Lalit Shastri
India’s decision to open its space sector to private enterprise was both necessary and overdue. There is no compelling argument against bringing private capital, manufacturing capacity, innovation and entrepreneurial energy into a field that has been built over decades with public resources. The question is whether the new architecture is strengthening India’s space capability or, unintentionally, beginning to weaken the institutional architecture of ISRO that made that capability possible in the first place.
That question has acquired fresh urgency with the intervention of G. Madhavan Nair, former Secretary of the Department of Space and former Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation. In an interview with The Federal, Nair questioned what he sees as IN-SPACe moving beyond its regulatory role and entering areas that properly belong to ISRO and NewSpace India Limited, the government’s commercial arm. His objection is not to private participation. It is to the possibility that a sectoral regulator could begin assuming the functions of an executor.
The distinction matters. ISRO is the country’s principal scientific and technological organisation, developing technologies, building infrastructure and carrying out space missions. NSIL was created to commercialise ISRO’s services, technologies and rockets. IN-SPACe, by its own description, was created as an independent, autonomous, single-window agency to promote, enable, authorise and supervise space activities by non-governmental entities. Its stated mandate encompasses private participation in activities including building launch vehicles and satellites, providing space-based services, accessing ISRO infrastructure and establishing new space infrastructure.
Nair’s argument rests on a clear distinction between three institutions. ISRO develops technologies and infrastructure and carries out space missions; NSIL commercialises ISRO’s services, technologies and rockets; and IN-SPACe is the regulator, principally for the private sector. His concern is that these distinct functions should not be allowed to overlap. He argues that ISRO, NSIL and industrialisation should remain under one roof, with unity of direction and command, while IN-SPACe can remain an independent regulator. His preferred route for taking ISRO technologies to industry is also significant: rather than simply transferring technologies to private companies, NSIL could form joint ventures with interested parties, allowing industry to participate in commercialisation while retaining an institutional stake for the national space programme. Nair also recalls that nearly 60 per cent of ISRO’s budget had historically been spent with industry on sourcing systems and components. His argument raises a larger question about the balance of value when technologies developed through public investment are transferred to private companies. That concern has since found an independent echo in the Parliamentary Standing Committee, which has warned that undervalued technology transfers can allow private players to earn significant profits while the originating institutions receive only a marginal share of the value created.
A regulator must regulate, a commercial arm must commercialise and a scientific and engineering organisation must retain the ability to develop and execute complex missions. When these functions begin to overlap, accountability becomes blurred. In a strategic programme, blurred accountability can affect not only administrative efficiency but the speed of decisions, the deployment of resources and ultimately India’s technological capability.
Nair’s caution on rocket technology adds another dimension. He has warned that technologies with dual-use applications require an appropriate legal framework and safeguards before they are transferred. His comparison with the nuclear sector is instructive. There, he points out, the commercial entity NPCIL invites bids for small atomic reactors, while the regulator, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, does not itself undertake that function. His question is whether the same institutional separation should not apply in the space sector.
The cost of waiting
The issue is no longer confined to institutional charts and policy documents. It has an operational dimension. Nair has drawn attention to the larger question of delays affecting India’s space programme. People familiar with the programme say that a GSLV has in fact remained on the launch pad for nearly six months awaiting clearance and is now expected to fly in September or October.
A launch vehicle is not an ordinary government file that can remain pending indefinitely. Sriharikota is a coastal spaceport exposed to a humid, salt-laden marine environment, where a vehicle kept on the ground for an extended period requires continuing preservation, inspection and readiness measures. It would be premature to claim that prolonged storage automatically produces a technical failure, but the longer a sophisticated launch vehicle remains outside its intended operational cycle, the greater the importance of preservation and technical oversight. The more fundamental concern is why a technically prepared launch vehicle should have to wait for months for administrative clearance.
According to people familiar with the matter, the effective clearance bottleneck involves two points of intervention – at a high official level connected with the department of Space and Dr Pawan Kumar Goenka, Chairman of IN-SPACe. This is an account from people familiar with the programme, not an established finding against any individual. The concern within the space establishment is about where operational decisions are actually being made and how much weight is being given to the technical chain of command within ISRO.
If a launch vehicle can remain on the pad for months while awaiting clearance, the government should be able to establish where responsibility for the delay lies and whether an additional layer of approval is improving safety and accountability or simply adding time. Launch windows, vehicle readiness and mission schedules are governed by technical considerations that cannot always be reconciled with the pace of routine administrative decision-making.
Nair’s intervention becomes significant in precisely this context. His criticism is not that regulation is unnecessary. It is that a sectoral regulator should not become the executor of programmes. He has also pointed to the unified direction and command historically associated with India’s space and nuclear establishments, contrasting this with a situation in which a regulator itself begins calling bids for assets and technologies belonging to the organisation it is supposed to regulate.
A regulator at the policy table
Dr Pawan Kumar Goenka, Chairman of IN-SPACe, is also a member of the Space Commission, the apex body responsible for policy and overall oversight of India’s space programme. This arrangement may be administratively convenient, but it raises an institutional conflict-of-interest concern: the head of the regulator participates in the apex forum in which policy and oversight for the sector are determined.
This does not by itself establish personal impropriety. But it raises a legitimate question about whether sufficient institutional separation exists between regulation and policy-making.
The question becomes more consequential if the role of the IN-SPACe chairman extends beyond regulating and facilitating private participation into matters concerning ISRO’s research and development or decisions over the terms under which ISRO-developed technologies are made available to industry. ISRO’s published allocation of responsibilities places programmes, projects and R&D within the Department of Space, while IN-SPACe’s stated mandate is directed towards the activities of non-governmental entities. If those boundaries have begun to move in practice, the government should clarify the authority under which such intervention is taking place.
There is now an independent parliamentary basis for examining that question. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, in its 410th Report on the Department of Space, observed that ISRO and other agencies under the Department of Space already function under the administrative oversight of the Department and the Space Commission. It specifically noted that requiring these government entities to obtain authorisation from IN-SPACe could create an additional procedural layer. The Committee recommended that the authorisation mechanism should primarily regulate and facilitate the activities of non-governmental entities and that the requirement for ISRO and other Department of Space agencies to obtain IN-SPACe authorisation may gradually be dispensed with.
That recommendation is significant. It means that the question of institutional boundaries is not merely an argument advanced by retired space officials. Parliament’s own scrutiny has identified the possibility of duplication and an additional procedural layer within the government system.
Encouraging private participation – or excluding the public sector?
There is another question that follows directly from the manner in which the reform is being implemented. If the objective is to encourage private participation, where does the authority come from to exclude the public sector from participating in facilities created with public resources? The tendering process concerning the SSLV launch complex at Kulasekarapattinam raises precisely this question. If the eligibility conditions restrict participation to private entities while excluding public-sector organisations, the issue is no longer simply one of promoting private enterprise. It becomes a question of whether an agency created to open opportunities is also acquiring the power to decide who should be excluded from them.
The question becomes still more pertinent when the operation and maintenance of a strategically important launch range is entrusted to a private contractor. If, as understood, ISRO will train the contractor’s personnel while the contractor assumes responsibility for employing and paying them, the arrangement raises a basic question that cannot be answered merely through the language of an Annual Maintenance Contract. Who bears the liability if an accident occurs at the range? Who is responsible if a trained contractor’s employee makes an operational error? Does the liability rest with the private contractor, with ISRO, with the Department of Space, or is it shared under contractual terms? These are not hypothetical questions in a sector where a mistake at a launch facility can have consequences far beyond a commercial contract.
India does not have a Space Act. The Parliamentary Standing Committee has recorded that space-related activities in the country are not currently governed by a comprehensive legislative framework and has called for legislation to regulate, authorise and oversee space activities. It has also noted that the Department of Space is drafting a Bill for this purpose.
That makes the question of liability more, not less, important. When public infrastructure is operated by a private contractor using personnel trained by ISRO, the government should make it clear, before an accident occurs rather than after one, who bears legal responsibility and under what statutory authority. Guidelines, authorisations and contractual arrangements may provide for particular liabilities and insurance requirements, but they cannot substitute for a clear legislative framework governing the larger allocation of responsibility in India’s expanding space sector.
Nor should training be confused with technology transfer. If ISRO trains the contractor because the contractor is to operate and maintain a sophisticated launch facility, the government should specify what knowledge is being imparted, what remains with ISRO, what the contractor is permitted to use beyond the contract and what safeguards apply after the contract ends. The contractor may pay the salaries, but the expertise being imparted has been accumulated through decades of public investment. The distinction between paying for manpower and acquiring institutional know-how therefore needs to be clearly maintained.
This is not an argument against private operation. It is an argument for equal clarity of rules. If public money has created the infrastructure and ISRO has developed the technology, procedures and operational knowledge behind it, opening access to private industry should expand national capability without creating an artificial divide in which private entities are enabled while public-sector institutions are excluded.
Technology transfer – but on whose terms?
Technology transfer is an essential component of India’s space-sector reform. But the debate cannot end with the proposition that technology must be transferred simply because private industry is being encouraged. Nair’s discussion goes much deeper. He places technology transfer in the context of how ISRO has worked with Indian industry for decades and of the distinct institutional roles created within the government space sector.
There is a fundamental difference between licensing a technology for a defined purpose, partnering with an industrial entity to manufacture and commercialise it, and transferring the technology in a manner that leaves the recipient as the principal commercial beneficiary while the originating institution relinquishes much of its continuing role. These are not equivalent outcomes. In a strategic sector built over decades through public investment, the terms under which technology moves out of the national space programme matter as much as the fact of transfer itself.
Nair’s preferred model is significant in this context. Rather than simply transferring ISRO technologies to private companies, he argues that NSIL could form joint ventures with interested parties. Such a model would allow industry to obtain access to ISRO’s technological capabilities and participate in their commercialisation while retaining an institutional stake, technological continuity and a continuing role for the national space programme.
Nair also draws attention to the special character of rocket technology. Some launch-vehicle technologies can have dual-use applications, making their transfer qualitatively different from the commercialisation of an ordinary industrial invention. He therefore argues that an appropriate legal framework and safeguards are necessary, pointing out that India has no space law at present while important decisions concerning technologies and assets are already being taken.
This is where the institutional question becomes unavoidable. If ISRO develops the technology, NSIL exists to commercialise ISRO’s services, technologies and rockets, and IN-SPACe has been created as a regulator principally for private-sector participation, the government needs to explain where the authority lies for deciding which ISRO technologies and assets should be offered to industry, whether they should be transferred or commercialised through another model, and on what terms.
There is now an independent parliamentary dimension to this question. The Parliamentary Standing Committee has expressed concern over technology transfers to private players at disproportionately low prices relative to their commercial potential and has recommended a more competitive and market-aligned framework for determining technology-transfer costs, along with periodic third-party audits. That concern reinforces the need to distinguish between enabling private industry and surrendering the continuing institutional value of technology created by ISRO.
The larger principle should therefore be straightforward. India should industrialise ISRO’s technologies, not dilute ISRO’s technological capital. Private industry should be able to build businesses around technologies created by the national space programme, but the value of those technologies, the strategic knowledge embedded in them and the continuing interests of ISRO and the public exchequer must not disappear at the moment of transfer.
Nair’s proposal of an NSIL-led joint-venture model deserves consideration precisely because it offers a possible middle path. Keeping every technology within ISRO would constrain industrialisation. Simply transferring technologies out could weaken the institutional and strategic base from which future technologies emerge. A carefully structured partnership can allow Indian industry to grow while ensuring that ISRO’s technological strength remains a national asset.
Private success should strengthen ISRO
None of this amounts to an argument against private enterprise. India’s private space sector needs to grow, and grow rapidly. Indian companies should manufacture launch vehicles and satellites, develop applications, provide services and compete internationally. The government’s decision to create greater space for industry is therefore welcome.
The success of Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 is an important demonstration of what this opening can achieve. Its successful orbital mission represents a landmark for India’s private launch industry and shows that the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is capable of moving rapidly into a domain once dominated by the public sector. That achievement should be celebrated precisely because it expands India’s overall space capability.
The international perspective is useful for a different reason. A Newsweek assessment published in the wake of the Vikram-1 achievement recognises India’s growing capabilities in launch vehicles, satellites and planetary exploration while noting the gap that still separates India from the United States and China in areas such as heavy-lift capability and sustained space infrastructure. Its broader point is that India need not define its ambitions as a conventional space race with either country. The objective should be to develop capabilities suited to India’s own social, scientific and strategic requirements while building a strong domestic space industry.
That perspective complements, but does not duplicate, Nair’s argument. The Newsweek assessment is about the scale and direction of India’s space ambitions; Nair’s concern is about the institutional architecture through which those ambitions are pursued. The two converge only on the larger proposition that private participation should increase India’s overall space capability.
Private companies such as Skyroot can expand the country’s capabilities without requiring the weakening of ISRO or the blurring of institutional responsibilities. There is therefore no contradiction between a strong ISRO and a flourishing private space sector. On the contrary, the two can reinforce one another. ISRO’s technological depth, infrastructure and accumulated expertise can provide a foundation for industrial growth, while private enterprise can bring speed, capital, competition and new ideas into areas where commercial participation is appropriate.
Fine-tuning, not retreat
The concerns raised by Nair do not amount to an argument for turning back the clock on India’s space reforms. They point instead to the need to examine whether the institutional arrangements created in recent years are producing the clarity and speed that the country’s expanding space ambitions require. A GSLV waiting for months for clearance, if the account of people familiar with the programme is correct, is not simply an administrative inconvenience. It is a reason to examine whether the decision-making chain is serving the programme or slowing it.
The answer is not to weaken IN-SPACe or restrict private industry. It is to clarify responsibilities and remove avoidable overlaps. IN-SPACe should regulate and facilitate within its mandate. NSIL should pursue commercialisation and industrialisation. ISRO should retain the authority and institutional space necessary to develop advanced technologies and execute complex missions. The Space Commission should provide strategic direction and oversight without allowing the distinction between policy and execution to become blurred.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee’s recommendations point in much the same direction. Its call to focus IN-SPACe’s authorisation mechanism primarily on non-governmental entities, its concern about additional procedural layers for ISRO and other Department of Space agencies, and its warning over undervalued technology transfers all suggest that the architecture of reform itself requires attention.
India’s space programme is entering a period of extraordinary ambition. The country wants to expand human spaceflight, develop a space station, pursue lunar missions and build a much larger commercial space industry. These ambitions will require enormous investment, technological continuity and a highly capable industrial ecosystem. They also require an institutional structure in which responsibility is clear and decision-making remains sufficiently close to technical expertise to prevent avoidable delays.
The concerns emerging from within ISRO should therefore not be interpreted as resistance to private enterprise or reform. They may instead be a warning that the reform architecture needs adjustment while there is still time to make it work better.
India does not need to reverse its space-sector reforms. It needs to fine-tune them while there is still time to get the architecture right. The private sector should be encouraged to fly higher. ISRO should remain strong enough to take India where no private company can yet go. And the regulatory system should be designed to make both possible.
That is not a retreat from reform. It is what responsible reform requires.
