India should be wise about Galileo

The most crucial aspect of the Galileo is its accuracy. It is so precise that it can zero in on a moving car in a remote region. India’s anxiety has to do with this accuracy. Its concerns are two-fold. One, it fears that the sharing of sensitive data may not be adequately firewalled from individuals and other nations participating in the enterprise (China, for instance, is a partner). Second, with relatively inexpensive receivers, it is going to revolutionalise the use of globally positioning systems by individual users. The Indian government appears unsure about how to handle the implications of such widespread usage.

However, India should have thought of all these drawbacks and looked for solutions before starting negotiations on Galileo. The arguments given for not finalising the deal do not sound convincing when we try to draw parallels with other areas of technology. If India can allow the use of mobile phones in the Valley, knowing full well that it could be misused by a few, why can’t it go ahead with other technologies which have better public utility relevance and have the potential to further business opportunities? China has entered the deal happily. A security paranoid country like Israel has also evinced interest. So why is India fighting shy of it, after it was expected to invest $353 million in the project?

The satellite navigation market is expected to touch $150 billion by the year 2015. Given this reality, a country like India should not walk away from a project of this kind. China, incidentally, has already invested $230 million in it. At a recent seminar on issues concerning global positioning systems in Bangalore, it was projected that though India’s satellite navigation market is now at $22 million, it has the potential to grow to $448 million over the next three to four years.

There can be no doubt that the technology will be extremely relevant in a country growing at over 8 per cent annually. The technology would come in very handy in tracking cargo and truck movement across the country. With the aviation industry booming, the need for an accurate navigation system is going to increase in the days to come. The introduction of global positioning systems-enabled cellphones is expected to revolutionalise the telecom industry. And companies in the field, both local and international, are competing to grab a piece of the Indian market, especially with its 300 million middle-class consumers — the size of the US market!

Technically, Galileo is expected to be more secure and offer more choices than the US military-based GPS. The current problem with an American GPS system is threefold: accuracy, range and cost. The Galileo is designed to meet practical objectives, improve the coverage of open access services in urban environments (to cover 95 per cent of urban districts compared with the 50 per cent currently covered by GPS alone). Professionals, scientists, market analysts, rescue teams and public-regulated domains will benefit from such a system. In fact India would benefit immensely from having both the GPS and the Galileo systems. This will mean that India will have 56-60 satellites available for its requirements.

All modern technologies have dual utility. They can be used for the benefit of humanity, or against it. A wise power should carry out a careful cost benefit analysis of inducting such technology, and not see danger everywhere and get obsessed with security considerations.

The writer is a security analyst