With 70 percent of India’s population living in villages, it is just not enough to be content with development of metros and cities. Development is not “only about science and technology but about creating wealth, knowledge and skills as also using traditional knowledge properly,” said ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair.
Addressing a workshop on communication strategies for taking S&T to the rural masses, he said: “As India is seen emerging as a world power, communications have a big role to play in terms of taking the right contents to the right people. However, today almost 90 per cent of the news we read or watch are negative and mostly about disasters,” he said.
He cited the example of the Rajiv Gandhi Water Mission, under which some 200,000 wells were dug, but most of them with water with high salt content. “A cost-effective simple unit invented by CSIR can convert this water into potable one. But how many people know about this?”

Lights under bushel!
In fact, this was a point repeatedly stressed at the workshop: The need for institutions to talk about what they do -- and do it in a way that others would hear.
Acknowledging that ISRO gets fairly good coverage in the media, Mr Nair said it was not enough. “While we’ve some of the finest missiles being made by our scientists, there isn’t much talk about this beyond a small para when a missile is test-fired. There is need to use technology (including space technology) to address the many problems India faces. But much of this misses media attention.”
The next GSLV F03 launch will be in August, said Mr Nair later told reporters that it would in orbit Insat 4CR “which is now being readied.”

Developed in-house
The indigenous cryogenic stage is almost ready, having undergone a short-duration test and awaiting a long-duration hot test. The next-generation launch vehicle will have a cryogenic stage with an increased thrust of 20 tonnes compared with the present 8 tonnes. 
The engine has been developed in-house.
The next two years will see a more advanced version of the Oceansat satellite, as also Astrosat, which will be a kind of platform to view the space in a range of wavelengths, he added.