Manpower crisis haunts space, defence R&D

The government research effort in space and defence is being seriously undermined by products from the IITs and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) opting for the IT and allied industries.

"We have given proposals to the government and it is taking up the matter with the Pay Commission," said Union Defence Minister A K Antony.

Most of the state-owned institutes like Indian Space Research Institute (ISRO), DRDO, BEL and HAL are struggling with the issue of shortage in quality manpower, which is expected to take a serious turn in the days to come.

This is likely to have a serious impact on high-end research in defence and space even as India tries to sharply improve its capabilities in these sectors in line with its rising economic status.

"What we are looking for is quality manpower from IISc and IITs which is not available to us. In fact, it has become so bad that we are not able to get even one or two persons of the right quality," said Dr B N Suresh, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram. This is a common feature for all such strategic government labs, he added.

DRDO, which owns 51 research labs across the country, is facing a major hurdle due to lack of quality human resources and high attrition. Since around 35 of these labs work on various areas of information and communication technology, getting IT professionals to work for them has become a challenge.

According to Suresh, this is happening because of the large compensation gap between the government and the private sector.

"That difference is high in India, but not so in other countries. That's why IIT graduates take up jobs in IT and the private sector industries, and even abroad. They are not available any more to ISRO, DRDO, DAE or even research institutes," he adds.

According to N Natarajan, scientific advisor to the Union Defence Minister and the Director General of DRDO, while the average attrition rate in DRDO is about 15 per cent, in some units including the electronics and systems departments, the rate is even higher.

Defence PSU Bharat Electronics which mainly caters to the Indian armed forces, is also witnessing huge attrition of middle-level engineers.

"They are poached by competitors. That's a problem for us. It's not difficult for us to attract talent; it's difficult to retain talent," says VVR Sastry, Chairman and Managing Director, BEL.

In desperation, defence R&D establishments and ISRO are now preparing to tackle the problem on their own. ISRO has stated its own training institute which is operating on the campus of the Vikram Sarabhai Centre.

The students who are joining the institute based on their performance in the IIT joint entrance examination, are being asked to sign a bond which will require them to serve ISRO for a minimum five years after the competition of the course.

DRDO is planning to take the help of Nasscom and its member companies for meeting its various software requirements. Presently, IT companies work at various DRDO research labs on a project to project basis.

BEL is going more and more for campus recruitment to get the right talent. It is also mulling a wage hike in January next year. "We are taking good HR initiatives to arrest the attrition," said Sastry.