The state is draining ISRO’s hard-won excellence

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is being poisoned by politicisation. With each passing year of late, it is a darker shadow of its once-formidable self, on the brink of a history in which it is no longer an engine of national growth.

In the recent past, the organisation has suffered a non-trivial number of high-profile launch anomalies and issues with spacecraft, including the PSLV-C61 and NVS-02 missions. Space is hard and such failures are not uncommon, but the almost steady clip of setbacks together with ISRO’s dispiritingly opaque public posture in the aftermath have raised concerns about systemic issues. In tandem, while the Indian space programme has introduced new commercial and policy initiatives, ISRO’s own launch frequency and scientific output have not increased.