India celebrates "Two for Tuesday" on Thursday

Image: Launch pic

India successfully place two (that's right, TWO) satellites into orbit after a successful launch atop a 44-metre (147-foot) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. That's the ninth consecutive successful launch of India's PSLV and one step closer to their planned launch of a Moon probe by 2008.
Interestingly enough, so far all of India's satellites have been designed with the rural population in mind. The best story was at SpaceDaily.com. They had a good pre-story too. Here are some examples from their most recent story:

(The first two were launched Thursday)
The biggest satellite, the 1.5-ton CARTOSAT-1, will supply high-resolution pictures for more precise maps for planning towns, laying new roads, digging canals, disaster assessment and water resources management.
The smaller 42.5-kilogram (94-pound) HAMSAT communications satellite will provide ultra-high and very-high radio frequencies to broaden bandwidth that Indian home operators had been seeking for years.

India has grabbed headlines with its commitment to send a probe to the moon in two or three years time. But its space programme has mainly been aimed at harnessing high technology for its population of more than one billion, particularly its rural masses.
The CARTOSAT-1 is India's 11th remote-sensing satellite on top of several broadcast satellites. India's other remote sensing satellites supply information for use in irrigation, agriculture and disaster management.
India has the world's biggest civilian cluster of remote sensing satellites.
Thursday's blast-off was the second since September when India launched Edusat, a distance learning satellite to allow teachers to broadcast primary and secondary classes to remote regions via television.

Since India is the world's largest Democracy it seems only fitting their Space program would first serve the needs of its people.