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Tatum Girlparts posted:Nothing really can be done in such an ingrained issue filled region. I mean even colonizing or whatever would need to involve bringing back the "well in my culture we hang people who do [insane backwards thing like widow burning or gang rape as punishment] so let's see what culture wins" type of argument and that's not really effective or pleasant. Charles James Napier posted:"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_James_Napier
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Mar 11, 2014 06:38
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Yes that would be the reference. Satisfying, and a pretty sweet burn, but not really effective for long lasting changes.
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Mar 11, 2014 06:40
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OwlBot 2000 posted:I made a joke or two in GBS but decided I wanted to actually learn what is being done or should be done because India is really that bad. "What is to be done" presupposes a unified decisionmaker that can act with minimal constraints. I do recommend being more interested in how Indian growth has occurred in the past, though. Having some perspective helps when hand-wringing over injustices in the present.
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Mar 11, 2014 06:42
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ronya posted:"What is to be done" presupposes a unified decisionmaker that can act with minimal constraints. Which/Whom I think will ultimately be necessary if things are to improve in the near (or even distant) future. What part of Indian economic history do you wish to discuss? The landlord class, empowered by the British to collect taxes, were historically very important and many families remain in power post-independence. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Mar 11, 2014 |
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Mar 11, 2014 06:48
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If it continues 8% growth, I think India would already be improving as well can be reasonably wished.
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Mar 11, 2014 06:50
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ronya posted:I think the geopolitical effect on trade of being NAM during the Cold War are overstated - Tito's Yugoslavia, Suharto's Indonesia, Mahathir's Malaysia were all part of NAM. Mahathir spent a decade attacking the US, Israel, and Zionism whilst cultivating both the US and Israel as major trade partners (albeit with the latter proxied through Thai ports). Granted, you could say some states were more "non-aligned" than others and at a certain extent that will be reflected in their domestic policy. Ultimately, to do trade with the US, you are going to have to offer something to them to some extent or at least be a state they have the hope for having a foot hold in. Yugoslavia was obviously a state the West wanted on it's side (for strategic reasons obviously) even if it was communist, the non-friend of my enemy. India made a very obvious choice to go in a different direction, which ultimately meant that autarky was a more ready option than exports. After 1991, this obviously changed and India opened up to globalized liberalism that in return allowed in to access foreign markets in the first world. However, right now is a bit more of a question since demand in the first world still remains very tepid and there likely isn't going to be such a dramatic growth in exports while competition still remains fierce. China itself just reported a dramatic reduction of exports, which wasn't the general expectation a few years ago. I think India may very well be in a situation where it could start running increasing trade deficits which will sap growth even though India isn't actually fully industrialized yet which means dramatic plans to change the social landscape of India will come into a crisis. Btw, I also think there is a big difference between recognizing India's problems and some of the really malicious things I have been hearing (not in this thread). I do think falls for neo-colonialism need to be laughed off even if the very real social problems of India need to be addressed and I admit there isn't a magic bullet to fix them. quote:If it continues 8% growth, I think India would already be improving as well can be reasonably wished. The same thing was said of China, and I don't think growth of either extent is sustainable and current Indian growth is around 4.4-4.7%.
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Mar 11, 2014 06:54
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ronya posted:If it continues 8% growth, I think India would already be improving as well can be reasonably wished. Do you have good reason to believe that growth won't stall in the near future due to competition, internal problems or a bad international economic climate? BBC posted:India's economic growth rate slowed down in the most recent quarter, according to official figures. The economy expanded at an annual rate of 4.7% in the three months to December, down from 4.8% in the previous quarter. The figure was lower than analysts had been expecting.Asia's third-largest economy has been weighed down by various factors, such as high inflation, a weak currency and a drop in foreign investment. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26385545
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Mar 11, 2014 06:54
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OwlBot 2000 posted:What part of Indian economic history do you wish to discuss? The landlord class, empowered by the British to collect taxes, were historically very important and many families remain in power post-independence. See, that's the thing. Economics is not a morality play - you don't create prosperity in the present by hunting down past injustices and correcting them. If you are interested in material prosperity, growth, and the epidemiological/religious/cultural transition to modernity, then reviving decades-old grievances is counterproductive. This is stuff for a truth and reconciliation committee, not the industry planning department.
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Mar 11, 2014 06:55
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ronya posted:See, that's the thing. Economics is not a morality play - you don't create prosperity in the present by hunting down past injustices and correcting them. If you are interested in material prosperity, growth, and the epidemiological/religious/cultural transition to modernity, then reviving decades-old grievances is counterproductive. This is stuff for a truth and reconciliation committee, not the industry planning department. If one group possesses disproportionate control over resources, political power and wealth, and it is not to everyone's benefit, then that issue should be addressed regardless of who wronged whom in the past -- especially if that group will likely be intransigent in the face of reform. Morality doesn't enter into it. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Mar 11, 2014 |
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Mar 11, 2014 06:57
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OwlBot 2000 posted:What part of Indian economic history do you wish to discuss? The landlord class, empowered by the British to collect taxes, were historically very important and many families remain in power post-independence. The British didn't create the zamindar system, the Mughals did. Largely based on the already pre-existing jatis who were in control of their respective areas. The British were more following a path of least resistance by carrying over the Mughal system of tax collection. That these families remain in power post-independence is rooted in the self-same problems endemic to every aspect of the jajmani system and how endogamous jatis work, combined with the realities of a democratic system.
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Mar 11, 2014 07:00
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OwlBot 2000 posted:If one group possesses disproportionate control over resources, political power and wealth, and it is not to everyone's benefit, then that issue should be addressed regardless of who wronged whom in the past. Morality doesn't enter into it.  Well, you pick your priorities. Capital accumulation is exponential, for a country that has not fully seized the existing technological envelope.
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Mar 11, 2014 07:00
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Yiggy posted:The British didn't create the zamindar system, the Mughals did. Duly noted, thanks for the correction. In any case, the British used them and had some sway over land taxes and so forth and could therefore force people into manufacturing by making farming too expensive.
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Mar 11, 2014 07:01
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The two aren't mutually exclusive at all, though? You could easily make the average person and the poorest people in the United States (or the world) richer by making the top 5% a little less rich. The combined GDPs of all countries is about 48 trillion dollars, and right now 85 people get more than 3.5 billion other people do. That is not a precondition for alleviating poverty, and as such making me 'choose' between a poor, equal country and a rich, unequal country is absurd when I could have a rich, equal country. Re: capital growth is exponential, ownership of and benefit from that capital needn't only go to a few dozen people. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Mar 11, 2014 |
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Mar 11, 2014 07:03
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Duly noted, thanks for the correction. In any case, the British used them and had some sway over land taxes and so forth and could therefore force people into manufacturing by making farming too expensive. Forgive me but I'm not sure which direction you're going with this. To clarify my thinking I'm responding to the notion that power should be wrested from these families because the British gave it to them (please correct me at any point, I'm not going for gotchas or anything). By drawing attention to the fact that its not really the British that did this, and ultimately not even the Mughals, I'm trying to bring attention to the fact that this is also something spilling out of millenia of jati politics and power struggle. So that from here... OwlBot 2000 posted:If one group possesses disproportionate control over resources, political power and wealth, and it is not to everyone's benefit, then that issue should be addressed regardless of who wronged whom in the past -- especially if that group will likely be intransigent in the face of reform. Morality doesn't enter into it. When we look at it from this standpoint, of addressing the situation, you can't get around the issue that as things are today the possession and disproportionate control over resources is actually further entrenched by the democratic process and voting. The old landowner jatis have actually lost power to the landworking jatis (as an example, the Yadav's in the U.P/Bihar region) out of sheer force of numbers and voting. Its not a simple issue. We see some land reform, but only in as much as it has changed control from certain jatis to others. This hands us a mixed bag, while lower caste jatis like the Yadav's have enjoyed political ascendancy, its not out of some desire for the greater good. They become just as politically entrenched and go on to resist any sort of land reform that doesn't benefit their families. So to go back to this... quote:that issue should be addressed regardless of who wronged whom in the past There are not really many good ways to address that issue, because while it is in many ways unhappy, it is a valid result of a democratic process.
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Mar 11, 2014 07:15
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Yiggy posted:Forgive me but I'm not sure which direction you're going with this. To clarify my thinking I'm responding to the notion that power should be wrested from these families because the British gave it to them (please correct me at any point, I'm not going for gotchas or anything). No, not because the British gave it to them, (that would be moralizing) but because it's harmful to India and affords them an undemocratic amount of political control and also gives them resources that could be better spent alleviating the worst poverty in India. quote:There are not really many good ways to address that issue, because while it is in many ways unhappy, it is a valid result of a democratic process. If that is the outcome of a valid democratic process then there's something wrong with the process or its starting conditions; in my opinion the democratic process is in India (as it is elsewhere) very easy to manipulate through control of capital, and these same groups are able to rig democratic processes in their favor. How valid is that?
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Mar 11, 2014 07:22
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OwlBot 2000 posted:The two aren't mutually exclusive at all, though? You could easily make the average person and the poorest people in the United States (or the world) richer by making the top 5% a little less rich. We are back to presupposing a (global?) technocratic decisionmaker who faces no political constraints. I did emphasize the political conditions surrounding all of the post-war world's only successful examples of rapid catchup growth on page 1. These are especially relevant because naively redistributive policy can trap developing countries in a terrible situation. Take land reform, the eternal hobgoblin of the third-world socialist party. Land reform is not, in itself, bad: Taiwan and South Korea both did it, to great effect. However, land redistribution creates a large class of small farmers. This is undesirable for crafting a political coalition when the eventual industrialization involves eliminating almost all small farmers and replacing them with, once again, large-scale industrial agriculture by a handful of concentrated owners, with small farms only contributing boutique crops (with the main difference being that most of the population should no longer be farmers). The main reasons to carry out land redistribution nonetheless is to (1) create savings in the short term that can be used to fund industrialization, and (2) avoid famine in the short term. That is to say, the land reform must be conducted in the knowledge that, ultimately, the eventual goal will roll back the land reform and re-consolidate land ownership. If you empower too many small farmers in a system that conditions their voice on remaining small farmers, they will oppose any continued industrialization. Then you're stuck. If you carry out land reform by, say, restoring inalienable tribal communal titles, then you are condemning the next generation to starvation and poverty.
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Mar 11, 2014 07:31
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OwlBot 2000 posted:If that is the outcome of a valid democratic process then there's something wrong with the process or its starting conditions; in my opinion the democratic process is in India (as it is elsewhere) very easy to manipulate through control of capital, and these same groups are able to rig democratic processes in their favor. How valid is that? While you certainly see manipulation through control of capital, a lot of these consequences are not the result of that but rather through the manipulation of jati voting blocks as well as the history & dynamics of the jajmani system. While we may not like the results of it, as long as life in India is so heavily influenced by the success and purity of endogamous extended families, and as long as the individuals of these families are allowed to vote democratically, you are not going to find an easy solution. And when you want to start imposing solutions from outside whenever you don't like the result of their democratic process, you're on dangerous ground. Edit: And I'm not arguing that we can't find problems with India and the validity of its democracy, but if your solution is just redistribution you are naive to certain realities of Indian history and cultural life. Because there will be another consolidation as long as the caste system is the way it is. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Mar 11, 2014 |
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Mar 11, 2014 07:33
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ronya posted:These are especially relevant because naively redistributive policy can trap developing countries in a terrible situation. Take land reform, the eternal hobgoblin of the third-world socialist party. Land reform is not, in itself, bad: Taiwan and South Korea both did it, to great effect. However, land redistribution creates a large class of small farmers. This is undesirable for crafting a political coalition when the eventual industrialization involves eliminating almost all small farmers and replacing them with, once again, large-scale industrial agriculture by a handful of concentrated owners, with small farms only contributing boutique crops (with the main difference being that most of the population should no longer be farmers). The main reasons to carry out land redistribution nonetheless is to (1) create savings in the short term that can be used to fund industrialization, and (2) avoid famine in the short term. That is to say, the land reform must be conducted in the knowledge that, ultimately, the eventual goal will roll back the land reform and re-consolidate land ownership. If you empower too many small farmers in a system that conditions their voice on remaining small farmers, they will oppose any continued industrialization. Then you're stuck. No disagreements here; you'll remember I proposed something in completely the opposite direction, an intensive pro-urban, pro-industrial program, State Capitalism (attracting foreign growth if anything), and addressing the major poverty problems. I think land-reform in India wouldn't get you very far. Yiggy posted:but if your solution is just redistribution you are naive to certain realities of Indian history and cultural life. Not mere redistribution, and it's not naive if you're of the opinion that cultural mores and attitudes are largely products of economic realities and express themselves differently depending upon material circumstances. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Mar 11, 2014 |
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Mar 11, 2014 07:36
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OwlBot 2000 posted:No disagreements here; you'll remember I proposed something in completely the opposite direction, an intensive pro-urban, pro-industrial program, State Capitalism (attracting foreign growth if anything), and addressing the major poverty problems. I think land-reform in India wouldn't get you very far. Then I refer you to the problems I noted on page 1. I suspect that we probably disagree on whether an ideologically socialist focus on industrial co-operatives, worker-owned factories, etc. would be as effective in discouraging kleptocracy as the labour-suppressive model as proven to be, but my inclination is that industrial democracy, in a society with weak transparency and democratic norms, is even more subject to self-serving abuse of the electoral process than liberal democracy, not less. e: and if land reform is not on the table, what is the point about grumbling about colonial-era landlords?
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Mar 11, 2014 07:48
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ronya posted:Then I refer you to the problems I noted on page 1. I'm not even super enthusiastic about the importance of workers democracy in India right now, given how dire the situation is. Good-old fashioned State Capitalism would do the trick well enough. But once again, whither corruption? Are certain cultures just naturally corrupt, or is there something else which can encourage people to be more or less corrupt?
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Mar 11, 2014 08:12
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OwlBot 2000 posted:I've no use for your pithy remarks. Zoroastrianism died out without any help from outside influences and the Germanic and Slavic peoples largely adopted Christianity on their own terms (Rome had imploded and if adopting Christianity wasn't so convenient for co opting the social structures the Romans left behind they might not have at all). I can't speak for South Americans except to say the death toll from plague was astronomical.
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Mar 11, 2014 08:29
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OwlBot 2000 posted:I'm not even super enthusiastic about the importance of workers democracy in India right now, given how dire the situation is. Good-old fashioned State Capitalism would do the trick well enough. It is a good question if state capitalism would actually make a difference, ultimately India's issue is going to be capital and a growing currency deficit would undercut any larger growth. Indian debt levels seem to be shrinking which gives them some room but not that much especially with a weak rupee. Personally, I think we are on the edge of seeing some of the deficits of a state capitalist approach in China where developed has happened but it also has lead to a growth debt bubble that hasn't replaced capital brought in from trade.
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Mar 11, 2014 08:31
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ronya posted:We are back to presupposing a (global?) technocratic decisionmaker who faces no political constraints. Yep, this is the problem I had as soon as I saw the thread title- the question "what should be done about India" presupposes that there's someone out there with the means, motive, and mandate to just go and "fix" a country of over a billion people. And then the OP goes and posts things like this: OwlBot 2000 posted:I made a joke or two in GBS but decided I wanted to actually learn what is being done or should be done because India is really that bad. Is there any chance of India becoming a superpower absent some miracle / competent dictator or is it too fragmented and too late to the race? As if he really believes in the pop-culture myth of the "benevolent dictator" who can overcome all political limits and just implement the "right" policies. Development has a lot more grey areas than that. Any solution will have to be legitimate in the eyes of the Indian people, and that means it can't be imposed by an outside force (dictatorial or colonizing or whomever). OwlBot 2000 posted:But once again, whither corruption? Are certain cultures just naturally corrupt, or is there something else which can encourage people to be more or less corrupt? I think the "something else" you're looking for is what political scientists call structural incentives. Part of the job of political institutions, like government, is to structure individual incentives in such a way that a person's individual best interest coincides with the best interests of society. So, in an institution where there's little room for upward mobility, with a weak legal system, it's in my best interests to scam the system for all it's worth. Introduce transparency and a strong legal system, corruption goes down. It's not very simple, since every society's institutional arrangement is unique and you can't just look at one institution in a vacuum, but it's better than a facile appeal to culture. Jargonless version: don't blame the player, blame the rules of the game. Guy DeBorgore fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Mar 11, 2014 |
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Mar 11, 2014 08:40
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OwlBot 2000 posted:But once again, whither corruption? Are certain cultures just naturally corrupt, or is there something else which can encourage people to be more or less corrupt? If you want a practical recommendation, start by empowering women. I know that Hofstede's framework has a lot of problems, but one thing it shows well is that its power distance (authoritarianism) and masculinity (status-seeking) dimensions are related, and further research on it showed that the masculinity dimension is positively correlated to corruption. India scores very high on both power distance and masculinity, men in India do very little homework, and so on. Colonial past is related to masculinity in addition to power distance, too - it served as a primer for the current generation to accept inequality as normal. So, if you want to know where to pour your money and/or time, it's to the women's organisations. It's like the people in microfinance discovered years ago: if you want to get results, empower women.
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Mar 11, 2014 09:24
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Duly note that if you can empower women, you would be doing a lot that is necessary to enact cultural transformation, like crippling traditional family law, granting property titles, and so forth. Much of rural India still has norms like "women are not allowed outside the house and farm once married". 'Empowering' here is tricky, because unilaterally leaving would result in being cut off from children and family, and regarded as tainted, immoral, et cetera.
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Mar 11, 2014 14:15
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ronya posted:Duly note that if you can empower women, you would be doing a lot that is necessary to enact cultural transformation, like crippling traditional family law, granting property titles, and so forth. Seriously all this 'well what if we remove power from the landlord class' won't actually DO anything. The problem is India is pretty much universally gripped by several social systems that are just objectively backwards and regressive. Those are what need to be fixed and some magic not-dictator can't actually make those changes.
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Mar 11, 2014 14:50
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I have an amazing idea: Let the Indians handle their affairs. Like has attempting to shoulder the "White Men's Burden" ever worked out to the benefit of the indigenious population?
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Mar 11, 2014 15:52
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Thundercracker posted:I have an amazing idea: Let the Indians handle their affairs. Like has attempting to shoulder the "White Men's Burden" ever worked out to the benefit of the indigenious population? The topic has moved on to "what can India do to solve its problems" and given that Indians are real people and not opaque beings from another world I think it's fair to discuss possible solutions.
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Mar 11, 2014 15:56
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Guy DeBorgore posted:I think the "something else" you're looking for is what political scientists call structural incentives. Part of the job of political institutions, like government, is to structure individual incentives in such a way that a person's individual best interest coincides with the best interests of society. So, in an institution where there's little room for upward mobility, with a weak legal system, it's in my best interests to scam the system for all it's worth. Introduce transparency and a strong legal system, corruption goes down. It's not very simple, since every society's institutional arrangement is unique and you can't just look at one institution in a vacuum, but it's better than a facile appeal to culture.
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Mar 11, 2014 17:12
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Thundercracker posted:I have an amazing idea: Let the Indians handle their affairs. Like has attempting to shoulder the "White Men's Burden" ever worked out to the benefit of the indigenious population? The topic of direct intervention lasted for like one post, most everyone here is talking about the problems they face as a broad concept. It's not white man's burden to say a country is hosed up and should do things like educate its women.
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Mar 11, 2014 17:21
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We need to deploy more robocops to shoot off dicks in India. That is all.
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Mar 11, 2014 17:37
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:What makes you assume that it is even possible to "erase something from the public consciousness"? This has been tried over and over in many places throughout history and it's failed virtually every single time. I always see people saying this, and I find it really strange. Do you think that propaganda has been employed throughout history just for shits and giggles? It is absolutely possible for the government (or private industry for that matter, if it has enough power) to heavily influence the way the public thinks about certain issues, up to and including almost entirely removing certain ideas from public discourse.
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Mar 11, 2014 17:53
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Ytlaya posted:I always see people saying this, and I find it really strange. Do you think that propaganda has been employed throughout history just for shits and giggles? It is absolutely possible for the government (or private industry for that matter, if it has enough power) to heavily influence the way the public thinks about certain issues, up to and including almost entirely removing certain ideas from public discourse. Which is why after the collapse of the Soviet Union everyone remained atheists instead of immediately converting to Russian Orthodox Christianity. Wait, no they didn't.
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Mar 11, 2014 17:57
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computer parts posted:Which is why after the collapse of the Soviet Union everyone remained atheists instead of immediately converting to Russian Orthodox Christianity. What is your point here? That propaganda never works? Because nobody is arguing that it always works..
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Mar 11, 2014 17:59
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Miltank posted:What is your point here? That propaganda never works? Because nobody is arguing that it always works.. Not in the short term (i.e., less than a few centuries), no. At least for the type of things we're describing (cultural or religious institutions).
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Mar 11, 2014 18:01
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computer parts posted:Which is why after the collapse of the Soviet Union everyone remained atheists instead of immediately converting to Russian Orthodox Christianity. Actually many, many, many did. Church attendance is about 3-4% by some estimates, but of course the shock therapy eroding all social life and economic collapse makes nationalism in the guise of religion common. And even though Hoxha was only around for a generation, Albania has the highest numbers of Muslims calling religion 'not important'. Note: the way in which they did this was unconscionable. "Today, Gallup Global Reports 2010 shows that religion plays a role in the lives of only 39% of Albanians, and ranks Albania the thirteenth least religious country in the world". Tatum Girlparts posted:Seriously all this 'well what if we remove power from the landlord class' won't actually DO anything. The problem is India is pretty much universally gripped by several social systems that are just objectively backwards and regressive. Those are what need to be fixed and some magic not-dictator can't actually make those changes. Agreed on the first part, and that's part of what I meant by "forcible secularization" though I really should have said de-feudalization and de-tribalization. Any institutions which work to oppress women in those ways need to be dismantled, and there's some precedence for this in Burkina Faso under Sankara. "Improving women's status was one of Sankara's explicit goals, and his government included a large number of women, an unprecedented policy priority in West Africa. His government banned female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy; while appointing females to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant. Sankara also promoted contraception and encouraged husbands to go to market and prepare meals to experience for themselves the conditions faced by women. Furthermore, Sankara was the first African leader to appoint women to major cabinet positions and to recruit them actively for the military." .... "The government suppressed many of the powers held by tribal chiefs such as their right to receive tribute payment and obligatory labour" OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Mar 11, 2014 |
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Mar 11, 2014 20:30
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I'm really curious as to the level of professionalism in their legislatures. How well is a typical Indian legislator paid? What do their resources look like with regards to staff and committees?
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Mar 11, 2014 20:50
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ronya posted:Duly note that if you can empower women, you would be doing a lot that is necessary to enact cultural transformation, like crippling traditional family law, granting property titles, and so forth. For some "fun" (and actually, I think, quite interesting and informative), stories, check No Longer Quivering (it's a community of people who escaped from the Quiverfull movement). quote:Much of rural India still has norms like "women are not allowed outside the house and farm once married". 'Empowering' here is tricky, because unilaterally leaving would result in being cut off from children and family, and regarded as tainted, immoral, et cetera. Seriously, I only pointed out the general trends - that research shows that, if you have such a very complex situation, with lots of corruption, poverty, inequality and so on, and you have to start somewhere, starting from women is a good idea. Bollywood is one interesting venue. Take English Vinglish, for example. It's a comedy, a very cute and heartwarming one. You also probably wouldn't find a more mainstream movie - it's not Astitva. It even stars Sridevi. But it's a movie about a traditional Indian housewife facing new challenges, and finding herself in them. And yes, I realise that films don't reach many of the worst places. Once again, I wasn't speaking of immediate effect - I think it would be unfair to demand that a complex situation like India's be resolved immediately.
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Mar 11, 2014 21:40
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:And regardless of how lovely the caste system is, ultimately you're arguing from a stance of cultural superiority here, aren't you? If the argument is that western liberal democratic societies are superior to a caste system, I don't see what the problem is here.
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Mar 12, 2014 01:04
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:And regardless of how lovely the caste system is, ultimately you're arguing from a stance of cultural superiority here, aren't you? There are some cultures that are objectively wrong. A culture where a woman has decent odds of being raped as punishment if she reports a rape is most likely one of those.
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Mar 12, 2014 01:21
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