You mean to say that, we should only spend that amount in finding cure for Alzheimer's and not try to find a cure for cancer or something else?
There are certain problems since the evolution of human beings, like poverty or healthcare.. and will remain there in future too ... So you mean to say that modern technology should not have been developed instead the money would have been donated to a few poor or sick people. Weird logic... Isn't it? How long will that sustain them ?
India shouldn't have adopted Computers in the early eighties, because India was a poor country. And computers were pretty damn expensive back in those days. Instead India should have taken loans and distributed to poor peoples which would have sustained them for a while. But then Indians are not morons of the highest order. Instead we adopted the computer technology, educated our masses, and look now it provides employment to millions, rakes in billions of dollars in earnings. The taxes of those same employed people of the industry helps the govt to bring more people out of poverty each year. But then this economic cycle seems to be beyond your level of understanding.
You can tell you friend that a lot more is being spend on research in medicine in India than the Space Program. Whole of India's Space Program is aimed to develop modern technology in-house , which will help to provide employment to many more Indians. There are related industries that manufacture components for space missions, then there are universities that do the research for space missions, then there are end users of products of space missions like weather forecast, or soil and mineral research, communications, defence, navigation, launching satellites for others and millions of other things that have come out India's space mission.
Do you know that the one of the payload of Chandrayaan2 is a 30cm resolution optical telescope. Can you envisage it's usage if used in an earth orbit? It's a high resolution keyhole satellite which can see a 30 cm large object from space. Now you see the benefit of developing something like a that? India did loose a Rover and a lander but then you have no idea about how many technologies India validated even with this failed mission.
Now that's beyond your understanding...