In 2018, catastrophic floods swept across South Indian state of Kerala, submerging farmland and leaving behind more than visible damage. When the waters receded, they revealed a deeper crisis—soil chemistry had changed, salinity had increased, and farming systems that had sustained communities for generations no longer behaved the same way.

For many farmers, the land had become unfamiliar.

For Devan Chandrasekharan, an aeronautical engineer with roots in farming, this moment marked a
turning point.

“That moment made it clear that agriculture needed more than incremental change,” he says. “It needed a different way of understanding what’s happening in the field.”

Today, as co-founder of Fuselage Innovations, a Kerala-headquartered agritech company with operations expanding across southern India and early international pilots, Devan is part of a new wave of innovators rethinking agriculture through technology.

From Fields to Flight Paths

Modern agriculture is increasingly shaped by data. But while satellite systems offer scale, they often lack immediacy. Cloud cover, delays, and low resolution limit their usefulness in time-sensitive decisions.

“In farming, timing is everything,” Devan notes. “If you cannot act at the right moment, even the best data loses its value.”

Fuselage Innovations addresses this gap using drones equipped with multispectral sensors, capable of capturing real-time, high-resolution data directly from the field. These systems detect early signs of stress—nutrient deficiencies, pest risks, or water imbalances—long before they become visible.

Farming as a Predictive System

The company’s approach goes beyond aerial imaging. It is built around a stage-wise model that tracks crop growth from early development to harvest, linking each phase to targeted interventions.

This transforms farming from a reactive process into a predictive one.

“Instead of responding to visible damage, we can identify stress signals early and intervene precisely,” Devan says. “That changes the entire economics of farming.”

The results are significant. Field applications have shown yield increases of up to 35 percent, alongside a reduction of nearly 50 percent in pesticide and fertiliser use. Precision spraying has also cut input volumes dramatically—from 150–200 litres per acre to just 10–15 litres—reducing both costs and environmental impact.

Scaling Beyond Boundaries

While the company’s early work was rooted in Kerala, its reach has expanded into Tamil Nadu and other parts of India, with pilot projects now extending to international markets such as Canada.

“Farming challenges may vary across regions, but the need for efficiency, sustainability, and better decision-making is universal,” Devan says.

Yet adoption remains a challenge. Farming is inherently risk-sensitive, and new technologies are often met with caution. To address this, the company initially offered its services free of cost, allowing farmers to see results before committing.

“Trust is the biggest barrier,” Devan says. “Farmers need to see the impact on their own fields before they adopt something new.”

The Future from Above

As climate pressures intensify and resource constraints deepen, agriculture is entering a new phase—one where data and precision will define productivity.

“Technology alone cannot solve agriculture,” Devan emphasises. “But when it is aligned with the realities of farmers and ecosystems, it can become a powerful tool for transformation.”

What began in the aftermath of a flood has now evolved into a model for the future—where farming is not just guided by tradition, but informed by intelligence.

Because the future of agriculture may not lie only in the soil—but in how we see it from above.

>> Rural water delivery in India has expanded rapidly under the Jal Jeevan Mission. But ensuring that water actually reaches homes every day now depends on better data, real-time monitoring, and systems like JalSoochak.

India built the pipes. Now comes the harder part.

Under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), more than 1.5 crore rural households have been connected to piped water supply — a number that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. But connection is not the same as service. The pipe in the ground tells you nothing about whether water came out of the tap this morning, in what quantity, or whether the source feeding it is under stress.

That gap — between infrastructure built and service delivered — is where India’s rural water systems are now being tested. And it is a gap that turns, fundamentally, on data.

Why Rural Water Delivery Depends on Better Data

Pump operators and Jal Mitras are the ones who know. They manage supply cycles, monitor pumps, and record water delivery across thousands of villages every day. But in most states, those records live in paper registers. They cannot be verified, compared across districts, or acted on quickly. By the time a problem surfaces through the usual channels, it has often been festering for weeks. Engineers and administrators are left reconciling inconsistent figures instead of responding to the thing that actually went wrong.

Arghyam, a Bengaluru-based philanthropic organisation founded by Rohini Nilekani, has been working on this problem. In partnership with Assam’s Public Health Engineering Department (PHED), it developed JalSoochak (Water indicator) — a platform designed to make frontline water delivery measurable, verifiable, and useful, all the way up the system.

How JalSoochak Is Transforming Rural Water Delivery

“Since the expansion of rural water infrastructure, understanding what is actually happening on the ground at scale has remained difficult. JalSoochak addresses this by enabling frontline workers to capture a simple image as evidence of water supply, while also giving Jal Mitras a verifiable record of their service delivery and attendance,” said Kailash Karthik, Secretary, Public Health Engineering Department, Government of Assam and Mission Director, Jal Jeevan Mission Assam.

The tool itself is straightforward. A frontline worker photographs a meter reading on their mobile phone. The image is processed using AI, the user verifies the reading, and it is logged as a daily record. What used to be a handwritten entry in a register — easily disputed, easily lost — becomes a time-stamped, verifiable data point that engineers, block-level officers, and state administrators can all see and act on.

Accumulated over months, those daily records start to show things that no single entry would. A supply dip that recurs every fortnight. A pump whose readings are quietly declining. A source under pressure before anyone has formally flagged it. Problems get caught earlier, and the people responsible for fixing them have the evidence they need to act.

How Assam Is Digitising Rural Water Delivery

The numbers from Assam are substantial. More than 16,500 pump operators now use JalSoochak, collectively logging over 20 lakh readings. Together, those entries account for more than 37,600 million litres of water supply recorded.

Assam also made something else clear: what works in one state will not simply work everywhere. Each state has its own administrative logic, its own infrastructure, its own ways of capturing supply data. JalSoochak had to be rebuilt to absorb that variation rather than ignore it.

The platform now supports multiple modes of input — bulk flow meters, electric meter readings, pump operation duration, IoT devices, and manual entries. It works in local languages. Rather than running parallel to existing government systems, it is built to plug into them, so the data flows to where decisions are actually made, without creating extra work for anyone in the chain.

“JalSoochak is not just a technology platform. It is an attempt to strengthen service delivery to ensure that the investments made in rural water systems translate into reliable services for people. The journey from Assam to a national scale Digital Public Good has been about one core idea: making data useful for action, where it matters most,” said Deepak Gupta, Director of Digital Infrastructure and Government Partnerships, Arghyam.

JalSoochak is part of a broader effort to build a Digital Public Infrastructure for India’s water sector — a set of open, interoperable systems through which data can move across programmes and institutions, enabling governments to respond to problems where and when they actually occur, rather than when they finally show up in a report.

Crores of households now have a connection. The question that follows is simpler, and harder: is the water actually there? Getting a reliable answer to that question, consistently, across every village and every state, is what the next phase of rural water delivery will depend on.

India green steel production could help the country avoid nearly US$1 trillion in future coking coal imports while strengthening its export competitiveness, according to a new study by the India Energy and Climate Center (IECC) at the University of California, Berkeley.

India could lock itself into nearly US$1 trillion worth of coking coal imports if the country continues expanding steel production through conventional blast furnace technology, according to a new study released by the India Energy and Climate Center (IECC) at the University of California, Berkeley.

The report argues that green steel — produced using green hydrogen instead of imported coking coal — offers India a strategic opportunity to reduce import dependence, shield itself from volatile global commodity markets, and gain an advantage in emerging low-carbon export markets.

India is expected to nearly double its steelmaking capacity over the next decade. According to the study, if much of this expansion follows the conventional route, the country could end up importing around 6 billion tonnes of coking coal over 40 years.

India Green Steel Seen as Strategic Alternative

“India is at a strategic decision point in steel,” said Neelima Jain, Director for Industrial and Trade Policy at IECC.

“If future capacity is built around imported coking coal, the country would hardwire currency and price volatility risks into one of its most important industrial sectors. Green steel offers an alternative path.”

The report says India’s expanding renewable energy capacity gives it a strong base to develop domestic green hydrogen production, which can replace coking coal in ironmaking.

IECC estimates that by 2030, green hydrogen in India could cost around US$3 per kilogram, enabling green steel production at roughly US$562 per tonne. That would place it only about 5–10% above conventional steel from new plants.

India Green Steel Could Reach Cost Parity by 2030

The study says that conventional steel remains vulnerable because it depends heavily on imported coal priced in U.S. dollars, while green steel can rely on long-term domestic renewable power contracts denominated in rupees.

“A static cost comparison misses the central economic point,” said Jose Dominguez, Research Manager at IECC.

“Conventional steel depends on imported coking coal priced in dollars. Green steel can be powered by domestic renewable electricity under long-term rupee contracts. Over time, that makes it far more resilient.”

Taking these factors into account, the report projects that green steel could achieve cost parity with conventional steel — or even become cheaper — around 2030.

India Green Steel: Export Markets Could Shift Towards Cleaner Steel

The report also warns that India’s carbon-intensive steel industry could face growing trade pressures as countries tighten climate-linked import rules.

It points specifically to the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which already covers steel imports. The mechanism imposes carbon-related costs on imported goods based on their emissions intensity.

“India’s green hydrogen costs are among the lowest globally,” said Nikit Abhyankar, Co-Faculty Director of IECC.

“India could be one of the few countries where green steel becomes economically viable within this decade, giving domestic producers an edge in export markets. It could also strengthen competitiveness in downstream manufacturing sectors such as automobiles and machinery.”

Policy Support Seen as Critical

The study says favourable economics alone may not be enough to kickstart large-scale green steel projects. It calls for policy support measures including long-term purchase agreements, reliable access to clean power, emissions verification standards and risk-sharing mechanisms for early investments.

“India’s experience scaling renewable energy and energy storage shows that well-designed public policy can accelerate cost reduction, unlock private investment, and speed early deployment,” said Amol Phadke, Faculty Director of IECC.

“Green steel will require a similarly deliberate market-creation effort.”

The report states India now faces a narrow window to decide how its next wave of steel expansion will be financed and whether the country can position itself competitively in a global industrial economy that is steadily shifting towards low-emission manufacturing.