India has already achieved a considerable reputation as far as its scientific credentials are concerned. For instance, the Indian scientists and engineers do work in several countries of the world and send good amounts of remittances to the country. Even in the space research India’s reputation is satisfactory.
The recent Mars mission cost the nation approximately Rupees 500 crores. Even after 66 years of India’s Independence, the country has been lagging behind in several social, and economic indicators, though the successive governments do claim that the planning periods are successful and could achieve satisfactory results!. For instance, very poor or lack of sports infrastructure in several schools, colleges and even in the universities. The poor cannot afford to send their children to the private and corporate educational institutes. Thus the country’s enthusiastic children are deprived of sports facilities. This is evident in the poor performance of Indian sportsmen in the international sports events. Thus the lack of sportive spirit has been eroding the reputation of India!.
The country needs to spend a lot of money to improve the infrastructural facilities to attract the foreign and the domestic investors. The country has been facing huge shortage of power and thus the nation needs a considerable investments on research and development of power sector. There are many instances of foreign investors expressing dissatisfaction as far as the economy’s infrastructural facilities are concerned!. Thus India could not succeed in attracting foreign investment to the satisfactory levels. In some instances even the domestic investors do express their dissatisfaction about the policies, research, infrastructure, etc.
India has also been facing the menaces of higher infant mortality rates, maternal mortality rates, lower agricultural productivity rates, poverty, poor housing facilities, frequent crop failures, unbearable conditions in the government’s hospitals and educational institutes, usage of obsolete technology in some sectors of the economy, improper research facilities, depressing crisis managements mechanism, heavy dependence on imports of crude petroleum, gold,etc though the country is abundant in many natural resources!.
In this competitive era, the nation needs to spend money on improving the above mentioned serious issues and also on some of the most useful and productive sectors rather than spending on space missions for which the returns cannot be expected in the near future!.
The missions to space would be justified if the country had been a developed nation. India should have spent on enhancing the social and economic infrastructure to improve the investors confidence.