Dear Crystal,
Frankly there is truth in what you say and so much so that I feel in the interest of fellow members who are similarly inclined; I submit the following clarifications.
Normally, India is compared with China; largest democracy with largest communist state (in terms of population).
First time seeing a comparison with Indonesia and African countries; and I must admit we've pockets in our cities where the slum conditions appear intolerable; shanties, not of cardboard boxes but close enough, brick walls with thin sheets for roofing. Surprisingly, the people who live there have TVs, cell phones, tap water or bore wells and even ACs running indoors. Then there is the garbage pile ups in these localities but nowadays our city corporations seem to have woken up.
My point was, most Indians, 75% to 80% of our population live in small towns and villages where, although poor, life is not so wretched.
According to World Bank data, India became the world's sixth largest economy in 2017 surpassing France and is likely to go past UK which stands at fifth position provided there are no major headwinds in the global economy such as enhanced trade sanctions or supply side shocks in oil
From what you've written, there's no longer any sense in highlighting that India's economy will surpass Britain's because w.r.t the scale of population we have, it has to be compared with China's, EU, or USA; since we constitute one fifth of the world.
Only when such comparisons are within reasonable margins can our poor have a decent enough standard of living.
Moving one fifth of world population to European level may take us the next 100 years.
How can one be sure of the 100 years? Because, unlike countries like Indonesia and African nations, right after Independence, India made massive investment in education and technology that they did not. This includes home grown nuclear tech. At one time, the Nixon government applied sanctions on India for our trials in nuclear explosions that lasted several years. We had to. After all China, even after walking into Tibet, remained an ever present military threat.
Space is more recent, and interestingly we have one Nobel Laureate in Astrophysics. Hawking expanded the theory of black holes after S. Chandrasekhar (Indian) introduced it to the world somewhere in 1950s. The English professor, Eddington mocked his theory when it was first presented. Chandra moved to the USA.
While India has provided the largest contingents for UN peace keeping missions, we have no global territorial ambitions. Historically India had the world's largest GDP before Europe began trading with India from 15th to 17th Century. There after, colonization, and the economy went downhill. Needless to say, Britain's and France's had a meteoric rise.
Among the colonies, India supplied the largest manpower to fight both world wars. It was a volunteer army
In continuity with Ancient India (as you refer to), we have an empirical philosophy called Vedanta ensconced within Hinduism. Vedanta is not for the man on the street. His needs are for a role model and so we have a god (or avatar) for every occasion.
The point here, is scientific thinking is in our blood and when in science, there is little room for ego. We are a member nation for ITER a multi billion project on nuclear fission energy in France. We have collaborations with NASA, Russian Space and to some extent with France.
We have good relations with Israel and Iran; with USA and Russia; no intentions of competing with European economies or with China. For us these are great nations in their own rights. We have our troubles with one neighbor, Pakistan but that's mainly because it's ruled by a military elite propped up by USA since the cold war.
If ever there was a country more patient with a troubling neighbor for over 70 years; let me know.
We have enough competition, competing with ourselves; and so our austere space missions.
--xxx---
The original intent of this thread was easy to understand physics: why it takes Chandrayaan 48 days to reach the moon using gravity assist; how it maneuvers from circular orbit to elliptical. And the complications of soft touch down. The physics we learnt in school but escaped our attention.
I suppose, we no longer have zest for it.
Edited by
jaish
on Thu 08/15/19 12:02 PM