Being a lone player, Indian space agency “ISRO” serves less than half of our country’s emerging space technology needs. In this context, do you think it is necessary to develop an ecosystem for private sector space companies to supplement ISRO’s efforts? (200 words)
Refer – Financial Express
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 6 years
KEY POINTS
· With the current manpower of ISRO it is simply not possible to meet the increasing demands of satellite launches and the heightened expectations that will arise, and hence the involvement of the emerging private sector becomes crucial.
· Though Indian policy allows private players to operate communication satellites under the regulation of the Committee for Authorising the establishment and operations of Indian Satellite Systems—this dates back to a policy from 2000.
· The sparse industry participation since shows this hasn’t helped much.
· Meanwhile, throughout the globe, the entry barriers to private players are being lifted and have successfully transferred many space operations to the private sector and it has yielded good results.
· For example, the US, the EU and even China have encouraged industry participation—and much of this happened with technology transfer from their respective space agencies.
· Recent US legislations, such as the American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act and the Nasa Transition Authorization Act, put the country at the forefront of government-private collaboration in space technology.
· The continually increasing private sector competence in the US and China means India has little time to lose if it has to maintain and build on the advantages of its recent leap-frogging in space-tech.
Benefits
· Encouraging participation of private sector in space would help towards forging a comprehensive ecosystem.
· It allows the industry to support the needs of the local market.
· This will help towards boosting India’s foreign policy drives, where space will act as a major emerging tool in fostering relationships
· New jobs will be created in the high-skilled-labour market to address the needs of the private space industry
· The new focus on privatization of space will help in reversing brain-drain from the country
· This will also instrumental in creation of more opportunities that support foreign direct investments (FDI) through the ‘Make in India’, or the ‘Digital India’ campaigns
