Facebook post without malice towards anybody: Tapan Misra

Chennai, Sep 24 (IANS) The Facebook post is not to criticise any organisation or its head but meant to bring out the critical qualities of leadership, said Tapan Misra, Senior Advisor to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Adjunct Professor at Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur.

Ever since the moon landing mission of ISRO failed, Misra's Facebook posts started gaining popularity.

His September 11 post "Fifteen Minutes of Terror - Vikram Lander's planned operations" and September 20 post "Space Technology is not Rocket Science", gained a lot of media attention.

"The Sep 20 post was all about leadership quality and nothing more than that. There was no malice," Misra said

"Being not much skillful in handling skewed interpretation of my certain post, meant for sharing my small experiences with common people, I was taken aback by certain news reports, which gave a slant and spin to this post and linked it to certain current happenings," Misra said in his post on Tuesday.

"But I must appreciate Indian media not biting the bait and coming out in defence of correct interpretation.

"What was astounding is that, common people were extremely appreciative of my posts and they could see through the intent behind such skewed interpretations," he added.

"After all, you cannot hide a cadaver for long. Untruth starts emanating stench faster than a cadaver," Misra said.

According to Misra's post, once a machine is sent to space it cannot be accessed to carry out corrective measures.

"You must be able to imagine all possible behaviours of spacecraft in space, in harsh and unforgiving environment. So, we have to test it in all possible imaginable conditions," he said.

Pointing out the importance of imagining varied situations Misra said space related development should not be hurried through.

He said gestation period is important for space projects.

"It should be well thought of, well debated, tested and simulated for worst and best possible cases of imagination. So, when space hardware fails, more often than not, it failed in a failure condition which we could not imagine. Usually hardware never fails, but engineers behind it fail," Misra said.

"The vision and power of a person determines his leadership quality," Misra told IANS and said that his post in no way critical of ISRO leadership.

"Leadership determines the backbone of an institution. All successful institutions have one thing in common: they choose a leader who built some thing new, chosen an untrodden path, building a new one," Misra, who played a key role in the design and development of C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) of RISAT-1 satellite, said.

According to Misra, a person becomes a complete leader when he passes through the stages of being ignored and ridiculed for new ideas, proves his point and adds value to his institution and society at large.

"When you see a sudden spurt in emphasis on adhering to rules, sudden increase in paper work, frequent meetings, unwinding discussions, you surely know leadership is becoming rare material in your institution. Institutions do not evolve with time as they stop innovating. Ultimately, they become living fossil, footnote in history," he added.

Misra said he is inspired by medical professionals in the case of a failure who show interest in knowing how a person contracted a disease.

"It is important to know what ails you, but more important is to understand how you contracted the disease in first place. You learn the most valuable lesson: prevention is better than cure. No point in crying when things go wrong," he said.

Does he refer to the failure of India's moon lander crash landing on the lunar surface and an emotional ISRO Chairman Sivan turning teary eyed?

Updating his previous post on September 23, Misra said: "I have posted this piece with an eye on communicating with general people who are not conversant with this esoteric subject. Unfortunately, certain media interpreted these generalised observations as my comment on certain happenings in recent times.

"Even common English phrases were reinterpreted with certain incidents. It is not proper and ethical for anybody to present bits and pieces of this post selectively for their own interpretations. I request all not to repost pieces from this post. If anybody wants to post, he or she should post in toto for better understanding of this purely academic post meant for general readers."