To me whole of India is basically a mini San Francisco. Yes, water is not clean, yes even now poor people need to walk long distances to get clean water and daily ration of rice at a lower price but these are not because the country is in need of money. It has more than enough money to handle the basic needs of most of its citizens, its government is garbage, inefficient, corrupt and ignorable. If we had any CEO of a tech company run India (think Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Shantanu Narayan), they’d make it a relative paradise in a decade, India could easily reach the living standards of Vietnam, South Korea etc.
Alas, in that context this technological progress is still a good thing because diverting money to more govt bureaucracies will not fix anything. At least here we see the money going to somewhat good use. Though from what I’ve heard, ISRO is also a bloated bureaucracy, albeit in the same way NASA is a bloated bureaucracy compared to SpaceX (ISRO is for all I’ve heard worse than NASA in how bloated and inefficient it is, I’m surprised they ever manage to launch anything)
Alas, in that context this technological progress is still a good thing because diverting money to more govt bureaucracies will not fix anything. At least here we see the money going to somewhat good use. Though from what I’ve heard, ISRO is also a bloated bureaucracy, albeit in the same way NASA is a bloated bureaucracy compared to SpaceX (ISRO is for all I’ve heard worse than NASA in how bloated and inefficient it is, I’m surprised they ever manage to launch anything)