Slashdot Mirror
Space Vs. Poverty Debate In India
MarkWhittington writes "Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was obliged recently to defend his country's space program, which involves the spending of billions of rupees when India still has a large number of people living in abject poverty. The debate raging in India parallels a similar one that has simmered in the United States for decades."
Space exploration vs poverty relief always comes up, but IMHO it's a red herring. As big as space budgets sound, at the national scale they're generally a pittance - much smaller than is already spent on poverty assistance or any of a great range of things. Heck, in the US we spend less on the space program than we spend on oil exploration subsidies to highly profitable businesses.
Personally, I wonder if it's "convenient misdirection," holding up the space exploration budget as "potentially wasteful" in order to keep the general populace from looking in more wasteful places. In addition there doesn't tend to be a wealthy, powerful champion for the space program these days. The contractors who get rich on the space program also get rich on defense programs - one of those possibly more wasteful places - defense programs are easier to defend.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Item 1: The poor in India aren't poor due to overtaxation.
Item 2: India's government is in better shape than most in Asia but there's still a fair level of corruption.
Item 3: If the corruption were cleaned up and civil institutions were impartial then the working poor could improve their situations in just a generation or two.
Item 4: The amount of money spent on the space program is pretty negligible in the big scheme of things. At least it gives the country a boost in the international ranking of such things and showcases the smart people in India which can have a lot of intangible benefit.