India’s biggest Drone festival

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What’s happening?

In Delhi’s Pragati Maidan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated India’s biggest Drone Festival – Bharat Drone Mahotsav 2022 today at 10 AM.
PM Modi will also interact with Kisan drone pilots, witness open-air drone demonstrations, and interact with startups in the drone exhibition centre.

Biggest festival?

During the two-day Bharat Drone Mahotsav, over 1,600 delegates comprising government officials, foreign diplomats, armed forces, central armed police forces, PSUs, private companies and drone startups etc, will participate in the Mahotsav.
More than 70 exhibitors will display various use cases of drones at the exhibition.
The festival will also showcase virtual awards of drone pilot certificates, product launches, panel discussions, flying demonstrations, display of a Made in India Drone Taxi prototype, among others.

Why this drone festival?

The festival comes amid the central government’s push for extensive use of drones in various fields, including agriculture.
Earlier this month, civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia launched a drone experience studio at the state-run think tank NITI Aayog where he unveiled two policies — Drone Shakti and Kisan Drone.
New federal guidelines for Kisan Drone have provisioned a range of incentives for farmers and organisations alike for the commercial use of drones.

India needs 1 lakh pilots

Recently, UnionAviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said India will need approximately one lakh drone pilots in the coming years.
Scindia said at the event that fees for drone pilot training courses will significantly decrease in the next 3-4 months as more institutes will get the necessary certification from the aviation regulatory body.

PLI scheme

The Centre this year invited applications from the drone industry for Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme to give a fresh boost to manufacturing and services in the drone sector,
Wherein Adani Group’s joint venture company with Israeli firm Elbit, IdeaForge Technology, and 12 other drone companies were selected as the beneficiaries.
The civil aviation ministry also invited the second batch of applications for the scheme on May 5. The deadline for submitting the applications was May 20.
The government had on September 16, 2021, announced the PLI scheme for drones and drone components with an allocation of ₹120 crore spread over three financial years.
Under the PLI scheme, the incentive for a manufacturer of drones and drone components will be 20% of the “value addition” made by the company during the next three years.
Importance of drones
A drastic rise in violence by terrorist groups globally has put an intense focus on border security to combat recent national security issues.
The traditional approach to border monitoring includes surveillance by video cameras, ground sensors, land vehicles, and manned aircraft but these have become quite inadequate.
There is a need to identify challenges which a country encounters across the varying border conditions and introduce a framework to address these challenges.
To ensure seamlessness in the legitimate movement of people and goods across the borders, the adoption of new technologies for border control and surveillance is of paramount importance.
Drones are a significant asset in border security as they allow for real-time reconnaissance, target acquisition, track movement of people and illegal activities via high-quality video feed.
Drones mounted with thermal detection cameras are much superior at tracking irregular activities such as illegal border crossing attempts through dense woods or mountainous terrain as compared to stationary video cameras.

From India’s perspective

India, a country with 15,106 kilometers of land borders and a coastline of about 7,516 kilometers shares these long borders with seven countries.
Of these countries, a few pose an incessant threat to India’s internal as well as external security.
To tackle internal and external threats, Indian law enforcement agencies, especially the Indian Army, is increasingly relying on the use of intelligent drone technologies for security and surveillance, and also to support its soldiers in harsh weather conditions.
That said, there are a certain set of systems that can scrupulously monitor those areas, but typically, these larger systems are limited in number.
At the same time, it is also difficult to create the infrastructure required to deploy such systems.

Drone rules 2021

In August last year, the government notified the Drone Rules 2021 with an aim to liberalise the stringent regime for civilian drone operations that it had established 2018, when these drones were allowed for the first time.
PM Modi said that the Centre is now also working towards creating a drone manufacturing ecosystem in India.