 There are currently also talks about integrating people's Aadhaar data with drone cameras so that it becomes easy for the police and the state governments to identify and track people. And that of course opens a different Pandora's box altogether. The COVID-19 lockdown has seen a number of police forces, including Telangana police, Kerala police, Delhi police, deploying drones to keep an eye out in potential lockdown violations. They're also being used to spray disinfectants, which as far as my understanding goes, are not currently allowed under the regulations. On the other hand, drones also present an opportunity, especially in the backdrop of the lockdown in helping with fulfilling essential services, especially e-commerce delivery, although that hasn't really happened yet. It appears as if we've been left to deal with the dire consequences of drone usage rather than reap some of the benefits that they present. What we're largely witnessing is that the users of drones at the hands of the police, which raises questions around state surveillance and also triggers the proportionality argument. In today's discussion, we'll take a look at the regulatory framework that allows for drone users in India and if that particular framework has been effective so far. Drones can also be potential enablers, like we've discussed for certain things, especially during a global crisis, like the one in which we find ourselves right now. We'll address why that hasn't happened though. We'll also try and answer questions around accountability and transparency, especially with respect to police usage of drones. We can then open it up to the audience who can ask the questions why the Q&A option at the bottom of their screens. For the discussion, I'm joined by Kishore Janalagata, co-founder of drone aerospace systems, which is involved in manufacturing drones and Shashank Srinivasan, Director at Technology and Wildlife, whose work involves around using drones for wildlife conservation and using them in the wild for location intelligence. So Kishore, let me come to you first. Do you think that the current digital sky policy which governs the users of drones is working at all? Because when the policy was being formulated, the DGCA consulted drone manufacturers, do you think that your comments found a reflection in the policy that came out in August 2018 and was subsequently implemented in December the same year? Also from what I've been seeing while reporting, is there a lot of police stations especially use drones manufactured by DJI? Are those drones even allowed to fly in India right now? So in my best understanding for your last question, no. The answer is no. They're not allowed to ask for the DGCA regulation that exists right now. And but there is a catch in that, coming back to your first question, because of the reason that the, although the rules and regulations have come out in December 2018, as you said, they are not yet implementable. So they're not yet implementable because the backend systems that are required that the authentication server that is necessary is still not functional. So as of now, whoever are doing NP anti clearance and everything, even the manufacturers are doing it as a provisional thing by saying that we are following all your guidelines and we will be able to comply when you get the regulation effective. So it is not, it is for future, not for current. And they're allowed to fly based on that. And even in that category, DJI does not qualify. So therefore, no, it's a violation of the regulation as of now, but what the police are doing. So and as far as taking feedback from the customers, they had, DGCA did open up for a public, you know, interest, I mean, information. They asked sent out queries. People put out suggestions of what needs to be done. Some suggestions were taken. Some suggestions were not taken, especially with regard to certain things like, they had this thing about specifically identifying critical areas zones, which are not safe to allow people to fly. But typical usage would be that they will publish a negative list and we will not be able to fly in those areas. But no, they didn't want that. They didn't want to publish a negative list. So what they expected us to do is that you tell where you want to fly and we will just tell you whether you can fly or not fly at that time. You know, so it was like, they didn't want to publish an open negative list. So that was like one thing which was not taken, but I think that's an easier way to operate. So that's just one example of it. Okay, Kishore, that's a really interesting statement that's happening there, that the regulations are somehow for a future scenario and not for a current scenario. But the DGCA has kind of made it mandatory post December 1st, 2018. Technically, they are active, but so which makes all almost all drone flying illegal in the country, as if the drone regulations do not exist or they do not favor any drone flying. Yeah, so that's like an hanging sword on your head because you cannot comply to the regulation because it is still not in full effect. And at the same time, they can catch you for not complying, you know, they can, and you still have to comply as per at least the getting the certification process end up, you know, the clearance is done. So it is going to be a complication. And I think it's kind of like a risk on the people who are actually flying right now. In terms of what a manufacturers can hope for or is hoping for, are manufacturers, drone manufacturers facing issues because they're not sure how to manufacture these drones or is there some understanding from the drone manufacturers that, okay, we can make certain categories of drones, for example, say the nano drones at least who are unregulated, which are unregulated. So there are manufacturers, but the nano drones only cater to mostly the toy market. So there are people who are interested in the toy market and some of them are actually even doing it. Those are the nano drones which are sub 250 grams and cannot fly, I think, 15 feet beyond us. So it's just really a toy tool. But when it comes to manufacturer for the industry, so currently the NPNT not being already available for actual use, the way it is operating is that the people who, people have created their own NPNT servers as test platforms. So they have like a test server where they've built on the specifications published by the DGCA, but it is not the official one. So people are trying to build an NPNT compliant drone based on these test servers and that is being provided as proof to DGCA, which is all documentary proof right now. And that is basically given, based on that, you are given a provisional certificate. It's a provisional, it's not a final certificate also. So the provisional certificate allows you to, more than allows you to operate and actually doesn't allow you to operate, it allows you to make a sale to the government. So if there is a government tender that is there, the government tender needs to have, says very clearly that you need to have an NPNT certified drone. And these drones which are given the provisional certification complied to those requirements, so therefore you're at least able to make a sale to the government, to our government bodies. But yet the operational part of it, because you don't have an actual NPNT, is still dependent upon local law enforcing authority. So it's really interesting that this is all only to ensure that few companies can get government tenders. But at the same time, you're seeing that companies like DJI have clearly made issued statements that they are not going to manufacture for Indian standards, which is what DGCA is bringing out. So are there issues of, say, these drones being exported out of India? I don't think manufacturers can scale out that, right? This is a very specifically den-designed for India use only. No, actually there are some manufacturers who as I best understand are actually exporting it to lesser countries like Papua and Eugenia and sometimes even Indonesia, Philippines and all of them. So yes, mostly the Southeast Asian countries, there are people exporting it to these countries as well. And where NPNT and others don't play a role. And I think a lot of the people are looking at that as a favorable market also. There is one last question that I want to ask you, which is on what's the authority for DGCA to regulate drones in India? We know it's the director-generate of civil aviation, that's what DGCA is, and it's only relevant for civil aviation. And clearly, airplanes are defined when they fly beyond a certain height and that's why I guess your classification of drones and the height limits kick in. But at the same time, I think the current rules are only for drones which are in line of sight, that you can only regulate it, fly a drone if it's in line of sight and you cannot bring out drones which are out of line of sight, take control with radio, control with some video form of it. But the DGCA is allowing testing for manufacturers to build them. Can you explain a bit more about this? That's right. So to the later part, there was an expression of interest that was opened about sometime last year for what is known now as BVLOs, that is beyond visual line of sight. So this is only for testing, so you need to qualify with a certain set of categories, criteria as well which includes that you need to have an actual licensed pilot. I'm telling about a civil aviation pilot, not a drone pilot. So you need a person with the PPL also as part of that team which you are due to apply for a permit to do this BVLOs testing. And you have to give a particular area which is at least 15 kilometers radius for which you need to speak to either a private land ownership or a government body which gives you the permission to use a particular space for this particular testing. And as a consortium, you can apply for this BVLOs license and then you are given a permit to apply this test platforms which only in these test areas are you allowed to actually do beyond visual line of sight. Elsewhere, as you said, you have to fly within the visual line of sight which is defined as I think 400 meters. As I recall, it is 400 meters is defined as the line of sight. So you cannot actually fly beyond 400 meters except in these test areas. And in this test areas, those who have applied, I think right now there are about four people who have already been permitted. I have to update myself with the numbers. I think there are four people who have been permitted as of now and there are more who are going to get permission. We ourselves also have been evaluated for the same permission in South India. So like this kind of things are also happening in the background where you are expected to fly for a minimum of 100 hours with one among the DGCA authorities in their presence or how that is going to happen. We'll only know when we actually begin it because as of now there's still the evaluation is going on where they're giving permit to people. And this has already been a year and a half now almost. I think last January, February, this started and it's already now March. It's over a year since this process has begun. And regarding the first part, whether DGCA is the authority is, I don't know from a legal perspective that is who gave them the authority. However, world over, even if you look at say the US as an example, the drone rules, drone regulations are drone rules and the authority, enforcing authority is being handled by FAA. So which is also their civil aviation authority. So therefore, across the world, you can see that the civil aviation authority is the one being given charge of doing this. How has DGCA got involved in our country is not sure to me from a legal standpoint. However, my best understanding is that the Ministry of Home Affairs is what has asked them to actually put the framework and everything and make sure that they govern the entire process. So as of now, I think initially they were not keen on taking up the responsibility, but I'm seeing more and more that now there seem to be more interested in drones. I think they're more interested in the passenger drones that might eventually come up. Okay, so we're gonna move to Sashank. I'm gonna come back to you. I wanna try to understand the pilot side of it now that you mentioned passenger drones and how do you pilot drones? Sashank, you've been working, training, you've been a drone pilot, you've been using them in wildlife conservation for a really long time now. Before I think even the regulations have come into force. Can you tell us what was the scenario before the drone regulations came and what's the status right now? Like, was there more confusion back then? Is it more clear now? How is a drone pilot regulated? How was your experience being one of even getting more people trained as such? Okay, great. Thanks for that, universe. Oh, and welcome back, Samya. I was just asking a couple of questions about my experience and I was going to go over that. So essentially, I just need to give a brief timeline of the regulation, the regulatory history in India regarding drones, right? So in 2014, sometime in Philemberg around October 10th or so, the BGSA issued a notification which essentially banned all drone sites in the country. Yes, yes. Now, before 2014, there were some, again, there have been people who have been flying remote aircraft, like aero-modeling since maybe the early 90s, maybe the early 80s, if I'm not mistaken, right? Again, I grew up in Calcutta and I was part of an aero-modeling club and I was in middle school. So that would be around the mid-90s and then we'll be flying aircraft of the Calcutta Medan. So there's more runway over there which is double to the cricket pitch as well and people would fly a model aircraft of that runway and this is again the mid-90s. So sometime around 2010 or 2011, like the drone industry worldwide started picking up. Again, part of this was people started modifying do we know devices to actually create like stable what-copter platforms and that kind of spirited off into small independent hobbyists and then small businesses around this as well. So around 2010, 2011, drone started like making the presence felt. DJI started manufacturing the Phantom one, selling it in a big way. 2014, again, in October, there was some incidents in India of drone use. I think if I remember correctly, the main instigator for the drone band was a pizza delivery service based out of Bombay which they had a PR stunt where they delivered a pizza using a drone and essentially that brought the entire house collapsing down on its end. So the metaphorically, not literally. So essentially what that resulted in that this BGCA band, so between 2014 and 2019, all drone flying for civilian purposes in India was technically illegal. I say technically because from a regulatory perspective, the enforcing authority is unclear. The implementing authority is unclear. Who has authority to actually give permission to fly drones was unclear and is still in practice on the ground, you know, very, very vague. So between 2014 and 2019, there was still drones in the country, there was still a drone industry. Those companies like Astiria Aerospace, like Quidditch started working specifically in like their niches. So for example, Quidditch, a company we've collaborated with in the past, has been doing some excellent work around the IPL photography and they've also helped, they've also done many other projects and they, again, at this point of time, focus on working in the film world and entertainment itself, right? Companies like them, other companies got the permissions, they needed to actually operate very publicly and at high profile events. But again, under the BGCA regulations, it was all technically legal because the ban was very thirsty-warded and did not leave any room for exceptions or exemptions of any kind. So in practice, what that meant is, again, we've also been flying drones over 2017, 2018 and in practice, what this has meant is that we're just working with government departments and we're working with authority to actually operate our devices with like permission letters from people like the district collector, people like the chief secretary of the state, joint secretaries in the government of India, headquarters in Delhi, right? So different departments and the secretaries who are, again, IS officers who have extreme amounts of administrative power, issue these letters and after that, the entire state machinery just complies and make sure that the work they want gets done, right? One project I was talking to Swami about earlier was in 2017, so one of the first projects we conducted as a company, as a technology for wildlife was on behalf of the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department. They had a, this was, again, during Akhilesh Yadav's tenure as chief minister. So this is like 2017, February. And essentially, they had a man-eating tiger on the loose in Dilipit district of Western Uttar Pradesh and the villagers had protested saying they won't go to vote in the upcoming elections until the tiger was captured and taken care of. So for this, we were called in to actually help the forest department to use drones and actually help locate the tigers. So the collaboration we did at that time with the quidditch who had drone operators and drones available on standby. And the letter of permission we got was directly from the chief minister's office because he essentially said, okay, we need drones among other devices and other technology, other techniques to actually find this tiger. And that was the issue in authority. And again, we were actually conducting these flights which under DGCA law were technically illegal, like police officers controlling the drone itself. They were looking at the live video feed. So again, like the question of where the illegality comes into place is unclear because again, India is a federation, it's got state systems. So in practice on the ground, it cannot be very, very great. And projects that have continued over the past few years, people have been doing work for mining companies for infrastructure of various kinds, for electricity departments. And the permission letters come, their own official letter has been a government of India that government representatives and officials issuing these letters of permission. And none of this has been contested in a court of law. The DGCA cannot not be aware of these operations because they're very public, like quidditch flies, drones above every stadium, they get permission from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, such with the operations. Do these value the DGCA ban as well? I don't know. Ashok, I would like to, I have, I have, Ashok, please go ahead. Just to clarify, I mean, because you said in the 2014 letter that bans the drone flying, it very clearly says that it's for all civilian use except for by government bodies. So therefore, if you get a letter from government bodies, it is considered legal. So that was the reason. So you can only do a government job and cannot do a private job, you know, that's how it works. Because also, since I've been reporting on drone users, especially by the police and state governments in particular, so what I have essentially found out while reporting is that there almost is never even a written order that the police can produce. So if you go and ask them who authorized your drone flight, who was the authority behind this, there are almost never written orders, which just gives you a feeling that there is sort of accountability and especially no transparency around the entire process. Also because the police hires a lot of drones and sometimes you don't even know the people that they're hiring things from. So all of that is adds to this, you know, sort of complex infrastructure that is around there and it results in something you don't even know what's exactly going on there if the police was even authorized to fly drones. And that is only, you know, the operational part of it. The drones that are flying in the air is of course capturing footage. So that footage is somewhere of course stored, processed, what exactly happens to that particular footage if there are any sort of security safeguards around it. We don't know anything about the process at all and all of that happens begins because of the fact that there is almost never written order and you don't always know where to go and actually talk to and who to talk to. So how do you think that happens? So I'll just continue with that. So that essentially the government bodies component is fascinating, right? Because does that mean that again, because this is the problem with like a bit personally what it orders. Is it okay for private or parties or private operators to own devices and try them on behalf of the government? Does the government need to be the one who owning and controlling the devices? Is it okay for the private operators to be hired and to do some of some operations for the government and other operations privately? Because again, in the past five years, no operator has been able to sustain itself only on government contracts because the lack of permissions has resulted in less investment into the sector. So people actually relying on projects to bootstrap themselves all the way through. And this really, this really concerns matters, right? There have been cases, projects I've heard of where people have gone in, again, like you said, there's no written orders at all. When the operators ask for written orders, the government tells them you're doing it for us, no one's going to question you and then they're sent into the field with government officers. There are risks to this because again, it's not like the government is a monolith. Different departments can contest each other actions. If the, you know, for example, the department of, the foreign department wants to flag drones and the department of mining contest that. Do the hoop, that's one of them calling the police to actually enforce the no fly zone. So is that the way it actually works in practice? And it's, it's all, it's all, it's all very risky, especially on the ground. Like there have been cases where there have been misunderstandings of being no written orders. So till someone can actually make a couple of phone calls they require to get through to the senior officer who authorize the action itself. They're, you know, in not arresting necessarily, but they are definitely being held against the will till they can show that what they were doing was legitimate, whatever that means. I would also like you to respond to that. But just before you do, I would also like you to address the point of who in this situation, for instance, if a police has hired a particular drone operator and because we don't have a written order, we don't even know who exactly the drone operator is or which company that person is associated to. Who in this particular case carries the liability? For instance, the data that is collected via the drones, if that particular data is used in a way that it was initially not intended for it to be. So who in that case actually takes the burden and the liability if something actually goes wrong? Please also incorporate that particular bit in your answer. So the question of who owns the data itself is, in a sense, I think it's for them to copyright of some understanding in that if someone is flying the drone, they opt in the drone, then the SD card or whatever memory storage device they have on the drone is set, they own that, they own that, and therefore they own all the footage on the device as well, right? In practice, what happens is that the police ask for the SD card directly. Again, in most cases where you're working with police departments who are tech savvy and aware of what they're doing, then they essentially have the drone operator fly the drone, the live stream from the drone if that's what's being collected is streamed to them itself because they're operating it like, while with the drone operator next to them. And they take the SD card from the drone operator, transfer the footage over to their computers, wipe the SD card and then hand it back to the drone operator, right? In which case at that point in time, the footage is now the property of the police, the police control it, I don't think copyright really applies over here. Because again, the police have the footage and there might not be a little order which actually shows that the drone operator took the operation. So again, this might not be a paper trade at all, but the fact remains again from my perspective that the drone operators are the ones who've flown the drone and actually collected the footage. So it's also their responsibility to ensure it's not misused in any way. In practice again, for the most part, what happens is the police control the footage. They're having cases where they've just have the drone operator to take the footage and make a map for them or something later and then the drone operator also has a copy of the footage which is where it can become more risky where a private party has got data belonging to the public of the public which they can use for their own, you know, for anything they want to do. So it might be, I didn't like mapping out grocery stores, might be mapping out how people are moving around. It might be for future facial recognition analysis. Again, it's with them and the data privacy bill doesn't really cover situations like this. Kishore, you want to add something to that? Yes, I mean, I've been experienced with Riga too, especially with Riga to Andhra and you were telling about how a private operator can do a job for a government body, I mean, how does it work? In fact, this was, I think, in my best understanding the problem that was trying to be addressed by Andhra because you cannot, even if you're contracted by the government, you're still a private body doing the job. So how do you handle this situation? They came up with something called as a Wettke's Agreement, you know, a typical Wettke's Agreement which happens for aircraft where your aircraft and the staff are basically handed over to another company which is, in this case, a government thing. So you're as good as working for them, you know, under their banner and everything, you know. So that is how they actually worked around this whole process of at least the legal part, you know, the paperwork was a Wettke's Agreement. So that is how they got the job done in Andhra state. When they claim to have a DGCA clearance for the entire state of Andhra Pradesh for this thing, but we never got to see the copy of the clearance so I don't really know how much it was a copy. So that part I'm not really sure about. Then the second part of it where you told, where he talked about the SD cards and the data being transferred and how that has happened, that's quite a difficult thing because I can tell you that almost more than half of the works that were done were not on paper. So they were not like, you know, there was no document to say the permission is granted or anything like that. It was all phone calls or in person, you know, all those kind of things. And sometimes they would be in your presence while you are flying, but other times they would not, they'll just say, go ahead and do it. So it was a very, very informal way of doing it. So I don't know accountability, how it's going to work in the context in that thing. About transfer of data in RX, when we did all the survey for Amravati, the new capital of Andhra, all the data was asked by us in voice, again, on a phone call to be handed over to a particular person who would come and take a hard disk of data from us. And only later did we get to know that whom we were handing out the data to is not a government representative, but another private party who is doing some other analytics and everything. Now, a consequential issue of this whole thing came up when it came to payment, because we had to showcase that we have done the job and we have got all the data out there. Then comes the thing saying that, okay, when you hand it over the data, we have taken a signature of the person who's handing over the data and everything. But when it comes to rules, you need to have it stamped by the department official, signed by a particular authorized signatory, all these kind of things, which were not done at that time. Of the data collection. So that became an issue also. So yeah, so I don't think anything on the, when it actually implementation, nothing happens. And just to add to that, that's fascinating on the ground because what that means is that there is, there's almost no record of any of these activities, right? Like there's the initials of the footage, but there's no record of the government issuing a contract of a tender being issued of modes of payment. It's all very unclear, which is quite difficult to understand in the context of if in case someone had to sue for damages for anything which has happened as a result of either the actual flight or the data collected, how do they go about it? Where's the paper, where's the evidence, where's the proof to actually take this to a court of law if that's the route someone wants to take. So again, like a, underpinning some context of the work we're currently working on is like, what is, where is records? Like if you need, if you, if something was wrong, who do you appeal to? If the police have used drones and they have harmed you in some way, you can't go to the police and complain about it because what they're doing is technically legal under the DCI, so what records do you have to actually obtain justice in this context? Very interesting because recently I did a story about how the Kerala police had hired private drone operators. So when I talked to one of the IGPs in the North Zone, I think he was in charge of the Kassergård district. So he told me that they just have these drone operators and so the footage is essentially stored on the mobile phones of the police officials. And when I asked him, how do you ensure that the drone operators are actually deleted the data from his side? He just said that we just ensure it. I mean, there was nothing concrete to go with. I'm not even sure if they actually make sure that the data is essentially deleted from a drone operators devices. So anyway, I think of course drones sort of present this dystopic view of the future if you start looking at it that way. But of course, it also essentially can act as a potential enabler, especially in times of a global crisis. For instance, the times we are in right now, especially for instance, drones can potentially help us in delivering a lot of essential services, fulfilling e-commerce deliveries. Do you think post lockdown, we might see a push towards that happening, sort of drones being more and more utilized in e-commerce deliveries to fulfill more essential services? And do you see the regulations around drone usage subsequently and consequently being relaxed for that particular issue? Is this to me? It's to both of you. It's to both of you. Yeah. So my personal view is that when it comes to e-commerce delivery, that is things like Amazon, I don't see it happening with drones. Not now. I don't see it even in the much in the future as well. I think of those as more like technology demonstrators to actually learn and understand the technology and further the technology for better causes. Because I think there are far too many safety hazards with drones delivery in crowded urban areas. However, I do see the delivery of essential equipment. Like for example, now if you want PPE to, if I am a manufacturer of PPE equipment for doctors and everything, there's no way for me to transport it in the current lockdown situation. There's very difficult time. So I think like these kind of intercity or interzonal transportation, I see a good future for that. So you will have like how you have hubs, like airport as a, I mean as a hub now, you'll have smaller hubs where you'll have these drone carrying essential equipment and delivery of those things. So I think that there is an advantage, but I will still see that only from an emergency operations and critical missions, not from daily supplies because I think it's far too expensive for daily supplies. So Shah, you wanna weigh in? Yeah. Sure. So just to clarify, I think that some of the uses for drones during the current job done and pandemic are, you know, I could break them down. There are uses which are extremely useful, but there are also ones which are completely gimmicky and they're ones which are useful but dangerous, right? So for example, I do think surveillance is definitely useful as a drone use, but it is very dangerous to consider in the given context, but it's being used by the state to enforce the lockdown quarantine. It's been used again after the Delhi riots. It's been used to surveil protests as well. So question of whether the people who are protesting, whether the civil threats are being violated is still not, has not been answered clearly. Even now, during the current lockdown, where people have been allowed to leave the houses, have been allowed to actually go to grocery stores, they have been allowed to move outside. So it's not a curfew, it's a lockdown, right? But the drones and the police force are still treating it like a curfew. So they're trying to send people back home. So it's one thing to make sure people don't gather in groups. It's another to use drones to chase people down roads to try and get images of their faces so that they can then be prosecuted or arrested at a further point of time, even though they haven't violated any law, they've only violated a lockdown in a sense. And again, it's again, all very, very unclear. So I do think surveillance is a useful use of drones, but also dangerous. However, using drones for spraying antibiotics during a pandemic caused by a virus is nonsensical. Using loudspeakers on drones for cloud control is also nonsensical because there's no reason you can't mount the loudspeakers on trucks or other ground vehicles. So there are lots of gimmicks being sold to police departments now. And again, there is an attractiveness to it as well, in that drones are a very easy way to, in a sense, project power, right? Because they're highly visible, they can be quite noisy depending on the type of drone you're using. They can actually be used to project a sense of control where they might not actually be that much control on the ground, where the drone flies over and even the police is watching, but actually there's some private operator flying the drone, I think, PUBG on the side. So there's no overlap as to, again, so that the drone is up in there and that's what's being used to show power. So going forward, like after the lockdown, hopefully there'll be the valuables of the drones are the ones which are going to be promulgated, in a sense, and the ones which are dangerous are going to be weeded out, or at least they're going to be proper, you know, and safeguards kept implemented so that they're not as dangerous as they currently are. I think, from the discussions so far, what you've basically understood is that drones have been exceptional when it comes to state surveillance, when it comes to carrying out state surveillance, but perhaps for the better part, for the thing that they can be used in better ways, perhaps there still is a long way to go from what we've understood so far. So I think with this, it's okay to open the discussion up for the audience. I would again reiterate that the audience can ask questions using the Q&A section at the bottom of their screens. We already have one question from Shashidhar KJ, who asks if it is possible to standardize drone manufacturing similar to the automobile industry, and if it is, how would it exactly look like for the drone industry? And I think Kishore, you would like to answer that, yeah. I definitely think it can be standardized. After all, even the automobile industry, in fact, I like to look at the drone industry as in parallel to how the automobile industry started up. Everything, including the licensing for the pilots, everything should follow the same model as the automobile industry is my personal opinion. Certain standards have to be set up and it can be done. Like for example, what should be the kind of communication as an example so that for certain things, like if you want state control to take over rogue drones, there should be setting up including an ATC, kind of a thing if you have. There can be this thing in terms of ethical and non-ethical, yeah, those are always debatable and I don't know who will be the right person to comment on those part of it, but definitely it is possible to standardize and I think it is a good time to even work on those standardized mechanism. Both in terms of where the drones can be applied, how, what is the kind of safety regulations, safety precautions that you have to take, including simple things like for automobiles that indicator should always be there if the light is not working or you can be penalized but all these kind of things can be put up and I think they really need to be put up. In fact, one of the reasons why I think we are also struggling is because we never had this kind of dedicated thing from the early days, which is the aeromodeling days. This is, I mean, drones are like an evolution of the aeromodeling days and even during aeromodeling, they were, if you look at much of the Western countries in US and everything, you had dedicated drones where you can do aeromodeling, flying, you know, all of those things are, and you have to follow certain rules. You can't step on to beyond a barricade, you cannot go into the field, inside the field only flying, only the pilot can get into, there are no support person. These kind of rules were there and people used to follow them, but here they were not. People would just fly anywhere that they found the space to fly, sometimes over there, you know, also, or random dried up lake in Hebal used to be, not Hebal, because Kote used to be our favorite to go and fly drones. So I think starting from there, we missed the gun and I think now we still have to start and catch up and actually it is possible to form the, you know, standardization and I think we should focus on that. Do you have a take on it? No, I'm not on this particular, I'm not on this question. Okay, so I think when we talk of drones, so, and pardon me for being, for bringing this up again and again, because this is essentially what my sort of life's work has been for essentially the good part of the last six months, the potential of, you know, misusing a drone to begin with, just the bad things associated with it, that can be made possible. Second thing is when that particular technology is given to a state department or a police station or a, you know, even with different police station and with different police station jurisdictions, you see a different kind of behavior in terms of how people approach these things. So A, so B, things with that particular police station with that particular police jurisdiction and C, essentially generally how things have been, have really played out so far in which the police has been a completely lackadaisical in maintaining written orders. It seems as though the DGC has been completely left out of the equation when it was supposed to be the enforcing and the regulatory authority for drones, how the DGC has practically been silent for the good part of the last two years ever since the policy came into force. So how exactly do you think that this entire ecosystem could potentially be made better so that we can actually sort of take out the better part of the drones and leave aside the things that we don't really want them to be doing in the society? So how do you see this entire infrastructure of a drones flying in the air and not actually sort of happening your civil rights? How exactly are we going to approach there? It's two, it's the both of you. Yeah. So I'll go first Kishore, that's okay. Sure, sure. So essentially that's a really large question, right? As to what does like a healthy drone ecosystem in the country look like? Some would argue that what's currently at play is healthy where the state gets to use drones to do whatever they want with them and everyone else has to apply for permission and if the state thinks the permission is good enough then you go with it, right? And that's, I don't think precisely it's very healthy, right? Because there are again uses of drones which are outside of state control which might in a sense be very healthy for the civil society, which is again using drones to regulate state actions using drones to map out to map out areas which are contested by, for example, mining companies who the state is supporting, right? So these are all uses, like again, like the idea of being able to submit drone footage to a court when contesting something which the state wants, right? It's important again, the reason for democracy the reason to have these the pillars of like an executive, legislative and judicial is so that there is a healthy balance between all things. At this point of time, if drones can only be used by the state against civil society and not by civil society to protect its own interests and that goes against the interests of the other country as a whole, right? Because again, then you start becoming a authoritarian as opposed to being a liberal democracy. So just give that as a upfront thing of my personal sense on this. I do think that it is possible to deregulate, to deregulate drone use to some extent but also decentralize drone control right now. Again, all of it is with the DGC sitting out of Delhi. What's been happening in the past few weeks because of the pandemic, again, not the lockdown, but the pandemic itself is that states are having to bypass the DGC to actually do what they want because they are finding use for drones in some way or the other. Now again, like I was saying earlier some of these might be gimmicky uses but it is still things the states want to use drones for. So I'll interject you there. Even before the, to be honest, because I've reported on this particular issue even before the pandemic began and we saw with the protests around CAA rising, erupting essentially around the country and followed that with the Delhi elections. So we did file a bunch of RTIs about drone uses in these very particular instances. And that is when we came to know that that was essentially my lead into knowing that the police essentially doesn't own a lot of drones that it flies. And also the fact that it doesn't even fly those drones themselves. So the liability and the responsibilities basically shifted to someone else. So even before the pandemic actually hit us we've been seeing instances where the DGC has been completely sidelined. There have been no orders. There have been no clearances taken. Officers which have been reported onto as in using drones flying in the air they don't have an order and even they just don't have an order. And even if they do, they don't have the data maintained centrally somewhere. That's fascinating. Because that's fascinating. Because the idea is that again the DGC is purpose and what the minister of civilization, I think the junior minister of civilization as well as other government have said is that they want the drone industry to take off to actually be a large contributor to India's GDP in the years to come because it's an industry which is growing. But the rules that they currently are ensure that only operators who work for the state or play by this or who are in favor of the state are allowed to actually operate and do what they want to. So for me personally, I would like to say a lot more NGOs using drones, right? Now almost no NGOs, I know of in India use drones. There have been amazing uses of drones and of aerial imagery or satellite imagery by NGOs across the world. For example, in Bangladesh after the protests, the riots, the genocide in Myanmar or the Rovingya camps in Bangladesh, there was lots of drone mapping done to actually make conditions for them on the ground better. There were numerous examples of this worldwide of civil society using drones for good. In India right now, I would say that's impossible for civil society because the regulations mean that if an NGO who again is regulated by the FCRA, decides to try to use drones, they have to follow every single rule in the book even if the rules contradict each other. While if a police department or any other government department wants to do the same, they can just go and do it and they don't have any consequences to suffer going forward, right? That needs to change to actually make it a healthy drone in the country. Sure. Yeah, so I have very little to say on this, but yes, I can understand that you can see the news reports recently also. The states are in open defiance of DGCA regulations when they're actually saying that simply we cannot follow the rules of DGCA in these conditions because that's too slow. We need immediate response. So there's no way that we can actually follow the rules in letter, in spirit, I don't know, but in letter, we simply cannot do it. So that's how it is right now and I see why, in fact, I think that the regulation should have taken care of emergency needs, which it doesn't. The emergency needs are our essential part. This was the part where, in fact, I had put down during the regulation framework also trying to say that there are certain aspects we have to cater to during emergency services. We may not be exactly able to follow these or there might be other reasons where you can't follow these kind of rules also. So where is the, how much? There's always this trade-off between freedom and misuse. So how it is, where is the line to be drawn and how it is to be drawn is very, very blurred. Okay, Kishore, we have a follow-up on Shashidha's initial question about standardization of drone manufacturing. So Shashidha's follow-up is, so when you say that we can standardize communication protocols, do you think that we should dedicate a band of spectrum for drone communication? And if that's possible, what are the possible implications for net neutrality in that particular instance? So I'm not very familiar with the net neutrality arguments around it, so I won't be able to say on that, but I don't think there's a necessity to actually do a separate bandwidth for this because with the way things are moving, we can continue to use the existing protocols and technology which is already in the market for this, which can include things like even your 4G and 5G networks for communication. It could include your Wi-Fi and it can include your other frequencies which is in the 2.4 ISM band itself to do this. So there is no real requirement for you to go with the separate spectrum. However, if we go beyond this small commercial usage and if we want to go into consumer usage and go into commercial usage, where we'll have to start synchronizing with air traffic control of the regular aircraft because we might be interfering with those safety requirements over there. During that time, there they have specific spectrums already allocated for air traffic control and you'll have to integrate within those things. Before this, you were actually discussing about how drones can potentially be used in, for instance, in healthcare services, essential services basically, to essentially behave like an enabler. So Mr. Ravi Krishnamurthy here has perhaps an add-on to that. He wants to know about the potential of users of drones specifically for agricultural purposes like for spraying pesticides or nutrients or even crop health analysis for carrying out crop health analysis. And before this discussion, I remember you saying that agriculture was one of those areas which was to begin with relaxed even when drones were being banned for 2014. So how do you essentially see that being out right now? So in terms of the regulation and the framework, if I have to say, as per the DGCA regulation which has come out in 2018 December, it specifically says that payload delivery and how does it define payload delivery is nothing should separate from the drone in flight. And that is the definition of payload delivery. So which means that you cannot do spraying at all legally, currently. So that is how the regulation is framed right now. However, there is a frequently asked questions that is attached to the regulation. And in that they say specifically for farmer use for pesticide and crop spraying, it will be allowed. That is in the FAQ and not in the, it's in the FAQ and the guidelines, not in the policy documenter. So that is one thing. So that therefore it's a little questionable, but it is allowed. But there is an other governing body which disallows it again. This is not to do with DGCA. There is another governing body. I'm not sure about what is the name of the government body. It is basically for, it is an agency which controls pesticide spraying and other things. General agricultural use of, general agricultural use in which it very clearly says that aerial spraying on farms is not allowed, which includes drones now. And the justification that they may have, which I assume I'm not entirely certain of it, aerial spraying is not allowed in farms because aerial spraying is typically done from a higher altitude, which basically means that when your spraying happens, it will go into areas which is not the target area and which is undesirable. And therefore they have restricted spraying from aerial drones itself. So this is from the regulatory legal perspective. Even if DGCA has allowed drone spraying in their guidelines and the FAQ, it is still restricted by the, I think it is what ministry it is, I'm not really sure. It is the agriculture and farming ministry or something like that. I have to check the actual agency that allows it. Kishore, what I told is particularly interesting given that as we were entering sort of the peak of this pandemic spreading in the country where almost everyone started, every state started taking this essentially as a pandemic and started treating it essentially as one, is that we saw drones actually being deployed and sort of being used to spray disinfectants around particular areas within the state. So now that you say that the only sort of relaxation was to spray disinfectants when farmers are using them. So how essentially did that, I mean, when drones are being used to spray disinfectants over cities, how does that not violate DGCA's norms in that case from what you said? In my understanding it violates. Okay. But who's going to build a cat? Okay. Shashank, I have a question for you particularly because you've been involved, you've worked with the UP government's forest department. So I want to understand, so when a particular government body approaches you for a particular project, so what exactly is there scope of work to begin with and do you see that sort of with time and as the project carries on, do you see that particular scope also widening in its reach? So that's my first part of the question. The second is what exactly were you supposed to a capture and whatever footage you capture, how did the data sharing happen? How exactly it was ensured that what you captured became the government's property and you did not retain any bit of it and whatever the government took away from you, how exactly was that data stored, processed, what were the safeguards? I want to understand how that particular process was. So the project happened, this particular one we did happen in 2017, the very short project, only for about three days, the scope of the project didn't widen at all and again to clarify, this was not a project and a tender for the government because tenders take time. So in this case, what was the mode of operation was that like a large NGO who knew the forest department well, got in touch with us and said, hey, by the way, the forest department wants to use drones for this operation and we can cover your cost for it, we'll need to do it. And he said, yes, sure, we'll do it. So in a sense, there's no financial transition between the government body who authorized the operation and wanted the operation and the drone operator in this context. And that's pretty normal from what I can make. Because again, it's hard for the government to do quick short-term projects which are being paid for. So even in the current time under the current pandemic, it's unclear as to how much of the drone work being done is volunteer drone work by drone operators who are doing it in the interest of getting further work in the future than the government. So it's a way to do free work so they're validating their operating credentials with like the police department so that they can use them for letters of reference going forward. How much of those work is paid? And again, I have absolutely no insight into what the funding mechanism is. For example, all the drone surveillance work is happening for the pandemic right now across the country. So they've been projects in Delhi, projects in Ahmedabad, in Telangana, there are NOAAF which have definitely been well advertised. But again, who's paying for it, how it's being paid for is unclear at this point in time. We met to our specific team, which was again, before the regulations in the current form were implemented. What the state department wanted is they wanted drones to be flown to actually find this drone type, right? So they wanted us to, like what's the scope of it? Which is that fly drones for this many hours a day and looking for a tiger under supervision of the forest department official in charge on the ground, right? In that case, every time it was the PCCF, the principal chief on the way to the forest for the state because it was such a high profile project. And the drones were flown, the live stream of the drone video was being shared with the forest officials on the ground who were there with us. They were using it to actually do command and control. So that is interesting where they were looking at the footage from above and actually making things happen on the ground in accordance with that, right? So they were telling, okay, I send an elephants that way because that area needs to be closed off, put up a fence here because we can see that there's a gap where the tiger might run out of. So that was being done using the drone footage. But the other one testing is even back then because this was three years ago was that people weren't really familiar with drone at that point of time. So in one case, we were on one particular day, we were told to fly a drone over an area where they knew that there was no chance of finding a tiger because they wanted the local population who were streaming out, looking at the operation to actually come and move away from the actual operation site. So they, we saw the drones that people gathered around to actually look at the drone while the elephants and the forest guards conducted this operation a few kilometers away, right? So it was used as a, in a sense, not as surveillance, but as a distraction to make sure that the work could happen unhindered, but I didn't really expand to the scope of work because we're just going to fly a drone in aid of this tiger capture project and that's what we actually did. And all the footage we collected, again, it had people were captured in the footage, but they were incidental captures because the main focus was the actual operation itself. And all the footage captured was handed over to the forest department who, at that point of time, were very explicit about the fact that they didn't want this footage showing up on any TV channel or any media anywhere else, right? Again, there was, so for this entire project, okay, there's no written paperwork actually saying, go ahead and do the project, right? There's no financial tail-linking the government to the drone operators in this context. There's, it's all completely, in a sense, deniable and this was, again, a few years ago, but there's no way to actually track back and say, okay, who ordered what at what point of time? Because a lot of it, as Kishore mentioned, is verbal, is over the phone, is people who are meeting and then speaking to each other and again, not for any reason of secrecy, but just because that's the way things operate on the ground. So things are just being done in that particular manner. The case today is not very different. Even with the regulation in place, things still operate the same way on the ground as well, which you're all familiar with and that does need to change. Things need to be more formal to actually ensure accountability. There's been a follow-up question from Mr. Ravi who asked about the initial question about the use of drones for agricultural purposes. So Mr. Ravi's asking if there is any chance that the no-spring regulation could potentially come out of the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizer. Kishore, that's for you. Okay, yeah, I'm not sure. I'm just checking out the details of that, but as per, it is supposedly, as per the insecticide act. Okay. According to the insecticide act, you cannot use drones and unmanned machines and hazardous tools for spraying hazardous chemicals. I'm just trying to read through the details as we speak. It is insecticides act 1968. Aerial application of pesticides needs approval permission from the Central Insecticides Board. Further, no permission approval has been granted by the Central Insecticide Board in the past for the use of the drones to spray pesticides. So Central Insecticides Board, that's the governing body there. Okay, so we have a very interesting question here. It's from an anonymous attendee, but the question is quite interesting. So of course, biometric data is under the current personal data protection bill, which is being deliberated upon by a joint parliamentary committee, classifies biometric data under sensitive personal data. And of course, the thing that a drone records, which includes your facial data, your thermal data, potentially all of them fall under biometrics and as a result under sensitive personal data. So do you think, in that particular instance, because it's dealing with something as serious as sensitive personal data and the data protection bill in its current form, also emphasizes a lot of, say, that particular category of personal data, do you think it's in protection? Is that for me? It's open to both of you. Okay, I'm not, I don't understand the privacy. I mean, I'm not very familiar with the whole privacy argument that's going on. So therefore, I'm not a very good person to be talking in those lines. However, yes, I do agree that when we have seen this and data privacy in the way the operations have been in the past, it's always been a concern, even for us also. Because at any time, will this be brought back and labeled on us? I mean, as a business, I've been more interested in safeguarding my own business at that time. So it's like, whenever I'm handing over data because I have the problem, you know, when I'm being handed over, when we were doing data, even for the national highways and other places, you, they were supposed to be in the original discussion. You know, you have like a secure login. We are supposed to copy our data into those particular places and those kind of things were talked about. But when it actually comes to action, or it is like a very casual hard disk, you take one hard disk somewhere, it goes, then I have to call him back and ask him so many times, you have to give me back my hard disk, I need to copy your data, this kind of, you know. And then he'll say, I'm coming, I'll come in one hour, I've got to go to this place, I've got to, I mean, it's extremely casual. That's what I want to say. It's always been extremely casual in handling of data. But in terms of what kind of concerns we should have, I think a person who is studying privacy should be a better person to argue about that. I mean, I would of course say that anyone who's dealing with the use of drones and the police in particular, given the kind of abuse that's possible in their hands, of course, drones should be held to extremely high safety standards and to extremely stringent protocols. Shashank, would you want to answer? Yeah, sure, that's a really, it's a really good question. And I would definitely answer that. I don't know about higher standards, but all of it should be held to a high standard, all biometric data. So even with drone use, there are practices, people can follow on the ground. So one reference is this group called V-Dobotics, which is based out of Switzerland. It's a large drones for good humanitarian action, nonprofit sets up groups of what they call flying labs across the world, which essentially consortiums of drones for good users in various countries. So in India, for example, we are part of the India Flying Lab, which is one such group. Now V-Dobotics is also one of the formulators for the humanitarian unmanned aerial vehicle operator network. So the humanitarian UAV network, which essentially formulates guidelines for the use of UAVs in humanitarian settings. And part of their guidelines include information on for drone operators on privacy, which essentially is that if you're capturing footage, try not to do any live streaming work, like you can always record footage and then trade back later. So don't do any live streaming work. And also when capturing footage, take it from top down, not at an angle, so that you don't capture people's faces in the footage, because that's almost never required from a humanitarian perspective, right? And those are good guidelines to follow even in regular drone use as we go forward. So I would definitely say people interested more in this, the UAV network is a good resource as it's V-Dobotics. And India specifically, what Medanama has been doing is fascinating. So again, those RTIs were really useful after the Delhi protests and the riots in terms of how the drones were being used. And also the internet freedom foundation has been doing some work around drones as well in India. So that's another good resource to look into for more information on privacy around drones. You said interesting about the shooting angles very particularly because at least with the Kerala story that we did, the police have actually, and the stories from last week, from what I remember, is that the police said that in only that one small district, they had arrested at least 170 people in within three days itself, people who are violating the lockdown. So this clearly means that it was definitely not just a top-down thing to perhaps scare away people into their homes, but the police was very actually and very actively looking for people who are violating it and they were actually hunting them down after that. No, this is also footage of angry shots where you can see people's faces quite clearly. They've been, again, looking back to the issue of abuse in the hands of the police, right? In terms of the whole three issues. There have been cases, again, I've seen footage from Ahmedabad where drones are being used to film people on their rooftops. So you have no idea whether they're part of one family but they're all living in one building, obviously. They're up on the roof enjoying the evening and then a drone fell overhead and captures footage of all of them, right? And they're on private property. Again, complete violation of the civil rights and it's absolutely useless in the terms of enforcing a lockdown because what do you get out of chasing people on private property who are in the same building back indoors when they're out on their roofs? It's not like a virus like spread by line of sight, right? It's biological. It's not this, like, irrational. If you look at someone, you can get a virus, right? But that's the way they're acting. And drones are totally being used to enforce this very perverse notion of what a lockdown should look like. Kishore, I had a question for you in particular. So this morning I did a story. This was a small instance from a place called Morbi city in Gujarat by the police. The video went quite well. You must be aware of it. Where two entrepreneurial gentlemen were actually using a drone and on the drone was tied two tobacco packets and they were essentially distributing it among themselves. So the police arrested both of them on the charges of delivering a non-essential commodity during the lockdown under section 188, so which wasn't allowed. But when I asked them about why they did not also charge them on using a drone without any kind of a clearance, the police in that police station told me that they did not even know what kind of a drone it was and what they should even start doing about it. So with all the kind of relaxations and limitations within the digital side policy that for instance a nano drone can be used for a particular purpose, a micro drone can be used for another particular purpose. So do you think that on the ground when police people will actually be implementing this thing, there perhaps is not enough knowledge which again results in the regulation not being implemented the way it is expected to be? Yeah, I think there is definitely a lack of information because I think the police generally tend to look at it from the current situation of what they think is right and what they think is wrong. So if they, even their own judgment that they think the cause is justified, then you are let go of whatever you are creating. So it is like that way I think they take that independent description that tends to happen in the way it operates right now. But yes, I think it is very difficult to tell, justify a good legitimate, good use and differentiate it from bad use of a drone. So I think that complication is going to be there. Not now, it's going to be there even in the future. I think a lot in actual implementation of distinguishing between a good use and a bad use over there. In this particular case that you are telling me, I see there are different cases that can actually be filed. One is your distribution of this thing. But definitely I think there is another side of it which is to say that illegal flying of drone itself is the case to book. So I think they can definitely be charged whether it is in the big picture for writing to do or not as per the law, I think they can be charged for illegal flying also. And then there is an also a problem. It's like for example, the crop spraying drones when if DGCA has given, whether it is how legitimate is a guideline or a FAQ be giving you permission to do a crop spraying drone when the regulation does not allow it. So I don't know the legitimacy of that. But even if I take that as the rule and say that okay, you can do a farmer thing, the same drones which were in under that category built for farming are today doing disinfectant spraying in the city. It's an illegal use for, I mean the reason that they were allowed to build that particular drone itself was for certain other cause and now it is not being used for that purpose. So I think yeah, there are a lot of good, there's going to be a lot of questioning that can happen around all of these things. I think it's only because it is enforced by a government agency that it's going to be taken lightly. But otherwise I think as for the purely speaking by the rule book, it's illegal in all ways. Shashank, would you want to weigh into that? Yeah, I completely agree with Tishor. Like the thing is you can easily prosecute to people trading tobacco using a drone but initially prosecuting everybody, right? Because the idea is that if you have laws which are so vague as to be selectively applied then they're unjust because you cannot just pick and choose when you can apply a law because that's not the way laws are supposed to work. They don't work one way for some people and a different way for other people. So if you're going to prosecute anyone on illegal flying, we should, everyone who's doing illegal flying which is everyone flying a civilian drone in India at this point of time to be prosecuted. Including the police. Exactly. Okay. Okay, I think I have one potentially big question about the silence of the DGCA in how the policy has been sort of implemented or the lack of the implementation of the policy and how the DGCA has been absolutely silent. How does, also in many instances been singled out and almost left out where its acknowledgement has not even been felt necessary. So do you think that perhaps the entire policy in itself needs a re-looking and to begin with the provisions might potentially be difficult to enforce and do you think all of that needs restructuring and reworking again just to ensure that the policy at the ground level is at least implementable and the DGCA can at least be kept in the know-how of how it's being used on the ground? My personal opinion is that if you try to make a framework which is going to be covering every aspect of potential views and misuse, it's going to be so exhaustive that nobody's actually going to follow it. I think it should be incremental. You bring in the, you make a rule which is rather very simplistic to begin with and you keep amending it or improving it based on the actual use case, how people are misusing it over time. So then you bring in a particular extra clause or whatever you need to do to actually curb that particular use. But I think trying to have an overarching entire spectrum covering regulation right from the start is not going to work out. And that's exactly how I think FAA started doing it because they had initially a fairly simplistic and they kept amending those rules and regulations based on the actual ground scenario, how people are using and misusing it based on that they would actually keep amending it. If you look at our regulation, there has only been one that has come out and it's tried to be over and covering the entire spying at least with the intent to cover the entire spectrum and it's not been effective from A to Z for anything. So it has not helped in any way that way. Well, to be fair, there were also talks of a drone policy 2.0 as soon as the first policy itself came out, I think within a month or two. But of course that hasn't materialized. Sushant, you were saying something. They did come up with a, they did come up with a, I think at the Aerospace Convention, I forgot the stage event that happened in January of 2019 last year. So that's when it was announced that the BVLOS 2.0 will be out and the draft is already ready. All of those things came out over there and then it's silencing. Sushant, give us things. So I do think that over here at least on the ground what's interesting is that the moment of the crisis and emergency where the different states felt that they had to do something about it, the policy just went out of the window, right? And I can let you think it's been happening for a while as well, but it's far more visible now in the past few weeks because just because the states are now have a very specificism, which is that, oh, we need drones early badly and the regulations are actually in the way, which is a very strong indicator that something needs to change drastically, right? And one way to look at it is the fact that the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the DGCA are responsible for like air safety among other things. So one way to partition it is to, you know, for example, make the safety part of drones come under the DGCA and the regulations only apply for safety around drone supply drones, for example, telling the nearest like Air Force Base or telling other aircraft operators in the area. So there's no untoward incident in the air itself, but actually operations happen with the consent of the local administration because we've had again, very good experiences working directly with district collectors and district administrators because they know what's hidden on the ground. They understand their jurisdiction very well. They're able to actually say, okay, fine, this operation is going to help like civil society at last. So we permit the operation, right? And again, they have local information on this. And that's definitely one way to actually take things forward because at this point of time, the current scenario is not working for anybody. So Akishwet Singh, something? Srinivas, you want to weigh in some? So I want to ask one question. So we had a couple of drone instances in the UK, I believe, which resulted in airport lockdowns. I think it was Glasgow Airport, maybe, where? UK, UK. Yeah, I think that works. Okay, yeah, the Gatwick Instance. So when we had someone claiming they spotted a drone and the entire airport like shuts down, all the flights are halted, then the cops essentially send in choppers to find this drone. So anybody who sees a chopper thinks it's actually a drone in the night, I think it was the pilots actually who was trying to take off, who reports the traffic controller that he has seen an unidentified object. He doesn't know if it's a drone. He doesn't know what it is. So now which brings this question to, let's bring this question to a DGCA. Will the DGCA only wake up when it comes to the safety question of airports and the drone being spotted at the airport? What does it take to actually bring safety into the picture, regulating drones in the right way so that we avoid this? I mean, it could be a hoppy thing. It could be actually someone miscretion who's probably doing this. But the concerns do remain and DGCA actually takes its counter civil aviation authority seriously because during the consultations they were actually receiving a lot of inputs from their brother and sister organizations who would tell them what they should be doing. So will the Indian experience matter to others or will it's a larger policy question that I have? There was actually a particular, I mean, you quoted the UK acting that happened, event that happened, but a similar thing also happened in India and it was not reported so widely and not so seriously taken, but I think the warning signals went out even during India itself also. So yes, I think there is a good case for it. In fact, I think that this is the reason why anti-drone technology is an area that I think is of very high importance and it is my understanding that the real drone regulation, which is as of now just I wash, is real drone regulation is actually going to take off when they have anti-drone technology. So that will be the key to actually getting a full-fledged drone, effective drone regulation in India. That is my understanding and anti-drone technology is as of now best understood in three, four months. One is completely shoot down a drone which you think is illegal. That's one method to do it. Then the second method is where you actually take control of the drone and bring it landed down to safety. And the third method is where you completely jam the communication and assume that in the jam communication it is taken care of, the drone is taken care of, sort of like that. So effective anti-drone technology is I think the key to getting a very good drone policy. Shashank, do we have a comment on this particular question? No, that's fine. I'm sure it's really covered that well. Okay, so I think it was a pretty fascinating discussion, especially for me because I've been, A, I've also been very limited in the way that I've been looking at drones, especially with how the police uses it. But of course there's an entire gamut on how potentially drones can be enables but also a significant privacy and surveillance concerns. So what we're essentially seeing a play out in India at least in the last year is that drones have essentially been a tool of state surveillance. They've helped the police almost every time that they wanted it to pull the police has been absolutely whimsical in the way that they've been deploying drones. There's never written order, like I've regurgitated at least n number of times by now, which of course raises questions around accountability and transparency in the entire process. Then there are concerns about what the drone policy in itself can do, if it can in itself be an enabler, if it helps Indian manufacturers, if it helps them in the competition from certain Chinese manufacturers, also from the US, especially for defense and commercial drones. What my sense essentially is from here is that drones will and are becoming tools that we'll perhaps see more and more, especially after the lockdown ends. I do hope that people who use drones do not end up abusing them and they keep in mind that people do, people roaming around in the streets should not be viewed as essentially criminals and they have to prove otherwise. Drones should not hamper people's civil liberties. People are people and yeah. So I think it was a pretty great discussion. We talked about the policies and if the policies need reworking and how the DGC has been silenced. So the DGC perhaps should look at the discussion and potentially wake up to the occasion. So the attendees will see a feedback form at the end of the discussion. I would urge them to use the form and leave their feedback about the discussion. Also mention things that we should consider perhaps for discussions from here. I would also urge all of you to please join friends.haskey.com. That way we can keep updating you about discussions and we can keep chatting about what we are about to do next. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope to see you all a few very soon. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you Sushant. Thank you so much. Thank you. See you.