India’s
spacecraft, Mangalyaan, successfully entered a Martian orbit this morning. It
made me very happy.
This
evening one of the TV channel had a call-in chat program with a retired scientist
from the Indian Space Research Organization. As was only to be expected all the
callers said how proud they were. (There was an Indian caller from Germany who
said, “Great job guys!” Guys?)
There
was one caller who wanted to know how this would affect his life. The guest on
the show gave the expected answer – add to knowledge etc. etc.
Will
the Mangalyaan clean up the Ganga? Will it stop power outages? Will it counter
the terrorism threat? Will it add muscle to our forces facing China? The answer
to those, and a lot of similar questions is, no.
Is
adding to knowledge justified when the taxpayers see no benefit to their lives?
I
believe it is justified. And not just because of spin-offs in technology. The real
benefit is the creation of first rate mathematical, scientific and technical
minds.
The country needs to have projects to which national prestige is
attached. The best minds will compete to get on to these projects and
organizations. The aggregation of the best minds will foster accumulation of
knowledge. More importantly even those who do not measure up to the standards
demanded of these prestigious projects, will also be improved. It is this humanware
spin-off which will impact industries and social systems.
It
is for the same reason I believe that IITs, and other institutes of national
importance, are not in the business of producing manpower with industry
relevant skills. They are – or should be - in the business of producing
knowledge. For that purpose they have to select the best available talent and
then continue to filter them. The result of the filtering should be people who
have the best minds to undertake research work. That is how it ought to work.
“The
temples of modern India” was Jawahar Lal Nehru's term. ISRO, Atomic
Energy Commission were started in his time. The TIFR, though started in 1945,
was given pride of place. These are temples of modern India.
Temples
require “temple priests”. As long as they are selected on acknowledged merit,
and merit subjected to regular review, the danger of decadence would be
minimized.
India
needs these new temples and a “priest-hood” to run them. Those who do not become temple priests will nonetheless be better. And that is what society will gain.
