This article hit too close to home for me, as an Indian struggling to decide which country to settle down in. Only difference is, I'm also losing hope in the US and pretty much every other country.
One thing is clear - the future is not like the past few decades, it's no more an option for conscienable individuals to stay on the sideline and watch the world burn down while flying around drinking mimosas; either we are part of the problem or part of the solution, the question in front of me and many like me is where my societal contribution and self preservation instincts can coexist and be of the most use to everyone.
The saying goes if you see a problem in everything perhaps the problem lies in your framing? If every country makes you lose hope when we live in the safest, wealthiest and longest life expectancy era in human history inspite of a global pandemic, then perhaps you need to examine your assumptions and framing?
The fact that you can choose a country to settle in implies you either have means or talent or both. I would speculate that you have the potential to make manifold contributions. Please reconsider your conclusions in a more optimistic light.
I don't have much hope left in India. We deserve the people we vote for. India has chosen fundamentalism and fascism.
The worst thing is that despite all data and stats around their failures, the current regime enjoys immense popularity. The opposition is irrelevant, the media and news portals are completely subservient to the regime. And even the SC, once the champions of our democracy are pretty much a laughing stock for whom issuing contempt cases over twitter posts to comedians is too much important.
India finally has single issue voters. And this issue isn't poverty, corruption, progress or anything like that. It's just Hindutva. This religious fundamentalism is what will finally end the great Indian experiment.
I will start with a quibble to make a point. India has a republican form of govt just like the US not a Democracy. Republican forms of governance have existed in India for over 2000+ years [1]. They will survive whatever foreboding you have real or imagined that will befall the "great indian experiment" which is not an experiment except for those whose history starts in 1947.
Hinduism has been present in India for over 3000 years. Hindu kingdoms welcomed Jews (~900BC), Christians (52 AD), Zoorastrians (600AD), Muslims (550 AD), Armenians (1500AD) who have lived and prospered without molestation for millenia because of the pluralistic nature of Hinduism. Zoorastrians who were wiped out in Persia (Iran) by their own kith and kin who converted have prospered in India to the point that this tiny minority (less than 100k) leads several of the top-20 conglomerates (e.g. Tata). Hinduism is not just tolerant but pluralistic because it acknowledges multiple paths to god unlike any other religion.
Pluralism >>> Tolerance.
Multi-religious, multi-ethnic India will survive because of Hinduism not in-spite of it. Case in point, the neighboring states of Pakistan and Bangladesh are both Islamic and the non-muslim population has dwindled precipitously from 20% in 1947 to less than 10% and they are well on their way to becoming 99% Muslim the next couple decades.
If people in US can be misled by fake news, India stood little chance. Facebook and WhatsApp have been used effectively to brainwash the general public in India.
As Barack Obama described in his new book 'Promised Land', the chances of democracy surviving in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious poor country like India was precarious at best. BJP and RSS has effectively made sure that democracy dies in India
This is same old same old, nothing new in here that India hasn't suffered for since it went from an extremely resource rich nation to impoverished after invasions. It doesn't really resemble the ground level Indian spirit which is very enthusiastic. India remains one of the most diverse countries, in other countries there have been Arab springs and revolts yet Indian hosts hunderds of millions of Hindus and Muslims and many Sikhs and Christians who apart from the odd one off issue, live in incredible peace compared to other countries.
Andy is a long time observer of India but this is a blinkered take. FDI (foreign direct investment) in India has doubled to $28B+ from $14B last year for the same 6-month period, in the midst of a pandemic. May I humbly suggest that foreign investors pumping cash into India by choice have more skin the game than economic journalists writing op-eds in newspapers no matter how erudite they are. A good chunk of this cash, about 50%, is into Reliance's Jio platform but that cuts for and against.
China is 90%+ ethnic Han with one-language-multiple-dialects, one-party state with most population concentrated in a few provinces. Indian elections might have a hundred plus candidates running for one-seat for parliament. India is a multi-ethnic multi-religious democracy with hundreds of languages spread across diverse geographies. The entrenched nature of (in)decision making in a three-tiered democracy, a free press, coupled with woke activism and sclerotic judiciary makes progress slow especially compared to China.
In India building a single nuclear plant requires wading through two decades worth of protests by foreign non-profits [1] and final adjudication by the Supreme court that construction could proceed. Foreign funded non-profits (NGO in India speak) were criticized by the former prime minister, Manmohan Singh, for intervening in matters of India's development. Recently, a metro line's storage shed in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, was relocated after a multi year battle to save <400 trees requiring the whole project to be delayed for multiple years inconveniencing 100s of thousands who would use that line.
You can have the biggest bullet train network created from scratch in a decade in China but then you get the Four Pests campaign [2] which led to eating and trading in wildlife which in turn sparked Covid 70 years later, the resulting famine, the horrors of the Cultural revolution, the great leap forward, the one-child policy, Vietnam invasion, Tiananmen, Xinjiang internment camps, One-belt-one-road, and finally President for life.
All this not-withstanding, the pace of decision making has picked up and on-the ground observers in India are far more optimistic than a journalists writing in from Hong Kong nestled in the echo-chamber that is elite journalism.
> China is 90%+ ethnic Han with one-language-multiple-dialects, one-party state with most population concentrated in a few provinces. Indian elections might have a hundred plus candidates running for one-seat for parliament. India is a multi-ethnic multi-religious democracy with hundreds of languages spread across diverse geographies. The entrenched nature of (in)decision making in a three-tiered democracy, a free press, coupled with woke activism and sclerotic judiciary makes progress slow especially compared to China.
That seems like a lot of excuses frankly.
> You can have the biggest bullet train network created from scratch in a decade in China but then you get the Four Pests campaign [2] which led to eating and trading in wildlife and perhaps sparked Covid, Cultural revolution, the great leap forward, the one-child policy, Vietnam invasion, Tiananmen, Xinjiang internment camps and President for life.
India also has its share of problems - terrorism, conflicts with pakistan/kashmir,sectarian/religious violence,extreme poverty,etc. But given all the problems of china, I'm willing to bet most people would prefer china over india. You act like it's just a bullet train. China lifted hundred of millions out of poverty. While hundreds of millions of indians live without electricity and indoor plumbing. Also, the problems you listed for china were mostly from decades ago.
> In India building a single nuclear plant requires wading through two decades worth of protests by foreign non-profits [1] and final adjudication by the Supreme court that construction could proceed. Foreign funded non-profits (NGO in India speak) were criticized by the former prime minister, Manmohan Singh, for intervening in matters of India's development.
If india wants to be free from foreign interference, perhaps they should leave the british commonwealth/empire once and for all and stop being a colony of britain? Why are you guys still part of the british empire? It's insane learning that india left the british empire and then rejoined it 2 years later.
Democracy is nice, but democracy is supposed to be a luxury you earn after you get wealthy. It was never meant for poor nations, especially poor multi-ethnic giants like india. Democracy was invented in athens by wealthy, educated, well-fed, slave owning greeks. Reason would tell you that democracy is an awful form of government for poor developing nations.
The problem with india is that it lacks the central authority that china has. Perhaps china is too centralized and too authoritarian but the lives of the average chinese certainly is better than the lives of the average indian. You need a strong central/federal power the larger, the poorer and more diverse you are. It's just common sense. Sure, you get brownie points and pat on the head from britain for being a democracy but much of your population is living in utter poverty. Certainly it's time to look in the mirror and say something hasn't worked out. Maybe even wonder whether britain isn't patting you on your head because indian democracy is good for india, but it's good for britain? It's not like britain ever gave much thought to the well being of india while it was ravaging india for 150 years. As a matter of fact, if there is any nation that wants india to be weak, it certainly has to be britain. No? Perhaps instead of doing things to win the approval of britain/etc, start doing things to develop the nation.
As someone who knows absolutely nothing about Indian politics, I feel like I have become less knowledgeable about the state of India after attempting to read and then skim this article. The bias appearing to be with the author is insane enough to make me want to question everything that he is saying. While I understand that its an opinion piece and that he could very well be 100% correct about everthing he is saying, the fact that I am getting no context as to who these people are other than "this leader good, this leader bad" makes this article appear to me that this is just some partisan hack complaining about politics he doesn't like, just from his own county's perspective. This just seems like the same boilerplate article from Democrats in 2016 saying "Now that Trump is elected, America is doomed" and recently from Republicans saying "Now that Biden is elected, America is doomed", painting their party leaders as great heroes and the opposition as evil villains.
Maybe I should have the required knowledge of Indian culture and politics before reading this, but maybe since Bloomberg News is a global paper, not an Indian one, it should spend more time educating people about the facts of who certain politians actually are before resorting to calling them cult leaders.
This article assumes a ton of prior context for sure, and it does make conclusions, I'll say it's very nuanced and actually gives an acceptable and agreeable summary of why India is the way it is due to everything happening in the past half century. If that's the goal of the article then there's definitely going to be much that has to be glossed over. It's also actually very well balanced (as much as any opinion piece can try to be) in its criticisms on both sides of the political spectrum.
Anyone who's spent some time knowing about Indira Gandhi and Manmohan Singh can walk away from this article with more context on what role they might have played in Indian history.
The same can be said about many articles in Bloomberg about American politics, but I suppose everyone's assumed to be fully versed in the EC system in the states since US is the place to be or whatever. Perhaps the best course of action is for Bloomberg to produce articles like that about everywhere and let the interested parties look up bg info elsewhwee. Otherwise every article about India has to then do Emergency in 70s 101 which sounds pathetic.
[+] [-] ramraj07|5 years ago|reply
One thing is clear - the future is not like the past few decades, it's no more an option for conscienable individuals to stay on the sideline and watch the world burn down while flying around drinking mimosas; either we are part of the problem or part of the solution, the question in front of me and many like me is where my societal contribution and self preservation instincts can coexist and be of the most use to everyone.
[+] [-] haltingproblem|5 years ago|reply
The fact that you can choose a country to settle in implies you either have means or talent or both. I would speculate that you have the potential to make manifold contributions. Please reconsider your conclusions in a more optimistic light.
[+] [-] skanga|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rishav_sharan|5 years ago|reply
The worst thing is that despite all data and stats around their failures, the current regime enjoys immense popularity. The opposition is irrelevant, the media and news portals are completely subservient to the regime. And even the SC, once the champions of our democracy are pretty much a laughing stock for whom issuing contempt cases over twitter posts to comedians is too much important.
India finally has single issue voters. And this issue isn't poverty, corruption, progress or anything like that. It's just Hindutva. This religious fundamentalism is what will finally end the great Indian experiment.
[+] [-] haltingproblem|5 years ago|reply
Hinduism has been present in India for over 3000 years. Hindu kingdoms welcomed Jews (~900BC), Christians (52 AD), Zoorastrians (600AD), Muslims (550 AD), Armenians (1500AD) who have lived and prospered without molestation for millenia because of the pluralistic nature of Hinduism. Zoorastrians who were wiped out in Persia (Iran) by their own kith and kin who converted have prospered in India to the point that this tiny minority (less than 100k) leads several of the top-20 conglomerates (e.g. Tata). Hinduism is not just tolerant but pluralistic because it acknowledges multiple paths to god unlike any other religion.
Pluralism >>> Tolerance.
Multi-religious, multi-ethnic India will survive because of Hinduism not in-spite of it. Case in point, the neighboring states of Pakistan and Bangladesh are both Islamic and the non-muslim population has dwindled precipitously from 20% in 1947 to less than 10% and they are well on their way to becoming 99% Muslim the next couple decades.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%E1%B9%87a_sangha
[+] [-] lazy_nerd|5 years ago|reply
As Barack Obama described in his new book 'Promised Land', the chances of democracy surviving in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious poor country like India was precarious at best. BJP and RSS has effectively made sure that democracy dies in India
[+] [-] amriksohata|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haltingproblem|5 years ago|reply
China is 90%+ ethnic Han with one-language-multiple-dialects, one-party state with most population concentrated in a few provinces. Indian elections might have a hundred plus candidates running for one-seat for parliament. India is a multi-ethnic multi-religious democracy with hundreds of languages spread across diverse geographies. The entrenched nature of (in)decision making in a three-tiered democracy, a free press, coupled with woke activism and sclerotic judiciary makes progress slow especially compared to China.
In India building a single nuclear plant requires wading through two decades worth of protests by foreign non-profits [1] and final adjudication by the Supreme court that construction could proceed. Foreign funded non-profits (NGO in India speak) were criticized by the former prime minister, Manmohan Singh, for intervening in matters of India's development. Recently, a metro line's storage shed in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, was relocated after a multi year battle to save <400 trees requiring the whole project to be delayed for multiple years inconveniencing 100s of thousands who would use that line.
You can have the biggest bullet train network created from scratch in a decade in China but then you get the Four Pests campaign [2] which led to eating and trading in wildlife which in turn sparked Covid 70 years later, the resulting famine, the horrors of the Cultural revolution, the great leap forward, the one-child policy, Vietnam invasion, Tiananmen, Xinjiang internment camps, One-belt-one-road, and finally President for life.
All this not-withstanding, the pace of decision making has picked up and on-the ground observers in India are far more optimistic than a journalists writing in from Hong Kong nestled in the echo-chamber that is elite journalism.
[1] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/manmohan-criticises-n...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojOmUWLDG18
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disown|5 years ago|reply
That seems like a lot of excuses frankly.
> You can have the biggest bullet train network created from scratch in a decade in China but then you get the Four Pests campaign [2] which led to eating and trading in wildlife and perhaps sparked Covid, Cultural revolution, the great leap forward, the one-child policy, Vietnam invasion, Tiananmen, Xinjiang internment camps and President for life.
India also has its share of problems - terrorism, conflicts with pakistan/kashmir,sectarian/religious violence,extreme poverty,etc. But given all the problems of china, I'm willing to bet most people would prefer china over india. You act like it's just a bullet train. China lifted hundred of millions out of poverty. While hundreds of millions of indians live without electricity and indoor plumbing. Also, the problems you listed for china were mostly from decades ago.
> In India building a single nuclear plant requires wading through two decades worth of protests by foreign non-profits [1] and final adjudication by the Supreme court that construction could proceed. Foreign funded non-profits (NGO in India speak) were criticized by the former prime minister, Manmohan Singh, for intervening in matters of India's development.
If india wants to be free from foreign interference, perhaps they should leave the british commonwealth/empire once and for all and stop being a colony of britain? Why are you guys still part of the british empire? It's insane learning that india left the british empire and then rejoined it 2 years later.
Democracy is nice, but democracy is supposed to be a luxury you earn after you get wealthy. It was never meant for poor nations, especially poor multi-ethnic giants like india. Democracy was invented in athens by wealthy, educated, well-fed, slave owning greeks. Reason would tell you that democracy is an awful form of government for poor developing nations.
The problem with india is that it lacks the central authority that china has. Perhaps china is too centralized and too authoritarian but the lives of the average chinese certainly is better than the lives of the average indian. You need a strong central/federal power the larger, the poorer and more diverse you are. It's just common sense. Sure, you get brownie points and pat on the head from britain for being a democracy but much of your population is living in utter poverty. Certainly it's time to look in the mirror and say something hasn't worked out. Maybe even wonder whether britain isn't patting you on your head because indian democracy is good for india, but it's good for britain? It's not like britain ever gave much thought to the well being of india while it was ravaging india for 150 years. As a matter of fact, if there is any nation that wants india to be weak, it certainly has to be britain. No? Perhaps instead of doing things to win the approval of britain/etc, start doing things to develop the nation.
[+] [-] thunkshift1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suyash|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spikengineer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nradov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gabruoy|5 years ago|reply
Maybe I should have the required knowledge of Indian culture and politics before reading this, but maybe since Bloomberg News is a global paper, not an Indian one, it should spend more time educating people about the facts of who certain politians actually are before resorting to calling them cult leaders.
[+] [-] ramraj07|5 years ago|reply
Anyone who's spent some time knowing about Indira Gandhi and Manmohan Singh can walk away from this article with more context on what role they might have played in Indian history.
The same can be said about many articles in Bloomberg about American politics, but I suppose everyone's assumed to be fully versed in the EC system in the states since US is the place to be or whatever. Perhaps the best course of action is for Bloomberg to produce articles like that about everywhere and let the interested parties look up bg info elsewhwee. Otherwise every article about India has to then do Emergency in 70s 101 which sounds pathetic.
[+] [-] foogazi|5 years ago|reply
>The bias appearing to be with the author is insane enough to make me want to question everything that he is saying.
How do you reconcile those two statements ? If you know nothing about X how can you have the context to detect bias ?
[+] [-] no1name|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] arunc|5 years ago|reply
Why do they publish this then?
[+] [-] Barrin92|5 years ago|reply