The fall of Madhavan Nair: decoding the 'scandal'

Two years ago, space scientist G Madhavan Nair was India’s pride when he was crowned with Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian honour. Today he is on the blacklist of the same government! The government of India has barred him from holding any of its posts, now or ever. The reason? He was the head of Antrix, the commercial arm of the Indian space establishment, when it decided to lease out transponders of two of its satellites to a private company. Country’s top scientists such as Anil Kakodkar, Prof Yashpal, CNR Rao and RA Mashelkar expressed shock and dismay over this “unprecedented action”. [caption id=“attachment_196237” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Former ISRO head G Madhavan Nair. AFP Photo”] [/caption] Nair, a highly accomplished scientist and the architect of the present generation of India’s space programme, was livid. He hit back at the leadership of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and attributed personal motives for this disgraceful decision. “He (K Radhakrishnan ~Nair~) has misled the government on the whole issue (the Devas deal). He is the key person who worked behind this; he misled and miscommunicated to the government,” Nair reportedly told PTI. Who is Radhakrishnan ~Nair~? The present chairman of ISRO and interestingly, a fellow scientist from Nair’s home-state of Kerala. Although the details behind the Nair’s blacklisting are not as salacious or intriguing as the six-year old “spy scandal” that rocked the Indian space establishment in the late 1990s and ruined the careers and lives of the country’s six space scientists, they certainly point to the complete disarray of the governance and accountability systems in the country. The questions to be asked are if the case in question was really a scam; if yes, was Nair really culpable. Instead, what the public got to know was that Nair and three other scientists have been blacklisted. The connotation of this announcement was that their hands are dirty. Are they? Let’s decode the “scam” that felled Nair and his fellow scientists and see the devil in the details. What exactly is the case? Antrix reportedly got into a 12-year $ 300 deal with a private company called Devas for leasing out 90 percent of the transponders of two of its satellites, CSAT-6 and GSAT-6A. When ready, Devas would use them for running digital multimedia services. Apparently, Antrix had got the clearance of the Space Commission and the Union Cabinet for the two satellites, but hadn’t informed them about the bulk purchase by Devas. In the wake of the 2G scam, media reports started appearing featuring this as the next big spectrum scandal because the transponders that Devas had hired would require chunks of S-band spectrum, an “expensive and evolving” commodity. It was, however, not clear if the agreement included the allotment of S-band spectrum, which was highly improbable because Antrix had no jurisdiction on that. What followed in the media was largely conjecture. Media reports concluded that if Devas gets to use satellite transponders they will come bundled with the (S-band) spectrum. However, it was conveniently overlooked that spectrum allocation was solely a DoT’s prerogative and ISRO/Antrix had no role. In other words, the scam was largely a piece of conjecture based on common sense. This is exactly what enrages Nair. In an interview with PTI, he said that there was an attempt to mix spectrum and satellite transponder leasing. “These are two different issues. ISRO deals with only leasing the transponders.” To make things clearer, he used the example of Tata Sky, which has leased 12 transponders from a single ISRO satellite. “Even if ISRO gives transponders to an operator, the latter can’t start operations such as uplinking, downlinking and beaming over the Indian continent till it receives licence from the Department of Telecom,” he said. One doesn’t need to know rocket science to understand this - it is like buying a TV doesn’t guarantee the channels it is going to receive. But who is listening? A government that is perceived to be lame needs soft targets to show its machismo. It may drag its feet on a billionaire industrialist or a crook politician, but not on a scientist. This is also where Nair’s charges seem justified. He accuses his country-cousin Radhakrishnan ~Nair~ for his fall. “A letter went from Department of Space to the higher-ups towards the end of 2009 or early 2010 (when Radhakrishnan was the chairman), seeking cancellation of the Antrix-Devas agreement. He had made up his mind to take action on something and later lined up all arguments in favour of such a decision. This is totally unheard of,” Nair said. The government action was based on the report of a five-member high powered committee (HPC) chaired by a former CVC that examined the deal and another panel that studied the report. According to Nair, Radhakrishnan ~Nair~ misled the committee. In a completely chaotic contemporary India, where facts and fiction are dangerously mixed, anything is possible except when it doesn’t touch politicians, their cronies and industrialists. When decisions are based on what is expedient and popular, which are largely dictated by half-baked media stories, it is bound to go crazy like this. Yesterday’s heroes are today’s zeroes. Does it really matter that Nair was behind 27 successful space missions including the “Chandrayaan”?