India's First-Ever Indigenous Space Shuttle Launched Successfully

Do you seriously think that receiving aid makes the country so beholden to foreigners that it can’t set its own national priorities anymore?

The total foreign aid received by India is less than 0.1% of its GDP. If it all stopped tomorrow, India would hardly notice the change. The UK used to be the biggest donor until last year, when they finally stopped all aid. India had been asking them to stop for a decade before that.

Did you know that none of the foreign aid actually goes to the Indian government? Like, not a single penny. Nil. Nada. It’s channeled either through international organizations such as the WHO or UNESCO, or through private NGO’s owned and run by foreigners. Did you know that India is in the process of banning some of these NGO’s because they use the aid as a tool to gain access to the country, but their activities are more political than charitable? One NGO got caught recently for fixing their books, lying about moving cash around the country. Another got slapped by courts for riling up anti-GMO sentiment, paying crowds to burn the fields of farmers who plant GMO crops. Another spent 10 fucking million dollars digging in Gujarat, hoping to find mass graves because they were convinced the government was lying about the Gujarat riots. They found nothing, but they sure got a lot of anti-India mileage out of the western press while they were looking. If that’s how aid work, fuck aid.

I’m sure other people have already told you that India’s space program actually earns money for the country through the Antrix subsidiary, which sells satellite launches to other countries. Just the cost savings on launching India’s own satellites rather than paying other countries to launch them would account for a good fraction of ISRO’s budget. Not to mention the countless other services they provide, from weather forecasting to soil monitoring for farmers, to mineral mapping to communications. Did you know India provides some of the cheapest cell phone rates in the world to its citizens, because of ISRO satellites? All stuff that benefits Indian citizens, for a relatively pathetic amount of cash.

You should get off your high horse. Out of a billion plus Indians, there are plenty smarter than you, who know much more about what benefits their country and how they ought to be spending resources.

/r/worldnews Thread Parent Link - ndtv.com