Strict budgeting, cooperation with Indian industry behind ISRO’s cost-effectiveness: Former budget director of ISRO

Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander soft landed near the Moon's South Pole on August 24

Every time the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) makes a successful launch a lot of attention is drawn to the frugal nature of such missions undertaken by the national space agency.

On August 24, ISRO became the first space agency to successfully land Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander on the South Pole of the Moon, spurring conversations around the agency's low cost of operations and high efficiency. The Chandrayaan-3 mission was carried out at a budget of just Rs 615 crore, which is lower than even those of Bollywood and Hollywood movies.

So, what is the reason behind ISRO's low expenditure compared to its counterparts like NASA, European Space Agency, Russia's Roscosmos, China National Space Administration (CNSA) and so on?

P Sudarshan, who was recruited for ISRO in 1976 and was responsible for ISRO's budgeting and improving industry relations, explains that the agency's strict practice of zero-based budgeting, coupled with its reliance on securing supplies from Indian companies helped make its operations cheaper.

Zero-based budgeting is when one does not take the previous year's budget as a base for current and future years. The budget estimate is arrived at after starting to calculate from zero.

"That was a technique or principle adopted by us to keep the budgets very tightly controlled. It applied to everything — general budget, the project budgets, program budgets, budgets for facilities etc.," Sudarshan told Moneycontrol.

When Sudarshan joined ISRO as Chairman of the Technology Transfer and Industry Cooperation and Budget Director, the agency had just launched one satellite. It had not launched any rocket. The Satellite Launch Vehicle (known as SLV-3), which was launched in 1979 was still under development in 1976.

Making it harder to import technologies were the sanctions that were imposed by several countries after India conducted its first nuclear test, the Smiling Buddha (also known as Pokhran 1) in 1974. In a conversation with Moneycontrol, Sudarshan explains that the emphasis on procuring supplies from domestic players was a result of these sanctions.

"We were concentrating on the Indian industry because we were getting no cooperation from anywhere in the world. Seven countries put sanctions on us. The sanctions were because of our sister organisation, which exploded the nuclear bomb," Sudarshan told Moneycontrol.

"This helped our budgets because Indian companies were far cheaper compared to international ones," he added.

"We allowed the industries, who partnered with us to export with some conditions. We also gave them opportunities. We did market research for them which was very important for industries," he said.

Market research by ISRO then was necessitated because there was some reluctance from industries about being in partnership with a space programme which was still in its nascent stages.

For example, back then ISRO was trying to get the industry to set up a plant for unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH), the main liquid fuel for rockets. "They were reluctant until I pointed out to them that India was already importing UDMH under some other name for using it as plant growth regulator for apple orchards in Jammu and Kashmir," he said.

"Once that was revealed, they shot up. They realised that they can, not just supply to us, but also apple orchards. So that was an import substitute," he explained.

By the time he left ISRO in 1988, he claims to have helped in indigenousing 100 critical technologies that ISRO uses currently. That number may have increased to 200 by now, he estimated.

Now, with the Rs 615-crore Chandrayaan-3 currently on the Moon, conducting scientific experiments on the lunar surface, all eyes are on what kind of results these experiments will bring in. It is important to remember that Chandrayaan-1, in 2008 discovered the presence of water molecules at the Moon's South Pole, which is where Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander is currently perched.