Insane India?

India launches a rocket to Mars

Critics of India’s Mars mission, which cost the country 4.5 billion-rupee ($73 million), say India can ill-afford to spend any money on space programs when about 70 percent of the nation’s 1.2 billion people live on less than $2 a day.

India’s Prime Minister Singh says he’s counting on the space program to yield technological advances that boost his country’s development prospects.

“Questions are sometimes asked about whether a poor country like India can afford a space program and whether the funds spent on space exploration, albeit modest, could be better utilized elsewhere,” said Singh last year. “This misses the point that a nation’s state of development is finally a product of its technological prowess.”

“India is home to poor people but it’s also an emerging economy, it’s a middle-income country, it’s a member of the G20. What is hard for people to get their head around is that we are home to poverty but also a global power,” chief executive of Oxfam in India told Bbc.

“We are not really one country but two in one. And we need to do both things: contribute to global knowledge as well as take care of poor people at home.”

It would be interesting to find out the cost of upkeep of Oxfam in India as a percentage of total funds donated!

Space Program Annual Expenditures

• India:  $1.5 billion
• Japan: $3.3 billion
• Untied States: $17.9 billion

Mars Mission Stats

• Japan’s mission to send a satellite to orbit the Red Planet failed in 1998.
• China’s probe to Mars was destroyed in 2011.
• About 50 percent of all attempts to reach Mars have failed.
• India and China became competitors in the space race in the late 1990s.
• The 780-million km journey to Mars would take about 300 days.

Related Links

• India faces severe water, farming, food crisis