How ISRO changed the way the world looks at India

This year marks an important milestone for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as it observes the 40th anniversary of two of its pioneering projects. Two missions executed successfully in 1975 were the launch of India’s first satellite, Aryabhatta, onboard a Soviet launcher and an experiment in education television called SITE (Satellite Instructional Television Experiment) using an American satellite.

Both projects were conducted much before India had developed its own launching capability, and were actually designed to test use of space technology for wider societal applications. SITE was an experiment in deploying space technology for tele-education, while Aryabhatta tested feasibility of tele-medicine though its primary objective was to gather scientific data. The seeds of SITE were sown in the 1960s by Vikram Sarabhai, father of the space programme, who believed that application of space technology could make a difference to development and economic growth.

Four decades later, has Sarabhai’s vision translated into reality? 

Technology-wise, the space agency has made tremendous advancements. India is capable of designing, fabricating and launching a range of satellites and offers launch services to other countries as well. Over the past two decades, ISRO has launched satellites for several applications — communication, broadcasting, weather forecasting, disaster management, remote sensing, cartography, search and rescue, distant education and strategic use. Soon there will be a cluster of navigation satellites as well. All this, along with scientific missions to the moon and Mars, augurs well for the emergence of ISRO as a robust space agency and positioning of India as a leading space faring nation.

However, one has to critically examine the real impact of space technology on the ground. The gains are clearly visible in areas like broadcasting, weather prediction and communications, but the experience in areas like telemedicine, distant education and remote sensing has rather been mixed. Going by the number of remote sensing satellites India has launched and expertise it has developed, ISRO should be doing roaring business in remote sensing imagery. But, as performance audits in recent years have revealed, utilisation of remote sensing data has been below par. Some satellites were planned without adequate assessment of data needs, resulting in idling of their capacity. Data sharing policy is also cumbersome. As regards use of data for government projects, lack of coordination caused poor usage. Audits revealed similar results with ISRO’s distant education satellite, Edusat. Ground infrastructure for utilising signals beamed from the satellite was not ready in many states several months after the satellite was up in the sky nor was content generation up to the mark.

All these issues, most of which are managerial rather than technological, need to be fixed before ISRO is burdened with more application projects as is being done currently. At the suggestion of the prime minister, some 60 ministries and government agencies have proposed 170 projects for using space technology under nine themes like agriculture, energy, water management, et al. Instead of spreading available resources sub-optimally across multiple projects, it will be wiser to focus on key applications like education and tele-medicine by correcting past mistakes and by having a clear structure for managing large application projects.

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