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India landed on the Moon for less than it cost to make Interstellar | The Independent
(www.independent.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Really? I don't think so!
In absolute values, sure, but They didn't adjust for the difference in purchasing power between India and the US. Yes, the purported INR 6,150,000,000.- can be converted directly into USD 74,400,732.- using the current exchange rate of INR 82.66 for USD 1.
BUT, if you take into account the difference in purchasing power of the two economies and use a conversion rate that eliminates the differences in price levels between countries (https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm, 24.059 between India and US in 2022) then INR 6,150,000,000.- come out to be equal to USD 255,621,597! This value you can now compare to the production cost of movies in the US etc.
But what can you expect from those young "journalists" from the independent... they should be ashamed of themselves.
Edit: You could also take the Big mac index and compare it (https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index) and the 75 million would become about 165 million.
Yeah, people always forget that purchasing power is a very important detail when you compare currency economies either in present day or historical contexts.
Why is purchasing power relevant here? They're not talking about how much the country can afford, but how economical they are in achieving their goals.
Purchasing power refers to how much goods you can buy with your currency. As you can imagine you can buy less with 100$ in the US than in India, where everything is cheaper. If you take purchasing power into account you convert everything into a "standard amount of stuff". And using a conversion based on "the same stuff" you'll get a different currency conversion factor.
India achieves their goal still very economically, but it's not 75mil, it's 255mil. The equivalent amount of stuff that costs INR 6.15billion if you buy it in India costs USD 255million if you buy it in the US.
Oh ok, I see what you mean. People are paid less and things cost less in India, basically.
Yes, exactly.