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Conversion to Islam or Buddhism.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:27
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Seriously. Try it in another federated, decentralized, populist society close to home. America, say. How do you think that advocating that the great cities of the Eastern and Western seaboards should dictate public morality and family law in conservativesville would be received? Cursorily we could say that popular election of sheriffs and prosecutors and judges was always dumb, and that all of these posts should be filled by central appointment, but do you think this would be easy to implement in America? If not, why on earth would you think it would be easier in India?
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Mar 12, 2014 05:28
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FizFashizzle posted:All the big software/accounting firms are already looking to move away from India as well. But, but markets and free trade must bring things up, up, up no matter what! ronya posted:Seriously. Try it in another federated, decentralized, populist society close to home. America, say. How do you think that advocating that the great cities of the Eastern and Western seaboards should dictate public morality and family law in conservativesville would be received? Cursorily we could say that popular election of sheriffs and prosecutors and judges was always dumb, and that all of these posts should be filled by central appointment, but do you think this would be easy to implement in America? I'm not joking about Indian Stalin half as much as people think I am. (But with better food management). I'm really not seeing how such a fragmented, incoherent country filled with infighting and rural backwardsness is going to get anywhere otherwise, given the hand it's been dealt over the past few centuries.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:29
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OwlBot 2000 posted:And the rural population won't outnumber the urban for much longer. quote:For the first time since Independence, the absolute increase in population is more in urban areas that in rural areas http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-prov-results/paper2/data_files/india/Rural_Urban_2011.pdf
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Mar 12, 2014 05:30
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ronya posted:Seriously. Try it in another federated, decentralized, populist society close to home. America, say. How do you think that advocating that the great cities of the Eastern and Western seaboards should dictate public morality and family law in conservativesville would be received? Cursorily we could say that popular election of sheriffs and prosecutors and judges was always dumb, and that all of these posts should be filled by central appointment, but do you think this would be easy to implement in America? I don't think anybody at all is saying it would be easy.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:30
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ronya posted:Seriously. Try it in another federated, decentralized, populist society close to home. America, say. How do you think that advocating that the great cities of the Eastern and Western seaboards should dictate public morality and family law in conservativesville would be received? Cursorily we could say that popular election of sheriffs and prosecutors and judges was always dumb, and that all of these posts should be filled by central appointment, but do you think this would be easy to implement in America? Yea I bet a lot of shitbags get mad whenever we pass a law like "don't beat your wife". We tell them to eat poo poo and if they break that law we put them in jail. I bet Bumfuck Nebraska hates a lot of laws that DC passes. Sucks for them.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:31
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FizFashizzle posted:All the big software/accounting firms are already looking to move away from India as well. Ultimately, I don't think cultural change is going to happen without materialistic change, if you go around hanging elders doing awful poo poo people are going to revolt even if we think what they did was wrong. From their frame of reference, the government came down and just killed their elder for something that was uncontroversial. If education is still minimal, why would think differently? Also, I think the track since the 1990s of attracting manufacturing and IT work has reached it's limits (as you say) and India is facing competition not only from China but a multitude of countries at this point. Honestly, I think it is going to come with new solutions, and not a "glass desert" cop out. Btw, the US doesn't have a wide spread Maoist insurgency while India does, if you want to "cram" new culture by force there is probably going to be a counter-reaction because the rule of law is already very weak in so many areas. So if you want to do a "Western cultural revolution" there probably is going to necessitate a familiar amount of causalities. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 05:32
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Ardennes posted:Ultimately, I don't think cultural change is going to happen without materialistic change, if you go around hanging elders doing awful poo poo people are going to revolt even if we think what they did was wrong. From their frame of reference, the government came down and just killed their elder for something that was uncontroversial. If education is still minimal, why would think differently? It's not even China really, it's more Eastern Europe and the Philippines. One of the more cynical reasons India recently endorsed Russia's actions is because a less stable Eastern Europe might stop Deloitte from continuing to move jobs into Poland or Romania. The entire education system has been designed to take people from the lower/lower middle class and funnel them into what basically amounts to IT manual labor. Once that's gone, not only will it destroy what little economy they have, but it will require a complete retooling of their entire educational system. Also it will be just in time for the upcoming diabetes/hypertension/obesity catastrophe to really take off.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:39
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The precondition for unilaterally asserting such supremacy is the credible threat of federal force. I'll put that in the agenda, below "defeat Naxalite insurgency". But besides that, let me point out that (1) unlike America, progressives in India have not exercised a solid majority on an efficient and powerful federal judiciary for nearly a century, and (2) even in America, populists of all kinds, left or right, get extremely exercised when federal forces show up in strength to put down crazy people building a harem (cf Waco). It is really hard to inculcate a consistent support for federal diktat, especially since such force is always a blunt instrument.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:39
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ronya posted:I'll put that in the agenda, below "defeat Naxalite insurgency". At this point wouldn't the reverse be better? Unfortunately they've got too much a focus on small farmers but liberal capitalism seems to have stagnated.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:43
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OwlBot 2000 posted:At this point wouldn't the reverse be better? Unfortunately they've got too much a focus on small farmers but liberal capitalism seems to have stagnated. Good god no. Those people are monsters, unless you want to replace institutionalized rape with institutionalized blowing up schools and burning people alive.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:44
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FizFashizzle posted:Good god no. Those people are monsters, unless you want to replace institutionalized rape with institutionalized blowing up schools and burning people alive. That does sound bad. But I think that's stuff people do when they're losing, not when they've already won.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:46
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they also do the kidnapping and rape thing
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Mar 12, 2014 05:49
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OwlBot 2000 posted:That does sound bad. But I think that's stuff people do when they're losing, not when they've already won. They're not exactly paragons.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:50
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Sounds like they're in urgent need of a purge.
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Mar 12, 2014 05:58
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So purge all of Indian culture by gunpoint, kill off all the Naxalites, education funding and attaching advanced manufacturing what next?
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Mar 12, 2014 06:01
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Ardennes posted:So purge all of Indian culture by gunpoint, kill off all the Naxalites, education funding and attaching advanced manufacturing what next? Do all of that while maintaining India's natural environment and adapting to the threats of climate change and peak oil.
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Mar 12, 2014 06:02
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clearly we need a #AllIndiaEco-FascistParty tag
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Mar 12, 2014 06:07
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I'm in. Let's hope the right people are reincarnated within a reasonable time frame. So is the consensus that India is 100% broken and not improving absent some really scary and dramatic change, or will it imperceptibly improve over a century or two until they point that all of a sudden, it's a livable place with a future? I'd really like some honest but optimistic perspectives on India. I can't help but compare it, quite unfavorably, to China. China has homogeneity and history going for it, but I think the revolution and strong state control has made it less awful than it would have been otherwise or given a simple independence movement rather than a total reset. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 06:10
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Barring some kind of weird hypothetical scenario, what is the best "obvious" way forwards for India? A stronger central government with a greater commitment to national prosperity? Increasing professionalism in the legislature? Economic reform?
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Mar 12, 2014 06:10
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Vermain posted:Barring some kind of weird hypothetical scenario, what is the best "obvious" way forwards for India? A stronger central government with a greater commitment to national prosperity? Increasing professionalism in the legislature? Economic reform? The best way forward is for as many Indians to study abroad as possible and return to India. I work with an organization now that encourages students to take the ample opportunities the state offers and go study in London, Perth (lol I know), Berlin, etc. The idea is to get as many people out of the country, exposed to western ideas (gender equality, functioning roads, not making GBS threads in public) and bring them back. Hopefully over the course of a few generations things improve. My job is basically to go to these colleges, talk about how awesome it is studying abroad and my experiences, joke about the differences between Americans and Indians, then take pictures. They really like pictures. In the short term, the best thing India can realistically do is improve basic infrastructure and try to eradicate things like Polio or Bubonic Plague. For example, UNICEF released a bunch of smartphone apps where you can pinpoint places people are openly making GBS threads, and hopefully they'll get enough data that they can figure out a way to dissuade this, or build toilets, or police the area better. Anyway please take the pledge not to poo poo next to the lake I live beside because that isn't fun to watch in the morning while I eat my oats. https://www.poo2loo.com
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Mar 12, 2014 06:18
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Vermain posted:Barring some kind of weird hypothetical scenario, what is the best "obvious" way forwards for India? A stronger central government with a greater commitment to national prosperity? Increasing professionalism in the legislature? Economic reform? I'd say a good starting point would be to get some international pressure in place to encourage them to clean up their legislature. Their politicians are, to be blunt, horrible people. There's no going forward when the government is being run by criminals. quote:1,448 of India's 4,835 MPs and state legislators have declared criminal cases http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-21469286 edit: FizFashizzle posted:The best way forward is for as many Indians to study abroad as possible and return to India. How would you go about getting them to return instead of staying there? Brain drain is a serious problem with a lot of developing nations. Wanamingo fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 06:19
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Is the sacred river / drinking supply listed as one of the places you shouldn't poo poo, or does the Ganges mystical powers take care of that?
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Mar 12, 2014 06:22
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The commitment toward continued neoliberalization continues uncontested as competition between BJP and Congress revolves around easing or baiting sectarian tensions; whether or not you think this is pro-8%-growth is another matter. Rich states will get richer; poorer states will rely on remittances or will shed internal migrants. I do not see the era of ambitious infrastructure projects returning. Demand for inter-state transfers will strengthen the federal hand, and it is this force that will motivate consistency in welfare policy whilst disempowering cultural conservatives in poorer states in the long run, much like in America.
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Mar 12, 2014 06:24
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Wanamingo posted:How would you go about getting them to return instead of staying there? Brain drain is a serious problem with a lot of developing nations. Familial obligations.
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Mar 12, 2014 06:24
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This is tiredness speaking, but it's very interesting to watch almost every country and culture converge upon urbanization and centralization despite being very different on the surface. Almost makes Hegelian conceptions of history seem plausible. With that often comes greater income inequality, urban poverty, and a corresponding push back from the workers and the poor followed by... ? Edit: but some nations will get more or less 'stuck' without outside help due to material or historical factors.
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Mar 12, 2014 06:27
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FizFashizzle posted:Familial obligations. What, by cultivating a sense of it? I'm sure you can't expect them to return because of family all on their own, otherwise brain drain wouldn't be a problem for any nation.
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Mar 12, 2014 06:29
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Really I am more curious about whether India will develop sufficiently quickly that it retains English as the language of government and business, or whether Hindi will displace it. That seems authentically hard to predict.
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Mar 12, 2014 06:30
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OwlBot 2000 posted:This is tiredness speaking, but it's very interesting to watch almost every country and culture converge upon urbanization and centralization despite being very different on the surface. Almost makes Hegelian conceptions of history seem plausible. With that often comes greater income inequality, urban poverty, and a corresponding push back from the workers and the poor followed by... ? well, not really. Rather, if you fail to maintain central authority, then your country falls apart under assorted pressures, much as new state entities did across Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Mar 12, 2014 06:31
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OwlBot 2000 posted:I'd really like some honest but optimistic perspectives on India. I'm less optimistic than I used to be, but my thinking is that it will slowly improve over the course of another 200 years or so. American democracy was pretty ugly in the 19th century too, its not unreasonable to imagine India going through some of the same problems as their democracy matures. Things like their longstanding enmity with Pakistan are definitely a distraction and slow down this progress though. My reasoning for thinking this are as follows: *In the cities, you are seeing a gradual weakening of ties among large, endogamous extended families and an increasing emphasis on the nuclear family. I think that as material condition improves, Indians will continue to balk at the lack of agency that endogamous jatis with strict control from by family elders allows. *The proliferation of cell phones has inserted an element of privacy that has never existed in many areas of Indian life. *Girls and women are hungry for education, even if avenues for it and cultural support are still lagging. While in Kolkata, one story I remember seeing in the newspapers showed both sides of this, though one side is quite ugly. A 17 or 18 year old girl's parents had arranged a marriage for her, but she did not want to marry so young and preferred to continue her studies, and so willfully skipped out on one of her prenuptial ceremonies. This is an increasing trend among her age group. The ugly side of it, however, was that out of anger her step-mother doused her in cooking oil and set her on fire, which is also an ugly trend and way that women have been kept in line for a long time. That said, in the cities there are more and more fathers who value their daughters future. Some of this is out of genuine interest, but some of it is also because it'll fetch them a better husband and a lower bride-price. Its a fair bit of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons for a lot of Indian families, but the result is a greater demand for female education into later ages. *An increasing presence of women centric and girl centric media in bollywood and other regional film industries. Last year there was a Bengali film that came out called Girlfriends/Ami Aar Amar Girlfriends. It was essentially a girl buddy film. While this may seem like a tiny thing, it was one of the first movies of its kind in Bengali film. It created some uproar among conservatives and apparently risked running into problems with the standards board, but ultimately it was released and the director (a profession that has a weird level of respect that in some ways surpasses the respect we have for film makers in our own culture) was in the media around its release pushing for awareness of women's lives, women's issues and the importance of women's space. The counterpoint to this is that other areas of the Indian film industry perpetuate old fashioned, conservative ideals of women. Almost every film has a highly stereotyped love interest story where the female is expected to adhere closely to a conservative vision of female behavior, with maybe a foil role of vamp/vixen in the more risque films. Those are a few things, if I sat some more I might be able to come up with another two or three. But, its a few small, gradual changes to park any sort of hope on. If we do see progress, I expect it to be slow. And they'll have to pass through their rough patch they've been in. Vermain posted:Barring some kind of weird hypothetical scenario, what is the best "obvious" way forwards for India? A stronger central government with a greater commitment to national prosperity? Increasing professionalism in the legislature? Economic reform? A stronger central government is crucial. The Indian political system has an incredibly weak center. This was almost a necessity since its inception was out of culturally distinct nation-states and language zones coming together, but it has hindered progress certainly. Its origins were akin to what it would be like turning Europe into a single nation. Even as merely an economic zone, you see the EU having struggles with how to deal with the problems of its member states from the center. Imagine that spreading to every facet of life besides economic and you can understand some of India's difficulties.
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Mar 12, 2014 06:36
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I'm speaking more broadly and long-term about the worldwide movement of people to urban centers, and what kind of effect that might have on social pressures and political situations -- especially if accompanied by wage (near) parity across all countries in the distant future. We're seeing hints of this as wages decline in the West and rise slightly elsewhere, but it will be a very slow transition.
OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 06:37
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FizFashizzle posted:It's not even China really, it's more Eastern Europe and the Philippines. One of the more cynical reasons India recently endorsed Russia's actions is because a less stable Eastern Europe might stop Deloitte from continuing to move jobs into Poland or Romania. I think alot of the reason that many more companies haven't already transferred their IT shops from India to China is to do with security issues and concerns about all their data will be secretly mined by the Chinese government. Certainly Eastern Europe, Malaysia and the Phillipines look like taking over more in the future, as well as work being taken back onshore due to the vast amounts of failure stories coming out of offshoring things to India. It doesn't help that all the semi competent ones just emigrate through skilled visas and the ones left behind to do the offshore work are the dregs, who often lack basic common sense and critical thinking skills,
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Mar 12, 2014 06:37
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Yiggy posted:A stronger central government is crucial. The Indian political system has an incredibly weak center. This was almost a necessity since its inception was out of culturally distinct nation-states and language zones coming together, but it has hindered progress certainly. Its origins were akin to what it would be like turning Europe into a single nation. Even as merely an economic zone, you see the EU having struggles with how to deal with the problems of its member states from the center. Imagine that spreading to every facet of life besides economic and you can understand some of India's difficulties. Do you think it would centralize under a Hindi language bureaucracy, or English? My sense is that a lot of pan-Indian corporations use English internally. Is the BJP's pro-business alignment more important to them than linguistic chauvinism?
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Mar 12, 2014 06:41
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ronya posted:Do you think it would centralize under a Hindi language bureaucracy, or English? My sense is that a lot of pan-Indian corporations use English internally. Is the BJP's pro-business alignment more important to them than linguistic chauvinism? I think English has a slightly better chance just because there is such a visceral reaction against Hindi language in so many states. Some of this is no doubt a hold over of the rancor of the language politics of the 50's & 60's, so maybe that'll change once that generation dies off, but I see no guarantees. Especially since several states have been able to conduct business for so long with their regional languages. That said, the proliferation of Hindi film and media in Bollywood has exposed a lot more people to the language and lowered their resistance to it, even in areas that have their own well-established regional language film industries. This last bit is more anecdotal, but I spent a good bit of time studying Hindi in anticipation of living a short stent in India, but ended up in West Bengal rather than Delhi. My Hindi did me very little favors while I was there, and I had a much easier time finding other English speakers, even if their English was as poor as my Hindi was. There were a few people in my life there whom I could only communicate with in Hindi, but it was definitely the minority. There was no interest or desire for many Bangla speakers to learn Hindi, but there were strong economic incentives for learning English. As for the last part, I'm not always so sure about the BJP and Hindutva politics. Being pro-business is certainly important, but the BJP's base is in regions and areas where that is still much less relevant; the rural North, etc. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 06:52
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Interesting! Well, state regional languages of government are one thing, but what are the economic incentives for English in the north like? The federal govt and professions still use English widely, but I don't know about office work etc.
ronya fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 06:54
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Yea I bet a lot of shitbags get mad whenever we pass a law like "don't beat your wife". We tell them to eat poo poo and if they break that law we put them in jail. I bet Bumfuck Nebraska hates a lot of laws that DC passes. Sucks for them. Such laws are unenforceable unless underlying social/cultural attitudes shift to a point where "suck it up and bow to the authority of the federal government" is the reaction you can expect as opposed to "slap her even harder so she doesn't get any legal ideas".
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Mar 12, 2014 07:02
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ronya posted:Interesting! Well, state regional languages of government are one thing, but what are the economic incentives for English in the north like? The federal govt and professions still use English widely, but I don't know about office work etc. I can't imagine they're too great right now since it is so heavily rural, village and agriculturally based. I can't speak well to office culture. Kolkata seemed to be kind of like the Detroit of India, and that was the only place I went. All of the middle class Indians I encountered and in the higher class retail outlets I interacted with there were English speakers, but almost none of the day-to-day storekeepers and street vendors spoke it. I lived near Jadavpur University though and the students in the neighborhood all seemed to speak a little English. One of the families I interacted with most regularly had zero English speakers, except for one of the sons who was enrolled at University.
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Mar 12, 2014 07:03
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Tatum Girlparts posted: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. All cultures have things that are "objectively wrong"
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Mar 12, 2014 07:39
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down with slavery posted:All cultures have things that are "objectively wrong" And there are lots of threads in which those problems are discussed. I don't see why there can't be a thread devoting to talking about India's problems and discussing what impact their culture has or has had on their social ills. I would have loved some replies telling me, "no, it's not all that bad here!" but there's one of that. That tells you India has some very serious problems that merit analysis, beyond any suggestion that we're unfairly singling out one group when "we've got our share of problems, too!"
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Mar 12, 2014 07:44
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OwlBot 2000 posted:I would have loved some replies telling me, "no, it's not all that bad here!" but there's one of that. That tells you India has some very serious problems that merit analysis, beyond any suggestion that we're unfairly singling out one group when "we've got our share of problems, too!" I disagree and think that you've fell victim to a few too many Facebook forwards. If the strongest argument you have is that nobody has defended India on the Something Awful forums I don't know what to tell you. The title of the thread really says it all. Nothing "should be done about India". You don't get to play worldwide morality police. down with slavery fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 07:45
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