The Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Vikram Doraiswami, has comprehensively countered some of the negative reactions from sections of the British media after India became the first country to land on the Moon’s south pole.
Writing in ‘The Daily Telegraph’ this week, the senior diplomat addressed the misplaced notion that somehow foreign aid is being “wasted” by India by conducting space explorations such as its successful Chandrayaan-3 mission. Here are some key excerpts from that insightful column…
India’s third moon-shot mission – Chandrayaan-3 – touched down on the moon’s south pole last week, landing not just a rover, but also human dreams collected over the ages. Space exploration inspires us because it is genuinely exciting to see mankind’s boundaries being extended. And so the excitement in India, as well as the outpouring of goodwill from thousands in the UK – including dignitaries speaking for His Majesty’s Government – has been hugely heartwarming.
And yet, there has been carping in influential media outlets about why the UK’s aid recipients still include India, or worse, that a developing country such as India “wastes” money on space. This is surprising, not least because this “aid” is not at India’s request. Nor is any going to the Indian state, either…
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As to “wasting” money on space research: our space programme is a value-for-money proposition. Put it this way: the current moon mission had a programme budget of $75 million. Even if there are overruns, it is well below what was spent on the Hollywood film ‘Avengers: Endgame’, which reportedly had a budget of $356 million.
Our space programme also delivers hugely valuable developmental services. As Prime Minister Modi said at our space headquarters in Bengaluru on August 26, more than space exploration, data from the space programme has been directly used by farmers, fishing communities, water departments, meteorologists, and now for the design and monitoring of infrastructure projects. Our indigenously built satellites have provided India with state-of-the-art remote sensing services for all these needs, as well as communications support for education and healthcare, well before the internet became ubiquitous.
And so to answer why we spend on space “instead” of poverty alleviation, it might surprise some to know that we can actually walk while chewing gum. Here’s how: our space programme has launched 389 satellites, earning some £320 million over the past nine years. While space earns revenue and saves us money, we have also managed to lift more than 450 million people out of multidimensional poverty since 2006.
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In certifying this, the UN Development Programme noted that, in this same period, incidence of poverty fell from 55 per cent of the population to 16 per cent; the proportion of people with lack of access to electricity fell from 24 to 2 per cent; sanitation deprivation fell from 50 to 11 per cent; and lack of potable water access fell from 16 to 3 per cent. In short, deprivation rates fell in every sector, and in every region…
