Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Dust Over India

postmasculine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 325 posts

Re: A Dust Over India

#181

Post by pdeuchler »

microarchitect wrote: post #145
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…

how does that justify having the poor out in the open begging for a living? What would you do? You can't magically produce houses, schools, hospitals and other basic infrastructure to service several hundred million people. Forget that, I doubt you could engineer an efficient distribution system that just provides these people with nutritious food. Keep in mind these people are distributed across a fairly large count…

I never promised a solution. I'd completely agree with you that it is a hard problem.

Just because I don't have a solution doesn't make the fact that having the poor, out in the open, begging for a living any less "bad".

Re: A Dust Over India

#182

Post by pdeuchler »

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.

While I don't disagree with the validity of your statement, I feel like you are splitting hairs... I was mainly using that as a demonstration of the relative differences in corruption between the two countries.

Re: A Dust Over India

#183

Post by tejaswiy »

cstross wrote: post #178
saket123 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

India was a bunch of smaller countries before John Company came along and conquered it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

Well, that's just not true. India was unified all the way from Afghanistan to Andhra Pradesh for very long periods of time[1]. After the Mughal invasion, pretty much the entire North India was unified under the Mughals. The end of the mughal empire was when things started getting a little fragmented and the East India company was there to take advantage of it playing one king against the other. But to say that India was a bunch of smaller countries all the time is false.

EDIT: Wiki actually has a pretty good summary with pictures and the like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India#Early_Middle_K...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maurya_Dynasty_in_265_BCE....

Re: A Dust Over India

#184

Post by badclient »

frasertimo wrote: post #169
badclient wrote: post #72

This is an uber linkbait article from a pickup instructor turned internet marketer. Nicely executed.

Employee of the site here. Just want to point out a few things. 1. The submitter of the article to HN has no affiliation with Postmasculine as far as I know, nor did we request them to post it here. We're very grateful for them doing so however! 2. While the author of the site was involved in the pickup industry for a while, he chose to no longer identify with that scene over two years ago, and specifically moved his…

Fair points, mostly.

I would say that it is a new trend for pick-up instructors to distance themselves from the pick-up industry mostly for marketing purposes. I think it's mostly semantics and at the end of the day, you're just fearing the phrase "pickup industries" focuses too much on the negative and not enough about the positives.

On the otherhand, as someone who's spent fair bit of time observing pickup companies, I will say that your marketing page seems very reasonable and not full of false promises common on most PU sites.

Re: A Dust Over India

#185

Post by therandomguy »

vacri wrote: post #127
therandomguy wrote: post #113

I grew up in one of the biggest cities in India. If I was as good with words, this is exactly what I would write. Or maybe I wouldn't. The problem in discussing these issues with most Indians is that they quickly become defensive. Instead of acknowledging the facts (which is the fist step to finding a solution), the typical response you would receive is, "even in US there is poverty/crime/corruption... you are being…

Pretty much any nation with a modicum of pride in their populace will have people getting defensive if a foreigner criticises their nation. I can't think of many first-world nations where I haven't seen symptoms of this.

Yup. Ignorance and arrogance masked as pride.

Re: A Dust Over India

#186

Post by srean »

cstross wrote: post #178
saket123 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

India was a bunch of smaller countries before John Company came along and conquered it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

Depends on what time you are looking at it. India has had several large empires established before. Maurya, Gupta, Mughal, Pala, Maratha. But you are right, India as a nation state came into being as a consequenc of the British raj and yes Europe is not a bad metaphor at all.

Re: A Dust Over India

#187

Post by mitra »

geekam wrote: post #133
memset wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

It's going to be hard for the caste system to stay rigid because in larger cities there is no way of verifying any of this. In bigger cities like Mumbai, it's already pretty apparent with most kids growing up indifferent to the complex caste adherence of the past. Most of these kids would not be able to attribute a caste to people based on their last names as that knowledge has been lost. Going with the theme of this thread, this is definitely not true across the board but definitely applies to the large majority, at least in major towns and cities.

Re: A Dust Over India

#188

Post by j45 »

memset wrote: post #73
photon137 wrote: post #48

Earlier 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…

Caste is the most insidious poison to ever walk the face of the planet, far worse than all the wars, disease, famine and genocide committed, because the people on the right side of caste find ways to justify it.
Post reply on HN