By: Santosh Miskin
santosh_miskin2020@yahoo.com
December 27, 2003

‘Move over, sun, and give me some sky,
I got me some wings I`m eager to try,
I may be unknown but wait till I`ve flown,
You`re gonna hear from me.’

The lines of Dory & Andre Previn’s song ‘You`re gonna hear from me’ truly encapsulate India’s mood. This mood has been transmuted into action in various vistas. On August 15th 2003, Prime Minister Atal B. Vajpayee in his Independence Day speech announced from the ramparts of the Red Fort - “Our country is now ready to fly high in the field of science. I am pleased to announce that India will send her own spacecraft to the moon by 2008. It is being named Chandrayaan I.” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “orbed maiden, with white fire laden” has always been a favorite muse of poets and she’s caught the attention of our poet – prime minister. The idea seemed to posses the half-life of exotic matter and failed to generate much heat and light. It was lost amidst earth-shaking events like Ms. Sonia Gandhi’s no-confidence motion and Ms. Pooja Bhatt’s nuptials. In the space-time continuum following our Prime Ministers statement, Brazil faced a set back when a rocket undergoing final pre-launch tests exploded on its launch pad; the Europeans launched their moon probe `Smart 1` and the Chinese have become the third nation to launch its citizen indigenously in space. Well, our politicians have promised us the moon & stars regularly so the nonchalance is understandable. Nevertheless, the moon mission warrants serious debate because of its ramifications on Indian society.

The articles featuring interviews of prominent space scientists succinctly elucidate the reasons for the mission. Unfortunately, many articles, which seem to be pro-‘Chandrayaan I‘ contain nauseatingly extraneous, ideological ‘issue du jour’ arguments while some article writers like to have it both ways; their enthusiasm for the moon mission waxes and wanes from article to article. For the naysayers, it’s easy to launch numerous pre-emptive strikes and shoot down ‘Chandrayaan I’. After all, could we not utilize the funds for “schools & education” or “in other fields of science and technology” or “feeding the hungry masses” ? Some other projectiles hurled will be - “we possess sufficient capabilities for military purposes”, “let’s fix the MIG’s first”, “let’s solve the Kashmir issue” and even the no-brainer “its already been done”. The most common reason to be touted will be – Poverty. So, is ‘Chandrayaan I’ a ‘lunatic mission’ ? Should escaping “gravity`s grasp” take precedence over lessening “poverty`s clasp” ? Is ‘Chandrayaan I’ a case of misplaced priorities ? No ! Lets cut to the chase and see why.

• The gateway to progress and prowess

The gateway to the stars has also become the gateway to progress and prowess. India has already launched or will launch satellites for diverse applications in agriculture, telecommunications, cartography, education, meteorology, remote sensing and disaster management. These satellites are not elitist endeavors but rather Gandhian tools. Data collected by the satellites is utilized by those making a living off the land and sea. State governments provide information that helps farmers choose which crops to sow, warn fishermen of impending cyclones, broadcast educational programmes to villagers and help in water resource management. These satellites also help private sector companies and other government bodies in urban and rural planning especially during building new infrastructure.

The possible dual uses for our space technologies are obvious. The PSLV could morph into an ICBM and the launch of ‘Chandrayaan I’ would afford an opportunity for ISRO to refine its guidance and control systems. Despite a vicious neighborhood, it’s to India’s credit that we have not precipitated a military ‘star wars’ type space program.

• Lets give our space scientists their place in the sun

Despite operating under constraints of political pusillanimity, fiscal finagling and international intrigues, our space scientists have consistently managed to deliver successfully. India’s IT professionals caused the international community to sit up and take notice and its time to pass the baton. Periodic and regular achievements in the space arena showcased around the world will lead global institutions, companies and even governments, to collaborate and outsource myriad space related activities to Indian space research institutions and scientists. Also, a successful mission can be used to prod and pressurize bureaucrats and scientists in other government research institutions to get their act together and start demonstrating results, DRDO’s AVATAR hyper plane for example We bemoan the fact that our youth are deserting India for foreign shores or that our engineers are turning to finance or marketing; but what can we do about it, you ask ? ‘Chandrayaan I’ is one such retention device, a talent magnet if you will. Also, having challenging scientific projects will generate magnetic forces strong enough to attract India’s brightest settled across the globe. ISRO and DRDO can become crucibles and repositories of Indian scientific talent.

It’s the responsibility of our space scientists to get us to the moon and it’s the duty of our politicians to see to it that we progress beyond bullock carts. Lets not enfetter and penalize our scientists for the failures of our politicians & bureaucrats.

• Its the journey, not the destination

The space race-track has no finishing line. ‘Chandrayaan I’ is simply the next ‘techno-logical’ step. After that, its Mars and then the Jovian moons and so on. This race is littered with trees, some with low-hanging fruits of technological breakthroughs and others with the bitter fruits of failure.

NASA’s Apollo program enlisted 20,000 companies, and at its peak, included almost 400,000 people across America, all working with focused dedication to make those landings on the moon a reality. India’s space agencies obviously possess the basic technologies to launch rockets & their payloads into orbit and they have involved institutions across the country. Nevertheless, our space agencies could add some panache to their efforts and involve a wider spectrum of the Indian public. Also, popular support means that simians with wrenches will maintain an astronomical distance. One approach is to break down future technical requirements for projects decades down the line into bite-sized discrete sub-projects so that they can be investigated and improved upon by the Indian scientific and technical community. Consider the Indians in colleges, R&D centers, private and public sector companies in India and across the globe as a massive parallel processing supercomputer, working 24/7. Any breakthroughs and novel applications can be patented and commercialized. For e.g. ISRO could conduct competitions (similar to DARPA competitions) for designing a robot rover prototype that can move autonomously over simulated lunar surfaces. ISRO gets the technology free and the teams can alter and commercialize their robots for use by the United Nations in its de-mining operations, or by the Indian border patrols along the Rajasthan border or even by companies and individuals for monitoring perimeters. Also, such mass mobilization efforts can prove invaluable especially during natural disasters or even war.

• Create the ‘Strategic Discontinuity’ and surf the tsunami that follows

The Wright brothers who achieved the first powered, manned, heavier-than-air, controlled flight at Kitty Hawk, NC on December 17, 1903 could scarcely have imagined that advances in space technology and aeronautics would take mankind to the moon within seven decades. Science does not advance at a linear, predictable rate. It blooms and unfurls like a fractal. Technologies overlap, interact, converge, merge and expand and some, which are very radical cause ‘strategic discontinuities’. These ‘strategic discontinuities’ are like huge waves or tsunamis, which lash the economic landscape leading to the overhauling or elimination of existing industries and the creation of new industries. Those who manage to surf these tsunamis manage to generate incredible amounts of wealth. The Internet, which is the convergence of telecommunications and computer technologies, has unleashed a ‘strategic discontinuity’ across various sectors from the entertainment industry to selling books. Companies like Amazon, Google, Yahoo and e-Bay came from nowhere and made billions for their founders. The BPO boom is a tsunami lashing the economies of the English speaking economies.

Consider a basic human need - Transportation. The ultimate goal of transportation technology is to transport human beings, animals or objects from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ instantaneously (and safely). Planes, trains and automobiles are outcomes of that pursuit. NASA is currently working on a project called ‘Prometheus’ to develop technology in the areas of nuclear power systems for propulsion. This technology will be incorporated in the ‘Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO)’, which will orbit the Jovian moons Callisto, Ganymede and Europa. This blending of nuclear, propulsion and aerospace technologies would provide NASA the ability to cut travel time to planets from months to weeks. An Indian company will find it very difficult to beat the stranglehold of Boeing and Airbus in the commercial airplanes segment, but if ISRO or DRDO were to successfully design and demonstrate safe, commercially viable vehicles operating on ‘Nuclear plasma technology” things could change. Such a vehicle, which could eat time zones for breakfast, would have the potential to cause a ‘strategic discontinuity’ in the global Aviation industry.

In 1903 CE, Indians would have found it difficult to imagine that in 2003 CE, ‘Air India’ airplanes would be flying regularly from Mumbai’s CSM airport to New York’s JFK airport with a stopover at London’s Heathrow. In 2103 CE, a ‘Space India’ spaceship taking off from Mumbai’s ‘Vikram Sarabhai Earth Terminus’ to Mangalpur’s ‘APJ Kalam Terminus’ on Mars with a stopover at Chandrapur’s ‘AB Vajpayee Terminus’ on the moon is not a sci-fi scenario.

• ‘Chandrayaan Valley’, anyone ?

Hi-tech hotbeds such as Silicon Valley are spawned when world-class educational institutions, pioneering companies, related & supporting industries and venture capitalists inter alia, mingle in an ambience of pro-business government policies and a culture that rewards risk and innovation. Such clusters of ultra-high ‘entrepreneurial density’ mimic black holes sucking in capital and brains from all over the globe.

Why can’t ISRO, DRDO, ADA, IISc, et al. become nuclei around which a ‘Chandrayaan Valley’ develops. This hi-tech cluster can become a hub of space related activities not unlike Florida’s ‘Space Coast’. ISRO’s commercial division, Antrix, is a good start but is it enough ? Private companies are jumping on the space bandwagon. A company called SpaceX started by Elon Musk (who sold his internet company PayPal’s to eBay for $ 1.5 billion) has plans to launch rockets than can put a payload into orbit for $ 6 million dollars. (www.spacex.com). Why don’t we get pioneering American entrepreneurs like Musk who have vision and the money, to set up shop in this valley ? Why can’t we invite European telecommunications companies, Israeli defense companies or East Asian electronics companies to set up R&D centers and manufacturing plants in that area ? Why can’t the government create the factor conditions and replicate the ambience of America’s Silicon Valley or Sweden’s biotechnology cluster at Uppsala and then get out of the way? The smell of innovation and entrepreneurs will automatically attract the venture capitalists. Why can’t ‘Chandrayaan Valley’ compete with Silicon Valley to attract the best brains, from Russia to Brazil and the cheapest money, from Japan to the US ?

• Diversifying our ‘prowess portfolio’

Over a period of time, the images associated with India have been changing. Its increasingly difficult to see the words ‘snake-charmer’ and ‘rope trick’ in the same sentence or paragraph with the word ‘India’; its more likely acronyms like ‘IT’ and ‘BPO’. That’s a welcome change but why should we Indians be constrained and restricted to IT & BPO ? What other sphere’s are there to conquer and who dares define boundary conditions for us ?

As we gear up to go to the moon, various sectors such as Earth Sciences, Energy technology, Materials technology, Cryogenics and Robotics, inter alia, will be touched. Intellectual assets will be acquired and augmented and these assets need to be put to work and generate a ROI. Can we tweak the model under which ISRO and DRDO operate ? No doubt, ISRO’s scientists and engineers are driven by noble ideals for serving India’s common man and making his life easier and more bearable but starting enterprises, which can provide jobs and sustenance for the next generations of Indians is no less noble. While the pursuit of science is its own reward for a scientist, if she or he were to make money from her/his pursuit, it certainly won’t hurt ISRO or the common man. For e.g. Millions of Indians abroad need to keep in touch with the motherland and they inevitably use ‘phone cards’. ‘Phone cards’, as anyone who has used them knows, are extremely cumbersome and can be a rip-off at times. This need is not just restricted to Indians but is true for Chinese or the Philippinos diaspora as well. Could a telecommunications scientist from ISRO start a spin-off to cater to this market using ISRO’s satellites and any technology it has developed under some sort of licensing scheme ? Such a company could make life easier for the diaspora and the profits generated could be used to subsidize telecommunication services for India’s poor.

In the future, technology and its commercialization will be the keys to maintaining competitive advantage. India needs to attain a critical mass of ‘scientist-entrepreneur’s’ in cutting edge sectors to trigger economic chain reactions whereby the future Cipla’s of the solar energy industry or the Infosys’ of the robotics industry are spawned. Can we learn something from the lessons of the global automotive industry ? Can we start challenging the status quo across industries so that we create Toyotas and Daimler Chryslers and not Hindustan Motors and Premier Automobiles ?

• Have we made history today ?

What spectacular accomplishments by Indians and India do our history books narrate for the time bucket 1947 – 2003 CE ? How many first’s can we Indians lay claim to within this period ? How many Nobel prize winners ? And, what are we doing presently, to shape the contours of our destiny over various time fences say 20 years or even 100 years from now ?

Why can’t we be the first country to land a woman on the moon ? Why can’t we be the first to land a human on Mars ? For the past 500 years, we have been wandering the backwaters while the Europeans were charting new territories both literally and metaphorically thanks to their Christopher Columbus’, Vasco da Gama’s and Marco Polo’s. The Europeans were able to assimilate new ideas, colonize new territories and were able to advance light years ahead in terms of material prosperity and technological advancement. ‘Chandrayaan I’ is a wonderful device to polarize our populace; to instill values such as love for science and adventure as well as foster an intellectual curiosity among our youth and children. The constellation of space heroes of the future must contain a disproportionately large number of women and men from India. A visible, macro level, national event such as ‘Chandrayaan I’ might even begin the catalysis of invisible, micro-level, individual histories for e.g. a poor farming couple in a remote village in India deciding to send their children to school to stop the vicious cycle of illiteracy at their generation or a young girl, resolving to be an astronaut when she grows up. Couldn’t ‘Chandrayaan I’ be a tornado unleashing millions of tiny ‘virtuous eddies’ across India ?

Presently, we speak of the Indian diasporas in the US or Fiji. In the next hundred years, we will talk about the Indian diasporas on the moon or Mars. Then again, maybe, there won’t be such a thing as Indian or American or Chinese in space. Out there, maybe, national, religious, ethnic and racial identities might blur and fuse into a single identity – Earthling. In the meanwhile, if the Americans have their ‘astronauts’, the Russians their ‘cosmonauts’ and the Chinese their ‘taikonauts’ we Indians must have our own, well, ‘juggernauts’. If we become the second nation to land a human on the moon it would cause an enormous impact. Better still; if we were to establish a permanent beachhead on the moon, it would begin a new chapter in the history of India and the world.

• 250 million reasons and counting

In 1977, the dominant logic for IBM’s forced egress from India would have been something like - “These gigantic calculators are anti-poor”. Likewise, Coca Cola was shown the door by our socialists probably because it was a “sponge soaking up the sweat and blood of India’s poor.” So, did throwing out a soft drink manufacturer because Indian villages did not have potable water solve the water problem of India’s villages ? No ! The hindsight’s 20/20 vision and we know our folly now.

Yes, there is a lot to be done in India in terms of poverty alleviation, potable water, electricity, health care etc. but obstructing ‘Chandrayaan I’ will definitely not solve these problems simply because the reasons lie elsewhere. There are degrees of separation between ‘Chandrayaan I’ and poverty alleviation. A moon-rocket blasting off from Sriharikota will not cause instantaneous generation of wealth. If the right conditions are created, time transcending, cascading effects will occur that will gradually transmute the economy and populace.

There is nothing more anti-poor than putting impediments in the march of technology. It’s the pursuit of the truth & knowledge that drives science; technology is the manifestation of this pursuit and technology, ladies and gentlemen, is what raises the development profile of a society not mere “Garibi hatao” type solutions and slogans. ‘Chandrayaan I’ is not at cross-purposes with the fight against poverty; it is the fight against poverty. That being the case, there are 250 million reasons to go, one for every Indian below the poverty line.

In conclusion, ‘Chandrayaan I’ can cause a churning which will produce nectar. We have to push in a multi-pronged manner to lift India’s poor upwards and if technology is the lever, ‘Chandrayaan I’ is the fulcrum. If India’s growth rates have to accelerate beyond a slothful 6 % or 7 %, we must target, not just existing industries where progression in growth will be arithmetic or geometric but seek to create new industries where progression will be exponential.

We will have to focus on India specific needs while devising our space programs but lets not lose sight of what the rest are doing. Also, if we are to close the technological hiatus between ourselves and the rest lets benchmark our space programs against best of the breed i.e. the Americans, Russians and Europeans and not against nations like China or Nauru.

The ascent of ‘Chandrayaan I’ is one of the touchstones of an India ascendant; an India that has emerged from Her chrysalis. Its time for India to spread Her wings and explore new trajectories. Its time for us Indians to step out of our infinitesimal blue & brown pebble and step into the cerulean infinity.

Santosh Miskin