The argument over the future of the Indian Space Research Organisation has moved well beyond the familiar debate over whether private enterprise should have a role in India’s space programme.
Private participation is no longer hypothetical. It is government policy, backed by legislation, regulatory changes, foreign investment liberalisation, technology transfers and an expanding ecosystem of start-ups. The real question is whether India is creating a larger national space capability around ISRO or gradually transferring publicly created capabilities out of ISRO without building sufficiently strong safeguards around what follows.
There is nothing intrinsically objectionable about bringing private capital into space. India cannot expect a government agency alone to service a space economy that now covers communications, earth observation, navigation, launch services, data analytics, defence applications and increasingly sophisticated orbital infrastructure. Private companies can manufacture faster, raise capital, take commercial risks and pursue markets that a scientific organisation should not necessarily be expected to chase.
That, however, is an argument for expanding Indian space capability, not for diminishing ISRO. The distinction has become increasingly important because the government’s declared policy goes considerably further than permitting companies to operate alongside ISRO. The Indian Space Policy envisages ISRO moving away from manufacturing mature operational space systems and concentrating increasingly on advanced research, development and newer technologies. NewSpace India Limited is intended to commercialise technologies developed through public expenditure, while IN-SPACe authorises and facilitates private activity. Mature systems, technologies, testing facilities and technical support are progressively being opened to industry.
The process is already well advanced. By January this year, 71 ISRO technologies had been transferred to industry and start-ups. The transfer of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle technology to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is particularly significant because it involves much more than subcontracting individual components. It is designed eventually to give industry the ability to manufacture and launch the vehicle end-to-end. Private entities are also being encouraged to build satellite constellations, launch vehicles and ground infrastructure.
The government describes this as scaling up rather than scaling down India’s space programme. That case deserves to be heard. ISRO itself cannot become the manufacturer of every rocket, satellite and commercial product required by an economy aspiring to become a major global space power. Transferring proven production technologies while allowing ISRO scientists to concentrate on next-generation propulsion, human spaceflight, planetary exploration and advanced systems could, if properly managed, strengthen rather than weaken the organisation.
But that proposition rests upon one indispensable condition: ISRO must retain the scientific depth, institutional memory and strategic capacity from which the next generation of technologies will emerge. It is here that developments surrounding the departure of scientists become disturbing.
More than 100 scientists and engineers have been reported to have resigned or sought voluntary retirement over a relatively short period, including personnel associated with important programmes. The Department of Space considered the situation serious enough in July to tighten exit procedures for Group A scientific and technical personnel working on Gaganyaan and other critical missions, taking greater control over decisions that had earlier been handled at the level of individual ISRO centres.
The government has argued that departures and recruitment are part of the normal life of a large scientific organisation. Numerically, 100 departures do not remotely amount to the disappearance of ISRO, which remains a formidable institution pursuing an ambitious programme. Claims that the organisation has already been virtually killed therefore go too far.
But numbers are a poor measure of scientific loss. Ten engineers possessing irreplaceable knowledge of a propulsion system can matter more than hundreds of employees elsewhere in an organisation. Space technology depends heavily upon accumulated experience – knowledge of why an earlier design failed, how materials behave beyond their published tolerances, why one configuration survived vibration and another did not, and countless engineering judgements that rarely reside completely in manuals.
Once such people leave, expertise does not simply disappear. In a rapidly growing private space industry offering better remuneration and commercial opportunities, much of it can migrate directly into companies receiving technologies, facilities and contracts from the state.
That creates an extraordinary policy paradox. The government is simultaneously trying to encourage movement of capability into private industry and prevent excessive movement of critical scientific manpower out of ISRO. The July restrictions on resignations are therefore more revealing than official reassurance. An organisation confident that attrition posed no strategic difficulty would hardly need exceptional measures to retain personnel associated with important missions.
The concern becomes sharper because space is no longer merely a civilian scientific endeavour. Communications satellites, navigation systems, high-resolution imagery, launch technology, tracking networks, propulsion expertise and orbital intelligence have direct military applications. The wars of the past few years have demonstrated how deeply space assets are integrated into surveillance, targeting, communications and battlefield awareness. India consequently cannot treat the transfer of space technology as an ordinary industrial licensing exercise.
The crucial issue is not whether the first recipient of an ISRO technology is an Indian company. Companies change ownership structures. Investors enter and leave. Engineers move between employers. Subsidiaries are created abroad. Intellectual property can be incorporated into derivative products. Joint ventures can alter the commercial destination of knowledge originally developed inside a strategic national institution.
National-security policy therefore cannot end with a clause requiring an Indian company to retain a specified shareholding. India needs an auditable system governing downstream technology use, foreign access to sensitive technical information, movement of key personnel, cybersecurity, export controls, subcontracting, changes in beneficial ownership and the handling of classified or dual-use knowledge. Some technologies should be commercially transferable. Others may justify restricted licensing. A smaller category may have to remain exclusively within sovereign institutions irrespective of possible commercial returns.
Profit itself is not the enemy. Private companies exist to earn it, and India wants them to succeed. But corporate obligations and national strategic obligations are not identical. A company must answer to shareholders and investors; ISRO ultimately answers to the Indian state. That difference cannot be wished away by describing privatisation as democratisation.
The United States provides an instructive comparison often invoked by supporters of India’s reforms. NASA relies extensively on private companies and has obtained extraordinary results from commercial partnerships. Yet the American model does not involve the state abandoning strategic oversight. Sensitive technologies remain surrounded by elaborate export controls, security classifications, procurement rules and restrictions governing foreign access. Commercialisation operates inside a powerful national-security architecture.
The greatest danger is not that private Indian companies will build rockets. That should be welcomed. It is that India could slowly convert an organisation possessing end-to-end capability into principally a research laboratory while the operational knowledge, manufacturing ecosystem and experienced personnel necessary to turn laboratory designs into functioning strategic systems accumulate elsewhere. Once such capacity has dispersed, rebuilding it inside the state would be extraordinarily difficult.
The government therefore owes Parliament and the country something more substantial than assurances that ISRO is being ‘scaled up’. It should spell out which capabilities will permanently remain sovereign, what categories of technology may be transferred, how recipients and subsequent investors will be screened, what happens when sensitive personnel move into private companies, and who continuously audits compliance after a technology has left ISRO.