'Visionary scientist, industrialist, institution-builder': Remembering Vikram Sarabhai on his 101st Anniversary

"I pay more than Rs 4 crore in taxes, you can assume that my money, paid as tax, is being used for the space programme," Dr Vikram Sarabhai, among India's top scientists, institution-builders and industrialists had reportedly said half-jokingly in the 1960s. This was during the initial phases of discussion pertaining to the budget of the Indian Space Programme. The statement was reportedly in response to a professor who asked Sarabhai about why he was spending taxpayers money on space science, which was barely known in India. This was as a time when hardly a decade had passed since the country's independence. Such an incident was recalled in a commemorative webinar hosted by Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, which Sarabhai had founded in his youth.

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