Why India should continue to invest in space technology?
Odisha cyclone in 1999: 10,000 dead.
Odisha cyclone of similar intensity in 2019: < 50 dead because ISRO was better equipped to track the cyclone path giving enough time for Govt to evacuate people to safety.
Ignore the ignorant including "liberal", "progressive" publications like NYT which publish racist cartoons on Indian space program.
The entire cartoon uses exaggerated stereotypes to make a point. If you think the depiction of the snobbish elite is okay, you're just falling into the "it's only racism if I don't like it" nonsense.
I don't think the cartoon is racist or offensive. I was trying to explain why some people found it distasteful. And stereotyping someone as elite is surely not the same thing as stereotyping someone as poor?
To add some nuance, I think the cartoon goes both ways, but unintentionally managed to offend Indian sensibilities by portraying them that way.
I think one way to look at it is... The underdog Indians managing to rub shoulders with the likes of NASA and ESA at a fraction of the latter's budget, which isn't wrong. ISRO's missions are typically about two orders of magnitude cheaper than NASA's, while still being very productive.
Somehow threads about India just devolve into ridiculous mudslinging like no other. White people clinging to tired old stereotypes. Indians are half to blame too, being over-sensitive and oddly conservative.
> Somehow threads about India just devolve into ridiculous mudslinging like no other. White people clinging to tired old stereotypes. Indians are half to blame too, being over-sensitive and oddly conservative.
There is an additional factor. Anglophone internet tends to be dominated by Americans. So, discussions about say Denmark don't get too heated because there aren't too many Danes participating.
>>> I think one way to look at it is... The underdog Indians managing to rub shoulders with the likes of NASA and ESA at a fraction of the latter's budget,
How are you getting this through the cartoon? All the cartoon shows is a poor asking for permission to get into an elite club
When Pakistan successfully became a nuclear capable nation in 2000s, Indians had the same reactions - to laugh at their stupidity of misplaced priorities.
The cartoon is trying to make an invalid point and insult India with their joke, that is how it became racist. It did not become racist by the idea of painting a set of people with broad brush.
The cartoon shows an unwelcome 'Indian' is knocking the door of super powers to be let in the elite club room amusing those inside it. If this is the case it is a huge discouragement for India because no matter what we do, even without any cheap superficial attempt to impress other countries, we will be mocked at with backdrop of embarrassing history that is no longer true and widespread as they make it seem to drive home the point with. This callousness is what makes NYT
racist.
Is it not racist to think India is hungry and desperate for power recognition, show off and then being complacent after like the people inside the room?
The subsequent money we get from West to deploy their payloads through the same advanced missions was also improving our poverty and cheaper for them .
Apart from mere recognition of a fact of our achievement, we know we have other problems we are famous for and funded by International bodies, including West themselves. So what makes NYT want to rub the salt into the wound in as if we forgot, at a time of celebration? Where else is it coming from, if not from the place of disdain onto this other nation?
You have to have some special kind of psychopathy to make fun of other country's poverty when they do know that the space missions are conducted after calculating all the costs and SWOT analysis taking into account of such poverty. Or do you think we are not intelligent enough for that?
It is this contemptuousness that I call NYT racist, not the one you elaborated upon.
Please stop this spreading this non-sensical misinformation.
The cartoon shows two formal dressed westerners in elite space club room startled by one uneducated man knocking with a dhoti and starving sleepy cow he catches by a rope just like village people used to do strolling on the streets of the past.
Is this the research you do to depict our Indian scientists and leaders or is it the idea that elitist differentiation of class, wealth and societal backwardness was to be shown here?
Besides, nowhere on the article it mentions that they have done their homework based on this story. Cows were not used. Open Bullock carts were used. Do you think putting a bullock cart in a cartoon would have been more difficult task to achieve than putting a Chandrayan on Moon? But no, you just have to stick to stereotype and squeeze out a rational meaning from it.
Give me a good citation and accuse me of throwing the racism card around.
You are mistaken it's not a lazy stereotype, the cartoonist has done his/her research. India has literally used cows for testing its initial satellites.
I’m sure that India used its own observation satellites to predict weather patterns and storms but western weather observation satellites monitor the whole Earth and share the information. Not every country should (or can) have its own national weather satellite installation.
Building a capability to predict weather patterns, implies, development of a slew of technologies, building an infrastructure to produce engineers and scientists, leasing out of those technologies to startups and other engineering enterprises to make better use of them.
The predictions made by your (US) meteorological department were wrong. Many would have died if we relied on you. Our meteorological department does better when it comes to local weather.
On a separate note, it honestly sucks how HN has legitimately gone to shit. A lot of old timers are basically boiled frogs and don't realize how alienated most other techies are by HN.
@Dang, ik I've harped about this a thousand times (and I myself have contributed) but y'all legitimately need to fix the toxicity on this board. Lots of early career techies don't want to be associated or go
on HN. I've heard this sentiment across the board from early career interns and friends of mine at Cal, MIT, UIUC, UMich, UW, IIT D/K/M, and Harvard - all feeder programs to YC
People will still apply to YC of course, but the brand has been increasingly tainted. I know for a fact in India Sequoia Surge gets the pick of the litter over YC.
I agree with the gist of the other posters (even if they have over-reacted): most of your comments reek of paternalism, Western exceptionalism, hypocrisy, holier-than-thou sanctimony, and clinging to stereotypes about Indians and having a grossly mis-informed view of Indians and India.
Your comment was the initial one, and it was not in good faith at all, ergo the cascade of defensive comments from Indians (whose sentiments I understand).
Whether what you said is racist or not is debatable, but stereotypical? Definitely. If you want to criticise India, there are many, many other things to say (such as its lengthy and backwards bureaucracy) without attacking ISRO of all things and subsequently linking it to rape (???).
Fact of the matter is that through ISRO and its projects, education is made more important for boys and girls alike, money is funnelled into research and education, and more education means a more civilised populace.
So you think they possibly saved 9950 lives, yet a vastly greater number live in poverty and a huge proportion of them are children with no access to healthcare and education, many of them begging in the streets. But yes let's give India a round of applause for finding a minor benefit to their $2bn spending on space exploration (also ignoring the fact that they are not really achieving new science that is not or could not be done by more developed nations).
What? There are literally hundreds of other uses of our space program which if we hadn't developed independently, we would be paying exorbitant prices to other nations for the same. Launching rockets costs us literally 10x lower cost than other nations. This thing doesn't benefit Indians only but other nations as well.
Are the education and healthcare systems you mentioned an indication of the American society where the average person cannot afford healthcare, and where children are unsure of their gender identity and personal identity? If this is the case, my friend, you have failed miserably.
However, despite challenges such as limited food and inadequate school infrastructure, the people in question have access to affordable healthcare and education, without the added burden of student loans. Moreover, they complete their schooling with minimal anxiety and confusion over trivial matters.
Odisha cyclone in 1999: 10,000 dead. Odisha cyclone of similar intensity in 2019: < 50 dead because ISRO was better equipped to track the cyclone path giving enough time for Govt to evacuate people to safety.
Ignore the ignorant including "liberal", "progressive" publications like NYT which publish racist cartoons on Indian space program.