The new scourge of India? (A rant!)

shashank.aggarwal

Well said Atala !!

Apparently, I agree that there were values, spirituality, tradition and everything. Bracing newer things doesn't mean that we are loosing older things.

And if the older India could have brought prosperity then we would have been among the world's more prosperous nations by now, however it simply is not capable of feeding all 1 billion of us, it had plenty of time to try and do that.

What is required is a combination of Old India and New India to actually have a good life.

__________________
Travelogue - Around India
Random Reviews

Nick-H

Don't think I'd call India 'paradise'.

__________________
.


Just one member of the IndiaMike Mod Team

Nick-H

Shashank... I think you put your foot in it there!

I'm sure India is perfectly capable of feeding its huge population. It is probably not capable of doing so while farming is organised as a cash crop, patented-seed-fertiliser-and-insecticide industry.

It is not tradition that is wrong with Indian farming: it is 'modernisation'.

shashank.aggarwal

Check the numbers 40 years before today ..(Or whatever time has passed since green revolution) ..

Btw, we were discussing Americanization.

Nick-H

I think we were discussing behaviour of the young generation . I guess we do this economic head-banging in enough threads already. Not sure the two things are separable?

capt_mahajan

'Americanisation' has two components

-Cultural, some of which I do not like, but India can well handle cultural assimilation, and I do have some faith in the young.

-Embracing economic policies which are structured to benefit the US and the Indian rich/middle class at the expense of the Indian poor.. which I abhor, and which are being embraced by most of my countrymen (sorry, Dilliwala, it is not 3% for this one).

The poor are subsidising the rich, and disparity is rising

Just one article, bold mine

GDP PLANNING, Number Crunching Won't do


The Article is from my issue of April 2006; I don't believe economic colonisation.. of the US variety, with their front line soldiers the willing Indian urban middle class... has decreased since then.

Note the US figures, too, which should tell us something.

Dilliwala

I'm glad to hear that. We can be grateful that it's not 10%. That works out to 105 million.

Cap'n, I don't remember who gave the stat - I think it was in one of BBC's World Debates after the 60-year mark - some desi said the benefits of globalisation have reached at best 30 million Indians. I wasn't doing the simplistic thing of using that figure as the number that want India to become America (obviously not all beneficiaries want that, and not all who want it are beneficiaries), but extrapolating from it - when we start stripping away the layers, the numbers left who really want India to become America wud not be much more, certainly in single-percentage. I don't buy the line (espesh from those media types) that 500 million of us want it to become America. Wud it not have happened in that case?

Let me also put out that not wanting India to become America does not require rejecting everything American. In any case, there's more to America, and India, than the latest ring-tones.

How did this turn into a discussion about economics and America, anyway? Ok, sorry I asked, I've been here long enough.
But I think it's becos the original topic of the thread has run its course!
Shall we move over to the more appropriate globalisation thread now, everybody?

capt_mahajan

Doesn't everything?

Agree absolutely (and as I have said elsewhere) about not rejecting everything US.

The constant assumption with present economic policy - on the lines of four legs good, two legs bad- is like Chinese water torture to me.

Maybe that is the trickle down theory

the three b's

I think I'm in lurrrvvvv

__________________
frequently bothered & bewildered, but totally.....

vdvoort

Oh, I'm so sorry, was that you...

Happy to meet you again, Machadinha ;-).

Enjoy!

trvl_in

One reveals one's precise class position as follows:

Your position is neatly tucked in just above those you most despise and just below those you most envy. The ones you actually hate are your precise peers.

When one encounters newly minted facsimiles of one's immediate class neighbours or peers in India the question becomes metaphysical...

edwardseco

Now that is a reply I will have to ponder..

Nick-H

It should be possible to trade with USA and other countries.

Whether it is possible to trade without domination, and eventual extraction of the life blood --- well, I have my doubts.

Exaggeration? Look at what Britain did. Colonisers have only one wish, one desire, one aim one instinct: fill their pockets, grab what they can, stay in or get out according to the balance sheet.

Anyone who does not see this to be the reality, is just looking at dreams --- unless they think India can actually, in the end, beat USA at its own game?

Me --- I'm a middle-class guy who likes to live the highest standard of living possible, perhaps even irresponsibly so in the view of many. I'm extravagant and a shopaholic. I don't really have anything against capitalism: it puts the butter on my bread, and I want jam there too.

The Captain is very much more experienced in the world of business than I am. I doubt that either of us ever turned a job down on the basis that our employers were in the basis of making money --- so we're hardly a couple of radical lefties here!

Rejecting everything from any other nation would be wrong and stupid.

machadinha

My understanding is actually that the socialist and non-aligned and more-or-less seclusionist post-Independence Indian governments -- who I realize full well it is fashionable to decry these days, and certainly among a young Indian crowd, and certainly going by this board alone -- were over time quite capable of making the country practically self-sufficient, statistically speaking at least, in terms of agricultural and industrial and economic etc. output.

As usual with poverty and starvation, the problem is not that the means are not there, but how they are distributed, and who holds the stakes.

But this persistent idea that India suffered from the socialist governments of a few decades ago (or from those remaining in a few states) and is now on the whole faring much better because of increased free-market policies is, as far as I know, a myth (as is the idea that it can't look after itself because of sheer demographics). Although I'm sure the middle classes will be better off today, as evidenced by their vast growth in a relatively short time-span alone. They are also traditionally the easiest to keep in line, as they have the most to lose: The illusion of a secure and stable livelihood, with some mod cons thrown in.

In any case and as a complete outsider I think post-Independence India by and large hasn't done all that badly for itself, in all the shifts it has gone through. I'm not the first to note it's quite amazing how it has managed to remain united and more-or-less democratic, compared to the troubles of many other former colonies. And I'm sure there are many hurdles to take, and as anywhere this will be frustrating, and time will tell how things work out. But India as any other place is just evolving, and it will always be so; there is no end goal to the process.

As to are there any hard and fast rules on how to steer such processes being the wo/man in the street, no, I guess not. Some of us go out and protest; some of us devote our careers to making the slightest difference; some of us are busy making a living and looking after the family and make a difference in that way. Etc. There is no route that prevails over the others. I guess remaining critical and not swallowing everything that's fed you is one step. (I think, and thus endeth the sermon, etc.) (And as a ps then, I agree this supposed increased affluence worldwide comes with a natural and predictable price in a number of fields, as is becoming more obvious by the day.)

__________________
Reading tips, all picked up at IndiaMike : INDAX's A Comprehensive Guide To India / Dinoj Surendran's Desi Humor / ITHVC on Culture Shock & Travel Health / JetLag Travel Guides For the Undiscerning Traveller / India Travel Links

capt_mahajan

Quite.

One more thing. The exact same people who were incharge in the earlier corrupt system are incharge in the latest corrupt system, our Prime Minister included. (however honest he is reputed to be, personally)

And yes, they will reform. But buy this from them... they will reform corruption last, because they are pastmasters at selective implementation

Meanwhile, to those who are starving- and while disparity is proved to be rising- they will recommend patience; wait for stuff to work here, stuff which hasn't worked anywhere else will surely work here, India being a land of miracles and all.