Abstract: India started well after independence in S&T with very supportive political leadership and charismatic scientific leadership. Creation of DRDO, CSIR, DAE, ISRO, Electronics department, DST and later likes of DBT and MoES, are the result of such progressive leadership. Prof Sarabhai’s statement in the UN in 1967 on use of advance technology for “men and Society” justifying India’s space program for an under developed country was a beacon for S&T pursuit. However, this message got diluted over the years and S&T for S&T took precedence over S&T for people. By and large, the political leadership has still been supportive over the years, but it is the scientific leadership that deviated from the path “for the people” or for the excellence in almost all the discipline of S&T. Many setbacks happened; the electronics commission was wounded up, the man power in Government R&D sector has reduced with no significant R&D in private sector to compensate. Today, we have changed from push model to pull model without creating competence in the pull segment. Yes, there are some bright spots like Chandrayaan-3 or Tejas, but the Indian S&T lags behind its potential as a young nation of 140 crore. The talk will focus on some of these issues and perhaps seek directions in this Amrit Kal as how to make some policy corrections to the policy overcorrections that are currently in place.
About the speaker: Dr. Goel started his career with initiating activity on Satellite Attitude Control System for spinning RS1 Satellite at Trivandrum and later moved to Bangalore as part of AryaBhata Project team. He contributed significantly to the development of magnetic attitude control system, mission planning for remote sensing, communication and scientific missions and authored over a hundred research papers in referred journals and conferences. Dr Goel was Chairman, Spacecraft System Advisory Board for IRS1, Project engineer AOCS for APPLE and Associate Project Director INSATII. He was Head Control System Division, Group Director AOCS, Deputy Director Mission and Control Area, Associate Director of ISAC and was Director ISRO Satellite Centre from 1997 to 2005. Dr Goel moved to Delhi as Secretary, Department of Ocean Development and transformed it into Ministry of Earth Sciences by integrating Ocean, Atmosphere and Geo Science and Technologies. He was the first Chairman of Earth Commission.
Currently, Dr Goel is Honorary Distinguished Professor at ISRO HQ, Honorary Visiting Professor at National Institute of Advanced Studies, and Chairman Governing Body, National Innovation Foundation (NIF), Ahmedabad. He is chairing Technology Research Board (TRB) of Ministry of Earth science. He is also Chairing Project Monitoring and Guidance Committee for Manned Submersible mission of MoES under Deep Ocean Mission.