift-off into the Second Space Age” (April 10, 2023), which said that India’s modest entry into the First Space Age followed by its many gains should be used to help the country tap the vast potential in the Second Space Age.

Until the early 1990s, India’s space industry and space economy was defined by ISRO. Private sector involvement was limited to building to ISRO designs and specifications. The Second Space Age began with the licensing of private TV channels, the explosive growth of the internet, mobile telephony, and the emergence of the smartphone. Today, while ISRO’s budget is approx. $1.6 billion, India’s space economy is over $9.6 billion. Broadband, OTT and 5G promise a double-digit annual growth in satellite-based services. It is estimated that with an enabling environment, the Indian space industry could grow by 2030 to $60 billion, directly creating more than 2 lakh jobs.

Yet, it is the enabling policy environment that has proved elusive. The first SATCOM policy was introduced in 1997. It contained guidelines for foreign direct investment (FDI) in the satellite industry that were subsequently further liberalised but never generated much enthusiasm. Today, more than half the transponders beaming TV signals into Indian homes are hosted on foreign satellites resulting in an annual outflow of over half a billion dollars.

A remote sensing data policy was introduced in 2001, which was amended in 2011; in 2016, it was replaced by a National Geospatial Policy that has been further liberalised in 2022. Yet, Indian users including the security and defence agencies spend nearly a billion dollars annually to procure earth observation data and imagery from foreign sources.

To streamline matters, a draft Space Activities Bill was brought out in 2017 and went through a long consultative process. It lapsed in 2019 with the outgoing Lok Sabha. The government was expected to introduce a new bill by 2021 but appears to have contented itself with the new policy statement.

What is different

To be fair, the Indian Space Policy 2023 is qualitatively different from previous efforts. It is a short 11-page document, which includes three pages devoted to definitions and abbreviations. The Vision is to “enable, encourage and develop a flourishing commercial presence in space” that suggests an acceptance that the private sector is a critical stakeholder in the entire value chain of the space economy. It makes five key points. It defines its role in India’s “socio-economic development and security, protection of environment and lives, pursuing peaceful exploration of outer space, stimulation of public awareness and scientific quest.”  

First, this is the only reference to ‘security’ in the document, making it clear that the focus is on civilian and peaceful applications. Considering that space-based intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, communication, positioning, and navigation capabilities are increasingly seen as mission critical by the defence services, that India conducted a successful A-SAT (anti-satellite) direct ascent test in March 2019, and, in the same year set up the Defence Space Agency and the Defence Space Research Organisation, it is reasonable to infer that a defence-oriented space security policy will be a separate document. The United States puts out a space policy under the aegis of the White House Office of the Science and Technology Policy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Departments of Commerce and Transportation while the Department of Defence and the Director of National Intelligence are responsible for the space security strategy.

Second, the policy lays out a strategy and then spells out the roles of Department of Space, ISRO, Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) set up in 2020, and New Space India Ltd (NSIL), a public sector undertaking set up in 2019 under the Department of Space as the commercial arm of ISRO to replace the now defunct Antrix.

Third, it states that ISRO will “transition out of the existing practice of being present in the manufacturing of operational space systems. Hereafter, mature systems shall be transferred to industries for commercial exploitation. ISRO shall focus on R&D in advanced technology, proving newer systems and realisation of space objects for meeting national prerogatives.” Another of ISRO’s tasks in the new Policy is to “share technologies, products, processes and best practices with NGEs (non-government entities) and/or Government companies.” This implies that ISRO will now use its biggest asset, its qualified and talented manpower to concentrate on cutting edge R&D and long-term projects like Chandrayaan and Gaganyaan.

As ISRO’s commercial arms, NSIL will become the interface for interacting with the industry, undertake commercial negotiations and provide handholding support to ensure smooth and efficient transfer of technologies.

Private sector role

Fourth, the NGEs (this includes the private sector) are “allowed to undertake end-to-end activities in the space sector through establishment and operation of space objects, ground-based assets and related services, such as communication, remote sensing, navigation, etc”. Satellites could be self-owned, procured or leased; communication services could be over India or outside; and remote sensing data could be disseminated in India or abroad. NGEs can design and operate launch vehicles for space transportation and establish their own infrastructure. NGEs can now make filings with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and engage in commercial recovery of asteroid resources. In short, the entire gamut of space activities is now open to the private sector. Security agencies can task NGEs for procuring tailor made solutions to address specific requirements.

The activities of the NGEs will be in keeping with guidelines and regulation to be issued by IN-SPACe. It is expected to act as the single window agency for authorising space activities “by government entities and NGEs,” in keeping with safety, security, international obligations and overall national interests.

Finally, IN-SPACe is expected to create and “stable and predictable regulatory framework” that will ensure a level playing field for the NGEs. It will act as a promoter by setting up industry clusters and as the regulator, issue guidelines on liability issues.  

The gaps

The policy sets out an ambitious role for IN-SPACe but provides no timeframe for the necessary steps ahead. Neither is there an indicative timeline for ISRO’s transitioning out of its current practices nor is there a schedule for IN-SPACe to create the regulatory framework. The policy framework envisaged will need clear rules and regulations pertaining to FDI and licensing, government procurement to sustain the new space start-ups, liability in case of violations and an appellate framework for dispute settlement.

A regulatory body needs legislative authority. The Reserve Bank of India was set up by the 1934 RBI Act, SEBI by the 1992 SEBI Act, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) by the 1997 TRAI Act. IN-SPACe is expected to authorise space activities for all, both government and non-government entities. Currently, its position is ambiguous as it functions under the purview of the Department of Space. The Secretary (Space) is also Chairman of ISRO, the government entity to be regulated by IN-SPACe.

The Space Policy 2023 is a forward-looking document reflecting good intentions and a vision. But it is not enough. What is urgently needed is a timeframe to provide the necessary legal framework to translate this vision into reality, to successfully launch India into the Second Space Age. 

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Awaiting Lift-off into the Second Space Age

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Published in the Hindu on April 10, 2023

The Space Age began in 1957 with the launch of satellite Sputnik 1 and in 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space. Neil Armstrong made history by walking on the moon in 1969. The First Space Age became reality.

Today, the Second Space Age is here. Though there is no precise date for its beginning, the contrast in today’s space domain is stark. Between the 1950s to 1991, a period dominated by the Cold War, 60 to 120 space launches took place annually and 93% of these were by the United States and the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) governments. Three decades later, not only are there many more actors in the space scene, but a majority are also private companies. Last year, there were 180 rocket/space launches, 61 by Elon Musk’s Space X; 90% of global space launches since 2020 are by and for the private sector.

India’s space journey begins

India made a modest entry into the First Space Age in the 1960s. The first sounding rocket, a U.S. supplied Nike-Apache, was launched at Thumba (Kerala) in 1963 and in 1969, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was set up. It has come a long way since, with over 15000 employees and an annual budget between Rs 12000 crores-14000 crores in recent years. Through these decades, it has sought to prioritise societal objectives and benefits.

Its first major project was Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) that involved leasing a U.S. satellite in 1975-76 for educational outreach across 2400 villages covering five million people. Satellite technology was a new mass communication tool. This led to the INSAT series in 1980s, followed by GSAT, that provided the backbone for the country’s tele-communication and broadcasting infrastructure.

This was followed by remote sensing capability development. The use of space-based imagery for weather forecasting, resource mapping of forests, analysing agricultural yields, groundwater and watersheds, gradually expanded to cover fisheries and urban management. Following the Indian Remote Sensing programme, this plan grew with the Oceansat and Cartosat series.

The field of satellite-aided navigation emerged later. It began with GAGAN, a joint project between ISRO and the Airports Authority of India, to augment the Global Positioning System (GPS) coverage of the region, to improve air traffic management over the Indian airspace. This has now been expanded to Navigation with Indian Constellation (Nav-IC).

In parallel came the development of satellite launch capabilities. Beginning with SLV-1 in the 1980s, it took a decade before ISRO developed the PSLV series that has become its workhorse with over 50 successful launches.

Space potential

The origins of the Second Space Age can be traced to the Internet. In India, the process began accelerating as 1990s saw the emergence of private TV channels, together with cable TV followed by direct-to-home transmissions. The demanded for satellite transponders and ground-based services exploded. Today, more than half the transponders beaming into Indian homes are on foreign satellites.

The last fifteen years witnessed another transformation and this time India was in lock-step with the developed world. The age of mobile telephony, followed by smart phones has shown the world what a data-hungry and data-rich society India is. Broadband, OTT and now 5G promise a double-digit annual growth in demand for satellite-based services.

In 2020, the global space economy was estimated at $450 billion, growing to $600 billion by 2025. The Indian space economy, estimated at $9.6 billion in 2020, is expected to be $13 billion by 2025. However, the potential is much greater with an enabling policy and regulatory environment. The Indian space industry could easily exceed $60 billion by 2030, directly creating more than two lakh jobs.

The reason is that in terms of the end-user revenue, only one-fifth is generated by the government. Media and entertainment account for 26% of India’s space economy with consumer and retail services accounting for another 21%. In terms of space activities, downstream activities like satellite services and associated ground segment are dominant accounting for over 70% of India’s space economy with upstream activities of satellite manufacturing and launch services contributing the smaller share. A similar trend can be seen in developed countries. The reason is that India has been an early adopter of digital app-based services.

The growing role of the private sector is also evident in the numbers and ownership of satellites. According to the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), there are 8261 satellites in orbit, of which nearly 5000 are active. Till 2010, about 60 to 100 satellites were launched annually. The pace picked up in recent years. In 2020, 1283 satellites were launched into space. Today, Starlink operates a constellation of 3500 satellites and has a million paying customers. Both Starlink and One Web (in which Airtel has a stake) project constellations of 40000 satellites each. And Jeff Bezos of Amazon has launched Project Kuiper to bring low-latency broadband connectivity around the globe. How this domain will be regulated is a separate challenge but this provides a glimpse of the scope of expansion.

Creating an enabling environment

The Indian private sector is responding to the demands of the Second Space Age. From less than a dozen space start-ups five years ago, today there are a over a hundred. The pace of investment is growing. From $3 million in 2018, it doubled in 2019 and crossed $65 million in 2021. The sector is poised for take-off; as a transformative growth multiplier like the IT industry did for the national economy in the 1990s.

Today, ISRO manages four to five launches annually. It manages 53 operational satellites – 21 for communication, 21 for earth observation, 8 for navigation and the remaining are scientific experimental satellites (China operates 541). In addition, ISRO has missions like Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan and Gaganyaan (manned space mission).

ISRO has always been an open organisation that has worked closely with the Indian private sector. However, for some private sector companies, space technology related work is a small part of their revenue stream. They were content as vendors, producing to defined specs and designs.

The start-ups are different. Their revenue stream depends on space related activities and they need a different relationship with ISRO and government. ISRO today is the operator, user, service provider, licensor, rule maker and now also an incubator. It has steered India through the First Space Age and now it needs to do what it can do best within its resources and its high-quality manpower – research.

To be fair, the government has been mulling over this. In 2017, the government introduced the first draft Space Activities Bill in Parliament but it lapsed in 2019. There has been talk of commercialising the PSLV and SSLV launch services and New Space India Ltd (NSIL) was set up to replace Antrix. The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) was set up in 2020 as a single-window-clearance for the private sector. However, it is unclear as to whether it will emerge as the licensing authority or a regulator. An Indian Space Association (ISpA) was created as an industry association.

In recent years, a series of policy papers have been circulated for discussion – a satcom/telecom policy, an earth observation policy and an foreign direct investment policy. These have served a purpose. What is needed now is legislation (a Space Activities Act). This provides the legal grounding that policy papers lack; helps set up a regulatory authority and create an enabling environment for raising venture capital funding into the Indian space start-up industry. The window of opportunity for India to join the Second Space Age exists; it should not be lost.

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‘Bharat Natyam’ in Indian Diplomacy

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Published in the Hindu on March 16. 2022

The late Jyotindra Nath Dixit (Mani Dixit to his many friends and admirers) took over as Foreign Secretary on December 1, 1991. He retired 26 months later, on January 31, 1994 – 58 years was then the retirement age.

Republics and Moscow

Those were times of change. On December 25, 1991, Soviet Union’s General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, the flag of USSR was lowered for the last time at the Kremlin and the following day, USSR was formally dissolved. In its place, 15 republics emerged. India accepted the challenge and set about opening new embassies to build new relationships with these countries in Central Asia, South Caucasus and Central Europe while maintaining its traditional ties with Moscow.

In January 1992, India and Israel established full diplomatic relations, announcing the opening of embassies and exchanging ambassadors for the first time, opening the door to a relationship that has blossomed into one of India’s most significant strategic partnerships in the last three decades.

Path to the nuclear deal

On January 31, 1992, Prime Minister P V Narsimha Rao participated in the first ever meeting of the UN Security Council at summit level (India was a member in 1991-92), presided by British Prime Minister John Major. On the side-lines, Mr. Rao had a bilateral meeting with U.S. President George H. W. Bush where the two leaders decided that in the changing world, India and the U.S. needed to have frank exchanges on issues that had divided them during the Cold War; the issue identified was ‘nuclear proliferation and disarmament’; the first meeting took place during Mr. Dixit’s visit to Washington two months later, sowing the seeds of the dialogue that continued through ups and downs, leading to the path-breaking India-U.S. Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement in 2008.

At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit on January 28, 1992, Prime Minister Rao’s ‘Look East’ policy began to take shape as India and ASEAN embarked on a sectoral-dialogue partnership. By end-1995, this had matured into a full-dialogue partnership and in 1996, India joined the security dialogue platform – ASEAN Regional Forum. Since 2002, the relationship has strengthened further with the annual India-ASEAN summit.

On China and Taiwan

Following intense negotiations, during Mr. Rao’s visit to China in September 1993, the two sides initiated the first of the many confidence-building-measures, notably the Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity Along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas. It laid the foundation of the relationship for two decades.

Simultaneously, India and Taiwan negotiated to open Economic and Cultural Centres; Taiwan opened its office first in Mumbai in 1992 before shifting to Delhi while Indian established the India-Taipei Association office in 1995.

The above gives an idea of how India was responding to the changes taking place around us and in the wider world. As a junior colleague who had the privilege of working closely with Mr. Dixit during these years, I often heard him engage patiently with foreign diplomats and respond to questions from inquisitive journalists seeking to make sense of the about-turns in Indian foreign policy.

Relaxing as he puffed on his pipe, in a private aside to his friends, he would tell us, “In Indian diplomacy, sometimes, you need to do a bit of Bharat Natyam”. The point was simple – you may appear in different forms to others but after you have first secured your interests.

UN vote dynamics

In recent weeks, the debates and discussions in Indian media and TV talk-shows about India’s stand on the Ukraine conflict and India’s votes in the UN Security Council and General Assembly are an appropriate moment to reflect on the Dixit principle.

Evidently, the Indian government has chosen to ‘abstain’, based on an assessment of its core interests. However, there is a cardinal principle associated with Security Council votes on issues in such charged times. A ‘for’ or ‘against’ vote is intended to convey a blunt message of ‘support’ or ‘opposition’. It is a black or white choice, and once exercised, the messaging is clear.

On the other hand, ‘abstention’ takes us into a grey zone because it is the middle path. It can either be seen as fence-sitting (which is a sign of helplessness) or create space for diplomatic manoeuvre (which is a successful outcome). In the Ukraine instance – the West should feel satisfied that India ‘abstained’ because they perhaps expected us to oppose their draft proposals given our traditional ties with Russia while Russia should also feel satisfied at our ‘abstention’ because they perhaps expected us to give in to Western persuasion.

The second outcome is a positive one but to appear in different forms at the same time, we need to revive the kind of Bharat Natyam that Mr. Dixit used so effectively to navigate those turbulent times, even as he helped set the course for Indian foreign policy three decades ago.

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