UDCT, Indian Chemical industry

Business India, March 14-27, 1994

Catalyst without compare
The University Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT), Bombay, is justifiably described as the brain behind the Indian chemical industry
Shivanand Kanavi

Wandering the corridors, the labora­tories and library at the University Department of Chemical Technology one encounters some unusual sights for an academic institution. You might find Dr Gharda of Gharda Chemicals poring over the latest chemical abstracts in the library, or Rajeev Pandia, managing director, Herdillia Chemcials, lecturing in a classroom or, some other industrialist conferring with UDCT director, Prof M.M. Sharma, fishing for ideas for new projects. All testimony, if any were needed, to the fact that UDCT truly qualifies to be called the brain of the Indian chem­ical industry.

The UDCT, housed in an innocuous grey sand­stone building in Matunga, a suburb of Bombay famous for its Udipi restaurants, is a truly world class centre of excellence in chemi­cal engineering. It has provided technical man­power to industry, spawned entrepreneurs, provided highly valued industrial consultancy" while at the same time actively participating in the formulation of government policy on the chemical industry. Besides, it does world-class research.

If this sounds like an exaggeration, then a visit to UDCT and a session with Prof Sharma would dispel that impres­sion. Prof Sharma, a product of UDCT and Cambridge, an international author­ity in chemical engineering and the first Indian engineer to be made a fellow of the Royal Society of the UK, typifies the UDCT spirit. Having been on umpteen corporate boards, he speaks eloquently about the problems and prospects of the Indian chemical industry. With equal felicity he speaks of global trends; after his stint at Du Pont, US, as a consultant for a year, the company was so dazzled, That they admitted to another well-known Indian chemical engineer that they needed several specialists to comprehend all that Prof Sharma talks about.

Prof Sharma pioneered the study of multi phase chemical reactions, that is solid-liquid, liquid-gas, solid-liquid-gas and so on, leading to scientific reactor design. The two volumes on the subject he co-authored have become standard ref­erences internationally. His work on microphases is one of the few genuine Indian contributions to chemical engi­neering. He has been on a number of com­mittees to advise the government on policy matters for the last 30 years.

Set up in the thirties to assist the textile industry, UDCT became a unique centre for the study of chemical engineering at a time when the field was not even taught in Europe. Today, besides imparting world class training in chemical engineering, UDCT has very active departments in food and fermentation technology, dyestuffs and intermediates, paints, plas­tics and polymers, textile chemistry and fibres, oils and fats, flavours and per­fumery, pharmaceutical technology and pharmacy, besides science departments.

Its graduates, post-graduates and PhDs occupy key positions in the Indian chemical industry and a large number are to be found in international chemical giants like Dow, Du Pont, Shell, Mon­santo, Merck, Amoco, etc. Due to its pio­neering nature and reputation as a centre of excellence, UDCT has had consider­able autonomy of operation. But being formally tied to Bombay University slows down the pace of curriculum change, which is essential if it must keep up with industry's rapidly evolving requirements. Now moves are afoot in the University to make the department for­mally autonomous, which would quicken the pace of change.

The most exciting frontline work being done at the department of chemical engineering is in Prof J.B. Joshi’s laboratory. He has been studying what goes on inside a chemi­cal reactor using lasers. For a chemical reaction to take place fast enough and give good yields the critical fac­tors are the concentra­tion of reactants, pressure, temperature and the catalyst. How­ever, what is important for a chemical engineer involved in reactor design is the way the reactants come in contact with each other or, in lay terms, the way they are mixed. Normally in a liquid-liquid or solid-liquid reaction, mechanical mixers called agita­tors or impellers are used. In liquid-gas and liquid-liquid reactions one can also be sprayed into another. Another tech­nique used in gas-liquid and gas-liquid-­solid reactions is 'sparging' or bubbling the gas.

The mixing is limited by factors like actual surface area of contact between reactants, which needs to be increased while suspension of the catalyst has to be critically controlled. Too little suspension of the catalyst may slow down the reac­tion while too much agitation can lead to loss of expensive catalysts. One also needs to have more or less homogenous mixing to avoid hydrodynamic stresses. This requires precise knowledge of turbulence caused by any particular type of mixing. Normally a large part of impeller design is done by conventional wisdom developed through trial and error.

Prof. Joshi, how­ever, constructs scaled down glass reactors of 25 to 100 litre capacity in his lab. When the mixing is going on he shoots a laser beam that is split optically to produce two coherent sources. They are then focused at a point within the reactor. The normal pattern of interference fringes formed by the beams is disturbed due to motion of the fluid at the point. If the interference pattern and the scattered light is studied then there will be frequency shifts in the scattered light depending on the velocity of the fluid at the point due to the well-known Doppler effect. This technique is called Laser Doppler Anemometry.

By knowing the distribution of turbu­lence all over the reactor and studying it as a function of impeller design, he comes up with the appropriate design for any particular process. The study of turbu­lence using lasers has led to a rich exper­tise in Joshi's team and newly designed reactors have been installed in Bombay Oil Industries, Chemo Pharma Labs, Indian Organic Chemicals, Hico Prod­ucts, Jaysynth Oil Mills, etc, and the tech­nology has been transferred to Reliance Heal Transfer for manufacture. This expertise along with the computer soft­ware developed is unique and sought after internationally. Soon he has plans to develop a total package for reactor impeller design.

His team has also developed a number of extremely useful technologies that reduce pollution drastically and produce valuable products from distillery waste, cyanide waste, nitrogen oxide wastes, etc. His work fetched him the prestigious S.S. Bhatnagar award for engineering sci­ences in 1992.

While many drug manufacturers have been worried about the effect of the prod­uct patent regime in the post-Dunkel era, Prof V.M. Kulkarni in the pharmaceutical technology division is unfazed. Operat­ing under a soft patent regime, the Indian drug industry has not invested in the dis­covery of new drug molecules. Thus he did not find many takers for his passion for drug designing. But now things have changed and money is pouring in. Dr Reddy's Laboratories have given him sophisticated computers and expensive software worth nearly Rs.30 lakh to design new drugs. He is extremely confi­dent about the prospects of India becom­ing a major player in drug designing due to the availability of highly skilled and inexpensive manpower. There are many such technology stories in UDCT's rather modest labs.

Prof. Sharma has no time for controver­sies over basic vs. applied science. His method of work seems to be to take up problems relevant to industry, look at the more basic aspects of the problem, solve them at a high theoretical level, generate ideas, check them out on a laboratory scale and then advise the industry. There is a culture in UDCT of faculty members doing academic work of a very high stan­dard while solving problems relevant to the industry.

For example, Prof J.B. Joshi has been doing internationally acclaimed research work even while earning the highest con­sultancy fees in Bombay University. When asked about the rationale of a ceil­ing of Rs.4.5 lakh on consultancy fees imposed by the University when a third of it goes to the cash-starved University, Joshi says, "It is prudent to have some sort of ceiling because after all my first commitment as a teacher is to my students Also, rightly, we cannot use university facilities like labs, etc, for consul­tancy work. After all if my sole aim was making money, then I would not have joined academia!”

Unlike most other insti­tutions UDCT seems to suffer from a problem of plenty in consultancy.
While IITs are now walking up to the idea of con­sultancy and industrial research. consultancy has been a professional norm for the UDCT faculty for nearly 40 year, A large number of companies like Herdillia, Tata Chemicals, Bombay Oil, Indian Organics, Gharda Chemicals, Hindustan Lever, Amar Dye Chem, Indian Dyestuffs Industries, Asian Paints, Nocil, PIL, Reliance Heat Transfer, Industrial Per­fumes, Dharamsi Morarji, Tata Pharma, Lakme, National Rayon Corp, RCF, Alkyl Amines, Western Pacques, Poly­chem, Dr Reddy's Research Foundation, CIPLA, Lupin - a virtual who's-who of the chemical industry - besides scores of small scale industries, have had the benefit of the expertise available at UDCT.

With this kind of utilitarian culture it is not surprising that many of UDCT"s alumni and even ex-faculty members arc successful businessmen. Dr Keki Gharda of Gharda Chemicals, Dr Anji Reddy of Dr Reddy's Labs, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance, I.A. Modi of Cadilla, the three Parekh brothers of Pidilite, R.M.Kedia of Kedia Chemicals, Dr K.V. Mariwala of Bombay Oil Industries, Nikhil Meswani of Reliance Petro, Dr Atma Gupta of Armour Polymers, V.G. Rajadhyaksha of Hindustan Lever, and J.M. Nadkarni of Bombay Paints are just a few names that come to mind. The full list is extremely impressive and also includes a large num­ber of small scale industrialists. The alumni have also been generous towards their alma mater in cash, chemical sup­plies, scholarships and endowments. No wonder, UDCT's diamond jubilee this year will be proudly celebrated by the Indian chemical industry.

Indian S&T 1947-97

Business India, August 11-24, 1997

Prisoner of autarky

Indian S&T is yet to recover from the fallout of autarkic policies and the Pokharan nuclear explosion

Shivanand Kanavi

Along with the rise of the modern nationalist movement and an attendant intellectual renaissance, the first quarter of the 20th century saw the rise of a few brilliant scientists like S. Ramanujan, C.V. Raman, S.N. Bose and M.N. Saha. They won worldwide acclaim for their work in number theory, molecular physics, quantum statistics and astrophysics. Although Europe was the seat of high science at that time, they did not emigrate and instead continued their pursuit of science in India despite the paucity of funds and poor educational and research infrastructure. In the process they also trained a few young researchers. The research groups pre-Independence were centred around these individuals in the mould of guru shishya parampara.

Institutional science
Then came Independence and along with Nehru and his brand of modernisation, a new breed of scientists like Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar took over as science administrators. Having studied in Europe, Bhabha and Sarabhai saw the rise of organised science in the period between the two World Wars, and they tried to repeat the experience in India by building government-funded R&D institutes outside the university system. The era of institutional science began.

Their access to Nehru and prominent industrial houses helped Bhabha and Sarabhai in raising new institutions like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the Atomic Energy Establishment (now called the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) at Mumbai and Physical Research laboratory (PRL), at Ahmedabad ..

Bhabha attracted a large number of talented scientists and engineers from India and abroad to work at the institutes. He understood that Indian science would gain only through international contact. He not only sent a large number of young scientists abroad for higher studies but also ensured that a large number of distinguished scientists including Nobel Laureates visited TIFR to give lectures. He modeled TIFR after the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton and encouraged the development of first rate groups in mathematics and physics. Expertise in many emerging fields like nuclear physics, electronics, computers, radio astronomy, and elementary particle physics was developed here.

Under Sarabhai's leadership the PRL at Ahmedabad, with its emphasis on cosmic rays and radio physics, became the birth place for Indian expertise in space sciences. Besides being excellent basic research centres, TIFR and PRL were the cradles for the nuclear, and space programmes that took off later.

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar wanted to develop the more mundane industrial technologies. A council to encourage industrial research had been set up by the colonial government in 1942. The idea was developed by Bhatnagar with Nehru's active encouragement and a network of laboratories starting with the National Physical Laboratory, (Delhi) and the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL, Pune) were built in 1950. From this grew the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) which at present is the largest chain of publicly funded research laboratories in the world comprising over 40 laboratories.

Within a decade of the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948, India became the first Asian country to build its own research reactor-Apsara in 1957 at Trombay. The problem that worried Bhabha was how to use India's limited resources of uranium to produce electricity without enriching uranium and more importantly how to use the vast reserves of thorium on the beaches of Kerala. The Canadians came forward with an answer with their Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor technology. India adopted this, while at the same time buying conventional reactors from General Electric Company of USA to gain experience in nuclear power. As a result, Tarapur Atomic Power Station was built on conventional grounds and a contract was signed with the Canadians to build the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station.

While the Trombay group went ahead in acquiring expertise in nuclear physics, the PRL Group under Sarabhai started the space programme, modestly. Sarabhai negotiated with the Bishop of an old church at Thumba (near Thiruvananthapuram) to use the premises to fabricate the first sounding rockets in 1963. Since everything in the field of rocketry had to be learnt from scratch, Sarabhai used his contacts in NASA, and among the scientists involved in the French and Russian space programmes to get as much information as possible. After Bhabha's death in an Air-India crash near Geneva in 1966, Sarabhai took over the leadership of both space and nuclear programmes. However, matters changed drastically for the nuclear programmes after Sarabhai's death in 1972. To the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, atoms were an instrument of power. Within a short while, she reoriented the programme towards generating a bomb.

Pokharan fallout
The underground nuclear explosion at Pokharan in the Thar desert in 1974 changed the course not only of the nuclear programme but of Indian science in general. Till-today, Indian R&D institutions and technology programmes cannot import a state-of-the-art CNC lathe or a special purpose pump much less hi-tech electronics and supercomputers, thanks to the embargoes. In fact, Canada abandoned the Rajasthan nuclear power project mid-way.

The wisdom that flowed from the PMO at this time was self reliance and import substitution. Nobody asked the question 'Is it cost-effective, original or globally competitive?’ as long as the science mandarins claimed it was a breakthrough in indigenous import substitution. The darkage of post-Independent S&T began. From which we have yet to recover.

With great difficulty; nuclear engineers have today managed to grasp the Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor technology, but in the process, are left with obsolete technology. A latecomer like South Korea with S&T infrastructure hardly comparable to India's, today produces 10,316 MW of nuclear power with 11 nuclear reactors, while India has an installed capacity of only 1,700 MW from 10 nuclear reactors.

Moreover, the transparency of the nuclear programme during. Bhabha and Sarabhai's time, later turned into extreme intolerance towards critics. Today there are serious questions to be raised about the money spent on atomic energy and the returns on it.

However Satish Dhawan, who took over the leadership of space programme in 1972, retained the openness and informality required for the cutting edge in science and engineering. Even though the technology embargoes were forcing Indian Space Research Organisation too to reinvent the wheel, he used the build-or-buy choice intelligently. Solid fuelled rocket technology had obvious applications in missiles and hence- no one was ready to give it. So Dhawan concentrated on developing it at Thiruvananthapuram.

Liquid fuelled rocket engines, which are the more efficient and necessary components of satellite launching technology, were a different cup of tea. Using his excellent personal contacts, Dhawan convinced the French to transfer the liquid fuelled rocket technology. He also formulated a well charted road map to reach the goal of satellite launching capability. Another group concentrated on learning the intricacies of remote sensing and communication satellites. When they did not get an electronic component from the US they either built it themselves or bought it -from the Europeans or Japanese. Dhawan also negotiated for free launches from the French and the Russians. Today the space programme stands out as one of the few publicly funded initiatives in India that has achieved world class standards.

With the gradual opening up and liberalisation in trade in the 1980s, a new initiative to focus on certain technologies was taken by the then PM, Rajiv Gandhi. Operating "on a mission mode", where a multidisciplinary group comes together to achieve a target and is then disbanded without creating bureaucracies, became the new paradigm. Sam Pitroda and his team in the telecom technology mission came to the fore. Belatedly India decided to enter the era of digital telecommunications. The result was the switch designed by the Centre for Development Of Telematics (C-DOT) meant for small exchanges. However before C-DOT could deliver the large switch it suffered a setback. In an increasingly fractured and revengeful polity Pitroda's closeness to Rajiv Gandhi was the excuse used by the succeeding government to cripple the telecom mission. So in the 1990s, when worldwide, telecom is undergoing fast technological changes, India once again lags miserably.

In the last ten years, successive governments have been busy fighting for survival and the initiative for the development of S&T has fallen to an extent on lower level R&D managers. Many science administrators have
created bureaucratic fiefdoms while a few have used the opportunity to reform.

For example R.A.Mashelkar, director of NCL, used the opportunity to make his colleagues aware of their intellectual property rights and pushed them towards proactive global technology marketing. NCL today has emerged as a world class centre in catalysis and polymer science. As the director general of CSIR, Mashelkar now has the task of converting his slogan of 'research as business' into reality.

At cross roads
Research in the private sector has been a joke so far. Equipment and wages of personnel involved in routine quality control, which is part of the manufacturing activity, listed by the industry as R&D expenditure to avail of the tax breaks. However the new GATT regime and the pressure on India to change, its patent laws is forcing a handful of domestic pharmaceutical companies to invest in new drug research.

If the state of bio-technology is poor due to the indolence of the private sector the fate of the other major technology of the 21st century-infotech- has been sealed by a luddite attitude towards computers. As a result there is hardly a domestic base for information technology without which no real software industry can come into being. The software industry requires the installation of a large number of computers in the government, financial sector and the corporate sector who then drive the market for application packages. However due to flawed policies that looked at computers not as an opportunity to increase productivity and create new jobs but as villains that would take away jobs India today has a pitifully small number of computers, hardly a quarter of those installed in China, leave alone other advanced countries. In the circumstances, Indians have developed core competency in customized solutions and software services for corporate clients abroad. This sector is growing at an impressive 50 percent growth rate. Software product development with higher margins and visibility has started only in the 1990s, that too on a low key. As an observer said: "What software industry do we have, we have not produced even a video game.”

To sum up, in the last 50 years Indian S&T has gone through a series of periods characterised by brilliant scientists before Independence, institutional science in the 1950s and 1960s, autarky and bureaucratisation in the 1970s and 1980s and opening up and the chance to leverage ourselves in knowledge based industries in the1990s.

Will our government, science satraps and entrepreneurs seize the hour or will we keep marking time, hearing inanities about the “third biggest pool of scientific power”?

M M Sharma, Indian Chemical industry, UDCT

Business India, February 10-23, 1997

The chemistry of industry
Prof M.M. Sharma, FRS, was the first Indian engineer to be made Fellow of Royal Society of London. Recently he was awarded the Leverhulme Medal established on the occasion of the tercentenary of the Royal Society “in recognition of his work on the dynamics of mu1ti-phase chemical reactions in industrial processes”. The medal has been awarded to only five other chemists and engineers since 1960.

He has made significant contributions in making the University Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT), Mumbai, of which he is the director, into a world class centre of excellence in chemical engineering. He spoke to Shivanand Kanavi on industry-academia interaction.

How did you acquire the mindset of doing basic research of very high value and at the same time being concerned about commer­cialisation of scientific results?
The answer to your question on my interest in interaction with indus­try goes back to the roots of the organisation (UDCT). There is no family history of business or great academic work. The desire to link practical problems with academic work is a later development.

Early faculty members at UDCT, like Professors Venkatra­man, G.P. Kane, G.M. Nabar, N.R. Kamath thought that UDCT should have organic links with industry in a professional way and not in terms of lip service.

As soon as India became inde­pendent, there was a vacuum. Who will advise textile mills in textile processing? The industry knew only spinning and weaving. After the Second World War, BIOS reports became available, to pro­vide the guidelines for organic chemical industry. Thus, a mutually beneficial relationship could be sustained.

From my Cambridge days, I had been publishing papers in Faraday Society Transactions, etc, but I was working on a problem which had links with industry even in the puritan atmosphere of Cam­bridge. In fact, those days, I was lucky to have an idea patented in my name and sell it to Shell International. My original con­viction became terribly strengthened with this exercise.
I would say that the monograph that I wrote with my mentor, the late Professor P.Y. Dankwerts, FRS, GC, in Cambridge, on 'Absorption of carbon dioxide in amines and alkalies', gave me great satis­faction. I think it became a sort of classic in chemical engineering where we explained how from the very first principles you go to the design of final industrial equipment.

What led to your celebrated work on 'microphases'?
At UDCT from the beginning, we had taken up problems, which were very heavily idea-centred because we had no budget. A problem of making precipi­tated calcium carbonate (which goes into toothpaste, etc), came to us. On the face of it, it was very simple. Calcium oxide plus water gives calcium hydrox­ide, which, with carbon dioxide, gives calcium carbonate.

At that time an idea came to us about the role of 'microphases', a phrase that we used much later. Microphase is a phase where the characteristic dimension is less than the diffusion path. In simple language, particles, which are sub-micron to few microns in size - it could be a small bubble, a small liquid droplet, solid particle - constitute the microphase. The microphase changes the dynamics of the process. For example, when you hydrate calcium oxide you get particles within micron range with­out expenditure of energy. Therefore, you see how real life problems are the harbingers of problems of great the­oretical interest!
It is a great pleasure for an applied scientist, when his idea works, and he can demonstrate its academic purity by way of research publication. It gives you a kind of thrill, which has a powerful catalytic action.

You mentioned the BIOS reports. Can you explain what they were and how the war triggered applied research in UDCT?After the German defeat in World War II, teams were formed with experts from allied forces to visit every German chemical plant and other plants and find out all the details about their manufacturing processes. German dyestuff industry and textile aux­illiaries were well known. The mother company was IG Farben from which Bayer. Hoechst and BASF were later born. The British Intelligence Office pro­duced these reports. Every detail of the manufacturing process was given in these reports.

They were then the starting point for entrepreneurs in India to start industries, we at UDCT had access to these reports and they were a fantastic source of infor­mation. The entire recipe was given in detail. Indians had to learn textile pro­cessing. Our textile-processing course was immensely helpful. It provided trained manpower when British experts had left.

Textile and sugar are mother indus­tries in India. They gave impetus to many things. All the original chemical compa­nies in India were textile houses ­Mafatlals, Sarabhais, Srirams in DCM, Jaikrishna Harivallabhdas. Ambika Mills, Atul. etc. From textiles to dyes and bulk chemicals is how we developed in India. Plastics and synthetic fibres, which dominate the chemical industry today came into the scene much later, in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Your advice is sought by almost the entire Indian chemical industry, Why not develop technology and licence it rather than be a consultant?Licencing is a complicated business. To advise industry on how to get more from existing assets is the most rewarding experience in terms of relationship between an academic and industry. Industry gets benefit immediately: more profits, less load on effluents, much more throughput out of existing equipment. The academic gets the benefit of seeing his ideas work and gets emboldened. It also buttresses his income. The student gets tremendous advantage because the quality of lectures he gets improves.

There is lot of talk in India about uni­versity-industry interaction, but it is only talk. People never put it into practice.

Consultancy by faculty members should have a wider base. If one person is involved in a faculty of 20, the spread fac­tor is very limited. At least one-third of the faculty should be involved.

Last year we generated Rs.43lakh through consultancy. Bombay University got one-third of it. This year will we be able to do it? Was it a freak year? No. by all indications we will make it this year also.

Lawyers, chartered accountants, doc­tors etc. practice consultancy, why not engi­neers? Of course, a high level of professional integrity is required. One black sheep can give a bad name to the institute. Any underhand dealing will get exposed - sooner rather than later.
Intellectual curiosity is also satisfied along with material needs and we have a greater chance of retaining a good per­son. This is important; after all an acade­mic's salary is nowhere near corporate salaries.

What do you think about sending teachers to industry on a sabbatical? Or about academics being on the boards of companies?
We have practiced these things very rig­orously. In the beginning, instead of sending a faculty member for a whole year, we see them on vacation place­ment so that he does not have to take leave and worry about continuity in service etc. A number of people have been on the board of companies and even many companies simultaneously. We encouraged it.
We have created as number of visiting professorship through private endowment, for persons from industry. We have not left any stone unturned.
Industry is realizing that their engineers need to upgrade and retrain. So they are requesting us to design refresher courses of 2-3 weeks’ duration.
Being science-based, the chemical industry is receptive to new ideas. If -you see Department of Science and Tech­nology's booklet on R&D in Indian indus­try, it is the chemical industry which leads; largely domestic companies and especially the technocrat-driven companies. 'The big C in their capital is technology and they have to be superior to be competitive nationally and internationally.
Of course, in India there is horizontal pilferage of technology because of Which the industry has acutely suffered in the last 20 years. The cost of innovation is high while that of pilferage is zero.

What is your view on the IPR controversy?Let us be very objective. When the cost of development is abnormally high and that too based on private money, it will be I treated as property. After a drug or agro­chemical molecule has been found, anybody can improve the technology and sell at a lower cost because the developmental costs have been borne by someone else. Why are we feeling diffident that we can­not generate ideas of that calibre?

I will give an example of missed oppor­tunities from chemistry. N.R. Iyengar had a brilliant idea to make an intermediate for rubber chemicals. He published that paper in Tetrahedron Letters. If he had the awareness, he would have patented it. Two or three years later there was a patent from Monsanto where the first paper referred to was N.R. Iyengar's! Based on that idea a commercial plant can be put up which costs less and is less polluting. A known product but made by a better route. I am just giving an example. If he had patented it, it is quite likely that Monsanto would have bid for it. He could also have then published it.

The debate on what can be patented and what cannot be, goes on all the time. An obvious thing cannot be patented but there is too much sensationalism in India ­"neem is being patented, tulsi is being patented.” etc. Something, which we know in everyday life, cannot be patented.

With the increasing integration of the Indian economy with the world econ­omy, there is a fear that Indian R&D will suffer. What is your view?I am convinced that globalisation will give a big boost to indigenous R&D and that it will get recognition internationally. The cost of research is so much lower in India than anywhere else. Talent is in reasonable abundance. All said and done I here is a worldwide trend against sharing technology. Therefore, the desire to come out with alternate technology, which is superior and patentable, will get a boost. Even in this liberalised atmosphere, many are not able to put up plants because nobody is ready to sell the technology to them. This will continue, because the developed nations perceive India as a potential competitor

Genetic Engineering, Bt Cotton

Business India, December 14-27, 1998

To terminate or not to…………

Violent agitators want the farm experiments on genetically engineered cotton to be terminated. Business India examines the issues involved

Shivanand Kanavi

Professor Nanjundaswamy and his followers in the Karnataka Rajya Raita Sangha (State Farmers’ Association) are very angry; in recent weeks they have been uprooting and burning boll worm resistant cotton plants, from experimental farms in Bellary and Raichur in Karnataka. Others have engaged in similar vandalism in Andhra Pradesh. Taken by surprise, farmers who had volunteered for the experiments have opposed these attacks and asked for police protection. The agitators allege "Terminator technology is being tried on unsuspecting third world farmers by the multinational seed company Monsanto." Some ministers in Andhra Pradesh too have fallen prey to agitators' propaganda and asked for banning of the experiments. Dr P.K. Ghosh, advisor to the Department of Biotechnology, has however deplored these attacks, clarifying that the experiments have nothing to do with the terminator gene and are about boll worm resistant cotton. Moreover, they are being conducted under the strict supervision of various agencies of the Central government. But no one is listening.

Comparison between Luddites and the crusaders against experiments in genetically engineered cotton ends with their violent methods. Luddites were manual textile workers displaced by the advent of machinery in early 19th century England, who went about expressing anger against their misery by smashing up machinery. They saw machines as the cause of their condition. The current agitators claim to be farmer's representatives and well-wishers but are preventing farmers from being voluntary participants in experiments whose successful outcome would lead to a better cotton crop, with lesser use of insecticides.

It is patent disinformation to say that current experiments are to do with the "terminator gene.” The experiments are to do with cotton that is genetically engineered to resist boll worm attack. It has been known for almost a century that a particular type of soil bacteria produces proteins that are toxic to some common pests attacking cotton, corn and potato. A German scientist, Ernst Berliner, who rediscovered it in 1915, in Thuringen, named the microorganism, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Since then this bacterial culture has been used as a commercial insecticide.

Monsanto's biotechnologists patented in March 1996 (US patent No: 5,500,365) an ingenious way to take out the genes from Bt, that are responsible for the production of toxic protein that has insecticidal properties. They then implanted these genes into cotton seeds. Such genetically engineered cotton seeds produce the toxin that will kill boll worms - a major pest that attacks the cotton boll. If a boll worm larvae eats a leaf or any part of the cotton plant, then the toxin attacks its gut, leading to its death much .before it can harm the crop. Monsanto sells this technology under the trademark Bollgard.

Several seed companies have been licensed the Bollgard technology in the US. After completing all the regulatory trials, checking for toxic effects on human beings, birds which eat the insects etc, the technology has been commercialised. Over 2.2 milllon acres of cotton growing area, that is 22 per cent of the cotton growing area in US, was planted with Bollgard cotton seed in 1997. It was found that 60 per cent of Bollgard cotton was not attacked by boll worms at all, and others applied anti-boll worm insecticide only once as compared to four to six applications in conventional cotton. It is also being planted in Australia and China.

India is the world's largest producer of cotton (32 per cent in 1995-96). However, due to the threat of boll worm, cotton requires one of the most intensive insecticide application. It is estimated that agrochemicals worth Rs.1,590 crore were used by Indian cotton farmers in 1995-96 alone. Thus, one would assume that Bollgard technology, if proven in Indian conditions, would be a boon to cotton growers and the environment alike.

Terminator gene
Terminator gene the villain in the agitator’s plot is the name given to a concept patent obtained by Delta & Pine Land and the US Department of Agriculture by its opponents. It has nothing to do with the experiments being conducted under strict government supervision.

In March 1998, Delta & Pine Land, the largest cotton seed seller in the US, was granted a concept patent along with the US Department of Agriculture (US Patent No: 5,723, 765, control of plant gene expression, Inventors: M.J. Oliver, J.E. Quisenberry, N.L.G. Trolinder and D.L. Keim). The concept, when further developed and implemented, can lead to seeds that will yield normal crops, though the second generation seeds will be rendered sterile. If successful this technology can stop the farmer from saving high yielding seed incorporation this technology, for the next sowing. They will be all sterlile, this will force him to go back to the seed company. This has been termed “terminator gene” technology by Pat Mooney of Canada-based Raral Advancement Foundation International, and organisation that campaigns against seed companies like Monsanto (see http://www. rafi.ca).

The technology is highly complex and requires all such seeds to be soaked in the antibiotic tetracycline before sale. The cost of technology and tetracycline are going to make such seeds extremely expensive. Thus, if any farmer were to buy them it can only be for extraordinary yields and other benefits. Moreover, ad for as hybrids go, the farmers is used to buying seeds every year since the hybrid vigour diminishes by almost 50per cent in the second generation seeds. Thus the commercial necessity and viability of this technology is under question.

Biologists like Martha Crouch of Indian University, and several NGOs have expressed the fear that such seeds, if ever produced, can render other plants of the same species grown nearby also sterile through what is called outcrossing, they also warn against possible toxic effects on insects and birds. Naturally, the terminator seeds have to be thoroughly tested before approval. Moreover , even if the regulatory authorities US approve such seeds, other countries need not follow suit. Even under WTO agreements on Intellectual Property Rights and other related agreements regarding plant varieties, individual countries can disallow certain varieties as inimical to public good, good security, environmental concerns etc. under a sui generis system.

Terminator technology is only confined to Delta & Pine Land’s labs and no seed using this concept has yet been produced for rigorous regulatory trials , leave alone commercial production. The technology has remained and important scientific feat in terms of genetic engineering, but of no real world consequences yet. A parallel can be drawn in the closing of sheep Dolly, by scientists in Scotland last year. A great achievement in life science. But if one were to start a campaign against it on ethical grounds saying this can lead to human cloning, Nazi eugenics and so on, then it would be highly premature and sensationalist. That is what the preset agitation against Bollgard experiments, is all about!

Monsanto, which has been on an acquiring spree, has made a friendly bid to buy out the controlling share in Delta & Pine Land, the world’s largest cottonseed company. At present, it owns only 7 per cent of the stock, the takeover is expected to be sooth according to Monsanto sources. To claim however, as the agitators do, that Monsanto will acquire terminator gene technology in future and use it in conjunction with its highly successful bioengineered seeds and hence any experiments using Monsanto’s present technology, even if they are beneficial to the Indian farmer, should be terminated, is highly convoluted, to say the least.


Biotech revolution
Mahyco, the leading cotton seed company in India, hence tied up with Monsanto in a joint venture, Mahyco Monsanto Biotech India Pvt. Ltd. to implement Bollgard technology in its own best -selling varieties. After all, Bollgard seeds of any other country cannot be used in India. So Mahyco has done considerable research leading to absorption of Bollgard in 10 of its varieties. It is these varieties that are being field-tested in 40 centres all over India under different agro-climatic conditions. Many of them are Mahyco's own research farms. However, some of them belong to private cotton growers. The tests are being conducted under the strict supervision of the Department of Biotechnology of the Central government. Due to the sensitive nature of biotechnology, over half a dozen committees working under the biotechnology and environmental departments are reviewing the results. When the trials were almost complete came these sudden attacks, causing dismay among scientists.

Mark Wells, national marketing manager of Monsanto in India says: "Genetically engineered crops are being scrutinised and tried under the strictest of conditions like any drug meant for human use. And rightly so. We find that highly competent Indian scientists are monitoring the tests. Monsanto will not provide any technology that will adversely impact the environment, current agricultural practices or force farmers to use our technology. New products and technology and must increase farmers’ income otherwise they will be rejected by them.”

Indian agricultural scientists have had more than three decades of experience in breeding hybrids and high yielding varieties. In fact, much of the enthusiasm for cotton in the past 20 years among farmers is due to the introduction of new high yielding varieties by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Agricultural Universities. It is however strange that the network of agricultural universities, with vast experience in in situ experiments, are not involved in the current trials. Vijay Kumar Gidnavar, deputy director of research, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad says; “we are looking forward to the results of the experiments. Bollagard is a major achievement in plant biotechnology and its success will give a fillip to biotech work among Indian scientists as well. In fact, we do have several biotech projects going on at the laboratory level already”

Let us not miss it
Biotechnology can yield a number of benefits for farmers. In fact, the report of the World Bank panel on transgenic crops, authored by eight internationally renowned scientists, including M.S.Swaminathan, states: “Transgenic crops are not in principle more injurious to the environment than traditionally bred crops. Transgenic crops that are developed and used widely can be very helpful, and may prove essential, to world food production and agricultural sustainability. Biotechnology can certainly be an ally to those developing integrated pest management and crop management systems.”

For example, potato impregnated with another gene from Bt has proven resistant to the potato beetle. Similarly, protection from corn borer for maize has been provided by another gene from Bt Besides insect protection, biotech can lead to better weed management, thereby increasing the yields. A major development has been the production of genetically engineered soybean, maize and rape seed that are resistant to herbicides. A broad spectrum herbicide like glyphosate kills most of the weeds and the crop as well, since it inhibits ESPSP synthase, an enzyme essential to plant growth. But biotechnology has enabled scientists to develop seeds thereby making weed control a simple matter of spraying glyphosate. Research is on to develop genetically engineered varieties that are resistant to various fungi and viruses as well.

In fact, mimicking the famous Moore’s law (Gordon Moore, founder of Intel) in micro electronics which states that “computing power of silicon chips will double every 18-24 months”, Monsanto has coined its own ‘Monsanto Law’, which states, “the ability to identify and use genetic information will double every 12-24 months.”

Should Indian agriculture miss this biotech revolution. When it is clear that environmentally friendly intensive agriculture is the only solution to the problem of feeding a billion Indians? One can understand the Frankenstein syndrome- fear of tampering with nature to produce an uncontrollable monster. But then, is not agriculture itself an artifice?

Men behind India's Space Programme

Business India, November 21-December 4, 1994 

 

Those magnificent men... 

The Indian space programme spanning 40 years is the story of remarkable men and their amazing deeds 

 Shivanand Kanavi 

(All photos are by Palashranjan Bhaumick)

The Church where Space is worshipped

 After seeing the giant Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), as tall as a 15-storeyed building, take off flawlessly on 15 October this year, it is hard to believe that it all started with a metre-long rocket, a little bigger than a Diwali firework. The Indian space pro­gramme today is acknowledged the world over as one of the top six. We have the capability to build state-of-the-art remote sensing and communication satellites and now with the success of PSLV, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has demonstrated mastery over complex technologies in rocketry, capable of putting satellites into precise predetermined orbits. How did it leap to these heights from its humble beginnings? Who are our prominent space men? What makes them tick? In the barrage of num­bers on payload capability, orbit charac­teristics, specific impulses, etc. the story of the programme and the people who made it possible tends to get obscured. Business India visited several ISRO cen­tres in Bangalore, Trivandrum, Valia­mala, Mahendragiri and Sriharikota to meet some of these elusive folk. 

 'A church where space is worshipped' sounds like a corny ad line or something from the fiction of an Isaac Asimov or an Arthur C. Clark novel. But it is a fact that the Indian space programme actually started in 1963 in a church and the adjoin­ing bishop's house. The premises were graciously offered to the cause by the local Christian community at Thumba, near Trivandrum. The scientists led by Dr Vikram Sarabhai worked in the bishop's house and the metre-long sounding rock­ets were assembled in the anteroom of the church and fired from a launch pad on the beach. 

 Pramod Kale, who retired on 2 November from his post of director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), carried out the traditional countdown for the first launch. Today the church with a history dating back to 1544 AD has thou­sands of youthful 'worshippers' visiting everyday. It has been turned into the most comprehensive space mu­seum in India. Dr P. Manoranjan Rao of the Pro­gramme Planning and Evalu­ation Group at VSSC remarks wistfully, "I hope our politi­cians learn something from this space museum and apply it in Ayodhya - that would be one more spin-off from India's space programme!” 

BOX

  'The space programme will help upgrade the technology level of the country of the country' 

Dr K Kasturirangan "We have had good leadership with clear cut goals"

Dr K. Kasturirangan, secretary to the Department of Space, who is also chairman of the Space Commission, in conversation with Shivanand Kanavi 

Congratulations on the successful launch of the PSLV. For you per­sonally, what has been the most chal­lenging and satisfying project? 

 Thank you. If you ask me personally, the design and development of the first oper­ational remote sensing satellite IRS-1A was the most exciting. Over a period of almost six years, we built a state-of-the-­art satellite. So many technologies had to be developed. We certainly had difficul­ties all through the developmental stage in structural testing, thermal design, developing new systems, etc. 

 Two aspects were that we were devel­oping these technologies for the first time and that since it was going to be an opera­tional system everything had to be reli­able. We were targeting for a life of three years for our satellite, whereas the corre­sponding French satellite, SPOT, had only a two-year life. Today, the IRS-1A has completed six years and is still work­ing. It was a sort of a national project, with the involvement of large number of centres. Those six years were a period of intense learning and innovation. 

You are a physicist and, in fact, spe­cialised in the esoteric high energy astronomy. How did you make the switch to an engineering project like that? 

I started my research career at the Physi­cal Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, with Dr Vikram Sarabhai. I had to develop the balloon-bound payload for X-­ray astronomy. For that I had to build my own electronic circuits, power supplies, logic circuits and even ground station equipment. It was an experience in mechanical, electronic and system engi­neering. That period of PhD work provided me a very good base for conceptualising a system and integrating individual sub-systems, making it opera­tional, etc. 

 It also provided me with capability to think originally and in new ways. This does not come about unless you do research. I emphasise this point because a lot of people today jump into careers after B Tech or M Tech. But if you want to be a successful manager, team leader, designer, innovator or anything where originality of thinking is involved, then it needs a background in research. 

 When I had just completed my PhD in ­1970, Dr. Sarabhai called me to his room and encouraged me to join the scientific satellite project. I told him that I did not know the technology component of satellites. But he gave me the confidence that a physicist can play an important role in systems engineering. Then I worked hard and learnt satellite technology and found that that it was not very difficult. 

How are you trying to retain the excitement and team spirit in ISRO? 

 One excellent trend has been set in this department and that is sitting down with the users; departments of telecom, ocean level of development of countries in this development, forestry, geology, agriculture, I&B, civil aviation, etc. They tell us what they are looking for in, terms of further support and services. Then we translate them into programmes and projects. 

The technology options are worked out by various levels of people. Second level, third and even fourth. They come out with ideas. An important thing about the culture of this organisation is that irre­spective of who the person is, he is heard with respect and given due weightage. ­That makes everybody get involved. Last30 years have been well directed. 

Has thinking begun already on the post-GSLV technologies? 

 We have not decided anything yet. Once the PSLV comes to fruition and GSLV ­moves fast then we will start worrying about the first decade of the 21st century. Several engineers are very busy looking ­at various things. Every day somebody comes and they want to do air- breathing engines, somebody else on single- stage orbit transfer, etc. and they point to the new technologies  needed for these systems. People at satellite centre say, now we should go in for the nest generation of satellites of heavier class, direct broadcasting systems, etc. Ideas are perpetually bubbling in the minds of peoples here. We have to review them, convert them into concrete projects looking at their economic viability, feasibility of accomplishing the goal in a certain time-fame, etc. At ISRO we have always operated at the cutting edge of technology and we would like to maintain that pre-eminent position in the years to come. 

One of the ideas being tossed around is that of an Asian Space Consortium, like the eminently successful European Space Agency….. 

This idea has been floated but there has been no concrete exchange of ideas. Compounding the issue is the fact that the region is not uniform. In Europe you have 13-14 member states who can industrially and technologically contribute. We need to address these issues, so far the programme has been national and co-operation has been on a bilateral basis. 

Leaving aside the political issues involved in such a venture, it makes sense economically. If you want to compete in the growing Asian Satellite market it would be easier to get contracts if various states in the region have stake in the programme. Otherwise, they would be awarded to Hughes or TRW or someone else. 

You are quite right. But we need to address some of the problems and have the region. So that each country can contribute the best they can. 

There is one basic question that is often raised. Indonesia built a satellite communication system much before us without a satellite or launch vehicle development programme. So, in today’s condition, why should one go in for these programmes, when made to-order satellites are available as also commercial launch programmes. 

The situation is not that simple. India is a country with about 3.2 million sq km land and the second largest population with large resources, not just in materials but also scientific. That is why right from the time of Independence self-reliance in cer­tain vital areas, like communications, meteorology, earth resources through remote sensing, etc. has been one of the national goals. 

 In these areas we have to provide the nation assured-services which are timely and cost-effective. Another important thing is that it generally upgrades the technological level of the country. It per­colates down to various levels of the economy. In fact the objective of the Swedish space programme is general upgradation of the country's technologi­cal capability. With our vast country and diverse needs, which we can meet with our own technological capability, why should we go and buy it from someone else. Moreover, we can launch our own satellites with our own launch vehicle most cost-effectively.

Technically speaking, if we have access to a booster like the first stage of PSLV, which is the third largest in the world, then India can construct ICBMs if it wants. What is your reaction? 

We have not configured this vehicle for any military application. Right from the beginning the PSLV has been designed as an optimised solution to launch 1-tonne class remote sensing satellites into polar orbits. Then the question was what are the technologies that we have so far in liquid and solid propulsion and how can we combine them in an optimal way in this vehicle. So, none of the requirements of a missile have been kept in mind for this vehicle. 

Is it that critical what the end use of the vehicle is? 

Certainly, Configuration and other details are quite different. 

What about the PSLVS ability to launch low earth orbit reconnaissance satellites? 

 Nowadays remote sensing applications are demanding more and more resolu­tion up to even two metres. Some com­panies abroad are openly.announcing high resolutions for civilian purposes which were earlier considered to be in the domain of reconnaissance. Capabilities, which were restricted to an aircraft-based survey are now being built into the space­craft itself. The PSLV will be a vehicle which will be used for these kinds of mappings. 

If the PSLV can actually launch a much higher payload but for the complicated yaw manoeuvre to avoid Sri Lanka then can't we have another launch site for it? 

 It is an expensive proposition to set up an alternative launch site and we have made considerable investments in Sriharikota. Let me also point out that most of the launch sites in the world today are not that well optimised. Either they will have deficiency for the equatorial mode or for the polar mode because of various constraints like nearby land masses, safety zones, nearness to the equator, etc. So, one has to live with the non­-optional situation. Our loca­tion for launching geostationary communication satellites is very good, being at 13° N latitude. The only thing better than that is the French site at Kouru islands in French Guyana which is at 7° S latitude. 

Right now ISRO just builds satellites and operates them but the department of telecom decides how the transponders are used by whom. Can ISRO on its own launch a satellite and lease out the transponders to whoever wants to use it, be it domestic private users or foreign governments or companies like Asi­asat, Arabsat or Apstar? 

 We can't rule out this possibility. It needs to be pursued. Right now I am unable to answer the question.

Since we are getting seven flight-quali­fied cryogenic engines from Russia, are we going to start flying operational communication satellites from the GSLV-l? 

No the first flight will be experimental and then as and when the need arises we will use them to launch comsats. Mean­while, before the end of this decade we want, to develop our own cryogenic engine whose, parallel development will go on. 

(End Box)

Today, with inspiring suc­cesses in satellite building and in rocketry, it is easy for a young man with stars in his eyes to join ISRO. But what was it like in the 1960s? Then all one had was the exciting news of the Soviet-American space race and the prospect of emigrating and joining NASA. It would have been considered daydreaming of the highest order for an Indian to think of an Indian rocket inject­ing an Indian satellite into orbit. So what attracted our would-be space men to join Vikram Sarabhai in his dreams? 

 "I was an undergraduate studying physics when the Soviets launched the, Sputnik. I made up my mind to join the space programme, though it did not exist then. Soon after my BSc honours, I went to Ahmedabad and met Dr Sarabhai. He asked me to come to Ahmedabad, finish post-graduation and then join him in the Physical Research Laboratory," recounts Kale. After two more years of waiting and an MSc, Kale became one of the first to be roped into the space programme. He moved to Trivandrum, to the nascent Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station. That was the time of the church and the bishop's house. The unassuming Kale is regarded with great respect in ISRO and his early retirement is seen a great loss. "We wish he would change his mind," says Dr Manoranjan Rao. 

 Kale started his work in satellite sys­tems quite early and is today one of the authorities on the subject. Besides his in-depth knowledge of satellite tech­nology, he is a systems man. Nearly- 20 years back his work in systems analysis and management was recognised. And eight months back, when he was trans­ferred to vssc at Trivandrum, it was not only another home coming for Kale but also a challenging opportunity in project management for the PSLv launch preparation. 

 Within a short time he brought in advanced project management tech­niques. "We had to deal with about 12,000 activities and 18 networks. It was a mind-boggling exercise in project man­agement. We prepared project evaluation and review technique charts with about 500 elements and tried to find which are the optimal, normal and critical paths," says R.A.D. Pillai, one of the project managers. In such a complex project some activities can go on in parallel, as they don't depend on others till they reach a certain stage while others deal with inte­gration of these sub-assemblies. The lat­ter kind are heavily sequential - that is they depend on whether other systems are ready at the right time, and can only be carried out in a sequence of steps. If a step is not completed then a bottleneck is created and the integration gets held up. Anticipating trouble involves finding all such critical paths. 

 Normally one finds only one critical path, but, since there are a number of fac­tors which depend on chance, the natural choice is the ‘Monte Carlo technique'. This technique derives its name from the infamous gambling dens of Monte Carlo and using 'game theory' estimates all possible critical paths. When Kale used these techniques for the PSLV, he found more than one critical path and that helped. "But there is no substitute for actually visiting any division or centre which is critical and finding solutions together with the people there. Software can only act as a pointer, it is not a substi­tute for leadership in the field," Kale rightly points out. 

 Richard Feynman, the brilliant Nobel prize-winning physicist who played a pivotal role in identifying the cause of the Challenger space shuttle disaster, wrote incisively in his eminently readable book, Who cares what other people think?, that the excitement and problem-solving atmosphere in NASA vanished after the Moon mission. The top people started developing shuttle-type of projects with exaggerated claims about spin-offs to perpetuate the space programme. Worse still, the team spirit vanished and the top guns stopped listening to the field­men. The thing to worry about is, has something similar set into the Indian space programme, now into its fourth decade? 

 Does the open atmosphere and excite­ment that prevailed in the early years still exist in ISRO? Kale vehemently asserts it does. "The only change I see is that people are getting a bit bogged down in places and the earlier spirit to go wherever problems exist is decreasing. Other than that, it is a very transparent organisation. All technical matters are thrashed out collectively. Who says something does not matter as much as what he says." 

 "One of the main reasons we are still highly motivated in ISRO is that for nearly three decades we have had good leader­ship with clear cut goals," says Dr. K.Kas­turirangan, the incumbent chairman of ISRO. "When Dr Sarabhai passed away, he had already defined four broad areas of work: development of a satellite, devel­opment of a launch vehicle, remote sens­ing experiments using data from the American Landsat and even a sociologi­cal experiment in satellite communica­tion in education, like SITE." 

 "Then the equally illustrious Prof Satish Dhawan took over," recalls Kasturirangan. "He made sure that these things are translated into reality by build­ing the core organisation to realise these goals. He set new goals like building the Aryabhata satellite, experimental remote sensing satellites Bhaskara I & II, first experimental communication satellite APPLE and intensive attention towards the development of the SLV-3. When he left the scene, Aryabhata, Bhaskara, APPLE were completed. The SLV-3 had successfully launched the Rohini class of satellites and even operationalised the first generation communication systems, the INSAT-l series. Then he led us in working out the profile for the next ten years: development of the augmented satellite launch vehicle (ASLV), the PSLV. and the IRS class of remote sensing satel­lites and the indigenous INSAT-2 series," he says. 

 "Prof. U.R. Rao strengthened the insti­tutions, promoted applications in remote sensing and carried forward with vigour the realisation of these goals," he adds. But what about the future? "We worry today about what we have to do five to ten years later. Once the activities regarding PSLV development come to fruition and the GSLV moves fast, we will start worry­ing about the first decade of the 21st century. One excellent trend has been set in this department and that is sitting down with users, like the departments of tele­com, ocean development, forestry, geol­ogy, agriculture, I&B, civil aviation, etc, who tell us what they are looking for in terms of further support and services. Then we translate them into programmes and projects. This loop is continuously on," says Kasturirangan. 

 Any number of ISRO personnel vouch for this. No wonder the space programme has been one of the few success stories authored by the government. People too have stuck around despite low govern­ment salaries and lucrative offers from multinationals. The essential cement has been the open atmosphere at ISRO and the excitement of breaking new ground all on one's own. 

 A very Indian characteristic of ISRO is the penchant for improvisation with what one has. For example, today Indian remote sensing has come of age and its IRS data and the expertise are in demand globally. But 25 years back it did not exist. In fact, remote sensing itself was then just emerging from the war-torn jun­gles of Indo-China, where it was devel­oped by the US to locate camouflaged Vietcong guerrilla positions. The moment an opportunity came along to learn remote sensing in the US with the Earth Resources Technology Satellite project, Sarabhai sent Kale, P. R. Pisharoty, C. Dakshinamurthy and B. Krishnamurthy for the same. 

 India at that time did not have remote sensing cameras and much less IRS satel­lites. So on their return the four began small. In Kerala, a common scourge affecting the coconut trees is 'coconut wilt' that only affects the crown of the tree and cannot be seen from the ground, thereby defying damage estimation. These scientists managed to hitch a ride on a helicopter, and using a camera with a roll of infrared sensitive film took pic­tures of coconut plantations. From this modest experiment followed by decades of painstaking work, India has today become one of the global leaders in all aspects of remote sensing.

 When it came to launch vehicle tech­nology things; however, became very dif­ficult. The US refused to part with even the most elementary technologies, instead saying, 'buy our sounding rock­ets'. The French were more helpful. They sold the propellant technology for small solid-fuelled sounding rockets; though it was a far cry from the indigenously devel­oped, sophisticated ammonium perchlo­rate-hydroxyl-terminated poly-butadiene technology that is now used in the first stage of the PSLV, which makes it the third most powerful booster rocket in the world. 

 In the mid-1970s, France once again offered to share the liquid propulsion technology in exchange for Indian collab­oration in developing the same. The Indi­ans were supposed to develop the pressure transducers for the Viking liquid engines under development. While these transducers are hi-tech products, they are only a small component of the liquid engine. Moreover, there are so many design complexities that the 'know why' is absolutely essential to build an engine. The ‘know how' in terms of drawings are not enough. Why a particular thing is machined to one micron precision and not two? Why a certain kind of gasket or an O-ring has to be used and not any other, etc, can make or break an engine. The French, probably never expected Indians to acquire the full technology. Hence the contract was signed at a throwaway price. 

Nambi Narayanan "If I write my memoirs one day, it will sound like a thriller"

 The 50-odd team that went to France between 1978 and 1980 was made up of the cream of young ISRO engineers. Every day they brainstormed and sought solutions to complex design problems of the Viking, while maintaining a 'dumb' exterior to their French counterparts. 

Two years later they returned to India and claimed that they could build a 6O-tonne liquid engine using nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical di-methyl hydrazine (UDMH), chemical compounds which were not even available in India then! "We asked for only Rs40 lakh (to fund the project)," recounts S. Nambina­rayanan, presently director, Cryogenic Propulsion, who lead the team to France. "Prof Dhawan was crazy enough to accede to this cocky request. If I write my memoirs some day, it will sound like a thriller," he laughs. 

 Two years later they built a model and in 1984 built an engine ready for test. But, then India did not have the present test facilities at Mahendragiri which, inci­dentally, being just ten years old is the most modem in the world. So the engine had to be taken all the way to France and Rs. l crore paid as testing fee. The French asked, "So you have brought an engine. Is this your prototype? Do you have a manufacturing programme?" and when answered in the negative, they could not believe it. They thought 'these Indians are crazy', Nambinarayanan recollects. 

The engine was tested and, to the jubi­lation of the Indians and the horror of the French the engine fired beautifully. Today's Vikas liquid engine is bigger than the French. Viking engine. And thereby hangs a tale of ISRO ingenuity and team work. It is this track record that gives the confidence to ISRO when they talk about developing cryogenic engines an order of magnitude more complex. 

 ISRO is not made up of just engineers who get their high from technology. There are also those who are worrying about costs,' markets, competitiveness and commercialisation. The hyperactive N. Sampath, executive director, Antric Corp, is one of them. In his characteristic rapid-fire style, he answers questions on commercial spin-offs with counter-ques­tions. "Why are we being asked about the commercialisation of the space pro­gramme? Can you show me one country in the world, which started the space programme to make money out of it? Then why pick on us?" This is not to say that he and his team are not looking at the highly competitive global space market, but he considers it as a spin-off rather than the main objective of the space programme. 

 "Our major problem in entering the global market is that we are only a five-satellite-old company, whereas there are companies which are 40 to 50 satel­lites old. So even though we can offer extremely competitive prices, the user goes for track record. However, due to fierce international competition, the big satellite companies are looking. at us as a source of sub-systems. So for some time we may not get any orders for complete satellites but make an equal amount of money by supplying sub-systems to, say, ten satellites," says Sampath. 

 The tie-up between Antrix and Eosat Corporation of the US, which has a turnover of about $40 million, is another deal that excites Sampath. "It is a step in gaining international credibility for Indian space products. It is a win-win situation. Eosat gets IRS data at highly competitive prices, which is moreover as good as and compatible with the Landsat (US) data that Eosat distributes to its cus­tomers. The imminent demise of Landsat 5 and the loss of Landsat-6 makes alternative arrangement a must. Here IRS data scores over the French SPOT data. Meanwhile, Antrix gains global market acceptability without spending a cent on expensive marketing,” Sampath exults. 

 Kasturirangan, Pramod Kale, Nambi­narayanan and Sampath are a small but representative sample of our space men. There are a whole host of others like Dr A.E. Muthunayagam, R. Aravamudan, S. Srinivasan, G. Madhavan Nair, K.V. Venkatachari, and Dr George Joseph. Behind payloads, orbits and engine char­acteristics it is these space men who, along with their thousands of colleagues, are propelling India into space. 

That is why the septugenarian doyen of our space men, Prof Dhawan said after the PSLV launch, "I wish I were a B Tech joining ISRO afresh !"

---------------------------------------------------------------

Indian Space Programme

Business India, April 21- May 4, 1997

SPACE: THE NEW BUSINESS FRONTIER
Driven by the telecom, TV and Internet revolutions, the global space market for satellites, launch vehicles and other hardware is expected to rocket to nearly $60 billion in the next three years. The software for, and services coming out of, this growing space infrastructure will involve even larger sums. With the Indian Space Research Organisation's technology and Indian entrepreneurship, the country is well placed to grab a significant share of this emerging business. But will the government amend its currently stifling policies to let this happen?

Shivanand Kanavi

Anand Krishna is a real estate devel­oper who is making his fame and fortune not on land anymore but actually beyond the skies. A Malaysian of Indian origin, Krishna owns Measat, a satellite company with four satel­lites in orbit. Shinawatra, a former general in the Thai army, is another to reach for the stars with company Thaicomm. They are part of an increas­ing number of Asian entrepreneurs who are getting into the hottest business of this, and probably the next, century - satellite services.

The business is rocketing in front of our very eyes and we seem to be missing it. Over the next 10 years a galaxy of satellites will cover our planet's skies. There are all together 150 satellites in orbit today running telecommunications, remote sens­ing, TV, scientific experiments and military appli­cations. In the next three years alone 500 satellites, called 'birds' in industry parlance, are expected to be launched.


The hardware alone spells $30 billion worth of business for builders. If the plan of the Bill Gates-­Craig McCaw company Teledesic to put up 840 satellites to provide multimedia services and global mobile connectivity to the Internet comes through, then the value of business will truly be astronomical.

Four major factors have fuelled an unprece­dented demand for satellites: the growth of the Internet, corporate business communication, value-added services and electronic commerce globally, but especially in the US; the mushroom­ing of satellite TV channels in almost all countries and their further development to digital Direct- To ­Home (DTH) service with high-definition picture and CD-quality sound; the development of commercial remote-sensing applications; and the urgent need to set up basic telephony in developing countries.

Global mobile communications drives the mar­ket. In the next three years over 300 satel­lites are expected to be launched in the low-earth (600-1,000 km) and medium­earth orbits (10,000 km). These are parts of constellations of satellites meant for global cellular com­munication such as Iridium of Motorola, Globalstar, Odyssey of TRW, Orbcomm of Orbital Sciences, Starsys of GE Ameri­corn, ICO Global, etc. There are a few more schemes involving 100-200 small satel­lites awaiting global regulatory processes.

With commercial remote sensing open­ing up, 100 remote sensing satellites are planned to be launched as well. Additionally 150 tra­ditional large satel­lites will be launched in geostationary.orbits. More than a hundred of them will be com­mercial communication satellites. Over 50 of these are high.- powered satellites meant for DTH TV broadcasts. About 30 satcoms (communications satellites) will be for standard telecommunications and others will be for assorted use, including multimedia services and the Internet.

Such an unprecedented boom will mean another $30 billion for launch providers. Besides the gov­ernment-funded space programmes, a large num­ber of private companies are developing rockets for these launches. Some companies like Loral (Ford Aerospace) have shed their defence business in favour of the more lucrative space market. The merger of corporate giants such as Lockheed-Mar­tin Marietta (GE satellites with General Dynamics rockets) and Boeing-McDonnell Douglas have also meant an intensified focus on their space businesses.

Unlike in the past, the major new players are not governmental or inter-governmental programmes such as NASA, Intelsat, Inmarsat or Arianespace, much less the cash-starved Russian and Ukrainian agencies. The new players are not manufacturers of satellites and rockets at all- rather, they are oper­ators, marketers and service providers. They rely on other firms to build the hardware and launch it, while they focus on selling and finding innovative applications for their services.

Where does India fit in this scenario?

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has today completed developmental flights of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), which can put a one-tonne satellite in a 1,000 km orbit. Work is in progress to stretch the existing launch vehicle by increasing the amount of propellants in the first stage solid-fuel booster and the second stage liquid-fuel engine, so that a 1200 kg satellite can be placed in a low earth orbit. The PSLV in its developmental phase cost an incredibly low $15 million. The entire programme was budgeted at about $100 million. Even if com­mercial launches of PSLV are marketed at $25-30 million, it will be the most attractive launcher for low earth orbit satellites, which could be for remote sensing, scientific experiments or ­the market driver - mobile communications, such as Motorola's Iridium (66 satellites) amongst others.

ISRO lost an opportunity to be part of the first round of Iridium contracts. Motorola had to finalise its financial closure and, due to the failure of the first developmental flight of PSLV in 1993 on account of a software error, dropped PSLV for consideration as one of the primary launchers. However, the later suc­cess of two flights in 1994 and 1996 means that Motorola will con­sider it as a potential vehicle for replenishing the constellation starting in 2002. Recently there have been a series of launch failures by sev­eral launch providers, and it might well become a seller's market for those who have suc­cessful launch records, so the window is still open for ISRO.

How does ISRO suc­ceed with a 'shoe-string budget' (as the well­known US aerospace magazine Aviation Week & Space Techno­logy said in a recent cover, story)? Space technology needs high­quality industrial and other infrastructure. For example, running the deep space simulation chamber for testing a satel­lite soaks up large amounts of power and about 2 million litres of liquid nitrogen, both of which are expensive in India.

MILESTONES IN THE INDIAN SPACE PROGRAMME
1963
First sounding rocket launched from TERLS

1969
Indian Space Research. Organisation (ISRO) formed under Department of Atomic Energy

1975
Aryabhatta launched

1979
Bhaskara-1 launched

1980
SLV-3, Rohini satellite launched

1981
SLV-3, RS-D1 launched. APPLE launched. Bhaskara-2 launched

1982
INSAT-1A launched

1983
SLV-3, RS-D2 Iaunched.INSAT-1B launched

1987
Launch of ASLV. SROSS satellite could not be placed in orbit

1988
IRS - 1 A launched
INSAT- 1 C launched
ASLV launched. Unsuccessful in placing SROSS satellite in orbit


1990 INSAT-ID launched


1991 IRS-1B launched


1992 ASLV launchedSROSS-C placed successfullyINSAT-2A launched

1993 INSAT - 2B launched PSLV-D1placing IRS-IE unsuccessfully


1994 ASLV launchedSROSS-C2 placed successfully PSLV-D2 launchedIRS-P2 placed successfully


1995 INSAT-2C launched IRS -1C launched


1996 PSLV-D3 launched
IRS-P3 placed successfully

1997 INSAT-2D sent to French Guyana on 8th April for launch


Space jargon
Geostationary orbit
Any object placed into orbit at 36,000 km above the equator will take the same amount of time as Earth to complete one revolution. Thus from Earth it appears to be stationary. Hence an antenna dish receiving signals from the satellite does not need to move to continuously track it, saving consider­able expense and complexity.
Transponder
A communication satellite used for telecom or TV receives the electromagnetic signal from the ground transmitter. It then retransmits it at a dif­ferent frequency towards Earth. The communica­tion equipment on board a satellite that does both is called a transponder.
Why multi-stage rockets?
The more weight that is carried into space, the larger the size of the rocket that is required for more fuel and power. It costs approximately $30,000 (roughly Rs. 10 lakh) to put one kilogram into geostationary orbit. In a multi-stage rocket the burnt out stages are detached one by one so that less and less weight is actually carried up.
Remote sensing
Observing Earth from a distance and getting infor­mation based on the reflecting properties of differ­ent objects is known as remote sensing. Remote sensing can also be done using aircraft but satellite remote sensing is far cheaper and more compre­hensive.
What is digital Direct- To- Home broadcasting?
In DTH, the signal frequency allows the broadcast to be received by a small dish antenna about a foot in diameter. Using digital technology the signals are compressed so that many channels can be broadcast from a single transponder. It enables the broadcaster to monitor and control usage, because the signal can be keyed to individual users, who can then be charged subscriptions. Since it uses digital technology, DTH provides extremely high­ quality picture and sound, as on a laser disc or CD.
Why should we use liquid-fuelled rockets when solid-fuelled rockets are much simpler to make?
Solid-fuelled rockets cannot be turned on or· off at will. Once lit they bum till the propellant. is exhausted. A liquid-fuelled rocket, on the other hand, can be easily controlled with a fuel valve, just like the accelerator of a car.


But ISRO has a major cost advantage because so much of space technology development is highly labour-intensive. This kind of work requires the highly skilled labour of scientists and engineers. ISRO has MScs, MTechs and PhDs assembling and testing critical subsystems of its satellites and rockets for a fraction of the costs of its foreign competitors. Just like the Indian advantage in developing computer software, low-cost intellec­tual labour gives ISRO a marked competitive advantage.

For example, the money invested in the entire Indian space programme over the last 35 years is half of what Japan invested in developing their own H-2 rocket over the last 10 years ($2.4 bil­lion). Yet it found that H-2, with a price tag of $150-180 million per launch, is priced out of the market. Now Japan is investing another $900 mil­lion to modify it into H-2A and using all the manu­facturing infrastructure of heavy weights like Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Nissan and NEC to bring the launch estimate to about $80 million. H-2A has the same payload capacity as ISRO'S Geostation­ary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) now under development at an additional cost of only $100 million. ISRO can profitably price it at $70-80 million when it flies early in the next decade.

Launch failures are a common occurrence in the developmental phase. But serious problems arise when an operational vehicle fails, because this shoots up the already high satellite insurance costs and damages the launcher's credibility in the market. Thus far, all of the operational satellites built by ISRO, be they remote-sensing satellites or communication satellites, have done well, with some performing beyond their designed lifespan.
PSLV also acts as a major step in achieving the capability to launch 2,000-2,500 kg communica­tion satellites in the 36,000 km high geostationary orbit. Slightly modified first and second stages which have already been ground tested are used in configuring GSLV to launch India's Insat series. After developing GSLV and putting it into opera­tion, it will be stretched to carry the heavier 3,500 kg class satellites.

Under the leadership of U.R. Rao, ISRO under­took a vigorous programme to develop a space industry in India by transferring their technology to build various subsystems for liquid- and solid­fuelled rockets to private and public sector units. Antrix Corporation, which was set up by ISRO to market the government organisation's products internationally, has already taken initial steps to involve the private sector, and it even has Ratan Tata, Jamshyd Godrej and Ravindra Reddy on its board. L&T, Godrej, MTAR, Walchandnagar Indus­tries and others, who are involved in manufactur­ing subsystems for ISRO, could follow the worldwide trend and form consortia to build launch vehicles and market launch services.

Global marketing requires investments, mar­ket savvy, and aggressive strategies, which pri­vate entrepreneurs can provide. In fact, Rao recalls how India's first experimental communi­cation satellite, Apple, was not only offered a free ride into space by Arianespace (a European launch conglomerate) but, throughout the devel­opmental stage of Ariane, its director-general would personally visit ISRO every three months to brief them on the latest progress in the project. Ariane used to fly prospective customers from all over the world to French Guyana for Ariane launches. No wonder then that when NASA stopped carrying commercial satellites following the Challenger disaster, Ariane moved in. Today it has 60 per cent of the commercial launch market with its Ariane-4 rocket.

To launch so many satellites one needs suitable space ports. More than 10 new launch facilities are being planned by the private sector worldwide in the US, Canada, Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Kenya and Australia. And India's Sriharikota Range (SHAR), covering some 170 sq km north of Chen­nai, if marketed properly, could be a money-spinner. The location utilizes Earth's eastward rotation to launch a geostationary satellite in the equatorial plane. Its location close to the equator is one of its main advantages (as geo­stationary satellites must be launched near the Earth's equator), besides the fact that the Bay of Bengal provides a safe, unpopulated environment. Along with the Ariane­space port at Kouru in French Guyana in South America, SHAR currently provides the best location for equatorial launches.

SHAR also boasts a state-of-the-art, 20-storey, 300-tonne mobile ser­vice tower. This is a mechanical engineering mar­vel built by Triveni Structurals to ISRO designs and specifications. The mobile service tower pro­vides facilities for launching PSLVs and is cur­rently being augmented with cryogenic equipment for launching GSLVs as well. To increase the fre­quency of launches to serve the global market an additional launch tower is being planned by ISRO and is awaiting government funding. The range also offers solid propellant production and casting facilities along with ground testing facilities for solid-fuelled rockets.

The star of the space programme is of course ISRO'S satellite design and fabrication capability. Indian Remote Sensing Satellites (IRS) today are among the finest in the world and at the same time inexpensive. ISRO currently has four of these in polar orbits and will launch four more by 2000. ISRO is thus placed to be the best provider of remote-sensing data globally, a market dominated earlier by Landsat (US) and Spot (France). It was also a bit of luck that Landsat-5 went out of action and Landsat-6 was lost in space by the Chinese Long March rocket.

ISRO moved into the vacuum with its high-class IRS 1-C. Seizing the opportunity, the US com­pany Eosat, which is marketing Landsat's remote-sensing data, made a strategic alliance with ISRO'S global marketing arm, Antrix. ''The alliance is win-win," N. Sampath, executive direc­tor of Antrix, exults. Recently Eosat's director of applications and training, Tina Cary, echoed simi­lar sentiments, saying, "the IRS series is a jewel in the crown of Eosat." A new partner to this alliance will be Space Imaging (US), which is soon putting up a high-resolution satellite of its own. The threesome, with its combined array of data products, hopes to capture a significant portion of the $250-million market for data over the next three to five years.

In an exclusive interview with Business India, K. Kasturirangan, chairman of ISRO, spelt out the organisation's marketing strategy. "Data sales in the form of computer-com­patible tapes and hard copies will yield us money, but the real money is in value-added services. Value-added services in remote sensing could soon have a market of $2-3 billion. The important thing is that in India we have a lot of experience in generating value-added products for specific queries, laying a pipeline for urban development or ground water studies or other studies in rural development, crop estimates, aquaculture, etc, which we did for our own developmental needs. Thereby we have built up the service infrastructure for the global market as well.

"We are encouraging more and more entrepre­neurs into remote-sensing, value-added services. When many of the foreign space agencies come to us today for signing co-operative agreements in remote sensing, they also come as representatives of industry in their country. We also have been including industrial representatives and put entre­preneurs together. We have identified about 50 entrepreneurs and 12-13 have become very active.

Profits from a distance
Remote sensing is a technology by which a satellite acts as our eye in the sky through which we get important information about our own planet. Everything reflects energy in a different way. The reflective and emissive properties of various surfaces, which are detectable by satel­lite, are called their 'spectral signatures'.

Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites are equipped with special cameras which scan a Part of Earth's surface for radiation. The data is digitised and sent to a ground station for analysis. This data can yield commercially valuable information. For example, in the case of ground water, the conventional method of prospecting yields a success rate of about 45-­50 per cent, but remote-sensing data used in conjunction with the conventional method yields a success rate of almost 95 per cent.

In the same way, remote sensing has great cash-saving applications in urban development, aquaculture, deep water fish­ing, cartography, siting industrial complexes, environmental impact assessment, pipeline laying, etc.

ISRO, in addition to having developed extensive in-house remote-sensing expertise, is working at building up a service infrastruc­ture and likewise encouraging many entrepre­neurs to service the market. The National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), National Natural Resources Management System and Regional Remote Sensing Service Centers are continuously making efforts to popularize the technology. They provide satellite data in various forms at throw­away prices to Indian users as compared to the expensive French SPOT satellite data. They also help in interpreting it for specific applications. NRSA, together with the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing at Dehradun, is training a large number of people from the government and the private sector in data analysis and value-added services.

Recognizing India's strengths in remote sens­ing, the UN has established an advanced centre for training in remote sensing for the Asia Pacific region at Dehradun. Given its state-of-the-art remote-sensing satellites and software abilities, India is considered to be one of the global leaders in the field.

Some are ex-ISRO people. Some have been trained by us at our Indian Institute of Remote Sensing at Dehradun and at the National Remote Sensing Agency at Hyderabad.
"Our French competitor SPOT is talking about a new satellite – SPOT-5 - with improved resolu­tion. They have their own established market. But I am sure that we will have our own niche in the mar­ket as well. We have to always maintain leadership technologically. Instead of trying to enter as the third force in this emerging market, we are having a strategic alliance with Eosat and Space Imaging," elaborates Kasturirangan.

Today India is one of the global leaders in all aspects of remote sensing. "In fact, a very large number of papers in any international conference on applications of remote sensing is from India," says former chairman Rao proudly. He was also the architect of Antrix Corp and its alliance with Eosat.

ISRO has not found space hardware marketing as easy, when giants like Hughes control 60 per cent of the global satellite market. SO ISRO has gone in for subsystem supply as a market entry route. It has a contract for about $2 million dollars from Hughes and a further half million from Matra Marconi. But this is not easy either. Each designer has his own specifications for subsystems, unless the system is co-designed with the supplier. "The money is peanuts and hassles are many, margins are non-existent, but the interaction is helping us in many ways. Though they are tough to satisfy, once Hughes or Matra realizes your value as a· reli­able supplier, they inevitably give a steady stream of orders which we can pass on to the industry while we become the testing, qualifying node," says Sampath.

Kasturirangan feels that 10 transponders to be leased out to Intelsat in 1998 from Insat-2E will not only bring in $100 million over the next 10 years but also give India visibility in the interna­tional communication satellite market.

"Our global thrust is remote sensing"
K. Kasturirangan, chairman of ISRO, spoke to Business India about ISRO'S marketing strategies and the challenges that lie ahead in the highly competitive global market

Are you looking at the global market for space hardware and software as a thrust area, or do you just have some surplus capacity to sell?

In the case of value-added services in remote sensing we feel we have some strength and we are giving it a global thrust. In communications we have leased 10 transponders to Intelsat in Insat 2­E for $100 million over the next 10 years. We also provide satellite operation-related services like track­ing and telemetry on orbit tests to other satellite companies.

When it comes to satellite hard­ware, we do have some problems. We can supply ele­ments which have been standardised like communica­tion elements, pre­cision mechanical elements, control system elements, electro-optical and infra-red sensors and propulsion elements, among others. We have a contract with Hughes worth over a million dollars. We are supplying some sub-systems to Matra-Marconi in Europe, and we are also holding discussions with Loral Aerospace of the US. But manufacturing is not ISRO'S activ­ity and we are transferring many of these things to industry.

In the launch-vehicle programme there is lim­ited capacity available for a single shot or replen­ishment of satellites in low earth orbiting constellations for mobile communication. There are a number of agencies in the world which are looking for that kind of support as well. But we are not planning a major thrust in the launch­ vehicle market.

Here again we want the industry to play a more important role. They should not be just making subsystems for us. They should get into assembly and the vehicle itself like Lockheed, McDonnell ­Douglas, Orbital Sciences, etc, in the US, so that ultimately we can have a space industry coming out of this.

Suppose tomorrow the government allows uplinking for private channels. How long will it take ISRO to put a satellite in orbit?

The DoT and the ministry for information and broadcasting use about 70 transponders. With Insat 2-D, which we sent to French Guyana for launch this month, we will have 93. As we place one Insat every year, we will have 130 transpon­ders by 2002. We can build up capacity for private users and adjustments could be done. You can't suddenly ask for 25 transponders – nowhere in the world can you do that. Other than that we can take care of private demand.

Do you see any widening of the Insat coordina­tion committee to include private users?

I will not right now rule out that possibility. How Insat will evolve in the future is certainly receiv­ing ISRO' S attention. It will depend on the telecom policy and broadcasting policy which are being discussed in the government.

The draft broadcast policy says channel opera­tors should use Indian satellites. If ISRO transponders are going to be priced competi­tively anyway, why should you insert that clause?

Every country, when it reaches capability like ours, develops a national satellite policy. When you talk about an Indian registered satellite, it is not necessary that it should be built by ISRO. It can be built anywhere. Registration essentially provides control of the satellite. Government also takes certain protective measures which are part of UN conventions and treaties as well as ITU (International Telecommunication Union) regulations

Have any Indian operators of satellite channels approached ISRO for transponders?

There have been in the past a number of enquiries.

So ISRO has lost that business?

Yes. If transponders were available they would have come to us.

There has been talk of an 'exodus' from ISRO. Is there any possibility of salary and perk structures being changed to offer more attractive packages?

The Fifth Pay Commission has come out with recommendations. They will be reasonably good. There is also an effort to bridge the gap with the private sector by offering housing and other perks.

Does the government recognize that high technology areas have to be treated differently; otherwise we will keep loosing talent?

Yes. The flexibility we have is quite notable. We can hire people at middle and senior levels directly if we need to. Our crop of new recruits is reason­ably good; they are not all from IITS or IIMS as they used to be, but from regional engineering colleges and good private engineering colleges. The slight difference in background they might have with IITS is easily made up for with in-house training. People with enough drive and motivation are given responsibilities in wider fields. We are not unduly worried of some people leaving. It happens in all organizations, government or private.

What are the technology challenges for new comers at ISRO, or is it getting routine?

A new generation of satellites, the reduction of weights of space components, increasing power, developing new, stronger and lighter materials, new high-resolution cameras, new digital circuits and electro-optical elements, etc. To bring down the weight of say a filter from 200 to 100 gm is a tremendous thing, but if that is the new interna­tional benchmark then we have to do it. It is not easy. We may go for a newer band, the Ka band, which is used for multimedia services. It is being planned for GSAT·3. We have to develop ion propulsion systems rather than gas-based ones. They will increase the life of a satellite. I don't see any problem of technology challenges for the next 10 years at least.

Meanwhile, ISRO is coming out with increas­ingly sophisticated communication satellites with Ku band transponders for smaller VSATs and mobile communications, global positioning sys­tems and Ka band for multimedia services. It will also produce a DTH satellite in 1998-99 as well as high-power S band transponders for digi­tal-audio communication, which could have possi­ble applications for a countrywide mobile communication system.

But these potentialities will not be realized until the government liberalizes telecommunications and broadcasting policies. To date the government refuses to release its stranglehold on communica­tions and broadcasting, which remain amongst the most rigidly controlled activities under the Indian Telegraph Act. Despite many modifications to the legislation since its enactment in the 19th century, the commercial opportunities offered by space technology (and even India's own satellites!) cannot be used to commercial advantage.

Despite the major advances made by the Indian space programme and its enormous potential for providers of satellite-based services such as tele­com and TV, government policy prohibits private satellite service providers from using ISRO's satel­lites. Starry-eyed entrepreneurs are not permitted either to set up satellite services or buy or lease satellites from ISRO.

What's more, uplinking from India between private sector satellite service providers and any satellites whatsoever is not permitted. This means that Indian service providers must not only lease transponders on foreign satellites, but must also send their programmes abroad for uplinking. This not only adds great expense to the service, but also means the loss of revenue that would otherwise go to ISRO and VSNL. The situation could get even more piquant if the government does not get its act together, because one might see ISRO'S transpon­ders leased to Intelsat, which in turn could sublease them back to Indian and other Asian operators, leaving ISRO out in the cold.

Nothing seems to highlight the wasted poten­tial of the Indian space programme due to current government policy more than the fact that while Indian experts train satellite technologists from Thailand, Malaysia, Korea, China, the Philippines and other countries at the foothills of the Himalayas at Dehradun, businessmen from these very same countries make a beeline to India to sell satellite services.

The countdown for capturing the opportunities of the space market has begun. Since it is still a nascent business with enormous growth potential and India has developed the necessary technologi­cal and managerial skills, the country is in a posi­tion to make a significant impact on the new business and reap a great deal of the rewards. But ISRO'S hands can only be unshackled through the creation and implementation of forward-Iooking, business-oriented policies. ISRO should be allowed to network with private enterprise to mar­ket its scientific and engineering expertise and products.

India and its entrepreneurs can rocket into the next millennium on the new business of satellite services, but only if the government lets them.