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India is drowning in its own excreta

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Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#81

Post by veidr »

spikels wrote: post #73

Open defecation is also practiced in San Francisco. I have seen is occurring in front of my apartments and on the street. You can find human feces on almost any walk through SOMA, the Tenderloin or Civic Center area if you know what to look for (expert tip: dogs don't look for hiding places to poo). We have decided this is not a problem.

Others of us have decided not to live in San Francisco (or India).

I'm not being entirely flippant; I'm originally from the Bay Area, and the filth is a significant part of the reason I live in Tokyo now. Regularly encountering human feces is one of several things I don't miss.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#83

Post by LekkoscPiwa »

ayushgta wrote: post #35
aashaykumar92 wrote: post #4

Having been to India quite recently (and being Indian), I talked to a lot of family members there about this issue, among others, as I saw it happen time and again. One of the things that really frustrated me was the pure lack of accountability in general. I said 'among others' earlier because I am also referring to environment issues such as littering and pollution. The people there aren't dumb--they know all of the…

>You can't blame the government Of course you can. And you should. This is all about terrible - and in many cases non-existent- governance. Widespread public problems this this cannot be solved by individual citizens or organizations. They need the power, money and resources of a government. > the country is so populated that it is extremely hard to make this drastic of an imposition and follow through with it. Popul…

You don't want too much Government in that department. But, it really is easy to fix by a simple Government regulation. Folks in Singapore used to litter a lot. Like really a lot. The place used to be extremely polluted too. So polluted and littered. We're talking about 1960s. At that time Singapore probably didn't look better than Mumbai looks today. Simple regulation: fine of $100 or more per each piece of paper you drop. Great income for the city, so hell yeah they would make sure to enforce it. And don't give me "cultural" differences stories because Singapore has rather large Indian population and they had to adjust to this too. How to get rid of pollution? Look at the UK. You know how Thatcher famously solved problem of pollution coming from big factories? She passed a law that said that the factory had to have its water input right below its waste water output. And factories need really clean water to operate and not waste water. In other words if the factory didn't invest in the top-of-the-line water treatment plant they could as well go out of business. Because waste water would enter the factory processing machines and probably brake them. You see, simple solutions work. Especially those that bring financial hardship on offenders. Hundres of buraucrats with their political agendas will just make matters worse.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#84

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

lucaspiller wrote: post #67
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #6

India isn't alone. Dubai is having a massive problem with sewage and in the US there are a lot of communities that have septic tanks which, when they fail, can cause ground water pollution. Even in St. Louis, Missouri, USA we still have overflows in which the sewer system excess gets purged into streams and rivers when it becomes too much to handle for the sewer system. A lot of US cities have this problem. And this…

> Dubai is having a massive problem with sewage I don't understand why people always bring this up about Dubai. In 2010 a new treatment plant was completed that nearly doubled capacity. Dubai probably has a better sewage system than most US cities now (and the funds to expand it if needed). The controversy was that in 2009 there were lots of queues for sanitation trucks to dump their waste, so a lot of drivers just i…

That's my fault for not keeping up with the times. Sorry I didn't know that was over and fixed. My original point still stands, when cities (even rich ones) expand very rapidly, a traditional sewer system takes too long to build to keep up with demand.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#85

Post by mailshanx »

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #83
ayushgta wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can't blame the government Of course you can. And you should. This is all about terrible - and in many cases non-existent- governance. Widespread public problems this this cannot be solved by individual citizens or organizations. They need the power, money and resources of a government. > the country is so populated that it is extremely hard to make this drastic of an imposition and follow through with it. Popul…

You don't want too much Government in that department. But, it really is easy to fix by a simple Government regulation. Folks in Singapore used to litter a lot. Like really a lot. The place used to be extremely polluted too. So polluted and littered. We're talking about 1960s. At that time Singapore probably didn't look better than Mumbai looks today. Simple regulation: fine of $100 or more per each piece of paper yo…

>> Simple regulation: fine of $100 or more per each piece of paper you drop

While you are right about the fines imposed on Singaporean society, the Singapore government's policies had far wider scope and were coupled with efficient execution.

The fines were augmented with large scale awareness campaigns. Even today, you can see posters in many different places in the city exhorting citizens to not litter. Garbage bin density is so high, that you can mostly find one within 10 minutes of wherever you are. Of course, the various awareness campaigns were part of a much larger nation building effort which include a conscription system (all males serve ~2 years in the army), a compulsory national savings system, policies to maximize home ownership, and so on.

The Singapore bureaucracy itself quite a unique system in it's own right. The best students are awarded scholarships to study in Oxbridge, and they are expected to return and serve in the civil service.

Considering all of this, i'm sure solving these problems entails good governance, and is certainly not a "simple" matter of imposing fines.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#86

Post by PeterisP »

arethuza wrote: post #78
simonh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (What happens when governments get locked in a bad Nash equilibrium? >Well, you get the Cold War Except M.A.D worked. It's an example of a beneficial Nash equilibrium because the stable state was a military stalemate. If one side had the bomb and the other didn't you get Hiroshima and Nagasaki all over again, and if neither had the bomb you'd get a conventional WW3.

"Except M.A.D worked." For a truly insane value of "worked" - running terrible (and largely unnecessary) levels of risk for decades hardly has much to recommend it.

What would be the better alternative?

The risk was far less terrible than, say, a few dozen tactical nukes used by one of the sides in a third war across Europe, as the status quo of warsaw pact borders wasn't that acceptable to both armies, and only MAD ensured that the cold war didn't become hot.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#87

Post by PeterisP »

tomphoolery wrote: post #5
aashaykumar92 wrote: post #4

Having been to India quite recently (and being Indian), I talked to a lot of family members there about this issue, among others, as I saw it happen time and again. One of the things that really frustrated me was the pure lack of accountability in general. I said 'among others' earlier because I am also referring to environment issues such as littering and pollution. The people there aren't dumb--they know all of the…

> The people there aren't dumb--they know all of these actions have harmful and negative effects on others' help and the general environment, but they would rather not care than care for the most part. Well that's just disgusting. I don't think you could pay me enough money to step foot in that country.

>>> The people there aren't dumb--they know all of these actions have harmful and negative effects on others' help and the general environment, but they would rather not care than care for the most part.

>Well that's just disgusting. I don't think you could pay me enough money to step foot in that country.

It's not a property of a country or nation, it is a basic behavior shared by homo sapiens as a species.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#88

Post by winter_blue »

bane wrote: post #77
lucaspiller wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dubai is having a massive problem with sewage I don't understand why people always bring this up about Dubai. In 2010 a new treatment plant was completed that nearly doubled capacity. Dubai probably has a better sewage system than most US cities now (and the funds to expand it if needed). The controversy was that in 2009 there were lots of queues for sanitation trucks to dump their waste, so a lot of drivers just i…

The controversy was that in 2009 there were lots of queues for sanitation trucks to dump their waste The controversy was that ultramodern, brand new, skyscrapers in what was pretty much an all new from scratch city that hosted the tallest building in the world had to have sanitation trucks to haul away the waste at all . It was symbol of ultra-superficiality.

I don't know what your point is here.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#89

Post by bane »

winter_blue wrote: post #88
bane wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The controversy was that in 2009 there were lots of queues for sanitation trucks to dump their waste The controversy was that ultramodern, brand new, skyscrapers in what was pretty much an all new from scratch city that hosted the tallest building in the world had to have sanitation trucks to haul away the waste at all . It was symbol of ultra-superficiality.

I don't know what your point is here.

nobody thought to build a sewer system

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#90

Post by arethuza »

PeterisP wrote: post #86
arethuza wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Except M.A.D worked." For a truly insane value of "worked" - running terrible (and largely unnecessary) levels of risk for decades hardly has much to recommend it.

What would be the better alternative? The risk was far less terrible than, say, a few dozen tactical nukes used by one of the sides in a third war across Europe, as the status quo of warsaw pact borders wasn't that acceptable to both armies, and only MAD ensured that the cold war didn't become hot.

Everyone would have been deterred with a tiny percentage of the weapons that eventually ended up being deployed - no political leader in the West or in the Soviet Union could ever have contemplated a single city being hit by an H-bomb. The Soviets, more than anyone, knew what it was like to lose tens of millions to a war - for all their faults they had no desire to repeat this experience.

MAD was the only possible strategy. However, the insane level of weaponry that was actually in place was, in my view, completely unnecessary. If your opponent is deterred by one level of force then having a hundred times this level does not make you safer.

[NB In case anyone interprets my position as somehow being in support of the Soviets - they were, as far as I am concerned, a criminal regime just as "evil" in their own ways as the other nightmares of the 20th century. However, the level of strategic threat they posed was wildly overstated for political ends.]

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