Can India afford Mangalyan?

It was November 5th, early morning 6AM. I eagerly searched for “Mars Orbiter Mission launch” on google! Several results appeared and one among them was an article published in The Economist (TE) titled “How can poor countries afford space programmes?” It was a mind blowing article. How thoughtfully the author A.R. (The Economist doesn’t reveal the full name of the author) had written it! The article said, “From a distance, India’s extra-terrestrial ambitions might seem like a waste of money. The country still has immense numbers of poor people: two-fifths of its children are suffering from malnutrition and half the population lack proper toilets. Its Mars mission may be cheap as compared to American (or Chinese) standards, at just $74m, but India’s overall space programme costs roughly $1 billion a year. That is more than spare change, even for a near $2-trillion economy. Meanwhile, spending on public health, at about 1.2% of GDP, is dismally low. What if the 16,000 scientists and engineers now working on space development were deployed instead to fix rotten sanitation?”

Really, the readers are influenced to think in these lines. What was the need for ISRO to spend 450 Crore! Couldn’t we feed our poor people with the same amount and reduce hunger?! Even Dr. Harsh Mander says that we should work on reducing malnutrition and other welfare programs to uplift the poor rather than spending so much on a mission for knowing more about Mars which is far away from us. This Mars mission is of little significance to the Indian citizens. Dr. Mander continues to say that Indian scientists should work on improving agriculture and living conditions of people! True. I agree with A.R., Dr. Mander and all those enlightened souls that the nation is having large number of malnourished people even more than Sub-Saharan Africa, lot of sanitation work has to be done. India is lagging in many more indices of social welfare!
Further, I am not taking upon Dr. Mander and others having similar views. I consider them only as critics.

Anyone and everyone in our society who is performing some good work will have to face criticism! So, most of us are virtually desensitised about such criticisms. Dr. Mander is working on issues pertaining to malnutrition and poverty which is a very vital contribution by him towards our society. According to him, it is important to allocate funds for eradicating malnutrition. Another educationist may say quality of our education is degrading drastically and there is a need to fund more on education and improve its quality. A health activist may say, people struggle to get quality health services in both rural and urban India. Out of pocket expenditure by individuals is very high. Therefore, health should be given priority because without solving these issues how will we be able to reap the benefits of our demographic dividend effectively! Such arguments are never ending! We will have to see each field uniquely and separately. I would say if everyone tries to excel in their fields, overall development will be witnessed. Hence the question is not about what these field specific experts say, but the timing of the article by The Economist!
The Economist (TE) has published the article on Nov 4th 2013, at 23:50 i.e. few hours before the launch of Mangalyaan. It could have been published even after the launching of Mangalyaan because the article in TE would not have influenced the decision whether to launch Mangalyaan or not! But still they published it in the critical time. That is to reduce the morale of the Indians in general and the scientists and engineers who have worked for the Mangalyaan in particular! We will have to see the wordings of the article again – “What if the 16,000 scientists and engineers now working on space development were deployed instead to fix rotten sanitation?” How arrogant! Should we consider this as sympathy for India?! Never! It is a very well planned conspiracy of the West only to demoralise Indian achievements!

I feel the most fitting answer is to quote Prof. U.R. Rao who replied American teasers that India can easily afford this investment since it spends more than 1000 crores on crackers! I also wonder whether the same authors have questioned the politicians stigmatized by the scams crossing thousands of crores! Had they opposed the expenditure incurred on the inaugural function of the Commonwealth Games held in Delhi which was more than 450 crores! More importantly have they forgotten the advantage of the weather forecast by the satellites that saved thousands of people from the possible disaster of Phailin cyclone recently?

India in international arena

Soon after independence, the challenge before India in the international arena was formulating a foreign policy which is not influenced by any other country. So we evolved NAM policy which is still guiding our foreign policy. The parties of bipolar world criticised India for going with NAM policy and remaining out of both the parties one headed by USA and the other by USSR. But they didn’t understand that the idea of NAM was to spread peace in the world and not war. Despite criticisms, India stood with its NAM policy and helped strengthening under developed countries and other developing countries like. Neither USA nor other developed countries in Europe even thought about the poor situation prevailing in those countries at that time! Later in 2008, India proved itself that its focus was correct towards developing countries as even during economic crises only these countries were moving with a faster economic growth where as the developed countries faced economic slowdown, default of leading banks and so on.

It was India which realised the need for disarmament in the world for having world peace. India proposed plans for disarmament for the first time in United Nations (UN) platform when world countries were busy in arms race!

Pollution of Earth had begun after the industrial revolution of 18th century in Europe. Intense degradation of environment was visible in the West which has affected climatic condition of the whole world! India took active participation in conventions to curb climate change and control of greenhouse gases. It judiciously supported common but differential principle as it is the West that have been polluting this Earth with high intensity since 18th century where as industrialisation has gained some pace in India only after independence. But still, India would not be liberating hot air up to per capita permissible amount even by 2030! West has to understand its mistakes and work towards correcting it rather than being biased about developing countries.

I would like to remind the West about the scientific skills of India. Leave alone the contributions from the times of the sage Aryabhata and others or even C V Raman, Srinivas Ramanujam. In the present days, Indians are also contributing in experiments of Large Hadron Collidor (LHC) which is working towards understanding elementary particles. Several western countries like USA, France etc. are collaborating India with other major projects like Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), Antarctica research, study of moon (through India’s Chandrayaan) etc.

Apart from these, India is considered to be an important country in the world arena with changing world order from west to east. USA’s Pivot towards Asia policy emphasises on improving its relations with India. With this policy, USA is agreeing to transfer certain technology to India too. President of USA, Mr. Barak Obama signed Obama – Singh Knowledge initiative with India and Millennium Alliance in education sector.

The grants from various philanthropic organizations are coming more and more to India. In a way, the country is trying to make India happy develop cooperation to achieve its goal of becoming a dominant power in Asia – Pacific region. Like it reduced its cooperation with Pakistan after attaining its goals in Afghanistan, it may do the same once it gets a strong hold in Asia – Pacific region, Myanmar in particular. The world countries, west in particular, are worried about the rise of China and want the help of India to counter the Red Dragon. In a way, west continues to follow the carrot and stick policy which was adopted by the British in India during colonial rule.

Insecurity of the west

If the western countries are so worried about the position of India in social indices, then why do they try to suppress our nation’s growth through different measures?! For example, as recognized by G20 countries recently in their meeting Moscow, policy of US Federal Reserve has increased the volatility of currencies of most of the developing countries including India. In fact, that policy itself is considered to be one of the major causal factor for depreciation of Rupee. The cheap money policy of USA during economic crises was a honey trap for which most of the developing countries like India fell and now striving hard to recover. Though USA says that the policy is in its national interest, it was clear about the consequences of that policy over developing countries. May be USA was worried about the high growth rate showed by India, China and other developing countries even during the economic crises.

When we analyse many steps of the west towards India, I feel western countries feel highly insecure with the developments happening in our country. We have seen it since long time. There were sanctions over India when it proved its nuclear capabilities through Smiling Buddha nuclear test in 1974 and another test in Pokhran in 1998. Even when India ensured that it has developed nuclear weapon for peace, west didn’t believe it not because India was an unreliable country but a thief always thinks that the other person may also be a burglar. With their insecurity, they wanted to curb India becoming a nuclear power which is considered as an elite group. India could sustain even during sanctions and then the world countries came again towards our country for cooperation which is history now.

European countries are very eager to improve economic relations with India because of its large markets. They want market for their dairy products, insurance and other financial service sector. Why do they ask India to liberalise its regulations towards these, if they are really feeling pity about the nation’s poverty? Instead, they should provide us the market access to our products for which European countries always hesitate! India’s mature industries like pharmaceutical and IT sector are not encouraged by them because of their insecurities of sustaining their capitalists.

More interestingly, TE article has expressed concerns about hunger in India. Yes, huge numbers of people are striving hard to get their daily bread. Understanding this problem, India formulated National Food Security Act in the year 2013. The act was highly criticized by the developed countries in World Trade Organization (WTO) forums, alleging that it is trade distorting. Even when India’s Minimum Support Price (MSP) was much lower than world average, foreign countries showed red eye towards MSP and said that it is against Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) under WTO. If west’s concern was genuine towards hunger in India, then what was the need for it to criticise the nation’s effort to eradicate poverty and hunger?!

Finally, why should West be worried about the expenditure incurred on Mars that India is bearing! The worrisome matter is if the Mangalyaan becomes successful, then India will join the elite group in the field. European countries are jealous about it. Though USA has agreed for a cooperative effort with India in understanding the Mars through its MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) project which would be launched very soon, other countries are not liking a poor country like India gaining higher status in the scientific arena. Keith Parkins, writer and environmentalist from Guildford called Mangalyaan as an “ego project, whilst majority of population are in abject poverty. There is more to Mars than launching a rocket.”! If it is a wasted project for India, is it not the same principle applicable for other countries too. Instead of sending Curiosity, USA could use the same amount of money to create jobs as it facing economic crises and the unemployment rate was increasing drastically there? Why didn’t these people raise their voice during that time?! Being a sovereign country, India possesses the capability to take its own decisions. So, politely we ask all those countries who are criticising Mangalyaan of India to shut their mouth!