Letters: Indigenous push

The successful launch of GSAT-19 is a watershed moment in Isro's illustrious journey

Indigenous push

While reading the editorial, “Big deal for Isro” (June 7), I was reminded of the successful launch of INSAT 3E and RESOURCESAT in 2003. The then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, congratulated Isro saying that “our scientists give a literal meaning to our affirmation that the sky is not the limit for India’s ambitions and achievements. I often say that India is ready for a long leap. You in Isro have already taken this long leap into space and have catapulted India into the front ranks of space faring nations”. 

These words acquired greater significance as developed nations denied technology to India and it failed in successive indigenous space missions. 

The successful launch of GSAT-19, the heaviest high throughput communication satellite, using the GSLV Mk-III launch vehicle is a watershed moment in Isro’s illustrious journey. The GSAT-19 is set to bring about changes that may revolutionise the communications mechanism in the country. This achievement is even more significant as the maiden development flights of each of Isro’s earlier generation rockets — the SLV-3 in 1979, the ASLV in 1987, the PSLV in 1993, the GSLV in 2001 and the GSLV-Mark 2 in 2010 — had failed. Isro’s success will not only help fulfil Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India dream but also encourage emerging generations of scholars and scientists undertake research and development in the country.

Shreyans Jain, New Delhi

A tragedy

Among the reasons for West Bengal’s industrial decline that Ashok K Lahiri states in his article, “Bengal’s business” (June 7), are employee indiscipline, industrial unrest and an anti-capitalist policy of the state government. 

Post-Independence, the state was bustling with business activity as pioneering companies such as Bata Shoe Company, Dunlop Tyres, Hindustan Motors, Imperial Tobacco and Indian Iron & Steel Company (IISCO) operating from there.

Its decay began with the rise of militant unionism led by Left parties and culminating in the cult of gherao in which hapless managers would be confined to their offices, humiliated, beaten and coerced into signing a pact.

An illustrative example is IISCO, the first private sector company to get a loan from the World Bank and which gave double-digit dividend consistently for five years 

during the early 1960s, beating Tata Iron & Steel Company. Its performance started deteriorating as unions became violent and disruptive. The company was taken over by the Centre in 1972 but its fall continued due to labour issues among other problems. 

The influence and rule of Left parties accelerated the decay. Increase in worker indiscipline and number of gheraos led established businesses to relocate. The jute industry disappeared and move to Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere. When then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya tried to revive industrial activity in the state, his party pounced on him. The politically motivated agitation by Mamata Banerjee against the location of a Tata Motors plant caused irreparable damage to the image of the state.

The tragedy is that the state has natural wealth, creative human resource and a strategic location, but there is no leadership to exploit any of these.

Y G Chouksey, Pune