Grudgingly acknowledging ISRO's world record feat of successfully launching 104 satellites on a single rocket would make "Indians proud" and offered "food for thought" for other countries on how to achieve space success with small budgets, China's official media Global Times said of India's space programme.
This is perhaps the first widely-followed world record India has made in the field of space technology. The Indians have reason to be proud.
However, the tabloid daily which criticised India in 2013 for sending Mangalyaan to Mars, overtaking China despite "millions of poor and illiterate people" said the significance of the ISRO's new feat is "limited".
The space technology race is not mainly about the number of satellites at one go. It’s fair to say the significance of this achievement is limited. On the whole, India’s space technology still lags behind the US’ and China’s. It has not yet formed a complete system.
Acknowledging that the new record is a "hard-won achievement for India to reach current space technology level with a relatively small investment," the daily said "it offers food for thought for other countries".
Nonetheless, the development of a country’s space technology is determined by the size of its input. According to data released by the World Economic Forum in 2016, the US’ space budget in 2013 was USD 39.3 billion, China USD 6.1 billion... As India’s GDP is about one-fifth to one-fourth that of China’s, the share of investment in space technology in India’s GDP is similar to that of China’s.
The daily, which has been carrying critical articles against India on almost a daily basis, also sought to make out a case that India is spending more on defence than China in terms of GDP ratio.
China's last year's budget amounted to USD 146 billion against India's USD 46 billion.
India’s Achilles’ Heel is its relatively small economic scale and a weak foundation for national development. As a hierarchical society, it has both world-class elite and the largest number of poor people.
(With inputs from PTI)
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