[QUOTE=Surya Deva;51040]Neitzsche, we can wind this discussion up as we seem to agree on these points:
- India is a developing country and is relatively poor compared to the West
- India is improving
What we disagree on is the fact that the conditions are improving for India’s masses, the 70% of poor Indians living in rural areas. You have not convinced me, and I don’t think you would convince anybody that the 70% of Indians living on less than 2 dollars a day are living OK. No my friend, they are living in poor living standards, lack basic needs like proper drinking water, electricity, housing and education.
You are rich, good for you. Most Indians are not, and do not pretend that they are not. You belong to the 30% middle class, but 70% of Indians do not.
The reason for this vast inequality is capitalism, because capitalism is based on exploitation. There is always going to be vast inequality in a capitalist society. No matter which capitalist country you go to it is always the case the top 1% of the population own about 50%+ of the nations capital. This fundamental contradiction in capitalism means that capital falls into fewer and fewer hands, leading to the masses becoming poorer and poorer. India is going through a similar development with capital falling into fewer and fewer hands. First this leads to the rise of a middle class(petite bourgeoise) and then as capital begins to fall into fewer and fewer hands, the middle class crumbles and the masses become equally as poor. The final result of a capitalist society is a society where a very elite few control and dominate everybody else who are all equally poor. Living standards drop for the masses because all of the capital ends up going to the elite few at the top. This is already happening in the West with every area of society experiencing big cuts.
India will go through a similar growth as the West has. First, the middle class will emerge and by 2020 about 50% of Indians will be middle class, later on around 2040 the middle class will begin to crumble, just like it is doing in the West.
There is really nothing special about India today. It is a developing country and has all the ills that a developing country has. I don’t think you should even pretend that India is better than Western countries - it is not. This is why you are in the US and not in India.[/QUOTE]
No, the reason I don’t believe it is because I have yet to see VALID a source that states 70% of people in India are that poor. It is illogical. Tell me the experimental design used. Was the sample chosen an SRS, a stratified random sample, or a multistage sample? What methods of statistical inference were used? In fact, I have seen the exact same statistic describing the number of Indians who live in rural areas. Living in a rural area doesn’t necessarily mean you should be labeled as “poor.” Often times, people in rural areas make just the right amount of income fit for their particular lifestyle.
Besides, you should always be careful with statistics and the context involved. The only trustworthy statistics in these matters are ones found by the government. Otherwise, you shouldn’t take them too seriously until you acquire additional information such as the standard deviation of the sample, experimental design used, and etc. Places like India have a high variability and a large disparity in incomes. This means that normal distribution graphs will always be non-normal and that there will always be outliers within the sample. Although the central limit theorem guarantees that the distribution of the sample mean will be approximately normal, this is only when the sample is large enough and one is meticulous enough to separate any outliers and influential points that would be detrimental to validity of the statistic. In a place like India, the chances of error are high.
You are basically describing India as if it were the U.S during the latter half of the 19th century. You are assuming that India will not reform itself and that the trends will always be the same. Sorry, that won’t be the case.
From the 1860’s until WW2, corruption was rampant in all levels of government, even up to the president/vice president. The conditions were similar to the condition in India. You had 80% of the population living in rural areas. You had the rest of the population working in terrible conditions for monopolistic mega millionaires like Carnegie and Rockefeller. Any strikes were immediately crushed by the militias and the law enforcement. Any attempts at change by the workforce = bribes to the government so that they would always overrule the people. Laws were formulated to break the power of the Unions. It took SEVERAL decades for the workforce to gain even the most basic rights on a national level. Eventually, change did happen when representatives sympathetic to the workers plight were elected.
Yes, this will inevitably happen. No one can deny that. And when it does, change will come once again. If you look at the history of the U.S, periods like the ones you have mentioned have always occurred and the nation as a whole subsequently brought itself out of those miserable times.
However, considering the unique circumstances plaguing us today, the West might not be so lucky this time.
We shall wait and see what happens.
No, I do not pretend that India is better off than the West - materially. The West is a despicable place in terms of spirituality, ignorance, and hedonism. Living in America disgusts me these days. The people here are so depraved and obtuse, it will make you cry.
These days, I can barely tolerate the environment here. Not too long ago, one of my Christian friends started talking trash about Buddhism. I, of course, got angry and muttered “Why are all Christians so ignorant…” Then, the whole table proceeded to yell at ME for being intolerant while ignoring his offensive comments on Buddhism. I responded by telling them that they should not respect the intolerance intrinsic to Christianity and Islam because “its simply a belief.” I told them that intolerance is always wrong, regardless of where it may manifest itself. But they still proceeded to defend Islam and Christianity and told me that I was being an extremist. I, as a typical Hindu would, swallowed my anger and let the issue slide and helped those ungrateful assholes with their Calculus.
Sure the people in developing countries may be ignorant, but that is largely due to a lack of opportunities and education. Its different in the West; the people here are so immersed in hedonistic lifestyles and American chauvinism, it isn’t even funny. You try to point it out, you get scorned. Of course, what would a pagan from a dirt poor country know about these matters?
The bias here is so seeped into the national conscience, it is futile go around and start reforming and educating these people. The West will only learn about spirituality after they are knocked out of their places in the world echelon and know what it means to be like the very countries they raped so long ago…
