[But those
concerns were not widely shared by India ’s leaders. In the heat of an election campaign, both Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi, the candidate for prime minister
from the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, were quick to
congratulate the scientists on their initial success. “India has once again established itself in the world,” Mr. Modi
said. “I congratulate the scientists and technicians behind the mission.”]
By Hartosh Singh Bal
The launch is only the first step, however, in a perilous
300-day journey that has ended in failure for about a third of all previous
efforts. Only the United States , Russia and the European Space Agency have reached Mars, and none
of them managed it on the first try.
Because India ’s attempts to develop a more powerful launcher had failed,
the spacecraft could not be sent directly on its way. Instead, it will have to
orbit Earth for nearly a month as a series of small bursts by its thrusters
slowly nudges it into space. If all goes well, it will reach Mars on Sept. 24.
At a cost of $72 million, the Mars project is relatively
inexpensive, but that has not stopped critics from raising questions about why
the government is pouring money into space programs when India has so many pressing social, educational and
infrastructure needs.
A prominent scholar and activist, Jean Drèze, told India Today that the Mars mission “seems to be
part of the Indian elite’s delusional quest for superpower status.”
But those concerns were not widely shared by India ’s leaders. In the heat of an election campaign, both Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi, the candidate for prime minister
from the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, were quick to
congratulate the scientists on their initial success. “India has once again established itself in the world,” Mr. Modi
said. “I congratulate the scientists and technicians behind the mission.”
Indian officials also defended the program as yielding
technological advances that are hard to predict, claims that critics were quick
to dismiss.
G. Madhavan Nair, a former head of the Indian Space
Research Organization, told The Indian Express this year that “instead of
concentrating on practical missions, we are spending money to prove nothing.”
“Someone has made some statement that the Mars mission will
prove new technologies,” he said, but added that “as a person familiar with
these technologies, I believe that there is no new technology involved.”
The space program is not only a source of nationalist pride
but also a weapon in India ’s competition with China . Shortly after the failure of a Chinese mission to Mars in
2011, Mr. Singh, addressing the nation on India ’s Independence Day, announced the plans for an Indian
attempt. “This spaceship to Mars will be a huge step for us in the area of
science and technology,” he said.
“China has gone earlier, but today we are trying to catch them,
catch that gap, bridge the gap,” Bhaskar Narayan, a director at the Indian
space agency, was quoted by Reuters as saying at the time.
Once the spacecraft nears Mars, it will be maneuvered into
a low orbit to assay the Martian atmosphere, looking in particular for the
presence of methane, a possible indicator of the existence of life processes at
some point in the planet’s history.
The modest size of the payload, at 33 pounds, is an indicator
of the limitations of the mission. But repeated failures in the development of
a rocket capable of carrying payloads of more than two tons had led to delays.
S. K. Das, a former member of the Space Commission, which
sets Indian space policy, said Tuesday that “we should see this as a technical
exercise,” though he conceded that a more powerful rocket could have made for a
more direct and less complex journey to Mars.
“It is a long journey, and we can only understand the
challenges and the problems by attempting it,” he added. “The first stage has
been flawless.”
CHINA’S LEADERS CONFRONT ECONOMIC FISSURES
[China has relied for the past three decades on unrelenting, even manic, construction of ever more factories, bridges, roads and apartment towers. But that is producing chronic overcapacity together with an acute shortage of blue-collar labor.]
By Keith Bradsher
Among them is Zheng Yilong, who graduated from a university
three months ago and refuses to consider a factory job even though his degree
is in machinery design. He seeks a desk job instead. Sitting at the employers’
booths are much older factory managers like Jin Tao who despair of finding the
workers they need.
“I see the problem mostly as an education mismatch
problem,” Mr. Jin said. “I’m willing to pay more than 3,000 renminbi a month,
which is more than what fresh college graduates are getting.” (That’s about
$500.) “I’m also willing to give training, but the young people now with
college degrees just don’t want to work in factories.”
Addressing the mismatch in skills and expectations here and
across China is a central issue facing the country’s leaders as they
gather on Saturday in Beijing . They will be convening for a four-day meeting, the Third
Plenum, that is expected to set the tone for Chinese economic and political
policy making for the next five years.
They will discuss whether to cut consumption taxes,
deregulate banking and currency markets, and break up state-owned monopolies
that have slowed growth in high-end sectors like telecommunications. The common
theme of all the policies: how to create a consumer-led economy and arrest a
steep increase in unemployment among young, educated Chinese.
In a speech to trade union officials published on Monday,
Prime Minister Li Keqiang said securing enough jobs for citizens was his
government’s top economic priority.
“Employment is the biggest thing for well-being,” Mr. Li
said. “The government must not slacken on this for one moment, and we must
constantly focus on this point. For us, stable growth is mainly for the sake of
maintaining employment.”
Similar plenums in 2003 and 2008 produced calls for a shift
to a more sustainable economy based on more consumption, more high-end services
like finance and more high-tech jobs. The meetings carry their name because
they are the third gatherings of the Communist leadership in each five-year term
of the party’s Central Committee; the first two plenums mainly involve
personnel changes.
Actual changes in economic policy have been slow despite
vows of reform. A big impediment to creating a consumer economy are the low
incomes of a generation of China ’s young people, the country’s would-be consumers.
Born in an era of ever-rising prosperity and mostly only
children because of the government’s “one child” policy, young people across China consistently say in interviews that they tend not to share
their parents’ compulsion for saving for retirement and children’s educations.
Even so, they seldom have the incomes to consume on the scale of the young
Americans and Europeans whom they admire and envy.
Mr. Zheng spends almost as much on new clothes each month
as he does on food or rent, he says. But as is common for a generation facing
high jobless rates — 25 percent or more for recent college graduates — he
relies on family and savings to pay for his lifestyle while looking for the
right job. That puts a limit on his overall spending. “I want a job for which I
was trained, or else my education will be wasted. I don’t want to work in a
factory,” he said.
Complicating matters is that many young people are avoiding
lower-end service jobs as well as factory jobs. The high school graduation rate
in China is rapidly approaching three-quarters of young people,
similar to the United
States . The
number of university graduates in China has nearly quintupled since 2000.
Cultural norms frequently discourage high school and
college graduates from accepting jobs in factories or even restaurants. For
many young people, the most prized job is a position in a government or
Communist Party bureaucracy, which is seen as providing security, healthy wages
and benefits — and the perks that come with exercising power, such as special
investment opportunities ahead of initial public offerings and sometimes
outright corruption.
Zhong Hui, a 23-year-old manager in a hot pot restaurant
chain, said that he was struggling to find waiters and dishwashers despite
offering $300 to $400 a month plus lodging in air-conditioned dormitories.
“It is not easy to find workers as people believe in their
hearts that being in the service industry and serving other people is shameful.
Parents do not want their children to work in services either,” Mr. Zhong said.
What keeps the Wuhan economy ticking is increasing investment. Drive across the
city in the middle of the night and what is striking is that at least half the
many construction sites are floodlit, huge cranes still moving as workers labor
around the clock to build more apartment towers, roads and other projects.
Powering that investment is an unending flow of cheap loans
from state-owned banks. China ’s central bank has opened the spigots of monetary stimulus
each time the economy has started to slow sharply in the past five years. Like
cities across China , Wuhan has borrowed heavily to finance local growth as have the
companies here.
To be sure, young Chinese who are able to find well-paid
jobs are starting to spend money. Zeng Danni, a 25-year-old gynecologist with
long hair and fashionable clothes, prowled a Ford dealership here on a recent
afternoon with a friend and her friend’s husband, looking for a sporty car to
buy in a shade of blue that she regards as pretty and youthful.
“I am not taking out any loans for this purchase since the
interest rates are too high. I am buying from our savings,” she said, adding
that, “My husband works in building safety design and we don’t have any kids
yet.”
Young Chinese may still be more fortunate than many young
people in the West, in that at least factory and restaurant jobs are available.
But without broader policy changes, economists question how the Chinese economy
will produce enough desirable jobs to bring down youth unemployment,
particularly among college graduates, a group that has been among the most
politically volatile in China.
“If you want just any job, you can get one, 100 percent for
sure — as long as you are not picky,” Mr. Zheng said. “I think there is a
mismatch between the jobs that are available and what I am looking for.”
Hilda Wang contributed reporting.
