Picture Courtesy :  Google

India seems to be passing through a winning streak now. Getting NSG waiver, signing Nuclear deal with USA, winning over Australia in the second test match, Vishwanathan Ananth on his way of winning the world chess championship and now the latest Chandrayaan, India’s first mission to moon that makes India only one of the six nations  in the world to do so.

The most significant outcome of successful Chandrayaan project is that the future generation will now take more interest in space ,science ,technology and astrophysics.  Very recently, recruiters from a mining company came back empty handed from Indian school of mines, Dhanbad. This was because all the prospective candidates opted for IT companies !  This is a  major worry for all the leading science and technology institutes in the country since there are very few takers for research in core science & technology areas. 

Chandrayaan project will definitely generate huge amount of interest in pursuing career in basic science and technology.    Many  Indian children ( including myself )grew up with the dream to work in NASA someday.  With the launch of Chandrayaan very soon children will now start dreaming to work with ISRO. Unfortunately, the public sector undertakings especially in science and technology are not  very marketing savvy.  As a result , many great works done at such places  do not get adequate visibility outside unlike NASA that very effectively promotes all its achievements through modern communication tools.  Rightly or wrongly , Indian scientific establishments have an image of lack of funding, lack of technology  and  being staffed by poorly paid pot bellied scientists  with only few of them being genius.  With the global meltdown India can bargain for technology transfer much more effectively now and access all the latest technology for its missions.

Chandrayaan will definitely  inspire young minds and in future we will have many takers who will delve into such missions.  With several public private partnerships in many of the government initiatives, Government  should  now  invest more into such projects and ensure near global standard compensation for our  scientists.  This will  create a confidence in the minds of our next generations to willingly choose Research and development as their careers. With India being an  emerging  economy and the global slow down , the brain drain is definitely going to come down with best of our talents opting to work in such facilities. May be the next manned Chandrayaan will happen  sooner than  the predicted time frame of 2015.

India is now changing from the world’s call centre hub to world’s  R&D hub.

Kudos to Indian Scientists. The Nation salutes you !