Let me summarize the problems of India in my very limited capacity.
1. India is a very very old civilization. Hence, there are way too many ideologies, religions, castes etc in the way of a focused progressive thinking.
2. India ceased to be offensive long back - history is very clear about what usually happens with a non-offensive civilization - they get captured, robbed, systematically destroyed. It took 600 years to rob India from Moghuls to the British. In this very long process of invasions and slavery, something very critical to human survival broke down completely. We Indians do not care of our own well-being. We are happy with getting away with minimal suffering. We just do not care.
3. As India spent most of the modern time in slavery, India became fatalist - none of our actions are relevant - finally the destiny/wish of God/karma takes over. So, we do not care about our actions. There is no causality.
4. Post independence from the British, India fell into the hands of a very corrupt political system. Please understand this, to survive in power the Governments in India need poor people. How can you govern and control 1.2 billion people? - by keeping them in abject poverty. This is a very simple mechanism (read Orwell's 1984) proven and tested the world over.
5. India has a class of enterpreneurial people. They make money for themselves and help their own. India has no sense of public distribution of wealth or enterpreneurship. An Indian will NOT help a man living in his own street if the other guy is from a different caste/religion/etc.
6. Poverty is the worst form of violence - but India has no plans to eradicate poverty. Politics is usually the tool for the rougue to make quick money and loads of it and as I mentioned earlier, poverty is necessary for the political class to survive.
I have 100 other points - perhaps I will write a blog about it and share with you people.
This article talks about something that hurts me a lot on personal level - trust me, every Indian has tried atleast once to change things around him. Most have failed. Even Gandhi failed miserably - he never got the India he dreamed of.
A Dust Over India
131–140 of 325 posts
Re: A Dust Over India
#132Because 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…
"Yes India's government is corrupt, but not all that much more corrupt than the US government." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/world/asia/18iht-letter18.... http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2091100,00.htm... People are holding hunger strikes to stand up against the corruption. When was the last time that happened in the US? You are rationalizing away al…
Western countries have merely professionalised corruption. Give a politician 10 lakh rupees in a brown envelope and it's a symptom of corruption, but donate $100,000 to his campaign funds and it's the sign of a healthy democracy.
Here in the UK, we are investigating massive corruption in the banking sector, the press and government. Every day we are seeing new revelations from the Leveson Inquiry on press ethics, or the Treasury Select Committee on banking. It would take a great deal of hubris to make any claim to the high ground.
Re: A Dust Over India
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the caste system exists and the inequalities exist - but they exist purely due to economic and political incentives. Belief in karma and reincarnation has got nothing to do with it. And even the victims of this system know this.
I want to nitpick slightly, if I may, albeit the point is not related to the general discussion of poverty in India. There is also some modern, relevant benefits to identifying someone's caste: it is an indicator that someone comes from a similar cultural or religious upbringing. That you speak similar dialects of Hindi. This is important when, say, marrying. This says nothing of the caste system as institutional dis…
Yes, caste system is embedded in the culture. It is not purely economic/political in nature. It is used by politicians because it is there, socially. This form is racism exists so deep in India. You can witness this:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit
* India Untouched - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1552060/
* India's broken people - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxJr0UlcNTA
There is whole sect in India which is segregated, tortured everyday for being born as a lower caste and it does not even end with their death. They have to clean others' feces by their hands (yes even today) and this is considered a norm. Rich, higher caste still instill this in their own kids to be wary of the "dirty people". Kids born into Dalit families are reminded of this by not letting them eat with other kids, not letting them wear same clothes and being asked for their caste again and again. This system is kept alive.
This all still exists and is in abundance. Point to note is that this is not just in rural, uneducated parts of India. Honestly, the concept comes from Hinduism. As a major religion for centuries, it has a code-of-conduct by Manu to divide the society into 4 major parts. But now it is a part of every sect in practice.
It exists and it is social.
Re: A Dust Over India
#134Oh Jesus Christ... Not another one of these posts. Guys, why do you write posts like this knowing the end result? Someone brings to light an obvious flaw in someone else's country, people from that country feel like it's a direct attack on them and come up with bullshit excuses, the bullshit annoys people and the whole conversation spirals into denials, "I'm not in denial"s, "what about your _____"s, and "that's not…
This isn't a criticism of India. People are reacting that way because they read a few paragraphs and came here to comment because what they read wasn't nice.
It's much more balanced than it's being given credit for, because it has the audacity to be honest about things like the fact that a lot of people in India are dirty. Let alone whether there actually are a lot of dirty people, people here are more interested in expressing their indignance. But as I say, it is more balanced than it appears. For example, the story about being hustled at the rug shop -- the author later notes that his mother did indeed get the rug. For example, the story about flipping out at the cab driver over a few dollars. There is no love here for the idiot Westerners traveling to India to experience "spiritual enlightenment".
But commenters don't want to respect his honesty. Just trot out the same old tired accusations of ignorance and cultural arrogance. Oh well.
Re: A Dust Over India
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
asto wrote: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN SAYING? My point was about carrying capacity. Hot or cold snaps do not significantly alter the base carrying capacity of the environment w/o infrastructure. In the US things like parking tickets, DMV fees, etc. are levied with abandon. Why use this approach to generate funds to pay for municipal workers rather than just having them extract bribes? Because the US has the infrastr…
Why are bribes inferior to levying fees, fines, and penalties? Seriously? The latter involves due process. It also accrues funds to a democratic body instead of to random servants of the state. This removes conflicts of interest, e.g. I'm going to require a billion licences because each licence means I get a bribe. Empirically, corruption hurts the economy and political system. An IIE paper showed that "a one-standar…
I have no disagreement with your point. Of course a codified system of fees is preferable to one that is completely ad-hoc and based on bribes.
But police officers and other minor officials (IRS workers, etc.) are given tremendous discretion about which violations to enforce and which to ignore. In that sense, the US system is quite ad-hoc as well.
And since the people who interact most directly with police officers are the poor, abuses of power are less likely to be reported... yet we still hear of them all the time.
I view it as a continuum of institutional evolution, with the US perhaps a small notch or two ahead of India in creating institutions that are resistant to corruption. It's definitely not a night and day distinction.
Re: A Dust Over India
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
This mostly has to do with the gap introduced by the Industrial Revolution the second half of the 19th century. If you follow the rise of Germany leading up to World War I, you will notice that the country was steadily becoming richer as industrial machinery was introduced from Britain (where most of the early inventions took place). Something similar occurred in the United States as well. India, on the other hand, i…
Even during the french revolution, the largest manufacturing districts in the world were still the Yangzi Delta and Bengal.India alone produced one quarter of the world manufactures. "It is very likely that, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the average standard of living in Europe was a little bit lower than that of the rest of the world" - Bairoch. The viewpoint that European countries surged ahead due to th…
> The viewpoint that European countries surged ahead due to the industrial revolution rather than colonial oppression has been widely debunked.
Neither the Austrian-Hungarian Empire nor Germany had colonies, yet their standard of living had improved dramatically over the second half of the 19th century. One could argue that these countries initially had feudal-style serfdom, yet in both of them serfdom was abolished earlier than in the Russian Empire (1770-1830 in Germany, 1848 in Austria-Hungary, 1861 in Russia), and the standard of living continued to increase after the abolition of serfdom.
I am not a huge lover of big empires, yet I consider the typical postcolonial argument which goes basically "white people are responsible for everything" as politically motivated and leading to victim mentality, which further inhibits progress. If you want to see a true example of exploitation, look at Congo under King Leopold. The British regime was lollipops and roses by comparison. If you look at hubs of economic activity in South-East Asia, and which in no small manner are still influencing Asian economic growth -- Singapore, Hong Kong -- all of them are former British colonial outposts.
If you take a country/people where accumulating wealth is not a culturally-established practice, and introduce wealth to this country through trade/industry/oil exploration, you won't get a reduction of poverty -- you will get more poverty, since the wealth you introduced can now sustain more people at their previous standard of living. This is, by the way, why having a conversation with postcolonialists can be completely impossible -- they place such an emphasis on differences between cultures when talking about pretty much anything, but when you hint that willingness to save money and plan for the future can also be culturally influenced, they get red in the face.
Re: A Dust Over India
#137Because 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…
The term for what you're doing in this argument is "tu quoque". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque 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 o…
My comparisons were not meant to logically refute the author's points.
I intended to point out the absurdity of focusing one's indignation on problems in another country.
Imagine if someone started expressing indignation about the bad breath of someone sitting on the other side of the room, when he himself had bad breath, though perhaps slightly fresher than the person whose breath he was outraged about.
For some reason, we don't view indignant rants about foreign political systems with the same eye for absurdity that we view indignant rants about other things.
Re: A Dust Over India
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 commu…
You guys should come by the Mission district or China Town or Lower Haight ( here in San Francisco ) or take public transit (any of the BART stations - 16th, 24th, Civic Center or Glen Park).
The foulest stench of excrement anywhere.
Some blame the Hispanic population and some blame the Hmong and others blame the street urchins. But I never expected to smell anything so odious in a major metropolis in the U.S.
Re: A Dust Over India
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment says more about India than the original article. Corruption? America's as corrupt (it's not). Poverty? They don't need houses - it's always balmy. Terrible land rules? It's humanitarian. Terrible infrastructure? It's difficult. Garbage and pollution? Well don't breathe it! A (very wealthy) Indian relative of mine once explained to me that while Indians may come rich and poor they all have greater pride i…
Indians can indeed be very proud. We're always looking to blame the corrupt politicians, the system, but we forget that the people themselves form the system. But if an outsider points this out, we quickly get defensive and use and every counter-argument that we can. You will hear the success and achievements of Indians around the globe as proof that we're not that far behind. I've seen it far too many times. Startup…
Unfortunately, this is not just an Indian trait, but a human one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error. Kudos to those who can look in the mirror and see their faults. It is a rare and valuable skill.
Re: A Dust Over India
#140It is hard to give a well rounded response to the post and yet keep it short. So I will not even try. A lot has been written about India, so people who want to know more will dig deep on their own, whereas many will be happy with poverty porn . 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 t…
In what way is regulatory capture corruption? What is the alternative? I'm reluctant to consider it corruption in the same sentence as bribery, despite that it is an inherent conflict of interest.