Nambi narayanan’S calvary

Accountability and its absence in India is the primary reason why the country is still close to the bottom of the scale in several economic and social sectors. Even after 15 August 1947, the country has remained the playground of powerful external interests acting through their domestic stooges. An example is the manner in which some of the very agencies tasked with protecting the security of the country foisted a false case on two patriotic scientists in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) after they had succeeded in making India a missile power. The effect of such a criminal move was to set back the cryogenic engine program of ISRO by 19 years. Thanks to faulty leadership, the post-colonial history of India is littered with missed opportunities, examples of which have been given in a book by former ISRO expert Nambi Narayanan, who was among the duo falsely accused on the basis of evidence that was cooked up by unscrupulous officers who have almost entirely escaped accountability. An example given in the book is how a Rolls Royce laboratory that could have given a boost to domestic R&D was shifted to India. Once installed, the hydraulics laboratory would have resulted on several innovations but this was not to be. Those in charge at the time stood by as the lab was cannibalised on reaching India, with its components getting scattered or being placed uselessly in storage. This took place nearly a half century ago, yet to date there has not been any inquiry into the matter. None of those who participated in or facilitated through inaction such vandalism suffered any setbacks. Indeed, most got promoted to higher posts. Around the same time, a French company offered the priceless cryogenic engine technology to India for just Rs 1 crore. Then Secretary of ISRO, T.N. Seshan was in favour of this unprecedented offer, only to have his advice turned down by Satish Dhawan, who was his senior. Two decades later, Russia sold cryogenic technology to India for Rs 235 crore, but his error of judgment cost Dhawan nothing, and he continued to accumulate honours. Narayanan has pointed out how Dhawan refused to install a multi-engine test facility at Sriharikota, perhaps on the assumption that India would never progress to that stage. And how he refused an offer by the French to transfer advanced technology to India after Delhi cleared the purchase of Airbus over Boeing. Such lapses are presented in sober prose in Ready to Fire, the book by Narayanan together with Arun Ram. The main subject of the book is the ISRO spy case and its fallout on a program critical to the defence of India, that involving the development of the very cryogenic engines, an early variant of which was inexplicably turned down by Satish Dhawan in the 1970s.

As the amount of compensation fixed by the Supreme Court in the horrendous Bhopal gas tragedy showed, human life is cheap in India, which is probably why the Kerala High Court regarded Rs 10 lakh as fair recompense to the ISRO expert for the Calvary that he went through at the behest of forces determined to slow down if not stop entirely India’s cryogenic engine program. When in 1994 the espionage case was dumped on the shoulders of the two scientists dealing with the development of the cryogenic engine, Bill Clinton was the President of the United States. It was during his time that relentless pressure was applied on India to give up its nuclear and missile program. Boris Yeltsin, who in many ways was a servant of foreign interests, was arm twisted to ensure that Moscow back away from its commitment to transfer cryogenic engine technology to India. Another focus area of the Clinton administration was Kashmir, and during the period when he was in office, those involved in the violence in the state looked to Clinton as their saviour in the project to delink Kashmir from the rest of India. It is to the credit of P.V. Narasimha Rao and his successors that they resisted all such pressure and went ahead with the nuclear and missile program, even while beating back efforts by Pakistan to separate Kashmir from India. Of course, it would be unfair to pin all the blame for the ISRO spy case on the US, as other countries too could have been involved in subverting officials in India into foisting a false case so as to slow down and if possible stop the domestic cryogenic program. What is unfortunate is that no serious investigation was conducted into the motivations of the higher-ups in Delhi who initiated the false case against Narayanan. Accountability has been absent in cases where officers get turned by foreign entities into working against the interests of their own country. Narayanan’s ordeal is a reminder of the rotten apples within the dovecotes of office, and the need to identify and take action against such hidden enemies. Fortunately, despite the efforts by countries that sought to render India helpless, our 1.27 billion people are protected by a nuclear deterrent sufficient to cause irreparable harm to an adversary. Unlike what happened in the ISRO case, when the conspirators escaped, in future the most condign punishment should be imposed on officials sabotaging key programs for foreign masters.