13 ms·

Everything Gardiner is saying is true :-( As an indian and also an immigrant here in the US, i can only be ashamed. it is hard to defend India when such simple

Everything Gardiner is saying is true :-( As an indian and also an immigrant here in the US, i can only be ashamed. it is hard to defend India when such simple things taken for granted everywhere else is a luxury. India is a mystery. How do things even work? (Try an evening commute in a suburban train in Mumbai) How can people (that too 1.2 B) even live in such conditions ? (Are the conditions because of the 1.2B?). But the country has a strange resilience. It is a country steeped in tradition on one side and trying hard to catch up with the rest of the world in modernization on the other. There are sparks of brilliance everywhere. Like lotus in a mucky pond. (http://www.thebetterindia.com/25026/gatimaan-express-10-interesting-facts-about-indias-fastest-train/ http://www.thebetterindia.com/25026/gatimaan-express-10-inte...). My only wish is a little less corruption, and basic amenities for all within 5 years. The problem is huge, and unlike software humanity cannot be just rewritten from scratch :-(

sremani 11y ago
Corruption is not the entire problem. The open defecation rates of India beat Sub-Saharan Africa handily an estimated 60-70% of world's open defecation is in India. I mean, come on, we should stop taking the cover of corruption and colonialism for every problem that persists.
- kamaal 11y ago
  >>Corruption is not the entire problem. Or may be it is. At least for our population scale. How and why do you think rules and regulations get flouted? Plus I don't tend to restrict corruption to what government officials do. The business(of all sizes) who don't pay a penny in taxes, Common public who break every single law knowing that they can buy their way out, people/managers in private companies blatantly indulging in linguistic, regional and religious politics quelling whatever little is left of meritocracy are all equally guilty. >>I mean, come on, we should stop taking the cover of corruption and colonialism for every problem that persists. Colonialism probably damaged India in ways which can't even be repaired now. To tell that it doesn't have any impact on how things are running now is very naive.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    Coming from a former colonial possession (Ireland), I agree that one shouldn't dismiss the injuries of colonialism, but I also think it's easy to fall into the trap of imagining that the pre-colonial era was one of benign harmony. It's easy to put the blame on a rapacious colonial power for a society's ills, but in many cases the only reason the external power was able to take over was due to dysfunction in the colonized country that limited its ability to respond to externally-imposed challenges.
    - chimeracoder 11y ago
      > Coming from a former colonial possession (Ireland), It's really not historically responsible to equate British rule of Ireland with colonialism as it existed in India. > but in many cases the only reason the external power was able to take over was due to dysfunction in the colonized country that limited its ability to respond to externally-imposed challenges. This is also not a particularly accurate depiction of the way that colonial powers built their empires. It's not a particularly accurate depiction of the way that the British took control over India either.
      - wavefunction 11y ago
        >>It's really not historically responsible to equate British rule of Ireland with colonialism as it existed in India. I'd be interested to find out why you think this is the case? I'm not an expert by any means on the history of either colonial era but the little I do know shows some striking similarities in how the natives were treated by the British as far as rapacious barbarity in multiple cases.
        bjones22 11y ago
        As someone who both has a lot of Irish blood (read: many relatives who hate the British), and someone who considers himself an amateur historian I'd like to make a single point: From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943: "starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks" ~ Churchill 1943 I think this quote captures the ethos of British colonial rule quite nicely. While the British ruled many of their colonies by a identifiable play-book (i.e. a superiority complex that lead to brutal governance), cultural preference, as it always seems to, lead to favorable treatment of those demographics closest to anglo-saxon / protestant / etc, characteristics. So I assert while famines were induced by the British in both Ireland and India, the Indians would have been seen as lowlier then the Irish, by a debatable amount. The Indian population would thus have suffered harsher under colonial rulers. This is coming from someone who has traced his ancestry back to a British lord, which in all likelihood means a family member (likely 3-4 generations) was raped as a direct result of British colonialism. History is brutal and everybody likes to call foul. However treatment of different, far off, peoples by colonial powers will never seek to amaze in its vicious and sickening nature. Like this incident committed by American troops in 1901: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balangiga_massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balangiga_massacre
- DanBC 11y ago
  Do you think "walls of shame" could help with the problem of open defecation? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31831559 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31831559
  - rattray 11y ago
    It's fairly common to see "do not urinate here" on walls in India. If the paint on the walls is nice, it seems to usually work. If the wall looks shitty, they're ignored. Near my apartment, there's a section of wall that's fairly well-hidden from the main street; people urinate there all day and it always reeks. (It's a corner of the outer wall of one of central Bangalore's nicest high-rise condo's). But the nicer stretches of that wall, and others in my area, are always devoid of urine. Open defecation doesn't happen when people have access to (ideally free) toilets. Nobody likes doing that and I can't imagine shaming them will help anyone.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      The linked article shows that open defecation does happen when people have access to free indor loos.
      - rattray 11y ago
        Thanks for pointing that out; it was wrong of me to make such a bold, absolute assertion, especially without data. It's certainly worth clarifying that I wouldn't expect 100% efficacy from anything involving cultural change; of course it still happens. And also worth mentioning that the available latrines have to be welcome, clean, and comfortable; at least, better to use than the open-air alternative. Many public latrines are rather less pleasant than a patch of dirt behind a bush.
- hakcermani 11y ago
  Agree with you. I meant it in the sense it impedes progress at grassroot level.
- rattray 11y ago
  I don't think anyone particularly revels in shitting outside. (I live in India, and don't see joy in people's faces when they do this). If people can afford a toilet, and get access to sanitation and plumbing, they will use them. In fact, the government has massive toilet-subsidy programs, and it's the government's responsibility to provide plumbing. Everybody here knows these programs and responsibilities are a joke, because of corruption (officials pocket the money for those toilet subsidies) and bureaucracy (getting the subsidies probably requires paperwork that the target citizens don't have, though that's just a guess on my part). So, yes, an ineffective government (in large part due to corruption) may well be a huge part of the problem, if not the entire problem.
  - adevine 11y ago
    This just isn't true: > A new household survey of nearly 23,000 north Indians offers more evidence, especially from Hindu households. Led by Diane Coffey, an economist at Princeton, it found that even among households with a working latrine, more than 40% reported that at least one family member preferred to defecate in the open. http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21607837-fixing-dreadful-sanitation-india-requires-not-just-building-lavatories-also-changing http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21607837-fixing-dreadful-...
    - rattray 11y ago
      Wow, Cunningham's law in action! Thanks for posting, that sounds like a fascinating study. May simply be a case of bad toilets, though; from the article: "Those with a government-built toilet were especially likely to choose a bush instead." EDIT: All cultural change is just slow. Give a European toilet to someone who's been using squat latrines all 40 years of their life and they'll perch. Give it to a younger person, and they'll learn the new way. Also, it looks like the cited statistic is a bit dramatic; only 21% of individuals who live in a household with a latrine practice open defecation. 80% efficacy is pretty good in social interventions. The household stat basically just says to me, "most Indian households include elderly members, who don't want to change their ways". EDIT 2: Link to paper: http://riceinstitute.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Open_Defecation.pdf http://riceinstitute.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/0... the graphs of age by defecation rate on page 6 support my age-related guesses.
- rattray 11y ago
  FWIW, I don't hear many Indians blaming colonialism for the ills here (could be because I'm white and nobody wants to be insulting). It's more something that folks in Western countries talk about as far as I can tell. EDIT: elsewhere on this thread, @sremani mentioned they are an Indian living in the US, so readers should not read my comment in favor of theirs.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >FWIW, I don't hear many Indians blaming colonialism for the ills here (could be because I'm white and nobody wants to be insulting). That, and also being conditioned not to thing so and blame themselves. Works wonder for keeping them at bay.
    - enupten 11y ago
      :) Ah, colonialization and its many wonders!
      - coldtea 11y ago
        Let's not forget post-colonialization. Less explicit, still as effective in resource grubbing and divide-and-conquer. From the people that lovingly prepared the best conflict zones for after they leave, such as India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Iran-Iraq, Nothern-Southern Cyprus etc.
        enupten 11y ago
        Agreed. It's actually much worse, because the ruling native elite in India think of themselves as being more related to the British culturally than to India itself! This kind of mind-warping can only happen in the land of the Yoga :D I'm actually sad that India had more academic achievements in early 20th century British India than in the latter part under the "Republic". Famines did decrease though, and that's arguably more important.
  - enupten 11y ago
- coldtea 11y ago
  >I mean, come on, we should stop taking the cover of corruption and colonialism for every problem that persists. Yeah, because obviously shitting outside is a lifestyle choice. They'd also not rather have clean air or decent houses too.
  - cynicalkane 11y ago
    Humans are very good at not changing harmful lifestyles even if those lifestyles are particularly gross. Simple education has been a powerful tool for fighting hygiene problems in the third world.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      Education doesn't help much if hundrends of millions don't have a bathroom at home -- and many not even a home, period.
- enupten 11y ago
  Oh come on. The issues that are constantly being dredged out by NyT and Wpost, tend predominantly to be endemic to North India. Why ? Because the governance in North India has historically been in a much worse state and consequently its economic situation is much worse than that of the South. The public schools in India are in a pathetic state, they can't get a degree from a university in their own mother tongues. In the rare case that they do, they never get a job... This suggests that poverty brings many social problems. It also suggests that governance is a big part of the problem. Colonialism should also be assigned a big part of the blame, since such egregious an aberration does leave a very deep scar on the society. Indeed Angus Madison notes how India's GDP fell from 25% of World's GDP to ~1-2% in less than 2 centuries of British rule. The scorched-earth policies which economically destroyed foundries to textiles, which prevented mechanization, which destroyed widespread schooling & killed off scholarly traditions, which left many of the Jati's economically weakened, which killed of millions in famines... The irony is that the fears of Luddites came true in India & China (with military help of course). You have a very shallow understanding of societies (and arguably of history too). This goes back to my comment about class war - the anglicized urbanites have no tangible connection or understanding of "Bharata", the poor disenfranchised India.
enupten 11y ago
The conditions are because the rural economy has deliberately been kept very weak. You can't blame poor people for trying to make a living. Go outside of your big cities to see the country for what it really is. I wouldn't necessarily want go by what established Hinduphobes like Gardner Harris have to say about the country.
- dominotw 11y ago
  >The conditions are because the rural economy has deliberately been kept very weak. Curious. By who?
  - rattray 11y ago
    While I wouldn't agree with enputen's characterization of "deliberate", it's entirely possible that they've been kept weak by a class of strongman lenders & landlords. Not an evil cabal, just a bunch of people who have the strength to play unfairly in the market and haven't been stopped. I don't have any special information here; it's just a hypothesis I find plausible.
  - enupten 11y ago
    The Indian state inherited from the British of course. I don't know if there is a conscious effort in this regard, but I'm convinced that it has been continuously waging class war against the non-Anglicized citizenry (for obvious reasons). The reluctance to tackle entreched political forces who make up the middle men means that farmers end up getting about 10% of what is paid by the end consumer. This is a tragedy. http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/Middlemen-pocket-lions-share-as-farmers-suffer/2013/11/19/article1899129.ece http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/Middlemen-pock... http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/02/26/farmers-struggle-to-escape-middlemen/ http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/02/26/farmers-strugg... The reason you don't hear much on this is because English media doesn't really have any rural correspondents. This is a area ripe for bringing in disruptive technologies. I don't know if there are startups working on this. I think MSR India has something on the political disenfranchisement front, and there some startups doing micro-credit.
kamaal 11y ago
Answer to your question lies your very post. The same Indians who probably cheat on taxes in every possible way in India(Fake rent receipts, Opting to buy things without a bill, show wrong records for accounting purposes), break every single traffic rule, litter streets, spit on the roads, break building regulations, play politics at office places, indulge in linguistic, regional and religious politics and do nearly everything wrong India; after arriving in U.S tend to exact opposite. Why is that so? Life in the U.S doesn't come for free either. Account for all your taxes, expenses and cost of living and you will see this is simply trading one thing for the other.
rattray 11y ago
I'm an American living in Bangalore (2mo) who spent 3mo traveling through India, after 6mo through other parts of Asia. I confirm a lot of this, especially how impressive India and Indians are. In Bangalore, the sparks of brilliance are a crackling fire. It's also worth noting that many of the problems noted in the article (air, water, food, flies) are far better in Bangalore. Frankly, there's a lot less cow manure, and the air isn't great but feels inestimably better than Delhi. "The Garden City" may have lost some of its greenery to the technology boom, but it's still in the top echelon in terms of tree cover of all cities I've visited (probably two dozen in the past year).
- adevine 11y ago
  The air pollution in Bangalore is now ranked worse than Delhi: http://m.thehindu.com/news/national/air-quality-levels-bengaluru-fares-worse-than-delhi/article7074817.ece/ http://m.thehindu.com/news/national/air-quality-levels-benga...
  - rattray 11y ago
    I saw that when it came out... it's only true of one metric, not overall air quality. You can barely see down the street in Delhi, whereas I see blue sky above my head right now. Your point is worth keeping in mind, of course; I chose my words carefully when I said "the air... feels inestimably better than Delhi". I still get a headache whenever I spend longer than 15m in a rick.
coldtea 11y ago
>India is a mystery. How do things even work? (Try an evening commute in a suburban train in Mumbai) How can people (that too 1.2 B) even live in such conditions ? Well, if you didn't have the money, connections or chance to be able to migrate to the US, you'd probably be living in such conditions too. It's not like you can't do much about it when you're poor. And it's not like the US is all roses either. I've been to places in Mississippi, Alabama etc that look like the third world. Or South Dakota, were the life expectancy among Native Americans rivals the third world. And of course the same is more or less true for the well (and not so well) hidden homeless, urban poor, latinos, "white trash" etc communities.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

sremani 11y ago

Corruption is not the entire problem. The open defecation rates of India beat Sub-Saharan Africa handily an estimated 60-70% of world's open defecation is in India. I mean, come on, we should stop taking the cover of corruption and colonialism for every problem that persists.

kamaal 11y ago
>>Corruption is not the entire problem. Or may be it is. At least for our population scale. How and why do you think rules and regulations get flouted? Plus I don't tend to restrict corruption to what government officials do. The business(of all sizes) who don't pay a penny in taxes, Common public who break every single law knowing that they can buy their way out, people/managers in private companies blatantly indulging in linguistic, regional and religious politics quelling whatever little is left of meritocracy are all equally guilty. >>I mean, come on, we should stop taking the cover of corruption and colonialism for every problem that persists. Colonialism probably damaged India in ways which can't even be repaired now. To tell that it doesn't have any impact on how things are running now is very naive.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Coming from a former colonial possession (Ireland), I agree that one shouldn't dismiss the injuries of colonialism, but I also think it's easy to fall into the trap of imagining that the pre-colonial era was one of benign harmony. It's easy to put the blame on a rapacious colonial power for a society's ills, but in many cases the only reason the external power was able to take over was due to dysfunction in the colonized country that limited its ability to respond to externally-imposed challenges.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > Coming from a former colonial possession (Ireland), It's really not historically responsible to equate British rule of Ireland with colonialism as it existed in India. > but in many cases the only reason the external power was able to take over was due to dysfunction in the colonized country that limited its ability to respond to externally-imposed challenges. This is also not a particularly accurate depiction of the way that colonial powers built their empires. It's not a particularly accurate depiction of the way that the British took control over India either.
    - wavefunction 11y ago
      >>It's really not historically responsible to equate British rule of Ireland with colonialism as it existed in India. I'd be interested to find out why you think this is the case? I'm not an expert by any means on the history of either colonial era but the little I do know shows some striking similarities in how the natives were treated by the British as far as rapacious barbarity in multiple cases.
      - bjones22 11y ago
        As someone who both has a lot of Irish blood (read: many relatives who hate the British), and someone who considers himself an amateur historian I'd like to make a single point: From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943: "starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks" ~ Churchill 1943 I think this quote captures the ethos of British colonial rule quite nicely. While the British ruled many of their colonies by a identifiable play-book (i.e. a superiority complex that lead to brutal governance), cultural preference, as it always seems to, lead to favorable treatment of those demographics closest to anglo-saxon / protestant / etc, characteristics. So I assert while famines were induced by the British in both Ireland and India, the Indians would have been seen as lowlier then the Irish, by a debatable amount. The Indian population would thus have suffered harsher under colonial rulers. This is coming from someone who has traced his ancestry back to a British lord, which in all likelihood means a family member (likely 3-4 generations) was raped as a direct result of British colonialism. History is brutal and everybody likes to call foul. However treatment of different, far off, peoples by colonial powers will never seek to amaze in its vicious and sickening nature. Like this incident committed by American troops in 1901: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balangiga_massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balangiga_massacre
DanBC 11y ago
Do you think "walls of shame" could help with the problem of open defecation? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31831559 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31831559
- rattray 11y ago
  It's fairly common to see "do not urinate here" on walls in India. If the paint on the walls is nice, it seems to usually work. If the wall looks shitty, they're ignored. Near my apartment, there's a section of wall that's fairly well-hidden from the main street; people urinate there all day and it always reeks. (It's a corner of the outer wall of one of central Bangalore's nicest high-rise condo's). But the nicer stretches of that wall, and others in my area, are always devoid of urine. Open defecation doesn't happen when people have access to (ideally free) toilets. Nobody likes doing that and I can't imagine shaming them will help anyone.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    The linked article shows that open defecation does happen when people have access to free indor loos.
    - rattray 11y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out; it was wrong of me to make such a bold, absolute assertion, especially without data. It's certainly worth clarifying that I wouldn't expect 100% efficacy from anything involving cultural change; of course it still happens. And also worth mentioning that the available latrines have to be welcome, clean, and comfortable; at least, better to use than the open-air alternative. Many public latrines are rather less pleasant than a patch of dirt behind a bush.
hakcermani 11y ago
Agree with you. I meant it in the sense it impedes progress at grassroot level.
rattray 11y ago
I don't think anyone particularly revels in shitting outside. (I live in India, and don't see joy in people's faces when they do this). If people can afford a toilet, and get access to sanitation and plumbing, they will use them. In fact, the government has massive toilet-subsidy programs, and it's the government's responsibility to provide plumbing. Everybody here knows these programs and responsibilities are a joke, because of corruption (officials pocket the money for those toilet subsidies) and bureaucracy (getting the subsidies probably requires paperwork that the target citizens don't have, though that's just a guess on my part). So, yes, an ineffective government (in large part due to corruption) may well be a huge part of the problem, if not the entire problem.
- adevine 11y ago
  This just isn't true: > A new household survey of nearly 23,000 north Indians offers more evidence, especially from Hindu households. Led by Diane Coffey, an economist at Princeton, it found that even among households with a working latrine, more than 40% reported that at least one family member preferred to defecate in the open. http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21607837-fixing-dreadful-sanitation-india-requires-not-just-building-lavatories-also-changing http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21607837-fixing-dreadful-...
  - rattray 11y ago
    Wow, Cunningham's law in action! Thanks for posting, that sounds like a fascinating study. May simply be a case of bad toilets, though; from the article: "Those with a government-built toilet were especially likely to choose a bush instead." EDIT: All cultural change is just slow. Give a European toilet to someone who's been using squat latrines all 40 years of their life and they'll perch. Give it to a younger person, and they'll learn the new way. Also, it looks like the cited statistic is a bit dramatic; only 21% of individuals who live in a household with a latrine practice open defecation. 80% efficacy is pretty good in social interventions. The household stat basically just says to me, "most Indian households include elderly members, who don't want to change their ways". EDIT 2: Link to paper: http://riceinstitute.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Open_Defecation.pdf http://riceinstitute.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/0... the graphs of age by defecation rate on page 6 support my age-related guesses.
rattray 11y ago
FWIW, I don't hear many Indians blaming colonialism for the ills here (could be because I'm white and nobody wants to be insulting). It's more something that folks in Western countries talk about as far as I can tell. EDIT: elsewhere on this thread, @sremani mentioned they are an Indian living in the US, so readers should not read my comment in favor of theirs.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >FWIW, I don't hear many Indians blaming colonialism for the ills here (could be because I'm white and nobody wants to be insulting). That, and also being conditioned not to thing so and blame themselves. Works wonder for keeping them at bay.
  - enupten 11y ago
    :) Ah, colonialization and its many wonders!
    - coldtea 11y ago
      Let's not forget post-colonialization. Less explicit, still as effective in resource grubbing and divide-and-conquer. From the people that lovingly prepared the best conflict zones for after they leave, such as India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Iran-Iraq, Nothern-Southern Cyprus etc.
      - enupten 11y ago
        Agreed. It's actually much worse, because the ruling native elite in India think of themselves as being more related to the British culturally than to India itself! This kind of mind-warping can only happen in the land of the Yoga :D I'm actually sad that India had more academic achievements in early 20th century British India than in the latter part under the "Republic". Famines did decrease though, and that's arguably more important.
- enupten 11y ago
coldtea 11y ago
>I mean, come on, we should stop taking the cover of corruption and colonialism for every problem that persists. Yeah, because obviously shitting outside is a lifestyle choice. They'd also not rather have clean air or decent houses too.
- cynicalkane 11y ago
  Humans are very good at not changing harmful lifestyles even if those lifestyles are particularly gross. Simple education has been a powerful tool for fighting hygiene problems in the third world.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Education doesn't help much if hundrends of millions don't have a bathroom at home -- and many not even a home, period.
enupten 11y ago
Oh come on. The issues that are constantly being dredged out by NyT and Wpost, tend predominantly to be endemic to North India. Why ? Because the governance in North India has historically been in a much worse state and consequently its economic situation is much worse than that of the South. The public schools in India are in a pathetic state, they can't get a degree from a university in their own mother tongues. In the rare case that they do, they never get a job... This suggests that poverty brings many social problems. It also suggests that governance is a big part of the problem. Colonialism should also be assigned a big part of the blame, since such egregious an aberration does leave a very deep scar on the society. Indeed Angus Madison notes how India's GDP fell from 25% of World's GDP to ~1-2% in less than 2 centuries of British rule. The scorched-earth policies which economically destroyed foundries to textiles, which prevented mechanization, which destroyed widespread schooling & killed off scholarly traditions, which left many of the Jati's economically weakened, which killed of millions in famines... The irony is that the fears of Luddites came true in India & China (with military help of course). You have a very shallow understanding of societies (and arguably of history too). This goes back to my comment about class war - the anglicized urbanites have no tangible connection or understanding of "Bharata", the poor disenfranchised India.

enupten 11y ago

The conditions are because the rural economy has deliberately been kept very weak. You can't blame poor people for trying to make a living. Go outside of your big cities to see the country for what it really is. I wouldn't necessarily want go by what established Hinduphobes like Gardner Harris have to say about the country.

dominotw 11y ago
>The conditions are because the rural economy has deliberately been kept very weak. Curious. By who?
- rattray 11y ago
  While I wouldn't agree with enputen's characterization of "deliberate", it's entirely possible that they've been kept weak by a class of strongman lenders & landlords. Not an evil cabal, just a bunch of people who have the strength to play unfairly in the market and haven't been stopped. I don't have any special information here; it's just a hypothesis I find plausible.
- enupten 11y ago
  The Indian state inherited from the British of course. I don't know if there is a conscious effort in this regard, but I'm convinced that it has been continuously waging class war against the non-Anglicized citizenry (for obvious reasons). The reluctance to tackle entreched political forces who make up the middle men means that farmers end up getting about 10% of what is paid by the end consumer. This is a tragedy. http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/Middlemen-pocket-lions-share-as-farmers-suffer/2013/11/19/article1899129.ece http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/Middlemen-pock... http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/02/26/farmers-struggle-to-escape-middlemen/ http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/02/26/farmers-strugg... The reason you don't hear much on this is because English media doesn't really have any rural correspondents. This is a area ripe for bringing in disruptive technologies. I don't know if there are startups working on this. I think MSR India has something on the political disenfranchisement front, and there some startups doing micro-credit.

kamaal 11y ago

Answer to your question lies your very post. The same Indians who probably cheat on taxes in every possible way in India(Fake rent receipts, Opting to buy things without a bill, show wrong records for accounting purposes), break every single traffic rule, litter streets, spit on the roads, break building regulations, play politics at office places, indulge in linguistic, regional and religious politics and do nearly everything wrong India; after arriving in U.S tend to exact opposite. Why is that so? Life in the U.S doesn't come for free either. Account for all your taxes, expenses and cost of living and you will see this is simply trading one thing for the other.

rattray 11y ago

I'm an American living in Bangalore (2mo) who spent 3mo traveling through India, after 6mo through other parts of Asia. I confirm a lot of this, especially how impressive India and Indians are. In Bangalore, the sparks of brilliance are a crackling fire. It's also worth noting that many of the problems noted in the article (air, water, food, flies) are far better in Bangalore. Frankly, there's a lot less cow manure, and the air isn't great but feels inestimably better than Delhi. "The Garden City" may have lost some of its greenery to the technology boom, but it's still in the top echelon in terms of tree cover of all cities I've visited (probably two dozen in the past year).

adevine 11y ago
The air pollution in Bangalore is now ranked worse than Delhi: http://m.thehindu.com/news/national/air-quality-levels-bengaluru-fares-worse-than-delhi/article7074817.ece/ http://m.thehindu.com/news/national/air-quality-levels-benga...
- rattray 11y ago
  I saw that when it came out... it's only true of one metric, not overall air quality. You can barely see down the street in Delhi, whereas I see blue sky above my head right now. Your point is worth keeping in mind, of course; I chose my words carefully when I said "the air... feels inestimably better than Delhi". I still get a headache whenever I spend longer than 15m in a rick.

coldtea 11y ago

>India is a mystery. How do things even work? (Try an evening commute in a suburban train in Mumbai) How can people (that too 1.2 B) even live in such conditions ? Well, if you didn't have the money, connections or chance to be able to migrate to the US, you'd probably be living in such conditions too. It's not like you can't do much about it when you're poor. And it's not like the US is all roses either. I've been to places in Mississippi, Alabama etc that look like the third world. Or South Dakota, were the life expectancy among Native Americans rivals the third world. And of course the same is more or less true for the well (and not so well) hidden homeless, urban poor, latinos, "white trash" etc communities.

deleted 11y ago
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