‘Not attracting best talent’: ISRO chairman on why few IITians join the space agency

NEW DELHI: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman S Somanath said that the organisation was not able to attract the best talents due to salary expectations of the graduates. “60% of the IITians walked out of the recruitment after checking the pay scale,” he said during an interview with the Asianet News.

Answering to a question “whether ISRO is able to attract the best talents in the country?”, the ISRO chairman candidly said “ the answer is no”.

Shedding light on hiring trends, Somanath, without naming the IIT, said in a recent recruitment drive, career opportunities, type of work etc were presented before the students but “no one joined”.

“...the pay structure of the ISRO system was displayed. Students saw the highest pay you can ever get in ISRO. When they saw that. That’s it. After the presentation, 60% of the people sitting in the hall walked out,” he said during the interview.

“Career ambitions of (students) who are joining IITs are different. They’ll probably start with that salary (highest in ISRO),” he said.

However, there are a few IITians who have joined the space organisation (in the past) due to their passion in space exploration. The percentage is less than 1%, he added.

“Money cannot attract people here. Then, the next question is, are we having adequate talent here to do the work that we are doing. The answer is yes,” he said.

Further he told the Asianet News, “talents are spread over a wide spectrum of social strata… Thousands and lakhs of people who are competent enough are not getting opportunities. I am one of them. When I was a student, I never got an opportunity to write an IIT entrance exam. But it doesn’t mean I was naïve.”

MP Shashi Tharoor earlier said that the ISRO chief “Somanath is a product of the TKM College of Engineering, Kollam, Kerala and many of his colleagues graduated from the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram (CET). At least seven more engineers from CET were involved in the Chandrayaan-3 success.”

Recently, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) honoured 12 of its alumni who were part of Chandrayaan-3 in an event titled ‘Over the Moon with Team Chandrayaan-3’.