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Comment by quonn | Hacker News Reader

Well, if you are still at the receiving end of much international support, if millions of your people are still dying of hunger ... Then, maybe, a mars mission and now this should not be one of your priorities.

For example, Germany does not have a mars mission. But if you're Indian, you can apply to many _German_ government programs to do come here any study for free. While _your_ government wastes your money on hunting neutrinos.

This is a very unfortunate state of affairs.

edit: I will say this, whether HN wants to hear it nor not. I'm happy to spend some karma. :)

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"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

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How do you expect Indian Physicists to get employment by building toilets ? Or by going around with begging bowls to Germany and collect some food. Your argument is so much racist in multitude of ways, why the heck there is Royal Society of Science when there was poverty in London in 1800s. May be India has no right to build labs till all Indians are fed ? FYI, India produces more grain than it consumes the problem is logistical, economical and political. There is no wide spread hunger deaths, even though abject poverty is a reality. Having a mars program or science lab is not stopping India from resolving these issues. Please just go away, when you have no idea what you are talking about. There are 47 million people on food stamps in america and 1 in 3 children in US go hungry at night. So may be we should close NASA and Stanford and wait till this problem is resolved.

Correction: My 1 in 3 was based on ads of North Texas food bank, apparently it is incorrect. As others replied it is close to 1 in 5.

>in america and 1 in 3 children in US go hungry at night

Really. I would love to see your source for that.

Possibly closer to 20%. http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hu...

But the point still stands: implying "India has to get its house in order, but America's solved enough problems to be morally justified pursuing the deeper mysteries of the universe" is a pretty arbitrary drawing of a line in the sand.

think its more like 1 in 5 according to [1]

[1]: http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hu...

20% in 37 states are food insecure, which apparently is some new term to do with nutritional requirements, I assume that means they are eating junk food. Pretending children are starving in the US makes India look better but is dishonest.

> There is no wide spread hunger deaths

Here is the first Google result I got:

"India's hunger 'shame': 3,000 children die every day, despite economic growth".

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/16/10424930-india...

Let's say you have $10, you can feed yourself for $10 or you can go hungry today and invest that $10 for $20 back tomorrow... tomorrow, you can feed yourself and invest the rest for more back the next day.

Your vision lacks forethought. Tomorrow you can feed many times more people with the yield from today's investment than you could today if you didn't invest.

That would be great if detecting neutrinos was related to India's food industry.

That's a sick comment, just like the top one in this thread. You would probably call investing anything in studying Einstein's General theory of Relativity as a waste of money for Indians as well right? That serves to make accurate GPSs, which is an industry in itself, generating employment. Should India wait until feeding the last hungry before making ANY technological progress? Which part of world you are living in?

Engineers often focus on problems they can see. If they were at CERN they would not see India's problems, they would be a world away. Cool things like this are doubly useful in places where there is great need, as they attract bright people like lightbulbs attract moths.

correct me if i'm wrong, but this is what you are saying "poor countries should spend money on feeding the poor instead of funding fancy science projects"

well allow me to retort, having science projects trying to answer some of the biggest un-answered scientific questions would help with the following: 1. Retention of Talent: would enable physists to stay in india rather than immigrate elsewhere. 2. Boosts Economy: Expenditure as salary stays within the country and can help boost economy. 3. Innovation : innovation in advanced fields of physicts/space exploration can help develop new consumer technologies. 3. would enable governments to get international fame/credibility and quite possibly a seat at the big boy table.

Now you might wonder is this worth it, well I believe its worth spending a fraction of the GDP to fund such projects. Its not like all the funding given to such projects can solve the various poverty related problems the country faces.

First, thank you for this reasonable response.

To address our points: 1) Maybe. But probably you can retain many good scientists when doing projects that will contribute the GDP eventually. 2) Sounds plausible. 3) It can, but India fails to develop even basic technology at scale in decent quality. I guess I will get downvoted again, but this is simply a fact. I have lived in India for a year. I know. 4) I guess that is the purpose. It might also get foreign governments to reconsider their foreign aid, perhaps rightly so.

If India would be where China is now, I would understand all this. But they aren't. Not even close. Not even in 20 years will they be close. And they are not, because they don't deal with the important issues _first_.

>Well, if you are still at the receiving end of much international support, if millions of your people are still dying of hunger ... Then, maybe, a mars mission and now this should not be one of your priorities.

man, your sentiment and logic is understandable. Yet, do you seriously think that by dropping Mars mission India would have changed anything in the plight of the poor people there? There still would be the same poor and no Mars mission.

The Mars mission serves enlightenment and progress and those are the most effective things which improve society and the lives of poor in particular (wrt. enlightenment for example - judging by the price tab, India's Mars mission didn't have any corruption or money mismanagement to speak of which on its own is a great achievement on par with developed Western countries and well ahead of countries like Russia or China)

That Germany doesn't pull its weight in space reflects badly on Germany, not India. Germany should shape up.

Societal evolution is not that simple

http://www.santafe.edu/research/themes/human-behavior-instit...

> But if you're Indian, you can apply to many _German_ government programs to do come here any study for free. While _your_ government wastes your money on hunting neutrinos.

This has nothing to do with actions of the Indian Government. If you don't want the German Government to run programs for international students, feel free to appeal to them.

Why should I? I think it's a good idea to run these programs.

You're spending your karma in the wrong place.

Your logic is simplistic: those people don't have money, so they shouldn't be spending it on things I consider frivolous (for someone in their situation).

You're failing to consider the following:

1. How does a poor country become rich? Why by developing its science and technology, of course (well technically, by becoming more productive, but you know what I'm saying). If we don't develop our own science and tech, we're going to be relegated to manufacturing textiles and outsourced software projects pretty much forever. Doing those things hasn't eliminated hunger so far, so why expect anything different in the future?

2. How much aid does India really receive? According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign_ai...) it ranked 18th on the list in 2012. Sounds high, until you consider that the normally-considered-developed countries of Israel and Turkey are 4th and 5th on the list. On a per-capita basis, I'm willing to bet it is even lower

3. How much do you really know about how the Indian government spends its money? Did you know we spend about 38 times as much on our armed forces as our space agency? Like any other large government, we waste money on some areas and allocate and spend it wisely in others. Research that produces results is never a waste and many Indian government agencies (ISRO and DRDO) have a solid track record in this regard.

4. There are immediate benefits to science and tech spending to even poor Indians. For example Oceansat-2, a remote sensing satellite launched by ISRO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceansat-2). Per Wikipedia, it's used for coastal zone planning and identification of fishing areas, among other things. Other satellites provide weather information, which again is used by fishermen, many of whom are poor. Not to mention all the spin-off technology from defense and other research (handwaving, but I can't be bothered to look up citations right now). EDIT: ISRO also _makes_ money by taking on satellite launching contracts. Their commercial arm Antrix Corp made $33m profit in 2013-2014 (if I'm doing the conversion right: http://www.antrix.gov.in/pdf/ANNUAL_REPORT_2013_2014_English...)

5. Like another commenter has mentioned elsewhere, we produce surplus food. The reason it doesn't get to all the hungry people who need it is pretty much the same reason people go hungry in developed countries: market failures and government aid not reaching the right people at the right time. These aren't things that are solved by diverting money away from research (unless it's to hand out straight cash to poor people, I guess, which almost no country does).

There's always a rash of commenters saying "feed your hungry" whenever they read a story about India doing science. I hope I've reduced their numbers by one at least.

Well, let me try to convince you of the futility of trying to convince other people to change their views.... oh wait... :)

Anyways, the last point, handing cash out to people, will essentially not work for the exact same reason: logistics. Who will do the handing out? The same agencies that are supposed to give grains at subsidized rates? How well is that working?

> Anyways, the last point, handing cash out to people, will essentially not work for the exact same reason: logistics.

Not that I disagree with the broader point, but a number of countries have had electronic benefit transfers for years (possibly decades). Perhaps this wasn't feasible on the scale of India in the past - I don't know - but it is much more feasible now with the widespread use of mobile phones. There is probably already an Indian equivalent to the m-pesa mobile-based money transfer system in eastern Africa.

There is a growing body of evidence supporting the effectiveness of direct, "cash"-based transfers in reducing poverty, from Joia Mukherjee (MIT Poverty Lab) and others. EBT and mobile transfers have the added benefit of significantly reducing opportunities for graft.

Israel and Turkey are on that list, because the US spends most of their foreign aid on them (Not sure about Turkey, it used to be Egypt.). This is for political reasons, not because those countries are in a bad shape.

> Did you know we spend about 38 times as much on our armed forces as our space agency?

I know India spends a lot on defense, which is just as questionable.

Egypt is also ranked above India on the list but they can also be classed as "developing".

I would argue that even our defense spending is less questionable than many developed countries. We have two hostile neighbors with whom we've fought 5 wars (give or take) since 1947, none of which (from the history books I know) we initiated (well maybe 1). Not a justification, but the war-wariness (deliberately spelled that way) is understandable.

The point I wanted to make is "feed your hungry" is a lazy and uninformed position to take when you hear about India doing science. If you read about $1000 toilet seats, by all means, fire away.

But I never commented on India doing science. I commented on them spending on specific high-cost projects that are unlikely to have a positive economic impact.

So it's OK for India to do science as long as it's cheap? Define cheap. How much should it cost for you to be OK with it?

How high-cost is too high? How much impact is necessary in order to greenlight a project, according to you?

Your objections are particularly nonsensical because the article doesn't mention the cost of the project anywhere. You've reflexively decided that it's $BIG_NUMBER and it's wasteful. With practically no information. (It will cost in the region of $250m, FYI)

How do you even know it will be costly (relative to the magnitude of the project)? We did launch the Mars mission pretty cheap you know :-) (yes, I know it's easier to launch cheaper when you pay Indian salaries, so don't bring that up)

EDIT: Big scientific discoveries haven't happened by the balance of probability. Many new advances come from unexpected places, by obscure scientists doing crazy-sounding things. No expert can declare with 100% certainty that something is "unlikely to yield a positive economic impact".

This is my last comment on the topic. It sounds like you've pretty much made up your mind and nothing can convince you to see the other side. Good luck.

Then it is an even worse reason than why they get aid, don't you think? :)

I am Indian. Which German programs can I apply to, to come over there to study for free. All that welfare is creating a generation of utter retards. Germany is likely the only EU country which has upside left due to great work ethics. Pretty much everyone else is living on borrowed money and is in decadence.

May be EU should lift everyone out of state dependence instead of sending Europa probe? No it shouldn't. Someone has to be extremely ignorant to not see disconnect between these challenges.

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