MeitY and Drone Federation India launch NIDAR 2.0 for indigenous drones

📌 Summary:

• MeitY, with Drone Federation India (DFI), launched NIDAR 2.0 (National Innovation Challenge for Drone Application and Research, 2026-27) under the SwaYaan capacity-building initiative
• The challenge tasks student teams to build autonomous drones powered by India's indigenous VEGA processor, developed under the Digital India RISC-V (DIR-V) programme to cut dependence on foreign chip designs and licensing costs
• Prize pool of over ₹65 lakh, plus startup incubation, cloud credits, software support and internships
• First edition (2025-26) drew 3,448 students from 22 states, 4 UTs and 109 cities; solutions built for Disaster Management and Precision Agriculture; 93 teams reached the Grand Finale, 24 won prizes worth ₹40 lakh
• NIDAR 2.0 shifts focus from conventional airframes to autonomous systems, indigenous avionics and core drone components across two tracks
• Aim: build a self-reliant (Atmanirbhar) drone industry

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS3 (S&T) — drone technology, indigenous semiconductors, Atmanirbhar Bharat in electronics.

📝 Prelims Facts:

• VEGA processor is developed under the DIR-V (Digital India RISC-V) programme
• RISC-V is an open-standard instruction set architecture (ISA)
• SwaYaan is MeitY's drone capacity-building initiative; DGCA regulates civil drones in India

🔑 Key Term: RISC-V — an open, royalty-free instruction set architecture for designing processors, reducing reliance on proprietary foreign chip designs.