Space Diplomacy of India

Reference

India celebrated its first National Space Day on 23 August 2024. The theme of the event was 'Touching the Moon and Feeling Life: India's Space Story'. India's space journey is taking off at a time when there is a lot of focus on the space sector on the international diplomatic platform.

India's Space Diplomacy

• Information Sharing: As part of outer space diplomacy initiatives, India can share relevant information with its regional partners and other developing countries to facilitate their development goals.
• Advancing the Global South: India is currently trying to pursue space diplomacy and take sustainable development to a new level. This is not only leading to the advancement of India's space program but has also helped in the development of other countries in the global south.
  • For example, India launched the Network for Space Object Tracking and Analysis (NETRA) project in 2019. This Space Situational Awareness (SSA) system provides early warning to detect debris and other hazards in outer space. The information obtained from this can be shared with other developing countries to help them in their SSA initiatives.
• Low cost: India’s low-cost and affordable launch services, especially ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), have attracted the attention of the international community.
• Efficient data utilization: India has the largest constellation of active remote sensing satellites focused on earth observation such as EOS-06 (2022) and EOS-07 (2023). Data from these satellites can be used in areas such as agriculture, water resources and urban planning.
• Regional Communication Satellite: In 2017, ISRO also launched South Asia Satellite (SAS), also known as GSAT-9. It is a geostationary communication satellite that facilitates various communication applications under Ku-band with coverage over South Asian countries.
  • Some of the key features of GSAT-9 include enhancing telecommunication connectivity for better banking systems and education in remote areas.
  • Along with this, GSAT-9 also provides facilities like mapping useful natural resources, weather forecasting for natural disasters, providing person-to-person connectivity for health consultation and other related services.

Advances in the space sector and its benefits

• Space market: According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the global space economy is expected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, up from a little over $630 million in 2023.
• Use in daily life: The space economy serves many purposes, such as the importance of satellites in ensuring day-to-day operations, accurate weather forecasting for disaster preparedness, remote sensing technology for agriculture, etc.
• Increasing capacity building: The success of the outer space sector in terms of water resource management, facilitating educational activities, promoting telemedicine and contributing to sustainable development and sustainability at large promotes capacity building through development partnerships.
• Defensive approach: Advanced countries also fulfill their important strategic objectives by militarizing and weaponizing technologies. However, it can also be the cause of cyber warfare and mining of resources on celestial bodies like asteroids and the moon.
  

Way forward

• According to experts, countries in the global South also lack political will and a clear strategic or policy framework on space diplomacy. This makes space cooperation initiatives in these countries temporary and unstable, which can fail at any time.
• India's effort to facilitate the socio-economic development of its neighbouring countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is noteworthy but India needs to keep an eye on its primary objective of becoming a major regional power and a global stakeholder in space diplomacy in the development of space programmes.
• Many developing countries, especially those in South Asia, lack the means to develop their own space programmes and technologies, so space diplomacy for the global South is fraught with challenges that need to be addressed.
• It is important for developing countries to engage in space diplomacy. This will enable them to realize foreign policy objectives and their development goals.
• Developing countries should also try to leverage space science and technology to enhance domestic space capabilities. This will also maintain their stake in the global space programme.
• It is a challenge for developing countries to invest and develop space science and technology due to their weak economic condition. However, for India, space diplomacy with its South Asian neighbours can help promote regionalism. It also promotes stability.