Satellite vs Bread

Amidst the rollicking feku and pappu Diwali special political fireworks and the long drawn 5.000-piece ladi cracker like hype over the impending retirement of a cricket icon, the ISRO's giant leap in its Mars mission got an ephemeral Diwali rocket kind of attention.

Thankfully the lift-off was 'picture perfect' and drew lots of adulatory messages. The ISRO has come a long way from its modest beginning when many of its launch vehicles used to end up in Bay of Bengal. But there were still some naysayers wondering whether a country with sub-Saharan social indices should indulge in such ego trips.

But they were silenced by the 'Jai ho' types who said the mission cost ISRO $73 million and in rupee terms it works out to 450 crore. They did some kitna deti hai type number crunching and came up with an ‘earthier’ finding that in kilometre terms it works out to Rs 12/km - equivalent to auto fare. So a mission to Mars, after all, need not mean guilt trips over country's elusive victory over poverty!

The foreign press was busy comparing ISRO's frugal mission with that of NASA's, whose annual budget runs into billions of dollars. Space entrepreneurs may be smelling an outsourcing opportunity. However what caught my eye was British tabloid Daily Express headline 'India sends a spaceship to Mars after UK gives £280million in aid'. It had an air of a charity donor rueing that his money was not being spent to feed the poor, but instead the caretakers' have pocketed it to buy i-Phones!

In this eternal debate between satellites and bread, it will indeed be suicidal to keep the space programme in abeyance until the country wipes of its poverty. But it will be worthwhile to imbibe ISRO's values of frugality, ingenuity and industriousness to improve the country's social indices.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat