comparing india's poverty and social issues (in 21st century ffs) with usa's in 60s is like comparing apples and orangutans, congratulations is warranted but not patronizing
It wasn't meant as a quantitative statement, but you're making my point: if even the US of the 1960s (with its poverty and social issues) could afford to run a space program, how much more India of today?
Any criticism that India's space program resources are better spent elsewhere applied just the same to NASA (and in some ways still applies, given how backwards some parts and aspects of the US are): either people see value in such a program (then India is just fine) or they don't (then NASA should shut down immediately).
India’s poverty problems are leagues worse than the US in the 60’s. The 60’s were literally the decade of “sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll”. The post war economy meant the majority of people could afford to buy a house, car, and raise a family.
Meanwhile, a large portion of India doesn’t even have potable water.
you have no clue about india's problems, its like I talking about some central american country by just reading bits and pieces about it and rag picking facts to support on the interwebs with zero knowledge IRL, please stop
If you extrapolate developmental indicators historically (eg. the AHDI [0]), India in the 2010-2020 period is roughly comparable to the US in the 1950-1960 period.
None of this is surprising if you have an background with US economic history. Similar to India today, the US in the 1940-1970 period had an industrialized half (the North, Midwest, and Western US) and less industrialized hinterland (Appalachia, South, Southwest).
A major component of America's development was because of massive industrial projects targeting Appalachia, South, and Southwest America (eg. TVA, Space Grants, NASA Huntsville, Interstate Highways) along with the expansion of the social safety net (eg. Great Society, War Against Poverty, Civil Rights Act, LBJ's entire domestic policy)
India is seeing a similar transformation via large industrial projects and an expansion of the social safety net via welfare programs/yojanas/"freebies".
This can be seen starkly with Rajasthan (INC run) and Gujarat (BJP run). Both share a similar culture and had similarly laggard developmental statistics in 2000, yet by 2019 both have converged with each other [1], as well as at the developmental work occurring in both Uttar Pradesh (BJP run) and Odisha (non-BJP run).
