It always irks me when people make such armchair-social-economist claims (which IMO, are ultimately only populism driven).
As to ISRO: you've made me feel proud to be an Indian! Ad Astra!!!
I'm "sort of" Indian... by way of marriage ;)
I get really excited when rockets go up, by generally spending too much time on telemetry [1]. I have been excited about this mission as well; admittedly, I can't help but feel a little emotional about it.
I think your sentiment will be echoed across India, in the sense that it brings science, technology and astro-dynamics even further to the forefront. It will kindle a fire in young people to look even more toward understanding and exploring these fields.
Regarding the mission, I thought it was interesting how Amul (a dairy company in India) used their "Amul Baby" in this little congratulatory ad [2]. The words are transliterated from Hindi. It basically translates to, "ISRO eat! This Mars thing is pretty cool!" इसरो खाओ! यह चीज़ बड़ी है मस्त मार्स! (Native speakers: please forgive me if I'm not quite right, and correct me if so.)
Along those lines, the kid in me wishes we could see rockets showing up on cereal boxes, with blazing exhaust plumes, launch telemetry and explanations of how events must be planned in order to reach their precise window of opportunity in space.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609781
[2] http://s4.firstpost.in/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/amul-mars....
Edit: Thank you viksit and vkjsub for the linguistic details. I didn't realize the "pun" with regard to इसरो and इसे रोज़ खाओ until it was explained!
"ISE ROZ KHAO"
That's a pun on ISRO as well as the phrase "Ise Roz", which means "This daily". Khao means "To eat". Ultimately - it translates to "Eat this daily".
"Yeh cheez badi hai mast mars" is actually another reference to not just the term "cheese", which is of course its bread and butter business (no pun intended), but also the fact that those are the lyrics to a very suggestive, infamous and controversial song from the early 90s which compared to the attention 'Twerking'received a couple of years ago.
They've achieved something incredibly difficult, on an amazing budget, and best of all: we're gonna get science out of it.