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GS Paper: GS3

  • Big Tech’s privacy promise could be good news and also bad news

    Context

    In February, Facebook stated that its revenue in 2022 is anticipated to reduce by $10 billion due to steps undertaken by Apple to enhance user privacy on its mobile operating system.

    Move towards more privacy-preserving options

    • Apple introduced AppTrackingTransparency feature that requires apps to request permission from users before tracking them across other apps and websites or sharing their information with and from third parties.
    • Through this change, Apple effectively shut the door on “permissionless” internet tracking and has given consumers more control over how their data is used.
    • Privacy experts have welcomed this move because it is predicted to enhance awareness and nudge other actors to move towards more privacy-preserving options, leading to a market for “Privacy Enhancing Technologies”.
    • Google’s Privacy Sandbox project is a case in point, though it remains to be seen whether it will be truly privacy-preserving.

    Big Tech dominance and issues related to it

    • Privacy and acquisitions: One standout feature of the Big Tech dominance has been the non-price factors such as quality of service (QoS) in general and privacy and acquisitions in particular.
    • Acquisitions to kill competition: Acquisitions by Big Tech are regular and eat up big bucks, not always to promote efficiency but to eliminate potential competition, described evocatively as “kill zone” by specialists.
    • According to a report released by the Federal Trade Commission, between 2010 and 2019, Big Tech made 616 acquisitions.
    • In the absence of a modern framework, competition law continues to rely on Bork’s theory of consumer welfare which postulated that the sole normative objective of antitrust should be to maximise consumer welfare, best pursued through promoting economic efficiency.
    • Market structure thus became irrelevant and conduct became the sole criterion for judgement.
    • Conduct now predominantly revolves around QoS which, like much else surrounding digital platforms, is pushing competition authorities to fortify their existing regulatory toolkits.

    Privacy as a metric of quality

    •  Companies such as Apple and DuckDuckGo (with its slogan “the search engine that doesn’t track you”) are employing enhanced user privacy as a competitive metric.
    • It has been shown that “websites which do not face strong competition are significantly more likely to ask for more personal information than other services provided for free”.
    • In 2018, OECD accepted that privacy is a relevant dimension of quality despite the low quality that may be prevalent due to lack of market development.
    • Regulators across the globe are recognising privacy as a serious metric of quality.
    • For instance, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in 2021 took suo moto cognisance of changes to WhatsApp’s “take-it” or “leave-it” privacy policy that made it mandatory for every user to share data with Facebook.
    • In its prima facie order, the CCI inter alia observed that this amounts to degradation of privacy and therefore quality.

    Way forward

    • Privacy and competition have overlapping boundaries.
    • If privacy becomes a competitive constraint, then companies will have the incentive to create privacy-preserving and enhancing technologies.
    • Barriers for new entrants: On the other hand, care must be taken so that Big Tech, aka the gatekeepers in the EU’s Digital Markets Act, do not misuse privacy to create barriers for newer entrants.
    • Restricting third-party tracking is not novel and other browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft’s Edge have already done so.
    • But Google, which owns 65 per cent of the global browser market, is different.
    • By disabling third parties from tracking but continuing to use that data in its own ad tech stack, Google harms competition.
    • The use of privacy as a tool for market development, therefore, has to tread this tightrope between enabling and stifling competition.

    Conclusion

    An approach that balances user autonomy, consumer protection, innovation, and market competition in digital markets is a real win-win and worth investing in.

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  • IRMS

    Context

    A recent Gazette notification regarding the creation of the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) marks a paradigm shift in the management of one of the world’s largest rail networks.

    About the merger and IRMS

    • A nearly 8,000 strong cadre of the erstwhile eight services is now merged into one.
    • Eight out of 10 Group-A Indian Railway services have been merged to create the IRMS.
    • The merged services are: Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS), Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS), Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS), Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers (IRSEE), Indian Railway Service of Signal Engineers (IRSS), Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers (IRSME), Indian Railway Service of Civil Engineers (IRSE) and Indian Railway Stores Service (IRSS).
    • Aims of the restructuring: Besides removing silos, this restructuring also aims at rationalising the top-heavy bureaucracy of the Indian Railways.

    Way forward: Training

    • Training the future leaders of India’s public transporter in the rapidly evolving logistics sector of the country is the most important task ahead.
    • The UPSC will recruit a few hundred IRMS officers each year from now, they will remain much less in number when compared to already serving officers for a long time to come.
    • Training of the existing cadre of officers: The fact remains that even after the creation of the IRMS, the 8,000 strong (already serving) officers of the Indian Railways will need to work in coordination and not in silos, as they will be serving in the organisation for decades to come.
    • This highlights the importance of training of the existing cadre of officers as they will have to deliver on the ambitious Gati-Shakti projects.
    • The task of training such a dynamic talent pool assumes importance in view of India’s aspirations of becoming a $5 trillion economy.
    • All this will require a massive revamp of the capacity building ecosystem of the Indian Railways.
    •  Redesign the training: The merger of services provides an opportunity to redesign the training for newly recruited IRMS officers to make them future-ready. Initial training along with mid-career training programmes may be reoriented.
    • The IRMS training needs to be designed based on the competencies required for different leadership roles.
    • Mission Karmayogi of the Government of India provides for competencies based postings of officers.
    • The Integrated Government Online Training (iGOT) programme of the Government of India will be instrumental in shaping the career progression of IRMS officers.

    Conclusion

    Future IRMS officers should be ready to face the challenges of working in an organisation that is involved in round the clock and round the year operations, has substantial social obligations to meet and, at the same time, which must earn for itself.

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  • Addressing Duty Anomalies in Trade Deals

    India has long suffered the anomaly of imported raw material being taxed more than the finished product. Economists call it the inverted duty structure. A spate of free trade agreements (FTAs) in the past have not helped. Are the new ones any better?

    What is the inverted duty structure?

    • An inverted duty structure comes up in a situation where import duties on input goods are higher than on finished goods.
    • In other words, the GST rate paid on purchases is more than the GST rate payable on sales.

    Why is it a problem?

    • When manufacturers cannot set off the taxes paid on raw materials against the tax on the final product, the excess tax paid on inputs gets built into the price of the product.
    • This makes an Indian-made product more expensive than the imported finished product, affecting the competitiveness of Indian makers.
    • The issue is acute in sectors like textiles and apparels.
    • Correcting duty anomalies is key to attracting investments in manufacturing.

    Will new FTAs worsen the problem?

    • Looks unlikely. The FTAs under negotiations are structurally very different from those signed a decade ago.
    • The FTAs signed in the early 2000s were with manufacturing hubs like the 10-nation ASEAN which includes the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan.
    • Most of these countries directly compete with India in a host of manufacturing sectors including apparel, electronics, and engineering goods.
    • They largely produced the same goods as India.
    • By contrast, the new FTAs being signed by India are with countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that share complementarities with India with respect to trade interests.

    How is India addressing duty anomalies?

    • India has been increasing import duties since 2014-15 to correct the inverted duty structure for non-FTA countries and the average tariff rose from 13.5% in 2014 to 15% in 2020.
    • In fact, the last two budgets sought to correct it by removing duty exemptions and lowering the duty on raw materials.

    How did the earlier FTAs impact India?

    • In old FTAs, India agreed to lower or eliminate duties on finished goods. But import duty on raw materials remained high.
    • That made it cheaper to import the final product than make them in India, hurting domestic manufacturers.
    • This can be seen from the fact that the share of ASEAN in India’s total imports has grown from 8.2% in FY11 to 12% in FY21, while exports have stagnated at 10%.
    • The share of South Korea rose from 2.83% in FY11 to 3.23% in FY21, while exports are up marginally from 1.5% to 1.6% during the same period.

    And how are the new FTAs different?

    • The UAE, for example, is a services, oil, and gold-led economy rather than a manufacturer. India benefits from duty-free access for mobile phones, which the UAE does not make.
    • Australia, which signed a pact with India last week is again not a major manufacturing economy, but a services one with key interests in wines and minerals, pears, oranges, etc.
    • Besides, this time around, the government is holding consultations with the industry during the FTA talks, doing a SWOT analysis to ensure FTAs benefit India’s exports.

     

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  • Understanding Software Copyright and Licences

    This newscard is an excerpt from the original article published in The Hindu.

    Does software have copyright? Even more specifically, is the Internet free inspite of software copyright? Are software programming languages free of cost? How does copyright apply to software?

    Software licensing

    • A copyright gives a creator the legal right to own, distribute and profit from his or her creative work.
    • There are different kinds of software licences that allow free use of software:

    (1) Proprietary License

    • There is proprietary software which is to be purchased as a one-time transaction or as yearly licences.
    • A popular example is Microsoft Windows which is purchased along with the computer or Microsoft Office which typically has a yearly licence that has to be renewed upon payment.

    (2) Creative Commons licence (CC)

    • There is the Creative Commons licence (CC) which is public domain: any software or work that is in CC can be used and distributed free of cost.
    • For example, Wikipedia is under CC and hence its contents can be used freely with the condition that attribution is made to Wikipedia (this is called ‘Creative Commons – Attribution-ShareAlike).

    (3) Permissive Software licence

    • Another form of free software licence is Permissive Software licence which is popular in the software developer community and in the commercial world.
    • This licence allows free use and modification of software. There are further specific licences under this category, like the Apache licence and MIT licence.

    (4) Apache licence

    • The Apache licence is maintained by the Apache Software Foundation which is a non-profit entity.
    • Many popular and powerful softwares like Spark (used in Big Data) have been developed under Apache licence.
    • MIT licence is maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and it covers hundreds of software packages including GitLab and Dot NET.

    What are Open Software?

    • All free and permissive software licences are similar to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
    • This is a set of rules and free software brought under one umbrella in the 1980s by Richard Stallman, a famous computer scientist and activist.
    • FOSS maintains its own licence, called GNU GPL (Gnu’s Not Unix General Public Licence) to govern and distribute free software but it comes with restrictions that its adoption and modification be for free use.
    • In the software community, ‘open source’ means any of the above non-proprietary licences.

    Who maintains open source softwares?

    • Open source software packages are developed and maintained by programmers from around the world.
    • Until the mid-1990s, the idea of the general public collaborating to create software for free seemed to be unrealistic and confined to small, elite communities.
    • However, with the success of a free operating system like Linux (which is under GNU GPL licence), many were convinced that open source could create sophisticated solutions because of access to top programmers around the world.

    Is the Internet free?

    • To access and to create content on the internet, there are costs involved such as infrastructure costs like network cost and the cost to host and maintain the content.
    • However, the core of the internet itself is free: it is free to use ideas like linking contents on the internet, transferring them with a network software protocol and adopting the associated standards like maintaining the website address (Uniform Resource Locator-URL).

    Are programming languages free of cost?

    • Until the 1980s, popular programming languages had a price but with the advent of Java in the 1990s and thanks to the initiatives of Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation in the 1980s, many languages, especially modern ones like Go or popular ones like Python are free.
    • Java is somewhere in the middle where there are free implementations of the language that most software developers use but there are also paid implementations provided by Oracle.
    • In general, the realisation in the software community is that a free language has widespread adoption and leads to the availability of an expert pool of programmers.
    • The last two decades have seen a proliferation of open source software and the future is even more exciting.

     

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  • Places in news: Nadabet- the Wagah of Gujarat

    As part of the Seema Darshan project, Union Home Minister inaugurated an Indo-Pakistan border viewing point in Nadabet in Gujarat, around 188 km from Ahmedabad.

    Where is Nadabet?

    • Located in the Rann of Kutch region, Nadabet is also known as the ‘Wagah of Gujarat’.
    • It is connected by a narrow bitumen road cutting across mudflats that get inundated during high-tide.
    • The biggest attraction of the Seema Darshan Project is the access provided to civilians to view the fenced international border with Pakistan at ‘Zero Point’.
    • This is guarded round the clock by the Border Security Force (BSF) in Banaskantha district of Gujarat.
    • Pakistan is around 150 metres from the border pillar 960 at Nadabet.
    • Though the BSF conducts a parade similar to the one held at Attari-Wagah border in Punjab every evening during sunset, there won’t be anyone present across the border on the Pakistani side.

    What is the Seema Darshan Project?

    • The Seema Darshan project is a joint initiative of the tourism department of the Gujarat state government and the BSF Gujarat Frontier.
    • The focus is to develop border-tourism in the region which has a sparse population and even sparser vegetation.
    • The project aims to boost tourism as well as restrict migration from the villages across the border to the Indian side.

    Role of Nadabet in 1971 Indo-Pak War

    • Nadabet played a key role in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War.
    • It was in this region that the BSF not only stalled the enemy trying to invade from the west, but also captured 15 enemy posts.
    • During the war, the BSF had captured 1,038 square km of Pakistan territory in Nagarparkar and Diplo areas.
    • The area was returned to Pakistan after the Shimla Agreement was signed.

     

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  • Challenges in RBI’s inflation management

    Context

    The first bi-monthly meeting of the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) for the current financial year reaffirmed its focus on inflation management.

    Towards the normalisation of monetary policy

    • The MPC voted to keep the policy rate unchanged at 4 per cent and retained its accommodative stance.
    • However, the wording was changed to “remain accommodative while focusing on withdrawal of accommodation to ensure that inflation remains within the target going forward, while supporting growth.”
    • This statement sets the stage for a shift to a neutral stance in the next meeting and policy rate hikes in subsequent meetings.
    • RBI has announced the withdrawal of some of the steps taken during the pandemic to support the economy.
    • These will foster the normalisation of monetary policy.

    Inflation challenge

    • The central bank has acknowledged that the disruptions caused by the Russia-Ukraine crisis have upended their growth and inflation outlook.
    • It has steeply revised its inflation projection from 4.5 per cent earlier to 5.7 per cent now for the current financial year.
    • The projection is based on an average global crude oil price of $100 per barrel.
    • The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) Food Price Index, a gauge of global food prices, posted a record growth of 12.6 per cent from February.

    Formalisation of Liquidity Adjustment Framework (LAF)

    • The RBI has been managing liquidity infused into the system during the pandemic through the Variable Rate Reverse Repo Auctions (VRRR) to withdraw liquidity and Variable Rate Repo auctions to inject liquidity.
    • RBI has now formalised the Liquidity Adjustment Framework (LAF).
    • The LAF is a framework to absorb and inject liquidity into the banking system.
    • The LAF is now a symmetric corridor with a width of 50 basis points.
    • The policy repo rate is at the centre of the corridor, with the MSF 25 basis points above the policy rate and the SDF 25 basis points below the policy rate.

    What is a Standing Deposit Facility

    • The RBI has introduced the Standing Deposit Facility (SDF) as the lower bound of the LAF corridor to absorb liquidity.
    • The idea of the SDF was first mooted by the Urjit Patel Committee report on the monetary policy framework.
    • The RBI Act was amended through the Finance Act of 2018 to allow RBI to use this instrument.
    • The SDF will be a facility available to banks to park their funds.
    • The SDF will serve as the standing liquidity absorption facility at the lower end of the LAF corridor.
    • At the upper end of the corridor is the Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) to inject liquidity.
    • Through the SDF, the RBI can absorb liquidity without placing government securities as collateral, hence it will give greater flexibility to the central bank.
    • The change also marks a shift away from reverse repo being the effective policy rate.

    Key takeaways

    • While on the face of it, there are no rate hikes, the shift from the reverse repo rate to the SDF signals a tightening of monetary policy.
    • There is a 40 basis points increase in the floor rate.
    •  In the medium run, the call money rate would move towards the new LAF corridor, thus bringing orderly conditions in the money market.
    • As RBI begins to normalise liquidity in a calibrated manner, its ability to manage bond yields will likely be limited.
    • Yields on bonds are likely to inch up and remain above the 7 per cent mark.
    • Going forward, the trade-off between managing inflation and the borrowing programme of the government will become challenging.

    Conclusion

    For now the RBI has rightly decided to place top priority on inflation management. This will help in maintaining the credibility of the inflation targeting framework.

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  • NITI Aayog publishes Energy and Climate Index List

    Gujarat has topped the list for larger States in the NITI Aayog’s State Energy and Climate Index–Round 1 that has ranked States and Union Territories (UTs) on certain parameters.

    State Energy and Climate Index

    • The States have been categorized based on size and geographical differences as larger and smaller States and UTs.
    • The index is based on 2019-20 data.
    • It ranks the states’ performance on 6 parameters, namely
    1. DISCOM’s Performance
    2. Access, Affordability and Reliability of Energy
    3. Clean Energy Initiatives
    4. Energy Efficiency
    5. Environmental Sustainability; and
    6. New Initiatives
    • The parameters are further divided into 27 indicators. Based on the composite SECI Round I score.
    • The states and UTs are categorized into three groups: Front Runners, Achievers, and Aspirants.

    Performance by the states

    • Gujarat, Kerala and Punjab have been ranked as the top three performers in the category of larger States, while Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were the bottom three States.
    • Goa emerged as the top performer in the smaller States category followed by Tripura and Manipur.
    • Among UTs, Chandigarh, Delhi and Daman & Diu/Dadra & Nagar Haveli are the top performers.
    • Punjab was the best performer in discom performance, while Kerala topped in access, affordability and reliability category.
    • Haryana was the best performer in clean energy initiative among larger States and Tamil Nadu in the energy efficiency category.

     

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  • Designation of Terrorists in India

    The Union Home Ministry has designated Hafiz Talha Saeed, son of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, chief of the Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), as a terrorist under the Unlawful (Activities) Prevention Act (UAPA).

    About Unlawful (Activities) Prevention Act (UAPA)

    • The UAPA is aimed at effective prevention of unlawful activities associations in India.
    • Its main objective was to make powers available for dealing with activities directed against the integrity and sovereignty of India
    • It is an upgrade on the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act TADA, which was allowed to lapse in 1995 and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) was repealed in 2004.
    • It was originally passed in 1967 under the then Congress government led by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
    • Till 2004, “unlawful” activities referred to actions related to secession and cession of territory. Following the 2004 amendment, “terrorist act” was added to the list of offences.

    Designation of Terrorists

    • The Centre had amended UAPA, 1967, in August 2019 to include the provision of designating an individual as a terrorist.
    • Before this amendment, only organisations could be designated as terrorist outfits.
    • Section 15 of the UAPA defines a “terrorist act” as any act committed with intent to threaten or likely to threaten the unity, integrity, security, economic security, or sovereignty of India or with intent to strike terror or likely to strike terror in the people or any section of the people in India or in any foreign country.
    • The original Act dealt with “unlawful” acts related to secession; anti-terror provisions were introduced in 2004.

    Who makes such designation?

    • The UAPA (after 2019 amendment)seeks to empower the central government to designate an individual a “terrorist” if they are found committing, preparing for, promoting, or involved in an act of terror.
    • A similar provision already exists in Part 4 and 6 of the legislation for organizations that can be designated as a “terrorist organisations”.

    How individuals are declared terrorists?

    • The central government may designate an individual as a terrorist through a notification in the official gazette, and add his name to the schedule supplemented to the UAPA Bill.
    • The government is not required to give an individual an opportunity to be heard before such a designation.
    • At present, in line with the legal presumption of an individual being innocent until proven guilty, an individual who is convicted in a terror case is legally referred to as a terrorist.
    • While those suspected of being involved in terrorist activities are referred to as terror accused.

    What happens when an individual is declared a terrorist?

    • The designation of an individual as a global terrorist by the United Nations is associated with sanctions including travel bans, freezing of assets and an embargo against procuring arms.
    • The UAPA, however, does not provide any such detail.
    • It also does not require the filing of cases or arresting individuals while designating them as terrorists.

    Removing the terrorist tag

    • The UAPA gives the central government the power to remove a name from the schedule when an individual makes an application.
    • The procedure for such an application and the process of decision-making will is decided by the central government.
    • If an application filed by an individual declared a terrorist is rejected by the government, the UAPA gives him the right to seek a review within one month after the application is rejected.
    • The central government will set up the review committee consisting of a chairperson (a retired or sitting judge of a High Court) and three other members.
    • The review committee is empowered to order the government to delete the name of the individual from the schedule that lists “terrorists”, if it considers the order to be flawed.
    • Apart from these two avenues, the individual can also move the courts challenging the government’s order.

     

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  • RBI proposes ATM cash withdrawals using UPI

    The RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has proposed to make cardless cash withdrawal facility available at all ATMs, irrespective of banks, through the Unified Payment Interface (UPI).

    What is UPI?

    • UPI is an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) facilitating inter-bank transactions.
    • The interface is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India and works by instantly transferring funds between two bank accounts on a mobile platform.

    How will cash withdrawals via UPI work?

    • While the RBI did not disclose specific details on how the process will work, a person having knowledge about the matter said ATMs soon will show an option to withdraw cash using UPI.
    • Upon selecting that option, a user would have to add the amount they wish to withdraw following which a QR code would be generated on the ATM machine.
    • The user would then have to scan that code on their UPI app and enter their pin following which the ATM will dispense cash.

    Why such move?

    • Allowing cash withdrawals through UPI would increase the security of such transactions.
    • The absence of the need for physical cards for such transactions would help prevent frauds such as card skimming and card cloning, among others.

    What are the current ways of cardless cash withdrawals at ATMs?

    • At the moment, a few banks such as ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC Bank and SBI, allow their users to withdraw cash from their ATMs without a card.
    • This was a feature introduced in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
    • However, it is a long-drawn process.
    • Users have to install apps of their respective banks and first select the option of cardless cash withdrawal on the app, followed by adding beneficiary details and the withdrawal amount.
    • After confirming the mobile number of a user, the bank will send an OTP and a nine-digit order ID to the beneficiary’s phone.
    • Post that, the beneficiary would have to visit an ATM and key-in the OTP, order ID, amount for transaction and mobile number to get the cash.

    Could this impact debit card usage?

    • Debit cards are currently the most popular way of cash withdrawals at ATMs.
    • As of now, there are more than 900 million debit cards in the country, and experts have cautioned that allowing cash withdrawals through UPI could negatively impact debit card usage.
    • There could be a potential first-order impact on debit cards as this step would reduce the need to carry debit cards.

    What’s next in the UPI pipeline?

    • It is projected that in the next 3-5 years, UPI would be processing a billion transactions a day, and to enable that, a number of initiatives have been introduced.
    • Chief among these is UPI’s AutoPay feature, which has already seen increased adoption owing to RBI’s disruptive guidelines on recurring mandates.
    • According to industry experts, the AutoPay feature will be crucial to increasing daily transactions on the platform.
    • The RBI has also announced UPI123 on feature phones without an Internet connection, which is expected to open up the payments system to more than 40 crore individuals who use such devices.
    • This will expand digital financial inclusion and add to the number of transactions made on the platform.

     

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  • GSLV-F10

    The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) with improvements added to its cryogenic upper stage (CUS) is expected to be ready in the second half of this year.

    What is GSLV?

    • GSLV is an expendable space launch vehicle designed, developed, and operated by the ISRO to launch satellites and other space objects into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbits.
    • GSLV is 49.13 m tall and tallest among all other vehicles of ISRO.
    • It is a three-stage vehicle with a lift-off mass of 420 tonnes.
    • ISRO first launched GSLV on April 18, 2001 and has made 13 launches since then.

    Stages in GSLV

    • The first stage comprises S139 solid booster with 138-tonne propellant and four liquid strap-on motors, with 40-tonne propellant.
    • The second stage is a liquid engine carrying 40-tonne of liquid propellant.
    • The third stage is the indigenously built Cryogenic Upper Stage (CUS) carrying 15-tonne of cryogenic propellants.

    Variants in GSLV

    • GSLV rockets using the Russian Cryogenic Stage (CS) are designated as the GSLV Mk I while versions using the indigenous Cryogenic Upper Stage (CUS) are designated the GSLV Mk II.
    • All GSLV launches have been conducted from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

    Difference between PSLV and GSLV

    • GSLV has the capability to put a heavier payload in the orbit than the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
    • PSLV can carry satellites up to a total weight of 2000 kg into space and reach up to an altitude of 600-900 km.
    • GSLV can carry weight up to 5,000 kg and reach up to 36,000 km.
    • PSLV is designed mainly to deliver earth observation or remote sensing satellites, whereas, GSLV has been designed for launching communication satellites.
    • GSLV delivers satellites into a higher elliptical orbit, Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) and Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO).

    Back2Basics: ISRO’s transportation modules

    (1) SLV

    • In the space transportation domain, the commissioning of the Satellite Launch Vehicle-3 (SLV-3) project in the early 1970s was the first indigenous experimental satellite launch vehicle.
    • As a four stage, all solid, launch vehicle, SLV-3 had its successful launch in July 1980, thrusting India into the select league of six countries with the capability to launch satellites on their own.
    • The ASLV- Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle project, in the early 1980s, was the next step of evolution in launch vehicle technology.

    (2) PSLV

    • In mid 80s came the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) project. PSLV was successfully launched in 1994.
    • The vehicle has proven to be a workhorse of ISRO, logging over 50 successful missions, launching national as well as foreign satellites.
    • On 15 February 2017, PSLV created a world record by successfully placing 104 satellites.
    • The nation embarked upon a highly challenging quest to master the complex cryogenic technology.

    (3) GSLV

    Discussed above.

    (4) SSLV

    • The Small Satellites Launching Vehicles (SSLVs) used for commercial launching of small satellites is under incubation.
    • It is a small-lift launch vehicle being developed by the ISRO with payload capacity to deliver:
    1. 600 kg to Low Earth Orbit (500 km) or
    2. 300 kg to Sun-synchronous Orbit (500 km)
    • It would help launching small satellites, with the capability to support multiple orbital drop-offs.
    • In future a dedicated launch pad in Sriharikota called Small Satellite Launch Complex (SSLC) will be set up.

     

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