I think a lot of what you say is the correct. I'll just add to that. Most of these "polite Indians" are college students from not-so good colleges (or bad stud

I think a lot of what you say is the correct. I'll just add to that. Most of these "polite Indians" are college students from not-so good colleges (or bad students at good colleges). They are studying Engineering just because of parental/peer pressure. I'm sure every Indian would know more than 3-4 friends who are studying just to make somebody else proud. Each semester, these students have some courses with assignments. The first thing they do is "Google" the assignment. If they don't find the solutions on the front page of Google, they either raid forums (including comment sections of blogs) asking for help or else they contact a small coding shop and "outsource" their assignments. These coding shops are small shops that charge extremely low rates too, so they don't have the best programmers either. Quite often coding shop employees raid the web for help too. A friend of mine has actually hired 3-4 "sub-standard" coders proceeds of which he uses to bootstrap his main startup. Unfortunately, in this storm sometimes even genuine students who just wish to learn get crowded out. My suggestion (and what I do generally) is to answer people as long as it is just about concepts. If you start doing somebody else's homework the whole batch might start asking you for help. So, my advice is just don't do anybody's homework.