India is renowned as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and is even considered to be at the forefront of development. But what we see when we walk through the streets between the tall shiny buildings, or even when we are waiting for the traffic light to change to green in our cars, seems to contradict this statement in many ways. Our country is moving one step forward but it forgets to look at what it is leaving behind.
The most logical solution that has been agreed upon by a number of intellectuals is the generation of employment, which would help poverty-stricken people to earn a wage that would help accommodate their basic needs. But this method has created another pressing problem: governments wish to introduce more opportunities for employment but fall short due to lack of funds.
The Indian budget has always been a victim to a considerable fiscal deficit, which often serves as an adversary to a number of realistically beneficial the government plans in order to help the public. The 2019 Union Budget announced a whooping sum of INR 11,586 crore (USD 1.6 billion) to be allocated to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Over the years, ISRO has taken Indian space exploration forward and has every Indian pride over it, but if such a significant amount of the budget was not allocated to journeying beyond the stars, there could be a further success in reducing poverty.
In economics, we learn that the most inherent problem faced by an economy is the problem of choice, which arises due to the fact that resources have alternative uses; a producer needs to choose what he/she will use the present resource to produce. In this case, the producer is the government, and the government has been presented with an opportunity cost of human development when they choose to invest their funds in space exploration. The government should finish its prevalent priorities before they form new ones. This greed for development is proving very costly. These funds allocated to space research can be utilized for feeding the considerable part of the Indian population that starves for fortnights. The funds can help build homes and shelters for those who sleep under bridges and even go to the lengths of getting arrested so that they can sleep with a roof protecting their heads.
We relish the wonders that lie among the twinkling stars that cover the expanse of this universe. But the suffering we witness outside the walls of a planetarium and the bubble that is space should coax us to reject space travel.. Discovering the texture of the soil on the moon will not level up to the infertility of the soil in some regions that lead the farmers of those regions to starve for fortnights. Mahatma Gandhi, the father of my nation, said, “Means are ends in the making”; the resources that are present at our disposal are limited, and the instances where we are using them, it all comes down to a matter of waste.
Space travel has also failed much more than it has been successful, and these failed attempts have cost a significant amount of funds that could be spent on other efforts. We should lead expeditions to the world beyond when the world around us is prospering. Finding a way to live on Mars is a tertiary goal when people are not being able to live on Earth itself. We know that humans exist, so why are we pondering over the existence of the supposed creatures that live in space?
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