“Taxpayer Funded Technology Gathering Dust In ISRO Labs Is The Real Waste”, Swarajya, March 31, 2026
“A Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) transferring technology to the private sector has set off a predictable fury. The committee found that ISRO’s commercial arm NSIL has signed 100 technology transfer agreements covering 61 technologies, many at fees below ₹10 lakh. Some went for ₹6,000. A few were transferred at no cost at all. The committee called these prices “disproportionately low relative to their commercial potential”.
On social media, the framing was instant. Public assets sold for a song. Taxpayer money subsidising private profit.
The outrage rests on an assumption that deserves scrutiny: that a laser gyroscope validated in an ISRO clean room, or a thermal insulation compound tested on a rocket motor casing, is already delivering value to the Indian public simply by existing inside a government lab. It is not. Technology locked inside a research institution is potential, not value. It becomes value only when somebody manufactures it, builds a supply chain around it, certifies it, finds customers for it, and sells it. That somebody cannot be ISRO…….”
Read full article at swarajyamag.com
