India restricts the ability of space agency employees to leave due to recent exodus
The effort of India’s government to defeat private enterprise
Turf war! In what will eventually be a useless and counter-productive dictatorial action, the Indian government has issued a directive restricting the ability of employees of its space agency ISRO from retiring or resigning, an action taken due to a recent exodus of between 100 and 120 engineers, scientists, and managers, many of whom left to take jobs in India’s nascent but growing private space sector.
In a memorandum issued on July 14, the Department of Space (DoS) directed major ISRO centres, including the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), not to routinely approve resignation or voluntary retirement requests from Group ‘A’ scientific and technical personnel associated with the Gaganyaan mission and other “important missions/projects”. Instead, such requests will require scrutiny by the Department of Space before a final decision is taken.
…Under the new directive, all resignation and voluntary retirement requests from scientific and technical personnel, including those at and below the rank of scientist and engineer, must be forwarded to the Department of Space along with “clear recommendations” from the respective centre directors, who will no longer have the authority to routinely clear such requests.
Multiple news reports from India today cite a recent spate of resignations and retirements, with many of those exiting employees getting jobs in private industry, with the most notable that of former ISRO chairman S Somanath, who has taken a position on the board of directors of the rocket startup Agnikul, which hopes to launch its own reusable rocket at some point in the future.
The government claims it has taken this action to make sure it doesn’t lose critical ISRO employees needed for its Gaganyaan and space station government projects, both of which are facing delays and technical challenges.
This directive will likely fail, however, for two reasons, both of which might in the long run be beneficial to India. First, young people just out of college will see it and decide it is better to get jobs in the private sector right off the bat. Why work for someone who will try to turn you into a serf who can’t leave? Second, it will guarantee an even greater exodus over time, as ISRO employees who want to leave will now take aggressive action to get out, as soon as they can. In both cases, the directive will encourage people to work for private industry, not the government.
At the same time, this directive suggests the government and ISRO is now taking action to squelch that new private sector. This order will limit the commercial industry’s ability to hire experienced ISRO people, thus slowing its development.
Similar actions were taken by NASA in the 2000s and 2010s when the agency began its transition to the capitalism model. There was great resistance within the government to ceding power to the private sector, resistance that still exists and showed itself again during the Biden administration. That government effort in the U.S. however has largely failed, because the public has elected a government (Trump and the Republicans in Congress) that favors the private sector, and because the private sector is getting the job done.
How things will play out in India remains unknown. Its administrative state is much more powerful, and its cultural traditions are not grounded as much in private enterprise, as is the U.S.
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India is a fledgling space power…and this is comparable to non-compete clauses. I have seen small municipalities worry about training deputies and having them go right back to a steel mill when things pick up again.
In the U.S. working for Elon isn’t going to hurt Space Force. In the “Global South” (I hate that term) even a podunk airline can crater El-Supremo’s five-man Air Farce….though one could make the case that zoopark acquisitions with MiGs, Mirages, and F-4s cost them more over time.
Over here, airlines are happy with USAF funds training pilots so they don’t have to….so this is likely about economies of scale.
Now, is this a nice thing? By no means.
In China, they use space efforts to determine which political leaders can do the most with fixed funds–but that might hurt them down the road because that can kill in house capability… something even Jared is learning to acknowledge.
India is even more vulnerable–especially since tax funds likely go to training folks who could walk out the door and hop a jet overseas.
With any luck, this decision will be overturned….for the time being—if you take the king’s money, you march to the king’s drumbeat.
I’d say this policy is a lot less like a non-compete and a lot more like a military stop-loss order. This can “work” for a limited time, but any attempt to make this into standard operating procedure over the long-term will both tank morale and kill recruitment.
I never liked the stop loss order but in the military I can understand it. My brother was stop lost.
But the employee being kept in a job they do not want will give them very poor performance. Less as time goes on.
That sounds vaguely familiar. There was a news story or two a few weeks ago about the Canadian government imposing an “exit tax” on citizens who decide to move to another country.
The giant intellects who run California have been talking up something similar. If implemented, all it seems likely to do is light a fire under any fence-sitters and make the problem it is intended to cure, worse.
I am unfamiliar with the rights of the individual in India. Can they force people to work against their will and a job they do not desire? (but of course, they are democracy, and the will of the many can in slave the few by a simple majority vote)
British born are serfs, citizen rights are only for nobility. (The king owns his children)
French constitution outlines the “rights of the many are Paramont over the rights of the individual”. (I had a coworker, 40 years ago, that the uniformed French Foreign Legion came marching into the building and proceeded to apprehend this person because he was “born in France” to a French Mother, and now had been drafted… He had to give up his French citizenship to avoid going to Angola)
In China, human rights is “not a right” but a condition based upon the will of the CCP party. All born there, or born to a Chinese national are considered “property of the people“ to be used and disposed of at the sole discretion of the people. (CCP) You cannot give up your Chinese Nationality when you come to United States, “a slave cannot declare it’s self free”. That’s why there a Chinese police departments throughout the country to regulate it’s citizens if they believe themselves to be free and not do the will mandated on all Chinese citizens, especially those allowed to travel… harsh repercussions for those not spying and collecting data for the party. if they refuse to comply, then they find new uses for the individual including organ donation. They can claim dual citizenship like John Boehner‘s wife, but China will always have 51% ownership! No exceptions.
Israel has conditions/demands on its dual citizens. Their are questions of loyalty in the house and senate over this debate. (another bill to stop funding of Israel was just introduced, we may hear something about it from the president speech tonight, along with the House passing of the “save America act” that was hidden in the defense bill)
Rumors of the world economy about to collapse will make all these issues seem trivial, agenda 2030? We are living in interesting times.
I simply cannot imagine an “employee” (now just a serf) working for a government agency at the point of a gun. Particularly work that requires a high degree of technical competency, experience, and knowledge.
Maybe somebody can explain to me why someone who wants to quit to find a job in the private sector and is refused “permission” to quit would continue to work? Personally, as long as they continued to pay me, I’d be sitting in my little cubicle reading books all day long, completely ignoring any work requests not actually accompanied by the threat of imprisonment, torture or death. And the demands that were made under those threats would be done as badly yet plausibly as I could do, and at about 1/4 speed.
Can you see anyone trusting the work being done by what are now essentially slaves?
P.S.: Underneath the block quote you say “spat” when I believe you meant “spate”. Yes, I put pencil marks in my books for the typo’s, too.
You are right. I have added the “e”. Thanks.
The only thing more dangerous than a doctor that minds being coerced into operating on you, is one that doesn’t mind being coerced. from Atlas Shrugged.
Blackwing1 asked: “Maybe somebody can explain to me why someone who wants to quit to find a job in the private sector and is refused “permission” to quit would continue to work?”
It is often said that the slaves in the American South built America. This is not correct, because it would mean that they did their jobs well. Instead, the slaves were resentful and worked as slowly as and inefficiently as they could get away with — they were passive aggressive. It is why there were slave drivers, so that the slow workers would be encouraged to work faster or better. America’s slaves worked hardest at making slavery too expensive to continue, and were beginning to succeed when a well-intentioned abolitionist invented the cotton gin.*
India has been a socialist society for a few decades, so the workers there may already be of a mindset that explains a relatively slow economic improvement. One would expect that those in the space field are more excited, because just as with NASA employees, they are working on the leading edge of technology. Well, NASA employees used to work on that edge.
To be clear, my point is that some or many the ISRO employees may now think of themselves as slaves — perhaps again, if they thought that way under their socialist rulers — and may choose to work not quite as hard or not quite as efficiently as they would have done had they remained free men.
When you don’t have a choice, you make the choices that you can.
This is very much unlike a non-compete clause. Under that kind of clause, a worker can still leave, but he may have to work in a different industry for a while.
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* The cotton gin had already been invented, but American cotton’s seeds are sticky, so the cotton gin used in the rest of the world does not work well on American cotton. The unintended consequence was that slavery in America became much more profitable.
If that non-compete clause means you sack groceries instead of being an engineer… that is a distinction without difference.
Both public and private outfits use compulsion at some level–let’s not pretend they don’t. You don’t get to vote for a boss like you can a politician.
If a person wears a private hat when he used to wear a government hat–that doesn’t mean he magically got smarter. If a low level CEO becomes a GS-13…he didn’t magically become dumber.
That’s religion.
You’re right. It’s far easier to vote for a good boss that a good politician. Changing jobs is common and is a proper response to a bad boss. A politician is a perennial problem as they are not held accountable for performance, or even campaign promises.
“A politician is a perennial problem as they are not held accountable for performance, or even campaign promises.”
Well, now, in a democratic republic, that responsibility/blame is designed to rest on The People. People who have been conditioned to depend on others, aren’t going to give a fig about ‘accountability’, as long as they get their benefits. And, so, ‘accountability’ becomes another Progressive ‘zombie word’: once meaningful; now hollowed-out and filled with the current Liberal ‘une lubie‘.
Term limits isn’t any more of a panacea that fixed-cost.
The second, lame-duck term allows them to go Mr. Hyde and run up a bill such that they are no longer answerable—where re-electability could tamp some of that down.
The Republicans causing the most trouble for Trump are the frumps going out the door. They don’t have to be nice anymore.
Where the socialists want to get rid of the Senate–I want to get rid of the House. If assigned seats can be had with each state having one R and one D, you keep the 50/50 split and California might have a chance at moderation.
The two-year term is two short. Six year renewable terms means they don’t have to go off the deep end.