A Dust Over India

Thus, for this reason alone, India is likely to have a different ratio of people to development, since less development is required to sustain one person's resource utilization.

Contrast this to the US where much of the country is snow covered for 1/3 of the year and without planning and infrastructure to enable it, there would be very little food available during the winter. In the US the infrastructure is a requirement for even moderate population growth.

The same applies to shelter. In India, a hut made of newspaper is adequate shelter year round. Try that in the Northern US and you'll freeze.

The result of this is that there are more poor people who do not rely as much on large scale planning and infrastructure for their basic survival.

Yes India's government is corrupt, but not all that much more corrupt than the US government.

If you want to talk about rights for the poor, in India if someone isn't using land and you set up a tent on it and start living there, you can't be evicted. The shantytowns that the author found so disturbing are actually a side-effect of India's weak property rights laws, which themselves are a result of democratic pressure from the poor to continue living where their families have lived for generations. Contrast this to the genocide the US conducted against native Americans who were in the way.

Basic infrastructure (roads, sewers) is lacking in India, but those are not easy projects to bootstrap. Bangalore has a massive sewer construction project going on now.

Frankly, it's not all that bad. Sure the garbage smells bad, but it's mostly just a matter of learning not to keep inhaling after you catch a whiff of something rank on the breeze.

If you are concerned about India's political infrastructure, notice that India's rulers are forming alliances with the US to help thwart Pakistan's nuclear ambitions. Note that once the US has a stake in one ruling party it tends to do much to prop up and empower that party, even if there are horrible human rights consequences.

When I go to India I notice the energy. People sit happily beneath a dirty tarp in a roadside food stand, enjoying Manchurian Gobi... sometimes 4 or 5 people sharing one bowl of the delicious spicy food. Smiles everywhere. These are extremely poor people. Also I notice the tiny businesses, some retail locations are only a few square feet in size but sell a variety of goods and are staffed by a single motivated shopkeeper who works 18+ hour days.

India is full of hard working people and ingenuity. I found the author's generalizations about dishonesty, etc., quite offensive.

Consider how much effort is undertaken in the US to hide poverty from view. Sadly the US ends up putting a very large percentage of its poor population in prisons and has relocated many to horrific housing projects, where the violence and horrors are contained away from view.

Consider how much effort is undertaken in the US to present the appearance of legit, non-corrupt institutions. Yet fraud abounds at all levels of government. The stuff Wikileaks exposed about the US is nothing more than fraud, dishonesty, and corruption.

China has a billion people too, but life there is far less horrid, dirty and bureaucratic. While the Chinese government is pretty deplorable, something is going right there, compared to India. Another problem with India is the mind-numbing Colonial-era bureaucracy -- to start a small business in India it takes months of paperwork just to get a business license. You have to get papers signed, resigned, rubber stamped by ten different offices and then pay crazy expensive bribes to everyone along the way. The problem is the government. It's an obsession with administivia at the expense of entrepreneurs.

"Nothing should be given free. Anything that is given free has no value. " - Padma Venkataraman

In May of this year, I spent time in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

The exchange rate during my travels was roughly 53 Rupees : 1 US Dollar. So I can definitely understand how tempting it can be to "do the math" and rationalize that giving X Rupees to random person will "help". But it's absolutely not a sustainable solution to the core and underlying problem, and might even be perpetuating it.

I "get" the concept of jugaad. My small solution was to not give Rupees away, but to tip well: anybody who seemed to be working on improving their economic situation. (Tipping is not normal practice for most Indians, but I figured it was better than handouts.)

This video can be hard to watch, but it's an interesting film about an organization called Rising Star Outreach ( http://www.risingstaroutreach.org ) that is working on helping of the "worst" of India's beggars, those who afflicted with Hansen's Disease (AKA Leprosy) http://byutv.org/watch/d0f942b2-6b4f-4923-9f88-7ad8fde4a01c

Some interesting tidbits from the video:

- "70 percent of the world's leprosy is in India."

- "People with leprosy are treated as untouchables ... Every month, people from the leprosy colony travel to the city to beg. Once they have enough money to buy food and clothing for the month, they go back to the colony."

- "Begging reduces people to their lowest level. The worse you look, the better you're going to be successful at begging."

But the video has a somewhat happy ending: it is demonstrating a work in progress, and general proof that giving people a way to sustain themselves economically via microloans really does work.

As far as the general population goes, India is an amazing country: resourceful, intelligent. But its biggest challenge will be its ability to cope with population growth.

Oh someone at work got a bigger raise than you? Excuse me while I laugh in your face.

I'm not too good at parties. I don't know how to compartmentalize.

It also bugs me that talking about this seems like a status move when it generates negative things in my life.