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A Dust Over India

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Re: A Dust Over India

#51

Post by ankit28595 »

Reading this article reminds me a story from "The Great Indian Novel" by Shashi Tharoor that explains the present state of Indians -

"A man, ... a symbol, shall we say, of people of India -- is pursued by a tiger. He runs fast, but panting heart tells him he cannot run much longer. He sees a tree. Relief! He accelerates and gets to it in one last despairing stride. He climbs the tree. The tiger snarls below him, but he feels that he has at last escaped its snapping jaws. But no -- what's this? The branch on which he is sitting is weak, and bends dangerously. This is not all; wood-mice are gnawing away at it; before long they will eat through it and it will snap and fall. The branch sags down over a wall. Aha! Escape? Perhaps our hero can swim? But the well is dry, and there are snakes writhing and hissing on its bed. What is our hero to do? As the branch bends lower, he perceives a solitary blade of glass growing on the wall of the well.On the top of the blade of grass gleams a drop of honey. What action does our Puranic man, our quintessential Indian, take in this situation?

He bends with the branch, and licks up the honey. "

No matter how desperate the situation, Indians will always find a way to adjust, to live with it. So despite all the filth, over crowding, corruption, inefficiency, Indians have learnt how to live and enjoy.

Re: A Dust Over India

#52

Post by sandGorgon »

briandear wrote: post #33
sandGorgon wrote: post #8

There was little else to do after nightfall in India but get drunk. hmm... OK http://www.buzzintown.com/delhi/events/category--nightlife/i... http://delhi.burrp.com/events/Film+and+Theatre#3 an Indian will lie to your face ... they’ll hand you fake business cards and offer to sell you something that they don’t actually have, so that you’ll voluntarily empty your wallet to them on your own accord. As opposed to DecorM…

It's hard to be sympathetic when walking through Paharganj in Delhi and have hundreds of con artists just outright lying and trying to scam well meaning tourists. I won't go back to India because of it. It's one thing to pay a guy to take pictures of you at Taj, it's another to have someone be helpful then demand a tip for it. China has a billion people too, but life there is far less horrid, dirty and bureaucratic.…

The comparison with china is, IMHO, pretty much apples to oranges. You are comparing industrialized portions of China with India's countryside (notwithstanding the forced removal of Beijing's slums for the Olympics http://olympics.scmp.com/Article.aspx?id=1419&section=in...). If you need to find fault with the slow pace of reforms, I give you democracy and cite US Health Reforms as an excuse - imagine if you had one billion rather than 300 million to work with.

As India's MoS-Small Scale Industries' Sachin Pilot once put it - "inclusive development vs growth".

Hoping that people will not cheat you at Bangkok's KhaoSan road is a bit too optimistic. Existence of ThornTree and Tripadvisor with their "Tourist Trap" sections is indeed because this is a human, not a regional phenomena.

I'm sad that you wont go back to India because of it - I really wish you had not stayed at Paharganj, but instead stayed somewhere inside Delhi. I wish you had skipped Taj Mahal altogether and instead taken a walk to Hauz Khas Village, bang in the middle of New Delhi - which completely epitomises India's bohemian kitsch, shopping, food, music along with monuments that predate the Taj Mahal by atleast 300 years. Maybe you could have dropped in to have a cup of coffee at one of the cafe's there that operate on an honor system rather than a bill.

Your tourist trap experience, colored the rest of your viewpoints and I'm truly sad at that.

Re: A Dust Over India

#53

Post by ankit28595 »

free wrote: post #34
grandalf wrote: post #31

Because India is close to the equator, the environment has a greater carrying capacity than the kinds of first-world, northern nations that the author is used to. 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 th…

Thank you for taking the time to write this. I come across articles and opinions like this all the time and always feel a little offended, but I do not know exactly what triggers that. Maybe its because I notice the progress happening, the hard work people put in, only to read articles and opinions that portray the situation so negatively.

Maybe because you are after all an Indian. Some foreigner talking shit about your nation, well, hurts.

Re: A Dust Over India

#54

Post by nsns »

I have spent years in India, and it's one of my favorite places on Earth. One thing I quickly discovered is how much Western visitors like to (ab)use their experiences to misconstrue a sense of superiority. Such a sense would immediately disappear, IMO, should they make an effort to overcome their own ignorance of the place.

The piece reads almost like a self-conscious parody of this usual Western tirade against India.

Re: A Dust Over India

#55

Post by irahul »

free wrote: post #29
memset wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically what it is like commuting by bus in India: http://www.preetindersodhi.com/pictures/the-indian-bus/ Imagine being crammed in during a 100-degree+ summer just to get to and from work every day. Oof. I live in NYC; we have a very tame definition of "taking the bus" as compared to India.

Come on, that picture is more exception than the norm. I travelled by bus for years when I was in school and college. There are definitely people hanging near the doors but nowhere as close as to what you mentioned in the picture.

> Come on, that picture is more exception than the norm.

The norm isn't too far from the exception.

I spent 4 years in Chennai, and this was a common sight.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-4o_J8R8OVg/TIy3nfGUzdI/AAAAAAAAAo...

Though I have never seen the bent buses in Bangalore yet in the 5 years I have been here. That is not to say public buses are pleasant here - you still deal with being densely packed with other commuters of varying degree of hygiene.

Re: A Dust Over India

#56

Post by jagira »

shawnee_ wrote: post #37

I watched the endless poverty scroll by like a demented video game. I had an overwhelming urge to stop at an ATM and withdraw 25,000 Rupees and start handing money out to people at random. "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.…

>> 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.)

Absolutely. Be generous to your domestic help, drivers, security guards and other people who work hard to improve their lives. It will reinforce their belief in hard work.

Re: A Dust Over India

#57

Post by ankit28595 »

Arun2009 wrote: post #20
ashwinm wrote: post #18

You haven't seen india fully,not even 10%. You cant blindly say the whole india is a shit hole. come to south india.It will be much better.

> It will be much better. I'm from Kerala - things may be slightly better here than say Bihar but not by a whole lot.

Actually, there is strong feeling in at least in North India, that Kerala is where whole India should be. I am from Haryana and though Haryana is much more developed economically than Kerala, all my friends agree that Kerala is much better. And when comparing to Bihar, the state is way ahead. At least the statistics show that.

Kerala has the cleanest railway stations, the best sex ratio, the most literate population, second least malnutrition (after Punjab).

Re: A Dust Over India

#58

Post by asto »

briandear wrote: post #33
sandGorgon wrote: post #8

There was little else to do after nightfall in India but get drunk. hmm... OK http://www.buzzintown.com/delhi/events/category--nightlife/i... http://delhi.burrp.com/events/Film+and+Theatre#3 an Indian will lie to your face ... they’ll hand you fake business cards and offer to sell you something that they don’t actually have, so that you’ll voluntarily empty your wallet to them on your own accord. As opposed to DecorM…

It's hard to be sympathetic when walking through Paharganj in Delhi and have hundreds of con artists just outright lying and trying to scam well meaning tourists. I won't go back to India because of it. It's one thing to pay a guy to take pictures of you at Taj, it's another to have someone be helpful then demand a tip for it. China has a billion people too, but life there is far less horrid, dirty and bureaucratic.…

It's easy to see why corruption in China would reduce. People are executed for it in China.[1] Hard to get scammers even behind bars in India.

[1] https://www.google.co.in/search?q=china+executed+corruption

Re: A Dust Over India

#60

Post by tokenadult »

ankit28595 wrote: post #40
powertower wrote: post #11

I think I understand now why India has historically been the place that produced enlightenment, at a greater rate than other countries have.... Out of necessity. It's hard to live in an environment like that without witnessing the game of life (the suffering), and hopefully, existing out of it. And I don't mean the suffering of the poor, but also of the rich, the middle class, and everyone else there, that's a piece…

I would like to point out that the extreme poverty that India is known for today is pretty much a legacy of the British Raj. The 'enlightenment' you are talking about came much before that, when India was a much more peaceful and prosperous area. So the 'Out of necessity' argument you made is pointless.

I would like to point out that the extreme poverty that India is known for today is pretty much a legacy of the British Raj.

Today (2012) is sixty-five years since the independence of India from British rule (1947). As an American, I have to agree with the general proposition that British colonial rule is not the best form of government, but as an observer of the great variety of former British colonies in the world that are now independent countries, I invite readers here to think about why some of those countries (including some that became independent more recently than India) are now prosperous and free. Perhaps there are details about life in India and policies of the independent government of India that kept India comparatively poor and backward even after India won independence. It's a backward-looking set of excuses to say "British rule was bad for us," as it may indeed have been, without also being curious about "How have other countries thrived since winning independence from Britain?"

As far as the bad influence of colonialism goes, I think in general French or Spanish colonial rule have been even worse for most countries than British colonial rule. And it appears that one way harm was mediated to many places of the world by colonial rule is that socialism (especially hard-left socialism like Marxism) was transmitted to colonies by Western colonial officials, and then many countries pursued ineffective policies for national development for decades after independence, because they were stuck in socialist ideology for too long.

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