Dear Jean Dreze,
Your economic prowess on emerging markets like India is
unquestionable,but upon your comment -”I don’t
understand the importance of India sending a space
mission to Mars when half of its children are
undernourished and half of all Indian families have no
access to sanitation.” has deeply saddened me,
nonetheless ,you made a valid point for which I don't
have a direct answer .
I believe, that travelling to the Moon and eventually to
Mars and to other planets is a venture which we should
undertake now, and I even believe that this project, in the
long run, will contribute more to the solution of these
grave problems we are facing here on Earth than many
other potential projects of help which are debated and
discussed year after year, and which are so extremely
slow in yielding tangible results.I would like to relate
briefly a supposedly true story, which may help support
the argument ,which was narrated by Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger a
pioneer in rocket flight mechanics ,NASA, to a young lady
thousand miles across the sea somewhere in jungles of
Africa serving poor and undernourished children.
About 400 years ago, there lived a count in a small town
in Germany. He was one of the benign counts, and he
gave a large part of his income to the poor in his town.
This was much appreciated, because poverty was
abundant during medieval times, and there were epidemics
of the plague which ravaged the country frequently. One
day, the count met a strange man. He had a workbench
and little laboratory in his house, and he labored hard
during the daytime so that he could afford a few hours
every evening to work in his laboratory. He ground small
lenses from pieces of glass; he mounted the lenses in
tubes, and he used these gadgets to look at very small
objects. The count was particularly fascinated by the tiny
creatures that could be observed with the strong
magnification, and which he had never seen before. He
invited the man to move with his laboratory to the castle,
to become a member of the count’s household, and to
devote henceforth all his time to the development and
perfection of his optical gadgets as a special employee of
the count.
The townspeople, however, became angry when they
realized that the count was wasting his money, as they
thought, on a stunt without purpose. "We are suffering
from this plague," they said, "while he is paying that man
for a useless hobby!" But the count remained firm. "I give
you as much as I can afford," he said, "but I will also
support this man and his work, because I know that
someday something will come out of it!"
Indeed, something very good came out of this work, and
also out of similar work done by others at other places:
the microscope. It is well known that the microscope has
contributed more than any other invention to the progress
of medicine, and that the elimination of the plague and
many other contagious diseases from most parts of the
world is largely a result of studies which the microscope
made possible.
The count, by retaining some of his spending money for
research and discovery, contributed far more to the relief
of human suffering than he could have contributed by
giving all he could possibly spare to his plague-ridden
community.
As I described ,investing in Space research may not solve
the abject poverty and hunger problems ,but on the
contrary I believe that investing certain amount of tax
payer money in space program will reap benefits to
mankind.
Grave problems as poverty and hunger in India. Basic to
the hunger problem are two functions: the production of
food and the distribution of food. Food production by
agriculture, cattle ranching, ocean fishing and other large-
scale operations is efficient in some parts of the world,
but drastically deficient in our country. For example, large
areas of land could be utilized far better if efficient
methods of watershed control, fertilizer use, weather
forecasting, fertility assessment, plantation programming,
field selection, planting habits, and timing of cultivation,
crop survey and harvest planning were applied.
The best tool for the improvement of all these functions,
undoubtedly, is the artificial Earth satellite. Circling the
globe at a high altitude, it can screen wide areas of land
within a short time; it can observe and measure a large
variety of factors indicating the status and condition of
crops, soil, droughts, rainfall, snow cover, etc., and it can
radio this information to ground stations for appropriate
use. It has been estimated that even a modest system of
Earth satellites equipped with Earth resources, sensors,
working within a program for worldwide agricultural
improvements, will increase the yearly crops by an
equivalent of many billions of dollars.
Amidst curses and criticism from our political dignitaries
and ministers, ISRO is all set to launch one of its kind
Mars orbiter “Mangalyaan”,which is made in India by
Indians for India. My heartfelt wishes for the success of
Mars probe.
Jai Hind..
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