IT, space, robotics, biotech & IPR

The Digital Rupee (e₹) is the rupee in electronic form, issued by the RBI as legal tender under Section 26 of the RBI Act, 1934; unlike a bank deposit or a UPI balance, it is a direct liability of the central bank, like a currency note.

Working of India's CBDC

• Two variants: wholesale e₹-W for interbank settlement (pilot from 1 November 2022) and retail e₹-R for the public (pilot from 1 December 2022).
• Two-tier model: the RBI creates e₹ and issues it to banks and non-banks, which distribute it through mobile wallets, mirroring the issue of paper currency.
• Design: token-based, same denominations as notes, no interest; person-to-person and person-to-merchant payments, with e₹ and UPI QR codes interoperable.

Progress of the pilots

• The retail pilot began with four banks in four cities and has widened to more banks, non-bank wallet providers and locations.
• Offline payments and programmability (money earmarked for a purpose, such as targeted transfers) added to test new use-cases.
• Benefits sought: lower cost of cash, settlement finality, inclusion and a sovereign alternative to private crypto-assets.
• Concerns: little added convenience where UPI already works, privacy, possible disintermediation of bank deposits and cyber-security, hence a calibrated, pilot-led rollout.

e₹ gives India's digital economy a public-money anchor; a full launch should follow clear use-cases beyond UPI, firm privacy safeguards and phased scaling.

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Fruits and vegetables lose value within days of harvest: the NABCONS study (2022) for MoFPI put post-harvest losses at 7.36 million tonnes of fruits and 11.97 million tonnes of vegetables. Biotechnology lets farmers turn this perishable surplus into storable, higher-value products.

Example 1: enzymes in fruit processing

• Microbial enzymes such as pectinase and cellulase break down cell walls, raising juice yield and clarity in mango, guava and citrus.
• Farmer groups can convert a glut into pulp and juice that sell through the year instead of dumping fruit at harvest.

Example 2: microbial fermentation

• Controlled starter cultures turn surplus fruit and vegetables into vinegar, wine, pickles and fermented beverages with long shelf life.
• Fermentation needs little capital and suits village-level units, adding value at the farm gate.

Other biotech aids

• Bio-preservation: lactic acid bacteria, bacteriocins and biopolymer coatings such as chitosan slow spoilage without chemical residues; antagonistic microbes and yeasts cut storage rots.
• Planting material: tissue-culture banana and processing-grade potato varieties give the uniform produce that industry accepts.
• Waste to value: peels and pomace become pectin, enzymes, compost and biogas.

Constraints

• Cost, scale, awareness, testing and regulation limit uptake; FPO-level processing units, cold chains and PM Kisan SAMPADA Yojana support are needed.

Taking these tools to farm-gate processing units can cut post-harvest losses and lift farm incomes.

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Climate-smart agriculture seeks higher productivity, adaptation to climate risk and lower emissions at once; India's space programme supplies much of the data that make all three possible across small and scattered holdings.

Climate-smart farming from space

• Weather and early warning: INSAT-3D, 3DR and 3DS observations feed IMD forecasts, cyclone tracks, heat and rainfall alerts and district agro-advisories, letting farmers time sowing, irrigation and harvest.
• Seeing through the monsoon: radar satellites such as EOS-04 image crops and floods through cloud; NISAR, launched in July 2025 with NASA, adds soil moisture and land-deformation data.
• Precision inputs: vegetation and moisture indices with NavIC positioning guide water, fertiliser and pest management — cutting costs, emissions and groundwater draw.
• Water and land planning: satellite mapping of groundwater, watersheds and soil supports drought-proofing, water budgeting and soil health cards.

Food security

• Crop forecasting: the FASAL programme and the Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre combine satellite, weather and field data for pre-harvest estimates that guide procurement, buffer stocks and trade decisions.
• Drought and disaster: satellite drought assessment (NADAMS) and flood mapping trigger relief; satellite-based yield estimation speeds up PMFBY insurance settlements.
• Decision platforms: Bhuvan and Krishi-DSS (2024), built with the Department of Space, put crop maps, soil, weather and reservoir data on one geospatial platform for planners and extension workers.

Limits

• Resolution and small plots: free imagery cannot resolve tiny, fragmented fields; ground-truthing is thin, so estimates carry error.
• Last mile: data reach departments more than farmers; smallholders need a vernacular advisory on a phone, not a satellite image.
• Cost and capacity: analytics, high-resolution commercial data and trained agronomists are scarce; data governance and farmer privacy remain unsettled.

Satellites give India a strategic edge in climate-resilient farming; that edge becomes food security only when data flow through extension services, FPOs and digital public platforms to the farmer's field.

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Launched on 3 May 2026, Drishti, built by the Bengaluru startup GalaxEye, is India's largest privately built satellite and the world's first OptoSAR Earth-observation satellite.

Salient features of Mission Drishti

• A privately built Indian Earth-observation satellite, made possible by the space-sector reforms: IN-SPACe as the single-window agency for private players and the Indian Space Policy 2023.
• A small satellite carrying two very different sensors, an optical multispectral camera and a synthetic aperture radar, on one platform.
• Purpose: all-weather, day-and-night imagery for security, agriculture, disasters and infrastructure, with the data sovereignty of an Indian-owned satellite.

Imaging techniques

• Optical (multispectral) imaging: passive sensors record sunlight reflected in several bands; images are detailed and easy to interpret but blind at night and under cloud.
• Synthetic aperture radar: an active sensor transmits microwave pulses and builds a high-resolution image from the echoes as the satellite moves; it sees through cloud, smoke and darkness and captures surface texture, moisture and deformation.
• Fusion: both sensors image the same scene at the same time, and the data are merged into one product, avoiding the time and geometry mismatch of combining images from different satellites.

Why the world's first

• Earlier missions carried either an optical or a radar payload, or flew them on separate satellites; Drishti is the first to combine both in one spacecraft with fusion at source, the 'OptoSAR' design the Prime Minister cited.

Applications and significance

• Uses: border and maritime surveillance, flood and disaster mapping, crop and insurance assessment, urban and infrastructure change.
• Significance: data sovereignty, a growing private space economy and export potential; challenges of funding, data policy and dependence on launch slots.

Drishti shows India's private space sector moving from launch services to frontier sensing technology.

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Agentic AI refers to systems that pursue a goal on their own, planning steps, using tools and adapting to results, rather than only answering a single prompt.

How it works

• A large language model serves as the reasoning core: it breaks the goal into sub-tasks, keeps a memory of context, calls tools such as APIs, browsers and code, checks results and iterates until the goal is met.
• Several agents may coordinate, each with a role, such as one that plans, one that executes and one that verifies.

Applications

• Business: customer-service agents that resolve a case end to end, coding agents, research assistants, supply-chain and IT operations.
• Public services: grievance handling that routes and follows up complaints, help with welfare applications, farm advisories in Indian languages, health triage and fraud detection.
• Illustration: an agent asked to arrange a journey checks availability, compares fares, fills the form and, with the user's approval, pays and files the ticket.

Advantages

• Productivity and round-the-clock service; personalised delivery at scale; capacity for complex, multi-step work that plain chatbots cannot complete.
• For India: scarce expertise is scaled, since one agent can serve lakhs of citizens in their own language, narrowing the gap between entitlement and delivery.

Risks

• Errors compound across steps; unintended actions with real-world effects; security threats such as prompt injection and misuse of credentials; privacy breaches through broad data access.

Challenges

• Accountability when an agent, not a person, acts; bias; job displacement; energy and compute needs; concentration in a few firms; regulation across borders.
• Governance response: human oversight for high-stakes actions and audit trails; India's AI Governance Guidelines (2025), which take a risk-based approach and bar unrestricted deployment of high-risk systems; the DPDP Act, 2023 for personal data; an AI Safety Institute.

Agentic AI should be deployed with humans in the loop, so that autonomy adds capacity without diluting accountability.

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India imports most of its crude oil and a large part of its gas; energy independence by 2047 means replacing those imports with domestic clean energy, not merely adding capacity.

Clean-technology pathway to 2047

• Renewables at scale: solar, wind and hybrids with storage, with 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 as the first milestone.
• Green hydrogen under the National Green Hydrogen Mission to replace grey hydrogen in refineries and fertilisers and to decarbonise steel.
• Electric mobility and railways, battery storage and critical-mineral security; nuclear expansion, including small modular reactors, for firm power.
• Demand side: efficiency standards, smart grids and pumped storage so that variable power becomes reliable power.

Where biotechnology fits

• Fuels: 2G ethanol from crop residue, compressed biogas under SATAT and sustainable aviation fuel, building on 20% ethanol blending.
• Process: engineered microbes and enzymes to cut the cost of cellulosic ethanol; algal biofuels; biological hydrogen production.
• Materials and carbon: bio-manufacturing of chemicals and plastics now made from petroleum, and biological carbon capture, under the BioE3 policy (2024).
• Constraints: the food–fuel trade-off, water use, feedstock logistics, scale-up finance and grid integration.

Energy independence will come from a portfolio — renewables and storage for power, hydrogen for industry, and biotechnology to turn biomass and waste into fuels and chemicals.

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Nanotechnology works at 1–100 nanometres, where materials gain very high surface area and reactivity — letting farm inputs be delivered in smaller, targeted doses and crops be monitored in real time.

Advancements in agriculture

• Nano-fertilisers: nano urea and nano DAP as foliar sprays aim at higher nutrient-use efficiency and lower bulk use; ICAR trials at 20 locations found nano urea usable as a foliar top-dressing in place of conventional urea.
• Crop protection: nano-pesticides and controlled-release formulations cut chemical loads, residues and runoff.
• Precision farming: nano-sensors read soil moisture, nutrients and pest pressure in real time, guiding drone-based spraying and irrigation.
• Seeds, soil and water: nano-coatings for germination and protection, hydrogels that hold soil moisture, and nano-filters for clean irrigation and drinking water.
• Post-harvest: nano-packaging and edible coatings extend shelf life; sensors flag spoilage — fewer losses between farm and market.

Uplifting farmers' socio-economic status

• Lower costs: smaller, lighter inputs cut input, transport and storage costs for the farmer, and the fertiliser subsidy and import burden for the exchequer.
• Higher and better output: precision dosing raises yield and quality, earning premium prices in domestic and export markets.
• Health and environment: fewer residues and less runoff mean safer produce, cleaner water and healthier farm workers.
• New rural livelihoods: drone-spraying and sensor services open jobs for rural youth and women's self-help groups trained as operators.
• Resilience: hydrogels and sensors help smallholders cope with erratic rain; fewer post-harvest losses mean steadier income.
• Caveats: field results are mixed and need independent long-term trials; biosafety and toxicity rules must keep pace; cost and awareness limit uptake among smallholders.

Nanotechnology can make farming input-lean and precise — if its benefits are proven in independent field trials and delivered through extension that reaches smallholders.

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Since Diamond v. Chakrabarty (1980) allowed a US patent on a modified bacterium, patents on genes, micro-organisms and plant varieties have spread worldwide — and been contested on ethical, ecological and equity grounds.

World scenario on life materials

• TRIPS Article 27.3(b): members may exclude plants and animals from patents but must protect micro-organisms and plant varieties, by patents or a sui generis system.
• Divergence: the US and Europe patent life materials widely; India's Patents Act Section 3(j) bars plants, animals and seeds, while the PPV&FR Act 2001 protects breeders and farmers and the Biological Diversity Act 2002 regulates access.
• Benefit-sharing: the CBD and Nagoya Protocol, and the 2024 WIPO treaty requiring disclosure of the origin of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, aim to curb biopiracy.

Why few Indian patents are commercialised

• Metric-driven filing: many patents from academia and public institutions are filed for rankings and appraisals, not for a market need.
• Weak lab-to-market bridge: few technology-transfer offices, little proof-of-concept or venture funding, and thin industry–academia links.
• Ecosystem gaps: low private R&D, long examination pendency, weak IP valuation and financing, and litigation risk deter scaling up.

India must move from counting patents to licensing them — translational funds, tech-transfer offices, industry-linked research and faster, predictable IP processes.

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Asteroids are rocky or metallic remnants of the solar system's formation, most orbiting in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter; those whose orbits bring them close to Earth are tracked as near-Earth objects (NEOs).

What asteroids are

• They range from metres to hundreds of kilometres across and are classed by composition — carbonaceous, silicate or metallic; NEOs that pass within 0.05 AU of Earth's orbit and exceed about 140 m are termed potentially hazardous.

How real is the threat

• Evidence: the Chicxulub impact about 66 million years ago is linked to the dinosaurs' extinction; Tunguska (1908) flattened forest, and Chelyabinsk (2013) injured over a thousand people from a body only about 20 m wide.
• Probability: extinction-level impacts by kilometre-scale bodies are extremely rare, and most such objects are already catalogued with none on a collision course; city-destroying impacts by smaller bodies are more frequent and less completely tracked.
• Assessment: the threat is remote in any human lifetime but non-zero and irreversible, which justifies steady, low-cost preparation.

Strategies for prevention

• Detection: ground surveys and space telescopes, NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, ESA programmes and ISRO's NETRA for tracking space objects.
• Deflection: NASA's DART (2022) struck Dimorphos and shortened its orbit by 32 minutes — the first kinetic-impactor test; ESA's Hera follows up, while gravity tractors and nuclear stand-off options are studied for larger bodies.
• Coordination: the UN-endorsed International Asteroid Warning Network and Space Mission Planning Advisory Group; the 2029 close approach of Apophis is a planned observation opportunity.
• Civil preparedness: impact-effects modelling and evacuation plans for small objects detected late.

The threat is remote but real; early detection, tested deflection and international cooperation turn a natural catastrophe into a manageable risk.

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India has built digital public infrastructure at a scale few countries match, from Aadhaar and UPI to direct benefit transfer, yet the gains remain uneven across regions, incomes and firms.

Status of digitalisation

• Payments: by 2023 UPI was handling about ten billion transactions a month, making small digital payments routine even for street vendors.
• Governance and markets: Aadhaar-based e-KYC and DBT, DigiLocker, GeM for public procurement, Account Aggregator for consent-based data sharing and ONDC for open e-commerce.

Problems

• Digital divide: unequal internet and smartphone access along rural-urban, gender and income lines, weak connectivity in remote areas and low digital literacy.
• Trust deficit: rising online fraud, cyber attacks and data breaches, with thin grievance redress and unclear liability for victims.
• Structural limits: a large cash-based informal economy, adoption costs for small firms, few local-language services and privacy safeguards still maturing.

Improvements

• Access: complete BharatNet to every gram panchayat, make devices and data affordable, and scale digital literacy through PMGDISHA.
• Usability: vernacular and voice-based interfaces so first-time users can transact without an intermediary.
• Safety: strengthen CERT-In, fix clear fraud-liability and grievance rules, and implement data protection fully.
• Adoption: nudge small merchants towards digital acceptance with low-cost tools and credit linked to their transaction records.

The platforms have been built; digitalisation will be inclusive only when access, skills and safeguards grow at the same pace.

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Artificial Intelligence refers to machines that learn from data to perform tasks needing human intelligence, such as recognising patterns, predicting and deciding; unlike fixed rule-based software, machine-learning and deep-learning models improve as they see more data.

AI in clinical diagnosis

• Imaging: models read X-rays, CT scans, retinal and pathology images to flag tuberculosis, cancers and diabetic retinopathy early, often before symptoms appear.
• Prediction: algorithms mine patient records to estimate the risk of complications and prompt timely intervention.
• Reach: decision support where specialists are scarce, faster triage and lower cost, a real gain for rural India.

Threat to privacy: yes, a real one

• Health data is the most sensitive personal data; the November 2022 attack on AIIMS Delhi's servers showed how exposed it is.
• Re-identification of anonymised datasets, commercial misuse by insurers or advertisers, and consent taken without understanding are live risks.
• Allied concerns: bias from unrepresentative training data, unclear accountability for a wrong diagnosis and over-reliance on the machine.

Safeguards

• The DPDP Act 2023 for consent and purpose limitation; consent-based sharing under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission; ICMR's ethical guidelines for AI in health; anonymisation, security audits and a doctor's final say.

AI should assist the clinician, not replace her, and be adopted only with firm consent, security and accountability norms.

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India imports most of its crude oil, so fuels that microbes make from farm, animal and urban waste offer energy security and waste management in one stroke.

Microbial routes to fuel

• Biogas: methanogenic bacteria digest cattle dung, crop residue, food and sewage waste without oxygen; the methane serves as cooking gas, power or compressed biogas, supported by GOBARdhan and SATAT.
• Bioethanol: yeast ferments sugarcane juice, molasses and grain into ethanol; petrol blending reached 10% in 2022 and 20% is targeted for 2025-26.
• Second-generation ethanol: cellulose-degrading microbes and enzymes turn paddy straw and other residue into ethanol, as at the Panipat 2G plant, cutting stubble burning as well.
• Biodiesel: oil-rich microalgae and other microbes produce lipids that can be converted into biodiesel; used cooking oil is another feedstock.
• Biohydrogen: fermenting bacteria release hydrogen from organic substrates, a clean fuel for the future.
• Microbial fuel cells: bacteria oxidising organic waste generate electricity directly, useful alongside sewage treatment.
• Enhanced oil recovery: microbes injected into ageing wells loosen trapped crude and raise output.

Limits

• Food-versus-fuel competition, high cost and low yields of advanced routes, and feedstock collection logistics; R&D, assured offtake and price support are needed.

Microbial fuels can meet only part of the shortage, but a waste-to-energy focus makes them sustainable, decentralised and climate-friendly.

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Chandrayaan-2 reached lunar orbit in 2019, but its Vikram lander could not complete the final descent; Chandrayaan-3 was built to prove that India can land softly on the Moon.

The main task

• Demonstrate an end-to-end safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, followed by rover roving and in-situ scientific experiments: the step that failed in 2019.

Countries that have achieved it

• The Soviet Union, the United States and China; India became the fourth on 23 August 2023, and the first to land near the lunar south polar region.

Subsystems of the spacecraft

• Propulsion module: carried the lander from Earth orbit to lunar orbit; it hosts the SHAPE payload to study Earth from lunar orbit.
• Vikram lander: throttleable engines, navigation, guidance and control, hazard detection and avoidance sensors, landing legs, power and communication, all strengthened after Chandrayaan-2; payloads RAMBHA-LP (plasma), ChaSTE (surface temperature) and ILSA (seismic activity).
• Pragyan rover: LIBS and APXS to analyse the elemental composition of soil and rocks near the landing site.
• Launch: the LVM3-M4 rocket lifted off from Sriharikota on 14 July 2023 and placed the spacecraft in Earth orbit for its onward journey.

The Virtual Launch Control Centre

• A remote facility at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, linked to the launch complex, that receives real-time launch-vehicle data through the countdown and flight.
• Designers monitor the vehicle's health from there and advise the launch team, so decisions rest on the people who built the systems without crowding the launch control room.

The mission proved indigenous landing technology; the lander and rover data from the south polar region add to the world's lunar science.

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Launched on 25 December 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), led by NASA with the European and Canadian space agencies, is the most powerful space observatory built so far, designed to see the universe in infrared.

Unique features

• Mirror: a 6.5-metre segmented, gold-coated primary mirror of 18 hexagonal pieces, far larger than Hubble's 2.4 m, gathers much more light.
• Infrared vision: it observes mainly near- and mid-infrared light, so it sees through dust and detects very distant, red-shifted early galaxies invisible to Hubble, which works mostly in optical and ultraviolet light.
• Cold operation: a five-layer sunshield keeps the instruments very cold so their own heat does not swamp faint infrared signals.
• Location: it orbits the Sun-Earth L2 point about 1.5 million km away, where cold, stable conditions allow uninterrupted observation, unlike Hubble in low Earth orbit.

Key goals

• See the first stars and galaxies that formed after the Big Bang.
• Study how galaxies, stars and planetary systems form and evolve.
• Analyse exoplanet atmospheres for water and other signs of habitability.

Potential benefits

• Knowledge: a deeper understanding of cosmic origins and of whether life exists elsewhere.
• Technology: spin-offs in infrared detectors, precision optics and lightweight materials.
• Cooperation and inspiration: an international scientific partnership and a spur to science education.
• Caveat: it cannot be serviced like Hubble, and it came at high cost after long delays.

JWST extends humanity's view to the edge of the observable universe and, through its technology and inspiration, benefits science on Earth too.

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A vaccine trains the immune system to recognise a pathogen without causing the disease, so that on real exposure the body responds faster and harder.

Basic principle

• Exposure to a harmless form or part of a pathogen (the antigen) prompts adaptive immunity and leaves behind memory cells, so the body mounts a rapid secondary response on infection.
• Population effect: when enough people are immune, transmission falls and even the unvaccinated gain herd protection.

How vaccines work

• Antigen-presenting cells process the antigen and alert helper T cells.
• B cells make antibodies that neutralise the pathogen, while killer T cells destroy infected cells.
• Memory B and T cells persist for years; adjuvants strengthen the response and boosters renew waning immunity.
• Platforms: live attenuated, inactivated, subunit or protein, toxoid, viral vector, DNA and mRNA vaccines differ in how they present the antigen.

Indian approaches to COVID-19 vaccines

• Inactivated whole virion: Covaxin, developed indigenously by Bharat Biotech with ICMR and NIV Pune.
• Viral vector: Covishield, the Oxford-AstraZeneca chimpanzee-adenovirus vaccine, made under licence by the Serum Institute of India; Sputnik V, an adenovirus-vector vaccine, produced by Indian partners.
• DNA plasmid: ZyCoV-D (Zydus), a plasmid DNA vaccine.
• Protein subunit: Corbevax (Biological E), a recombinant protein-subunit vaccine.
• Later: mRNA and intranasal candidates followed, widening the toolkit.

A mix of indigenous and licensed platforms gave India scale and choice during the pandemic and left it with stronger vaccine-making capacity for the future.

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Applied biotechnology turns molecular biology into seeds, vaccines, drugs and diagnostics; for the poor its worth depends on whether the products are cheap, safe and within reach.

R&D achievements

• Agriculture: Bt cotton, the only GM crop under commercial cultivation as of 2021; marker-assisted varieties such as Improved Samba Mahsuri rice resistant to bacterial blight; tissue-culture plantlets; biofertilisers and biopesticides.
• Health: indigenous vaccines including Rotavac and recombinant hepatitis B, and against Covid-19, Covaxin, ZyCoV-D and Corbevax; low-cost biosimilars such as insulin; affordable diagnostic kits.
• Genomics: INSACOG (December 2020) tracks coronavirus variants, and GenomeIndia has sequenced over 10,000 genomes for disease surveillance and precision medicine.
• Support system: the Department of Biotechnology and BIRAC fund research and start-ups; Biotech-KISAN links scientists with small and women farmers.

How they uplift the poor

• Health costs: cheaper vaccines and biosimilars cut out-of-pocket spending; low-cost diagnostics bring early detection to primary care and immunisation programmes.
• Farm incomes: resilient, higher-yield and biofortified crops raise small-farm output and nutrition; biofertilisers and biopesticides cut input costs.
• Jobs and enterprise: bio-industries, rural bio-enterprises and Biotech-KISAN hubs create work outside agriculture.
• Public health: genomic surveillance guides pandemic response, on which the poor, with the least buffer, depend most.

Cautions

• Biosafety and regulatory trust: GM mustard was cleared for environmental release in 2022, but the Supreme Court split on it in July 2024.
• Seed prices and corporate dependence, IPR barriers and uneven access; public-sector research, affordable pricing and extension are needed.

Biotechnology reaches the poor only when innovation is matched by affordable access, sound regulation and farmer training.

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Nanotechnology is the engineering of matter at the scale of roughly 1 to 100 nanometres (a nanometre is a billionth of a metre), where materials show optical, chemical and biological properties they lack in bulk.

What nanotechnology is

• It builds particles, materials and devices atom by atom or molecule by molecule; at this scale surface area rises sharply and quantum effects appear, giving new strength, reactivity and conductivity.
• India's Nano Mission of the Department of Science and Technology (2007) funds research and infrastructure in the field.

Uses in the health sector

• Targeted drug delivery: nanoparticles and liposomes carry a drug to diseased tissue, as in cancer therapy, raising effect and cutting side effects.
• Diagnostics and imaging: nano-biosensors, quantum dots and contrast agents detect disease early; lab-on-chip devices enable low-cost point-of-care tests.
• Vaccines: lipid nanoparticles carry the mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines, showing nanotechnology serving public health at scale.
• Treatment and repair: nano-scaffolds for tissue engineering, nano-coatings for implants, and silver nanoparticles as antimicrobial agents in wound care.

Concerns

• Nanotoxicity and unknown long-term effects, accumulation in the body and environment, and thin regulation call for safety testing and clear norms.

Nanotechnology can make diagnosis earlier and treatment more precise, provided safety testing and regulation keep pace with the science.

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The pandemic showed how fast technology can be mobilised in a crisis: from genome sequencing and contact tracing to vaccines developed in under a year and public services delivered online.

Detection and surveillance

• Testing: RT-PCR and rapid antigen kits, pooled testing and genome sequencing tracked the virus and its variants; AI-aided reading of chest images supported diagnosis.
• Tracing: the Aarogya Setu contact-tracing app, GIS maps of containment zones, thermal screening, and drones for surveillance and public announcements.

Treatment and hospitals

• Telemedicine through eSanjeevani kept care going during lockdown; indigenous ventilators, PPE and testing kits were scaled up; robots and UV disinfection reduced staff exposure; trials tested plasma and repurposed drugs.

Vaccines

• Vaccines came in record time on mRNA, viral-vector and inactivated-virus platforms; India's Covishield and Covaxin were delivered through CoWIN, which handled registration, slots and certificates.

Continuity of life and welfare

• Work from home and video conferencing, online classes through DIKSHA and SWAYAM, digital payments, and direct benefit transfers that reached the poor during lockdown.

Supply and logistics

• Lifeline UDAN flights and drones moved medical supplies, and online portals tracked hospital beds and essential goods.

Limits

• The digital divide excluded many from online classes and vaccine slots; tracing apps raised privacy concerns; misinformation spread as fast as facts; and imported inputs created dependence.

Technology helped detect, treat and cushion the crisis, but it worked only where public-health capacity, privacy safeguards and equal access backed it.

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In June 2019 ISRO announced that India would build and run its own space station in low Earth orbit rather than join the International Space Station.

The plan

• A modular station as the follow-on to Gaganyaan, India's first human spaceflight mission, for crewed stays and microgravity research.
• Announced by ISRO chairman K Sivan in June 2019; since then the Cabinet approved the first module, BAS-1 of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, in September 2024, targeting launch in 2028 and the full station by 2035.

Benefits to the space programme

• Science: a permanent microgravity laboratory for materials, biology, medicine and physical sciences, plus in-orbit tests of new technologies.
• Capability: docking, life support, crew transfer and long-duration human presence build the skills for deeper missions, including a crewed lunar landing targeted for 2040.
• Autonomy: India sets its own research agenda and partnerships rather than depending on others' stations.
• Industry: steady demand for modules, launches and services gives firms and start-ups, supported by IN-SPACe, a pipeline of work.

Challenges

• High cost, radiation and life-support risks, heavy-lift launch capacity, docking reliability, and justifying the spend against social priorities.

A station would turn Gaganyaan's first crewed flight into a lasting human presence in orbit, provided cost, safety and launch capacity are managed well.

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After India had to fight patents on turmeric and neem in foreign patent offices, it moved from costly case-by-case reaction to a proactive defence: give examiners the evidence that the knowledge is old, so that wrong patents are never granted.

Documenting prior art: the TKDL

• Set up in 2001 by CSIR with the Ministry of AYUSH, the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library converts formulations from Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga texts into five international languages, organised under the Traditional Knowledge Resource Classification.
• Patent examiners at offices such as the European Patent Office and the USPTO search it under a non-disclosure access agreement, so prior art is visible before a grant.
• CSIR files third-party observations and pre-grant oppositions with TKDL evidence; hundreds of applications abroad have been rejected, withdrawn or amended.

Domestic law

• Patents Act, 1970: Section 3(p) bars patents on what is in effect traditional knowledge, and Section 25 allows opposition on the ground of knowledge held by local or indigenous communities.
• Biological Diversity Act, 2002: National Biodiversity Authority approval is required before seeking intellectual property rights on Indian biological resources, with benefit-sharing for the communities concerned.

International effort

• India has pressed for mandatory disclosure of the source of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in patent applications; WIPO adopted a treaty on this in 2024.

Limits

• TKDL covers documented texts of Indian medicine; oral and community knowledge, and fields beyond medicine, are harder to protect, so monitoring of patent filings must continue.

India's method is to prevent wrong grants by giving examiners the evidence rather than lock knowledge away; extending it to oral knowledge and to more patent offices would widen the shield.

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Biotechnology applies biological knowledge, from genes to microbes, to make crops, livestock and inputs more productive and resilient. For a farmer it can mean more output per acre, lower input bills, fewer losses and new sources of income, all of which lift living standards.

Higher and more stable output

• Pest-resistant varieties: Bt cotton, approved in March 2002, cut bollworm damage and raised output; marker-assisted breeding speeds the release of improved varieties.
• Stress tolerance: crops bred for drought, salinity, flood and pests protect incomes in rainfed and coastal areas, and genome editing offers faster, targeted improvement.
• Tissue culture: disease-free, uniform planting material for banana, sugarcane, potato and flowers raises yield and quality; national certification of tissue-culture plants protects growers.

Lower costs and healthier soils

• Bio-inputs: biofertilisers, biopesticides and bio-control agents cut chemical bills, restore soil health and support organic and natural farming.

Livestock and fisheries

• Vaccines and diagnostics, artificial insemination, embryo transfer and improved fish strains raise milk and fish output and cut disease losses, the mainstay of landless and small households.

Nutrition and income beyond the field

• Biofortified crops tackle hidden hunger in farm families; bio-processing and waste-to-energy add income beyond the farm gate.

Concerns to manage

• Seed costs and corporate control; pest resistance, as with pink bollworm in Bt cotton; biosafety and biodiversity risks; and public trust. GEAC regulates approvals, and the Department of Biotechnology's Biotech-KISAN programme links scientists with farmers so that technology reaches the field with support.

Biotechnology can raise yields, incomes and nutrition, provided farmers get affordable, safe and well-regulated technology with extension support, as Biotech-KISAN tries to ensure.

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IRNSS, operationally named NavIC, is India's own regional satellite navigation system, built by ISRO for assured position and timing over India and its neighbourhood.

Why India needed it

• Strategic autonomy: foreign systems such as GPS and GLONASS are controlled by other governments and can be degraded or denied in a crisis; assured signals matter for defence.
• Critical services: disaster response, aviation, shipping and telecom timing cannot rest on a signal India does not control.
• Regional focus: continuous coverage over India and about 1,500 km beyond its boundary, plus self-reliance in space technology and indigenous chipsets.

How it helps in navigation

• Constellation: seven satellites, three in geostationary and four in inclined geosynchronous orbit, so several are always high in India's sky.
• Working: satellites broadcast time-stamped signals from atomic clocks; a receiver uses the delays from at least four satellites to fix position and time, while ground stations monitor orbits and clocks.
• Accuracy: designed for position accuracy better than 20 m over the primary service area.
• Two services: an open Standard Positioning Service for civilian users and an encrypted Restricted Service for authorised users such as the armed forces.
• Uses: road, marine and air navigation, fishermen's safety alerts, surveying, precise timing and disaster warnings.

IRNSS gives India an independent, assured navigation backbone; its full value will come from NavIC-enabled devices and use alongside global constellations for reliability.

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India pairs a large scientific workforce and a strong generic-pharma base with big needs in health, food and energy and a supportive policy framework; together these have made biotechnology one of its fastest-growing knowledge sectors.

Why so much activity

• People and cost: a large pool of trained biologists, chemists and engineers, and research at a fraction of Western cost.
• Industry base: an established generic pharmaceutical industry with manufacturing scale and regulatory experience, ready to move into biologics.
• Demand: a large disease burden, the need for affordable vaccines and drugs, food security and biofuels create domestic markets.
• Policy: the Department of Biotechnology (1986), the National Biotechnology Development Strategy 2015-20, BIRAC (2012) funding start-ups and industry-academia projects, biotech parks and incubators, and Make in India.
• Resources and farm use: rich biodiversity; Bt cotton since 2002, biofertilisers, biopesticides and tissue culture, though the debate on GM food crops continues.
• IPR: product patents since 2005 pushed firms from copying towards innovation.

How biopharma has benefited

• Vaccines: India is a leading vaccine maker for the world; indigenous products such as Rotavac show research-to-market capability.
• Biosimilars: guidelines on similar biologics (2012, revised 2016) opened a regulated path; Indian firms make affordable insulin and monoclonal antibodies, cutting prices at home and building exports.
• Diagnostics and enzymes: low-cost diagnostic kits and industrial enzymes widen access and lower healthcare costs.
• Ecosystem: BIRAC grants and incubators have created a pipeline of biopharma start-ups.

Challenges

• Thin early-stage funding, slow approvals, dependence on imported inputs and equipment, weak translational research, and biosafety and clinical-trial ethics.

India's biotech surge rests on skills, policy and demand; sustaining biopharma's gains needs more research funding, faster and predictable regulation, and strong IPR and biosafety frameworks.

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Set up in July 2017 and reporting in July 2018 with a draft Personal Data Protection Bill, the Srikrishna Committee followed the Supreme Court's 2017 ruling that privacy is a fundamental right, and aimed at a 'free and fair digital economy'.

Strengths

• Coverage: one law binds government and private data fiduciaries alike, built on consent, purpose and collection limitation, data minimisation and transparency, and reaching processing linked to business in India.
• Rights: individuals get access, correction, portability and a limited right to be forgotten; fiduciaries owe a duty of fair and reasonable processing, with privacy by design.
• Enforcement: an independent Data Protection Authority, breach reporting, impact assessments for significant fiduciaries, and penalties of up to ₹15 crore or 4 per cent of global turnover give the law teeth.
• Constitutional footing: it answers the Court's call, repeated in the Aadhaar judgment of September 2018, for a robust data protection regime that balances individual interests with legitimate State concerns.

Weaknesses

• State exemptions: wide grounds such as security of the State and public order, without prior judicial approval, leave the largest data holder least constrained.
• Localisation: a mandatory local copy of all personal data and local-only storage of 'critical' data raise costs for firms without clearly improving security, and the Centre alone defines what is critical.
• Oversight and transparency: the regulator's independence from the executive was questioned, and the proposed change to the RTI Act's personal-information exemption could weaken transparency.
• Process: the draft was framed without wide public consultation on its final text.

My view

• The report is a sound, rights-based foundation, but its credibility rests on tighter checks on State access (necessity, proportionality, oversight), a truly independent regulator, workable localisation rules and open consultation before enactment.

A data protection law is only as strong as its limits on the State; with those limits fixed, the Committee's framework can turn the privacy right into everyday protection.

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Stem cells are unspecialised cells that renew themselves and can develop into specialised cells such as blood, skin or corneal cells, which makes them the body's repair kit.

What stem cell therapy is

• Stem cells taken from bone marrow, umbilical cord blood or tissue, or made by reprogramming adult cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (Shinya Yamanaka, Nobel Prize 2012), are given to replace or repair damaged cells and tissues.
• Established uses: blood stem cell transplant for leukaemia and thalassaemia; limbal stem cells to rebuild a damaged cornea; cultured skin cells for severe burns.

Advantages over other treatments

• Cure, not control: it replaces defective or lost tissue, so it can cure conditions that drugs and transfusions only manage.
• Lower rejection: the patient's own cells avoid immune rejection and lifelong immunosuppressants.
• Less dependence on scarce donor organs and on repeated transfusions, which carry infection and iron-overload risks.
• New options for diseases with few treatments, such as some blood, eye and spinal disorders, with fewer long-term side effects than drugs.

Cautions

• Beyond blood stem cell transplants and a few proven uses, most therapies remain experimental; unproven clinics, high cost and tumour risk need regulation, so the ICMR-DBT National Guidelines for Stem Cell Research (2013, revised 2017) allow clinical use only within approved trials.

Stem cell therapy promises repair rather than symptom control, but it should reach patients through proven, regulated trials rather than commercial shortcuts.

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A crewed flight is a different order of challenge from a probe: the payload must survive, and so must the crew.

Technological obstacles

• Human-rated launcher: a rocket certified for near-zero failure tolerance; GSLV Mk III, whose first developmental flight was in June 2017, must prove itself over repeated launches.
• Crew module and return: heat shield, controlled re-entry, parachute deceleration and sea recovery; ISRO tested these with SRE-1 (2007) and the CARE capsule (2014).
• Life support: air, water, temperature and radiation control in a sealed cabin, and a crew escape system for launch aborts, neither flight-tested by 2017.

Logistical obstacles

• Astronaut selection and training, space medicine, crewed mission control, a global tracking network and recovery ships.
• Cost: a decade-long budget commitment competes with development needs, and one failure costs lives and prestige.

Critical examination

• The barrier is certification, reliability and funding, not raw capability: ISRO has a heavy launcher, re-entry experience and deep-space navigation from Chandrayaan-1 and the Mars Orbiter Mission.
• The case for going ahead: spin-offs in materials, medicine and electronics, prestige, inspiration for youth and space diplomacy; partnerships can fill gaps in training and life support.

The obstacles are demanding but manageable; a phased, safety-first programme with partnerships can take India from robotic to human spaceflight (since then, ISRO's Gaganyaan programme envisages a three-member crew in a 400 km orbit for three days, returning to Indian waters).

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India's nuclear programme, shaped by Homi Bhabha, was planned around scarce uranium and abundant thorium, which produced a three-stage strategy and a lasting emphasis on self-reliance.

Growth of nuclear science and technology

• Foundations: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (1945), Atomic Energy Commission (1948) and Department of Atomic Energy (1954); Apsara at Trombay (1956) was Asia's first research reactor, followed by CIRUS (1960).
• Power generation: Tarapur (1969) with imported boiling water reactors, then an indigenous line of pressurised heavy water reactors run by NPCIL, scaled from 220 MWe to 540 MWe and 700 MWe designs.
• Full fuel cycle: uranium mining at Jaduguda, heavy water plants, fuel fabrication and reprocessing gave India command of the closed cycle.
• Strategic capability: the 1974 and 1998 tests; the sanctions that followed deepened indigenisation.
• Applications: radioisotopes for cancer therapy and diagnostics, radiation processing of food, mutation-bred crop varieties, desalination and industrial radiography.
• Opening up: the 2008 civil nuclear agreement with the United States, IAEA safeguards and the Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver allowed uranium and reactor imports; Kudankulam was built with Russia.
• Fast reactors: the Fast Breeder Test Reactor at Kalpakkam (1985) built experience for the 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor of BHAVINI (since then, the PFBR attained first criticality on 6 April 2026).

Advantage of the fast breeder programme

• More fuel out than in: the uranium-238 blanket converts into plutonium-239, so the reactor breeds more fissile material than it consumes.
• Multiplies uranium: it draws far more energy from the same natural uranium, stretching limited domestic reserves and cutting import dependence.
• Gateway to thorium: a thorium blanket breeds uranium-233, the fuel of the third stage, unlocking India's very large thorium reserves for long-term energy security.
• Closed cycle: reprocessing and recycling reduce long-lived waste, and the technology is largely indigenous.
• Caveats: sodium coolant demands rigorous safety, costs are high and the prototype took long to commission.

Fast breeders link today's heavy water fleet to a thorium future; if safety and cost are mastered, they give India an energy base largely free of imported fuel.

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From the first satellite Aryabhata to the Mars Orbiter Mission, ISRO has built a self-reliant, low-cost space programme whose declared purpose has always been national development rather than prestige alone.

Achievements in space science and technology

• Launch vehicles: from SLV-3 to the PSLV workhorse and the GSLV; the indigenous cryogenic upper stage flew successfully on GSLV-D5 in January 2014, and the heavier GSLV Mk III is under development.
• Satellites: the INSAT/GSAT communication series, the IRS remote-sensing fleet, the seven-satellite IRNSS (NavIC) regional navigation system completed in 2016, and Astrosat (2015), India's first multi-wavelength observatory.
• Science missions: Chandrayaan-1 (2008) found evidence of water on the Moon; the Mars Orbiter Mission entered Mars orbit in September 2014 on India's first attempt and at a modest budget.
• Technology and commerce: the reusable launch vehicle demonstrator flew in May 2016, and PSLV launches foreign satellites through Antrix (since then, 104 satellites in one launch in February 2017 and the Chandrayaan-3 landing near the lunar south pole in 2023).

Applications in socio-economic development

• Communication: INSAT/GSAT transponders carry telephony, television and DTH to remote areas; tele-education links classrooms to expert teachers and telemedicine links district hospitals to specialists.
• Agriculture and resources: crop-area and yield forecasting, groundwater prospect maps, watershed and land-use planning, and potential fishing zone advisories that raise catch and save fuel.
• Disaster management: INSAT weather data and cyclone tracking enabled mass evacuation before cyclone Phailin in 2013; satellites map floods, droughts and forest fires for relief.
• Navigation and transport: NavIC for vehicle tracking, fishing and defence, and GAGAN for safer civil aviation.
• Governance: imagery for land records, urban planning and geo-tagging of MGNREGA assets, shared through the Bhuvan geoportal.

India's space programme pairs frontier science with everyday services in classrooms, farms and cyclone shelters: space as an instrument of development, not only of pride.

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Nanotechnology engineers matter at 1 to 100 nanometres, where materials acquire new strength, conductivity, reactivity and optical behaviour that bulk matter does not show.

Why a key technology

• Scale changes properties: carbon nanotubes are stronger than steel yet light, silver nanoparticles kill microbes, nano-catalysts react faster; materials can be designed atom by atom.
• General-purpose reach: targeted drugs and sensitive diagnostics, better solar cells and batteries, smaller and faster chips, membranes for water, and inputs for agriculture.
• Convergence: it fuses with biotechnology, information technology and materials science; the countries that lead it gain in manufacturing, health and defence.

Nano Mission: salient features

• Launched by the Department of Science and Technology in May 2007 with Rs 1,000 crore for five years, as an umbrella programme for capacity building in nanoscience and nanotechnology.
• Basic research: grants to individual scientists and research units in nanoscience.
• Infrastructure: centres of excellence and shared facilities for synthesis, characterisation and fabrication, open to institutions nationwide.
• Applications and technology development through joint institution-industry projects, with promotion of public-private partnership.
• Human resource development through postgraduate programmes, fellowships and training, plus international collaboration and public awareness of nanoscience.

Scope in India's development

• Water: nano-membranes and nanoparticle filters to remove arsenic, fluoride and pathogens from rural drinking water cheaply.
• Health: cheap point-of-care diagnostic kits and targeted delivery of drugs for tuberculosis and cancer, cutting dose and side effects.
• Agriculture: nano-fertilisers and pesticides that cut input use, and smart packaging that reduces post-harvest loss.
• Energy, environment and industry: efficient solar cells, LEDs and catalysts, pollution sensors, and lighter, stronger composites, coatings, textiles and cement.
• Caution: nanoparticles can be toxic to people and ecosystems, and standards lag; safety research and regulation must grow with applications.

Nanotechnology can serve India's goals in water, health and energy if the Nano Mission's research is carried into safe, affordable products, with regulation keeping pace.

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