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The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam

theguardian.com

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Re: The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam

#151

Post by Balgair »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #118
rubidium wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is it the modern bureaucracies that are terrible? Or the "old ideas"?

It's the mismatch. Honor and reputation work for small high-trust societies where everyone knows each other, but a nation state (not to mention a global economy) requires more robust enforcement mechanisms.

On honor: It is that you can't really kick someone out of a nation state. In a smaller society, when you are dishonored, you leave the group. In a nation, you can't really do that, so we have made up ways to do so in a half way, namely prison. Honor doesn't really work in a nation state. Brett McKay has a lot to say about honor in the modern world starting here: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/10/01/manly-honor-part-i-...

Re: The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam

#153

Post by stefantalpalaru »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #148
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safety in traffic depends, among other things, on the relative speed between you and the cars around you. When this relative speed gets out of a certain range, you and/or those around you are forced to make dangerous maneuvers increasing the risk of collision. With this in mind, think about scenarios where the average speed is above the legal limit: highways, rural roads with no known speed cams, etc. Now imagine hea…

Rural roads you have to be careful speeding because people walk on them and tractors drive on them, and sometimes there are horses. If you're driving the limit and there's a bunch of people behind you, either (a) they can deal with it or (b) you can pull over and let them pass.

Rural road in northern Italy: https://www.google.it/maps/@45.4014223,8.955495,3a,75y,72.04...

Re: The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam

#154

Post by devdas »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #104
nashashmi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to put the blame on to any "one" reason for Southern Europe doing badly, but I came across an article that probably gave a better reason why there was so much difference between North and South Europe, and the theory it presents is religious difference between Protestantism and Catholicism. Protestant (read the bible) & Catholic (follow the pope). This gave the north literary rise, and literary history, and ad…

If that is the case, Southern European corruption should reduce in the future, because now Catholics are literate too. India still has terrible public education, so it may take them longer to catch up.

India also has to dismantle the social systems and institutions set up by the British, which were designed to make people at the top rich, instead of running for the benefit of society.

Dismantling this is hard work, and you cannot simply destroy a bureaucracy without having a replacement ready (or chaos). WWII was good for Europe in some ways, because it massively destroyed the aristocracy and a lot of bureaucracy along with it. It was effectively a reboot of society, backed by a lot of cheap funding.

Re: The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam

#155

Post by devdas »

djrogers wrote: post #147
eitally wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun addendum to this cultural note: the fact that things are based in hundred thousands leads to weird comma structural in written numerals. http://www.fullstopindia.com/indian-number-system-made-easy/ For example: 1,00,000 = 1 lakh 1,05,000 = 1 lakh + 5,000 rupees = 105,000 rupees

According to your link, your first example should be 10 lakh

1 => one 10 => ten 100 => one hundred 1,000 => one thousand 10,000 => ten thousand 1,00,000 => one lakh 10,00,000 => ten lakh (one million)

Re: The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam

#156

Post by drunken-serval »

praxulus wrote: post #34
aianus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada everybody speeds all the time. In fact, it would be unsafe not to speed on the 401 as you'd be driving considerably slower than everyone else. So the enforcement randomness is the same, it's just the penalties are stiffer and longer-lasting.

People don't get speeding tickets for going with the flow of traffic. And no, it really isn't unsafe to go at the speed limit. Driving at 20mph on a highway can cause problems, but going 10-15mph slower than traffic in the rightmost lane is not going to cause any accidents.

Oh yes they do. In Milwaukee, WI at the end of the month, you'll get a ticket for either going with the flow of traffic or driving below the flow of traffic (the speed limit).

The highway will be lined with cars being pulled over.

Re: The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam

#157

Post by xixi77 »

tahoeskibum wrote: post #138

I wish Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg would start sometjhing like an X-prize to reduce corruption. Lack of drinking water and malaria are just the symptoms. I grew up in India and am too familiar with this cancerous corruption that keeps third world countries firmly in the third world... :-(

Would have been nice, not gonna happen though. Just imagine the headlines about the American billionaires funding efforts to influence those poor countries political systems :)

Re: The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam

#158

Post by api »

rdtsc wrote: post #14

It is hard for those in Western countries to imagine what it is like to live in a corrupt state like that. Eastern Europe is like that as well. Corruption is a way of life. It starts from bribing the doctor who will deliver the baby, to bribing kindergarten teachers, to high school teachers, paying to cheat on a state exam, buying a driver's license etc, until bribing the cemetery to take make an extra spot for the d…

This is why frontiers are so important. Only on a frontier is it possible to basically nuke the past and build a new society that is (relatively speaking) free of this kind of meta-stable eternal corruption.

Once this kind of thing is established, it is game-theoretically very stable (tit for tat, etc.) and is virtually impossible to uproot without some kind of catastrophic purge or apocalyptic collapse.

Re: The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam

#159

Post by anovikov »

sithadmin wrote: post #115
anovikov wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other side of the life is chaos, crime, pollution and insecurity, and not unimportant for the crowd here, low company valuations vs their profits in those countries. Exactly because laws don't work. No startups in the proper sense can exist in such conditions, because contracts can't enforced, intellectual property rights can't be protected, and venture capital is impossible because money can be only loaned for the p…

>In Europe, it strongly depends on the fraction of Orthodox population. Wait, what? Mind unpacking that idea a bit?

Just an observation. Orthodox people are prone to corruption because they see every organized structures except church as 'foreign'. For example, theft on the workplace (being it a government or private employer) is culturally OK for them, they don't even try to hide it from the people they know. Any collaboration with the government (even reporting crime not being its direct victim or family member) is a no-no. A cop can't be a friend, they mostly make friends between themselves. etc. etc.
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