Community Care Centres set up to care for the HIV infected people are closing down in various cities of India. It is said that fund shortage is the reason why this is happening. Therefore NGOs which do not rely on government funds are the ones that continue to provide care for the HIV infected people. Since government funded Centres have closed down, the NGO run Centres have been receiving so many more patients than earlier days. Few days back there was a news report in the Times of India that says that Indian Health Officials were booed at Paris for not being able to supply anti-TB drugs to its own people.
Indian farmers committing suicide for not being able to pay back the loan they have taken make news on and off. Since a large section of the population depends on rain to irrigate their field, inadequate rain damages their prospect of a good harvest. The result is that they are unable to pay back the loan. P. Sainath in one of his articles in The Hindu on March, 2013, reports that since 1995, 270,940 farmers have committed suicide. Besides, it is estimated that there are 14 million bonded-labour (or slavery!) in India, the highest in the world. China comes next, but India is way ahead of China in term of the number of people who are still in modern day slavery.
So what is it that Mars' Mission will benefit this people? Except for elite Indian being able to brag that India is sending rocket to Mars, I see no benefit to the common people. I wish the Rs. 450 crore was used to alleviate the suffering of some of these people than spent in sending a rocket to Mars.
Of course, we need ISRO to develop technology to warn us about cyclone or storm or give us prediction about the rain and snow.
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