Muses of Murari

Yesterday’s launch by ISRO, to moon is another big story that will keep runnning in our sensational media circles until some other news eclpises it. The achievement of launching the lunar probe, by Indian rocket scientists is extremely commendable. The moment the launch declared successful, there were lot of stories milling around in the news media. There were questions raised like, why spending nearly 4000 million rupees, when half of the country is dying in hunger. Lots of discussion on availability of Helium-3 in moon, which has potential to emancipate us from power shortages for centuries! And on the space race, with China. And also some notes on extra-terrestrial living. And this event is dubbed as natural extension of present ISRO missions like launching satellites. Manned space trip is also in radar and ambitious space odysseys to the planets like Mars and many more. 

It is really chest thumping and moment of pride for us, that our country, is now, a part of the elite group of countries, dealing in sophisticated space exploration. Though, the moon has been conquered more than five dozen times so far, still this late achievement is a significant step to our country. The space exploration, would not solve our present day political problems and for that matter, it be of no help in dealing with our day-to-day problems. But, it is matter of prestige to show the country’s measured, yet untappped scientific prowess to the world. 

There are hell lot of reasons, why we don’t have world class scientific people. Even, if we do have, either they were exported to countries like US or they waste their natural skills in industries like IT, pushed by their family commitments or simply mesmerised by money. I don’t know what we can do to solve the present crisis of lack of world class scientific think-thank here in India. But, we can do something on this Chandrayaan-1 story. And it can do some magic, if the present achievement is handled adeptly. If this story is marketed well across the country, it could inspire an entire generation. We have around 50 % of our population in and under twenties. Imagine, this moon mission, if fed well, through school curriculam, workshorps, educational programs in TVs, internet, creating sci-fi movies, video games and in other knoweldge dissipation mediums, children would get inspired to take science streams as their career options. This inspiration comes to children by seeing those who did it/succeeded in doing it. For example, when Sania Mirza succeeded at international tennis level, it slowly created a demand in our country. The demand was for tennis coaches. Lot of children, got inspired and started to learn playing tennis. Thanks to the mass media, that showed Sania’s success. We can’t say, that we will get another Sania Mirza or Serena Williams or Raefal Nadal, from those children who got inspired. But, certainly there will be inspired citizens, unlike many of their previous generation counterparts. Who knows?, we might get a world class tennis player better than Roger Federer! Similarly, this Chandrayaan-1 story, if propagated to our millions of children in proper channels, they will get inspired and start to dream BIG not only in space studies and but it will also kick interests among children in other science studies. When the space race had started between US and Soviet, an entire generation in US was inspired and many students took science streams. The entire country was captivated by the space craze. Why such a thing is not happening in our country. Partly, due to lack of true leaders and visionaries and also partly, due to our family values. 

Of course, parallely, our inept government policies should be reformed. More policies, to encourage quality of our education, atleast in higher education sector, should be created. We need clear leadership, to create a congenial atmosphere, in terms of quality of educational infrastructure and in terms of funding to the reasearch institutions, that can encourage the talented people to work for their ideas, their dreams and ultimately lifting our country from the embarrasing position of near zero world class scientific research output.

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