A Dust Over India

British rule in India couldn't do this - half a billion people is a bit too many to simply overrun. Instead they played factions against each other, one trick being to give a smaller faction superior arms, they keep the peace and a slice of the pie, but are wholly dependent on the supply of arms. British rule in India was a massively different beast to the Dominion countries.

Examples:

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

"Contrast this to the genocide the US conducted against native Americans who were in the way."

"Consider how much effort is undertaken in the US to hide poverty from view."

"Yet fraud abounds at all levels of government."

Even if this stuff were true (and it mostly isn't), your arguments don't answer the author's points.

Consider a few of these:

Indian culture itself is quite disorienting. The people can be incredibly warm and hospitable, or cold and rude depending on the context and how they know you. The conclusion I eventually came to is that if they already know you, or if they’re somehow benefiting from you, then they can be incredibly warm and open people. But if they don’t know you, or if they’re trying to get something out of you, then they are a prickly, conniving bunch.

Is this a specific Indian behavior ? You can find sycophants in any part of the world. It is not that Indian culture is wired to sycophancy.

But what Sanjay told me about Indian people is bizarre but true. He said Indians will rarely, if ever, resort to violence. As a foreigner, you never have to worry about being robbed, or having a knife pulled on you, or getting beaten up by a gang of thugs and having your kidney carved out of you. And this is true.

Except that it isn't. Cases of foreign tourists being robbed,threatened at knife point, mugged aren't rare. As a tourist one has to exercise caution in India as much one would do in any other country as a tourist.

BUT, Sanjay said, an Indian will lie to your face. He’ll say anything to get what he wants from you. And most of them don’t see it as immoral or wrong. So on the one hand, they won’t stick a gun in your face to take your wallet. But 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.

Won't any conman from any part of the world operate the same way ? The author is stereotyping just because his Indian friend told it to be so.

Not really. The Transperency International which ranks countries by corruption ranks India at 95, where as U.S.A is ranked at 24[1]. Lower the rank less corrupt the country is.

1. http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/

One thing that I do want to mention is that India is a very high variance country. For almost any statement one makes, there will be a un-ignorable part of the country where the statement is not true. To get a truer picture of India, always keep that in mind. A part of the variance is not only spatial but also temporal. Depending on the time you choose to travel, your impression of Mumbai's city train system can be poles apart.

In the post it was claimed that author felt safe in India. That automatically gave the author's gender away, especially given the names of the places he visited. India's capital and most of the north and western states (Gujarat excluded) are highly unsafe if you are a girl and alone. Even the locals will not venture out in the evening unaccompanied by the opposite sex. Sexual violence and molestation is a daily affair. It is even ethnically targeted. If you are a girl from the north-east, India's capital is not a friendly place.

On the other hand visit Chennai, Mumbai, Pune (by no means an exhaustive list) nobody will give it a second thought if an unattended girl has to travel in the wee hours of the night, even if wearing a mini fortune in jewelery.

Every so often in 7 years a north/west/central region of it will erupt in politically motivated inter-religion violence and riots of the worst kind. There would be thousands dead, injured, burned and raped (yeah, I am not making this up), but no one will get punished.

On the other hand states like Kerala, West Bengal havent had such violence ever since the creation of independent India. But measure them along the axis of economic growth, the latter will come up in very unflattering colors.

In certain regions of India, you will find bribes to be business as usual. In the south, (barring Karnataka) that is certainly not the norm. Sometimes the differences are so great that sometimes when you hear the stories from the other side you cannot help but wonder, "is it the same country !"

Some cities are poster-children of bad traffic, some are pretty decent compared to Indian average.

In some cities the form of the garbage disposal is that you throw it on the street, whereas in others you will have regular system that collects it off the dumpsters and empties it on the landfills. Furthermore it is not correlated with the perceived wealth of a city or town. Some of the poorer ones are cleaner and more organized.

Most of India is male-dominated and patriarchal whereas the north-eastern states are matriarchal. In many states it is still customary for the girl's family to pay huge amounts in dowry, and a matter of peer pride for the boy's family, whereas in many parts, (kerala, west bengal) dowry is frowned upon. It is not completely absent but when such a transaction does take place, it is sneaked in different ways and peer pressure works against it.

In the northern and western states girl child foeticide is rampant, not so in the other states.

Lastly: Corruption is practiced differently in India and US. In US there is this revolving door between corporations and the govt that legitimizes corruption, whereas in India it is closer to cash under the table. Not claiming that one is better or worse than the other, just making an observation about how it is practiced.