Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian to be in space, recalled on Sunday what he had seen as his spacecraft flew over India and why he quoted Muhammad Iqbal up in the space when asked by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi how he felt: “Sare jahan se accha, Hindustan hamara”.
The ‘birthday boy’, who turned 70 on Sunday, was in his element at the Kerala Literature Festival in Kozhikode on Sunday. In a conversation with former Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G. Madhavan Nair, he stressed the need to nurture space research for greater good of mankind.
“We should not extend the conflict between the nations to outer space. If not, Star Wars will be a reality,” he said vouching that the ISRO had never gone ahead with a project for the sake of national pride and that the benefits of technology had always trickled down to the common man. “There is hardly a facet of an Indian citizen that has not been touched by ISRO’s technology”, he said citing the advances in education, tele-medicine, telecommunication, etc.
Mr. Sharma called for a collaboration of world nations to enable a human landing on the Mars, as a single nation alone might not be able to afford the mission. However, a member of the audience bowled him over with a question that pointed out the mess human beings had made of the Earth and the need to fix it before venturing into outer space.
“Yes, we have ruined the Earth and have done an exceptionally good job of it. Yes, we should look at sustainable development,” the wing commander and astronaut said. “But we cannot afford to do things sequentially, but parallelly and make sure that we do not repeat our mistakes.”
Mr. Sharma said that after the wave of information technology, the wave of space technology was coming and asked the younger generation to prepare themselves for career opportunities ahead.
‘Dedicated channel’
Meanwhile, Mr. Madhavan Nair announced that the ISRO would soon launch a dedicated space channel.
The ISRO was not in competition with NASA or any such organisation and that the organisation believed in setting self-imposed benchmarks. The earliest human touchdown on the Mars could be in around 2030.
