Key Priority Sectors for Engagement and Action

The ‘Global-South Science & Technology Initiative’ would take up following key areas as priority sectors to showcase Bharat’s scientific and technological prowess and to share our expertise with the countries of the Global South.

• Bharat is able and willing to provide its expertise and capability in other sectors of Science and Technology such as digital technology, new materials, environment, renewable energy, agriculture and food, medical research, etc. and capacity building activities including in higher education and research infrastructure. Bharat has also developed science and technology to meet its diverse development needs, including low cost and appropriate technology, which could be shared.

• Bharat is among the few countries that initiated its space programme while evolving to become a newly industrialised economy. Bharat is building end-to-end space capabilities vital across numerous socio-economic and scientific applications. These capabilities have been developed in an economically sound manner. Bharat is ready to share these achievments with the Global South and assist countries in leveraging resourceful experiences in upstream (satellite, launch vehicle and spacecraft science, design, engineering and manufacturing), mid-stream (space data acquisition, processing, disseminating, and archiving) and downstream (value-adding the data for a variety of civilian, commercial and security end-users) of the space sector. With the space sector reforms of 2020 and the Indian Space Policy 2023, Bharat has immense potential in the public and private sectors to develop and deploy affordable space technologies, products, services, platforms and stacks and share them with countries of the Global South. The Science Diplomacy Programme at RIS works with numerous stakeholders in Bharat's public and private space sector to extend space technology-driven socio-economic cooperation to the Global South. RIS has signed an MoU to partner with Bharat's leading space industry body, the Satcom Industry Association-India. The two institutions have jointly organised seminars, conference sessions and deliberated on different facets of space economy. RIS is also the first policy research institution to partner with the Department of Space's newly-established Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe). The two institutions are working on a pioneering international space economy mapping study to expand the business ambits of Bharat's private space sector in Bharat's neighbourhood and the Global South. RIS faculty members regularly attend closed-door space-sector deliberations, space and allied domain national and international conferences, and publish policy briefs and papers in national and international space domain publications.

• This initiative reinforces and synergises with the other initiatives on the Global South Centre of Excellence, the ‘Aarogya Maitri’ project for essential medical supplies in crisis situations, and the Global South Scholarships for higher education in Bharat.