| As government institutes in the area of science and technology go, the Indian Space Research Organisation has one of the best track records. The INSAT satellites, which are the backbone of the country's communications, television broadcasting and meteorological services systems, the remote-sensing IRS satellites, and the two launch vehicles, PSLV and GSLV, are the cornerstones of India's claim to ascendance in the rarefied field of space technology. |
| But as the above quote from Sarabhai shows, India's space programme has, from its very inception, had to justify its existence""especially its claim on scarce state finances at a time there were so many more pressing claims on monies. To put it baldly, is space research something of an indulgence for a poor country like India (and it was unqualifiedly poor when ISRO was launched in 1969)? The "application" of space technology to improve the lot of the man on the street, something Sarabhai too refers to, is one way out of the problematic. |
| SK Das's book Touching Lives is all about ISRO's exemplary record in the area of social outreach. While there is no indication in the text itself about the book's being commissioned by ISRO, it is, in a sense, a public relations exercise. For one thing, Das is an ISRO man himself, and two, it is his disappointingly and uniformly laudatory tone""shorn of nuances, and even the barest hint of an appraisal. |
| Touching Lives is the chronicle of Das's travels to remote parts of the country, from Lakshwadeep to Tripura, where ISRO conducts its community outreach programmes, and his conversations with ISRO officers who have devised them and the people whose lives have improved dramatically as a result. |
| So you have Das talking to the Bhil community in Alirajpur, Jhabua about the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment, which had ISRO telecasting programmes on education, livelihood-support, entertainment to direct reception television sets in 2,400 of the remotest villages of India. Or a similar Satellite Telecommunications Experiment used to connect various inaccessible parts of the country in a telemedicine network, or provide training for first-time women panchayat members in Karnataka. Then there are various remote sensing applications projects like the one used to determine potential fishing zones in Lakshwadeep, which has led to a manifold increase in fish landings, or the Uttar Pradesh Sodic Lands Reclamation Project, which has benefited 190,000 hectares in 21 of the state's 28 districts, touching the lives of 364,000 people. |
| The numbers are heartening, and ISRO's work itself is transforming. But, despite Das's lucid prose and well-rounded, school-textbook like narrative style, what's irritating is the way he makes his point. His entire repertoire of narrative devices seems to consist of questions, first to the scientific experts beginning with something like, "tell me how does ISRO...?", and later, to the beneficiaries"""what do you think of the programme?", "how has it helped you?", and the like. It's a simplistic ploy and can get quite monotonous, when repeated across chapters, many of them with more than one episode illustrating the virtues of the same programme. The book would have read far better, shorn of some of these very similar stories. |
| Das meets some interesting people on his travels, but sadly they remain fixed as types""the farmer despairing of his poor crop, the first-time woman panchayat member flush with her new-found sense of power, the poor mother of an 11-month-old son running from pillar to post for her son's treatment, and so on. And despite all Das's attempts to breathe life into them with descriptions of their dress, the way they speak and the gestures they make, they don't ring true. Only rarely does he succeed""as with young Suresh in Saragur, Karnataka, the bright son of a poor tribal, who insists, with a wisdom beyond his years, that as a result of the EDUSAT programme in his school, he need not go to more expensive schools further afield. |
| It's these outstanding characters and their heart-touching stories, after all, that bring home the relevance of ISRO's work. |
| TOUCHING LIVES The little known triumphs Of the Indian Space Programme |
| SK Das Penguin Price: Rs 250; Pages: 257 |
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