ISRO Staff Bodies Seek Safeguards for Public-Funded Space Technology
ISRO employee associations have reiterated that private participation in the space sector must not weaken the agency or transfer public-funded technology at throwaway prices.
A group of employee associations at the Indian Space Research Organisation has renewed its call for safeguards in the ongoing debate over private participation in the country's space sector, stressing that such involvement must not erode the agency's own capabilities.
The Joint Action Council, which brings together several staff associations, issued a note circulated among employees on Thursday. It follows an earlier letter to the ISRO chairman on September 4, a day after the successful GSLV-F17 mission, in which the associations sought clarity on the agency's future role amid reports that it might be asked to focus only on a few strategic missions while leaving the rest of the sector to private companies.
Those concerns prompted ISRO Chairman V Narayanan to state that there was no move to privatise the agency. He said ISRO would continue to build and strengthen its capabilities while partnering with the private sector to expand the space economy, and later addressed employees in a video conference to address their worries.
In the fresh note, the associations made clear they are not opposed to private participation. Indian industry, public sector units and start-ups have an important role in expanding the country's space ecosystem, the note said, but private involvement must strengthen national capability rather than weaken ISRO's core functions.
The four-page note argued that ISRO's capabilities have been built with public money and cannot become a source of private profit without adequate returns to the nation. It called for a level playing field, transparency and accountability, and said public wealth should not be transferred at throwaway prices or treated as a freebie for private entities.
While acknowledging a legitimate need to increase the number of missions, which the note said cannot be achieved without private players, it cautioned that this should not mean transferring all mature technologies developed by ISRO to private entities. It specifically mentioned the LVM3 rocket and the under-development NGLV, saying these must remain with ISRO, which should retain the complete chain of capability from research and development to realisation, integration, testing and launch.
Attempts to obtain an official response from ISRO were not successful.