151–160 of 242 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free housing & food? Which country is that?
The UK is infamous for housing illegal immigrants in hotels, and they don't just get free food but free money, too. Oh, and free healthcare. Free money, housing, and healthcare for everyone is also the law here in Germany, which is why we get flooded by illegal immigrants too.. ..and that's why these Western European welfare states are collapsing. You can only afford something like this if your population overwhelmin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Last year I read an article saying like 30% of children in India are stunted. We were solidly middle class in india that never went hungry. All our kids in USA now are atleast 3-4 inches taller than us. They are often taller than their parents in their mid teens.
Is air quality a problem in the city where you grew up?
I don't understand the significant of metrics like the international poverty line. Seems like the only point of its existence is to create a sense of progress or maybe exaggerate it. They never account for basic stuff like how many calories people get to eat, let alone the quality of nutrition. Last year I read an article saying like 30% of children in India are stunted.
> Last year I read an article saying like 30% of children in India are stunted. We were solidly middle class in india that never went hungry. All our kids in USA now are atleast 3-4 inches taller than us. They are often taller than their parents in their mid teens.
Not being hungry is not the same as getting good nutrition. Middle class in India doesn't eat enough meat, fish, eggs, fruits, and vegetables.
Middle class meal in South India is mostly rice. With some fried potato side. In the North its Chapathi(Flat bread-Wheat), with friend potato sides and lentil(Dal).
Only thing that Middle class likely gets a good deal of is milk(through Chai).
Plus meat is taboo subject in India. A kind of sugar loaded vegetarianism is what most middle class in India gets to eat.
India really needs to work on consciousness-raising regarding sanitation/cleanliness. Modi made a start in 2014. I don't know why the momentum stopped. Some of the videos coming out of there (e.g. the recent video of the railway employee throwing a huge amount of used disposable plastic food trays off a moving train) are shocking.
The video in question seems to be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci-QQaP2fSM
It is pretty shocking, but at least not as shocking as garbage trucks dumping trash into the river (of which there are many online)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Check this out: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-how-asia-works The odd one out in this assessment is India, because it did some similar things (land reform) without success. A difference might be that India sheltered businesses from foreign competition and didn't encourage and invest as much. Another, is that you need caste connections to do business. Culturally I intuit that the upper-castes that contro…
India has similar barriers for foreign manufacturing businesses to enter as those that China has. And the caste aspect doesn't make sense, as caste is hyperlocal and there isn't solidarity between caste groups of different ethnicities. Furthermore, caste ranking doesn't fully translate to business ownership, as traditionally, merchant and moneylending castes like Banias were towards the lower end. The main difference…
A prime example is the state of government schools in India, which are almost exclusively used by the very poor. State funded schools in east Asian countries are of significantly higher quality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you explain the differences across South Asia by anything else than cultural attitudes towards cleanliness and dirt? Singapore is very clean. Malaysia is fairly clean. Cambodia sort of. India and Philippines very much not. And Zoroastrians are absolutely meticulous about cleanliness, be they poor or rich.
All such questions are easily answered once you take a look at the per-capita budget each country has for the required expenditures. India is extremely poor per-capita.
Job options are non existent. Farming and some local trade is all you have. There is also total absence of health care infrastructure. Most people have to travel to metros for healthcare. Last time I visited a small town in my weekend motorcycle rides to see my former manager, the biggest political issue in the town was wanting a kidney speciality hospital built. It turns out taking a day off(loss of earnings), traveling to Bangalore, spending money and time for dialysis was bankrupting entire family trees. Similar situations exist for bypass surgeries, and getting stent installed in heart. You will hear these stories for all kinds of major ailments.
Options for schooling and cram schools are absent. Your kids don't get a competitive peer group, or decent enough tuition/coaching to compete with students from metros, and once you lose your chance to study engineering/medicine its just one more generation of poverty your bloodline has to endure.
In the metros, if you have the money you get good hospital and schools. But owning a home is nearly impossible these days. By and large if you don't make it to FAANG in a few years, you just leave and move abroad.
Nearly every young person I know doesn't even try and default goal is either Gulf or Jobs in western countries.
In short, its a brutal Zero sum game, everybody grabs whatever they can, by any means they can, even if they have to burn down the whole thing in the process.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Theory (I live half a world away though): totalitarianism. China has a very strong and top-down government, where if the leadership decides for example that streets should be clean, millions of government officials make it happen. I don't know if that is just good organization or if it's backed by e.g. legal repercussions if it's not done right though. But of course it's got major downsides, as the Chinese government…
But that doesn’t explain Taiwan. Even Vietnam is nicer than India.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
India has similar barriers for foreign manufacturing businesses to enter as those that China has. And the caste aspect doesn't make sense, as caste is hyperlocal and there isn't solidarity between caste groups of different ethnicities. Furthermore, caste ranking doesn't fully translate to business ownership, as traditionally, merchant and moneylending castes like Banias were towards the lower end. The main difference…
I think the caste aspect makes sense in terms of who a politician feels responsible for when they are in power. For example, typical upper caste politician might feel that they only need to improve the conditions of upper caste people while not feeling responsible for people in lower castes, or just people who are poor in general. I think sentiments like that is prevalent across politics in India, though I agree abou…
And India uses Caste Based Affirmative Action using a quota that makes around 60% of all government positions reserved for lower caste individuals [1]
> state of government schools in India, which are almost exclusively used by the very poor. State funded schools in east Asian countries are of significantly higher quality
These are broad terms. Education falls onto state and local government in India, and leads to massive variation (eg. Kerala, Punjab public schools doing fairly well versus Bihar, MP public schools doing badly).
It's the same in East Asia, though I would like to know what you define as "East Asia". The urban-rural education gap is well documented in China as well [2]
[0] - https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/how-caste-factor-p...
[1] - https://www.clearias.com/reservation-in-india/
[2] - https://fsi.stanford.edu/docs/research_projects__understandi...