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India To Build Neutrino Observatory
TeriMaKiChooth writes "Only the fifth in the world, the facility is being called one of the biggest and most ambitious scientific projects ever undertaken by India. About 90 scientists from 26 organizations will be involved in the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO), organizers say. Neutrinos are elusive, nearly mass-less elementary particles, sometimes called 'ghost particles.'"
I remember this from somewhere... hmmmmmmm
Eat sleep die
You should really work on these observations of yours... Better luck with the Neutrinos.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
is a real bad swear word!
Terrorist could use NeutrinoComm(tm) to circumvent the blackberry-surveillance!!
I do not see how this type of project is sanctioned by the Indian government. Half the population is living in slums Most parts of the country have only intermittant electricty There is almost no safe water (by Western European standards) The majority of the population is functionally illiterate. The roads are amongst the most dangerous in the world Pollution (air, water, and waste) is a HUGE problem I suggest that this money could be better spent addressing those problems
I could be wrong, but I feel that progress needs to happen on all fronts. Research, industry, infrastructure, quality of life, etc. are all things that need to be invested in at the same time. The problems you speak of don't have silver-bullet cures - you have to work on them for generations. What will you do till then? Suspend all research spending? At any rate, I'm amazed at the conviction you demonstrate when discussing such issues. You're either a genius (who really has solutions) or someone who hasn't thought this through well enough.
So that India can do to it's science the same thing that USA Government did to NASA? Most of the problems you've mentioned are not as hard-pressing, as we, Westerners here can think. But leading in science is crucial to any country's political and economical success. Or you would prefer that Indian Government just spend all it's money on ineffective corporations bailouts, crazy military projects, paranoid surveillance and self-perpetuating fear "security" programs? Well, Indians learned much from Brits in their time, but now they seem much more reasonable than their old "mentors". So they are "doing it right", to my taste.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
You're either a genius (who really has solutions) or someone who hasn't thought this through well enough.
Of course he has! He's going to use a neutrino beam that will clear out the pollution, fix the roads, and implant literacy into the populace!
Haven't you seen Star Trek? Neutrino beams fix everything!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
People forget that when one builds something (e.g. Neutrino observatory) the money doesn't go to bricks and detectors. Eventually all the money goes to people. In order to build the observatory you need builders and other low-tech workers in addition to the all-knowing scientists.
Big projects such as this create jobs. And even after it is completed, it will continue to employ many people, both educated and uneducated. The road to progress goes through development, not through throwing money at people directly. Enter cliche: If you give a man a fish, you give him a meal for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you give him a meal for his whole life long.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
I'm a particle physics grad student, and I swear I have never heard anyone refer to them as ghost particles. This seems to be BBC science writers only...
xterm -n 8
If you give a man a fish, you give him a meal for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you give him a meal for his whole life long.
That's all well and good, but what happens if you teach a man to find neutrinos?
Duck? (verb, not noun - for all you Whoosh-able).
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
as long as its not built by cowboys
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Wtf? None of you wrote is true, excpet for the electricity part. And pollution is a porblem everywhere, not only in India.
Geese, what do you people have against birds anyway?
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
Sorta, but not exactly. Sure, it eventually trickles and creates that Keynesian multiplier.
But, and here's the important part, so would spending that money on something more useful like schools or water pumps. The money spent on those would create just as many jobs, you know, and you'd also have some schools or clean water instead of a national penis size symbol.
Think of it this way. If you spend X dollars, a Keynesian multiplier of Y says effectively you've put X*Y dollars into the economy. But if you invested that original X into something pointless, effectively you now only have X*(Y-1) that actually goes into anything the country actually needs. Unless Y is at least in the hundreds, you'll still see a difference.
And actually a more reasonable multiplier to expect is somewhere around 1.25 to 1.5. The highest ever multiplier recorded for a government investment was 1.73.
So basically even if you're uber-lucky, a million invested in useless crap will also bring 730,000 that trickles into more useful stuff. Whereas if you invested that million into something useful, well, now you'd have 1.73 million worth of useful stuff.
Basically that multiplier isn't a blank check to do any stupidity whatsoever with the public money. It doesn't mean you can just blow it on any crap and let the multiplier distribute it for you. At the end of the day, a million wasted is still a million wasted.
But it gets even better, actually. The multiplier itself is different for different things you do with the money. A million invested in something could have a multiplier as low as 0.23 (actual historical case too: yes, it's possible for such an investment to actually be a loss) or as high as 1.73. Like any investment, basically, you get a different ROI. It doesn't mean just blow the money or anything and expect it to trickle just the same.
Or in less complicated terms, think of it like this: a country has a certain amount of resources, including manpower. Tying up X thousand people into one project (including making those bricks and supplying the factory and whatnot) means X thousand you won't have for something else. Even if it creates Y thousand other jobs somewhere else too, that original X thousand is still tied up in activity A instead of activity B. If A is less needed than B, that's not a good use of manpower.
Also, I'd say that one should look at the actual conditions in a country before cheering for a waste. The exact multiplier and number of jobs created depend a lot on the local conditions. The way it works in a western post-scarcity economy, where really at worst you just diverted some people from marketing jobs and services and other ultimately just ways to do something when you don't need them in actual production, may not be the same for a country which still has a scarcity economy.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If you give a man a fish, you give him a meal for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you give him a meal for his whole life long.
And if you set him on fire he will be warm for his whole life long...
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
I find them a tern off.
Blank until
And yet their people still live in a third world country, bailed out by Western countries to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
The problems you speak of don't have silver-bullet cures - you have to work on them for generations.
... I'm amazed at the conviction you demonstrate ...
Of course there's no silver bullet, but the point is, there are huge problems in India and spending money to build the 6th of these things seems stupid.
Suspend all research spending?
Not ALL research spending, but how about research spending on project directly related to solving these issue first?
I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. Actually I don't care at all about what the Indian government decides to waste its money on. I am simply amazed that they would prefer to spend their money being number 6, than cleaning up their house.
I could be wrong, but I feel that progress needs to happen on all fronts. Research, industry, infrastructure, quality of life, etc.
Ideed $270 million could be used to give everyone in the country 24 cents or provide an incentive for the best and brightest to stay in the country and for bonus points inject money into the Indian high tech industrys.
I do not see how this type of project is sanctioned by the Indian government.
With money that is bookmarked for such projects. Believe it or not, third world countries have finance ministers who plan and reserve portions of funds for different causes and do not simply dole out cash to whoever asks for it.
Half the population is living in slums
Nonsense, unless you call the huts that a lot of tribes live in or cabins built in the mountains as slums too. People are fairly self-sufficient and are generally healthier than the average city yuppie. A very small number of people are actually in such a dire situation that they're dying from starvation.
Most parts of the country have only intermittant electricty
Rural areas do have this problem, but every place from small towns and cities have regular power supply. It is definitely not a problem in "most" of the country.
There is almost no safe water (by Western European standards)
There are almost no people with weak immune systems (by Western European standards)
The majority of the population is functionally illiterate.
Now where did you get that from? And what do you mean by that?
The roads are amongst the most dangerous in the world
They're definitely not as safe as the ones in the more developed countries.
Pollution (air, water, and waste) is a HUGE problem
in the entire world, not just in India.
"Dr Jaikumar expects the project to enhance understanding of the universe and the Earth's structure, as well as volcanic activity and how tsunamis are formed." Oh okay, but HOW do neutrinos affect volanic activity and tsunamis exactly? Could we get a 1-2 sentence further explanation of what the heck you are talking about?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I am simply amazed that they would prefer to spend their money being number 6, than cleaning up their house.
It's pretty clear to me that they are not doing this simply for the sake of showing off (i.e. "being number 6"). There's plenty of other scientific endeavors a country can spend its wealth on to show off (for example, a space program). Particle physics is hard science. You don't get into it unless you're trying to do hard science.
Sometimes; but only if you're an idiot.
If they contract their observatory / lab to major institutions to performing scientific work, this could be a net gain. A nice functioning town will evolve around the observatory.
As a physicist, let me say that neutrino detection, while interesting and challenging, should definitely take a back seat to some of the poverty and sanitation issues facing India. If this was research that offered immediate benefits to the country (like a new medicine), then I could understand it. But as much as I would love to see more neutrino detectors built, I can't justify it being done with money that could be put to such a better use.
India to build only the world's 5th ever neutrino observatory at 1/4th the cost of an Indian home http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilia_(building)
Enter cliche: Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day; set him on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
Analysts says that in the first quarter of 2011 the mine industry of Cho Ming Tibet will sky rocket and will need to hire people from other areas just to meet the large demand of mine worker.
I'm an Indian and I do believe in science but there are tons of basic things in India that needs to be corrected first... and here they are finding neutrino!! Awesome.
I think of some consequences of a project like this that can help the country in the long haul:
- Huge money for India can create lots of jobs, not only for scientists;
- Bring international money directly for this project or because the increase in credibility of their project capabilities;
- Keep some bright minds in the country that can work in other pursuits later in life that bring even more money to the country;
- Increase the karma of the pursuit of a scientific carrear as there are money being invested in this, so more scientists in the future;
Maybe other good things. I am sure that what really contributes for the wealth of a nation in the long term is very hard to predict. So the investment in diverse areas may be a good bet. (the book The Black Swan talk about or tendency to discover wrong obvious causes for everything in history).
As a physicist, let me say... If this was research that offered immediate benefits to the country (like a new medicine), then I could understand it.
As a physicist, you should know better.
Once upon a time I was a neutrino physicist, both at one of the large labs (SNO) and on a small reactor neutrino experiment. A table-top detector I designed actually detected reactor neutrinos.
Since that distant day I've worked mostly as a software designer and medical physicist. I've run my own business, and I'm an adjunct professor in the Department of Pathology at the local university helping the biologists and MDs deal with the large numerical datasets that genomic technology is producing. For my next career I'm trying to decide between robotics and poetics, and will probably do some of both.
I can do that diversity of things because of the kind of education I got as a physicist. In the course of the past fifteen years I've intereacted heavily with biologists, pathologists, cardiac surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, chemists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers and software developers, and because of the foundations my education rests on I have been able to learn to communicate with all of them quite effectively, and contribute to a number of projects that are likely to make the world a better place.
Projects like this Indian neutrio detector are factories for the production of people like me, and personally I'm arrogant enough to think that India could use a few more people like me. I've worked with physicists from all of the world--the US, Canada, Poland, and Israel, the UK, Sri Lanka, Australia, China...--and the Indians I've known have been as good as any. Projects like this will help keep them in India, where when they leave academia--which is the most common outcome for PhDs in any discipline--their skills and education will be more likely to be applied to local problems.
It is utterly myopic to attack a project like this as not addressing India's problems. It is ONLY projects like this that will solve them, by creating the only thing that will ever solve them: highly trained, intelligent, mathematically an technologically literate, curious, empirically-oriented human beings.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
India to build $55 Neutrino Observatory.
>Neutrinos are elusive, nearly mass-less elementary particles, sometimes called 'ghost particles.'"
Gee, thanks for defining that for us. I mean, it's not like the general public have been hearing about these "neutrinos" since the 70s. I mean, Carl Sagan certainly never talked about them. And it is so incredibly rare to hear the science media mention them - they hardly get any airtime at all, like k mesons, and unlike electrons or photons.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
Me too, but I don't crow about it.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
You're either a genius (who really has solutions) or someone who hasn't thought this through well enough.
Of course he has! He's going to use a neutrino beam that will clear out the pollution, fix the roads, and implant literacy into the populace!
Haven't you seen Star Trek? Neutrino beams fix everything!
That's going to take a lot of polarity reversal... Better be sure a damn good deflector dish is included in the spec.
You know there's millions of homeless people in America right? Perhaps we should shut down NASA too.
1. Half the population is living in slums. - Incorrect. According to J Urban Health. 2007 May; 84(Suppl 1): 27–34. , 28% of the Urban population, which is itself ~40% of total lives in slums. You have a roughly 200% error in your estimate.
2. India also has a educated middle class equivalent to the population of Central Europe.
3. India has a burgeoning economy with the second highest growth rate at about 8.5%
4. India has a developing science program, ranking in the top 5 countries with nuclear and space technologies.
5. You have an incorrect assumption that throwing more money at a problem solves it faster. Even if it did, the social disruption caused by solving a problem can create new ones. Sometimes, deep-rooted problems that were developed over centuries of colonization have to be solved at a controlled rate, on the same time scales.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Mod parent up. +1
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
This is where most people get wrong about India. India is more diverse, it has poorest people in the world and very rich people. There are lots of uneducated people and there are lots of educated and talented people.
You have to look at India in this perspective. So the above mentioned facility is to enhance already booming research on new technologies.
-YoungTelugu
It is really amusing to see so many people raise their hands and start shouting - poverty, slums, drinking water, health, etc. etc. - whenever any mention of India investing a substantial sum of money in a challenging scientific endeavour, apparently reserved for the developed first world countries, comes up.
:-)
How easy it is to do so, without having any ground knowledge of the state of things in the country, right?
Perhaps, a bit easier, than taking the troubles to know that all the basic things to be taken care of, as mentioned above, are already financed by a multitude of schemes for each one of them under various mininstries, programs and plans of the Indian governement.
Nowhere in the country, at no point of time in the last 2 decades at least, has a water, electricity, housing, education or health program suffered because of lack of funds from the top of the pyramid, but because of the apathy shown towards sincere planning and execution of those projects, including brazen corruption prevailing at all levels, which accounts for consuming most of the funds meant for the upliftment of the social condition.
Without digging for exact statistics and quoting all the schemes, it would not be an exaggeration to say that India regularly allotts huge sums of money, running into billions of dollars, for each of those basic amenities, under its Five Year Plans, Annual Budgets etc.
It is definitely a matter of debate about the ratio of funds allocated for different purposes, the methods of allocation, accountability and responsibility. But just because apparently there seems to be less red-tapism for the scientific agencies in produring and applying funds for advancing research activities, or the pot-holed roads, hungry kids and uneducated & unemployed youth make for a more sensational news items whenever the former happens, India shouldn't be accused of trying to become a scientific powerhouse in spite of all the adveristies.
In fcat IMHO, the funds allocated for such scientific activities, is still far less than what should have been for a country the size and aspirations of India, and certainly much less than other countires like China.
Relativity is a bitch
USA has the largest budget defecit in the world but it doesnt stop it bombing other smaller countries
[sarcasm]I'm sure the exemplars of righteousness that are most (Indian) politicians will put that "HUGE" sum of $270m to good use to improve the lives of impoverished.[/sarcasm]
There he is. Everytime theres a story about a developing nation spending on something scientific, atleast one guy has to come up with this sameoldsameold bullshit.
There are problems in the developed world too - problems that could use money that the developed world wants to spend on the ISS or the LHC, to name a few "big science" examples. US doesn't even have universal health care for cryin out loud! Why don't they stop all their space funding and use that to provide universal health care first instead?
The idiots who whip out this argument think that powerty alleviation or slum improvements or food assistance programs somehow have to happen in a vacuum - "you must only do this, not that". You try and do many things - there is no "serialization" requirement.
The logic that every last cent of money must somehow be spent first on powerty alleviation before anything else is done is facetious - the same way you can't make a baby gestate fully in 1 months instead of 9 by "throwing" 9 women at the problem, you cannot "fix" the slums by just throwing money at it. Its a complex problem and it takes coherance in funding, social improvements, labor environment changes, etc to slowly feed on one another before the problem is resolved. The USians know that - they tried to fix their problem by throwing money at it in the form of "the projects" - all that was achieved was just a change of geography of the slums.
You really should go google for "tyranny of the O" - heres something to start you off: http://www.well.com/~bbear/collins.html#RTFToC10
I hope you don't "tyrannize" (is that a word? it should be :-) your own life by this false dichotomy. It would be a pity.
Oh, and a few nitpicks:
-- No, Half the population DOES NOT live in slums - Half the population does not live in cities even, theres no question of half the population living in slums. You KNOW how much their population IS, don't you? You are possibly thinking of Mumbai - surveys say half the population of Mumbai lives in slums, and it could quite possibly be true given what I have seen of that city, but Mumbai holds only about 1% of Indias population.
-- Majority of the population is functionally illiterate? Where did you get this? You must be thinking of the US ;-)
It is said that a major milestone in the development of a human young adults' brain is when he becomes capable of holding two seemingly contradictory thoughts in his head without going all "Angsty" about it.
I counter suggest that its high time you crossed that threshold "Smart Fellow".
Sigura Non Grata
Stop the moralizing, please.
Every nation must be able to walk and chew gum.
As a physicist, let me say that neutrino detection, while interesting and challenging, should definitely take a back seat to some of the poverty and sanitation issues facing India. If this was research that offered immediate benefits to the country (like a new medicine), then I could understand it. But as much as I would love to see more neutrino detectors built, I can't justify it being done with money that could be put to such a better use.
Are you really a physicist or are you just calling yourself one? I can't imagine someone that is trained and is good at problem solving cannot imagine benefits aside from money. Money should always secondary to real science, be it NASA, FERMI labs, CERN, ITER or anything else that creates intellectual wealth.
Physicists that do not work as physicists are the most sought after individuals in science related industry (ie. non-arts related industries). They are *problem solvers* - something that is vital to and in short supply in any industry be it software development or sewer treatment.
Finally, if you wish to rail against waste, you should look at corruption in India. 100x the money is wasted in that Black Hole. Prime example would be the Commonwealth Games. $10 *billion* spent, and what was gained? On the other hand, this is only $270m and you get a top class research facility preventing some brain-drain. So I'll continue to question that you are actually a physicist on basis that your argument is not very rational.
Half the population is living in slums
Nonsense, unless you call the huts that a lot of tribes live in or cabins built in the mountains as slums too. People are fairly self-sufficient and are generally healthier than the average city yuppie. A very small number of people are actually in such a dire situation that they're dying from starvation.
Most parts of the country have only intermittant electricty
Rural areas do have this problem, but every place from small towns and cities have regular power supply. It is definitely not a problem in "most" of the country.
There is almost no safe water (by Western European standards)
There are almost no people with weak immune systems (by Western European standards)
The majority of the population is functionally illiterate.
Now where did you get that from? And what do you mean by that?
The roads are amongst the most dangerous in the world
They're definitely not as safe as the ones in the more developed countries.
Pollution (air, water, and waste) is a HUGE problem
in the entire world, not just in India.
I'm a caucasian male American who lived in NOIDA, UP, India from May 2004 through Jan 2006.
Your responses do not reflect the reality that I lived in India.
"Slums" is a very generous word for some of the conditions I saw. Hell, in the US, at least one can squat in a relatively stable structure. A ripped tarp over a frayed rope firmly anchored into a large pile of dirt and gravel; with three families living in/around it. A three story brick building under construction; at least one worker family living in it. I'd see the open cooking fires at night and hear a newborn baby crying when I went out onto my balcony to smoke a cigarette.
The electricity was indeed intermittent. Some days there was no electricity at all. On the days that I had electricity, there was always an outage from 1-4 hours, every day, without fail. The electricity was also of shit-poor quality. India is on a 240V standard, but one day the voltage in the outlet could be 170V and then next day 280V. I lost an iBook power adapter to a night with a 295V spike. The power lines supplying my office building literally melted down, because the office in the floor above installed air conditioners that drew too much current.
Functionally illiterate is quite accurate. Most people I saw were uneducated and could not read. When I was told that the Chief Minister of Bihar (a political position roughly equivalent to Governor of a US state) was illiterate, I didn't believe it. As it turns out, it was true: Rabri Devi
Don't get me wrong. I love India. Living there was one of the best experiences of my life. However, there are much higher priorities than a neutrino observatory.
Considering India's GDP growth rate is among the highest in the world, I'm not sure if they ought to be listening to advice from nations with stagnant GDP growth or negative GDP growth.
Fix your own economy first before preaching. And if you believe your own words, don't breathe, don't take bathroom breaks, until you get out of a recession.
Keep in mind that India's space program is a profit-center. It actually _earns_ more money than the govt. spends on it. That's because placing satellites into orbit is big business, and high-tech services like satellite launches sell for hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.
South Korea and India were of similar economic situations in 1950, the difference being that S. Korea poured money into technology, and India did what you suggested. Guess what? Getting homeless people to fish just creates lots of poor fishermen instead of lots of poor beggars. Big whoop. The goal is to create more jobs for scientists, physicists, researchers, lab assistants, programmers, etc.
Plus, India's tax rate is far lower than in Western Europe, and 90% of people are not taxed. So the amount they spend is a tiny drop in the bucket of the annual income of people.
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_India#Tax_Rates
"about 10 per cent of the population meets the minimum threshold of taxable income"
So 90% of the population pays 0% taxes. And the progressive tax rates for the remainder of the population go from 10% to a maximum of 30% tax.
As for literacy, the "majority" of Indians are not illiterate, 32% are illiterate as of 2007, which is still a big number, but not a majority. Much of that illiterate population was born circa 1950. In the age group 7-15, literacy is 90% (10% illiterate).
Moreover, your presumption that they "prefer to spend their money being number 6, than cleaning up their house" is childish if not outright moronic. India's economy is $1.2 trillion dollars, and the project costs $270 million. That's 0.02% of the economy. To put that in perspective, that's equivalent to a 19 second bathroom break a day. And let's not forget that the project could be profitable, and in the very least provides good high-end jobs for their increasingly educated population.
Compare $270 million with the numerous welfare and social programs India provides to poor people. $13 billion to subsidize food for low-income families. $12 billion to subsidize fertilizer for poor farmers. $7 billion for education (at the federal level, states pay more). The list goes on for social programs that are all near $10 billion each.
In the end, they have a democracy and if folks don't like the budget, they'll elect other folks in. Every nation's budget is going to have cutting-edge R&D. It's ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Overall, their nation is doing fine, rapidly progressing with envious growth rates. It's not _your_ tax money being spent (and even for Indians, it's only the tax money of the upper 10%), so relax and let them build a nutrino research facility. If you're interested in nutrinos, I'm sure they'll love for you to pay them money to use their research center.
Suspend all research spending?
Not ALL research spending, but how about research spending on project directly related to solving these issue first?
How do you know that they're not doing that?
Just because a story is published about India doing physics research, how does it logically follow that they're not also working on social and economic issues?
Putting moderation advice in your
Aren't you anxious to know if a really hot curry actually does emit neutrinos, or if it is hot because it somehow interacts with neutrinos?
Putting moderation advice in your
I'm so happy to see this "spend money on social programs first" junk finally being modded troll and not insightful.
You're responding to a post about a:
(*) Technical innovation in a developing country
( ) Product shipped to a developing market
( ) General discussion about IT in the developing world
The location is:
( ) Africa
(*) India
( ) Bangladesh
( ) China
( ) Somewhere else in Asia
( ) South America
( ) Central America
( ) Other _unspecified_
You're objecting to it on the basis that:
(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in that country yet
( ) American jobs will be lost
Your argument is bogus because:
( ) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in the developed world either, that doesn't mean we should halt all technological research
( ) This will not adversely affect any efforts to alleviate poverty
(*) This will help to alleviate poverty
( ) Poverty in that country isn't as widespread as you say it is
( ) The US does not have a divine right to keep all the cool jobs
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Aren't you anxious to know if a really hot curry actually does emit neutrinos, or if it is hot because it somehow interacts with neutrinos?
I was just wondering how far down I'd have to scroll to find some racist troll rolling out the traditional curry joke. Some people just can't comment on anything India-related without having a pop at their funny food, funny accent or funny customs, can they?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
He gets an impressive resume and gains admission to any PhD program of his choosing? Becomes a professor, and... uses his teaching assistants as an endless supply of cannibalistic food?
If you read the original article, you'll learn that India's DoE is building it out of its own allocated budget -- it is _not_ requesting a budget increase from the Federal Govt. All the fed. govt has done is given _clearance_ (NOT _funding_) for the DoE to build it. It's up to the DoE to find out how to scrape together $270m from their budget.
To put it succinctly, if the nutrino detector isn't built, the DoE would have an extra $270m to spend on something else. You'd rather they build a nuclear reactor?
Christopher Columbus would laugh at you. As an Indian, living in India, I have to say, Westerners blindness to their own history is staggering. It is only when one is rich that you can have this causal attitude that poor people should always be aware of (and be reminded of) their poverty, and ACT as if they are poor. As if their poverty is their whole identity. I agree there is poverty in India, but there are many not-so-poor people in India as well. The population of the middle-class (that thing you seem to be losing in America) in India equals the ENTIRE population of Europe. Are you suggesting their life goal should be to become social workers? I have another suggestion for you: why dont you go back in time and tell Columbus that instead of trying to find funding from the Queen of Spain - no one else had money - for a crazy trip OVER the edge of the world (who does that?) - he should instead spend the money on fixing European poverty in the 15th century. There was a lot of it. Look it up. Then tell English industrialists in the 18th, to not fund inventions but spend the money instead on improving the lives of their mill-workers living and working in filthy conditions first. As a smart fellow, you might have read some classic English literature about that? In the 15th Century, India's immense wealth and trading goods were the reason that Columbus left Europe in the first place, looking for a sea trading route to India. Disappointingly for him, he found America instead (they didnt call them 'Red INDIANS' just because they liked the sound of it). Then the west carried on to India anyway, and we know how that went. At least, I hope you do. We wont forget. India went from 1/5th of the world economy in the 17th century to impoverished state in 200 years, as a colony. It was no accident - its why the British came in the first place. You may have heard of the cycle of poverty? - you seem to have it in your own American inner-cities too, from what i hear. That in 2010, American politicians are still campaigning with messages like "we want to make sure a retired grandma doesn't have to choose between buying her medicine and dinner" is frightening and appalling for those of us who admire Amrerica. So much for the free market 'decides'. Even among the poor in India, grandma lives with and is taken care of by her kids, and govt healthcare is free. Private healthcare is a choice, if you can afford it. And our Doctors and dentists do very well. You can keep your kind, if ignorant, suggestions about India. I'll see you on the Moon. That is, if the Chinese will let either of us land.
Those neutrinos are some totally radical dudes!!!
You forgot to mention the most retarded part of the "spending" concerns. India's Fed. Govt. isn't increasing the Dept. of Atomic Energy's budget. It merely gave clearance to the DAE to build the facility using the DAE's existing budget. If the Fed. Govt denied clearance, the $270m stays with the DAE, and _cannot_ be spent by the Dept. of Transportation for roads or the Dept. of Education for schools or the Dept. of Agriculture for farm subsidies. If the DAE didn't build a nutrino detector, it would just spend that money on other nuclear research. That's what the whole freaking department is about, atomic research. If NASA saves some money by not doing a shuttle launch, its money doesn't get yanked and moved to Homeland Security. Once NASA has been budgeted, the money stays within NASA. The following year, NASA's budget can be reduced if the senate thinks it's wasteful.
Folks don't realize that budgets work like fractals, and on contract law. The Fed. Govt is only responsible on carving out the budget for its departments, it does not directly budget every single brick and peon. Moreover, once budgeted, the Govt. enters into a contract and has to fulfill it or risk default. Democracies operate on contract-law and rule of law; the Fed. Govt. would be acting like an asshat monarch if it just swooped in and stole money from one dept. and moved it to another mid-year.
I never denied in my post that there is a lot of scope for improvement of infrastructure and a lot of need for it too.
At the same time things are not as simple as what the OP suggested or you concluded through your observations over 2 years. There are certain standards that are very important to us and you will recognize them too, but there are other standards that we don't really care about. For example, a lot of people in the west are paranoid about cleanliness of water and food hygiene. While we in India are very particular about hygiene, we do not go so far as to avoid street food or drink out of a tap or even from a nearby stream/pond. Oh, and we eat with our hands! Ok, it is not as simple as I state here either, but I cannot think of a way to put all of it in a single post. You really need to tour the entire country to understand how things are, observe our politics, read our history. You will realize that things are not necessarily better or worse; they're just very very different and highly complicated.
Also, reforms are not as simple as throwing money in because the social structure and culture of India is much more complex than that. The sheer size of the population brings about major challenges that merely throwing money does not solve. We have done really well in just 60+ years of independence; probably better than any country given the size of our population and political issues with our neighbours.
Just out of the top of my head, here are some things the neutrino lab will help with:
All of this revenue loops back into the budget for further reforms and the process itself enriches so many people. I'd say this is much better than the money we're spending in building all those temples or mosques or churches.
Rural areas do have this problem, but every place from small towns and cities have regular power supply. It is definitely not a problem in "most" of the country.
Not sure what areas you are talking about but our office in Pune (Maharashtra) has rolling power outages every week (usually on Thursday) because the grid doesn't have enough power to supply the entire state and the distributors are forced to switch between areas. Every office in the area that I know of has UPS, generators or both.
This state has a population of some 96-97 million people and includes major cities such as Mumbai. Still want to stand by your "every place has regular power supply" or were you implying that electricity on the same five days every week is regular?
The power outages last an hour everyday during summer, not more than that. If it's more or even erratic, you need to register a complaint and it should get fixed. These outages can be bought out from MSEB in exchange for higher electricity bills that are more in line with other power suppliers (Reliance, Tata). For example, MSEB supplies power to the navi mumbai region of maharashtra and there too they used to have similar power cuts for the same reasons. Through a petition, they got rid of the power cuts in the Kharghar node of Navi Mumbai at the cost of paying higher bill rates.
Mumbai city (or any area that is not provided for by the MSEB) does not have load shedding, mainly due to the fact that it is a major financial hub of the country.
What I implied by regular is that electricity is definitely not intermittent; I agree that what I said was not accurate to the word, but my intention was to refute the 'intermittent' word. You have regular power in Pune most of the time, with load shedding during summers for an hour or less every day or for 6 hours in one day of the week depending on the region (I have lived in at least 2 regions of Pune for some time to know this). This too is planned and practically every resident knows the timings for the cut in their area.
I clarified in a later post that I am not claiming that things are perfect, but simply throwing money at them is not the solution. The electricity issue involves hundreds of factors, the primary one being acquiring land of farmers, re-routing rivers and potentially destroying some aspect of the ecosystem of the said river. Wind and solar power projects are way too expensive to even be an option right now. Despite that, India is 5th worldwide in wind power generation.
It is extremely annoying when practically every major achievement or goal set by India is welcome with cynical nonsense like the OP without any real knowledge of the ground situation.
What the above poster (the one that thinks he's "smart") and even article submitter is unaware of is the announcements of very large and relatively cheap neutrino experiments in India before (I think there was one about ten years ago). This is part of an ongoing effort by a group of experts in India.
Besides, the above poster could have applied the same argument to tell Newton to stop mucking about. There really is no way to reason with luddites that think we should do nothing but treat symptoms instead of trying to find out how things work.
California used to be the power supply joke of the developed world. How are things now?
INO, right?
I agree with you. this is similar to CWG allotment of funds(not corruption) like for Kaveri engine, moon mission instead of reliable engines for launch