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Oh Jesus Christ... Not another one of these posts. Guys, why do you write posts like this knowing the end result? Someone brings to light an obvious flaw in so

Oh Jesus Christ... Not another one of these posts. Guys, why do you write posts like this knowing the end result? Someone brings to light an obvious flaw in someone else's country, people from that country feel like it's a direct attack on them and come up with bullshit excuses, the bullshit annoys people and the whole conversation spirals into denials, "I'm not in denial"s, "what about your _____"s, and "that's not the same as ______"s being thrown back and forth. Person A: Your country is shitty! Person B: You don't understand us! Person A: You're in denial. Person B: What about your country? Person A: At least we don't _______! Person B: That's not the same as _______! This is the worst way to criticize someone's country/behavoir/business. It's all logic, no emotion, and humans do NOT respond well to it. When criticizing some else's country always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS include an equal list of good and bad otherwise it feels like an attack on that person's homeland. The whole point of criticizing someone is to help them see their flaws (which they've normalized to and are oblivious to) and get better, but they can't get better when they aren't listening to you, and they aren't going to listen to you if they feel you are attacking them, they will attack back.

moron 14y ago
This isn't a criticism of India. People are reacting that way because they read a few paragraphs and came here to comment because what they read wasn't nice. It's much more balanced than it's being given credit for, because it has the audacity to be honest about things like the fact that a lot of people in India are dirty. Let alone whether there actually are a lot of dirty people, people here are more interested in expressing their indignance. But as I say, it is more balanced than it appears. For example, the story about being hustled at the rug shop -- the author later notes that his mother did indeed get the rug. For example, the story about flipping out at the cab driver over a few dollars. There is no love here for the idiot Westerners traveling to India to experience "spiritual enlightenment". But commenters don't want to respect his honesty. Just trot out the same old tired accusations of ignorance and cultural arrogance. Oh well.
lenkite 14y ago
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.
- ChrisNorstrom 14y ago
  I am from Bulgaria. Every country has its flaws. If this article was about Bulgaria. I myself would feel a bit hurt. I would immediately try to lesson the blow of some of the arguments and accusations. And just for the record, I'm being brutally honest about my own home country. India with all its problems has much more of a future than Bulgaria does. Bulgaria's population is shrinking, business is shrinking, villages are shrinking. Every 5 years we go back and see how things have shrunk, life is a bit harder, and corruption shows it's head in more places. Each year Bulgarian businesses have less potential customers. At least in India everything is growing, things are incrementally getting better. My whole argument is that the author writing posts like this is not going to change anything or do anything productive or constructive. It's just going to hurt feelings without creating action. It's a useless article for Indians because it's not encouraging, has no call to action, and just plain hurts. In fact reading his article just makes me want to stay away from India. Honestly, India was one of the places I wanted to visit in the next 10 years. After reading that and mentally combining it with all the other "I went to India and was shocked and disappointed" articles it makes me want to avoid the country altogether for the next 30 years. Everyone's country has shit. But if you're going to talk about the shit in Country_X. Equally talk about the flowers too. Otherwise the people living in that shit have their motivation and drive to make it better taken away. And others are given an overly negative view of Country_X.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

moron 14y ago

This isn't a criticism of India. People are reacting that way because they read a few paragraphs and came here to comment because what they read wasn't nice. It's much more balanced than it's being given credit for, because it has the audacity to be honest about things like the fact that a lot of people in India are dirty. Let alone whether there actually are a lot of dirty people, people here are more interested in expressing their indignance. But as I say, it is more balanced than it appears. For example, the story about being hustled at the rug shop -- the author later notes that his mother did indeed get the rug. For example, the story about flipping out at the cab driver over a few dollars. There is no love here for the idiot Westerners traveling to India to experience "spiritual enlightenment". But commenters don't want to respect his honesty. Just trot out the same old tired accusations of ignorance and cultural arrogance. Oh well.

lenkite 14y ago

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.

ChrisNorstrom 14y ago
I am from Bulgaria. Every country has its flaws. If this article was about Bulgaria. I myself would feel a bit hurt. I would immediately try to lesson the blow of some of the arguments and accusations. And just for the record, I'm being brutally honest about my own home country. India with all its problems has much more of a future than Bulgaria does. Bulgaria's population is shrinking, business is shrinking, villages are shrinking. Every 5 years we go back and see how things have shrunk, life is a bit harder, and corruption shows it's head in more places. Each year Bulgarian businesses have less potential customers. At least in India everything is growing, things are incrementally getting better. My whole argument is that the author writing posts like this is not going to change anything or do anything productive or constructive. It's just going to hurt feelings without creating action. It's a useless article for Indians because it's not encouraging, has no call to action, and just plain hurts. In fact reading his article just makes me want to stay away from India. Honestly, India was one of the places I wanted to visit in the next 10 years. After reading that and mentally combining it with all the other "I went to India and was shocked and disappointed" articles it makes me want to avoid the country altogether for the next 30 years. Everyone's country has shit. But if you're going to talk about the shit in Country_X. Equally talk about the flowers too. Otherwise the people living in that shit have their motivation and drive to make it better taken away. And others are given an overly negative view of Country_X.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]