Misplaced Priorities
In India, there are hundreds of millions of people who have no identity cards, no birth certificates, no registration whatever with any level of government to prove they officially exist. That being said, with no documentation, proof of birth, residence or anything else there are no government social welfare programs that can be extended to them. No medical service, no assistance of any kind.They're on their own. In a country of over a billion people, a huge proportion of whom live in squalid misery.
Yet India is an emerging economic giant. And its people, enterprising, hard-working and highly skilled, are its future, representing its entry into the high-stakes field of international power-sharing with its expanding markets and trade and its export of many of its well-educated people to reward other parts of their world with their industry and cleverness.
For India, looking into the future, not only is the sky not the limiting factor in their aspirations, it represents a challenge they plan to meet and surmount. In 2008, India sent a successful probe to the moon that was able to detect evidence of water on the lunar surface, for the first time. The country is also in the planning stages of a rover mission to the moon, awaiting budgetary approval for a manned space mission to proceed.
There are plans to send a spacecraft to Mars next year on a scientific mission. "This spaceship to Mars will be a huge step for us in the area of science and technology", announced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh proudly. $82-million is marked for that mission, to help celebrate the 65th anniversary of India's independence from British imperialism. The spacecraft is intended to orbit Mars, collect data for use by the Indian Space Research Organization.
This is the country, two weeks earlier, where the electricity grids suffered a massive failure, leaving over 600-million people in the dark, representing the world's largest blackout. Everything was stopped in its tracks; manufacturing, rail traffic, lighting, hospitals. People were trapped in malfunctioning energy systems, unable to complete journeys, all manner of serious inconveniences that would stop all commerce and life if it occurred in more developed countries.
This is also a country that doesn't have universal hygiene and sewage systems, where more people defecate in public than use modern toilets. The electrical grid along with other civil infrastructure such as it is, requires upgrading. But according to Indian scientists - and obviously an opinion shared by government taking pride in such accomplishments - technology developed in the space program is responsible for valuable spinoffs.
Labels: Economy, India, Political Realities, Science, Space
posted by Pieface @ Friday, August 17, 2012
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