The director of a lunar mission leaves for private industry. A Chandrayaan scientist follows. Then another. Over 100 departures in months. It is not attrition, but a reckoning.New Delhi is watching this unfold with visible discomfort. The Department of Space (DoS) has issued a memo restricting resignations from scientists on “mission-critical projects.” It is a gesture of control that actually signals powerlessness, and it points to a deeper restructuring of India’s science and technology ecosystem, where public institutions are no longer the default destination for elite technical talent.The exodus and its patternBetween 100 and 120 scientists have resigned from ISRO in recent months, according to a report by The Times of India. Nearly 80 have exited the UR Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru. Around 20 individuals have left the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre located in Thiruvananthapuram. There clearly seems to be a pattern here, which indicates that this migration is not accidental in nature.Timing adds to the worry. There are sanctioned posts of 18,142 at ISRO in science, technology, and administration. Currently, there are 2,613 vacancies – a shortfall of 14.4%. The organisation was already undermanned when the exit rate increased.The scientist responsible for Chandrayaan-3 was leading a team which had gathered nearly 25 TB of information by conducting 100,000 tests, as reported in The Hindu. The loss of such a scientist means a loss of expertise that cannot easily be replaced. Gaganyaan, India’s human spaceflight programme, runs behind its launch schedule. The initial test flight was scheduled for the first quarter of 2026 but a slight delayment is assumed by the experts. The scientists carrying decades of accumulated knowledge have left precisely when continuity matters most. Private sector transformationFor decades, ISRO benefited from a compact between state prestige and scientific purpose. The organisation offered something beyond salary: legitimacy, national relevance, participation in a historic project of development. That compact is now under strain.In 2020, India opened up its space industry for private players with IN-SPACe.The Indian Space Policy 2023, however, redrew the boundaries between public and private participation. It took just six years for firms like Skyroot Aerospace, Agnikul Cosmos, Pixxel, Bellatrix Aerospace, Dhruva Space and Digantara to revolutionise the aerospace industry. Today, there are over 400 space startups registered in India and raising venture capital funding worth US$ 500 million collectively. India’s space economy is valued at US$ 8.4 billion currently and expected to grow up to US$ 40-45 billion by 2030 as per government estimates mentioned in Indian Space Policy 2023. The policy made all sectors of the space value chain open for private sector involvement and helped start-ups to grow from just one start-up in 2014 to over 400 start-ups in 2026.Innovation without bureaucracyFor ISRO scientists, the appeal is direct. Private companies offer better salaries, stock options, greater flexibility and opportunities to lead projects early in her career. Engineers can now compare public service with market-based opportunity in ways not possible before. This is not simply a labour-market shift. It is political-economic.Former ISRO veterans accelerated this trend. Senior scientists retired from the national space agency then founded or mentored startups. They have found innovative paths for Indian aerospace engineers. For example, Skyroot Aerospace, which was founded by two former ISRO scientists Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, is developing small-satellite launch vehicles that can compete in the commercial market. Skyroot became the first Indian private company to launch a rocket in 2022. On July 18, 2026, it successfully launched its Vikram-1 rocket from Sriharikota. Agnikul Cosmos has designed a native-made rocket engine through 3D printing. Pixxel has deployed hyperspectral imaging satellites for commercial earth observation. Bellatrix Aerospace developed the world’s first commercial Microwave Plasma Thruster using water as fuel and successfully tested India’s first privately built Hall Thruster.Value of ISRO’s scientists: Expertise as venture capitalThe ISRO scientists have expertise in the design and creation of rockets, satellites, propulsion, and other space-related systems. They provide quick growth opportunities, chances to create something from scratch, and an environment where the gap between planning and implementation is minimal. One scientist who designed ISRO’s most critical systems can accelerate a startup’s development by years. Years of knowledge of failure modes, material limits, and testing protocols cannot be taught quickly. For instance, the former ISRO Chairman S. Somanath came on board as the Board Observer of AgniKul Cosmos before the startup’s Mission 02, illustrating the trend of ISRO scientists entering India’s private space industry as reported by The Hindu. The presence legitimised private space as a serious alternative to government service. The result is a familiar pattern. The state creates the market. Scientists trained by the state build it. Talent flows where opportunity and compensation concentrate. And the state watches, unable to compete.Government in defenceOn July 14, 2026, the Department of Space issued a memorandum to ISRO centres. It directed them not to accept resignation or voluntary retirement requests from scientists working on Gaganyaan and other “important missions.” All such cases must now be referred to the DoS for final decision. This reversed a 2020 directive. Six years earlier, ISRO centre directors held authority to accept resignations from Group A scientific and technical personnel. That authority was withdrawn. The decision was centralised.The government’s response reveals the problem. By tightening exit rules, the DoS acknowledged that talent retention is now strategic. It is a defensive move. But it also exposes the limits of bureaucratic control in a changing economy.The structural contradictionThe real issue is structural. Public institutions like ISRO still operate within hierarchical decision-making, slow career mobility, and frameworks of state employment inherited from an earlier era. That model once worked because it faced limited external competition and was backed by strong public legitimacy. Today it faces a much more dynamic private sector.Here is where the issue becomes politically significant. India has been encouraging private space participation as part of a broader reform narrative. The state wants innovation, investment, and competition. But it also expects ISRO to carry national missions, strategic capability, and technological credibility. Those expectations now sit uneasily together.The government is promoting market expansion while hoping to sustain high-quality public science within that market. It has not resolved this tension. The resignations should not be read as individual career choices alone. They are symptoms of a larger contradiction.The result follows a familiar post-liberalisation pattern. The public sector is asked to do more with less. The private sector absorbs the most mobile talent. Over time, this weakens institutional depth even when headline reform appears successful.ISRO remains powerful. Its symbolic capital is strong. Its technical capability is not in question. But symbolic capital cannot substitute for competitive compensation, bureaucratic efficiency, or genuine career security. A memo cannot substitute for retention.What must change?If the government wants public science central to India’s space ambition, it must treat retention as policy, not discipline. This means restructuring compensation, reducing bureaucratic friction, and making public science a credible long-term career and not a temporary duty before private opportunity calls.Scientists leave for better pay, autonomy, challenging problems and working conditions. Preventing their exit by restricting resignations does not fix these things – it merely formalises the state’s inability to compete for talent honestly.What unfolds at ISRO now is not a crisis of discipline. It is a test of whether the Indian state can retain expertise when expertise itself has become marketable. The memo suggests the answer may not be reassuring.Asmita Bharadwaj is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, researching astropolitics and India’s space governance.