Today, India is launching a rocket to Mars. The Guardian newspaper has the story:

The cyclone season is almost over, the planets are in alignment, the countdown has started. On Tuesday at 2.46pm local time, a rocket will blast off from the Indian space port on a small island in the Bay of Bengal, heading for Mars.

Its course will be closely followed. The $70m (£45m) mission – India’s first attempt to reach the red planet – aims not just to gather information that might indicate if life has ever existed or could exist there, nor simply to showcase Indian technology, but to steal an interplanetary march on its regional rival, China.

Why?

Does any sane person really care if there is “life” on Mars? I’ve never seen or heard any explanation of what we humans stand to benefit from knowing one way or the other.

Is it likely that a $70 million project will produce technology spin-offs like teflon or the micro-chip? To put this in some context, $70 million might buy you just one Boeing 737 commuter airliner with enough left to buy fuel to fly it for a year or so.

What drives the leaders of a nation beset by the earthly problems that India has to do this? The “mission” (just the use of that word says a lot) was announced a while ago, in the week that 600 million people were hit by the world’s worst power cut.

The Guardian explains:

“In the last century the space race meant the US against the Soviets. In the 21st century it means India against China,” said Pallava Bagla, one of India’s best known science commentators. “There is a lot of national pride involved in this.”

That the mission was about national pride was never in doubt. It was announced last year by prime minister Manmohan Singh in his annual address from the battlements of Delhi’s famous Red Fort, the bastion of the Mughal emperors. Its success would mean the Indians would join the Russians, the US and the European space agency which have all also reached Mars.

Ahh. So it’s not about pushing the boundaries of technology to find a way to improve the lot of Indians, or the rest of mankind. It’s about “national pride”. It’s about keeping up with the Jones’ whether you can afford it or not.

A plunging currency, ailing economy and the state’s seeming inability to deliver basic services have led many Indians to question whether their nation is quite as close to becoming a global superpower as it seemed in the heady years of the last decade when economic growth pushed the 10%. For a government beset by charges of corruption and mismanagement, the Mars mission is one way to repair its battered image …

Really? … In whose eyes? …

… Such expenditure is, however, controversial, with some questioning whether India, where more than 40% of children are malnourished and half the population have no toilets, can afford the mission. One development economist called it a symptom of “the Indian elite’s delusional quest for superpower status”.

Controversial indeed …

It’s priorities all wrong. It’s mindless. It’s the 1% grinding the 99%. It’s hubris.

Let’s hope the rocket gets to Mars, because that way a few Indian scientists and politicians can at least have their day of pride. If it doesn’t, the waste and stupidity will be absolute.