In his book, The Argumentative Indian , Nobel laureate Amartya Sen recounts that one of his teachers, the great Cambridge economist Joan Robinson, used to tell him: the frustrating thing about India is that whatever you can rightly say about it, the opposite is also true (Sen ). Whereas this poignant expression of the plurality and apparent contradictions that pervade the subcontinent proves to apply to almost any aspect of Indias social, cultural and political life from its philosophical and historical traditions to its democratic practice and economic development there appears to be at least one compelling argument around which a widespread consensus can be found: the mounting importance of India.
1.1 Why India Matters
The most telling indicator of Indias growing significance is perhaps encapsulated in the slogan used by the Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi for the 2014 Indian general election: Achhe din aane waale hain (Good days are coming). Though the slogan was coined with the intention of conveying that a bountiful future was in store for India if the Bharatiya Janata Party won the election, Indias future is indeed brimming with potential to fundamentally reshape the global landscape and generate transformative political, economic, social and technological revolutions across the board. For once, figures speak for themselves.
There are currently more than 1325 million people living in India, and this population continues to increase by 2403 new inhabitants every hour (MedIndia ). Young Indians, therefore, clearly represent the most significant human capital on the planet, a capital that will increasingly and more strongly drive Indias path to prosperity (Ibid).
In parallel to this, the Indian economy has now emerged as the fastest-growing major economy in the world, and many projections by leading financial institutions, such as the OECD, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and the International Monetary Fund, expect this trend to continue for the next few decades, turning India into the rising economic superpower that China is today (OECD ). More importantly, these institutions also project that, by the middle of the century, India will join the United States and China as one of the three largest economies in the world in nominal as well as Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms. In the meantime, the economies of Europe, Japan and Russia will likely witness a relative decline, primarily owing to their shrinking and ageing populations.
This shift in the geo-economic barycentre of international affairs will most likely be also accompanied by a shift in political power. There is broad consensus that, over the next decades, India will reach the level of the United States and Europe in terms of national power based upon GDP, population size, military spending and technological investment (National Intelligence Council ). It is thus not possible to imagine solutions to the current and future global challenges without the engagement and support of India. Issues such as international security and terrorism, climate change, environmental sustainability, development and international trade will all require a strong partnership with New Delhi.
Moreover, in addressing global grand challenges, understanding of the Indian perspective can prove essential to deepen our own knowledge and provide a window into possible solutions. This is in part because India is that rare combination of a country that is simultaneously developed, emerging and underdeveloped and in part because India today, with its highly dynamic and adaptive approach, has become a hub of creativity and all types of innovation. In areas as diverse as education, financial inclusion, healthcare, transportation, manufacturing and energy production, Indias innovations are going a long way in solving important development problems and, in some cases, even positioning India to leapfrog entire developmental steps thanks to the adoption of new technologies (IndoGenius ). A cogent example of this leapfrogging development is the Aadhaar biometric identity card, which is being used by more than a billion people for presence-less, paperless and cashless e-governance services like the eSign and the Unified Payment Interface. Because India is simultaneously a developed, an emerging and an underdeveloped country, as it innovates for itself, its home-grown solutions might actually be more applicable in the rest of the developing world than Western innovations (Ibid). This makes Indias experience of global relevance.
There are also other factors that urge the reconsideration of the importance of India to global development and affairs. Historian Ramachandra Guha has made a compelling case for why India is the most interesting country in the world (Guha ).
This research project is, in a sense, the story of this journeys direction in one of the most relevant and promising endeavours India has embarked upon: space.
1.2 Indias Achievements in Space
Indias journey in space is unique in its inception in the sense of having been envisioned from and for a developing nations perspective and purpose. Since the establishment of a space programme in the early 1960s, space activities have been understood as a very useful tool to address many of the societal issues faced by a huge and poor country like India. This vision was enunciated by the father of the Indian space programme, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, in his well-known statement:
There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us there is no ambiguity of purpose. We are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally and in the comity of nations, we must be second to none in the applications of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society.
Founded in 1969, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), a government institution under the Department of Space (DOS), has piloted all Indian space activities guided by the two-pronged aim of demonstrating the applications of space assets for the development and betterment of society and achieving self-reliance and indigenous capability development in what was deemed a technologically strategic field.
Another equally impressive element of Indias journey in space has been the consistent way in which the programme has instilled user involvement and consultation among various stakeholders as integral to the process. From the early 1970s at a time when technological development in the space sector was mostly pushed rather than pulled ISRO started to implement a unique approach based on the concrete needs of space technologies users. Indeed, the utilisation of space technology began with pioneering experiments in the areas of remote sensing and telecommunications, such as detection of coconut root-wilt disease and the use of satellite-based television broadcasting to reach out to rural areas under the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE). Since then, Indian space activities have made tremendous progress with the successful development of indigenous capabilities and one of the largest space, launch and ground infrastructures in the world. This comprises the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) constellation, the Indian National Satellite (INSAT) System for telecommunications and meteorology and the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) for PNT services, as part of ISROs operational space infrastructure, and the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and later the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) and its variants, as part of its launch infrastructure. As of 2016, ISRO had conducted 124 launch and satellite missions with a total of 34 active satellites in orbit. In parallel, a ground infrastructure of several centres for data reception and processing was set up to track and control these space assets and provide relative applications to Indian citizens. With all these elements in place, the Indian space programme has witnessed significant scaling of activities in space and has matured high-class, end-to-end systemic capability in the design, development and operations of Indian space assets and applications (Prasad ).
