Kalyan Raman کلیان راماں · @kalyanasc
4th Sep 2015 from TwitLonger
ISRO and how to write about it
I write this in response to a blog post - "How NOT to write about ISRO" - by Mr.Aravindan Kannaiyan, US-based desi blogger, which was in turn provoked by Othisaivu Ramasamy's blog post lauding ISRO's achievements and its contributions to society. Respectively at http://contrarianworld.blogspot.in/2015/08/isro-othisaivu-ramasamy-how-not-to.html and https://othisaivu.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/post-546/#more-5354
AK, as we shall call him, is vehemently critical of OR for praising ISRO without detail or due cause ("empty bragging"), and opines that the real deal is how ISRO would measures up to NASA.
As someone who has spent much of his working life in ISRO and generally in the space business, I wish to put down a few comments in this connection.
We are taught in journalism that the true meaning of an event or phenomenon lies in its historical, sociological (cultural) and philosophical contexts and it's the duty of journalists to lift said event into that frame and read it by the light of all they know. Therefore, ISRO can only be assessed in the context of India's status of as a post-colonial nation, the material condition of her people, and the cultural propensities of her ancient communities. Equally, NASA should be assessed taking into account America's pre-eminence as a superpower, NASA's use of the same technological infrastructure companies that subserves America's burgeoning defence establishment, and of course, the ruling White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Culture.
Therefore, I find AK's flat comparison between NASA and iSRO, as if they were two abstract entities suspended in ether, fundamentally devoid of substance.
OR is writing of ISRO, an Indian organization existing in the Indian milieu, to a readership that is largely Indian and reads Tamil. Therefore he assumes a certain level of awareness about ISRO's achievements if not its character as an organization. If ISRO lands a probe in Mars, no working adult Indian is going to say, "How lame! Where is our Feynman?" They understand instinctively that it is close to a miraculous achievement in the Indian environment. To be an uninformed and unsympathetic alien is AK's choice; engaging with his views promises the rest of us little or no reward.
I can say with authority that AK displays serious ignorance of how ISRO actually functions, and the challenges of various kinds that it has successfully met over the years in spite of being a government department and being situated in a country like India. "Technology for the common man" has been ISRO's avowed goal since inception, and it has delivered not just the technologies but also the end-use systems as well in many vital areas. ISRO is designed to understand its mission failures in a structured and systematic way; these failures have been shared openly within the organisation and with the public, not always by rockstars like Feynman, however.
Anyone who writes, "To be fair to the Soviets the space race engendered a culture of yearning for scientific achievement in the Khruschev era" knows little about science in Soviet Russia. This is just irresponsible ad-libbing. It was not solely out of newfangled yearning that the Soviets were always ahead of the US in the space race, right up to the Space Station programme. The moon missions were the only exception.
Finally, to compare without considering distinct histories and conditions is what racists and casteists do. I am glad AK represents the views of a minority of Indians, resident or non-.
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