Securing sustainability in Indian agriculture through civilian UAV: a responsible innovation perspective

摘要

Emerging technology like civilian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has the potential to exert an impact on agricultureproduction and crop damages assessment. Securing sustainability in agriculture requires accountability and responsibilityof the actors engaged in the deployment of the civilian UAV due to associated deployment risks and unintendedconsequences. UAV technology has the potential to replace remote sensing technologies like satellite imageries andpiloted aircraft used in the crop insurance business. The governance of deployment of UAV technology in India is a complexchallenge when a well-developed regulatory system is not in place and diverse actors involved in the deploymentand operation of civilian UAV for agricultural applications. Therefore, two main questions, how UAV innovations can leadto sustainability in Indian agriculture and how are the issues of governance of civil UAV innovations in crop insurance applicationsaddressed, are dealt with. The responsible innovation approach is adopted as a theoretical framework. The exploratoryand qualitative study used in-depth interviews, and the interviewees were selected through snowball samplingtechnique. The results suggest that in the governance of emerging technologies like UAV certain values such as trust,transparency, safety, autonomy, and environmental friendliness assumed high significance. Findings also suggest thatUAV has the risk-taking ability in adverse weather condition. The UAV technology also creates values (social, economicand environmental) for deployment in the crop insurance business in India.