India has an excellent Space program. The recent Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C9) that fired 10 satellites into orbit successfully, is a testimony to that. The launch included six CubeSats (www.cubesat.org) from the University of Toronto. So are some of the other achievements such as missiles that carry warheads and interceptor missiles. Programs that support defense, provide weather information, mapping data, telecommunications etc. are critical and their importance to ground operations can be articulated.
However, with regards to the Moon Mission – Chandrayaan-1, it is not clear what benefit Indian citizens will derive from sending payloads to the moon, which includes a lunar orbiter. If this is a commercial venture with the costs recovered from sending six of the eleven payloads, paid for by “foreign” customers, (not if they are CubeSats) then one could justify this venture based on a return on investment (ROI) basis.Else, it would only serve to provide the ISRO scientists a self-serving interesting project, which boosts their ego and portrays the space prowess of India. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing at all, if we didn’t have other uses for this investment that serve the 200 plus million people who live under abject poverty, or provided some benefit for the other 800 million citizens of India, besides bragging rights, that India has joined the elite lunar club. Besides, the Moon Mission, India has a manned space mission planned which would make India the fourth nation to do so, along with Russia, USA and China. Again this begs the question, what is the ROI?
On the other hand, there are indeed challenging projects that would benefit the entire country. One such project is distance learning. Education in rural India has a lot to be desired and using satellite technology to enhance the education system would pay rich long-term dividends. The challenge is to support India’s multi-lingual environment. If you look at India’s currency, there are fifteen languages represented* plus English. If we were to take just fifteen languages (minus Nepali), we would probably need upwards of 150 channels to serve pre-school thru standard ten. Add to this other regional languages such as Bojpuri, Sindhi, Marwari, Tulu etc. and the number of languages would exceed twenty. There are significant lapses in the quality of education particularly in rural India. Another factor India is confronted with is the medium of instruction. Neglecting English puts the student at a disadvantage.
Neglecting the regional language has a detrimental effect in preserving ourcultural diversity. The answer is a multi-lingual medium of instructionswhere the liberal arts subjects are taught in the regional language, and thescience subjects in English. In addition there is need for adult education and dissemination of information pertinent to agriculture, which is localized for a particular demographic and environmental conditions.
Assuming satellite based solution is the answer, this would present outscientists at ISRO a truly challenging project with a very definite andmeasurable ROI, that would do India a great service and something to beextremely proud of.
* The languages in order of their appearance are: Assamese, Bengali,Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya,Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu.
