|
India is probably about to elect Narendra Modi as Prime Minister. He's the BJP candidate and is putting up some pretty decent numbers. He was the chief minister of Gujarat, which had better growth than the rest of India, but mostly due to its improved infrastructure. Here's a decent Guardian run down of him. He comes with the good and bad. He is from a lower caste and worked himself up, which is a fairly encouraging story. If you want authoritarian state capitalism, this is your guy. He's very buddy buddy with the US Ambassador, and they've even endorsed him and promised to give him a visa. He's had a travel ban on him ever since he, uh, failed to act during some anti muslim riots in 2002. He understands the needs to modernize and reform India, calling for more toilets and less temples to be constructed, etc. From what I've read, seen, and talked to people, his biggest problem is that he's a true believer. He's never been married or had any children. He does not interact with the wealthy elite in Delhi and people are curious how he's going to get anything done. He accomplished things done in Gunjarat through intimidation, bribery, and coercion. He's a huge enemy of the press. Worst of all he probably oversaw massive anti muslim violence in the early 2000s, hates Muslims, and has flat out said something "needs to be done" about "muslim violence." I currently live in India and thought of making a thread about the splitting of Andra Pradesh and Telangana. Essentially the southern part of Andra Pradesh broke away finally and formed their own state, taking the capital of Hyderabad with them. In the most typical Indian solution to a problem ever, Hyderabad now serves as a joint capital until ten years from June 2nd when the new AP capital will be finished (lol yeah right). For the last few years, Telangana activists had been setting off the occasional bomb in HYD, and students liked to set themselves on fire. The official reasons for the new state are cultural. The Telangana were promised protection in 1955 for their language and culture that they claim they haven't received. Of course the real reason this went through Parliament is because Rahul Gandhi saw Modi in his rearview mirror and wanted to go ahead and make another voting block. In a way this is just really hardcore gerrymandering. Right before the vote went down Parliament was tense. Pro and Anti Telangana clashed daily. It came to a head when the vote neared, with pro Modi MPs starting a flat out fracas. Someone brought in a can of pepper spray and just opened up on everything, while another guy was arrested before he could set off an incendiary device (though that might just be a lie created by the congress party, no one can be sure). This was Times India's picture of the whole affair.  Anyway I'll be back but I have lots of things to say about Indian corruption, caste mentalities, the race to the bottom that is IT exporting, how most of the capital will be bailing to the Phillipines before long, the looming health disaster, etc. India is an interesting place. FizFashizzle fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Mar 12, 2014 |
#
¿
Mar 12, 2014 01:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 01:02 |
|
|
Ardennes posted:It seems a rather circular argument unless India dramatically changes economically, at a certain level, it is material. To be honest, if I had to bet, I don't think it is going to change and Westerns will condemn Indian culture when it fact there isn't any realistic way to change it. All the big software/accounting firms are already looking to move away from India as well. Things are going to get much worse before they get any better.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2014 05:26
|
|
|
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
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2014 05:30
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2014 05:39
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2014 05:44
|
|
|
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
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2014 06:18
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2014 06:24
|
|
|
Down with Slavery are you Indian?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2014 08:27
|
|
|
Yiggy posted:
This isn't necessarily a good thing at all. Indian construction standards outside of the big cities is a joke at best. Even in places like Hyderabad they have 2 or 3 deaths a week due to scaffolding collapsing because they don't know how to lash it properly. They even passed a law here in AP to spur growth that if a contractor completes 50% of the building, he receives 80% of the agreed upon contract value. At that point they cease construction and demand outrageous sums to finish. The result is you have hundreds of empty skeletons dotting Hyderabad built by contractor who never had any intentions of completing them. They're poorly built and are like unsalvageable, and will probably cost more to tear down than they did to build. On top of that, it's not like the construction workers get anything out of it other than slave wages. They live in slums around the construction site. Their homes are whatever they can salvage for frames (trees, stolen rebar, whatever) covered in tarps. They're rampant with disease, there's no fresh drinking water or sewage, rapes are endemic, etc. I'm not advocating letting people starve to spur some communist rebellion or whatever owlbot is advocating. Having completely unskilled labor paid slave wages to live in slums and build useless office buildings with Grover level structural integrity isn't the answer though.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2014 08:41
|
|
|
Best Friends posted:What lead to this law passing? Make construction jobs. Countries all over the world make dumb decisions to spur the construction industry. You could argue it's less destructive than leveraging the entire mortgage industry to do it. edit* it should also be noted that in the last decade and a half or so AP has been going out of its way to quash a nascent secession movement that was promising everything it could to the poor and downtrodden of the state. Giving them cheap jobs was one way of doing it, and it helped build their capital city in the process. Jokes on them of course, since the Congress Party sold the state upriver and created Telangana anyway, and gave them Hyderabad to boot! FizFashizzle fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Apr 15, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2014 08:52
|
|
|
Witnessing this election firsthand was pretty fascinating. I'm especially fond of the buses picking people up from various slums/settlements and operatives handing them 4,000 rupees and a bottle of whiskey to go vote the right way. Here in Hyderabad, Modi supporters celebrated the announcement by murdering five Muslims in the old town.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2014 07:15
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 01:02 |
|
|
TheImmigrant posted:Tell me more about Hyderabad. There's a good chance I'm moving there for work. Email me. User name at gmail dot com. Have some Indian Facebook memes.  Rajnikanth: do you want any more seats? Have I given you enough? Modi: no, there's no opposition left. FizFashizzle fucked around with this message at 18:33 on May 17, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 17, 2014 18:30
|
|