#108 A New Era for Indian Aviation: The C-295 Assembly Milestone
Today, Avinash Shet writes on India’s advancements in the aviation manufacturing space. Arindam Goswami follows, with a piece on the geopolitical significance of Digital Public Infrastructure. Lastly, Lokendra Sharma explores what India’s foray into nuclear energy has been like in this week’s curated section.
Technology has become important not just in our everyday lives, but has also become an arena for contestation among major powers including India. The Takshashila Institution has designed the 'Technopolitik: A Technology Geopolitics Survey' to understand and assess what people think about how India should navigate high-tech geopolitics. We are sure you are going to love the questions! Please take this 5-minute survey at the following link: https://bit.ly/technopolitik_survey
Technopolitik: C-295 and the ‘Make in India’ Flight Plan
— Avinash Shet
The aerospace industry has taken a new turn as Airbus Defence and Space SA, Spain, signed a ₹21,935 crore agreement with Tata Advance Systems Limited (TASL). This agreement is significant because it marks the emergence of the private sector to undertake the complex aircraft assembly process for the military transport aircraft C-295. Not jet assembling, the TASL facility is expected to handle the complete production lifecycle, that is from manufacturing components to assembling, testing, delivery and maintenance. The procurement of the C-295 transport military aircraft is happening to replace the ageing Avro-748. This agreement marks the first instance of a private company manufacturing and assembling a military aircraft. Such agreements do exist but those involve public sector companies like Hindustan Aeronautical Limited (HAL) which manufactures aircraft like Sukhoi Su-30 MKI, with a license from Sukhoi Aviation Corporation, at Nagpur.
In India, manufacturing aerospace components started after the 1991 liberalisation. Following the liberalisation, companies such as TASL, Mahindra Aerospace, Dynamatics Technologies and other private players began to enter this sector. With time, these industries climbed up the value chain and manufactured complex components. Examples include TASL, which manufactures the airframe of the AH-64 helicopter; Dynamatics Technologies, which manufactures doors for the Airbus 220, and Bell 407, among others. The capabilities of Indian manufacturing units led to significant efforts in attracting aerospace giants such as Airbus and Boeing to establish their manufacturing facilities in India.
This development is a big boost to India’s “Make in India” initiative. TASL will manufacture all components, except the aero engine and avionics. This is the most significant aspect of the C-295 project, which facilitates the transfer of advanced manufacturing techniques and technologies from Airbus to Indian partners. This infusion of cutting-edge expertise will elevate the manufacturing capabilities of local manufacturers and the technical capabilities of Indian engineers and technicians. Projections indicate that this facility will create 600 direct high-skill jobs and roughly 3000 indirect jobs. Airbus's technology transfer will push local suppliers, primarily MSMEs, to enhance their manufacturing capabilities. This will open up opportunities for these local manufacturers to go up the value chain both in terms of manufacturing capabilities and economics.
Some reports suggest that the C-295 aircraft is suitable for commercial use as a regional transport aircraft. With the rising air transportation market in India, there is a huge demand for aircrafts, especially the small regional jets. If indigenous built, the C-295 commercial variant can fill the gap, reducing cost and time and providing competition to ATR and Bombardier.
In the long run, this development will contribute to the growth of other areas within the aerospace domain, such as aircraft design, testing, and related R&D and innovations. The indigenous manufacturing capability will enable designers to produce their design prototypes within India, resulting in reduced time and cost. This will make the process of developing an aircraft in India more seamless and accessible. Furthermore, by expanding the manufacturing footprint, technology development extends beyond the aeronautical domain, encompassing areas such as automotive, space, and heavy industries. Who knows, we might soon have companies in India building their own indigenous aircraft, competing with giants like Embraer, Bombardier, Airbus, and Boeing.
Technomachy: The DPI Frontier
— Arindam Goswami
In the recently concluded academic conference of The Takshashila Institution’s Network for Advanced Study of Technology Geopolitics, there was an interesting discussion, led by Rahul Matthan, on the geopolitical perspectives around digital public infrastructure (DPI). It assumes a lot of significance, given that India is pushing the adoption of its DPIs worldwide. This includes UPI, CoWIN, and others. This diplomacy around the adoption of Indian DPIs globally could possibly have a geopolitical angle to it, too.
Foundational principles embedded in code
What is helping this push is that the principles of data privacy and security – like consent, prior information, purpose specification, data retention, data minimisation, etc. – have been built into the code. The bottommost layers of this technology stack, essentially the building blocks of the DPIs, have these principles embedded into them. These are foundational principles, not an afterthought. Whatever wrapper functionalities get built on top of these layers, therefore, have these foundations firmly moulded into them. Agreed that there are, and probably will be, security and data privacy-related incidents within this stack, but we can safely say that that is not due to a lack of proactive measures taken at the foundational level.
The technology aspect of DPIs is discussed a lot. But what is the geopolitical significance of this? In 2018-19, the word DPI probably didn’t exist in the world lexicon, or in people's minds. But by the end of 2023, it was on everybody’s mind. The Covid pandemic helped popularise it because of how we built and used CoWIN, and other countries recognised that. The high-volume usage of UPI in India showcased its benefits – seamless, frictionless, easy transactions, which can be leveraged even by the technologically challenged. This has led to various usage models and the spread of UPI to other countries, which we all must have already read about.
Geopolitics of DPI
Thus, DPIs have emerged as one area of technology, and India is leading the discussions. Even European countries, which have a higher concern around data privacy and security, have shown interest in India’s DPIs, when they see that the foundational layers of our DPIs have these principles embedded into the code itself. That assuages their concerns that we don’t have a fully functional and adequate data protection and privacy law. Even the USA, which is generally cautious about the “public” part of DPIs, driven by commercial, private interests, is curious about the other DPIs like CoWIN, if not the fintech DPIs. They are especially impressed that all of this comes from a democratic country, knowing that there are geopolitical risks were it to come from some other countries like China.
The geopolitical significance of this is also marked by the fact that we were able to include DPIs in the G20 agenda. As leaders of the Global South, we also introduced DPIs into the talks involving them. Indian DPIs could help the Global South in their developmental aspirations, while not compromising on their sovereignty, which they fear when interacting with global institutions like the World Bank and other private entities.
There is a capacity issue when it comes to building DPIs. Not all countries will have the wherewithal and expertise to build DPIs. India could help them. Building and providing DPI as a service (DPAAS) is what we should focus on, if we are looking to push for adoption by other countries aggressively. The fact that we have built our DPIs to be interoperable and to have redundancies built into them so that they are not tightly coupled, makes them attractive. They are built to be interoperable, flexible, scalable, customisable, and even open source sometimes. There could be cloud and on-prem versions, to assuage concerns of those wary of cloud environments. Data localisation concerns of countries could be resolved this way.
Concerns about what happens if DPIs fall into the hands of dictators miss the point that DPIs are going to be built anyway. A lot of money is going to be spent on building them. Why not, therefore, use Indian DPIs, which are foundationally built to assuage privacy and security concerns?
DPIs cannot be built without private sector involvement. They bring in the innovation and agility required to solve all of these complex problems, with oversight from the government. There will be potential problems of path dependence and monopolistic tendencies. This is where being cautious while putting together the building blocks of DPIs, as India has done, is very important. Having done that, India can morally lead the charge on DPI adoption across the world.
Soft power ambitions
It helps with our soft power ambitions and builds a narrative around India’s abilities globally. The fact that all of this requires great diplomatic finesse and rigour and that we have been able to do it successfully bolsters our geopolitical ambitions. We can lead the setting of standards and protocols in this area. This gives us entry into other aspects of technology leadership, which we should pursue.
Pitfalls to avoid
What can sour the geopolitical possibilities of DPIs is if we try to surreptitiously bring in riders in our negotiations with other countries around DPIs. We need to be genuine. We can’t push our strategic interests in a way that hurts other countries' sovereignty and security concerns. We have to be mindful of this pitfall. DPIs are at the software level; it would be mindless to push hardware along with it, just for strategic gains. It would lead to us losing our well-earned goodwill, which is important geopolitically. And to be sure, there will be incentives to mess this up, because these systems are meant to be highly interconnected and interoperable, which could provide us leverage over geopolitical relations. We should refrain from doing this. International relations are built on trust and mutual benefits; suspicions can sour them.
Geopolitically, DPIs can provide us with a lot of benefits. We should grab this opportunity with both hands.
If you like the newsletter, you will love to read our in-depth research and analysis at https://takshashila.org.in/high-tech-geopolitics.
Examining India’s tryst with nuclear energy
— Lokendra Sharma
After a suboptimal performance over the last two decades — accentuated by the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 — nuclear energy is making a comeback in 2024 globally and in India. On the global front, nuclear energy got a ringing endorsement in the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (or COP29). In India, the nuclear establishment is opening to the idea of private sector participation in the state-led nuclear power programme. The Indian government has indicated it is open to partnering with the private sector on small modular reactors and other nuclear technologies. However, whether nuclear energy witnesses a renaissance in India commensurate with the aspirations of India’s nuclear establishment will depend on the degree of participation of the private sector, as well as developments in India’s three-stage nuclear power programme. India has already mastered the first stage and is moving into the second stage now with the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) in Tamil Nadu moving into the final stages of completion — it is expected to achieve criticality soon.
But what are these three stages? What are fast breeder reactors? What does India’s nuclear establishment plan to do with nuclear energy in the long term?
G Vaidyanathan and R D Kale — formerly associated with the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, provide answers in their following 2022 journal article:
Vaidyanathan, G., Kale, R.D. India’s nuclear power program: a critical review. Sādhanā 47, 181 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12046-022-01953-9 (full article pdf available here: https://www.ias.ac.in/public/Volumes/sadh/047/00/0181.pdf)
According to Vaidyanathan and Kale, the first stage involves the setting up of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) that use heavy water as both a moderator and a coolant. PHWRs use natural uranium as fuel. The second stage involves setting up Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs). ‘The spent fuel from PHWRs contain small quantities of unutilized U235, Pu239 and large quantities of U238. The recovered Pu239 along with U238 forms the fuel for’ the FBRs — alternatively called Sodium Cooled Fast Reactor (SFRs) by the authors. The ultimate goal of India’s three-stage nuclear power programme is to utilise thorium (or, thorium-232 isotope specifically which is available in abundance in India). As for the fuel cycle for the third stage, the authors explain: ‘In the latter period of the second stage, SFR will use Th232 as blanket material producing U233 as fissile material. The third stage will then use U233/Th232 combination in fast and/ or thermal breeders to fully exploit available Thorium to produce power.’
After a thorough explanation of the programme, the authors end the article with an insightful conclusion. Few insights stand out. As to why the nuclear programme has performed below par, they cite five factors, including the ‘[h]urry in acquiring foreign designs that were not proven’. Fully aware of the delays in utilising thorium, the authors make the following recommendation: ‘Efforts on Thorium utilisation in molten salt reactors must be given an impetus and a prototype reactor of small power say 10 MWt should be built early. Realistic projections should be made on Thorium reactors based on ground realities.’
What We're Reading (or Listening to)
[Opinion] A strategic thrust to space beyond borders, By Ashwin Prasad
[Podcast] Comparing India-China Consumption Trends, By Amit Kumar
[Takshashila Blog] Building India’s State Capacity: Takshashila’s Approach to Human Resource Management, by Anisree Suresh