Chabahar Port & National Quantum Mission
Topic 1 : Chabahar Port
The port is of strategic importance to both Iran and India. Why is it getting delayed — and how soon could it progress here onward?
Context: During this visit to Iran, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar held discussions with the Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mehrdad Bazrpash on establishing a long-term cooperation framework for the Chabahar port in the south of the country.
Chabahar, which sits at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman, is Iran’s first deepwater port that puts the country on the global oceanic trade route map. The port lies to the west of Iran’s border with Pakistan, about as far as Gwadar, a competing port developed by China in Pakistan, lies to the east of the border.
Chabahar is of strategic importance to both Iran and India. It can potentially help Tehran ward off the effect of Western sanctions, and offers New Delhi an alternative route that bypasses Pakistan, which does not allow India land access for trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia.
The port is also part of the proposed International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a multi-modal transportation project linking the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea via Iran, and onward to northern Europe via St Petersburg in Russia.
What is the nature of India’s involvement in the Chabahar port?
India’s involvement in the development of the port began in 2002, when Hassan Rouhani, then National Security Advisor to President Syed Mohammad Khatami, held discussions with his Indian counterpart, Brajesh Mishra. On President Khatami’s visit to India the following year, he and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee signed a roadmap of strategic cooperation, one of the key projects in which was Chabahar.
The emergence of a hostile Pakistan after Partition severed India’s land connections with Iran and Central Asia. This, however, did not greatly impact India’s closed economy in the four decades that followed Independence. It’s only after the 1990s, as the Indian economy opened up and India’s engagement with the world began to grow, that it began to look at trade routes as a central element of its larger geopolitical strategy.
India and Iran began to cooperate more closely once the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996. Both countries were against the Pakistan-created Sunni Islamist militia, and backed the Northern Alliance led by Ahmed Shah Massoud. As India sought to get past the Pakistani block on land transit access to Afghanistan, the search for an alternative route became more urgent.
The easiest routes for India to Central Asia and Russia are through Pakistan and Afghanistan. The next best is through Iran, which borders Central Asia and the Caspian Sea. Even as India sought access to Afghanistan, it was also looking at what was called the INSTC, which would take it to Russia and the European territories.
The Chabahar project became even more important for India after China began to develop the Gwadar port in Pakistan as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
How much of the Chabahar port has been developed?
There are two distinct ports in the Chabahar project, Shahid Beheshti and Shahid Kalantari. India’s investment is restricted to the Shahid Beheshti port.
India, Iran, and Afghanistan signed a trilateral agreement in April 2016, after which the Indian Shipping Ministry worked at a rapid pace towards developing the port. In December 2017, the first phase of Shahid Beheshti port was inaugurated, and India sent its first consignment of wheat to Afghanistan through Chabahar that same year.
Two years later, Afghan exports to India passed through the port for the first time. India received four such consignments that year.
But why is it taking so long to develop the port?
India has traditionally had trouble implementing ambitious infrastructure projects in its neighbourhood. From Nepal to Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Iran, Delhi has made commitments on building power projects, highways, railways, and other infrastructure. Each proceeds slowly or not at all.
More specifically, however, geopolitical roadblocks, the biggest of which is Iran’s relationship with the US, have been the major reason for the delay.
The US had put Iran in the so-called “axis of evil” along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea which put pressure on New Delhi to go slow in its relationship with Tehran.
The US-Iran relationship started to improve temporarily after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed between Iran and the P5+1 and the European Union in 2015 when Barack Obama and Rouhani were Presidents.
The Donald Trump administration, however, walked the US out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, and imposed sanctions on dealing with Tehran. A “carve-out” was provided to India for Chabahar, but it was difficult under the sanctions regime to find international suppliers for the material required to develop the port. The US exit from Afghanistan and the return to power of the Taliban in August 2021 came as a further blow as India snapped ties with Kabul. The situation has improved since — in 2022, India reopened its embassy in Kabul and announced Rs 200 crore of development assistance to Afghanistan.
New Delhi also allocated Rs 100 crore for the Chabahar port project, and said in 2023 that it would send 20,000 metric tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan through the port.
What happens in the project here onward?
The pace of development of Chabahar port will be impacted by US-Iran ties, which have been deteriorating steadily and could worsen dramatically in the event of Trump returning to the White House early next year.
The ongoing crisis in the Red Sea, a spillover of the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, has made the situation in the entire region extremely volatile and unpredictable. Since November last year, Yemen’s Houthi militia, which Iran backs, has harassed commercial vessels passing through this major global shipping lane, drawing retaliatory strikes by the US and the UK.
This week’s tit-for-tat missile strikes by Iran and Pakistan targeting militant bases in each other’s territory marked an escalation in an unexpected direction, the full implications of which remain to be seen.
India has said it has zero tolerance for terror and the Houthi attacks on commercial vessels harm its interests. But after the Iranian cross-border strikes in Pakistan, it also acknowledged that countries need to take actions “in their self defence”.
The Chabahar project comes with its challenges, mainly susceptibility to American sanctions and pressures, the volatility and continuing uncertainties in Afghanistan, and the seeming incompatibility with the BRI. However, through active and visionary diplomacy and efficient implementation and operations of the project, Iran and India can overcome these challenges and should be able to maintain the Chabahar project as a viable transit hub and link.
Topic 2 : National Quantum Mission
Context : The Union Cabinet approved the Mission last week at a cost of Rs 6,000 crore. It will be implemented from 2023 to 2031.
The National Quantum Mission, launched by the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, aims to catapult efforts across the nation to engineer and utilise the delicate quantum features of photons and subatomic particles to build advanced sensors that boost the value added by these enterprises and to support sustainable development.
How can quantum physics help?
- Medical Diagnostics:
In medical diagnostics, these sensors play a central role in sensing the very feeble signals emitted by atomic nuclei in tissues and detecting diseases. They sense the weak magnetic fields generated by neurons and map the brain’s activity, helping experts detect neurological illnesses at an early stage.
- Transportation And Logistics Systems:
It’s used in the Global Positioning System (GPS) to measure small deviations in space and time, allowing us to build sophisticated transportation and logistics systems on the ground.
- Better studying of Physical Phenomena in Space :
Quantum mechanics can help us built sensitive sensors which can over come the challenges associated with detection of light used to detect physical phenomena in space .
4 To propel research
National Quantum Mission (NQM) will allow Indian scientists to develop indigenous technology, systems, devices, and materials required to propel research and development in quantum technology.
Under the NQM, there will be four thematic hubs (T-hub) operating for each of the four verticals:
- Quantum Computing
- Quantum Communication
- Quantum Sensing and Metrology
- Quantum Materials and Devices
What it benefits?
The NQM will be spearheaded by the DST between 2023-24 and 2030-31. The mission is expected to benefit communication, health, finance, and energy as well as drug design and Space applications.
The mission targets the development of intermediate-scale quantum computers with 50-1,000 physical qubits in eight years in various platforms like superconducting and photonic technology. Satellite-based secure quantum communications between ground stations over a range of 2,000 kilometres within India, long distance secure quantum communications with other countries, inter-city quantum key distribution over 2,000 km as well as multi-node quantum network with quantum memories are among the other deliverables.
What is Quantum Technology?
Quantum technology is a class of technology that works by using the principles of quantum mechanics (the physics of sub-atomic particles), including quantum entanglement and quantum superposition.
Quantum computers go beyond mere speed; they represent a fundamental departure from classical computing. Leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics and sub-atomic properties, they employ quantum bits (qubits) instead of classical bits. Qubits exist in multiple states simultaneously due to superposition, enabling the parallel processing of vast data volumes.
Quantum entanglement: allows qubits to influence one another instantaneously, irrespective of distance, enabling concepts like quantum teleportation and communication. Practical-scale quantum computers, however, are still in early developmental stages, limiting these possibilities.