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Angry young Indians: What a waste

economist.com

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Re: Angry young Indians: What a waste

#91

Post by intended »

err_badprocrast wrote: post #72
spiderPig wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well articulated. I'm a kid who came over to the US for higher studies. All these problems are deep-rooted in our culture. The culture doesn't encourage innovation and curiosity is shunned in most of the schools. Kids get into this rat race of scoring high grades without even realizing it. (I'm going to go off on a tangential rant here onward): Sadly, it looks like most of us are proud of it. And the ones who co…

> The culture doesn't encourage innovation and curiosity is shunned in most of the schools. Kids get into this rat race of scoring high grades without even realizing it. I'm not trying to take anything from what you're saying, but my experience is that applies just as well to US school (high school, at least.)

Having been to both places - the similarity may be there, but America has just started on the path of wiping out the ability to think from its children.

We've been 'teaching the test' for decades now. No child left behind has just started for you in comparison.

The Indian education system is busy creating mental athletes who are literate, but incapable of actually working outside of their experience set - essentially training fencers instead of fighters.

Re: Angry young Indians: What a waste

#92

Post by zapf »

sridharvembu wrote: post #59

I am optimistic about India, in spite of all the problems. First, almost all the problems are accounted for by the $1200 GDP per capita. It is hard to visualize just how scarce resources are to solve problems when you are that poor. At the municipal level, annual budgets of $20-$30 per capita would be considered good in India, even in a relatively prosperous city (by Indian standards) like Chennai. Lack of hygiene an…

No way man.

If your daddy doesn't have money you can't get no education.

If your daddy doesn't have money you can't enough vitamins to get the brain or the proteins to get the muscles to work properly.

If your daddy doesn't have money you can't even shit with dignity.

Without a middle class or a rich daddy, you are basically screwed.

When 37% of Indians live below poverty line. I dunno how you think skill and nutrition levels are increasing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India#Poverty_estima...

To get India going, we need to do all the the article is saying - spend on food, health and eduction. But I would add the state needs to do that, private sector will just screw the poor further - no deliberately, but shit happens.

Being optimistic is just that, optimistic.

Re: Angry young Indians: What a waste

#93

Post by test001only »

kamaal wrote: post #86
joonix wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimate how much people are willing to live in shitty conditions in exchange for business opportunities. The US may not be a boomtown but it has opportunity to live a comfortable life if you can add value. Most people would prefer quality of life + "just getting somewhere" (the American standard) over living in a dump + business opportunities.

There no 'shitty conditions'. Not by what I perceive and experience. People who opted to stay in India to reap the benefits of the IT boom in the 90's are in something like a million times better conditions than the guys who left to the US in the 90's. If you want to be super rich, this is the time to be in India. And it will be at least for the next half century, there is too much room to grow and there is far littl…

I think you are overestimating the demand for talent here. Recently Infosys announced that they are going to change the workforce ratio to 70% freshers and 30% seniors. There are very few companies which value true talent in India. You have to fight and pay bribe to get anything that has interaction with a government organisation. Broken or no roads, fly over and metro that are taking years together to complete. As far as I am aware only very few percentage of people became rich in the IT boom of 90s but most of the people who went abroad during that period are well to do today (this from random sample among my relatives and friends).

Re: Angry young Indians: What a waste

#94

Post by sateesh »

31reasons wrote: post #66

What I have learned is that Indians severely lack "social intelligence". I am not talking about the kind which makes you good with people. I am talking about, how much a person thinks that What is good for people surrounding you is also good for you. I think average indian's such intelligence is perhaps is in negative. I have seen people throw trash on the streets without any regard for others. Same goes for every ot…

I think the better term is "lack of civic sense". I don't think there is a lack of social intelligence or such thing, I see it more as a plain apathy to anyone other than self and one's kins.

Re: Angry young Indians: What a waste

#95

Post by rtpg »

nnq wrote: post #89

I'm not Indian, but I truly hope that India rises above it's current economical level, for the good of the entire world. Having whole generations of very hard-working ( too hard working!) young people that have grown with an unhealthy tolerance for very bad working conditions, work abuse and for bad living conditions decreases the quality of working conditions worldwide (or in EU and US at least) and enforces a stere…

for what it's worth the salary of a mid-level manager in India is half of what an equivalent position will fetch in Korea (this surprised me greatly at first).

Re: Angry young Indians: What a waste

#96

Post by [deleted] »

31reasons wrote: post #66

What I have learned is that Indians severely lack "social intelligence". I am not talking about the kind which makes you good with people. I am talking about, how much a person thinks that What is good for people surrounding you is also good for you. I think average indian's such intelligence is perhaps is in negative. I have seen people throw trash on the streets without any regard for others. Same goes for every ot…

[deleted]

Re: Angry young Indians: What a waste

#97

Post by modarts »

habosa wrote: post #80
31reasons wrote: post #66

What I have learned is that Indians severely lack "social intelligence". I am not talking about the kind which makes you good with people. I am talking about, how much a person thinks that What is good for people surrounding you is also good for you. I think average indian's such intelligence is perhaps is in negative. I have seen people throw trash on the streets without any regard for others. Same goes for every ot…

It may be a lack of "social intelligence" as you say, but it could also be a result of Broken Windows Theory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory ). What incentive does one person have to organize his/her trash when there are already massive burning piles in the street?

I feel that the concept of the "Tragedy of the Commons" more closely mirrors this aspect of "social intelligence" that the original commenter referred to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Re: Angry young Indians: What a waste

#98

Post by nnq »

rtpg wrote: post #95
nnq wrote: post #89

I'm not Indian, but I truly hope that India rises above it's current economical level, for the good of the entire world. Having whole generations of very hard-working ( too hard working!) young people that have grown with an unhealthy tolerance for very bad working conditions, work abuse and for bad living conditions decreases the quality of working conditions worldwide (or in EU and US at least) and enforces a stere…

for what it's worth the salary of a mid-level manager in India is half of what an equivalent position will fetch in Korea (this surprised me greatly at first).

with South Korea's GDP per capita being 10x that of India, I would've expected a more than 2x difference. So this would imply a much lower difference between manager and worker incomes in Korea than in India. Basically Korea's better social equality smooths down what should've been a 5x-10x difference to a mere 2x one ...then again, my understanding of East Asian economies is not very good, and they are know to be economically "weird", so I may be quite wrong on this.

Re: Angry young Indians: What a waste

#99

Post by sridharvembu »

zapf wrote: post #92
sridharvembu wrote: post #59

I am optimistic about India, in spite of all the problems. First, almost all the problems are accounted for by the $1200 GDP per capita. It is hard to visualize just how scarce resources are to solve problems when you are that poor. At the municipal level, annual budgets of $20-$30 per capita would be considered good in India, even in a relatively prosperous city (by Indian standards) like Chennai. Lack of hygiene an…

No way man. If your daddy doesn't have money you can't get no education. If your daddy doesn't have money you can't enough vitamins to get the brain or the proteins to get the muscles to work properly. If your daddy doesn't have money you can't even shit with dignity. Without a middle class or a rich daddy, you are basically screwed. When 37% of Indians live below poverty line. I dunno how you think skill and nutriti…

All of the problems were much worse 35 years ago. Yet, in spite of all that, India has made progress. I assume you are very young - I am approaching 45, and I am more optimistic now than when I was at 25.

I am not just being optimistic, I am putting my money and my time where my mouth is.

Re: Angry young Indians: What a waste

#100

Post by D_Alex »

kamaal wrote: post #86
joonix wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimate how much people are willing to live in shitty conditions in exchange for business opportunities. The US may not be a boomtown but it has opportunity to live a comfortable life if you can add value. Most people would prefer quality of life + "just getting somewhere" (the American standard) over living in a dump + business opportunities.

There no 'shitty conditions'. Not by what I perceive and experience. People who opted to stay in India to reap the benefits of the IT boom in the 90's are in something like a million times better conditions than the guys who left to the US in the 90's. If you want to be super rich, this is the time to be in India. And it will be at least for the next half century, there is too much room to grow and there is far littl…

> There no 'shitty conditions'.

Based on my 2 trips to India - Mumbai and Chennai - this is either naive or dishonest.

I'll go further, and say that out of all the roughly 50 countries I visited, which include Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Indonesia, Phillipines and Solomon Islands, conditions in India were The Shittiest. Sorry.

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