Abdul Kalam Evaded Satellites At Pokhran. Now Punjab Farmers Are Doing It

New Delhi: Dr APJ Abdul Kalam mastered satellite evasion for Pokhran's atomic tests. Today, Punjab and Haryana farmers use similar tactics to evade farm fire detectionIn May 1998, under the leadership of scientists including Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, India conducted the Shakti series of five nuclear tests at Pokhran in Rajasthan while successfully concealing crucial preparations from some of the most sophisticated American spy satellites in orbit.Farmers have now learned that satellites can only see what happens when they pass overhead. If fields are set ablaze outside those observation windows, many fires go undetected.The latest sign of this challenge is the launch of Fire Watch, a new multi-satellite monitoring platform developed by the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology (iFOREST). The platform has been designed as traditional fire-counting methods are missing a substantial part of the picture."Current monitoring relies on fire counts from polar-orbiting satellites, which give an incomplete picture of stubble burning," said Dr Chandra Bhushan, CEO of iFOREST."To design effective interventions, we need to know not only how many fires are detected, but also where and when burning takes place and how much land is affected. Fire Watch brings these data together to make better information available to policymakers and the public."Officially, detected farm fires have fallen dramatically from the peak levels of nearly 80,000 incidents reported in 2021 to roughly 6,000 in 2025. Enforcement measures, penalties, machinery subsidies and awareness campaigns have undoubtedly played an important role. But experts also acknowledge that farmers have become aware of how and when satellites observe their fields.Current operational monitoring relies primarily on four polar-orbiting Earth observation satellites. These include NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors flying aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites, and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite or VIIRS sensors carried on the Suomi NPP and NOAA-20 satellites.These four systems generate most of the fire alerts used across northern India.The challenge is that all four observe a given location only during specific times of the day. Their overpasses are clustered around daylight and midday periods.Fire WatchRecognising this blind spot, iFOREST built Fire Watch to use a larger constellation of satellites rather than rely exclusively on conventional fire counts.The platform integrates data from MODIS and VIIRS for active fire detection, while adding observations from Meteosat-8 and Meteosat-9 carrying the SEVIRI instrument. Unlike polar-orbiting satellites that make only periodic visits overhead, these geostationary satellites observe the same region repeatedly, generating imagery approximately every fifteen minutes.This makes it possible to identify not just where fires occur but when burning activity reaches its peak.The third layer comes from Sentinel-2 imagery. By comparing conditions before and after the burning season, analysts can estimate how much agricultural land has actually burned.A fire count measures only detected flame events. It does not necessarily reveal the total extent of damage or the actual area affected. Two districts may record similar numbers of fires while very different amounts of farmland are burned.Parliament Takes NoteA 2026 Parliamentary Standing Committee recently observed that, despite India's achievements as a leading space power, the country continues to rely heavily on foreign satellite systems for monitoring forest fires and similar environmental events.The Committee noted significant diurnal observation gaps and urged the Department of Space to prioritise development of a geostationary satellite capable of round-the-clock fire monitoring.India possesses some of the technological building blocks needed to address this challenge.The recently launched EOS-05, also known as GISAT-1A, is a major advance in persistent Earth observation.GISAT, designed to repeatedly image India, can image selected regions every five minutes and cover the entire Indian landmass every thirty minutes under cloud-free conditions. It functions almost like a giant CCTV camera positioned in geostationary orbit.Scientists believe such a platform could transform farm fire monitoring because it would reduce opportunities for exploiting observation gaps.However, the satellite still remains under in-orbit testing.EOS-05 is regarded as a strategic national asset, and its operational control structure involves defence and national security considerations. Consequently, environmental agencies may not automatically receive unrestricted access to its data products.Scientists Sound WarningMany scientists argue that this issue deserves careful reconsideration. If satellite observations can aid pollution control, they argue, then at least part of such EOS 5 satellite data should be made available for civilian environmental applications.Yet even without dedicated fire detection satellites, surveillance of burned fields has become increasingly sophisticated.While farmers may evade direct imaging of active flames, they cannot easily hide the aftermath.India's National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad, conducts regular analysis of burnt agricultural areas using, among others, high-resolution Cartosat-3 imagery.Even when the actual flames are not recorded, the scars they leave behind remain visible.These burnt area assessments are routinely shared with the Commission for Air Quality Management.This has transformed crop residue monitoring into an ongoing contest.