How Post-Independence Science Leaders Navigated Scarcity to Build World-Class Programmes
As India stands at a technological crossroads with artificial intelligence reshaping global possibilities, the nation’s leaders and scientists are reaching back into history for guidance. What they find is a profound and counterintuitive lesson: the greatest achievements in India’s scientific development came not from abundance, but from scarcity. Not from ease, but from constraint.
This was the central message that emerged Monday (Jan 26th ) at the Hyderabad Literary Festival, where two leading chroniclers of India’s scientific history addressed a packed audience in the Science and the City stream. Their conclusion was striking in its clarity: the institution-building principles that created ISRO and atomic energy programmes in the 1950s and 60s remain deeply relevant—perhaps more so—in 2026.
VISION BEFORE RESOURCES
Dr. Dinesh C. Sharma, author of Space: The India Story, placed the matter plainly. “The founders of the scientific programs in India had a clear vision and pathway right at the beginning,” he said. “This resulted in the development of institutions for space and atomic energy even as these institutions grew in the shadow of scarcity of resources—particularly scarcity of foreign exchange—and the weight of a bureaucracy that India inherited in 1947.”
The statement contained within it a historical paradox. India in 1947 inherited not just political independence but institutional chaos. The Indian Civil Service, modeled on British hierarchical structures, was designed for control and compliance, not innovation. Foreign exchange was precious beyond measure. The country had no existing space programme, no nuclear infrastructure, no technological base comparable to established powers.
Yet within two decades, India had established ISRO and an atomic energy programme that would become the envy of many nations.
How? Sharma pointed to a single man: Vikram Sarabhai.
“The development of ISRO with its distinct work culture,” Sharma explained, “was a result of the project-oriented approach initiated by Vikram Sarabhai and his emphasis on developing applications of space technology when India did not even have a rocket or a satellite.”
This is worth pausing on. Sarabhai began building a space programme without the traditional infrastructure. He didn’t wait for rockets to develop satellite applications. He imagined satellite applications and worked backwards. He nurtured teams of scientists and engineers to deliver what he had envisioned in terms of developing the space program.
This is not conventional institutional development. This is visionary leadership meeting practical necessity.
RENAISSANCE MAN AS ADMINISTRATOR
Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy, whose monumental 750-page biography Homi J. Bhabha: A Life was released in 2023, offered a parallel portrait of another multidimensional institution-builder.
“Bhabha was a Renaissance man,” Dadabhoy said, painting a picture far richer than the usual “father of India’s nuclear programme” reductionism. “He was a lover of music, an accomplished painter, besides being an accomplished scientist and institution builder.”
But the significance of Dadabhoy’s characterization went deeper. Bhabha was “both a visionary and a doer—a man of thought as well as a man of action.” This distinction matters profoundly. Visionaries without execution ability produce only dreams. Operatives without vision produce only mediocrity. Bhabha uniquely combined both.
When Bhabha established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in 1945, there was literally nothing. A vision existed—JRD Tata’s commitment to science—but the infrastructure, the personnel, the institutional culture: all absent.
Bhabha had to imagine an institute into existence. He had to recruit the brilliant minds. He had to negotiate with government bureaucrats about resources. He had to convince the state that science deserved investment comparable to defense or industry.
He succeeded by embodying a truth that later institutions often forgot: that institutions reflect the character of their founders. If Bhabha had been only a scientist, TIFR would have been a laboratory. If he had been only an administrator, it would have been a bureaucracy. Because he was both—and also a man who understood music, art, culture—TIFR became something else: a place where excellence was non-negotiable, but humanity was never forgotten.
GROWTH IN CONSTRAINT, NOT ABUNDANCE
The conversation returned repeatedly to a paradox that modern India struggles to understand: these programmes achieved their greatest heights not when resources were plentiful, but when they were scarce.
Sharma emphasized this in his discussion of ISRO’s early days. The space programme had no satellites to launch. It had no rockets to test. It had foreign exchange constraints that would have seemed crippling to any Western agency. Yet this constraint forced something essential: focus.
When you cannot afford to fail, you build carefully. When you cannot afford waste, you become efficient. When you cannot afford to hire mediocrity, you become rigorous in recruitment. The very scarcity that seemed like a limitation became a discipline.
This stands in sharp contrast to how many modern research institutions operate. With abundance of resources, there is a tendency toward diffusion—too many projects, too many priorities, too much bureaucracy managing the money. The constraint that forged ISRO’s culture is precisely what modern institutions often lack.
WEIGHT OF BUREAUCRACY
The second constraint Sharma mentioned deserves equal attention: “the weight of bureaucracy that India inherited in 1947.”
Independent India did not invent bureaucracy. It inherited from the British a system designed for control: hierarchical, rule-bound, suspicious of innovation. The Indian Civil Service, in 1947, was structured to manage an empire, not to nurture scientific independence.
Yet Sarabhai and Bhabha and their successors found ways not to destroy the bureaucracy—that would have been impossible—but to work around it. Bhabha negotiated for TIFR to have institutional autonomy. Sarabhai and his successor Satish Dhawan fought to locate ISRO in Bengaluru, away from Delhi’s bureaucratic weight, close to scientists.
This was not rebellion. It was pragmatism. They understood that scientific work requires a different culture than administrative work. Deadlines in administration can be negotiated. Deadlines in science are set by nature. A satellite either orbits or it doesn’t. A nuclear reaction either sustains or it doesn’t.
So they created space—literally and institutionally—where scientific culture could flourish even within a bureaucratic state.
PROJECT-ORIENTATION VS. PROCESS-ORIENTATION
Sharma’s phrase “project-oriented approach” appears simple but contains a revolutionary insight.
A project has a goal, a timeline, and accountability. Once you define the goal—send a satellite into orbit, develop a reactor, build an institute—you can organize all activity toward that goal. This is different from process-orientation, where institutions maintain bureaucratic procedures regardless of whether they serve a defined objective.
Sarabhai’s genius was in insisting that ISRO be project-oriented. Not “maintain a space agency.” But “develop satellites that serve India’s needs.” Not “conduct space research.” But “apply space technology to agriculture, weather forecasting, communications.”
This project-orientation created a feedback loop: each project had measurable outcomes. Each outcome could be celebrated or analyzed. Teams built identity around delivering outcomes, not fulfilling procedures.
MULTIDIMENSIONAL LEADER
Both speakers, in their different ways, were describing a particular type of leadership that modern institutions rarely produce: the multidimensional person.
Bhabha was painter, musician, scientist, administrator. Sarabhai came from business (his family had pharmaceutical interests), studied physics abroad, returned to India with both technical knowledge and a broader perspective on how institutions function. They were not narrow specialists. They were Renaissance figures.
Modern institutional development tends to produce specialists: the brilliant physicist, the capable administrator, the strategic planner. But rarely the figure who can move fluidly between technical depth and humanistic breadth.
Yet it was precisely this breadth that allowed Bhabha and Sarabhai to imagine institutions that were more than laboratories or agencies. They imagined TIFR as a place where excellence was pursued with elegance. They imagined ISRO as an organization where brilliant minds could do their best work.
LESSONS FOR THE AI AGE
The implicit question hanging over this conversation was urgent: What can India’s AI journey learn from the ISRO and atomic energy precedents?
The parallel is instructive. In the 1950s, India did not have rockets or nuclear reactors. Today, India does not have the computing capacity or data infrastructure of Silicon Valley or Beijing. By conventional measures, India “should” be a follower in AI.
Yet the history of Sarabhai and Bhabha suggests a different possibility. They did not wait for resources to become abundant. They did not seek permission from established powers. They imagined a role India could play given the constraints it faced. Then they built institutions to deliver that vision.
What might this look like in AI? Perhaps an India that does not compete on raw computational power but on the application of AI to problems specific to India—agriculture, healthcare in resource-constrained settings, language and cultural preservation. An India that builds institutions for frugal AI innovation, drawing on the same discipline that created low-cost spacecraft.
THE UNFINISHED QUESTION
As the session concluded, neither speaker fully answered a question that hung over the proceedings: Why has India’s institution-building energy apparently declined?
TIFR and ISRO remain world-class institutions. But when was the last Indian science institution founded that achieved global significance? When was the last scientist-administrator of Bhabha’s caliber produced by the system?
Some in the audience suggested that the problem is structural: modern institutions are more professionalized, more specialized, less tolerant of the kind of broad visionary leadership that Bhabha and Sarabhai embodied. Others suggested that abundance itself has become a problem—when resources flow easily, the discipline forged by scarcity disappears.
The question remained open. But the implicit challenge was clear: if India is to lead in AI or any emerging field, it needs to recover something from its scientific past. Not nostalgia, but principle. The principle that visionary leadership combined with project-orientation, institutional autonomy, and multidimensional thinking can overcome almost any constraint.
IN THE WORDS OF THE SPEAKERS
Dr. Dinesh C. Sharma, Author of Space: The India Story:
“The founders of the scientific programs in India had a clear vision and pathway right at the beginning which resulted in the development of institutions for space in atomic energy. These institutions grow in the shadow of scarcity of resources particularly for foreign exchange, and the weight of a bureaucracy that India inherited in 1947.”
“The development of ISRO with the distinct work culture was a result of the project oriented approach initiated by Vikram Sarabhai and his emphasis on developing applications of space technology when India did not even have a rocket or a satellite. He nurtured teams of scientists and engineers to deliver what he had in mind in terms of developing the space program.”
Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy, Author of Homi J. Bhabha: A Life:
“Bhabha was a multifaceted personality—a Renaissance man, a lover of music and an accomplished painter, besides being an accomplished scientist and institution builder. He was both a visionary and a doer—a man of thought as well as a man of action.”
THE INSTITUTIONAL LEGACY
Both TIFR and ISRO continue to operate today as world-class institutions. TIFR remains India’s premier fundamental research institute. ISRO continues to achieve milestones that command global attention—Chandrayaan-3’s successful lunar landing, Mangalyaan’s Mars mission, preparations for Gaganyaan (India’s first human spaceflight programme).
These are not accidents. They are consequences of decisions made 70+ years ago by institution-builders who understood that excellence requires more than money. It requires vision, autonomy, focus, and leaders who can simultaneously dream and execute.
As India navigates the AI revolution and charts its future in emerging technologies, the lesson is neither simple nor comfortable. It is not that constraints are good—they are not. It is that constraints, when navigated by leaders of sufficient vision and character, can create a discipline that abundance rarely produces.
The question for India’s future is whether it can recover that principle without requiring the constraint.
- Naresh Nunna
