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please elaborate why you think that the political system is "saner"? my Indian colleagues are very unhappy with the system itself and the racist and populist go

please elaborate why you think that the political system is "saner"? my Indian colleagues are very unhappy with the system itself and the racist and populist government that is elected by this system.

barry-cotter 5y ago
India is a democracy with 70 years behind it. If politicians are egregiously bad they get voted out. See Indira “Emergency” Gandhi, of mass involuntary sterilization fame. In China there is no similar system for changing the people who are in power if they screw up badly or are just plain depraved evil. Mao and company were responsible for the Great Leap Forward and accompanying famine and the Cultural Revolution, both of which killed many people. Independent India has never had anything similar and it’s not because India’s ruling class was nicer. I do understand that if you care more about having the right kind of people with the right opinions in power then Western educated Congress Party people might be preferred to those Indians want to vote for. But that’s democracy.
- bllguo 5y ago
  Yet even with the utter disasters of the great leap forward and the cultural revolution, China is _still_ leaps and bounds ahead of India. How does that figure into your calculations? Outside of China, all the East Asian Tigers achieved their growth under authoritarian rule. How much more evidence do we need before having second thoughts that hey, maybe democracy is not the end-all, be-all of government systems?
hollerith 5y ago
It can be bad, but still better than China's system. China has had competent leaders since 1978, but before then they had disastrously bad leaders for decades that killed many millions of their own people, and if the current or some future leadership turn bad, there are few robust mechanisms (institutional knowledge, traditions, expertise, etc) to help replace it with better leadership. In short, although things are pretty good for residents of China at the moment, IMHO the risk of the whole country's becoming a hellscape is much higher in China than in India.
- bllguo 5y ago
  > In short, although things are pretty good for residents of China at the moment, IMHO the risk of the whole country's becoming a hellscape is much higher in China than in India. that's the tradeoff. In a democracy you intentionally cripple your own government's ability to get things done. It lets you avoid major risks but consequently you don't get to reap major rewards. In a situation like India's, don't you think maybe greater risks are worth taking? Stability and preserving the status quo is something you want _after_ becoming developed. Consider that even after China kneecapped itself with the cultural revolution, today it's still far ahead of India. "Pretty good" is an understatement relative to India, unfortunately.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    You're undercalling the risk. Measuring by corpse count, the Chinese system triggered arguably one of the greatest catastrophes to ever hit the human rate in the Great Leap Forward. The gap between India and China They're- arguably about 20 years big - isn't large enough to justify that level of suffering. As far as government policy is concerned, that is pretty close and the individual Indians are going to be in a better position to enjoy the fruit of their labour than individual Chinese citizens. India is consistently achieving 5% real GDP growth for 30 years - and those numbers are a lot more reliable than China's. There is little need to take risks, they're building wealth at a fast rate.

barry-cotter 5y ago

India is a democracy with 70 years behind it. If politicians are egregiously bad they get voted out. See Indira “Emergency” Gandhi, of mass involuntary sterilization fame. In China there is no similar system for changing the people who are in power if they screw up badly or are just plain depraved evil. Mao and company were responsible for the Great Leap Forward and accompanying famine and the Cultural Revolution, both of which killed many people. Independent India has never had anything similar and it’s not because India’s ruling class was nicer. I do understand that if you care more about having the right kind of people with the right opinions in power then Western educated Congress Party people might be preferred to those Indians want to vote for. But that’s democracy.

bllguo 5y ago
Yet even with the utter disasters of the great leap forward and the cultural revolution, China is _still_ leaps and bounds ahead of India. How does that figure into your calculations? Outside of China, all the East Asian Tigers achieved their growth under authoritarian rule. How much more evidence do we need before having second thoughts that hey, maybe democracy is not the end-all, be-all of government systems?

hollerith 5y ago

It can be bad, but still better than China's system. China has had competent leaders since 1978, but before then they had disastrously bad leaders for decades that killed many millions of their own people, and if the current or some future leadership turn bad, there are few robust mechanisms (institutional knowledge, traditions, expertise, etc) to help replace it with better leadership. In short, although things are pretty good for residents of China at the moment, IMHO the risk of the whole country's becoming a hellscape is much higher in China than in India.

bllguo 5y ago
> In short, although things are pretty good for residents of China at the moment, IMHO the risk of the whole country's becoming a hellscape is much higher in China than in India. that's the tradeoff. In a democracy you intentionally cripple your own government's ability to get things done. It lets you avoid major risks but consequently you don't get to reap major rewards. In a situation like India's, don't you think maybe greater risks are worth taking? Stability and preserving the status quo is something you want _after_ becoming developed. Consider that even after China kneecapped itself with the cultural revolution, today it's still far ahead of India. "Pretty good" is an understatement relative to India, unfortunately.
- roenxi 5y ago
  You're undercalling the risk. Measuring by corpse count, the Chinese system triggered arguably one of the greatest catastrophes to ever hit the human rate in the Great Leap Forward. The gap between India and China They're- arguably about 20 years big - isn't large enough to justify that level of suffering. As far as government policy is concerned, that is pretty close and the individual Indians are going to be in a better position to enjoy the fruit of their labour than individual Chinese citizens. India is consistently achieving 5% real GDP growth for 30 years - and those numbers are a lot more reliable than China's. There is little need to take risks, they're building wealth at a fast rate.