Curbing talent exodus: It’s deja vu for Indian Space Research Organisation
As the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is in the news for issuing a memorandum aimed at deterring scientists and engineers attached to important missions
As the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is in the news for issuing a memorandum aimed at deterring scientists and engineers attached to important missions from quitting, the space agency, in fact, is reliving a nightmare from the 1990s. This is perhaps the second time in its history that ISRO is faced with the task of containing mass exits. The first instance was in the early 1990s, when the information technology (IT) boom and campus recruitments dealt a blow to ISRO which was then on an expansion mode. “Nobody could anticipate it. It was a big crisis back then. Many senior hands left ISRO for the IT sector,” recalls E.K. Kutty, who retired in 2005 as Director (Programme Planning and Personnel Policy) from the ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru.
In his book Kutty, who now heads the UL Space Club, which he founded and mentors, has even recounted the ordeal that ISRO went through in his August 2025 book ISROyile Kuttikkaalam (Mathrubhumi Books). “It is notable that ISRO’s practice of acquiring the finest talent in the country faced a stiff challenge in the last decade of the 20th century. A first-class rival arrived on stage to lure brilliant engineers in the 22-24 age bracket who used to queue up to join ISRO—the private IT sector,” Mr. Kutty wrote in the Malayalam book. It was the time when Bengaluru was fast metamorphosising into India’s IT hub. Companies such as Infosys, HCL and Wipro were making major strides in the sector.
At ISRO, the 1990s were the time when the space agency also was expanding, with work on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) and satellites at critical junctures. On the hiring front, the biggest headache for ISRO was that its own process could not hope to match the brisk campus recruitment model that the IT sector adopted. Recruitment process “Being a government system, public were mandatory as all Indian nationals were to be given equal opportunity. The entire recruitment process could take about eight to nine months,” recalls Mr. Kutty. By then, the ‘best brains’ would have been absorbed by the private companies.
Centralised recruitment to science/technology branches was a major change introduced by ISRO back then to handle this crisis. Such measures eventually led to the establishment of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) in Thiruvananthapuram in 2007. Resignations and voluntary retirements in ISRO are in the news now with the space agency asking its centre directors and unit heads not to accept requests, especially from hands involved in missions such as Gaganyaan, “as a matter of routine.”
The BriefWire