As space travel becomes cool once again, some unlikely candidates are rising to the fore. India has just landed a spacecraft near the lunar south pole, to the cheers of millions of proud Indians. "India is now on the Moon. India has reached the south pole of the Moon - no other country has achieved that. We are witnessing history", gloats Prime Minister Modi.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission is ostensibly a scientific mission, to make thermal, seismic and mineralogical measurements. But, as much as anything, this is India in search of bragging rights, looking to establish itself among the first rank of countries (and maybe to establish leadership of the BRICS group of semi-developed countries).
Although many millions of Indians may be cheering the achievement, you have to think that many more millions - India has millions to burn - probably aren't. India (official India, that is) is proud of the way they are approaching their space program, slow but sure (setting aside the odd expensive disaster, like the failed Chandrayaan-2 moon-shot) and "on a shoestring", as one member of the moon mission team proudly asserts. Certainly, it is a much more fuel efficient approach than the Russian and American missions, which will save some money. But this is still a very expensive "shoestring".
So, my first thought was: Should a poor country like India really be throwing billions of dollars at what is arguably little more than a vanity project for Prime Minister Modi?
Well, that partly depends on whether you consider India a poor country. Certainly, in terms of overall GDP it is far from poor: India now has the fifth highest GDP in the world, after only USA, China, Japan and Germany. But it has a huge population, right? Yes, in GDP per capita, it comes in at a lowly 139th, well below other G20 countries, including even the equally populous China, and even below some African countries.
The popular image of India is of grinding, in-your-face poverty, and there is still plenty of that to see; the inequalities in the country are stark. But poverty is notoriously hard to define and measure, and India has made some surprising strides in addressing its underdevelopment. As it gradually enriches itself, India has allowed a surprising number to escape the direst levels of poverty (some 415 million people over the last 15 years, according to the UN's Multidimensional Poverty Index). But an estimated 374 million Indians still lack proper nutrition, sanitation, housing and cooking fuel, and 445 million lack both electricity and drinking water. These are unimaginably large numbers, and arguably India remains overall a very poor country.
On a measure of poverty defined as the percentage of the population living on less than certain minimum incomes, India comes out middle-of-the-pack, along with countries like Mexico, Philippines, Indonesia, etc. When poverty is defined as the percentage living below a country's own self-defined poverty line (a very subjective and variable measurement), India actually does little worse than many a European country.
Either way, India is probably no longer down among the poorest of the poor. So, who are we to say that they should not harbour pretensions to space travel? If it were Burundi or Somalia sending up rockets, we in the developed world might have a justifiable cause to be peeved. But India? Hate Prime Minister Narendra Modi as you might (and I do!), at this rate it may not be many more years before India is in a position to look down on many of the more developed states of the world. If they want to spend billions on moon-shots, we are not in any position to complain.
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