With the successful launch of 104 satellites from a single rocket on February 15, 2017 at 9:28 AM IST, ISRO has managed to once again prove to the world that no matter what goals are set for it, ISRO manages to blow them all to smithereens.
By effectively managing the launch of 104 satellites in one go, and by one rocket, ISRO has beaten every other space agencies record by a large margin. For comparison, now the second place for most satellites in one go goes to the Russian Space Agency. The Russian Space Agency in 2014 launched 37 satellites, with NASA trailing behind at third with 29 satellites in one go. Also, India beat its own record by more than 5 times the initial one of 20 satellites that it sent in space in June 2015.
The payload was made up of 104 satellites out of which only three were India’s own, and rest came from India’s international customers with 96 of the satellites belonging to the US, and one each from UAE, Switzerland, Netherlands, Kazakhstan, and Israel. The total weight of the payload was about 1,378 kg and hence to make the launch a success, PSLV’s XL variant was used. It is currently India’s most powerful rocket and has a proven success record in the Chandrayaan mission and in the Mars Orbiter Mission(MOM).
After reaching the orbit, the first satellite to be launched by PSLV was Cartosat-2 Series satellite weighing 714 kg, after which it reached the Polar Sun Synchronous Orbit where it launched the rest of the Indian’s satellites, INS-1A and INS-1B(weighing a total of 30 kg). The rest of the foreign satellites, totalling 101 in number, and weighing about 664 kg, were launched in pairs afterwards!
The mission’s primary payload, Cartosat-2 series satellite with a life span of five years, was launched to provide remote sensing services. The primary objective of the satellite is similar to the four previous satellites in Cartosat-2 series and is going to provide us information on the distribution of water, road network monitoring, coastal land usage and regulation as well as on land use maps creation etc, by using images from the satellite.
The two nano satellites INS-1A and INS-1B also have their specific payloads with the INS-1A carrying Surface Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function Radiometer and the INS-1B carrying Earth Exosphere Lyman Alpha Analyser as payloads.
After the launch, Prime Minister Modi, as well as President were among the people who tweeted to congratulate ISRO on their majestic feat. ISRO’s chairman A S Kiran Kumar also deemed the launch to be successful while congratulating the team for their attempts to deliver in spite of challenges.
This launch adds another feather to the cap of ISRO and also showcases the work done by Antrix Corporation Ltd. (Antrix), which is the commercial wing of ISRO. With the need for high-end communication systems growing per day, organisations around the world want a piece of their own in the space to ensure business. Antrix is the point of interaction for all these organisations and countries who want to launch their satellites. Backed by ISRO’s impeccable record so far, with cost effective space programmes, Antrix has been doing a great job in its own niche of finding customers and creating a greater share of the launch market for ISRO to handle. And with the current record, the road to ISRO’s future looks clear!
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.