Mr. We-Can-Win-By-Losing Bets Against The Poor Again

Defying critics at home and abroad, the Indian Space Research Organization is preparing to launch its first interplanetary exploration satellite to Mars. Called the Mangalyaan—”Mars Craft”—the satellite is expected to launch tomorrow afternoon and will reach the Martian atmosphere in September 2014.

India has been criticized for spending $72 million on the project instead of on “toilets and teachers,” as the FT‘s Victor Mallet put it. Indeed, the statistics are jarring. According to the World Bank a third of the world’s poorest people live in India. “I don’t understand the importance of India sending a space mission to Mars when half of its children are undernourished and half of all Indian families have no access to sanitation,” the well-known economist Jean Drèze told the FT last year when the Mangalyaan project was being organized. “It seems to be part of the Indian elite’s delusional quest,...”

I hope it works.