There are a couple of dead comments that, essentially, made the same argument that I've heard here in Scotland when there was talk of a Space Port being set up: why are you wasting money on this when there are problems with poverty etc right here at home.

The response to those arguments, at least here, is simple enough. There are currently about 7000 jobs in the Scottish space industry and in the last two years Glasgow has built more satellites than any other city in Europe. Yet, we have to go to another country to get these satellites launched!

And I suppose the choice of phrase, "space industry", is what makes the difference. It can seem reasonable to say, "this country shouldn't have a space program" but it sounds far less defensible to argue, "this country shouldn't have a space industry".

And so with India. This particular launch was for the Indian government, but the article mentions the previous record-breaking launch of 104 satellites at once. Of those, 88 were for a company called Planet, "a US private imaging company". And the others were commercial launches for various other countries.

Since the space industry is rapidly growing with huge commercial potential, it seems ludicrous to argue that you shouldn't be developing it. It would be like someone 20 years ago arguing that you shouldn't be developing Internet connections when you had poverty issues to deal with. How exactly will avoiding hi-tech industry help that in any way?