Expert Speak Digital Frontiers
Published on Jan 23, 2025

From faith to agriculture, drones are increasingly becoming central to addressing a broad spectrum of India’s developmental needs.

Flying high: Civilian drones in India

Image Source: Getty

The Maha Kumbh Mela of 2025 is a unique festival; occurring only once every 144 years due to a rare planetary alignment. It also marks a milestone in India’s digital revolution. With aspirations of making it the first “Digital Maha Kumbh” of its kind, the world’s largest cultural and spiritual gathering will employ artificial intelligence (AI)-powered cameras, drones, tethered drones and anti-drones systems, to monitor the event. Underwater drones are being used for the first time, providing 24/7 surveillance, particularly during the sacred Sangam Snan, while transmitting real-time reports to an Integrated Command and Control Center. With the ability to function over unlimited distances, drones will ensure the precise detection of suspicious underwater activities, enabling immediate response. Alongside, sonar systems, interceptor drones, and anti-drone systems will all contribute to an advanced, comprehensive surveillance network. India is actively integrating the latest digital technology to generate solutions and deliver benefits to different sectors of its economy—agriculture, mining, infrastructure, emergency response and transportation are some of the key civilian areas that benefit from this endeavour.

With the ability to function over unlimited distances, drones will ensure the precise detection of suspicious underwater activities, enabling immediate response.

Drones for Development: The India story

India, aspiring to lead the Industrial Revolution 4.0, has set the ambitious target to become a global hub for drones by 2030, aiming to further boost its gross domestic product (GDP) by 1 to 1.5 percent and create at least 500,000 jobs in the coming years. According to the Global State of Drones 2024 report by Drone Industry Insights (DII), among the top 10 countries shaping the commercial drone industry, India ranks second, only after the United States (US) The Indian drone manufacturing sector is projected to see significant growth, with annual sales turnover expected to rise from approximately INR 600 million in 2020-21 to INR 9 billion by 2024-25. To actualise this aspiration into reality, India has already taken a few significant steps:

A streamlined policy: The Drone Rules 2021 aim to foster the ease of doing business, and promote growth in India's drone industry through trust, self-certification, and non-intrusive monitoring. They simplify compliance by abolishing several approvals, reducing the number of forms from 25 to 5, and slashing fees to nominal levels, delinking them from drone size. A user-friendly Digital Sky Platform will enable most permissions to be self-generated, featuring interactive airspace maps with reduced yellow zones and expanded green zones for easier drone operations. Key changes include no required remote pilot licenses for micro drones used non-commercially and for nano drones, no security clearance needed for licenses, and exemptions of certification for research entities and export-focused manufacturers.

A user-friendly Digital Sky Platform will enable most permissions to be self-generated, featuring interactive airspace maps with reduced yellow zones and expanded green zones for easier drone operations.

Boosting domestic manufacturing: In line with India’s vision of becoming Atmanirbhar (self-reliant), the government has announced Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes for 14 key sectors, including drones and drone components, with a combined outlay of INR 1.97 trillion to boost manufacturing and exports. This initiative may create a cascading effect on the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) ecosystem, as anchor units established in each sector will require a robust supplier base across the value chain, predominantly supported by MSMEs. Furthermore, recognising challenges faced by startups and MSMEs under the initial PLI scheme for drones, launched in 2021, the government is planning a new, more efficient PLI scheme for the sector. The upcoming scheme will streamline procedures, improve implementation, simplify documentation, and feature a larger financial outlay to better support the growth of the drone industry.

Ban on drone imports: As of 9 February 2022, India has implemented a drone import policy that bans the import of foreign drones in completely built-up, semi-knocked down, and completely knocked-down formats, with a few exceptions. However, the import of drone components has been liberalised to support domestic manufacturing.

Establishment of drone schools: The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to date has approved 63 Remote Pilot Training Organisations (RPTO) to offer drone training and skilling programmes. These training schools have collectively issued over 5,500 Remote Pilot Certificates.

These initiatives cumulatively underscore India's dedication to enhancing its domestic drone manufacturing capabilities and promoting self-reliance—an important aspect of the “Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, which will reinforce the nation’s ambition to emerge as a global drone hub by 2030.

These initiatives have yielded positive results across civilian drone applications in India. Drone technology is revolutionising critical sectors such as infrastructure development, disaster response, and agriculture. In infrastructure projects, drones equipped with high-resolution cameras and sensors provide accurate data for planning, design and execution, enabling better decision-making, resource optimisation, and risk mitigation. They play a key role in construction monitoring by conducting aerial inspections, detecting deviations, and identifying safety issues, thereby reducing delays and improving project efficiency. In disaster response, drones equipped with thermal imaging and sensors assess the damage, locate survivors, and support rescue operations in hard-to-reach areas, enabling swift relief efforts.

Drone technology is revolutionising critical sectors such as infrastructure development, disaster response, and agriculture. 

In agriculture, drones have a prominent role to play in enhanced precision farming by monitoring crop health and detecting pests while also optimising irrigation, pesticides, and fertilisers. This helps in getting higher yields and minimising environmental impact. Their ability to cover large areas efficiently provides invaluable insights for both farmers and project managers alike helping effectuate sustainable agricultural practices through a robust implementation of precision farming Further supported by targeted initiatives like “Namo Drone Didi, which aims to empower women-led Self-Help Groups (SHG) by training them with drone technology for agricultural services while also subsidising drone costs and facilitating loans. This will potentially help generate at least INR 100,000 in additional annual income per SHG and foster economic empowerment and sustainable livelihoods. The “Kisan Drones” scheme is another key initiative that employs indigenous drone-based systems integrated with satellite technologies for real-time crop and soil health monitoring. It facilitates efficient land assessment, damage detection, and post-event management. Additionally, the promotion of “Kisan Drones” aims to enhance agricultural practices through crop assessment, land record digitisation, and the spraying of insecticides and nutrients.

Challenges to India’s drone industry

These initiatives are welcome steps taken by the Government of India to boost the strong and resilient manufacturing sector for the drone industry; nonetheless, a robust and high-demand domestic market is of equal importance to sustain this growth. This is crucial if India wants to realise its dream of becoming a global drone hub by 2030. Furthermore, drone startups need to be assisted with scaling if these companies are to become future leaders in the drone market in India. Certain other key challenges need to be addressed as well.

Overcoming regulatory hurdles: Despite recent liberalisation, regulatory processes under the Drone Rules 2021 can still be cumbersome for manufacturers and operators, and these compliance requirements could slow drone development and use. Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone operations are critical for commercial scalability, but their adoption is slow due to strict regulations and limited test permissions. Finally, stricter norms for drone registration and operation are required to prevent misuse, but this could create bottlenecks for businesses.

Fostering talent: Developing a skilled workforce for operating and establishing dedicated testing facilities is crucial. Currently, India lacks an adequate number of designated testing and incubation facilities for private innovators to create and test drone inventions. Even though there are RPTOs available for training, it is not cost effective enough for an economically marginal populace to avail its benefits.

Harmonising drone policies across states and union territories: Though some state governments have policies for setting up drone manufacturing ecosystems, this is not universal or uniform across India. This may lead to unequal growth of drone hubs and ecosystems in the country. Importantly, variations in drone policies across states could create operational ambiguities for businesses. Efforts should therefore be made to harmonise these guidelines, rules and policies. 

The government may initially play a key role in creating a viable market for drones to harness the country's manufacturing potential by driving commercial demand from government-dominated sectors.

To greater heights

The government may initially play a key role in creating a viable market for drones to harness the country's manufacturing potential by driving commercial demand from government-dominated sectors. The various central and state ministries could allocate specified amounts in their budgets for drone purchases that they could later rent or lease to create a drone economy in the nation. The natural progression would be to transition into a private sector-driven drone manufacturing and consumption market, which is constantly innovative and self-sustaining. Furthermore, the government could consider implementing targeted incubation and scaling initiatives so that the innovators may expand their ideas and become fully functioning independent players in the Indian and global drone market.

The Government of India may also establish training schools and innovation centres at subsidised rates in technical institutions across the country to mitigate the present lack of facilities to train future drone pilots, serving as a viable incubation hub for drone innovation. The Government of India may release a white paper that outlines the minimum standards and requirements for all states to follow when establishing drone manufacturing ecosystems while still ensuring that local markets develop according to individual states’ particular needs and aspirations. Building on these steps, states could be encouraged to release their policy papers on establishing drone hubs and markets, along with annual “state of the sector” performance reports detailing activities conducted and hubs created.


Debajyoti Chakravarty is a Research Assistant at the Observer Research Foundation

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