When 400 million people are living below the poverty line without a square meal a day, without shelter and clothes, when
about 500 million are
illiterate or near illiterate, India is aiming to reach the moon by 2020! What an irony! What a wrong way of setting up
priorities!
There is no prioritization here at all. In this modern world when almost everything about the moon is known to mankind and when almost the entire knowledge is available to all, is it necessary to spend billions on such an unnecessary trip? For the last five decades India has been bent on developing its space technology. Accordingly it sent up a number of rockets starting from atmosphere probes to satellite launchers. Many of them have nose-dived as soon as they lifted up. A few has risen to a few kilometers. There are stray successes too.
But is the whole thing needed? Is it a priority? When millions are crying for food, medical treatment, food and clothes, is it right to earmark and spend a certain percentage of the GDP on such redundant missions?
Why not we concentrate on the development of the basic infrastructure for agriculture, education and industry to lead our motherland and its citizens to prosperity?
Getting into the space club is not going to help our hungry millions in any way. It is not going to lift the prestige of India abroad. The powers that count, know that we are a poor country and that our priorities must be set in the right direction. This may balloon up our ego; but it will be a mere pretension based on falsehood.