Not entirely correct but you have some points. India's SLV is not from 1960's. In 1960's India used to have only sounding rocket experiments not a SLV program. Mind you but the first man made orbital object the Russian Sputnik, was put in space on 4th October of 1957, that is 57 years and 4 months ago to be exact. The first Indian satellite to be put in orbit was in 1980. By your own logic the first Iranian satellite in space being in 2009, Iran is about 29 years behind India and 51 years behind Russia (and the rest of the world). So we can exclude the 8 decades from your statement.
Furthermore, India's R&D budget is not in "hundreds of billions of dollars". The entire R&D budget of the world is something less than 1500 billion dollars with major spenders being US, EU, Japan and China. India's R&D budget is afew tens of billions of dollars with a population of over a billion people. And India did not have much access to space technologies either; specially in the tightly controlled markets of cold war era of 1970's and 80's when they were developing their core space program. In fact, Iran today has better access to obtain technology than India did back then. Now any kid anywhere in the world could purchase electronic processing power capable of orbit projection calculations for afew dollars, while in 1970's India had to spend millions to get a comparable system for the job.
If Iran did set its priorities right and spent the right amount of money and instead of forcing brains out of the country concentrated on hiring brains then, Iran can catch up with India in about 10 years and with China in about 20 years. Which is not bad at all. For a country that used to be on the same level as Afghanistan just 65 years ago, this is already an achievement to be just 50 years behind the industrialized world. Yes, Afghanistan. People forget this but Iran was no different than Afghanistan, the two countries sharing the distinction of being among countries with the world's worst infant mortality rates:
List of countries by infant mortality rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sometimes it is better not compare yourself with today's or 1970's Sweden, Germany or France and compare yourself with actually what you were. You will be surprised what you will find out. Ask your elders about Iranian people's lives and how they lived around an "abanbar" and shivered under a "korsi". It is living memory. It is not that far ago. These were the times when Western Europe had become entirely industrialized and physics had discovered general relativity and the code of life, the "DNA" had been broken wide open. Do you see, where you as an Iranian and a Western European come from? Entirely different worlds, my friend. His great grand daddy was discovering neutrons and anti-matter particles when your great grand daddy was wondering about fixing and cleaning the leaking and stinking abanbar. Then how can you, now expect things to be like Denmark in Iran?
Although I,m in consummate accord with most of your words but here are a few observations regarding what u said;
World has witnessed lots of Ups and Downs in last couple of thousand years. When Iranian were the civilized ones, Europeans were hunting pigs in jungles and when Iranians had public sanitary systems, Europeans were washing themselves in rivers. The opposite is true for Iran 100 years ago and West in progress. In order to compare two nations fairly, you must see all its ups and downs. Actually, it seems it is a game of ENVY and then CATCH UP. Sometime back in history, Europeans were jealous of Iranians , then they tried harder and surpassed Iranian level. Now, again, the history repeats itself. This time, Iran was sleep for couple of centuries and envied West. Iran catching up quick. When we talk about numbers about Iran, we should be very update. Many aspects of Iran and Iranians life and tech increasing hugely every year. So,
even a 2013 ranking or number may mislead you.
For instance, what you said about Infant Mortality Rate is old news. Iran is now having almost the same numbers as other Developed Nations. Here it says, which is by the way for last year (1392 Iranian calendar , while it is almost 1394 in Iran), It says
Infant Mortality Rate decreased to as low as 10.68 from the previous year of 14.46. This shows a nearly
%40 improvement annually. So, I guess the current numbers would be well below 8 infants per 1000 births.
آخرین آمار مرگ و میر مادران باردار و نوزادان کشور
The other thing about Iran, being at least 57 years behind West just does not make sense. It is not a fixed trend or formula so we can calculate 57 years accordingly. The only important element in this is the CURRENT GROWTH RATE. Having a satellite being sent to space on 1959 by X country does not mean that country maintained the same growth rate since. So, with current growth rates, it is naive to say West is ahead by 57 years or 20 years.
One must take many variables into account in order to read to a conclusion that X country is ahead of Y country by X years. Well, there are some variables countable. so, what is being highly advanced:
1- Being able to launch heavy payloads to Geo orbit for commercial use.
2- Being able to produce Semi-HighTech, High tech products locally (electronics, IT, Nano, Biotech, stemcells, etc)
3- Being at the edge of Medicine science.
4- Being able to build all different sorts of military gadgets.
5- Having a working social and economic system that produces value
6- Having an innovation based education system
7- Having good scientists who do practical and theoretic research.
8- Being able to acquire locally most of its technological needs.
Well, Iran has the tech to launch 100 kg payloads to 500 km LEO orbit. Iran is working (almost finished) on SLVs to carry its locally built 1 tonnes satellites into GEO 36000 km and it is scheduled to be dine in 4 years from now. Iran produced most of its semi-high tech (Automobiles, heavy industries, etc) and high tech (Nano tech products from simple nano concretes or nano strings for socks to up to state of the art Nano tech molecular microscopes and nano machines, different types of Radars and avionics, advanced composites, most of its IT and computer needs, exotic medicines, missiles, space tech, 3000KM range radars, submarines, robotic tech, sensitive transplants or surgeries and thousands of other things Iranian are mastered to do already. There are few countries in world which are able to produce all that Iran does LOCALLY.
To have a better perspective, we have to respond to these questions;
- Is Iran a head of West in tech and modernity? NO
- Is Iran decades away from Western level? NO
- Does Iranian glorious pre and after Islam history counts in rankings today? NO
- Does Western backwardness before Industrial Revolution counts in rankings today? NO
- Is it likely to see IRAN catches up West in science and tech soon? YES
- Is it possible for Asia to take the place of WEST in couple of decades? Hell, YES
