One of the big cost saving features was not giving their engineers paychecks for the last 17 months apparently....

https://lemmy.world/post/3801333?scrollToComments=true

A day after the Congress sought to puncture the hype around Modi’s leadership for the achievement of landing on the moon by recalling how India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had created the key infrastructure for technological advancements, general secretary K.C. Venugopal raised critical questions about the government’s attitude towards science.

Venugopal tweeted: “The excitement and pride of Chandrayaan-3 will stay with us for a long time. Isro Chairman Dr Somanath’s leadership truly created history and we extend our hearty congratulations to him and his team. However, the Prime Minister must answer some (questions) for his hypocrisy. You were quick to come on screen and take credit after the landing, but why has your government failed so terribly in supporting the scientists and Isro?”

"Why did the HEC (Heavy Engineering Corporation, Ranchi) engineers who worked on Chandrayaan-3 not receive their salaries for the last 17 months? Why did you cut the budget for such crucial missions by 32%? These are the heroes of our country, they run a world-class space research programme, but you have no regard for their talent and hard work. To add insult to injury, you hogged the limelight when that moment was about the scientists’ achievements,” he added.