Are you serious? Do you know the per capita income of the Western countries which are involved in the experiment?

Ram.. This has nothing to do with *mentality*. Politicians make a ton of money by doing these deals. They can’t make money by hiring a bunch of sorry looking researchers.

Can you say that the west has zero education problems , zero hunger issues and they can afford to blow off any amount on a test that may find nothing.

IMHO this is a Indian mentality problem. We, do not in general, appreciate the value of research. That is why the advanced nations continue to bully us to buy their technology ,whether it is is a nuclear reactor or a factory filter. We don’t spend on research , so we end up spending much more on buying later.

Ofcourse, your concerns regarding the education systems are well placed, but we dont have the resources to tackle it. Our Netas can sanction all the billions for educating the poor but the outcome can never be guaranteed. We need to monitor every scheme and this has to be technology driven. Probably satellite images(from chandrayaan-3 ??) can tell us exactly how many rural schemes are running (with teachers) and how many just exist on papers that our babus’ present to us.
Traditional methods are unreasonably inadequate.

It is about the division of labour, we have one bunch of people who are in charge of sending probes to the moon and another bunch who are in charge of providing a good education system. The moon probe guys are exceedingly good at their job and the education system guys are dismal at theirs. Denying the moon probe guys money and funnelling it to the education guys is a case of rewarding the mediocre at the expense of the good and it does not bode well for either of the groups in question.

Handing more money to a group of people who are not doing a good enough job with what they have will not solve much. A better idea would be for the government to get the hell out of regulating education(as Atanu has said often) and maybe allow the moon probe guys to take over the management of that job instead. Maybe then we will have a good education system AND be sending probes to the moon.

One should not judge a scientific expedition purely by its primary goal. Very often secondary requirements by themselves are so complex that they generate innovative and practical technologies. In my opinion, it is important to unleash those who are brilliant and then try to use them to either mend or create a system that would allow more achievers to flourish.

I agree that our education system is badly broken, and needs major reforms. However, stopping the moon mission is not going to help in any appreciable way.