Not sure yet which gender belongs to Mars. Venus is still light years off. The frugal engineering and parsimonious applied science that launched India as a nation through interplanetary space lifted human spirit like never before.
It is no equation or alloy technology that I can identify with when marveling at ISRO scientists' collective accomplishments. I do not know how to feign such knowledge either. So here's what surrounds me as the overwhelming mood engulfs the nation.
1. It was a mission, like locusts movements. Locusts have no king, and yet they march in ranks. It was not a campaign where a kingly authority reigned. Yet, the nation willing to be swept beneath the apogee missed this distinction. I am hoping we glean this subtlety sooner than later.
2. Design trumps operations. No matter how marvelous project and program management can get with agile and scrum methods, MoM may not have delivered without a requisite specificity in design phases. Quality cannot be sacrificed even if expense control is a target.
3. Shared context is unconscious value base, and diversity binds it best. It is known that most of the scientific cadres on Indian government rolls come from aspirational histories. The lack of the silver spoon hardwired struggle and survival in resource constrained contexts. The distinguishing competence of these scientists may well be the temperament of method in enquiry, and not curiosity per se. Both past hardwiring and cultivated scientific temperament fuse together best when language, creed and faith are transcended in long gestation. If removed even by a bit, you may experience jugaad, but not the elegance of robust science.
Well for starters, these are points that I choose over many others. They may seem simple on the surface. But they may well transcend the complexity of rocket science.
In sheer paradox, as a nation, we may have got this mix in serendipity than through science of social psychology or the procedures of conscripted ideology or manuals of leadership code.
What do you think?
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