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

India is drowning in its own excreta

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 137 posts

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#121

Post by MarkMc »

j_s wrote: post #115
MarkMc wrote: post #113

Here's an extract on this topic from a fantastic book called 'Poor Economics': Most experts agree that access to piped water and sanitation can have a dramatic impact on health. A study concluded that the introduction of piped water, better sanitation, and chlorination of water sources was responsible for something like three-fourths of the decline in infant mortality between 1900 and 1946 and nearly half the overall…

http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking-Pove... Would be interested to hear about any similar books you'd recommend.

Sorry I cannot recommend any other book on this topic - nothing else I have read about tackling poverty comes close to Poor Economics.

By the way, Esther Duflo (co-author of the book) has a TED talk worth watching: http://www.ted.com/talks/esther_duflo_social_experiments_to_...

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#122

Post by mooneater »

mooneater wrote: post #120
j_s wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking-Pove... Would be interested to hear about any similar books you'd recommend.

http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Poverty-Economic-Possibilities...

Poor Economics criticizes this book (by Sachs) "who posits that poor people are poor because they are caught in one or more poverty traps" --http://www.philanthropyaction.com/articles/book_review_poor_...

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#123

Post by chris_mahan »

realrocker wrote: post #99
fab101 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with most of what you said. Just a note: 'Bhaiyya' is a 'taboo word' (or mildly derogatory, if you prefer) for folks from UP. Source: I am from UP, India.

So is a "Bihari", in most parts of India. I am from Bihar, India. That's why I said it: to emphasize on the classifications we have created and abide by. It's less derogatory than a "chamar" or a "musahar" or a "dom". I am sure there are terms even lower than these.

Taboos hold back.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#124

Post by known »

4 people in a home hate each other 24x7 for the past 3000 years (caste).

What will an Intellectual (Gorbachev) do?

Give them their share of land/Independence and tell them to go and build their own home/nation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Award

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#125

Post by arbuge »

kamakazizuru wrote: post #80
ultimoo wrote: post #41

Great article. Does convey some of the harsh realities. However, I didn't understand why outline such a well written article with a meaningless sensational headline. "Drowning in its own excreta", really?

link baiting is the thing to do these days! sad truth.

Catchy headlines have been important since before the Internet though.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#126

Post by Flimm »

mailshanx wrote: post #85
LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Exactly. Good policies are worthless without good execution.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#127

Post by jquery »

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.

Indeed. For example, our Muni and Bart escalators are toilets at night for homeless people, to the point where they literally seize up from so much human waste. And our government acts like this is normal and there's nothing to be done.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#128

Post by derleth »

simonh wrote: post #69
derleth wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Widespread public problems this this cannot be solved by individual citizens or organizations. They need the power, money and resources of a government. More to the point, they need an entity that is both powerful enough to force change and not bound by the same incentives that the polluting companies are. It's down to a Nash equilibrium, which is the stable strategy that obtains when everyone makes the best decisi…

> (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. It's an example of a beneficial Nash equilibrium because the stable state was a military stalemate.

True if you ignore the externalities of a huge military build-up. A better solution would be both sides agreeing to not have nuclear weapons and not start a conventional WW3.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#129

Post by derleth »

api wrote: post #105
k2enemy wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only solution that has ever actually worked is for government to step in, tax, regulate, and build infrastructure. I'm not aware of any case in all of history where anything else has been effective. That is far from the truth. One of the recipients of the 2009 Nobel (memorial) in economics documents cooperative solutions to commons problems: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2...

Are these theoretical or have they been done in the real world? I have seen an endless procession of game-theoretic illustrations of nove problem solving techniques. In the real world the only technique I have seen work is "hey, you, stop shitting there or go to jail." The reason is that game-theoretic arenas are idealized computational worlds where all the rules and influences are known, while real environments are…

> American eating habits. People would rather be miserable, fat, poisoned zombies than to stop eating empty carbs with a side of sugar and mystery meat.

This is entirely untrue, as should be obvious from the absurd conclusion it forces you to reach.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#130

Post by LekkoscPiwa »

Flimm wrote: post #126
mailshanx wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

Exactly. Good policies are worthless without good execution.

This can be said about any policy. And there is no way to find out how execution will go without at least trying to execute vs. complaining that execution won't work.

Funny. Because when you read my post you will certainly see that I explained the execution part. Good income source for Mumbai -- fines for littering that is. When fines are high enough and cops get their monthly quotas of them - as explained in my original post - this would lower the scale of the issue if not resolve it completely. I also have given an example of Singapore with large Indian population where this has worked.

It seems some people prefer to always complain than to actually at least try doing something...

Post reply on HN