I am delighted to find that The Australian National University, Canberra is organizing the K R Narayanan Oration with the theme ‘India’s Space Enterprise: A case study in Strategic Thinking and Planning’. I am happy that this Oration is being delivered by Dr K. Kasturirangan, one of the foremost space scientists in India. Former President of India K R Narayanan was a noted statesman and strategic thinker who has contributed to the development of India in different spheres.

Indian space programme has its origin with the unveiling of the vision by Dr Vikram Sarabhai as early as 1962. He visualized the importance of space application for societal upliftment through communication and remote sensing satellites for a country like India with six hundred thousand villages spread in remote corners of the nation. Now seven hundred million people 70 per cent of our population live in the rural areas. Dr Vikram Sarabhai gave a roadmap to build expertise to achieve the ultimate goal of building India’s own launch vehicles and satellites and ability to launch them from Indian launch station by Indian scientists in partnership with academic institutions and industry.

Over the last four decades, the vision of Dr Sarabhai has been translated into mission mode programmes by Prof. Satish Dhawan and his nurtured leaders like Dr U R Rao and Dr K. Kasturirangan and now Dr G. Madhavan Nair. Today India is self reliant in space technology with its own satellite for remote sensing and communication applications.

The benefits of space programme are now reaching the society through tele-education, tele-medicine, e-governance, meteorology, communication and broadcasting, resource assessment and disaster management. This has been realized through strategic thinking and meticulous planning. Further, India is poised to send a probe for lunar exploration and develop reusable launch vehicles. This will lead to manned missions and mining in planets through international collaborations. The leadership attributes and qualities developed through India’s space programme have found significant applications in many socio-economic programmes of the country.

Considering that half of the world population is yet to experience the excitement of space programme, I am sure this Oration will generate a renewed interest by these countries in space missions through international co-operation drawing the benefits of expertise and experience available with countries like India.

I greet the organizers of K R Narayanan Oration and wish the participants success in the mission of promoting science and technology for societal upliftment.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
New Delhi 2006