Night Time Light radiance in India rose 43% in last 10 years: Report

The normalised Night Time Light (NTL) radiance in India jumped 43 per cent in 2021 as compared to 2012, the latest data from the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) showed as reported by The Times of India. The night light is used by economists to track the economic growth of regions across the globe.
 
According to NTL Atlas, released by Isro's National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), some states saw a growth of over 400 per cent in the past decade.
 
"Significant increase was observed in Bihar (474 per cent), Manipur (441 per cent), Ladakh (280 per cent) and Kerala (119 per cent), while a good increase was observed in Arunachal Pradesh (66 per cent) Madhya Pradesh (66 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (61 per cent) and Gujarat (58 per cent)," it said.

 

The growth has been moderate in developed states like Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu because the base number in 2012 was higher.
 
While the increase in six states/UTs has been classified as insignificant, in 21 states/UTs the increase is in the range of 6 per cent and 40 per cent.
 
A moderate increase was observed in Lakshadweep, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Haryana, Punjab, West Bengal, Uttaranchal, Karnataka, Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tripura, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Andaman and Nicobar, Meghalaya and Jammu and Kashmir.
 
"NTL data is obtained from sensors onboard combined missions of Nasa and NOAA...These products can be used for spatiotemporal trend analysis to understand its relationship with environmental changes and socio-economic parameters like electricity consumption, GDP, population, urban expansion, poverty etc," Prakash Chauhan, director, of NRSC told TOI. 

 
Moreover, global organisations like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) believe that the data can be used to determine the socio-economic indicators when "no other reliable information exists", the report said.