“Youth of country have benefited a lot”: PM Modi praises space sector reforms in ‘Mann ki Baat’

In the 113th episode of his monthly radio address, ‘Mann Ki Baat,’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday praised the advancements in India’s space sector, saying that the youth of the country have benefited a lot from space sector reforms.

PM Modi also emphasized the significance of the recent National Space Day celebration on August 23.

“A lot is happening in 21st-century India, which is strengthening the foundation of Viksit Bharat. For example, on August 23, all the countrymen celebrated the first National Space Day. Once again, you all must have celebrated the success of Chandrayaan-3. Last year, on this day, Chandrayaan-3 landed at the Shiv-Shakti point on the moon’s southern hemisphere, making India the first country to achieve this feat,” PM Modi said.

“The youth of the country have also benefited a lot from space sector reforms,” he added.

The Prime Minister also spoke with the leaders of Galaxeye, a space-tech startup founded by IIT Madras alumni. Modi asked about how their technology would benefit the country.

Suyash, a member of Galaxeye, shared their journey, mentioning their participation in the “Hyperloop” project and their recognition as one of the top 20 teams out of 1,500 globally.

“At the time of our engineering studies, we thought about a project called ‘Hyperloop’. At that time, we started a team named ‘Avishkar Hyperloop’ and we went to America with the idea. That year, we were the only team from Asia that went there and we hoisted our national flag there. We were among the top 20 teams out of around 1500 from around the world,” Suyash said while responding to PM’s question.

He praised the government’s decision to open up the space sector for privatization and said, “During that time, watching SpaceX and the decision of the PM to open up the space sector and its privatisation, a landmark decision was taken in 2020.”

“We were quite excited about this,” he added.

PM Modi congratulated the team for the achievement.

The team explained that their technology could see through clouds and operate at night, providing daily clear images of any location in India.

“So, we can take a clear picture of any corner of the country every day. And the data that we procure will be used to develop two areas. First to make India extremely secure. We will monitor our borders, oceans and seas daily, monitor enemies’ activities and provide intelligence to our armed forces. The second is to empower the farmers of India. We have already developed a product for the Shrimp Farmers of India that can measure the quality of water from space in their ponds at 1/10th of the current cost. Going forward, we want to generate the best quality satellite images for the world to fight global issues like global warming,” said one of the team members.

PM Modi enquired about the technology’s precision, and the team responded that it offers resolutions of less than 50 cm, covering over 300 sq km at a time.

Another member of the team told the Prime Minister that many policies, like ‘Geo-Spatial Data Policy’ and ‘Indian Space Policy’, have seen a lot of changes in the last three years; the infrastructure and facilities of ISRO have become available to them.

“Like we can go to ISRO and test out hardware, this can be done very easily now. This has been very helpful for us and for many startups,” he pointed out.

PM Modi concluded by saying that when a reform takes place in a sector, multiple effects are witnessed and many people benefit from it.

“The country’s youth now want to try their future in this field here in India,” he said.