It’s sad to see well intentioned people adopt the narrative that freedom of speech is just some western value, unfit for India.
People under oppression need your solidarity, not their circumstances being explained away.
Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
31–40 of 181 posts
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
India is arguably faithfully following the US here, because Modi's populism has more than a few parallels to Trump.
You're overestimating Trump. India under Modi is in the process of trying to build an authoritarian Hindu nation-state with a completely alternative model compared to the secular, western-inspired mode it has run on up until now. Trump, despite tricking a few LARPers into thinking he had some kind of great agenda was just a TV show host. He was about as likely to rebuild the US in some kind of new image as a televang…
India has always been run on a far more authoritarian model than the U.S. Yes, it's a true democracy but freedom and democracy are not the same thing, and the legacy of the former colonizers is very much there still. Modi is just pushing the overall authoritarian stance of Indian institutions in a different direction that anyways provides him with a lot of shallow, surface popularity.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#33One of my favorite comedy group from Nigeria has an apt skit
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#34That's two over-a-billion population dysfunctional autocratic regimes in Asia. Fun times ahead.
Western Liberal democracy is basically vanquished in Asia, right at the time that Asia seems to be poised to dominate economically and demographically. Liberal democracy isn't making any inroads in Africa and Russia has certainly given it a firm no, with the Vysehrad states in Eastern Europe also turning away. Basically only Latin America is up for grabs at the moment and the results there seem mixed at best. We could well face a situation where this is a phenomena reserved for Western Europe and North America, with the rest of the world following the Chinese model. People forget that the U.S. beat the USSR in the cold war because of economic, not ideological, superiority. But it appears that the connection between democracy and economic outperformance is looking strained.
But what is perhaps more sobering is realizing that North America and Western Europe themselves look to be more interested in following the Chinese model, basically a surveillance state led by an anti-democratic elite that has no qualms about using violence and extra-judicial mechanisms of social control to supress popular movements like the Yellow Vests in France. In that case, the big difference between the Chinese model and the Western model would be that in the West, popular movements can be crushed as long as the big corps are OK with it, whereas in China the big corps are firmly under the thumb of the government.
I think those worried about authoritarianism should be much more concerned about the power of tech and big corps to control the public square than having the "wrong" people win elections, because the defending the process is much more important than the worrying about the outcome.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#35It’s sad to see well intentioned people adopt the narrative that freedom of speech is just some western value, unfit for India. People under oppression need your solidarity, not their circumstances being explained away.
It's hilarious to see SV firms pushing for freedom of speech while they disparage that same freedom in their own origin country.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I see this as a propaganda piece. I tend to agree. I've worked in SV a long time, and a majority of non-US-born coworkers remain Indian. I see no evidence of this changing, so I find it implausible that slate has it's finger on the pulse of tech and is detecting a weakening of the role of Indian programmers, nor have I observed any decline in the quality or usefulness of Indian programmers, which is ultimately what…
I think the piece is about India the country, not Indian expats though?
I take the "influence" of India to be the pipeline of labor to SV. Those can be work-visa holders or those working in Indian offices, to me these two categories go hand-in-hand.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#37India somehow had stumbled and took a turn towards the Hindu right wing majoritarianism/ultra nationalism. It has certainly caused long term effects, the pace of reforms has slowed down considerably. Major policy decisions seems to be stuck in limbo for years, for example regarding Walmart: atleast for 10 years Walmart trying to start retail operations in India, but government hasn't given clarity on policy. Similarl…
[flagged]
Feminism does not attack men, it attacks families.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#38This downward trend has long been in the works. The current government came into power riding on a wave of popularity, largely driven by their "IT cells". Now comfortably in power, they are probably dismantling the path, to avoid others who might try to follow. The government is not just in a stand-off with big-tech companies. It continues to view its own citizens as adversaries with frequent internet shutdowns [1].…
Can we stop with all this IT cell bullshit? Modi got in because he was more competent than the rajputra of the Nehru dynasty. My family are from Gujarat. We’ve known about Modi since he was governor. We moved out of our ancestral village several generations ago but still return on special occasions because our kuladevi is there. The area is semi-desert. Modi got water from the Narmada dam piped in. Now cash crops can be irrigated and the kids don’t die of dysentery any more. We used to have to stop at a larger town and walk a couple of miles down a dirt track to get there. Modi got a road built and regular bus service to the nearest city. That’s why he is popular. That area was staunchly Congress since 1947 and still is but you won’t find anyone with a bad word to say about Narendra Modi. He got things done and that’s what counts. The Hindu nationalism is just icing on the cake. (Remember there was a time when Congress also used to brag about how e.g Sardar Patel rebuilt Somanath.)
Now with the latest missteps such as demonetization and the COVID response etc. the bloom is off the rose a little but he is still genuinely popular and more importantly there isn’t anyone on the national scene “who might be trying to follow.”
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#39Lmao, SV will know first hand what it means "don't play with fire". They thought they had another US, well they helped create another China. When US will learn that only Europe can be considered their ally in this world?
> When US will learn that only Europe can be considered their ally in this world?
For Europe China is now largest trading partner. And European politicians will forever remember that private US companies banned acting president of the USA from the platform. Europe is also taking steps to get rid of Facebook, Twitter, Google and other SV darlings.
Re: Silicon Valley thought India was its future, now things have changed
#40This is a theme that will apply in a variety of different areas, well beyond Silicon Valley. There was a sense in the late couple of decades that India will become a faithful follower of US practices (if not policies) with its easily accessible population for everything from movies to ecommerce, food chains to apparel brands and more. The implied sense was that the rapidly growing middle-class would want to mimic (or…
India is arguably faithfully following the US here, because Modi's populism has more than a few parallels to Trump.
All other things aside, Modi’s first term started in 2014, Trump’s in 2016. Even assuming that one is similar to the other, it raises the question of who’s following whom...