Vikram Sarabhai: A Life - Amrita Shah
For me, Vikram Sarabhai has always been the most distinguished Indian ever. Personally, considering the shaping of the India today, I regard him higher than the Mahatma, Tagore, Nehru, JRD Tata, Raman, Bhabha, Kurien, Kalam or any other Indian for that matter. The simple reason being he is the only one on whom the word ‘pioneer’ is most suitably decorated. Born into the ultra-rich cotton mill owning strict Jain sect following Sarabhai family in Allahabad, science was always his passion. Montessori home-schooling till matriculation followed by science graduation from Gujarat college; on Tagore’s recommendation he does his tripos in Cambridge, does doctoral research on cosmic rays under CV Raman. Studies of cosmic rays make him visit the south where he meets Mrinalini Swaminathan, an accomplished Bharatnatyam dancer. Marriage at early 20’s. Despite being involved in the thick of the Indian uprising & Gandhi being a frequent visitor at their home, he never leaned towards the freedom movement. Nehru was keen on physics which was due to his friendship with Homi Bhabha who also happened to have regards about Vikram. Over a lifetime, his pioneering efforts are immense. He started the mother-hub of science in India the Physical Research Laboratory for space, the Ahmedabad Textile Industry Research Association for his family business, the Operations Research Group the leading authority on stock market research, Sarabhai Chemicals for pharmaceutical products, Sarabhai Research Centre, Darpana an arts-&-dance institute for his wife, the IIM-A for management, the AIR for broadcasting, the Doordardhan for telecasting... and of course his greatest legacy, the TERLS (Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station) in Trivandrum. In between, Vikram gets into an affair with his wife’s friend and surprisingly both women stand by him till his death. Though he is aware that, along-with space, energy is another sector that will develop one day to create breeders & ballistic missiles, he was always against nuclear power and uphold the necessity of using science for peaceful purposes, which of course came into conflict during 1962 Indo-China & the 70’s Indo-Pak wars. Our energy programmes had huge govt. funding & flamboyance whereas our space programmes had a meagre budget & the first rocket was built inside a church building & transported on top of a cycle to the launch pad. Can’t complain because back then, the red tape made it really tough to make politicians understand that, for the development of a country rockets and satellites are more powerful than missiles. All the institutes he started are the leading ones in those fields and all whom he personally picked out are the people we admire today: Kalam, Satish Dhawan, UR Rao, Vainu Bapu (last week Manorama Sunday supplement was about him) Kasturirangan, Madhavan Nair, Nambi, K Radhakrishnan etc. His greatest ability was to encourage those working under him to reach beyond their grasp. He knew India could not afford the time & money to start everything from scratch, leapfrogging was the only option. Even before the first rocket was launched from Thumba in 1963, he was already dreaming about launching our own communication, broadcasting & educational satellites in our own launch vehicles which did happen, 5 years after his ‘mysterious’ death in Halcyon Castle at Kovalam in 1971. For me, he is the greatest Indian who ever lived. He is like the Edison of India. Always ticking with ideas way ahead of its time. It was his pioneering activities that led India through the telecommunications & broadcasting technologies that we use/abuse like anything today.