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India Is What Happens When Rich People Do Nothing

65 points by pmoriarty 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwastrike 6y ago
In early 00’s I bet big that India will surpass China. I was very wrong.
ArkanExplorer 6y ago
India has a lot of problems, and in comparison to them, COVID is fairly minor. For example about 200,000 people have died so far in India with COVID, but over 1 million are estimated to die each year from the effects of air pollution: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/absolute-number-of-deaths-from-ambient-particulate-air-pollution?tab=chart&country=IND https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/absolute-number-of-deaths... India's fundamental problem is that it is overpopulated - stretching all of the natural resources of the country, and increasing density leading to viruses like COVID transmitting more easily. The country needs a one child policy, or to put serious money back into Vasalgel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm_under_guidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm...
- srean 6y ago
  > The country needs a one child policy That's going to be a disaster, its dawning on China that this was a mistake. You end up with a demographics that skewed towards the old, and that brings its own problems. India is not a problem that can be solved in an HN comment
  - coolspot 6y ago
    Overpopulation is what drives many problems worldwide: hunger, global warming, resource exhaustion, wildlife extinction, etc.
    - FredPret 6y ago
      Are you suggesting we nuke a billion people in the third world to stop overpopulation? Even as a joke, that’s sickening
      - coolspot 6y ago
        Not only overpopulation, it can also permanently reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by approx. 20% !
      - dublin 6y ago
        Well, that's pretty much what Bill Gates and his GAVI are doing, just with their "vaccines" instead of nukes. (Gates' comment that vaccines will result in reducing global population by 15% (about a billion) cannot be really be interpreted other than as advocacy for vaccine-initiated genocide.) Genocide is so much easier with vaccines than with nukes - and you don't have the radiation problem to deal with.
        afavour 6y ago
        This nonsense? Again? I'd really have thought the average Hacker News reader was better than this. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-gates-vaccinations-depopulation/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-gates-vaccinations-de...
        FredPret 6y ago
        Preventing a potential pregnancy is the same to you as nuking an existing person? ...yikes
        canadianfella 6y ago
        Can you explain how vaccines are genocide please?
- unmole 6y ago
  > India's fundamental problem is that it is overpopulated This is utter nonsense. Taiwan, Korea, Isreal and the Netherlands all have higher population densities. India's TFR is less than 2.2 with the majority of the states at sub-replacement levels. Rising living standards result in slowing population growth. This is something that Malthusians wilfully ignore. India faces a multitude of challenges. I will not pretend to know the answer for any of them. But, I do know that pointing to overpopulation as the root of all evil not helpful in the least.
  - N1H1L 6y ago
    Yeah. This is the standard too many people are bad 60s rhetoric. The reality is that China and Japan are barreling towards a too many old people crises, as is India. I come from Bengal, and my state, and city specifically have had a TFR below 1.8 for twenty years now. Combine that with out migration and we already have a problem there.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      This is not a problem, it is a challenge to be managed. The world is on track to peak at 10 billion people near 2100. It is not a bad thing total fertility rate continues to decline far below replacement rate. Yes, you're going to burn a few more percentage points of GDP during a window of time on caring for the elderly vs other progress producing activities, but such is the cost of reaching a population equilibrium with sustainable resource consumption.
    - mc32 6y ago
      How long would India be able to keep up TFR with low-density high-TFR places? If people become more affluent and demand more and consume more, at some point minor events become catastrophic. It's not sustainable, unless we start populating other planets (not likely any time soon). Managing an old population is another issue and an issue everyone will have to come to terms with and manage at some point.
      - N1H1L 6y ago
- seahckr 6y ago
  India's population "problem" if it can be called that is in only 3-4 states out of 28 - Uttar Pradesh (230M), Bihar (120M), Maharashtra (120M). Most states in India have population densities comparable to countries in Europe.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    Why do you suppose that European population density is sustainable all over the world? Presumably the sustainable population density is going to vary with climate and geography? I ask as someone who doesn't know much on this subject and wants to learn more.
    - manquer 6y ago
      Warmer tropical climates can support more population generally. More crops are possible, lesser infra required etc. Suitable is a question of idealogy and choices , one is cultural and other is ecological. Whether you are comfortable living in a 700sq foot apartment or you need a sprawling 10 acre property is really about culture, europe is okay with smaller cars, more public transport , dense cities , US is not . Sustainable density really then, Looking at the crazy limits in the bay area is funny to me, but perhaps it is right for people here they don't want higher density housing. --- Earth itself quite capable of supporting multiple ten of billions but it would come at the expense of reduced bio diviserty Most people would think that is bad, but there is case that it isn't . Earth has gone through multiple extinction events before us, however this is chance for life to become multi planetary for the first time, for life itself it is probably worth the risk. Theoretically ofcourse we all cooperate and work in sync, we could achieve that without destroying the planet. However we aren't wired that way , evolution is not efficient.
      - imtringued 6y ago
        >Earth has gone through multiple extinction events before us, however this is chance for life to become multi planetary for the first time, for life itself it is probably worth the risk. If you can live on Mars you can live on Earth, the problem is that nobody wants to live on Mars or a Mars like Earth. You are also underestimating the time it takes to colonize Mars. There aren't any plans right now, all we get is more rovers. Nobody is sending space manufacturing equipment to Mars nor is anyone sending an autonomous outpost ahead of time ready for people to move into it. As it is right now, if we were to send people to Mars we would send them there to die there. If you are going to talk about Elon Musk, I'm going to remind you that he planned a Mars mission for 2018, he can't be trusted with anything.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > India's fundamental problem is that it is overpopulated In the early millennium, while traveling for several months in India and being shocked at the situation in states like Uttar Pradesh, I would occasionally ask Indians I met if overpopulation was not seen as a problem. The response was often that India’s mighty population is what will let it throw its weight around globally in the 21st century, and claims that India is overpopulated are a Chinese or Pakistani (or both) plot. I wonder if this belief has only strengthened with the more nationalist government in recent years, and the even greater tension with China.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Indonesians don't mind saying "too many people", as most of their population of 270+ million lives on the island of Java. However they have other very large islands (Sumatra, and part of Borneo) that could be settled, so it's not an insurmountable problem. China's and India's large populations are their Achilles heels - they need vast quantities of food and water, yet China imports 50% of some food items, and India relies on Himalayan headwaters that China is diverting.
  - manquer 6y ago
    They are not wrong in saying human capital benefits India the most in this century. However it will come with great pain for the vast majority. India is politically reverse of the US. More populated states like UP have more representatives, they are usually conservative (nationalist/right wing) in politics, lesser education, lesser efforts in family planning etc. There has not been redistricting called delimitation commission in India since 1976 on some of these population growth concerns, it is currently scheduled for 2026. The TFR in most parts of india is below 2 these days, but the most populous states are still growing , that make the national average. It is hard to win an national election even today without UP.
- Yaa101 6y ago
  The country has only one problem, the fascist caste system where rich castes feel entitled to scam, rape, squeeze and murder poor castes. All problems of that country boils down to this.
  - reactspa 6y ago
    Many urban Indians have no idea how bad the caste situation is. I'm a Northerner of a so-called upper caste (but not a Brahmin). I had to move to Chennai (a Southern city) for a year. I was shocked when apartment-hunting there. At every "to let" apartment visit, I would soon be asked if I were a Brahmin. Then the person would let me know they were a Brahmin, and that they would only rent to Brahmins. Nope, didn't get a decent apartment in that city. It seems all the nice property there is cornered by Brahmins.
    - crowf 6y ago
      Somewhat unrelated, but how does someone know what cast you are from? If you move to a new place where no one knows you, can you just say that you are from the best caste?
      - sateesh 6y ago
        Oh there are proxy questions and ways to figure that out, what is your full name, and the most widely used one is, "Are you a non-vegetarian ?". Almost unfailingly most of the landlords put these questions before renting out.
        crowf 6y ago
        I didn't realize that castes had different rules regarding meat eating. Thanks for informing me.
    - rramadass 6y ago
      Absolutely not believable, at best an isolated anecdote. Urban India is the one place where "casteism" is almost irrelevant. Like everywhere else it is economic conditions that drive everything. More specifically, it is in Southern India where "upper-caste Brahmins" are at the receiving end due to the long lived "Dravidian" movement.
- mandeepj 6y ago
  > For example about 200,000 people have died so far in India with COVID, but over 1 million are estimated to die each year from the effects of air pollution: You are utterly dumb, numb and emotionless. I guess you belong to the same class of people - who are chanting after each gun shooting - "guns don't kill people". Air pollution is not killing 5000+ people everyday in India, but COVID is.
- rramadass 6y ago
  This is a very simple reductionist argument and thus untrue. The real reasons are far more complex and involve the interactions between lack of resources, poor infrastructure, geographical spread, uncontrollable diversity, overpopulation and of course History.
- belatw 6y ago
  Maybe they should just kill all the poor people and eat them?
dartharva 6y ago
Apathy from higher classes is not really something endemic to India, and I doubt its intensity is much more here than in other countries. In fact, the "rich people" who can escape to 5-star hospitals in India are in an extreme minority. The real reason is that the people are used to not expecting things from the government. It is a common conception here that if some public service comes from a government agency, it is bound to be of terrible quality. The public mostly tries to avoid government schools and hospitals as much as it can even if alternatives are several times more expensive and as a result, corruption in those institutes gets ignored and dismissed as something natural even when they get more funding. That's what I feel is the main problem - India is what happens when People do nothing.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "Apathy from higher classes is not really something endemic to India, and I doubt its intensity is much more here than in other countries." Let's say you live in a community where everyone has plenty of water, and you just happen to have a lot more of it than everybody else, and you do nothing. The consequences of that are very different than if you lived in a community that was experiencing a drought and many people were dying of thirst, and you had lots of water and chose to do nothing. So to compare the inaction and self-centerdness of the rich in India with similar inaction and self-centerdness of the rich in other countries whose population is much wealthier overall and less in dire need compared to India is misleading. The consequences of inaction in India are much more severe. "the "rich people" who can escape to 5-star hospitals in India are in an extreme minority" And yet in them are concentrated extreme wealth and power. It's that wealth and power that could be used to help India as a whole rather than to help this tiny minority alone.
  - rsj_hn 6y ago
    I think this fundamentally misunderstands paper wealth for real wealth, and financial capital for real capital, and you are getting away with it by pretending that wealth is like water -- e.g. there is a finite amount of it that people need to drink. What is wrong with India -- and I understand this is not a fundamental explanation but a symptom of more fundamental causes -- is that it is difficult to invest and create more capital in the country. This has absolutely nothing to do with "hoarding" financial assets. What it means is that the credit/financial system is broken, so that if you have the skills and ideas and talent to do something you cannot have your plans priced by the credit markets. If there was a functioning credit market that would help enable productive ecosystems. It is, unfortunately not sufficient, you also need skilled labor that doesn't flee the nation, you need rule of law so that contracts are enforced, you need a stable regulatory environment so that investments can be planned ahead without paying bribes to various officials and interest groups, etc. Absolutely none of this requires anyone who holds lots of financial assets to get off their as* and do anything at all. If they do nothing and don't invest, they will merely become relatively poorer as new entrepreneurs arise. They are not blocking the production of anything unless they use their wealth to actively create roadblocks (e.g. bribe officials to turn down permits for upstarts, etc). In an economy with functioning credit markets and productive eco-systems, it is not old wealth that innovates, it is new wealth. You still have Rockeffellers laying around but people like Elon Musk arise from the ranks of the middle classes to become wealthy on the backs of new ideas. The lack of Indian Elon Musks is not due to the Rockefellers "hoarding" their oil fortunes, anymore than middle class people like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison didn't get funded by old Timber barons. They got funded by credit markets. So the problem with India is that while it has human capital, it lacks the other ingredients to create productive eco-systems that can create the capital needed to make India richer and more productive. So look to things like lack of rule of law, a bureaucracy that prevents new entrants, and a credit system that does not properly price new investment ideas. Rich people are merely passive holders of bonds or stocks and play no positive or negative roles in any of this.
nonameiguess 6y ago
Surely, the canonical example of a nation collapsing because the rich just horde gold and don't try to actually make anything is the Spanish Empire, not India.
- dublin 6y ago
  Not really - I'd argue that a lot of the problem in India isn't just selfish accumulation of wealth, but the utter unconcern for others that is inherently baked into the prevalent Hindu worldview. I've worked with Indian missionaries, and they uniformly agree that you simply cannot get many Hindus to have any concern for their fellow man - in fact, helping someone is actively discouraged, as you would be interfering with the Karma that is justifiably punishing the suffering party in this or a previous life. If that's your worldview, then there can be no selfless compassion (an almost uniquely Christian concept, FWIW).
throwawaysea 6y ago
This article is simplifying things in very self-serving ways to make a political argument by leveraging a tragedy. It ultimately aims to blame the rich but the article is poorly-written, vague in making that connection, unfocused in what it covers, and ultimately incoherent: The first part of the article seems to be a criticism of how India handled the pandemic. But until the recent second wave, India's strategy was considered to be highly successful. This article describes the initial lockdown in very negative tones, but I would say that given all the unknowns and the high density of Indian metropolitan cities, it seems that a harsh initial shutdown followed by numerous phases that relaxed restrictions/handed control to local governments seems fairly logical. If there wasn't a strict lockdown early, critics would be making the opposite argument right now. This second wave is also not well-understood. This article, like others, uses anecdotal examples of election rallies or sporting events as contributors, but it ignores that the sudden growth in cases from 3/1-4/1 may just be the result of aggressive, poorly-understood COVID variants (or a mix of all these factors). The second part of this article criticizes private healthcare. But in many countries, state-run healthcare is low quality to begin with, which is what spurs on the advent of private healthcare. Developing nations in particular have state-run hospitals that provide a DMV like level of service. Why shouldn't citizens be free to seek out better care? The author begins to make an argument that the difference between public hospitals and private hospitals is somehow problematic but doesn't ever get specific in terms of evidence for claims, instead resorting to low-quality ranting with phrasings like "clutching their pearls". It's also not clear how the public/private aspects are connected to the current second wave. The third part of the article is about the Bhopal disaster, which doesn't seem related to the current situation at all. Bhopal was a story of corporate corruption (ignoring safety standards), government corruption in India (allowing this kind of behavior), government corruption in the US (denying extradition requests, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Carbide#Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Carbide#Bhopal_disaster), and the lack of accountability in globalized/international economies. I re-read this part a few times but it too doesn't seem relevant and the author's meandering introduction of the Bhopal disaster into this article just adds to the incoherence. In the end, I am not sure what the point of this article is or why The Atlantic thinks it met their standards.
- wobbly_bush 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ram_rar 6y ago
This is a very poorly written article with reductionist arguments to satisfy its own narratives. Every country has people with different socio economic backgrounds. Irrespective of country, people with resources will do whats best for them.
- sg47 6y ago
  I disagree. There's no sense of community in India. It's every person for himself and most people don't care about contributing to the community.
carlsborg 6y ago
Many centuries of subjugation followed by successful democracy meant people in power with no generational knowledge or guidance on how to run a town or municipality. And the wealth flows from political power.
not1ofU 6y ago
Slightly off topic, humerous video discussing India/Bangladesh boarders (map from 2015) and types of enclaves (2nd order enclave?)on both sides. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-aIzkvPwFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-aIzkvPwFo
mrlonglong 6y ago
I watched a documentary that said the UK took over 45 trillion GBP from India in the last 200 years. I'm pretty sure that might be why it lacks the resources to protect its people.
- solveit 6y ago
  Kinda hard to have a discussion if you don't at least tell us which documentary (better: cite the paper that the documentary presumably cited).
  - sinyug 6y ago
    There is a 2017 paper by Utsa Patnaik[1] where she comes up with a figure of GBP 9.2 trillion, which is about $45 trillion[2] based on historical exchange rates. Shashi Tharoor has written a book on what the British did to India.[3] This is based on his speech on the reparations question at a 2015 debate at the Oxford Union Society.[4] 1. Revisiting the 'Drain', or Transfers from India to Britain in the Context of Global Diffusion of Capitalism (Agrarian and Other Histories, 2017, Tulika Books) https://cup.columbia.edu/book/agrarian-and-other-histories/9789382381952 https://cup.columbia.edu/book/agrarian-and-other-histories/9... 2. British Raj siphoned out $45 trillion from India: Utsa Patnaik Interview. https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HNZA71LNVNNVXQ1eaIKu6M/British-Raj-siphoned-out-45-trillion-from-India-Utsa-Patna.html https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HNZA71LNVNNVXQ1eaIKu6M/Br... 3. An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India. 2017. Aleph. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/07/era-darkness-british-empire-india.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/07/er... 4. Britain Does Owe Reparations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCgBQFhQGf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCgBQFhQGf0
    - rramadass 6y ago
      I was about to post the same response but you beat me to it. As a follow up to (4) above, watch Shashi Tharoor's longer speech on the devastation and mess that the British left in India: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5ykS-_-CI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5ykS-_-CI Also read the old book Empire in Asia, How We Came by It: A Book Of Confessions by William McCullagh Torrens.
readonthegoapp 6y ago
I agree. And would only add that the US Covid disaster is what happens when rich people here do nothing. The author highlights the importance of segregating the rich from the poor, financially/socially, to sustain these types of tragedies. I appreciate that he called out the "moral malnutrition" of the comfortable, but especially the upper class/caste. Sometimes, a disaster playing out in real time on tv (or, at least Youtube) is actually a disaster, and requires addressing. It's tough for America to preach right now given that it seems like we have police killing black men, including kids, every single day -- which is not, unfortunately, hyperbole. But they are disasters. We don't need to excuse them away, and say well a lot more black kids got killed by covid than cops.

65 points by pmoriarty 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

throwastrike 6y ago

In early 00’s I bet big that India will surpass China. I was very wrong.

ArkanExplorer 6y ago

India has a lot of problems, and in comparison to them, COVID is fairly minor. For example about 200,000 people have died so far in India with COVID, but over 1 million are estimated to die each year from the effects of air pollution: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/absolute-number-of-deaths-from-ambient-particulate-air-pollution?tab=chart&country=IND https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/absolute-number-of-deaths... India's fundamental problem is that it is overpopulated - stretching all of the natural resources of the country, and increasing density leading to viruses like COVID transmitting more easily. The country needs a one child policy, or to put serious money back into Vasalgel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm_under_guidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm...

srean 6y ago
> The country needs a one child policy That's going to be a disaster, its dawning on China that this was a mistake. You end up with a demographics that skewed towards the old, and that brings its own problems. India is not a problem that can be solved in an HN comment
- coolspot 6y ago
  Overpopulation is what drives many problems worldwide: hunger, global warming, resource exhaustion, wildlife extinction, etc.
  - FredPret 6y ago
    Are you suggesting we nuke a billion people in the third world to stop overpopulation? Even as a joke, that’s sickening
    - coolspot 6y ago
      Not only overpopulation, it can also permanently reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by approx. 20% !
    - dublin 6y ago
      Well, that's pretty much what Bill Gates and his GAVI are doing, just with their "vaccines" instead of nukes. (Gates' comment that vaccines will result in reducing global population by 15% (about a billion) cannot be really be interpreted other than as advocacy for vaccine-initiated genocide.) Genocide is so much easier with vaccines than with nukes - and you don't have the radiation problem to deal with.
      - afavour 6y ago
        This nonsense? Again? I'd really have thought the average Hacker News reader was better than this. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-gates-vaccinations-depopulation/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-gates-vaccinations-de...
      - FredPret 6y ago
        Preventing a potential pregnancy is the same to you as nuking an existing person? ...yikes
      - canadianfella 6y ago
        Can you explain how vaccines are genocide please?
unmole 6y ago
> India's fundamental problem is that it is overpopulated This is utter nonsense. Taiwan, Korea, Isreal and the Netherlands all have higher population densities. India's TFR is less than 2.2 with the majority of the states at sub-replacement levels. Rising living standards result in slowing population growth. This is something that Malthusians wilfully ignore. India faces a multitude of challenges. I will not pretend to know the answer for any of them. But, I do know that pointing to overpopulation as the root of all evil not helpful in the least.
- N1H1L 6y ago
  Yeah. This is the standard too many people are bad 60s rhetoric. The reality is that China and Japan are barreling towards a too many old people crises, as is India. I come from Bengal, and my state, and city specifically have had a TFR below 1.8 for twenty years now. Combine that with out migration and we already have a problem there.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    This is not a problem, it is a challenge to be managed. The world is on track to peak at 10 billion people near 2100. It is not a bad thing total fertility rate continues to decline far below replacement rate. Yes, you're going to burn a few more percentage points of GDP during a window of time on caring for the elderly vs other progress producing activities, but such is the cost of reaching a population equilibrium with sustainable resource consumption.
  - mc32 6y ago
    How long would India be able to keep up TFR with low-density high-TFR places? If people become more affluent and demand more and consume more, at some point minor events become catastrophic. It's not sustainable, unless we start populating other planets (not likely any time soon). Managing an old population is another issue and an issue everyone will have to come to terms with and manage at some point.
    - N1H1L 6y ago
seahckr 6y ago
India's population "problem" if it can be called that is in only 3-4 states out of 28 - Uttar Pradesh (230M), Bihar (120M), Maharashtra (120M). Most states in India have population densities comparable to countries in Europe.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Why do you suppose that European population density is sustainable all over the world? Presumably the sustainable population density is going to vary with climate and geography? I ask as someone who doesn't know much on this subject and wants to learn more.
  - manquer 6y ago
    Warmer tropical climates can support more population generally. More crops are possible, lesser infra required etc. Suitable is a question of idealogy and choices , one is cultural and other is ecological. Whether you are comfortable living in a 700sq foot apartment or you need a sprawling 10 acre property is really about culture, europe is okay with smaller cars, more public transport , dense cities , US is not . Sustainable density really then, Looking at the crazy limits in the bay area is funny to me, but perhaps it is right for people here they don't want higher density housing. --- Earth itself quite capable of supporting multiple ten of billions but it would come at the expense of reduced bio diviserty Most people would think that is bad, but there is case that it isn't . Earth has gone through multiple extinction events before us, however this is chance for life to become multi planetary for the first time, for life itself it is probably worth the risk. Theoretically ofcourse we all cooperate and work in sync, we could achieve that without destroying the planet. However we aren't wired that way , evolution is not efficient.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      >Earth has gone through multiple extinction events before us, however this is chance for life to become multi planetary for the first time, for life itself it is probably worth the risk. If you can live on Mars you can live on Earth, the problem is that nobody wants to live on Mars or a Mars like Earth. You are also underestimating the time it takes to colonize Mars. There aren't any plans right now, all we get is more rovers. Nobody is sending space manufacturing equipment to Mars nor is anyone sending an autonomous outpost ahead of time ready for people to move into it. As it is right now, if we were to send people to Mars we would send them there to die there. If you are going to talk about Elon Musk, I'm going to remind you that he planned a Mars mission for 2018, he can't be trusted with anything.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> India's fundamental problem is that it is overpopulated In the early millennium, while traveling for several months in India and being shocked at the situation in states like Uttar Pradesh, I would occasionally ask Indians I met if overpopulation was not seen as a problem. The response was often that India’s mighty population is what will let it throw its weight around globally in the 21st century, and claims that India is overpopulated are a Chinese or Pakistani (or both) plot. I wonder if this belief has only strengthened with the more nationalist government in recent years, and the even greater tension with China.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Indonesians don't mind saying "too many people", as most of their population of 270+ million lives on the island of Java. However they have other very large islands (Sumatra, and part of Borneo) that could be settled, so it's not an insurmountable problem. China's and India's large populations are their Achilles heels - they need vast quantities of food and water, yet China imports 50% of some food items, and India relies on Himalayan headwaters that China is diverting.
- manquer 6y ago
  They are not wrong in saying human capital benefits India the most in this century. However it will come with great pain for the vast majority. India is politically reverse of the US. More populated states like UP have more representatives, they are usually conservative (nationalist/right wing) in politics, lesser education, lesser efforts in family planning etc. There has not been redistricting called delimitation commission in India since 1976 on some of these population growth concerns, it is currently scheduled for 2026. The TFR in most parts of india is below 2 these days, but the most populous states are still growing , that make the national average. It is hard to win an national election even today without UP.
Yaa101 6y ago
The country has only one problem, the fascist caste system where rich castes feel entitled to scam, rape, squeeze and murder poor castes. All problems of that country boils down to this.
- reactspa 6y ago
  Many urban Indians have no idea how bad the caste situation is. I'm a Northerner of a so-called upper caste (but not a Brahmin). I had to move to Chennai (a Southern city) for a year. I was shocked when apartment-hunting there. At every "to let" apartment visit, I would soon be asked if I were a Brahmin. Then the person would let me know they were a Brahmin, and that they would only rent to Brahmins. Nope, didn't get a decent apartment in that city. It seems all the nice property there is cornered by Brahmins.
  - crowf 6y ago
    Somewhat unrelated, but how does someone know what cast you are from? If you move to a new place where no one knows you, can you just say that you are from the best caste?
    - sateesh 6y ago
      Oh there are proxy questions and ways to figure that out, what is your full name, and the most widely used one is, "Are you a non-vegetarian ?". Almost unfailingly most of the landlords put these questions before renting out.
      - crowf 6y ago
        I didn't realize that castes had different rules regarding meat eating. Thanks for informing me.
  - rramadass 6y ago
    Absolutely not believable, at best an isolated anecdote. Urban India is the one place where "casteism" is almost irrelevant. Like everywhere else it is economic conditions that drive everything. More specifically, it is in Southern India where "upper-caste Brahmins" are at the receiving end due to the long lived "Dravidian" movement.
mandeepj 6y ago
> For example about 200,000 people have died so far in India with COVID, but over 1 million are estimated to die each year from the effects of air pollution: You are utterly dumb, numb and emotionless. I guess you belong to the same class of people - who are chanting after each gun shooting - "guns don't kill people". Air pollution is not killing 5000+ people everyday in India, but COVID is.
rramadass 6y ago
This is a very simple reductionist argument and thus untrue. The real reasons are far more complex and involve the interactions between lack of resources, poor infrastructure, geographical spread, uncontrollable diversity, overpopulation and of course History.
belatw 6y ago
Maybe they should just kill all the poor people and eat them?

dartharva 6y ago

Apathy from higher classes is not really something endemic to India, and I doubt its intensity is much more here than in other countries. In fact, the "rich people" who can escape to 5-star hospitals in India are in an extreme minority. The real reason is that the people are used to not expecting things from the government. It is a common conception here that if some public service comes from a government agency, it is bound to be of terrible quality. The public mostly tries to avoid government schools and hospitals as much as it can even if alternatives are several times more expensive and as a result, corruption in those institutes gets ignored and dismissed as something natural even when they get more funding. That's what I feel is the main problem - India is what happens when People do nothing.

pmoriarty 6y ago
"Apathy from higher classes is not really something endemic to India, and I doubt its intensity is much more here than in other countries." Let's say you live in a community where everyone has plenty of water, and you just happen to have a lot more of it than everybody else, and you do nothing. The consequences of that are very different than if you lived in a community that was experiencing a drought and many people were dying of thirst, and you had lots of water and chose to do nothing. So to compare the inaction and self-centerdness of the rich in India with similar inaction and self-centerdness of the rich in other countries whose population is much wealthier overall and less in dire need compared to India is misleading. The consequences of inaction in India are much more severe. "the "rich people" who can escape to 5-star hospitals in India are in an extreme minority" And yet in them are concentrated extreme wealth and power. It's that wealth and power that could be used to help India as a whole rather than to help this tiny minority alone.
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  I think this fundamentally misunderstands paper wealth for real wealth, and financial capital for real capital, and you are getting away with it by pretending that wealth is like water -- e.g. there is a finite amount of it that people need to drink. What is wrong with India -- and I understand this is not a fundamental explanation but a symptom of more fundamental causes -- is that it is difficult to invest and create more capital in the country. This has absolutely nothing to do with "hoarding" financial assets. What it means is that the credit/financial system is broken, so that if you have the skills and ideas and talent to do something you cannot have your plans priced by the credit markets. If there was a functioning credit market that would help enable productive ecosystems. It is, unfortunately not sufficient, you also need skilled labor that doesn't flee the nation, you need rule of law so that contracts are enforced, you need a stable regulatory environment so that investments can be planned ahead without paying bribes to various officials and interest groups, etc. Absolutely none of this requires anyone who holds lots of financial assets to get off their as* and do anything at all. If they do nothing and don't invest, they will merely become relatively poorer as new entrepreneurs arise. They are not blocking the production of anything unless they use their wealth to actively create roadblocks (e.g. bribe officials to turn down permits for upstarts, etc). In an economy with functioning credit markets and productive eco-systems, it is not old wealth that innovates, it is new wealth. You still have Rockeffellers laying around but people like Elon Musk arise from the ranks of the middle classes to become wealthy on the backs of new ideas. The lack of Indian Elon Musks is not due to the Rockefellers "hoarding" their oil fortunes, anymore than middle class people like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison didn't get funded by old Timber barons. They got funded by credit markets. So the problem with India is that while it has human capital, it lacks the other ingredients to create productive eco-systems that can create the capital needed to make India richer and more productive. So look to things like lack of rule of law, a bureaucracy that prevents new entrants, and a credit system that does not properly price new investment ideas. Rich people are merely passive holders of bonds or stocks and play no positive or negative roles in any of this.

nonameiguess 6y ago

Surely, the canonical example of a nation collapsing because the rich just horde gold and don't try to actually make anything is the Spanish Empire, not India.

dublin 6y ago
Not really - I'd argue that a lot of the problem in India isn't just selfish accumulation of wealth, but the utter unconcern for others that is inherently baked into the prevalent Hindu worldview. I've worked with Indian missionaries, and they uniformly agree that you simply cannot get many Hindus to have any concern for their fellow man - in fact, helping someone is actively discouraged, as you would be interfering with the Karma that is justifiably punishing the suffering party in this or a previous life. If that's your worldview, then there can be no selfless compassion (an almost uniquely Christian concept, FWIW).

throwawaysea 6y ago

This article is simplifying things in very self-serving ways to make a political argument by leveraging a tragedy. It ultimately aims to blame the rich but the article is poorly-written, vague in making that connection, unfocused in what it covers, and ultimately incoherent: The first part of the article seems to be a criticism of how India handled the pandemic. But until the recent second wave, India's strategy was considered to be highly successful. This article describes the initial lockdown in very negative tones, but I would say that given all the unknowns and the high density of Indian metropolitan cities, it seems that a harsh initial shutdown followed by numerous phases that relaxed restrictions/handed control to local governments seems fairly logical. If there wasn't a strict lockdown early, critics would be making the opposite argument right now. This second wave is also not well-understood. This article, like others, uses anecdotal examples of election rallies or sporting events as contributors, but it ignores that the sudden growth in cases from 3/1-4/1 may just be the result of aggressive, poorly-understood COVID variants (or a mix of all these factors). The second part of this article criticizes private healthcare. But in many countries, state-run healthcare is low quality to begin with, which is what spurs on the advent of private healthcare. Developing nations in particular have state-run hospitals that provide a DMV like level of service. Why shouldn't citizens be free to seek out better care? The author begins to make an argument that the difference between public hospitals and private hospitals is somehow problematic but doesn't ever get specific in terms of evidence for claims, instead resorting to low-quality ranting with phrasings like "clutching their pearls". It's also not clear how the public/private aspects are connected to the current second wave. The third part of the article is about the Bhopal disaster, which doesn't seem related to the current situation at all. Bhopal was a story of corporate corruption (ignoring safety standards), government corruption in India (allowing this kind of behavior), government corruption in the US (denying extradition requests, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Carbide#Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Carbide#Bhopal_disaster), and the lack of accountability in globalized/international economies. I re-read this part a few times but it too doesn't seem relevant and the author's meandering introduction of the Bhopal disaster into this article just adds to the incoherence. In the end, I am not sure what the point of this article is or why The Atlantic thinks it met their standards.

wobbly_bush 6y ago

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ram_rar 6y ago

This is a very poorly written article with reductionist arguments to satisfy its own narratives. Every country has people with different socio economic backgrounds. Irrespective of country, people with resources will do whats best for them.

sg47 6y ago
I disagree. There's no sense of community in India. It's every person for himself and most people don't care about contributing to the community.

carlsborg 6y ago

Many centuries of subjugation followed by successful democracy meant people in power with no generational knowledge or guidance on how to run a town or municipality. And the wealth flows from political power.

not1ofU 6y ago

Slightly off topic, humerous video discussing India/Bangladesh boarders (map from 2015) and types of enclaves (2nd order enclave?)on both sides. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-aIzkvPwFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-aIzkvPwFo

mrlonglong 6y ago

I watched a documentary that said the UK took over 45 trillion GBP from India in the last 200 years. I'm pretty sure that might be why it lacks the resources to protect its people.

solveit 6y ago
Kinda hard to have a discussion if you don't at least tell us which documentary (better: cite the paper that the documentary presumably cited).
- sinyug 6y ago
  There is a 2017 paper by Utsa Patnaik[1] where she comes up with a figure of GBP 9.2 trillion, which is about $45 trillion[2] based on historical exchange rates. Shashi Tharoor has written a book on what the British did to India.[3] This is based on his speech on the reparations question at a 2015 debate at the Oxford Union Society.[4] 1. Revisiting the 'Drain', or Transfers from India to Britain in the Context of Global Diffusion of Capitalism (Agrarian and Other Histories, 2017, Tulika Books) https://cup.columbia.edu/book/agrarian-and-other-histories/9789382381952 https://cup.columbia.edu/book/agrarian-and-other-histories/9... 2. British Raj siphoned out $45 trillion from India: Utsa Patnaik Interview. https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HNZA71LNVNNVXQ1eaIKu6M/British-Raj-siphoned-out-45-trillion-from-India-Utsa-Patna.html https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HNZA71LNVNNVXQ1eaIKu6M/Br... 3. An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India. 2017. Aleph. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/07/era-darkness-british-empire-india.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/07/er... 4. Britain Does Owe Reparations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCgBQFhQGf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCgBQFhQGf0
  - rramadass 6y ago
    I was about to post the same response but you beat me to it. As a follow up to (4) above, watch Shashi Tharoor's longer speech on the devastation and mess that the British left in India: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5ykS-_-CI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5ykS-_-CI Also read the old book Empire in Asia, How We Came by It: A Book Of Confessions by William McCullagh Torrens.

readonthegoapp 6y ago

I agree. And would only add that the US Covid disaster is what happens when rich people here do nothing. The author highlights the importance of segregating the rich from the poor, financially/socially, to sustain these types of tragedies. I appreciate that he called out the "moral malnutrition" of the comfortable, but especially the upper class/caste. Sometimes, a disaster playing out in real time on tv (or, at least Youtube) is actually a disaster, and requires addressing. It's tough for America to preach right now given that it seems like we have police killing black men, including kids, every single day -- which is not, unfortunately, hyperbole. But they are disasters. We don't need to excuse them away, and say well a lot more black kids got killed by covid than cops.