Ground control: On ISRO, policy and and its focus

The irony was evident: on the day the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had its greatest success of the year — the launch of its first geosynchronous imaging satellite (EOS-05) on a temperamental GSLV — its employee organisations demanded clarity on its long-term plans. But this grievance was long in the making. Since the Indian Space Policy of April 2023, the message has been clear that ISRO would, one day in the unspecified future, stop making commercial satellites and launch rockets. Clearly inspired by NASA, it expects to focus on ambitious exploratory missions and, literally, moonshots. Why would a space agency ramping up space missions upset a section of employees? This is not the paradox it presents. The letter, co-signed by nine employee associations, and addressed to the chairman, seeks clarity on staff-strength, recruitment and the outsourcing of core functions. ISRO says that it will “not be privatised or reduced”; IN-SPACe, set up to facilitate private participation, says the agency will “not be diminished”, only that the industry’s role must grow. Both are silent on the core concern — potential job losses. This brings up an underlying tension that ISRO must deal with: does its vision of India’s space sector align with its founding principles, of not being enamoured of space races and being laser-focused on space technology as a tool for social development? Or is the image of power, where India is one of a handful of space-faring countries with a mushrooming of ‘space startups’, now the bedrock of that vision?

With a budget 16 times the Department of Space’s — $24.4 billion against ₹13,705 crore — NASA too has scaled back since the 1960s: from 0.7% of American GDP in 1966 to 0.1% now, and from 36,000 civil servants at Apollo’s peak to about 14,000 today. Unlike NASA, which in its early years designed and made every nut and bolt, ISRO has always had a manufacturing relationship with the private sector (Walchandnagar, L&T). What is different is that the buzz is not about established companies building on experience but new entrants with fleeting foreign capital, most interested in satellite data as a service. No sector can hope to be static; survival can mean significant changes to how it operates. There is yet no serious reckoning with the might of China’s space programme. If India’s space sector in 2035 is to be known as a source of export earnings, a nucleus of value-added services that brings in jobs and absorbs skilled labour, then hard choices taken today may be worth it. But jumping onto a bandwagon of space — as fuel for the science fiction fantasy of billionaires and colonial notions of conquest, to align with some misplaced notion of an ‘exclusive’ club — is foolhardy. ISRO must have a transparent policy that spells this out.