I came across a post on twitter that was posted by the BBC News. The post was about India becoming the 1st country to land on the south pole of the moon and the 4th to land on the moon.
All the comments from the British were almost the same saying one of these two things:
1. The government of India and ISRO have achieved this due to the aid sent by the United Kingdom.
2. Why is the government of India wasting their money on these projects if most people in the country still suffer from poverty.
I would like to discuss about these points below. Your comments about thoughts on the matter and/or comments about a difference in opinion are welcome.
Firstly, the aid by UK to India was meant to have stopped in 2015. In 2012 then Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, even described Britain’s annual £280 Million aid to India as “Peanuts”. In 2017 the government of India stated it gave more foreign aid to countries than it received. This proves that India didn’t need the aid and still doesn’t. However, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact calculated that UK provided aroud £2.3 Billion to India from 2016 to 2021. This however are investments that were made in India disguised as an aid. This figure includes £441 million in bilateral aid, £129 million in development investment via the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), £749 million of aid through multilateral organisations and £1 billion in investments through British International Investment (BII).The UK’s aid to India is now very different to that provided a decade ago. The UK no longer offers financial support to the government, nor does it fund direct poverty reduction.
Coming to the second point, around 10% of the Indian population lives under the international poverty line. I agree that the funds that go to space exploration should go to the uplifting of the poor. However, just because ISRO is a government organization doesn’t mean that it is a money wasting machine that doesn’t give any returns. The government doesn’t burn the tax player’s money while investing in ISRO. ISRO has been a profitable organization for years now by launching satellites for different nations like the USA, Germany, Canada and the UK.
Twitter Post by BBC News – https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1694327781243371916?t=QdTpeu-NS8AklGUMUD78Xw&s=19
by pande_vatsal
6 comments
If you are going to state that the £2.3 Billion to India from 2016 to 2021 was in fact, investments disguised as aid you should maybe elaborate otherwise its just your claims versus the claims of people on Twitter.
PS quoting Pranab Mukherjee dismissing £280 million of our money as “peanuts” as some form of proof is not doing your position any good .
For point 2, some people always complain about government projects like this, the yanks do it against NASA for example. Like you say they fail to realise that most of the cost of the project is funnelled into the economy, it’s not blasted into space to be lost forever, and money spent on science is never ‘wasted’ even if doesn’t show immediate returns.
Investing in space exploration almost always includes investing in engineering and science, which is usually a great way to uplift the economy of a nation. It’s a fantastic achievement for India to have landed on the moon.
Like you said, space technology can be a revenue maker too, and getting to the moon is far more impressive than launching stuff just into earth orbit. Who knows what they can make from this achievement.
Well done India!
Any space program is a huge waste of money, with the exception of satellites for coms and GPS.
They are just jealous because UK doesn’t have a a rover of its own on moon yet.
Please give back the Kohinoor, it doesn’t belong to UK.
First I’d like to wonder why you are trusting the first replies to twitter posted articles are anything but bots trying to push an agenda?