Madam, - Jim Silke (October 30th) asks an admirably brief question to make a poignant point: "How can India justify spending huge sums on space and nuclear programmes when so many of its own people live in terribly poverty?"
It is pointless to point at India. One could ask why the budget of the US has been the way it is since the dawn of the American century.
It has been estimated that in the US over the course of a year, at least 1.35 million children are at some point homeless. Americans are at risk from a wide range of preventable causes of death and disease, including obesity and violence.
It is needless to say how appalling things are for those who lack health insurance - some 47 million people. More than half of all personal bankruptcies in the US are related to an inability to pay for illness or injury. The infant mortality rate in Harlem, New York, has been estimated to be higher than in Bangladesh.
Most money is spent, in most countries, on things that have little to do with human well-being. Spending money has a lot to do with power. - Yours, etc,