India proposes new oppressive space law
India’s government has proposed a new space law that essentially places all control of future space projects under the control of the central government.
The proposed law, which is open for comment for the next month, can be read here [pdf]. I’ve read it, and it astonishes me in its oppressiveness and hostility to private enterprise. This clause, one of many similar clauses, sums this up quite well:
Any form of intellectual property right developed, generated or created onboard a space object in outer space, shall be deemed to be the property of the Central Government.
The law would also require anyone who wants to launch a space project to get a license from the government, and gives the government the power to control that license in all aspects, including the power to cancel it for practically any reason.
If this law passes I expect that India’s burgeoning space industry will suffer significantly, especially because it will make it difficult to attract investment capital. Instead, it will be the central government that will run the business, and in the long run such government businesses always do badly.
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India’s government has proposed a new space law that essentially places all control of future space projects under the control of the central government.
The proposed law, which is open for comment for the next month, can be read here [pdf]. I’ve read it, and it astonishes me in its oppressiveness and hostility to private enterprise. This clause, one of many similar clauses, sums this up quite well:
Any form of intellectual property right developed, generated or created onboard a space object in outer space, shall be deemed to be the property of the Central Government.
The law would also require anyone who wants to launch a space project to get a license from the government, and gives the government the power to control that license in all aspects, including the power to cancel it for practically any reason.
If this law passes I expect that India’s burgeoning space industry will suffer significantly, especially because it will make it difficult to attract investment capital. Instead, it will be the central government that will run the business, and in the long run such government businesses always do badly.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
This looks like an attempt by the professional bureaucrats of India – sometimes known as the Babu State – to assert their authority over an additional area of national economic life. My grasp of Indian internal politics is insufficient to form any rational opinion as to what the odds of this proposal becoming law might be, but I agree with Mr. Z that India would be shooting itself in the foot with a shotgun if it is so foolish as to enact such a law.
India the other year introduced a catastrophic currency reform. To eliminate the black market which is what upwards a billion of Indians live off of daily. Their savings were eradicated over night because they save in cash and those paper bills were suddenly declared worthless and could only be transformed to a fraction of their nominal value via criminal gangs well connected with the corrupt authorities. Since there was a sudden shortage of cash, commercial activity collapsed. Not in the big export industry that drives official GDP figures, but in the huge informal small-scale business economy of India.
The people of India create all of this wealth with their skills, despite of their mad government. I was unfortunate to study statistics at a university (which isn’t fun because it’s hard), and pretty much every text book and paper in the literature list had an unpronounceable Indian name. They certainly know something math genetically. They invented chess! But they are poor at electing political leaders. I think that this whole democracy and government thing is alien to their nature and that they would do much better without it.
“Gems of Ramanujan and their Lasting Impact on Mathematics”
International Center for Theoretical Physics
November 2016
https://youtu.be/ay1RCfQkrWQ
(1:08:21)
Thomas Sowell in his books on economics uses India as a bad example of over regulation across the board. It’s not just this example.