Lest anyone doubt the benefits to India of its own union that was facilitated (with the ultimate exception of Pakistan and Bangladesh) by the British Empire, consider for a moment that India is a member of an extraordinarily elite club of spacefaring nations capable of not only launching rockets into orbit, but also sending probes beyond Earth orbit.
In "space agency" parlance, India is at "level 4", along with only Japan and the ESA (France and Italy are officially "level 4" as well due to past independent space-exploration activities independently of their own ESA membership).
At the present time, NO nations are officially "level 5" (able to launch humans into space, without meeting the requirements for level 6 or above)
Russia and China are "level 6" (operating space stations, without meeting requirements for level 7 or above).
Only the United States is "level 7" (humans on the Moon, without meeting requirements for level 8 or above).
I believe the higher levels are as follows:
level 8: human spaceflight beyond Earth-Moon orbit. AFAIK, the US will get to graduate to level 8 after Artemis 2 or 3 takes a capsule beyond the Moon's orbit. There's debate about whether level 8 should be split into 8A (beyond Earth-Moon orbit, without escaping from Earth-Moon gravity well) and 8B (escaping Earth-Moon gravity well). The main issue is, a hypothetical 8B mission would involve such complicated logistics with zero margin for error, it would almost be criminally reckless to even attempt just for the sake of saying, "yay, we're cool, we're level 8B now" instead of waiting until level 9 is achievable and doing it instead.
Level 9: humans set foot on a planetary body within the Solar System other than the Earth or Moon. Probably Mars... but non-inconceivably Venus, Ganymede, or another moon of Saturn or Jupiter that has an atmosphere.
Level 10: human spaceflight beyond the solar system
Level 11: achieved FTL, and earned humanity's official invitation to join the Galactic Federation.
The point being, if Britain hadn't facilitated India's eventual union, India would have NEVER had the money to pursue a level 4 space program, let alone be on the cusp of graduating to level 5 in the near future.