INDIA'S SECOND SPACE AGE

1. Background

• The Space Age began in 1957 with the launch of satellite Sputnik 1 and in 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the world's first person in space.
• Neil Armstrong made history by walking on the moon in 1969. The First Space Age became reality.
• The Second Space Age 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 per cent of these were by the United States and the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) governments.
• Three decades later, there are not only 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 per cent of global space launches since 2020 are by and for the private sector.

2. India's space journey 

• India's entry into the First Space Age in the 1960s. The first sounding rocket, a U.S.-supplied Nike Apache, with over 15, 000 employees and an annual budget between ₹ 14, 000 crore 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 197576 for educational outreach across 2,400 villages covering five million people.
• Satellite technology was a new mass communication tool. This led to the INSAT series in the 1980s, followed by GSAT, which provided the backbone for the country's telecommunication and broadcasting infrastructure.
• This was followed by remote sensing capability development. The use of space-based imagery for weather forecasting, resource mapping of forests, and 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 Global Positioning System (GPS) coverage of the region, to improve air traffic management over Indian airspace.
• This has now been expanded to a regional navigation satellite system called Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC).
• In parallel came the development of satellite launch capabilities. Beginning with the SLV1 in the 1980s, it took a decade before ISRO developed the PSLV series that has become its workhorse with over 50 successful launches.

3. Space Potential

• The origins of the Second Space Age can be traced to the Internet. In India, the process began accelerating as the 1990s saw the emergence of private TV channels and cable TV followed by direct-to-home transmissions.
• The demand for satellite transponders and ground-based services exploded. Today, more than half the transponders beaming into Indian homes are on foreign satellites.
• The last 15 years witnessed another transformation and this time India was in lockstep with the developed world.
• The age of mobile telephony, followed by smartphones 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 is estimated at $9.6 billion in 2020, which 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.

4. India's space economy

• The reason is that in terms of end-user revenue, only a fifth is generated by the government.
• Media and entertainment account for 26 per cent of India's space economy, with consumer and retail services accounting for another 21 per cent.
• In terms of space activities downstream activities such as satellite services and the associated ground segment are dominant accounting for over 70 per cent of India's space economy; upstream activities of satellite manufacturing and launch services contribute to 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.

5. Satellites in Space

• According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), there are 8, 261 satellites in orbit, of which nearly 5, 000 are active.
• Till 2010, about 60 to 100 satellites were launched annually. The pace has picked up in recent years.
• In 2020, 1, 283 satellites were launched. Today, Starlink operates a constellation of over 3, 500 satellites and has a million paying customers.
• Both Starlink and One Web (in which Airtel has a stake) project constellations of 40, 000 satellites each.
• Jeff Bezos of Amazon has launched Project Kuiper to bring low-latency broadband connectivity around the globe.

5. Creating an enabling environment

• The Indian Private sector is responding to the demands of the second space age. From less than a dozen space startups five years ago, there are over 100 today.
•  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 takeoff 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, eight for navigation and the remaining as scientific experimental satellites (China operates 541).
•  In addition, ISRO has missions such as 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 startups are different. Their revenue stream depends on space-related activities and they need a different relationship with ISRO and the government.
• ISRO today is the operator, user, service provider, licensor, rule maker, and incubator.
• It has steered India through the First Space Age and needs to do what it can do best now with its resources and its high-quality manpower research.
• In 2017, the government introduced the first draft Space Activities Bill in Parliament but it lapsed in 2019.
• There has been talking about commercialising the PSLV and SSLV launch services and NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) was set up to replace Antrix.
• The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (INSPACe) was set up in 2020 as a single window clearance for the private sector.
• However, whether it will emerge as the licensing authority or a regulator is unclear. 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 a 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 regulator authority and creates an enabling environment for raising venture capital funding into the Indian space startup industry.
• The window of opportunity for India to join the Second Space Age exists; it should not be lost.

CHINA'S STANDARDISATION

 

1. Context

On April 2, 2023, the Chinese government announced it would “standardize” the names of 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh. The Ministry of Civil Affairs in Beijing published a list of 11 places along with a map showing the Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh as a part of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.

2. What are the places on the list?

• The Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs notification announced 11 “place names for public use”, in Mandarin, Tibetan, and English (pinyin transliteration of the Chinese names).
• These include five mountain peaks, two more populated areas, two land areas, and two rivers.
• All of the 11 sites are on Indian territory, and the southernmost is close to Itanagar.
• The Chinese government referred to the location of the sites as “Zangnan”, or “south Tibet”, which is how it refers to Arunachal Pradesh.

3. Why is China giving names to places that are in India?

• China claims some 90,000 sq km of Arunachal Pradesh as its territory.
• It calls the area “Zangnan” in the Chinese language and makes repeated references to “South Tibet”.
• Chinese maps show Arunachal Pradesh as part of China, and sometimes parenthetically refer to it as “so-called Arunachal Pradesh”.
• China makes periodic efforts to underline this unilateral claim to Indian territory.
• Giving Chinese names to places in Arunachal Pradesh is part of that effort. 

4. How many times China has renamed places in Arunachal Pradesh?

• This is the third time China is issuing names for places in Arunachal Pradesh, a gesture seen as provocative by India and one that has coincided with periods of strains in relations.
• In 2017, the first list of “standardized” names was issued for six places in Arunachal, which was then seen as a retaliatory move after the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, visited the State.
• The second such list was issued in December 2021, more than a year into the crisis sparked by China’s multiple transgressions across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) starting in April 2020.
• The second list coincided with a new border law passed by the Chinese government that called for various Chinese civilian and military agencies to take steps to “safeguard” Chinese territory, including through such administrative measures.
• The second list had 15 places, including eight towns, four mountains, two rivers, and the Sela mountain pass. 

5. What is McMahon Line?

• The disputed boundary in the Eastern Sector of the India-China border is over the McMahon Line.
• Representatives of China, India, and Tibet in 1913-14 met in Shimla to settle the boundary between Tibet and India, and Tibet and China.
• During the Shimla conference, Sir Henry McMahon, the then foreign secretary of British India, drew up the 550-mile (890 km) McMahon Line as the border between British India and Tibet.

Image Source: India Today

6. The dispute between India and China's  Eastern sector

• The McMohan line moved British control substantially northwards. This agreement ceded Tawang and other areas to the imperial British Empire.
• Though the Chinese representatives at the meeting initiated the agreement, they subsequently refused to accept it.
• Subsequently, the Chinese government stated that it does not recognize the "Illegal McMohan Line.
• China accuses India of occupying areas in Arunachal, which it calls part of Southern Tibet.
• China claims territory to the south of the McMohan Line, lying in Arunachal Pradesh.
• China also bases its claims on the historical ties that have existed between the monasteries in Tawang and Lhasa.

7. What is behind China's move?

• As with the two previous cases, India rejected the Chinese announcement. Arunachal Pradesh is, has been, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India.
• More broadly, the moves from Beijing point to a hardening of its stand on territorial disputes, which are now seen less as matters to be resolved diplomatically and bilaterally but as questions of China's sovereignty.
• Besides the renaming, the new border law as well as the new regulations from the State Council all underscore how under current leader Xi Jinping, the protection of national sovereignty and the territory has been mandated under various laws.
• This has also driven more activity along the borders from local­level authorities, such as stepped-up programs to build new civilian settlements (including some that have come up
  on territory disputed by both Bhutan and India) as well as other border infrastructure.

8. What does China seek to gain from making these claims? 

• It is a part of the Chinese strategy to assert its territorial claims over Indian territory.
• As a part of this strategy, China routinely issues statements of outrage whenever an Indian dignitary visits Arunachal Pradesh.
• It did so when the then Vice President Venkaiah Naidu went there to address the state Assembly in October 2021.
• The first batch of renaming in 2017 had come days after the Dalai Lama visited Arunachal Pradesh.
• Also, Chinese officials claim that standardization was necessary since all names used in southern Tibet were inherited through word-of-mouth for generations by minority ethnic groups.
• Hence, these names reflect that China's proposal on the sovereignty claim of the region has a prominent historical, cultural, administrative, and jurisdictional.
• Laying aggressive claims to territories based on alleged historical injustices done to China is part of Beijing's foreign policy playbook. The Claim on Taiwan is one such example.
• Also, consistent efforts are being made by China to change the facts on the ground in several disputed islands in the south china sea.

For Prelims: Zangnan, or south Tibet, Arunachal Pradesh, Line of Actual Control (LAC), McMahon Line, and Bhutan. For Mains: 1. In the wake of the recent renaming of some places in Arunachal Pradesh by China, India needs a comprehensive strategy to solve the border issues with the neighboring country". Discuss. (250 words).

 

Previous year Question 1. What is/are the recent tension between India and China highlighted in the newspaper? (TNPSC Group 1 2015) A. China's proposed dam on Brahmaputra B. PM's visit to Arunachal Pradesh C. China recently tried to block an ADB loan D. All of these Answer: D

Source: The Hindu

POPULATION BOMB

 

1. Context

On March 27, 2023, Beniamino Callegari, associate professor at Kristiania University College, Oslo, and a member of the Earth4All modeling team, and Per Espen Stoknes, Earth4All project lead and director of the Centre for Sustainability at the BI Norwegian Business School, published their predictions about the world’s human population in the form of a report by the Earth4All Initiative.

2. Background

• This comes five decades after reports in which some economists blamed, among other things, the planet’s expanding human population for its many problems.
• The two researchers have revisited them and revised the original population predictions.
• The effort is notable for how women’s reproductive rights and population control have emerged in contemporary political discourse, as well as the useful contradictions they strike with more recent reports pertaining to development policy.

3. What does the new report find?

• In the new Earth4All Initiative report, the researchers set aside population-modelling approaches adopted by the UN, the Wittgenstein Centre (sponsored by the European Union), The Lancet, and integrated assessment models.
• Instead, they modelled birth rates explicitly and causally as a function of GDP per person, which shows “a negative correlation between income and fertility rate”.
• In this context, the per-capita GDP is a “proxy” for female education and socio-economic mobility, among other factors.
• Based on such modelling, the researchers advanced two scenarios.
• The first, called “Too Little, Too Late”, predicted that if economic development continues as it has in the last five decades, the world’s population would peak at 8.6 billion in 2050, roughly 25 years from now, and decline to 7 billion by 2100.
• In the second scenario, called “The Giant Leap”, the researchers concluded that the population will peak at 8.5 billion by 2040-a decade

---

Share to Social

---

View All Current affairs