ISRO chief tells staff the agency is not being privatised

ISRO chairman V. Narayanan said on 8 September that the space agency remains a government organisation and is not being privatised. He was answering staff unease that spilled into a five-page letter from nine employee associations dated 4 September, sent after the GSLV-F17 / EOS-05 flight.

"My colleagues have some genuine concerns and it is our responsibility to clarify. ISRO is not being privatised, it is a government organisation and we are working with government investment. The space ecosystem has to grow and the space economy has to grow," he said on the sidelines of Bengaluru Space Expo 2026.

The associations, which together speak for about 5,000 of ISRO's 18,100 staff, asked for a written position on launch-vehicle production, the new pad at Kulasekarapattinam, future hiring and remarks by IN-SPACe chairman Pawan Goenka that ISRO would step back from making some vehicles. Media reports last week said the government wanted manufacturing and operations moved to private firms. ISRO called those reports baseless on 7 September and said its role was not shrinking.

Narayanan put numbers on the present arrangement. "Whenever a PSLV or a GSLV is lifting off, don't think that everything is done by ISRO. Almost 80 per cent of the budget is invested by Indian industries. 450 industries are working for us," he said. He put national demand at about 50 launches a year and said those flights would be done "by the Indians in India," not by ISRO alone.

That is the reform the 2020 space rules were written to produce. Mature work, including serial production of proven vehicles, is meant to move to industry so the agency can spend more time on human spaceflight, new vehicles and deep-space missions. ISRO has already licensed technologies to companies. Transfer of a mature design is not the same as selling the agency. Staff still hear "transfer" as a prelude to fewer posts and a thinner workshop.

Goenka had said on 6 September that ISRO's importance was "by no means diminishing." The letter asked for that sentence on official paper, with a map of which lines stay inside the agency. Narayanan's comments at the expo are the public version of that map. They are not yet the signed note the associations requested.

Fifty flights a year is a capacity target, not a 2026 timetable. ISRO does not fly 50 missions a year today. Reaching that rate requires private production of PSLV-class vehicles, a working small-satellite launcher and a second operational pad. If industry misses those dates, the agency will be asked to fill the gap and the same staff will be told they are both essential and on the way out.

The letter and the chairman's reply now sit on the same week. One asks for writing. The other offers a speech. Until a policy note names which vehicles stay in ISRO shops and which posts will still be advertised, the 5,000 signatories will treat privatisation as a live risk, whatever the chairman says at an expo.