The timing of MOM is rather unfortunate for NASA. People see two missions going to Mars at the same time, and naturally compare the two price tags. They see the two price tags - and the order of magnitude difference - and, understandably, wonder about it. Add on things like India being the first country to teach Mars on their first go, and it's very easy to paint a picture of the Indian space program as being somehow badly cheaper our note efficient than NASA.
Bit the truth is, apart from the fact that they're both going to Mars to study it's atmosphere, the two missions see only barely comparable.
The MAVEN payload is more than four times heavier than the payload on MOM, it carries significantly more scientific instruments, and it was custom built to advance a scientific frontier. MOM, by contrast, was first and foremost a demonstration mission - proof that India can cheaply insert a small payload into Martian orbit using largely off the shelf components. And, over and above all that, those headline figures also represent the vast differences in labour costs between the two countries, and the different way in which India allocated it's costs.
Basically, if MAVEN is a Ferrari - custom engineered for absolute peak performance by one of the most advanced manufacturers on the planet, then MOM is a Toyota Corolla - still an incredible piece of engineering, in its own way, but very much built down to a budget, and only possible due to the advances made on the cutting edge in preceding decades.
This shouldn't be taken as anything against what the Indians achieved with MOM - they wanted to get to Mars, and they did exactly that - it's just important to keep it in context.
