Streets would be deserted, homes empty, shops closed and at times, buses would halt plying when India were playing a test match on foreign soil. People would be huddled in front of a television which a family owned or would be sitting in circles around a transistor. The faint cackling radiating from the boxes would stir the air. Most families had no television at home. They were either too costly to afford or considered superfluous, and the elders condemned it as an obnoxious element. The pictures on the screen would fluctuate and often the audience would miss some action. A boy would rush to fix the antennas during rain and gusty days.
In July 1975, over 100 agog villagers of a hamlet, Pij in Kheda district of Gujarat huddled in front of a wooden box with a blank screen. After some time, the screen flickered with visuals of a discussion in the local language. This was India’s first rural television telecast, and the man with the TV remote was Dr Vikram Sarabhai steering the Atomic Energy Commission and bringing home signals of transformation with the Khera Communications Project, which bagged the Unesco prize for rural communication efficiency in 1984.
A non-aligned nation since its inception, India launched its first satellite in 1975 from Kapustin Yar, a Soviet rocket launch and development site. Aryabhata was built by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), and a pact was signed between India and the Soviet Union in 1972, directed by UR Rao, the former Isro chairman, and “The Satellite Man of India”, who had worked under Dr Sarabhai. Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said in 2022 that Isro has launched a total of 129 satellites of Indian origin and 342 foreign satellites belonging to 36 countries since 1975.
After the Raj-Roberts left, scientific research was a smidgen 0.1% of the GNP, which later exceeded 1%. With Jawaharlal Nehru at the vanguard of fanning technology and exhorting experts and scientists, a chain of new research labs were set up. The Cambridge-educated Homi J Bhabha founded and directed two major scientific institutions – the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, which housed India’s first mainframe computer, and the Atomic Energy Commission to steer the country’s nuclear power plants. Five IITs were inaugurated between 1954 and 1964 to bolster technical capabilities.
With the arms race skyrocketing global tensions, the Mahatma’s land entered the field with “Smiling Buddha” when a “peaceful” nuclear explosion was carried out in Pokhran in 1974. Indira Gandhi had sanctioned it in 1972, a year after the Liberation of Bangladesh. It was a “near failure”, claimed a secret US assessment in 1996 inexplicably. Another chair was brought in for the new member of the nuclear members’ club. The second chapter of the Pokhran path came in 1998 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee gave the nod for five nuclear explosions spanning two days under operation Shakti.
Chandrayaan-1 launched in 2008 discovered the presence of Hydroxyl, water molecules on lunar surface, created 3D conceptualisation of many craters and detailed map of the lunar surface features. Isro became the fourth space agency to blast a spacecraft to Mars orbit in 2013, which captured the solar coral dynamics, and its observation showed for the first time that oxygen exceeded carbon dioxide at a particular altitude. AstroSat in 2015 became India’s first space astronomy observatory which made a rare discovery with its first detection of FUV photons from the Lyman Alpha emitting galaxy.
Nothing could have appeared more insuperable than the numbers and science behind India’s first general elections in 1952 spearheaded by Sukumar Sen, an ICS and a gold medalist in mathematics. For around 176 million eligible Indians aged above 21, there was universal adult suffrage who would vote for 4,500 seats across 2,24,000 booths, and seal their decisions in 2 million steel ballot boxes.
1909 IISc
IISc was established in then Bangalore through a vesting order and a resolution passed by the government of India
Morris Travers, its first director, was a chemist. The institute opened its doors to students in 1911 and 24 joined
Initially, it had only two academic departments - general and applied chemistry and electrical technology
Nobel Laureate Dr CV Raman became its first Indian director in 1933, while Satish Dhawan became director in 1962
Rulers of the Mysore state provided 371 acres and 16 guntas in then Bangalore
1931 ISI
Indian Statistical Institute is a unique institution for research, teaching & application of statistics, natural science and social sciences
Founded by prof PC Mahalanobis in then Calcutta, it now has four centres in Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Tezpur
Its journey started in Kolkata with a total annual expenditure of less than Rs 250
The institute prepared the draft of the Second Five-Year Plan which became known as the Mahalanobis Growth Model
1951 IIT
The first IIT was established in Kharagpur, West Bengal based on the recommendations of the NR Sarkar committee in 1950 in Hijli, a detention camp. Its present name was adopted before the formal inauguration in 1951 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
There were 224 freshers and 42 teachers for the first session in August 1951. Academic programmes started with only 10 departments
The first board of governors was formed with Dr BC Roy as its chairman. In 1956, the institute was declared an institute of national importance
1958 drdo
DRDO was formed in 1948 amalgamating Technical Development Establishment of the Army & the Directorate of Technical Development and Production with the Defence Science Organisation
DRDO has given strategic systems and platforms such as Agni and Prithvi series of missiles, LCA Tejas, multi-barrel rocket launcher Pinaka and Akash
Dr Raja Ramanna, a nuclear physicist, who was appointed DRDO director general in 1978, steered India’s first nuclear reactor Apsara
‘The Missile Man of India’ Dr APJ Abdul Kalam oversaw the successful completion of the IGMDP as its chief
1966 BARC
Dr Homi J Bhabha, the Father of India’s nuclear programme, established the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) in 1954 for research programmes
After his death in 1966, AEET was named the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai
Dr HN Sethna, who succeeded Bhabha, set up the Rare Earth Plant at Alwaye, Kerala in 1952 for processing Monazite, to separate rare-earths and thorium-uranium concentrate
Dr R Chidambaram worked on the implosion method for the device tested at Pokhran in 1974
1969 ISRO
Established in 1969 under the chairmanship of Dr Vikram Sarabhai
It replaced Indian National Committee for Space Research (Incospar), set up in 1962 under the department of atomic energy
Central government brought Isro under the department of science in September 1972
Controlled experiment before a full-fledged satellite system resulted in Krishi Darshan
Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (Site) was hailed as the largest sociological experiment in the world during 1975-76
Sir Cyril Radcliffe sat in his stucco bungalow in the viceregal estate in the sweltering summer heat of Delhi in 1947. His task was vivisection, and his mantra was speed. Never before had the fate of so many been decided by one man - an enormous task that began by drawing the boundary lines on a Royal Engineers’ map. India’s destiny was sealed. A nation was born and one-fifth of the world shook its colonial chains to earth like dew. A country once in tumult, fraught with schisms, stormed by uncertainties, pillaged by the rapacious East India Company, and then wrung dry by an Empire, has traversed an arduous path to 76 years of Independence. As a nation basked in the dazzling rays of freedom, a system of governance was thrashed out in the Constituent Assembly, and its guiding principles were delineated in an elephantine Constitution. The stage was set but there were promises to keep and miles to go. Progress was impossible without scientific prowess. Disparaged as the land of ‘snake charmers and fortune tellers’ the gentle waves of scientific temper shaped the shores for a behemoth which would hold the world in its thrall. The New Indian Express looks back at the nation’s epochal moments in science