“India’s space programme about continuity”: Jairam Ramesh

New Delhi [India], September 20 : Rajya Sabha member Jairam Ramesh has said India’s space programme since its inception in the 1960s has been about continuity irrespective of the fact who was in power and hit back at the Centre in what he said it did not give “due credit” to the past governments.
“The glorious space journey that the Leader of the House wants us to believe started in 2014, but the first milestone was on twenty second February of 1962...The second milestone was on the fifteenth of August 1969 with the creation of ISRO...The third milestone was in July 1972 when Satish Dhawan became the chairman of ISRO,” the Congress member said in the Upper House on Wednesday, during the discussion on India’s glorious space programme and successful soft landing of Chandrayaan-3.
ISRO's successful lunar landing mission 'Chandrayaan-3', which made India, the fourth nation after the US, Russia and China to have done so, is being discussed in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
"The success of Chandrayaan-3 is based on the competencies, the capabilities, the capacities that have been created over 60 years period,” Jairam Ramesh said.
Jairam said it was because of the continuity in governance which made Chandrayaan-3 a successful event.
"Leadership is not about taking credit when things are going good, and running away when things are going bad. Leadership is when you have the courage of taking responsibility for things that are going wrong as much as taking credit when things are going right," he said, citing anecdotes of how Satish Dhawan gave credit to APJ Abdul Kalam in 1980 on the successful launch of SLV-3, after unsuccessful attempts earlier. Satellite Launch Vehicle-3 (SLV-3) was India's first experimental satellite launch vehicle, successfully launched on July 18, 1980 from Sriharikota.
Further, targeting the government of the day he said the political leadership of earlier governments had given freedom to the scientists and asserted it was never seen as a "symbol of Indian nationalism".
“India's space programme has always had a developmental orientation. It has always been space for development, space for communication, space for rural development, space for weather forecasting, and space for identifying sources of water. Indian scientists and technologists have never seen India's space programme as a symbol of Indian nationalism. It has always been seen in a developmental perspective, as an instrument of fulfilling developmental aspiration,” he said.
He urged members to see the space programme as an instrument of development and not as a symbol of "muscular nationalism".
India took a giant leap as the Chandrayaan-3 lander module successfully landed on the moon's South Pole on August 23, making it the first country to have achieved the historic feat and bringing to an end the disappointment over the crash landing of the Chandrayaan-2, four years ago.
After having landed, the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover performed different sets of tasks on the lunar surface, including finding the presence of sulphur and other minor elements, recording relative temperature, and listening to movements around it.
The stated objectives of Chandrayaan-3, India's third lunar mission were a safe and soft landing, rover roving on the Moon's surface, and in-situ scientific experiments. Meanwhile, the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover are in “sleep mode”, with awakening expected around September 22.