oh really? if it were to be allotted to all the above purposes, it would merely get eaten up by corrupt officials. thats exactly whats happening to the allocations for these purposes right now. better a billion rupee sattelite than a billion rupees worth of bad roads and non existent village schools.

As one among many Engineers who joined ISRO straight after college we all cherished a vision and believed Space research was not only important for science, but also vital to India’s development.I am giving below a few of the benefits which space research and particularly ISRO has done us proud.
Take, for example, India’s six remote-sensing satellites - the largest such constellation in the world. These monitor the country’s land and coastal waters so that scientists can advise rural communities on the location of aquifers and where to find watercourses, suggest to fishermen when to set sail for the best catch, and warn coastal communities of imminent storms (see “Eyes in the sky”). India’s seven communication satellites, the biggest civilian system in the Asia-Pacific region, now reach some of the remotest corners of the country, providing television coverage to 90 per cent of the population. The system is also being used to extend remote healthcare services and education to the rural poor.
When India first detonated a nuclear device in 1974, the US and European nations imposed widespread sanctions to restrict India’s access to technologies that could be used to make a nuclear missile. This hobbled the country’s rocket development programme and forced the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to reinvent technologies it could no longer buy. In the long run this has given India an advantage over other countries with aspirations to reach space. Its space programme is already largely self-sufficient and aims to soon be completely independent of foreign support.
India’s space programme is already a money-earner. ISRO sells infrared images from its remote-sensing satellites to other countries, including the US, where they are used for mapping. And the Technology Experiment Satellite, launched in October 2001, is beaming back images of the Earth’s surface with a resolution of 1 metre, though they are not yet available commercially.
> using imaging satellites for development remains at the top of the agenda for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).infrared images are used to measure the reflectance of plant-covered surfaces to check how well watered the crops are. It is also possible to distinguish between crops such as rice, wheat and cotton, and even predict whether a crop might fail for lack of water.Ensuring a supply of clean drinking water is a problem in many parts of rural India. Villagers often resort to guessing the right spot to drill a well based on experience, but it is a hit-and-miss affair. Topographic and hydrological maps produced from satellite images allow rural communities locate areas most likely to yield underground water.The next step for ISRO team is to use the same information to work out where to build small dams to capture rainwater and recharge underground reservoirs. This approach could help reclaim arid and semi-arid land for agricultural use.
ISRO’s satellites are also having an impact at sea. OCEANSAT, launched in 1999, monitors the chlorophyll content of oceans and the sea surface temperature. ISRO scientists use the information to identify areas where cold, nutrient-rich water wells up from the ocean floor, which in turn attract fish.The coordinates of these areas are then sent to more than 200 coastal centres. The upwellings last for several days - meaning the areas identified contain high concentrations of fish - long enough for fishermen to arrive and gather a sizeable catch. According to ISRO sources, fish catches have doubled in the last decade.
Besides remote sensing, ISRO operates eight communications satellites. These are now used by 35,000 commercial customers, all based in India
ISRO has also used these satellites to implement disaster-warning systems. In 1977 a cyclone killed 10,000 people on the coast of Andhra Pradesh in south-east India. In the 1990s data from meteorological satellites was used to warn of a similarly devastating cyclone, dramatically reducing the loss of life to 900.
ISRO is becoming more ambitious in how it plans to use these satellites. It has already linked 69 hospitals in remote areas of India such as the Andaman Islands to 19 hospitals in India’s main cities. A health worker in a remote location can then transmit a patient’s medical information to a specialist in seconds and, in many cases, a video consultation is sufficient for diagnosis. This means the patient can avoid travelling huge distances unless it is absolutely necessary.

“A space program even while catering largely to defense and political needs, presents a big opportunity to give the economy a competitive edge in the short, medium and long run. Even though this mutual benefit is not a foregone conclusion the upside potential certainly exists and only remains to be adequately exploited.”

I like how you explained that. Very helpful. Thanks.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/nasalife_features-noblinds_archive_1.html

There are numerous indirect benefits in addition to direct ones such as remote sensing, defense applications etc.

Many technologies in consumer electronics today owe their birth to research into defense and space.

And you can never predict the unknown. A person in circa 1450 would have sworn that the flat world ended past the coast of iceland. So, the mission of Columbus would have been considered monumental waste. The rest is history.

And, just because nothing much has been found after 60s does not mean space exploration is worthless. US has slumped in Science/Technology (as evidenced by the changed demographics in the Phd programs) after 1970s and space program received scant attention (no new lunar expeditions and such). And in the meantime, USSR collapsed and thus worldwide space exploration has been left cold. Its time India and China that produce great engineers/science students to take the mettle and solve the many unknown problems.