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The number of times you are getting downvoted reminds me of a disturbing trend I've noticed in online discussions about India, and in the papers when I've visit

The number of times you are getting downvoted reminds me of a disturbing trend I've noticed in online discussions about India, and in the papers when I've visited the country. There's a crazy nationalist streak there that doesn't seem to be familiar with the idea of "loyal opposition" or the value of dissent. That worries me a lot more than the corruption.

lewstherin 16y ago
Get surrounded by neighbours like India does, have your workplace called as chop shops, be the butt of several "stealing jobs" jokes and you will automatically feel a little touchy when some armchair critic sits and posts twenty things wrong in the country and basically calls your nation unfit to live. What I see above is not loyal dissent by any means.
- moultano 16y ago
  >calls your nation unfit to live. What I see above is not loyal dissent by any means. I think you are exemplifying my point. The appropriate response is to say that she's wrong, not that she's disloyal or beyond the pale. Edit: he->she
  - todayiamme 16y ago
    I am a she, by the way.
- todayiamme 16y ago
  Um, I am not exactly an arm chair critic. I actually think that in order to find a solution to a problem you need to look at the truth first. I can't tell you how I feel when I walk by a child slaving in a teashop. That child doesn't know the meaning of loyal dissent. That child doesn't have people speaking up for him/her. That child needs to have a future and I am willing to spend a large part of my life trying to give them one. However, in order to do that you need to see the truth. I have not written a single opinion in that post except for the observation that this state is slowly disintegrating and although I might be wrong I have tried to prop it up with data. If you feel hurt by it then I am sorry, but this is what the cards are and I would rather spend my time deciding how to play the hand.
  - lewstherin 16y ago
    I am making the below post assuming you are Indian citizen. Lets look at the truth then. > when I walk by a child slaving in a teashop. You know quite well that child labor is illegal in India and we have a huge enforcement problem. When you walk by such a child, why don't you report this to the cops? Why don't you pass on this information to CRY or some such NGO. Have you tried speaking to the guy who employs the kid and tried to get the child enrolled in some school? My point precisely is that as a dispassionate observer, you are not doing anything to solve the problem. I will state why I believe there is reason for hope. When I had gone to get my driver's license in Hyderabad, I was turned down on the pretext of not knowing some archaic clauses because I did not come through an agent and hence had not bribed the person incharge. However, next time round, there was a redhat system on which I had to give my test (no more answering questions to some guy). Now there is a very clean smooth system with very little scope of corruption. A billion plus population and a poor one at that will lead to chaos. To jump from that to a country disintegrating calls for quite a leap of faith. I highly doubt that there has been a study of failed states to definitively conclude that your figures lead directly to a disintegrating state.
    - todayiamme 16y ago
      Have you ever realized that we are all addicted to hope? I think that you ought to read Collapse(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_... by Jared Diamond ). Whatever he has written is so profound that I still haven't finished the book i.e. I need time to assimilate it in. You see, everything is a part of a complex chain of causality and in order to figure out anything while avoiding infinite recursion we need to create mental models of those interconnections and analyze upon that. I can't go into the data ad infinitum to prove the point. I need to pick up blocks of concepts and hold them up as black boxes in order to observe how the bigger box behaves with them. This means that my comment can extend as long as I want and I can write entire books on the constructs of this scenario, but we need to stop it somewhere. This is why I have taken that so called "leap of faith". I am open to the possibility that I am wrong, and I hope that I am wrong, but that doesn't make the problem any less pressing.
apu 16y ago
I don't know if this is so specific to India. In a lot of the US (maybe even most of it?) you get called a traitor or unAmerican or whatever for not agreeing with the government or the Republicans or whoever is in power and control of the media at the moment. Even in more liberal places in the US, there are often unstated limits to what you can talk about ("saying X is maybe ok, but Y is just ridiculous/crazy/anti-blah"). Outside the US, I certainly see this kind of nationalism in many other countries, such as Israel and China to name a couple.
- moultano 16y ago
  It's true of nationalism everywhere, but the nationalist sentiment in India seems unusually strong relative to Europe and the Americas. No one is going to call you out as a traitor for saying "A lot of things suck about the US," unless you're a politician. Even right-wing talking points are full of negativity about the US.
  - lewstherin 16y ago
    Please watch some old episodes of Bill O' Reilly. He screams and shouts at people saying they are unamerican, a traitor yada yada yada. If you really would like links, I can look up a few for you.
    - moultano 16y ago
      He certainly does that, but about towards people disagreeing with war policy, not just general complaints about the country.
nalbyuites 16y ago
Worry not! Despite the "crazy nationalist streak" that you see online, Indians are actually one of the most critical of their government. Ask literally any Indian on the street about governance and hear the expletives fly. So they are more than aware of corruption and poor governance. Except - they have tired of the doomsday predictions heard since 1947. The down votes are probably because the 'cancer' symptoms are brought up ad nauseum in Western outlets as reasons India (as if its a simple monolith) failed. Like pg said for startups: If you feel that you will fail, you stop working and then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think this applies to a country's psyche too, like it does to founders.

lewstherin 16y ago

Get surrounded by neighbours like India does, have your workplace called as chop shops, be the butt of several "stealing jobs" jokes and you will automatically feel a little touchy when some armchair critic sits and posts twenty things wrong in the country and basically calls your nation unfit to live. What I see above is not loyal dissent by any means.

moultano 16y ago
>calls your nation unfit to live. What I see above is not loyal dissent by any means. I think you are exemplifying my point. The appropriate response is to say that she's wrong, not that she's disloyal or beyond the pale. Edit: he->she
- todayiamme 16y ago
  I am a she, by the way.
todayiamme 16y ago
Um, I am not exactly an arm chair critic. I actually think that in order to find a solution to a problem you need to look at the truth first. I can't tell you how I feel when I walk by a child slaving in a teashop. That child doesn't know the meaning of loyal dissent. That child doesn't have people speaking up for him/her. That child needs to have a future and I am willing to spend a large part of my life trying to give them one. However, in order to do that you need to see the truth. I have not written a single opinion in that post except for the observation that this state is slowly disintegrating and although I might be wrong I have tried to prop it up with data. If you feel hurt by it then I am sorry, but this is what the cards are and I would rather spend my time deciding how to play the hand.
- lewstherin 16y ago
  I am making the below post assuming you are Indian citizen. Lets look at the truth then. > when I walk by a child slaving in a teashop. You know quite well that child labor is illegal in India and we have a huge enforcement problem. When you walk by such a child, why don't you report this to the cops? Why don't you pass on this information to CRY or some such NGO. Have you tried speaking to the guy who employs the kid and tried to get the child enrolled in some school? My point precisely is that as a dispassionate observer, you are not doing anything to solve the problem. I will state why I believe there is reason for hope. When I had gone to get my driver's license in Hyderabad, I was turned down on the pretext of not knowing some archaic clauses because I did not come through an agent and hence had not bribed the person incharge. However, next time round, there was a redhat system on which I had to give my test (no more answering questions to some guy). Now there is a very clean smooth system with very little scope of corruption. A billion plus population and a poor one at that will lead to chaos. To jump from that to a country disintegrating calls for quite a leap of faith. I highly doubt that there has been a study of failed states to definitively conclude that your figures lead directly to a disintegrating state.
  - todayiamme 16y ago
    Have you ever realized that we are all addicted to hope? I think that you ought to read Collapse(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_... by Jared Diamond ). Whatever he has written is so profound that I still haven't finished the book i.e. I need time to assimilate it in. You see, everything is a part of a complex chain of causality and in order to figure out anything while avoiding infinite recursion we need to create mental models of those interconnections and analyze upon that. I can't go into the data ad infinitum to prove the point. I need to pick up blocks of concepts and hold them up as black boxes in order to observe how the bigger box behaves with them. This means that my comment can extend as long as I want and I can write entire books on the constructs of this scenario, but we need to stop it somewhere. This is why I have taken that so called "leap of faith". I am open to the possibility that I am wrong, and I hope that I am wrong, but that doesn't make the problem any less pressing.

apu 16y ago

I don't know if this is so specific to India. In a lot of the US (maybe even most of it?) you get called a traitor or unAmerican or whatever for not agreeing with the government or the Republicans or whoever is in power and control of the media at the moment. Even in more liberal places in the US, there are often unstated limits to what you can talk about ("saying X is maybe ok, but Y is just ridiculous/crazy/anti-blah"). Outside the US, I certainly see this kind of nationalism in many other countries, such as Israel and China to name a couple.

moultano 16y ago
It's true of nationalism everywhere, but the nationalist sentiment in India seems unusually strong relative to Europe and the Americas. No one is going to call you out as a traitor for saying "A lot of things suck about the US," unless you're a politician. Even right-wing talking points are full of negativity about the US.
- lewstherin 16y ago
  Please watch some old episodes of Bill O' Reilly. He screams and shouts at people saying they are unamerican, a traitor yada yada yada. If you really would like links, I can look up a few for you.
  - moultano 16y ago
    He certainly does that, but about towards people disagreeing with war policy, not just general complaints about the country.

nalbyuites 16y ago

Worry not! Despite the "crazy nationalist streak" that you see online, Indians are actually one of the most critical of their government. Ask literally any Indian on the street about governance and hear the expletives fly. So they are more than aware of corruption and poor governance. Except - they have tired of the doomsday predictions heard since 1947. The down votes are probably because the 'cancer' symptoms are brought up ad nauseum in Western outlets as reasons India (as if its a simple monolith) failed. Like pg said for startups: If you feel that you will fail, you stop working and then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think this applies to a country's psyche too, like it does to founders.