I am sad and disappointed at being hit by the curse of the inaugural flights. ISRO never had a great record with first flight of a new launch vehicle. History has repeated itself. However, I am once again mesmerized by the silence of ISRO and the position ("All stages performed as expected .") taken by them. They don't sound like a Organization standing up for themselves!
SSLV-D1/EOS-02 Mission
The ISRO of old was brave and transparent. It used to take failures on the chin and bounce back with stupendous success. However, in recent memory ISRO is developing a habit of going mute after difficult missions. The project management is at it's lowest point. None of the important missions have been an unqualified success in the recent past. The checkpoints, as in the case of Chandrayana-2 lander, are being skipped in favor of the mission deadline. It seems optics and other dynamics are winning over the hard facts of science and project management.
This points to a concerning change of culture at ISRO, revealing a lot about the current set of leaders at the organization. I am so missing the ISRO of old, when leaders like Dr. K Kasturirangan, Prof. U R Rao and G Madhavan used to helm the Organization. The later years have been a leadership crisis at ISRO. Failure was not a taboo then but only an opportunity to learn and course correct. Hyper marketing was shunned and hard facts were presented to the public and scientific community.
I sincerely hope that ISRO comes out of the woods and finds it's feet sooner. It must find the right people to lead it's projects without submitting itself to the organizational dynamics. Science and Temperament should be the sole criteria for leadership of this elite Organization. This is the least we can expect from an organization associated with giants like Dr. Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai.