The Hindu Business Line : Space for growth

The author uses the wealth of experience gained during his sojourns to tell us how space satellites have spread awareness and improved education in the remotest corners of the country.

Touching Lives
The little known triumphs of the Indian space programme
By S.K. Das
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 250

Rina Mukherji

Books written in criticism of the Government’s economic and administrative malpractices by journalists and academicians are a dime a dozen. But one never gets to know the other side of the story. The travails of bureaucrats, administrators and scientists struggling to make sense of the vast differences in lifestyles, customs and traditions across a sub-continent that is home to a babel of tongues and an equal number of intermixed races (not to speak of some of the mo st difficult terrain) never reach us. A gentle prod to delve beyond the maze of official statistics is always met with a deafening bureaucratic silence.

This is where S.K. Das’s book scores over many others of the same genre.

As an administrator in the civil service and a finance professional who spent a good part of his life with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Das had access to some of the remotest communities who benefited from India’s space programme. The author uses the wealth of experience gained during his sojourns in places such as Chamarajanagar in Karnataka, Koraput in Orissa and the Sundarbans delta in West Bengal to tell us how space satellites have spread awareness and improved education in the remotest corners of the country, treated and reclaimed sodic wastelands in Uttar Pradesh, helped fishermen net bigger catches in Lakshadweep, improved healthcare through telemedicine in Tripura, mapped landslide-prone zones in the Himalayan regions, and got girl children in school in Madhya Pradesh.

For arguably the first time, the reader is informed of the methods used to treat sodic wastelands, or how fishermen in Lakshadweep can be assured of a good fish catch on the strength of maps plotted to show the clustering of phytoplankton and sea-surface temperature to indicate where fish conglomerate and hence the potential fishing zones. One also learns how satellite remote-sensing can detect sub-surface geological elements such as alluvial fans or valley fills, which determine the presence of aquifers, and transfer the information on to hydro-geomorphological maps which can be ultimately used to prospect for drinking water in drought-prone, water-scarce regions like Koraput in Orissa. We also learn of the role Automatic Weather Stations can play in boosting earnings from tourism in Kerala, even as farmers benefit from the data and decide on the kind of crops to sow.

Das has also brought out the prejudices bred by the general populace about tribals and the underprivileged, while documenting the changes that are revolutionising the lives of the poor who had been hitherto left out by the Government’s developmental programmes.

The research done on each of the ISRO programmes is extensive. The outreach programmes are well selected, and Das has diligently worked at acquainting us with each of the scientists involved, the opinion communities have of the individual concerned and what the ordinary man on the street thinks of the respective programme and its implementation.

The book is a masterpiece in science communication, in that it is bereft of jargon, and explains every scientific term as it relates to a layman.

One cannot help but remark about the imaginative cover design. Set against the backdrop of a satellite launch vehicle blasting off from a space station as children in rural India play in the foreground, the cover is positive and evocative of a resurgent India keen to take its villages along as it transports itself into the 21st century.

Unfortunately, the strength of the content is lost in Das’s bland narrative, which is on the lines of a government dossier fattened on facts and figures. The linear method that Das follows takes the shape of a listless Films Division documentary, while the conversations with scientists intended to explain scientific facts are more in the nature of a Tell Me Why General Knowledge book for adolescent schoolchildren.

We are also never told about the inter-departmental rivalries that must be overcome by administrators at the grassroots level to bring in a measurable quantity of success, save for one single instance in Alirajpur in Madhya Pradesh, where a television set usurped by the local bureaucrat quietly finds its way back to the block office in the face of an official visit masquerading as a national television channel shoot.

Slick editing and a racier style would have definitely made this book a far more attractive read and infused a lot more optimism in favour of the resurgent India Shining Das seeks to highlight. It would also serve as a finer tribute to all those faceless scientists at ISRO whose triumphs Das dedicates his book to.

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