A new leader arrives, but reluctantly

The Indian space programme now has to find a new leader and it has to be somebody who can steer the many ambitious projects to success in a short span of time. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has someone in mind for the job: A Bangalore-based Punjabi aeronautics engineer, a reputed scientist and a man known for his exceptional management skills. The question is if he will accept such a daunting role. When the Prime Minister’s office makes the call, the answer is neither a yes nor a no.

Show Notes

All clips and voices used in this podcast are owned by the original creators.

We thank wholeheartedly all our guests who appeared on this episode.

• Mallika Sarabhai
• EV Chitnis
• Jyotsna Dhawan
• Roddam Narasimha
• Gopalraj
• S Chandrashekhar

We thank our narrators who stepped in to re-create some of the sections in the episode

• Excerpt from Vivek Prahaladan’s book, ‘The Nation Declassified: India and the Cold War World’ – Read by Gaurav Vaz

References

• ‘The Nation Declassified: India and the Cold War World’ by Vivek Prahaladan

Full Transcript of Episode 7

It’s December 1971. The fall term at Caltech in California is almost over. An Indian professor, part of the visiting faculty at the aerospace engineering department, is in the middle of a lecture when he’s interrupted.

There’s a phone call for him and it’s urgent. It’s from the Indian embassy in Washington DC and the Indian Ambassador to the US, L.K Jha is waiting on the line.

“Dr. Vikram Sarabhai passed away,” Jha tells the professor. “Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would like you to return to India to take over the Indian space programme,” he adds.

The professor’s response was intriguing — It wasn’t an immediate yes or a no.

He tells Jha — “I am in the middle of a class. I have been pulled out to attend the telephone call. I will complete my assignment here, which is another two or three months long. I am going to be back in India in March. And I will come and see the Prime Minister.”

The call ended and the professor went back to his lecture…but this time, a little preoccupied.

He had to make an important decision.

From ATS Studio, this is Mission I-S-R-O, a Spotify original podcast about how India reached space.

I’m Harsha Bhogle.

Recap

In the previous episode, I told you about how Vikram Sarabhai steered the space programme singlehandedly after the death of Nehru and Bhabha. Under Sarabhai’s leadership, the space programme, within a decade, expanded significantly. Operating at breakneck speed, Sarabhai laid the foundation for a range of projects — from communication satellites to indigenous rockets to the building of a satellite launching vehicle. He also went on a recruitment drive and hired India’s first space scientists and engineers. These new recruits came equipped not with degrees or training in space science and technology but with ample enthusiasm and energy.

Thumba, after the UN sponsorship had become an international rocket launching hub. Sarabhai’s watch-and-learn strategy had worked and soon, Indian engineers had managed to build and launch our first indigenous rockets.

But ISRO wasn’t the only institution that Sarabhai was steering. After Bhabha’s death, Sarabhai had become the head of the Department of Atomic Energy and most of Sarabhai’s time was divided between nuclear energy and the space programme. He was constantly, constantly travelling, darting from one big project to another, ironing out roadblocks, ensuring they were on the path to success.

But in a cruel twist of fate, on December 30, 1971, Vikram Sarabhai passed away.

He was only 52. 

ISRO’s architect was dead. What now?

Here we go

In his autobiography, Wings of Fire, APJ Abdul Kalam writes about the moment he heard about Vikram Sarabhai’s death. Kalam was among the last few people that Sarabhai had spoken to before he passed. They had even arranged to meet at Trivandrum airport the next morning to discuss a project. But when Kalam landed in Trivandrum, “a pall of gloom hung in the air”, he writes. The aircraft ladder operator told him that Sarabhai was no more.

EV Chitnis too was on his way back to Trivandrum when he heard the news. Sarabhai had sent him to Delhi to attend a meeting on his behalf. Even today, Chitnis, who is 95 years old, gets emotional when he thinks about Sarabhai’s passing away.

EV Chitnis
Sarabhai was nearly…you know it was not a just a he was our boss or anything. He was a professor, he was a mentor. We had a…almost like a family.

Back in Bombay, Mallika Sarabhai was inconsolable.

Mallika Sarabhai
It was like a four legged table with one leg broken. I couldn’t believe it.I could not — my first reaction when Amma told me was, was it a plane crash? Because I couldn’t believe that his health had given way. But after that, it was like an abbyss, nothingness. And it was only at Bombay airport when his body was brought, and there were thousands of people there who wanted a last look at him. And it was only when the coffin was opened, and I touched him. He looked as though he was about to wake up from one of his power naps. No greening of the face, no changing of colour, but icy cold. And it was that that really made me realise that he was gone. I still cry.

By the next day, Vikram Sarabhai’s body was taken to Ahmedabad to his home The Retreat, for the last rites. Scores of people including scientists and officials from all over the country had turned up to pay their respects. A long procession accompanied Sarabhai’s body to the cremation ground.

Mallika Sarabhai lit the pyre and a few days later, Vikram Sarabhai’s ashes were brought to Thumba and scattered in the Indian Ocean.

India had lost a visionary, a remarkable institution builder, a talented scientist and a patriot.

EV Chitnis
If he had lived longer, how much he would have contributed to India.This is my thought everyday.

In just 52 years, Sarabhai had established a legacy that has meaning even today. Imagine the number of people in modern India who can find some association to Sarabhai’s work. My association is pretty obvious. I studied in IIM Ahmedabad, an institution that Sarabhai was instrumental in setting up. In the 1950s itself, he realised that India needed to efficiently manage all the industries that would come up in independent India. And so, in 1961, IIM-A was set up. The centre piece of this campus – and where, I’d try and spend a lot of time in – was the Sarabhai Library. 🙂

Anyway, let’s get back to our story.

So, quite understandably, the year 1971 began with a lot of uncertainty for ISRO. Who was going to take Sarabhai’s place? Concerned about this, seven scientists and engineers including Abdul Kalam wrote a letter to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on January 11 1972.

Vivek Prahaladan, in his book, ‘The Nation Declassified: India and the Cold War World’, writes about this in detail. In their letter, the scientists pointed out that the immense growth of space research in India was due to the support of the political leadership and the far-sighted leadership of Sarabhai. And they added –

Narrator
Dr. Sarabhai encouraged individuals to submit technical proposals, had them scrutinised by a committee of peers and upon being convinced about the relevance of the project, gave authorisation for its execution. This opened up a reservoir of talents who became automatically accountable and committed to tasks.

So, for ISRO to maintain its present momentum, the scientists suggested that it should remain under the direct charge of Indira Gandhi and be administered through an autonomous scientific institution. They also added that the new chairman of ISRO should be someone who enjoys national and international recognition and someone who has experience in managing scientific and technical organisations.

Around the same time, MGK Menon, a 43-year-old physicist, who was the director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research was asked to meet the Prime Minister.

Indira Gandhi had called for a meeting. In the room were PN Haksar, the Principal secretary to the Prime Minister, physicist and meteorologist PR Pisharoty and Dr. Homi N Sethna, the director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.

New heads had been to be found for a number of organisations that were under Sarabhai’s charge. Three specific departments came up for discussion. The first was the Department of Atomic Energy. The Prime Minister decided that the space programme and the atomic energy will no longer be interconnected and will have separate men in-charge of them.

By this time, the department of atomic energy was working on an atomic bomb project; while, ISRO as you already know, had not one but several ambitious plans. 

It was decided that Homi N Sethna was going to head the atomic energy programme. And MGK Menon would head the space programme and would also be the director of PRL. Menon had also been asked to take charge of the Department of Electronics, as he continues to be the Director of TIFR as well.

Menon was a great institution builder himself, and he was well acquainted with the space programme thanks to his association with Sarabhai. In fact, it was Sarabhai who had, only a year before, suggested that Menon head the Department of Electronics.

Menon basically told the Prime Minister that he is ready to take up charge of the space programme but only in an interim capacity. He felt that handling both the space and the electronics department would be difficult. The space programme, especially, needed undivided attention, given how much it had expanded by then.

And, so, if the Prime Minister is looking for a successor to Vikram Sarabhai, the man for the job was actually … Satish Dhawan.

Menon remembered Indira Gandhi’s face at the mention of Dhawan. There was a tinge of disappointment. Dhawan had been on the government’s mind for multiple scientific positions but he had been difficult to persuade. Slowly, she said, “Prof. Menon, you are right you know. But I don’t know if it will work. I had wanted him here for other things and he had always said no.”

Who – was – Satish Dhawan? 

Let’s do some time travel

Born on September 25, 1920 in Srinagar, Satish Dhawan, like Sarabhai and Bhabha, also grew up at a time when India was inching closer towards freedom.

The son of a judge, Dhawan acquired an eclectic set of degrees. He had a BA in Mathematics and Physics, an MA in English Literature and a BE in Mechanical Engineering. But the field he was most drawn to was aeronautical engineering.

Jyotsna Dhawan
The whole concept of flight, I think fascinated him. It fascinated him forever. I mean, even the simple, he could endlessly watch, you know, planes taking off and landing. (laughs). It never stopped fascinating.

This is Jyotsna Dhawan, cell and developmental biologist and Dr. Satish Dhawan’s daughter.

Dhawan’s interest in aeronautical engineering was sparked by what he saw around him, growing up during the second world war. During his engineering degree, he came to Bangalore all the way from Punjab to work on the shop floor as an intern at the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited which at that time was repairing British warplanes.

Jyotsna Dhawan
Right. So this was the height of the war. And I think what he got from the practical training on the shop floor at HAL was something that totally fascinated him.

You know, doing aeronautics or Aeronautical Engineering at the time was kind of like the IT of the 90s, right? Because it was fascinating. It was new. There were so many new developments and you could see the deployment, you know, every day they were you know, even though there was no internet or any of the news travelled much slower. The fact is, they were still newsreels and you can imagine the fascination with which any young person would be viewing the fact that the RAF, and, you know, the Indian contributions to the British effort were,you know, so what’s the word? …I’m sure they just filled the imagination. And you know, those were in some senses still the early days of flight.

When the second world war ended in 1945 and independence was within reach, the leaders of the freedom struggle had realised that new India was going to need a large number of highly skilled people. So they managed to institute a scholarship for a selected group of 1000 Indians to go abroad and study.

Jyotsna Dhawan
It was a programme where 1000 young people, I think mostly young men were selected to go to the UK or to the US for technical degrees. And my father was lucky enough to get one of those scholarships. And so this scholarship came with a bond. It meant that after you finished your work, you had to sign an agreement that you were going to come back and work In India. So many, many people, you know, who who did things in the post independence India, were recipients of those scholarships. So I know for example, there was another person, a friend of my father’s also from the Punjab, who was the engineer responsible for building the Bhakra Nangal Dam.

Satish Dhawan had his eyes set on Caltech in the US which was the mecca for aeronautics.

The department had been started by Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian-American engineer and scientist who had made significant contributions in mathematics and aeronautics. As interest in rocketry peaked in the second World War, he and others founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory which would become the backbone of NASA’s ambitions in space.

And among Karman’s collaborators was Hans Leipmann, a professor of aeronautics and applied physics. Liepmann mentored Satish Dhawan as he completed a double doctorate in mathematics and aerospace engineering.

Dhawan carved himself a name as a very capable scientist and engineer.  The website of the aerospace department at Caltech today lists six people as “legends” of the department: and among them are Karman, Leipmann and .. Satish Dhawan.

Once his course work was done, as per the terms of the bond, Dhawan returned to India. And the place he chose to go to on his return was…the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. A full circle in our story. It was in this campus that Sarabhai and Bhabha met and most likely thought up the idea of a space programme.

Dhawan’s career saw a meteoric rise at IISC. In just four years, he was the head of the aeronautical engineering department and seven years after that, he became the head of IISC itself. At the age of 42, he was the institute’s youngest director.

Roddam Narasimha
He was an extraordinary man. Sense of humour, works very hard.

This is Roddam Narasimha, aerospace scientist, former director of the National Aeronautics Laboratory and among Dhawan’s first students.

Roddam Narasimha
He is a good teacher, loves doing experiments and on the whole, a very cheerful person, which incidentally in those days was not common in the institute of science, because most people came with a suit and tie. but he came in his California shirts and the little car EMG. He came to the classroom saying good morning — this was something new to us.

Incidentally, it was Homi Bhabha who recommended Dhawan’s name for the director of IISC. Bhabha felt that Dhawan could transform IISC for the better. And he was right.

Roddam Narasimha
The institute before the time, Dhawan became the director, it had only a few departments and actually apart from a small number of people, there was not a great deal of research coming out of there. And the transformation that Dhawan made there, was many new disciplines, hire the best people to get there and encourage them, make bigger plans, change the education syllabi and so on. Gave greater autonomy to the departments.

Apart from being a talented scientist and a charming professor, Dhawan was also an able manager. His directorship at the IISC was an early example of his ability to manage complex projects, competing departments and academic politics. This was a skill that would come in very handy throughout his career, especially after 1971.

IISC was dear to Dhawan, and he gave it his everything. Dhawan was especially eager for the institute to make significant contributions to the growth of science in India.

Jyotsna Dhawan
Oh, I think it was an immediate love affair. He was he was one of that generation who were totally fired up about the Indian experiment in a sense, right? Because if you think about it, who on a global stage thought that that independent India was going to not just survive but thrive. Right. And that generation was had this fire in their belly about ensuring that that happened.

Nine years after serving as the director of IISC, as is normal in the lives of most academics, Dhawan decided to take a sabbatical and teach. He was itching to go back to the classroom and he chose Caltech, his other beloved institute as the destination.

And just when he was settling in Caltech and reacquainting himself with his alma mater, the Indian embassy telephoned him.

He was told that the Prime Minister would like him to return to India and take over the Indian space programme. And just as the Prime Minister herself had feared, Dhawan’s answer wasn’t an immediate yes.

In his book Reach for the Stars, A History of the rocket programme in India, Gopalraj writes that most people, when they are told that the Prime Minister is asking them to head the space programme, would immediately jump on the next available flight to India. Not Dhawan. What Dhawan does instead is tell LK Jha that he is in the middle of a sabbatical and needs to think about this decision first. He also tells Jha that since he is working for the Indian Institute of Science, he would be unable to give the Prime Minister an answer until he had spoken to the institute.

Jyotsna Dhawan
Yeah, well, I don’t know how much of that was the way it was. You know, I’ve heard that story many times. And it’s been written about I, I do remember that he was teaching. He was actually in a lecture when the call came, and so he had to call them back. And so I think he was just being practical. It comes from a place where you have the confidence to say, Okay, if they want me, I’m, I’m willing to think about it and do the job because I think I can do it. But I also have certain requirements, okay. And I need to think about what those requirements are, because I don’t want to be in a position of having to promise to deliver something and then be stymied by you know, by a set of situations which I have no control over. So in a sense, it also means that you’re willing to be To let go of a particular position, right, in other words, you’re not there for the position. Right? You’re not hankering for that position. you’re assessing a situation and saying to yourself, okay, I think I can do this job. It is going to be a huge challenge, but these are the things that I need to think through what it is that will, will allow me to do that job effectively. Right? And if they decide that, okay, you’re, you’re you’re too arrogant, and you know, who do you think you are for for saying, I’ll think about it, then. So be it I, I just do what I could I continue to do what I do, right.

The Prime Minister and her advisors decided to actually wait for Dhawan to make up his mind. 

Dhawan was no stranger to the space programme. He had been a key part of INCOSPAR, the original committee under which the space programme was organised. The committee had scientists from across the country advising and discussing how the space programme should move forward. The IISC was a space which would collaborate and consult with space scientists.

Jyotsna Dhawan
Satish knew Dr. Sarabhai very well, and they were in touch and I’m sure. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m sure there were many committees on which they both sat. And there was lots of informal as well as formal exchanges. So,…because you know, the PRL in Ahmedabad, where Dr. Sarabhai was, you know, setting up so many of these programmes – there was constant communication between them, and IISC. I do remember hearing about the sounding rockets from long before my Father joined the Space Programme.

In fact, just before Sarabhai passed away, he had written to Dhawan asking him if he could help a young engineer called Muthunayagam visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s test facilities near Caltech. Muthunayam was trying to set up a solid rocket motor testing facility in Thumba.

Alright. While Dhawan was still making up his mind, the interim head of ISRO MGK Menon got to work and did some reorganising. The whole complex at Thumba which included the Thumba International Rocket Launching Station, the Space Science and Technology Centre and two other centres – the Rocket Fabrication Facility and Propellant Fuel Complex – all of this was merged to form one big centre. And it’s new name was the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre.

Finally, sometime in March, Dhawan returned to India. First he met the chairman of the council at IISC R Choksi and then he met JRD Tata. Both men tell him that he is free to make his decision and that neither they, nor the institute will stand in his way.

Gopalraj
Then according to what Dhawan himself told me, he went and met Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

This is Gopalraj, science journalist and author.

The much awaited moment had arrived. 

Gopalraj
And there were two conditions he put forward. One was that he wanted to continue to be the director of the Indian Institute of Science. And the second was that the headquarters the Space Programme should be in Bangalore so that he could continue to be director of Institute of Science.

So not only did he make the Prime Minister wait, when he did finally meet her, he laid down conditions in front of her.

Roddam Narasimha says he explained these conditions and terms in a letter to the Prime Minister.

Roddam Narasimha
Basically, the letter was very interesting and very typical of Dhawan. He first of all says what the Space Programme should be. In other words, he lays down in his first one or two paragraphs, exactly what is– exactly what India’s Space Programme should be. It as about solving social problems, improving education, doing better things..that’s sort of thing. values for… values for society. 

And then he laid down the conditions about IISC.

Roddam Narasimha
And he said, Madam, if you approve of what I’ve said, I’d be honoured to accept your invitation. And apparently Mrs. Gandhi was very surprised that somebody was writing a letter like that.

Indira Gandhi, keen that Dhawan take over the space programme, agreed to both the conditions. Dhawan would be allowed to continue to head IISC while taking on the mantle of the space programme. Second, the space programme’s headquarters would be moved to Bangalore.

For anyone who knows the work of contemporary ISRO, you now know why Bengaluru has become synonymous with ISRO. Satish Dhawan plays a critical role in it – and who knows, if not for him, ISRO may have continued to grow in Thumba.

Roddam Narasimha
And there are two people credited with getting Mrs. Gandhi to accept him. One was Professor MGK Menon, who was of course, the Secretary then, the government, and the other one was Haksar, was a big advisor., in whom Mrs. Gandhi had great trust. And this thing I found out from a recent book, Jairam Ramesh.  Jairam Ramesh ..goes through  how Haksar persuaded her to get and he says Ma’am, it is not just that the  the Space Programme will be done. But by appointing him,we would have done great service to the nation. Because what he says he will do, he will do.

The reason Dhawan put these conditions in front of the Prime Minister was because he felt it was the right thing to do — as its head, he felt a strong commitment towards IISC.

Jyotsna Dhawan
Yes, I think so. Because, you know, he really poured himself into anything that he took on it, it could be the smallest thing it could be, you know, the Space Programme. He did not do things by half measures. So there was no question of,sort of, he felt a very strong commitment to IISC. So, you know, in a sense, it was more than his home.

But as we will see later, this didn’t mean that the space programme was sidelined by any measure. Dhawan gave it his everything too.

On first June 1972, the government established a space commission and a separate department of space. Just like the atomic energy commission and department of atomic energy. The Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO was brought under the department of space. 

Dhawan took over the chairmanship of ISRO in September.

ISRO’s path had been so ambitiously set by Sarabhai, that its new chairman had to get going from the start.   

Three projects in particular demanded immediate attention: The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment or SITE for which Sarabhai had signed an agreement with the Americans. The second was the building and launch of India’s own satellite launching vehicle, popularly known today as the SLV-3. The third was the building and launch of India’s first satellite, Aryabhata.

While some work for all these three projects had been done already, a lot of the work remained and there wasn’t any guide or blueprint for any of them. India’s space scientists were still figuring it all out by themselves.

What worked in ISRO’s favour was the fact that Dhawan, the successor to Sarabhai, shared the same goals for the space programme as his predecessor.

S Chandrashekhar
He had only one aspiration. As far as I could say. He wanted to make sure that the Space Programme was relevant as far as India was concerned.

This is S Chandrashekhar, an ex-ISRO scientist who worked with Dhawan closely.

S Chandrashekar
So he was very clear that it had to have a significant development and economic agenda. Okay. I mean, if at all you have to characterise, I don’t think this was contradictory to what Vikram Sarabhai wanted.

When he came to Thumba, among the first decisions that Dhawan took was to organise the workforce of the space programme and fix specific project heads for programmes.

As Gopalraj tells us, it was time for ISRO’s fast-paced expansion to get a formal structure.

Gopal Raj
Sarabhai had a very informal style of management when it came to the Space Programme. He’d periodically fly down random people even when…  after he became the chairman Atomic Energy Commission. He would meet heads of the various groups, you know, discuss projects with them give the…you know, so okay this this project can go ahead, that can go ahead. On the spot sanctions. It is very much a one-to-one kind of relationship. This is something that Dhawan apparently referred to as under the banyan tree, Gurukul style of management. So that clearly was not going to — could not be possible if you’re going to have a massive expansion of the of the, of the Space Programme that actually happened during Dhawan’s period. 

One of Dhawan’s first appointments was a head for the newly named Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Kerala. For this, he brought in the former director of metallurgy in the atomic energy department – Dr. Brahm Prakash, a man known for his saint-like nature.

The other significant appointment he made was to make Abdul Kalam the head of the SLV project. This decision sparked a lot of controversy but I’ll tell you about that in an upcoming episode.

Ultimately, in 1972, as he took on the reins of a space programme which was mid-journey, the big question in front of Satish Dhawan was if he can lead India’s space programme to its proposed destination. How was he going to help bridge the gap between where India was and where it wanted to be?

If you remember, India had only built rockets up until this time – a small milestone in the large scheme of things.

A little more than three years later, Dhawan would see his first success as India’s first satellite entered space. But there was a slight glitch.

More on that, later.