A Dust Over India

Your theme throughout had been that there's variance in India. Of course! With any big country you would expect good amount of variance. I couldn't help but point out that although there is variance whatever the orignal blog post said was a very good reflection of the meidan. By citing the high variance you are making it sound like the OP has only seen the bad parts of India. That's not true. The OP has a very gentle (yes!) summarization of the median. That's how life is in India.

LONGER POINT-BY-POINT REPLY

> One thing that I do want to mention is that India is a very high variance country. For almost any statement one makes, there will be a un-ignorable part of the country where the statement is not true. To get a truer picture of India, always keep that in mind.

It is very high variance indeed. But for every mile of good road there are millions of miles of crappy road. Variance yes. But the median is pretty sucky.

> Depending on the time you choose to travel, your impression of Mumbai's city train system can be poles apart.

How is it different? During rush hours it's unsafe, super-over-crowded, uncomfortable, dirty, etc. When it isn't rush hour it is not super-over-crowded yes. But it still is unsafe (no closing doors, etc.), uncomfortable (plank seats which broken planks, etc.), dirty (very very dirty), etc.

> On the other hand visit Chennai, Mumbai, Pune (by no means an exhaustive list) nobody will give it a second thought if an unattended girl has to travel in the wee hours of the night, even if wearing a mini fortune in jewelery.

Well, I can talk about Mumbai, and I disagree that nobody will give a second thought. But girls being out late (around until 11:00 PM) alone ("unattended") in Mumbai is not that bad because the city is still busy and crowded. In Gujarat things are much safer. But we used to still accompany our female friends back home.

> In certain regions of India, you will find bribes to be business as usual. In the south, (barring Karnataka) that is certainly not the norm.

I have no first hand experience but that's very very hard to believe. Especially given how elections are conducted. Whenever there's an election in Tamil Nadu (of which Chennai is the capital) you free television sets being given out by the ruling part to votes who vote for them. Fairly educated people working in other parts of India like Mumbai would go back home to get their free TVs. Ton of universities are owned and operated by current or former politicians in South India. Admission criteria is how much money can a student's family "donate".

> Some cities are poster-children of bad traffic, some are pretty decent compared to Indian average.

That's just saying some are very horrible while other are not as bad (Indian average) but still not comparable to anywhere else on the planet?

> In some cities the form of the garbage disposal is that you throw it on the street, whereas in others you will have regular system that collects it off the dumpsters and empties it on the landfills.

I think all cities have a regular system that collects garbage and uses landfills. But these garbage collectors don't collect all the garbage and there's 10x fallen on the sides, overflown and just laying there around such dumpsters. They'll collect a bag or two that is inside the dumpster AND easy to grab. I agree there would be certain parts (and again, these exists; variance; but are in minority, very small minority; median) that are decently run. But would love to hear about examples of cities where you could say the city is clean and is cleaned.

> In the northern and western states girl child foeticide is rampant, not so in the other states.

Only two states have more females than males (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_states_and_territories_r...). Since females are expected to live 3 years longer than males in India (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expec...) all states should have more women than men. Just because Tamil Nadu (say) has 995 females per male doesn't mean that's going very well. In fact, it's still pretty bad. Maybe not as bad as other states but is no way justifiable. Lastly, variance, yes. Median, still horrible.

> Lastly: Corruption is practiced differently in India and US. In US there is this revolving door between corporations and the govt that legitimizes corruption, whereas in India it is closer to cash under the table. Not claiming that one is better or worse than the other, just making an observation about how it is practiced.

If a cop stops me for not having a driver's license, not wearing a helmet on a two-wheeler, talking on the phone, etc. I pay the cop Rs. 50 instead of the Rs. 100 fine and not ask for the receipt. Job done. If in Mumbai I apply for a passport and that calls for police verification of address you have to actually go to the police station (they don't come to you) and bribe(?) them with Rs. 100 to do their job. They never verified your address and if you didn't pay up they would report that you don't live at your place. I could go on and on with this but essentially this is how the country is run. If you are saying that's the same as US then I don't know what to say.

Here's an excerpt "If someone is born in an unfortunate situation, for instance into a very poor family, we explain it as due to past bad karma. We try to do more good karma this life in order to ensure we have a better rebirth. Is this chasing after happiness in life after life correct?

Some people say, "Those people are poor because of their bad actions; therefore they are morally inferior. We shouldn't try to improve their situation because that would interfere with their karma. Rather, they should accept being in a lower class and try to create positive actions so they will be rich in future lives."

EDIT: Given the downvotes I must have rubbed someone the wrong way.

When you compare you do need to take into account all the axes, I would be interested in knowing a train system that carries as many commuters for comparable price and profitably (as far as I recall the train system is indeed profitable, dont know if they receive subsidies or not). You cannot isolate services from who are going to use it and their buying power.

I will also posit that that your perception of the median is very different from mine. I speak from personal experience living in several cities/towns in India. Now I have learned enough not to extrapolate. The other thing that we disagree on is that you brush aside the variance saying India is large and variance is natural. I think (a) the mainstream western audience is not familiar with this level of variance and (b) the variance is grossly un-reported.

So my post was mostly a way of caution not a rebuttal of the original. Your link illustrates my point well. I doubt that even after accounting for its size that people will expect such a variance in sex ratio.

Oh and make no mistake, it has nothing to do with being busy or crowded. Delhi is busy and crowded too, but for a girl that does not prevent one from getting groped. Forget pedestrians, when my sister drives in Delhi/Kolkata other drivers will be trying to harass her by driving aggressively, the traffic cop will try to take advantage. Absolutely none of that happens in Chennai.

I cannot speak about your compulsions, but all I can say is that I have obtained a drivers license, a passport and renewed them with not a single paisa paid in bribe. In fact I had to think really hard to remember when did I bribe anyone at all, that was to load a crate in a train (and it wasnt even against the law or something). Main point is that in parts of the country you can do just fine without bribes, whereas in others its a part of life.

I havent been there in 3 years, but in my usual haunts in Kolkata garbage does get cleaned up. But again it will vary in the city as well. Yes there are open dumpsters, but no household filth accmulating on the side of the residential streets, going outside of Kolkata this actually surprised me. Compare that to say Kanpur a prominent city in one of the larger states. Its not uncommon to find open animal cadavers, excrement of all possible kind: cow, camel, pig, elephant you name it, in your day to day travel. Yeah I would run into shitting elephants stuck in a traffic jam ! Thats the variance I am talking about.

And I think you completely missed the point of comparison of corruption in India and US. And by no means I am justifying the corruption in India. It bothers me deeply that now it has become so acceptable. It is the acceptance of corruption that worries me more than the corruption itself. But, how is installation of backscatter machines not corruption. The semantics are different, the means are different, but the effect is the same. I still have not been able to decide that dollar for dollar per capita which is more corrupt USA or India. I have argued countless times that India is by far the more corrupt one, but now I am not so sure. In India it is in your face all the time, in the US its a background daemon.

Haha! Such a great turn of phrase!

Honestly, everything in this article makes sense. I've also had these same experiences. Not sure I'd write about it though - particularly since India is such a nebulous topic, hippies come in all flavors, and whatnot .. but an enjoyable read.

Next up: China.