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A Dust Over India

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Re: A Dust Over India

#151

Post by cjrp »

maddalab wrote: post #32

Exaggerations abound. While I agree with aspects of poor governance and garbage accumulation and many other observations, I realized the author was out to represent a preconceived notion of a nation, when I read, "homeless people sleeping on the tarmac, the city is so crowded and disgusting that people decide they’d rather sleep on the airport runway." I will pick on that lie to state my point. If you have been to an…

I was going to say.. western airlines like BA operate flights into New Delhi, and I can guarantee you they would not be landing their 747s on runways with people anywhere nearby.

Re: A Dust Over India

#152

Post by saket123 »

srean wrote: post #100

It 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…

With so many variances (I have seen most of them), I just wonder if India was suppose to be like Europe with smaller countries rather then one big country with all these variances.

Re: A Dust Over India

#153

Post by powertower »

bluekeybox wrote: post #136
nodemaker wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agreed.

It's too easy to blame the white man while pretending that the European and American advances were 95-99% a product of the white man's racism and brutality subjugated on the rest of the world.

Not relevant but a really good watch: http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-...

Re: A Dust Over India

#154

Post by aggronn »

GoodIntentions wrote: post #150
aggronn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> In what way is regulatory capture corruption? Try getting a decent mobile data plan in Canada. It will be rapidly apparent to you.

I see what you're saying, but in what way is that strictly corruption? I think what I'm really asking is, where do we draw the line on what is corruption and what isn't? To me, regulatory capture, and a fair amount of public economics, is just 'how things are'. There are ways to try to reduce certain aspects of it, but are we really willing to ban movement between working in industry and the regulatory side of things like we ban bribery?

Re: A Dust Over India

#155

Post by jhaglund »

photon137 wrote: post #14

The mistake the author made is that he lived in India for three weeks. Had he stayed for six months or a year, he'd have been able to figure out what makes India tick - India is the very embodiment of clever innovation to survive - it will ask you very tough questions and it will compel you to innovate, often rapidly, just in order to survive - not even succeed. This, in India, is known as "jugaad". He missed the "ju…

I think we call that "hustling" in America. It is common amongst poor folks around the world and can lead to run-ins with the authorities. It seems more like treading water than a path to independence, to me.

It appears to me that the most unfortunate people eventually give up regardless of country. I don't blame them. Being poor is discouraging especially if you are older.

Re: A Dust Over India

#156

Post by [deleted] »

alberich wrote: post #66
photon137 wrote: post #14

The mistake the author made is that he lived in India for three weeks. Had he stayed for six months or a year, he'd have been able to figure out what makes India tick - India is the very embodiment of clever innovation to survive - it will ask you very tough questions and it will compel you to innovate, often rapidly, just in order to survive - not even succeed. This, in India, is known as "jugaad". He missed the "ju…

I'd argue that this "jugaad" happens everywhere when people are under extreme pressure and have no good expectations of getting anywhere following the rules. Here in Brazil there are lots of young people that gets into drug dealing just because they don't have nothing better to do. The grow up in extreme poverty and society would very much like them to be dead or in prision, so they take their chances... sometimes it…

[deleted]

Re: A Dust Over India

#157

Post by poppysan »

Alex3917 wrote: post #120
pdeuchler wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

"People are holding hunger strikes to stand up against the corruption. When was the last time that happened in the US?" The last major one was July 1st, 2011 in the California prison system.

Not sure why this is being down-voted. The over 2 million Americans that are imprisoned do count as citizens, and the prison system is as corrupt as they come, from cases of judges being paid by private prisons(1) to give harsh sentences to minors to the blind eye given to assault and rape behind bars(2).

(1. http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/peopl...)

(2. http://www.hrw.org/news/2007/12/15/us-federal-statistics-sho... )

Re: A Dust Over India

#158

Post by turar »

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…

"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."

By that logic, Russia would have been the most advanced nation in the world a long time ago, yet it's historically been lagging Europe (and later USA) in development. Many in Russia actually use a totally opposite logic: because the environment in Russia is so harsh, warmer climates of Europe and USA have greater advantage in terms of agriculture initially, and infrastructure maintenance later on.

So I don't think it's as simple as that.

Re: A Dust Over India

#159

Post by Eliezer »

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.…

Indeed, if you're going to give out 25,000 rupees at random, be sure to give them to people doing productive work. Unfortunately, increasing the flow of money to the begging sector increases the number of beggars, it does not make individual beggars better off. There is no law preventing potentially productive people from begging, and if you go around handing out 25,000 rupees to people who look like beggars, more potential workers will dress up accordingly. Begging is also an industry, sad but true. This isn't to say that you shouldn't give away 25,000 rupees at random - just give them to people who look like they're working.

Re: A Dust Over India

#160

Post by natep »

I double checked, and according to Wikipedia, he's right. The homicide rate is 3.2/100,000/year for the most recent year with data, compared to 5.0 for US. Although many countries do have lower rates, India is nowhere near the more violent South American and African countries, which are the worst.

There's so much more in this article to process, I don't think I'll post a reaction until I've had time to mull it over (at which point, this post will be dead, oh well). It did strike me that my cousin has been in India for the last few weeks, and hasn't mentioned the poverty once in her travel blog. I think I'll send this to her and see if she has anything to say.

Also, am I the only one that finds it weird that a piece with this level of nuance is on a site otherwise dedicated to dating advice for straight, cis men? The kind of advice that divides behaviors into 'needy' and 'not needy' and claims that your behavior will determine what kind of woman you end up with?

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