Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavs | Hacker News Reader

Every time India space programs discussion comes out a group of people will bring up India's poverty and other problem that should be fixed instead of investing on space program.

I used to be one of those guys (I am from Bangladesh), then I looked at the actual cost of this space program and realized that its not a lot of money (~$70 Million) even by India's standard. For example, in india's domestic cricket tournament (IPL) one of their franchise was sold for $370 million.

I also don't buy the wholesale "you shouldn't do x, unless y is achieved/fixed" argument. It might apply to some instances, for example india defense budget is about $46 billion, a big portion of it could have been certainly spent to alleviate the living condition of poor Indians in general. But most of the problem in India and other south-east asian countries are corruption and inefficiencies, not (always) lack of funds.

View on HN

The irony of those complaints is that programs such as this one have a tremendous positive impact on industry and the economy. Think about what happens when you have a group of engineers and technicians who successfully build, launch, and operate a Mars orbiter. What sort of skills and experience do they acquire, what sort of impact do they have on the industrial base? What do they go on to do later in life?

And think about the proof of Indian engineering and manufacturing that this sort of mission provides. How much more likely are people to buy satellites or launch services from India? Or Indian made aircraft? Or even just consumer goods?

R&D spending often has a multi-fold positive impact on the economy, and I think that is likely to apply for this mission.

Still, it would make a difference in those people lives, even fighting corruption.

Corruption often comes hand-in-hand with poverty.

Speaking from experience as someone that has already traveled quite a bit around the world.

One of the bigger questions is international aid.

"Since 2007 India has been the world's largest recipient of recorded remittances from abroad. In 2010 these inflows were worth $54bn (£35bn). UK foreign direct investment in India is considerable, reaching £1.8bn in the same year."

You can't really on the one hand claim your country is terribly poor, and needs handouts from other nations, and on the other play at being spacemen.

Thankfully the UK will stop sending foreign aid to India in 2015.

It reminds me of the people on state benefits that think a good use of their money is a 52" plasma tv.

On the other hand, I think the stopping of state aid to a country should be celebrated as a positive thing - a "graduation", if you like.

I don't know anything about UK investment in India but remittances are not international aid, that is money earned by foreign workers.

Yes apologies. I copy and pasted the wrong bit from a badly written gruaniad article.

The point stands though. Whether it's billions or millions, it's still a ton of money which we shouldn't be giving them in aid.

Maybe, just maybe, the British should not have colonized and looted India and parts of Asia and Africa for 300 years?

So you believe that the current British, should be paying money for crimes committed by their ancestors?

Personally, I don't think people should pay for other peoples mistakes, even if they happen to be born in the same country.

What if those people are still benefiting from other people's sins? If the current British don't want to pay maybe they can dispose of the ill-gotten gains i.e the country estates paid for by black slaves, the textile fortunes paid for by exploited Indian cotton farmers, the Kohinoor diamond in the Crown jewels etc.

Well it was clear from WW2 records that British were not willing to pay India even for the support India gave to them during the war. They only relented in the face of American pressure. Records also show that much of the 'development' in India such as railways was made practicable by Indian capital and labor, while the rewards of it all went directly to finance the Industrial Revolution in the west. The 'why' of this mindset of take-take only became clear to me when I followed events after the British losses of American colonies.

When any side feels the dominant emotion of 'loss', it makes it do selfish things to avoid future losses. But that extracts more losses from the other side and so the cycle can continue.

In the light of all that history, which current Indians being on the receiving side remember more than the British, any help the British give to India is at least perceived by India in a positive way.

As to the extent of the monetary help - its effect is limited by the ability of the recipient to absorb it. For analogy, YC reduced the investment into each startup down from $150k as it made things worse, not better.

without British rule India would be an even bigger shit hole.

^this gentlemen is how you openly admit your bigotry.

If you haven't seen it, I'd recommend watching "An idiot abroad". It's a great travel show with Karl Pilkington. He goes to foreign lands and tells it how it is.

bigotry? i don't think you understand what that word means.

According to this article http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/15/a-global-shift-in-... foreign aid to India from UK amounts only to 280 million GBP; and something the Indian government is not at all keen in receiving in the first place!

Remittances are money that Indians working abroad sent back to India. Is that aid??? And the quote again talks about "foreign direct investments". FDI. Does that read aid?

Where are you quoting that from? It is not good form to give a quote without a link. And you make a quote and come to a conclusion about aid. Btw, the UK aid to India is £280m.

Edit - Probably this one - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/18/uk-aid-india

Read the article again properly.

Thanks, I copy and pasted the wrong bit. But the point stands.

No sir, are you complaining about the #280 million aid to India? That's a pittance to the 1.8 trillion dollar and growing economy India is. Sure there are poor people. But we are a growing economy and have a greater need for technology than U.K has. That was always our ticket to prosperity. Who knows, this might open up an Indian empire in the future solar system economy :-)

Yes I am complaining about the £280m send to India. There are a lot of other causes closer to home that would benefit greatly from it.

It is exactly that a country like India, with a growing population, that needs to invest in space exploration. We are going to inhabit other planets if we are to continue our species.

> You can't really on the one hand claim your country is terribly poor, and needs handouts from other nations, and on the other play at being spacemen.

... and you can't really post on HN without showing some basic common sense.

FYI: "International remittances" is NOT foreign aid. It is money sent to India by Indians working abroad.

Foreign direct investment is NOT foreign aid. It is non-Indians buying Indian stocks.

Please read up on these before you criticize. Your bigotry is too obvious.

BTW: India has asked UK to stop the aid. Plus, any aid that UK does send should be considered a payment for all the stuff they looted from India (and the Indian lives lost fighting for UK in WW2).

"Thankfully the UK will stop sending foreign aid to India in 2015". You seem to have a problem with this simple wish but perhaps you can explain what it is? Do you think aid should continue (in spite of India's request) or that the UK should stop. BTW we can read negatives without capitalization.

Many countries including Britain seem to me to get their priorities wrong. India certainly does when one sees the wretched and disgusting (not strong enough!) way in which so many people are forced to live by being deprived of services which have perforce to be supplied by the state.

> You seem to have a problem with this simple wish but perhaps you can explain what it is?

My problem is with the assumption that this miniscule amount of "aid" is somehow significant.

Do realize that when countries give "aid", it is often more for domestic reasons. This "aid" comes with all sorts of strings attached, and benefits the donor country more than the recipient.

Case in point: US military aid to Israel comes right back to the US in the form of weapons purchases from Lockheed, Grumman, Boeing, etc. In other countries, donor countries stipulate that the aid be used to purchase things from the donor country only; or expensive "consultants" are hired to manage the aid, depriving any benefit to the recipient.

As stated elsewhere, foreign aid from the UK to india is £280m. But I'm glad that's such a miniscule amount to you.

India's budget for this year is ~ $270B. So this "aid" from Britain (most of which would be absorbed by British charities buying British goods and hiring British consultants anyways) amounts to about 0.1% of the budget. Sounds pretty miniscule to me; and in terms of impact, would have roughly the same effect as a flea jumping on an elephant.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Union_budget_of_India

UK's aid is more to massage UK's ego and keep your british raj hangover going than to help India. A rocket launch in 60s and then a nuclear test in 74 should have taught you what importance India gives to this aid. Even our parliamentarians are on record that we don't need it. But well...

Besides, I suspect that except in cases of natural disasters, most aid in general is a not-so-subtle bribe to buy influence. We can see front-pages demonstration of these facts quite often, all you have to do is follow the itinerary of John Kerry.....

As for remittance, I think you have misunderstood the meaning of the word. So let's ignore that part of your outburst.

Worth noting that there is a lot of investment from India to here in the UK:

"More Indian investment comes to the UK than to the rest of the EU combined. There are over 900 Indian companies in the UK, with Tata being the largest manufacturing employer across the whole country."

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/danny-alexander-visits-in...

Tata Motors also owns Jaguar and Land Rover...

I need to start making a note of the assholes on HN so I can avoid them in future.

As everyone has already mentioned, remittance is not international aid. This is very weak. Last time I checked, India asked UK to stop giving them aid (I could be wrong).

> You can't really on the one hand claim your country is terribly poor, and needs handouts from other nations, and on the other play at being spacemen.

Even if India needed/wanted international aid (see other comments) we are talking about investing 1/1000 of that money into giving jobs to skilled engineers and scientists (and others). Helping poor countries doesn't mean just feeding poor people, it means to give the possibility for development.

I find very offensive treating international aids as if recipients are helpless beggars that deserve that should be grateful and stay put.

I believe this is the bigger question about international aid. It should enable development, not increase assistentialism.

There are similar parallels with internal welfare systems in many countries. Help shouldn't be cut off as soon as someone reaches the limit of poverty, because there is little incentive to cross that barrier.

Can you guess which country is the 6th highest in remittances?

France.

Do you want to guess what number 8 is? Germany. Are these poor countries? Are remittances "international aid"? No, not necessarily. They're just an example of extended families spread out across different countries sending different parts of the family money. Should we begrudge France or Germany their remittances? Or their space programs?

[transcript]:"how dare you, little people, to dream, and make the things we, the superior ones, were incompetent to do?"

I wish India the best in its effort to the future and a better life to all of their people. It by their own big dreams and achievements they will create a great and shining civilization (they already has)

Let your light shine through the world, and dont listen to the bullies; it's pure envy

Reply on news.ycombinator.com