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By:

Chaitanya Giri

3 October 2024 at 5:27:32 am

India’s Space Programme in an Age of Polycrisis

In the first of a two-part series, we examine why India’s space programme must evolve for an age of wars and global instability, where old civilian-military binaries no longer suffice. In the lead-up to the multi-state assembly elections scheduled for April 2026, and subsequently during his international visit in May 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi consistently emphasised the substantial challenges the global community is currently facing, including ongoing conflicts, supply chain...

India’s Space Programme in an Age of Polycrisis

In the first of a two-part series, we examine why India’s space programme must evolve for an age of wars and global instability, where old civilian-military binaries no longer suffice. In the lead-up to the multi-state assembly elections scheduled for April 2026, and subsequently during his international visit in May 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi consistently emphasised the substantial challenges the global community is currently facing, including ongoing conflicts, supply chain disruptions, and the adverse secondary effects on the international economy and diplomatic relations. This was exemplified in his address to the diaspora in The Hague. “This decade is increasingly turning into a decade of disasters for the world. We can all see that if these conditions are not changed swiftly, the achievements of many past decades could be undone. A very large section of the world’s population could once again be pushed into the quagmire of poverty.” India’s ascent during the Amrit Kaal is contingent upon global geoeconomic stability and a prolonged period of peace, or at least a state lacking large-scale conflict. Despite the emergence of various conflicts, Prime Minister Modi consistently emphasised, “This is not the era of wars,” while the themes of the 2023 G20 presidency, ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,’ and the 2026 BRICS presidency, ‘Humanity First,’ highlighted the significance of the interconnected advancement of India and the international community. Notwithstanding this, in situations where ongoing reorganisation of the global hierarchy results in prolonged international conflicts, disruptions, and the decline of international standards, one of the many initiatives that the Government of India must contemporise is the core vision and mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Trinary Space Fusion What are the expectations of the Prime Minister’s Office regarding the Indian space program? It is anticipated that the program will innovate in advanced space technologies, excel in space sciences, serve the most underserved segments of society, mitigate environmental stresses, assist in identifying remedial mechanisms, strengthen the national economy and societal indicators through the commercialisation of space endeavours, and, most importantly, ensure comprehensive national security. Since the space program clearly serves both military and non-military needs, Indian strategic circles have absorbed the two lexicons, ‘civil-military fusion’ and ‘civil-military integration’, originating in Chinese and United States strategic literature. Today, several proposals have been made to implement civil-military fusion within the Indian space ecosystem. However, is it a good model for India to approach? The two lexicons, civil-military fusion and its antecedent, civil-military integration, are products of Chinese strategic literature. Characterised by a clearly defined binary system, civil-military fusion receives substantial support from the highest echelons of authority - the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. The Party has established a binary civilian-military control mechanism over space-based and terrestrial assets, financial flows, innovation capital, and associated returns. While the Central Military Commission serves as the military authority, the State Council, through several state-controlled enterprises, serves as the civilian authority. Flexible Binary The United States does not maintain a rigid civil-military binary. For the longest time, US commercial and civilian entities and institutions have held dedicated portfolios of civilian and defence projects. Following the transformation of the Department of Defense into the Department of War in 2025, the latter now serves as the principal integrator of all sensory data and intelligence collected from commercial space contractors, civilian space and scientific agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and United States Geological Survey, as well as Federally Funded Research and Development Centres. In both China and the United States, civilians not part of the military—operating both within and outside government structures—are increasingly functioning as co-workers of uniformed personnel. There are instances where they are also becoming co-workers with private military contractors and militias engaged in prolonged grey-zone armed conflicts. In India’s case, we have a trinary. For India, civilian space activities refer to the ‘nationalised’ space activities, fully operated by the executive arm of the government. This ecosystem comprises the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), public sector undertakings, various ministries of the government, and a select band of private space contractors that work exclusively with nationalised financial and technological resources. In 2010, a small unit, known as the Integrated Space Cell, was established within the Integrated Defence Services Headquarters to dedicate certain ISRO-built assets for breaking the back of cross-border terrorism and ensuring peace along the Indian frontiers. By 2012, the Naresh Chandra Task Force had recommended the creation of an aerospace command. In 2019, the Integrated Space Cell was relegated, and the tri-service Defence Space Agency (DSA) and the Defence Space Research Agency (DSRA) were established. In 2026, a separate Defence Geospatial Agency (DGA) was created. While the Space Based Surveillance I and II were outputs of the ‘nationalised’ civil-military complex, with state-laboratories of ISRO and DRDO building and launching satellites, the upcoming Space Based Surveillance III has widened the horizons, with the third arm of the trinary, the stand-alone commercial space sector. Dual-Purpose Space Agencies Indian space strategy planners must, for the good, relinquish their understanding of dual-purpose technology development within the siloed civil-military binary. The Pentagon and the White House now clearly view NASA as one of the technological and sensor layers of the US space program, the other two being those built by the Pentagon and the US commercial space ecosystem. The United States’ ambitions in the lunar and cislunar regions are neither exclusively civilian—implying a pacifist or non-military nature—nor restricted to NASA. In March 2026, the United States relinquished its Lunar Gateway, a lunar orbital space station, and adopted a ‘Surface-First’ strategy to establish a permanent presence on the Moon. The strategic objective of the United States is to compete with the Chinese civil-military complex and to attain control of the lunar surface, regarded as the next strategic high ground. To this end, NASA, the United States Space Force, and the expansive US commercial space sector collaborate in concert. The decade of disasters and upheavals does not permit India the liberty to run mutually exclusive civilian, military, and commercial space programs. The fusion of the three has to happen. Space weather is a trinary pursuit, vital for scientists, armed forces, and commercial space operations. NAVIC is not only a civilian PNT system, but a strategic civil-military-commercial asset. Cislunar operations cannot be carried out solely by ISRO; the next military institution emerging from the DSA-DSRA-DGA combine, the aerospace command, will have a role to play in them. The changing character of space power now increasingly mirrors the changing character of geopolitics itself. Nations are no longer treating space merely as a theatre of scientific prestige or symbolic technological accomplishment. Space is rapidly becoming the infrastructure layer beneath global commerce, digital sovereignty, battlefield awareness, logistics, climate resilience and diplomatic leverage. In such an environment, countries that continue to compartmentalise their space sectors risk strategic obsolescence. India therefore confronts not merely a technological challenge, but a doctrinal one. The debate is no longer whether India should possess advanced space capabilities but whether those capabilities can be organised in a manner adequate for a fractured world order increasingly shaped by sanctions, proxy conflicts, technological blocs and weaponised interdependence. (The writer is a Space and Emerging Technology Fellow at the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology, Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai.Views personal.)

India waits to lasso diamantaire Mehul Choksi

Mumbai: India rubbed its hands gleefully as the Belgium Police honoured its request to arrest the absconder diamantaire Mehul Chinubhai Choksi – more than seven years after he, along with his nephew Nirav Deepak Modi - allegedly duped the Punjab National Bank of nearly Rs. 13,800-crores.

 

The scam involving the ‘Mehul Mama-Nirav Bhanja’ erupted in Jan 2018, after the PNB lodged a complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

 

By then the kin, along with many of their family members, winked and slipped out of the country, leaving a rattled India rubbing its palms in disappointment.

 

A political-cum-financial storm raged, embarrassing the Bharatiya Janata Party government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi a year before the Lok Sabha elections.

 

Multiple agencies launched a multi-pronged probe into what became the biggest banking scam in the past quarter century – and almost four times bigger than the stock market-cum-banking fraud the late Big Bull Harshad Mehta had inflicted on the Indian economy 33 years ago (in April 1992) – when it was just opening up.

 

In Belgium

According to official reports, Choksi was living with his Belgium citizen-wife Preeti in Antwerp, a global diamond hub, presumably for the past 18 months on a ‘residency permit’ acquired through questionable means, for medical reasons.

 

Earlier, he shot to the headers (June 2021) while being taken in a wheelchair to a court by the Dominican Republic's Police on charges of sneaking into the small country in the Caribbean Sea, North America.

 

Interestingly, as the Antigua & Barbuda government initiated the process to cancel his citizenship acquired through an investor visa, Choksi had suddenly gone ‘missing’ till he surfaced in the Dominican Republic.

 

The April 2025 action by Belgium followed a request by India’s CBI and the financial frauds specialist Enforcement Directorate (ED) to nab Choksi as the InterPol had revoked his Red Corner Notice in 2023.

 

Mama and Bhanja

‘Mama’ Choksi is the founder-owner of Gitanjali Group while ‘bhanja’ Nirav’s Firestar plus other companies – and the duo, with some PNB officials hand-in-glove – conspired to make a ‘mamu’ of not only PNB, but other banks, as it subsequently tumbled out.

 

After making a quiet exit, Choksi was detected living in the verdant Antigua & Barbuda Isles (West Indies), then attempted entry to the Dominican Republic, was sent back to Antigua & Barbuda and then went to Belgium where he was nabbed on Sunday.

 

Similarly, Modi was found sauntering on the streets of London and nabbed in March 2019. He remains in jail there since India's extradition is still pending.

 

However, India is keeping its fingers crossed that it may finally lay hands on Choksi, bring him to India and face trial in the PNB scam, though it may take time.

 

Born in Mumbai (1959) and educated in Gujarat, Choksi, 66, and wife Preeti have three children.

 

The Rs. 13,800-crore PNB scam

In the modus operandi revealed after India’s second-largest PSU bank PNB admitted it was scammed, Choksi and Modi used fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoU) to get overseas credits or loans from Indian banks.

 

The PNB first informed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) of the fraud and then lodged a criminal complaint with the CBI in Jan. 2018, plus another CBI complaint in Feb, that led to a FIR against Modi and Choksi and their companies.

 

The ED entered the scene to probe the allegations of money-laundering through the LoUs – which they allegedly misused to avail short-term business finances from foreign branches of Indian banks.

 

The probe said that the duo were availing the LoUs from the PNB’s Brady House Branch from March 2011, and over the next six-seven years, managed to get a whopping 1,200-plus LoUs like a breeze with the help of some friendly bankers within.

 

Post-scam, the gold-diamond companies Gitanjali Group and Firestone Group with multiple operations in India and abroad have largely wound up, while some personal assets of the mama-bhanja have been auctioned to recover a part of the dues.

 

ED's plea to declare Choksi fugitive stuck for seven years

Even as absconding diamantaire Mehul Choksi, a key accused in the Punjab National Bank loan fraud case, has been arrested in Belgium, the ED's plea to declare him a fugitive economic offender has been pending before a court in Mumbai for nearly seven years.


Choksi, 65, and his nephew diamantaire Nirav Modi are the prime accused in the Rs 13,000 crore PNB bank loan fraud case. Choksi was arrested in Belgium following an extradition request by Indian probe agencies, official sources said on Monday.


The Enforcement Directorate had filed the application in July 2018, seeking to declare Choksi an FEO and confiscate his assets under provisions of the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act.


However, the matter has witnessed repeated delays owing to a barrage of applications filed by the accused in the PMLA court and the Bombay High Court alleging procedural lapses in the Enforcement Directorate's plea.


"The court is kept busy with frivolous applications, and hearing on our application to declare him (Choksi) an FEO has been adjourned for the past seven years,” an ED officer had said after the hearing was once again deferred this February.


"The court should have continued the hearing and taken a decision on the future course of action once the application was moved," the officer had said.

He had urged the court to take note of the repeated filing of similar applications and to not entertain them.


Choksi's lawyer had informed the court that the accused was undergoing treatment for suspected cancer in Belgium and intended to file an application in connection with his health.


Under the FEO Act, an individual can be declared a Fugitive Economic Offender if a warrant has been issued against him for an offence involving Rs 100 crore or more and he has left India while refusing to return. Once declared an FEO, the person's property can be confiscated by the investigating agency.


Choksi had challenged the ED's application in the Bombay High Court, alleging that the agency "had not followed proper procedure before filing the application and, hence, it stands vitiated".


However, in September 2023, the High Court dismissed his plea, ruling that the ED had adhered to the prescribed format under the FEO Act. It also vacated a stay on the special court's proceedings.


Despite this, the hearing on declaring Choksi FEO could not commence, with Choksi continuing to file applications before the special court through his lawyers.


While most of these pleas have been dismissed, a few remain pending. His latest attempt to stall proceedings through a plea to recall the notice issued on the ED's FEO application was rejected in December 2023.


According to ED officials, Choksi left India under suspicious circumstances in early January 2018.


Shifting stance

Choksi's counsel has argued that the ED kept shifting its stance on the material grounds for declaring him an FEO and that the suspension of his Indian passport made it impossible for him to return for investigation.

The court, however, rejected this argument, stating that the notice was issued based on accurate information and not based on "wrong facts or mistaken assumptions".


ED claimed the accused left the country under suspicious circumstances in the first week of January 2018.


Nirav Modi has already been declared as an FEO by the special court. He has been lodged in jail in London since 2019.

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