This is an era of liberalized scams involving politician-bureaucrat-big business nexus in looting the national assets. The heat generated by 2G spectrum has not subsided. Now, CAG audit findings have revealed the corruption cloud over the Indian skies. The Union government on 17 February scrapped the controversial 2005 S-band allotment deal between Antrix, the commercial arm of ISRO, and Devas Multimedia, a private firm. Explaining the rationale behind the annulment of the deal Law minister Veerapa Moily said there has been an increased demand for spectrum for national needs, particularly in the fields of defence, para-military forces, railways and other public utility services as well as for societal needs. “In view of the country’s strategic requirements and societal services like education, healthcare, communication and disaster management, the government will not be able to provide slot in S-band to Antrix for commercial activities, including for those which are the subject matter of existing contractual obligations for S-band,” Moily added.

This particular issue should be seen beyond the frontiers of corruption. Just as thousands of kilometers of national highways are virtually owned by private sector, through Antrix-Devas deal Indian Space Organization was attempting to handover the national space assets to the private sector for a song. ANTRIX Corporation Limited was incorporated as a private limited company owned by Government of India, in September 1992 as a Marketing arm of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for promotion and commercial exploitation of space products, technical consultancy services and transfer of technologies developed by ISRO. Antrix signed an MOU in March 2003 with M/S Forge Advisors, USA to explore opportunities in digital multimedia services. Later, Forge Advisors established an Indian company called Devas Multimedia Pvt Ltd.

The Bangalore-based start-up, founded in 2004, is headed by Dr. M.G. Chandrasekhar, former Scientific Secretary at ISRO. In 2008, Deutsche Telekom picked up 17 per cent stake in Devas for about $75 million. Columbia Capital and Telcom Ventures are the other international investors. Devas was able to get Rs.1.14 lakh premium on its share worth Rs.10 when it divested stake to Deutsche Telekom. The board of directors includes Kiran Karnik, a former President of Nasscom; Larry Babio, a former vice-chairman of Verizon, and Gary Parsons, a former Chairman of XM Sirius Satellite. It may be noted that former ISRO Chairman Prof. U.R .Rao’s daughter works for Devas.

According to the contract, Devas Multimedia is entitled to get a total of 70 Mhz of the S-band spectrum on lease for 20 years. The contract requires ISRO to build and launch two communications satellites — GSAT-6 and GSAT-6A — at a further cost of Rs 2,000 crore. To operationalize this agreement, ANTRIX committed to development and launch of two satellites by ISRO referred to as Primary Satellite-1 (PS-1) and Primary Satellite-2 (PS-2) in the agreement. DEVAS got all this for a measly Rs.1000 crores. S-band spectrum was once used by Doordarshan to deliver programmes by satellite to all parts of the country but is now considered to be of enormous commercial value for high-speed, terrestrial mobile communications. In 2010, the Union government got nearly Rs. 67,719 crore from the auction of just 15 Mhz of similar airwaves for 3G mobile services.

Mass education, weather forecasting, disaster management, communication and navigation were the original intent of the Space industry. Increasingly, though, commercialisation is taking a toll of ISRO’s priorities. The Antrix Board of Directors, significantly, includes Ratan Tata and Adi Godrej. MNCs have been availing of the remote sensing capability of ISRO for a song while commercial DTH/multimedia operators like Tata Sky, Bharti, Sun, Reliance ADAG etc have been scrambling for Ku-band spectrum.

So, what are the issues in the Antrix-Devas deal? S-band spectrum was allocated without inviting competitive bids. Organizational control systems were not followed. ISRO’s costs were underestimated. Public resources were diverted to build two customer-specific satellites. Devas Multimedia’s terms deviate from those in past commercial contracts of ISRO/Antrix. According to preliminary CAG estimates, this spectrum largesse to a private customer could have caused the exchequer a loss in excess of Rs. 2 lakh crore. And the Prime Minister’s office, to which the ISRO is directly accountable, turned a blind eye for the past six years, and would probably have continued to do so had it not been for fear that the taint of accumulating scams in 2G, CWG etc would reach the PM’s chair through the S-band scam.

The S-Band spectrum scam is very much a fallout of the commercialisation of ISRO, whereby the ISRO bureaucracy hankering after lucrative but shady deals, has compromised the credibility of the institution and undermined the work of the scientists. If this is what happens when corporate layers get on the boards of scientific institutions, it is a pointer to how the UPA-II’s agenda of commercialisation of education and research will also open the floodgates of corruption in those areas too. The crash of image thanks to these scams will take a greater toll on the credibility of scientific research institutions than the crash of launch vehicles and rockets.