A Dust Over India

I think you are doing the Indian readership of HN a mild dis-service here. Most here acknowledge the issues raised by the Author. We do feel hurt by his conclusion, summed up as: "The whole country sucks", but well..things are what they are.

As several readers have already stated, institutionalized corruption is the bane of India today and no visible improvement is possible unless we tackle and eliminate this first. But the political class and bureaucracy would never allow this to happen.

Our "Lokpal" bill - the anti-corruption bill that that was fought for by a popular activist with a hunger strike has now been in-definitely postponed by the current coalition government. Due to a series of elementary media-mismanagement blunders, the activist team lost the massive support they initially had and the political class were quick and clever to capitalize on these mistakes, perform character assassination, and sucessfully shoot down the Lokpal bill along with it.

Most people I know are highly upset at this - many have even lost hope and given up change as a lost cause in India. We had the whole of India massively mobilized and firmly behind an anti-corruption drive for some months before the activist team got a 'god' complex and attempted to re-direct this support into their personal, pet agendas - one guy on his Kashmir stance, another on his anti-alcoholic drive, another attempting to re-direct funds into his pet charity, etc. They broke one fundamental rule of politics: never give your political opponents juicy targets to shoot ammunition at. In politics, if you are going against the norm, you are going to be heavily scrutinized. You need to be lily-white if you want a chance to change things with people power.

The Indian middle class were dismayed at several of these relevations and though people could swallow some of them, it become too much to eventually swallow and the movement lost enough steam that the politicians and bureaucracy have now put this bill indefinitely on the backburner - possibly never to see the light again.

The LokPal bill was something originally raised in the 1960's btw.

I no longer believe that it is possible to affect any meaningful and lasting change in Indian society without revolution - which would lead to its own separate set of problems. Sure, you can donate a few years to charity and helping NGO's will will do some trickle of good - a few scattered moments of goodness in the vast, apathetic darkness and that's about the limit.

Slightly different perspective on poverty, happiness and cultural diversity in India through the lens of music. http://www.youtube.com/show/soundtrippin?s=1

Tourism != traveling

Tourists should keep their judgments to themselves. Traveling is about immersing yourself in the local culture, tourism is about observing it from a safe distance -- i.e. touring.

Making deep conclusions about the people of another culture while traveling around in hotels, eating at Pizza Hut (okay, just once!) and hopping around between tourist attractions and ashrams designed specifically to attract white people is like me trying to figure out if you would beat your wife, just by looking at your face. There is no correlation.

For a westerner, the easiest way to understand is Caste = Corruption.

For e.g.

    1. If you kill somebody, you should be **hanged**, if you're NOT from my caste.
    2. If you kill somebody, you did it in **self-defense**, if you're from my caste.

This is an universal trait of people trying to cope with limits. I've always know it as "ingenio mexicano" or "mexicanada", roughly translated as mexican wit. It is a matter of national pride and accepted wisdom that nowhere in the world people are as cleaver as we are.

See some examples at: http://quependejadas.com/tag/gracioso/page/2/

The most amazing thing is that most of these images are probably not Mexican at all, but stolen from redneck sites (search for: Look, I fixed it). That is 100% in character with the spirit of mexicanada. Why actually fix anything when I can find someone else who did it and steal the credit!!!