Click to play videoBangalore: For ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair, recession is good news. The country's premier space organisation has been been facing a crunch of good scientists ever since the IT boom. But more and more youngsters are now opting for science.
"Last time we had the entrance test, hardly 30 per cent of the candidates turned up. This time for the same exam 70 per cent turned up, so it makes a lot of difference. The entry level salaries that we are offering cannot be matched by even private companies," says he.
And there's more talent in the making. In an intra-school contest in Bangalore - where Nair was the chief guest - high school children showed off their rocket science skills. They they made paper rockets, fuelled them and demonstrated how even paper rockets could even take off.
A Class X student, Vishwanath B Hiremath showed how he had made a rocket of only "gunpowder and paper".
Vishwanath's rocket flew the highest - 266 metres above the play-ground. His group mates are not the typically tech-savvy Gen-Y. They come from humble backgrounds but dream they did to soar higher than others by getting their trajectory and cone shapes right, and succeeded.
The success of Chandrayaan has fuelled the dreams of many Indians and perhaps the recession has given more reason for young scientists to take up space research. Well, at least, 2009 will bring happy tidings for an organisation that's always faced a severe shortage of staff.
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