India has nukes, aircraft carriers and a space programme. It is not a poor country. It has poor people tho' because... It has nukes, aircraft carriers and a space programme. Priorities!
EDIT I assume this is being downvoted because it doesn't kowtow to the "big pharma is EEEVIL" groupthink, but it doesn't make it any less true.
It's not really that straightforward. Believe it or not, developing nukes, aircraft carriers, and a space programme is actually easier than lifting 600 million people and all their future generations out of poverty.
Take the above into perspective. High tech research, industry, etc. also need huge investment. What happens if we educate tons of our population and then they end up without jobs ? (this actually happened in Soviet states not so long ago..) Reduction of poverty and advances in technology have to happen in tandem. Besides, most of the amazing strides the US made in technology have origins in military/space exploration applications.
Reduction of poverty in India is definitely a priority. It's just one of the priorities. We have a $20 Billion educational plan coming into force soon (targets higher education as well as lower levels).
Every problem in India is a problem of scale and penetration. I hope people on HN will appreciate that.
Bill Gates certainly recently understood that when he decided to join the fight against polio.
That is also true, but it is a matter of perspective. I am writing this from the UK where we don't have aircraft carriers or indigenous launch capability anymore. There is a time for national prestige but there is also a time to be pragmatic about what a nation can actually afford.
It's not because of national prestige (except the space program). The UK doesn't have any of those things because they have big daddy USA protecting them if the need arises.
India does not have anyone to protect her against China or Pakistan. In fact, China has been phenomenally increasing it's naval concentration in the Indian ocean. India has failed to grow an indigenous military industry (except for nukes and some other stuff..) and this has resulted in India becoming the largest purchaser of weapons worldwide. Definitely not a title I am proud of.
Geopolitics is complex. It could be argued that had the US/UK not 'enabled' Pakistan back in the day we wouldn't have this problem today. It was good for western nations to have an ally in this region against Russia and thus Afghanistan during the cold war era.
But I'd like to add. On the subject of our space program. Our president a few terms ago was a fisherman's son (and he was from a very poor family..) who eventually went on to become a rocket scientist and then later the president of the country.
We are working on poverty, a one sided perspective on such a complex issue doesn't do it justice. We need the space program as much as we need to improve food distribution. And we have enough people to work on many problems simultaneously.
I can understand that as someone from the UK you are upset because your government insists on giving aid to India. But the aid issue is politicized greatly. India has said several times that we do not want the aid but political forces in both countries have resulted in the continuation of aid. I can see how the UK media might spin that into 'Oh, we give them aid and they make missiles'. All I can say to that is, it's not true. I'd encourage anyone to research this more to arrive at the real facts. We don't make nukes with aid money.
> I am writing this from the UK where we don't have aircraft carriers or indigenous launch capability anymore.
What are you talking about? The reason you're being downvoted is that trite, inaccurate Daily Mail-ish opinions are just dumb.
The UK doesn't have aircraft carriers because it fucked up the decommissioning / commissioning cycle. HMS Queen Elizabeth will be operational in 2020 [1]. You seem to be implying that a choice has been made to no longer have aircraft carriers in order to prioritise welfare.
And what is Trident if it's not "indigenous launch capability"? When did the UK ever possess land based missile capability?
The UK gave up on ground based launchers as they were far too vulnerable - although the first missile silo designs were actually done for the Blue Streak missile:
Show me some Daily Mail links then boy, because I haven't read them. In fact if I were going to guess what paper said "no nukes" I'd say the Grauniad. India's policy of "guns not butter" cannot be justified given the very real issues facing their population.
What is the Queen Elizabeth? I'm glad you asked. It's a carrier that will come into service at some point in the future and we could not afford to keep a carrier capability going in the meantime. FACT. It's a class of 2 ships, one of which will be mothballed as soon as it is built as we cannot afford to operate it. FACT. The project is ongoing because penalty clauses mean it would cost too much to cancel it. FACT. The aircraft that will operate from it are the second choice as we couldn't afford to fit catapults. FACT.
It's not like India doesn't need its military. Its relationship with Pakistan pretty much demands it. Plus, now they have contested territory with China as well.
Sigh. I don't know whether you're being sarcastic. You're focusing on a country when we should be thinking about individuals. What I see is a population set that is currently excluded from survival due to the pricing of certain chemicals. This population set exists both in India and in our own backyard. There are 2 ways we can get access to a solution for that population set. One, allow generics to compete after a certain period. This tends to be natural, since reverse engineering a drug takes some time. During that time, big pharma can price the drug to maximize profit, after that, they have to compete better if they want to hold on to that profit.
EDIT I assume this is being downvoted because it doesn't kowtow to the "big pharma is EEEVIL" groupthink, but it doesn't make it any less true.