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The
27th flight of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C23) launched
SPOT-7 a French earth observation satellite into a 655 km Sun Synchronous Orbit
(SSO). Along with SPOT-7 there were four co-passenger satellites – AISAT from
Germany, two from Canada and one from Singapore. The successful launch of all
the satellites by Indian PSLV marks an important landmark in the march of ISRO
after it entered the international market for satellite launch vehicles in
1999. On 26-05-1999 the Vajpayee
government, then in a visionary bold move used the PSLV-C2 to launch the
DLR-TUBSAT satellite of Germany and thus commenced the journey of India as a
major player in the international market of space launch vehicles. The saga
continued with the tally of satellites launched by the PSLV of ISRO now
touching 40. The Antrix corporation – the commercial arm of ISRO was
established under yet another visionary leader – P.V.Narasimha Rao in
1992.
It
is not just the launch vehicles that ISRO is taking to the global community.
The global outreach of Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) services has been growing in
a steady phase for the last two decades. IRS data particularly from
Resourcesat-1, Cartosat-1 and Cartosat-2 are penetrating into new territories.
The down-linking of IRS data with Australia has made the IRS presence in a
significant manner in the southern hemisphere for the first time. In Africa IRS
data is a major player with Cartosat-1 and Resource-1 data. Euromap seeks IRS
data in Europe.
Now
the urgent need is to use the full potential of ISRO’s various services to the
benefits of the Indian people at all levels.
ISRO’s
remote sensing applications have a vital importance for the planning of
sustainable development in India and conserving her national resources. IRS
series satellites - Resourcesat, Cartosat, Oceansat etc provide vital data regarding
natural resources like forest, river basins, ground water, ocean status etc.
The ISRO communication itself states: ‘Some of the important projects carried
out in the country include Groundwater Prospects Mapping under Drinking Water
Mission, Forecasting Agricultural output using Space, Agrometeorology and Land
based observations (FASAL), Forest Cover/Type Mapping, Grassland Mapping,
Biodiversity Characterisation, Snow & Glacier Studies, Land Use/Cover
mapping, Coastal Studies, Coral and Mangroves Studies, Wasteland Mapping etc.’
Each
of these reports is available in the ISRO website comprehensive data rich
reports with attractive info-graphics.
However our people-representatives in both parliament and state
legislative assemblies seldom have the knowledge of these reports pertaining to
their constituencies and the link of their constituencies with those of others.
In this connection Yuva Bharathi editorial team proposes a scheme that is ancient
and rooted in Indian tradition which can also synchronize itself with the needs
of our people representatives to apply the IRS data for their constituency
development.
Let
every people’s representative be given a laptop or an application that has the
five – geo-resource zones of each constituency and bordering constituencies.
The five geo-resource zones are based on the ancient Tamil classification of
land into five categories. These categories were originally intended as
literary techniques and yet they do seem relevant when we think of developing
people-centered usage of IRS data for sustainable development. The categories
are given below with their traditional Tamil names in the brackets:
·
Forest and Forest related activities: (Kurunchi)
·
Grassland and grassland related activities: (Mullai)
·
Farmland and farmland related activities: (Marutham)
·
Ocean and Ocean related activities.: (Neithal)
·
Desert and sparsely populated areas and
activities related to them: (Palai)
Interesting
enough ISRO has reports for each of these categories. The categories cannot be
seen as pigeonhole classification with no inter-connectedness. Each of these
zones has specialized communities associated closely with the defining natural
resource of the zone. They have cultural and spiritual dimensions also. Thus
the forest based Kurunchi has as its
Deity Murugan whose consort is Valli the daughter of tribal chieftain. The
grassland has as its Deity Vishnu as His most popular avatar is as cowherd
which is the human-resource interlink for the grassland eco-system. The farms
depend on rain and Indra the celestial lord of rains is the Deity of this zone Marutham. For Neithal it is the Vedic Deity Varuna. For the deserts the fierce
Goddess is the Deity. The zones are interconnected: The children of the ocean
have to supply the inner-land salt and the mainland has to support the coastal
communities with raw materials for boat making as well as net making.
Specialized occupational groups have to come in contact with each other. The
Deities then form a family relation thus emphasizing the organic
inter-connectedness of these zones. Murugan of Kurunchi is married to the
daughter of Neithal: Varuna and Indra are Vedic deities sharing many
commonalities. All these point out that the natural resource based
classification of ancient Tamils also has in it the possibilities for all kinds
of networks between them: cultural, resource-based, occupation-based,
economical, socio-political etc.
Let
us take the case of Mullai – which is
grassland and livestock based system. In the case of India with neglect of this
eco-system the 80 percent of our grassland has become degraded while the demand
as well as production of milk has been on the increase. The need for
revitalizing this important national natural resource of 2 Mha in India can be
done very effectively by satellite based technologies. ISRO uses IRS-LISS III
for the grassland mapping and study. However there is a significant gap between
such gathering of data and their availability with the local legislators and
members of parliament. The government should make it mandatory that every
member of the Parliament should take a session with ISRO extension officer in
studying the data available with ISRO pertaining to the five geo-natural zones
present in his or her constituency. Already writer Joe D Cruz has made a
memorandum to the Prime Minister to study the problem of coastal communities
based on the framework of this geo-cultural/resource based framework. We ask both ISRO and people’s representatives
to come together to make a strong people-science network in order to achieve
unprecedented exploration of the potential of space technology to benefit the
humanity.
Aravindan Neelakandan
YB-ET