Noted scientist and honorary professor at ISRO Bengaluru Sivathanu Pillai on Saturday called ‘BrahMos’- the Indo-Russian supersonic cruise missile, a “brahmastra for Indian Armed forces” and “a war winner” on Saturday. Known as the ‘Father of BrahMos’, Pillai was speaking at the 12th convocation of the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DAIICT) at Gandhinagar that saw 379 students, including 8 Ph. D scholars receive their degrees at the convocation ceremony.

On being quizzed on the need for more missiles like ‘BrahMos’ in light of India-Pakistan’s current political situation, Pillai said, “Today if you look at BrahMos, it is the only supersonic cruise missile operational in the whole world. No other country has ventured to have supersonic system in the armed forces. We have ‘BrahMos’ operational in the navy in the naval fleet, we have the army on the land force and very soon it will be with the airforce. So when we have the tri-service operation of the Brahmos, it is going to be a war winner. As you have seen in the Gulf War, the major victory of the Gulf War was the deployment of Tomahawk missiles by the Allied forces to destroy the enemy’s assets first so that way we have got a very good weapon available to give victory to India.”

Calling India self-sufficient in space technology, the noted scientist averred that going by the demand from the world over, the next move for India should be to market its space technology. “So we are going for more number of launches in a year using the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) and the trend is to go for “smaller satellites”. The navigation and the remote sensing satellites are becoming very small and they want to have interconnectivity and more revisit time. Whereas the communication satellites are going bigger and bigger, so to suit the trend the space research program will adapt itself so that we will be able to serve the nation and also we get sizable market from the world,” he added.

Speaking to students, Pillai spoke about the need for a rehaul in India’s education system and creation of innovation in ICT education and start-ups and knowledge system powerhouse to unleash India’s knowledge potential.

He said, “Startup and entrepreneurship has become a very important components of the education. I have seen in the IITs and institutions like the IICT the major component of the education is turning towards how we can mould the youngsters to entrepreneurs. That’s a big turning point in our education system which is going to make things different…In India if you see…unlike American and other countries where research has been given more important component of education, in India that has not picked up well. But our country needs that change, research should become more present-age of the education system than the teaching part.”

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