[HN Gopher] Dating in Delhi when you're poor
___________________________________________________________________
Dating in Delhi when you're poor
Author : hidden-spyder
Score : 215 points
Date : 2021-08-06 17:15 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| lota-putty wrote:
| India hosts 400% of humans of its healthy capacity; 150 people
| per sq km.
|
| What the world sees is the tip of the iceberg. Someone alien to
| India might have to spend decades to get all the idiosyncrasies
| that run here.
|
| For starters, good portion of sexual harassments/rapes are not
| reported. Even unnatural deaths go unnoticed or ignored.
| winter_blue wrote:
| > India hosts 400% of humans of its healthy capacity; 150
| people per sq km.
|
| Urban areas in almost every part of the world have higher
| density. For example, New York City has 10,716 people per sq
| km, and Manhattan (a borough of NYC) has a density of 26,821.6
| person per sq km.
|
| So I'm not sure what you're point here is.
| retrac wrote:
| It's fascinating how much wider the class gap is there, but so
| many of the same dynamics sound familiar. Parts of it read as
| very familiar to me. In Toronto, as a guy from a small town and a
| working class background. It is also very different for me, of
| course. Ultimately very few Canadians are "poor", in a sense. I
| could walk into one of our hospitals on one of those dates and be
| seen for free. Social assistance paid more when I was homeless
| than that woman earns; though $100 does go much further in Delhi.
|
| But I do remember that disjunction; it's normal, expected, to
| spend what amounts to a week or a month of my income on a night
| out. Being gay, the pressure to hide, to go for a date some place
| far away from home, somewhere you can hopefully blend in, or
| somewhere private, and where you won't attraction the attention
| of jeers, usually just jeers but sometimes you worry you'll have
| to run. Even the bit about McDonald's being too expensive. It is.
| It's a luxury, though most of us, myself included, tend not to
| think of it as such. Until you have $80 in your account and a
| whole week ahead and he wants to get a burger for dinner. $25 is
| a lot of money suddenly. It's an interesting experience when your
| friends decide to go out for dinner and your concern with where
| to go is which location has a menu option with a decent ratio for
| calories per $ and if the water is free.
|
| I too found poetry to be worth far more than it cost. Trees can
| be a gift. As can parks. And settings. Many intangible things can
| be gifts. And it is an art to be learned and practiced, just like
| the art of selecting and giving physical gifts. And of physical
| gifts, I discovered long ago that it truly is the thought that
| counts. Oh, yes, someone will love something that is of monetary
| value or expensive. But I have received many gifts worth some
| real money, but the ones where the gift was the thought are the
| ones I tend to still have. A card when I wasn't expecting one. I
| still have the thoroughly wrecked chew-toy for my dog gotten by
| one particular friend who is now gone.
|
| Maybe as a result of our smaller class gap, there is one thing
| that doesn't ring so true to me. "The girls also don't have that
| many expectations." Not here. The boys had big expectations. It's
| easier to jump over the class gap if you're young and attractive,
| at least for a while, and pursue the material in exchange for the
| material, so to speak. I did it too; who doesn't want to go away
| for the weekend; go out for drinks and not count out the coins?
| ipaddr wrote:
| It sounds like you are away from home feel a sense of freedom
| and got sucked into a downtown lifestyle with no budget. I
| don't understand why out of towners move downtown and only
| downtown where local people have moved to other areas of the
| city because of price and affordability. Somehow downtown feels
| safe because as a tourist that's what you see. For those moving
| get out of the downtown core and be able to afford your city.
| retrac wrote:
| No, I was living in the outer suburbs. Toronto has always
| been expensive. Nearly all of my income went to the rent on a
| bedroom and a transit pass the first year. I suppose that is
| the downtown lifestyle, though.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I lived in downtown adjacent neighborhoods for years before
| moving downtown. This isn't going to be my forever
| neighborhood but it's really nice being able to walk to a
| _wide_ selection of restaurants nearby, be close to well-
| maintained parks and have multiple transit lines to take into
| work.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| doit4thebitties wrote:
| Dating never requires money. And no guy should be a free dinner
| dispenser or ATM for commercial activities for someone he doesn't
| even know.
|
| You can click, talk, walk, dance, and kiss for free... anywhere
| and everywhere.
|
| Besides, dinner and coffee interview dates are too formal and
| boring.. zzz.
| bboylen wrote:
| If you can't have a fun conversation over coffee or dinner you
| probably arent compatible
| sombremesa wrote:
| My first thought when reading this was hoping that these types of
| articles will reduce the comments I see on the internet that try
| and compare Delhi/Mumbai squalor to LA.
|
| Then I read the first comment on this HN thread, which is
| directly comparing this to Toronto.
|
| So either Westerners don't realize that people in these places
| are making less money in a _month_ than the middle class person
| can expect to spend in an average afternoon, or there is some
| intermediate step of "let me compare this to what I know" that
| is happening. It's not really enough...you should experience it
| for yourself (there's also other issues, such as people claiming
| there's more homeless in LA than in Delhi, not realizing that a
| lot of effectively homeless people in India aren't classified as
| such - it'd be like saying you're not homeless in LA if you have
| a tent or a sleeping bag).
|
| Reminds me of learning a new language, where beginners try to
| formulate thoughts in their native tongue and produce a direct
| translation, whereas those who are fluent can skip that step
| completely.
| [deleted]
| ajmurmann wrote:
| > there's also other issues, such as people claiming there's
| more homeless in LA than in Delhi, not realizing that a lot of
| effectively homeless people in India aren't classified as such
| - it'd be like saying you're not homeless in LA if you have a
| tent or a sleeping bag
|
| Sorry, I really cannot avoid going on a tangent because of
| this.
|
| We seem to talk quite differently about informal housing if
| it's in the US or west vs. in a poorer country. We have non-
| profits push for sanitation in "slums" to improve health
| outcomes. Yet nobody is pushing for bathroom access or garbage
| removal in "homeless camps". I recently read about a homeless
| camp in a park in Oregon where the inhabitants cut down trees
| for materials and fire wood. When does it become a slum and we
| start treating it like we'd expect poorer countries to treat
| their slums?
| derefr wrote:
| Slum buildings get addresses, are subject to zoning, have
| mail delivered to them, etc. It's basically a matter of
| government recognition of the slum as something that won't go
| away.
|
| Though also, much of that recognition comes from the fact
| that people in a "homeless camp" don't tend to _think_ of
| their living arrangement as permanent or the space they
| occupy as theirs by right; whereas the people living in a
| slum, do.
|
| If you live in a camp and you're offered public housing,
| you'll usually take it, because the camp wasn't where you
| wanted to be.
|
| If you're living in a slum, you might hold out for city to
| just improve the slum, because your dwelling in the slum is
| _your home_ , for better or for worse.
|
| This is where things like the "container house" movement come
| into play: that demand is mostly driven by people who think
| of a slum as their permanent home, who want options for
| improving their dwelling in that slum into something they can
| be proud of.
| cheriot wrote:
| In America, slums and informal housing is destroyed by the
| city government. See LA's Echo Park for a recent example
| https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-protesters-clash-sweep-
| echo...
|
| We have 350m people, 0.5m homeless and lack the political
| will to build more housing. They are expected to stay out of
| sight or the municipality will destroy their shelter and
| often trash their belongings.
|
| Humanity is more cost effective, but doesn't allow us to
| moralize https://scoop.me/housing-first-finland-homelessness/
|
| /rant
| hilbertseries wrote:
| I think there's a little more nuance to what happened in
| echo park. Echo Park lake has always had some homeless
| people living there, but it was nowhere close to 200
| prepandemic. There was also some attempt to relocate
| everyone, it's the city of LA so obviously no one really
| trusted them. But it's weird to me see a public park that's
| meant to be used by everyone taken over and then when it's
| taken back. LA is destroying informal housing?
| sombremesa wrote:
| > it's weird to me see a public park that's meant to be
| used by everyone taken over
|
| That's what a majority of urban poor in India live on -
| public/unclaimed land (i.e. informal housing). They're
| not counted as homeless as a result, unlike in LA.
|
| That's how LA can appear to have a comparatively larger
| homeless population, even if it's a lot smaller in
| reality.
|
| In India this type of housing is illegal and _can_ be
| destroyed by the government, but that rarely happens
| because the situation can be leveraged for votes (there
| 's a lot of poor people).
|
| Yay democracy.
| Talanes wrote:
| >but that rarely happens because the situation can be
| leveraged for votes (there's a lot of poor people)
|
| There's a massive difference hidden in that statement
| alone. Here the politicians just assume those people
| aren't voting.
| captain_price7 wrote:
| I'm hesitant to call the slum population "homeless". We
| have people in the parks, footpaths too, and that's very
| different from people living in many of these slums.
|
| Here are a few facts: some of these slums are 100+ yrs
| old. A lot of them have "permanent" homes, something lot
| harder to uproot than tents. And lastly, if the
| government attempted to destroy them, it won't be just
| poor people, almost entire society will be outraged.
| Something similar happened here in Dhaka.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| It's not about building more housing. There is enough
| housing to house everyone in the US and then some.
|
| Homelessness is not just about finding/funding a home. You
| need food and transportation for a job. If the solution
| were as simple as throwing money at the homeless,
| California would have long ago solved their homelessness
| issue.
| pm90 wrote:
| > It's not about building more housing.
|
| It actually is. From: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/
| 2021/06/08/1003982733/squ...
|
| > By the 1980s, homelessness emerged as a chronic issue.
| There were many factors, including the federal government
| deciding to slash the budget for affordable housing. By
| then the California state government had significantly
| cut taxes and gutted social programs, including for
| state-funded mental institutions, resulting in thousands
| of people with mental illnesses and other difficulties
| struggling to make it on their own.
|
| > Yet the core reason for the crisis boils down to supply
| and demand for housing. As regions like the San Francisco
| Bay Area became magnets for highly paid professionals in
| the computer-driven economy, they failed to build enough
| new units to keep up with demand.
|
| > A 2016 study by McKinsey Global Institute estimated
| that California needs 3.5 million new housing units by
| 2025 to deal with its chronic housing shortage. Yet new
| housing construction has only slowed since then, despite
| Gov. Gavin Newsom's campaign promise to lead an effort to
| produce those 3.5 million units. Even before the pandemic
| wrought havoc on the construction business, California
| was constructing only about 100,000 new homes per year,
| way below the minimum 180,000 per year that analysts say
| the state desperately needs.
| babesh wrote:
| In California, it initially was because Reagan closed
| mental institutions. We had the housing (the mental
| institutions). Also, housing back then was affordable.
| You can't chalk it down to housing till close to the
| 2000s.
|
| Now you have this toxic brew of people with mental
| issues, drug addicts, people with family issues, and
| economic issues all feeding into each other.
|
| Housing is then only a start. Also, any city that gives
| homeless more services than other areas just attracts
| more homeless.
|
| It is monstrously expensive. Look at what SF is spending
| and watch what happens when the COVID-19 funds and state
| IPO windfall run dry.
|
| Both the left and the right are at fault. Some of these
| people need to be institutionalized. Cities need to be
| cleaned up. Housing should be provided. Shipping homeless
| to other cities is not cool.
|
| No city is probably willing to pay what it truly costs.
| It is probably roughly how much we pay for the criminal
| justice system.
|
| https://nicic.gov/assign-library-item-package-
| accordion/stat...
|
| $146K per person for the criminal justice system and then
| multiply it by 2 or 3 for social services, mental health
| services, drug treatment, etc...
|
| Roughly 250 billion a year. You need to make the
| underlying institutions more efficient but institutional
| capture has already occurred. In other words, in a few
| years it is more likely to be 500 billion a year and the
| problem would be just as bad.
|
| Of course if you wanted to turn around the criminal
| justice system as well, then you immediately jump into
| the trillions.
| wahern wrote:
| > Gov. Gavin Newsom's campaign promise to lead an effort
| to produce those 3.5 million units.
|
| He _is_ leading an effort. Whether he 's spending enough
| of his own political capital is another question. But one
| of the problems in California is that the state
| constitution guarantees municipalities "home rule". That
| means very little can be accomplished without local
| cooperation, including local zoning board cooperation.
| It's like federalism at the state level--the central
| government can ban practices relatively easily, but it
| can't force positive action, only coerce through tax
| revenue incentives, which has its own constitutional
| restrictions, not to mention political barriers.
|
| California is a NIMBY paradise, legally speaking.
| cheriot wrote:
| > California is a NIMBY paradise, legally speaking.
|
| 100%
|
| However the state has and can overrule cities. First ADUs
| were legalized and next, if SB9 passes, duplexes. It's
| baby steps, but it's possible and probably the only way
| forward.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| My experiences with homeless people in California are
| very limited to my trip there 10 years ago. I did have a
| really good conversation with someone giving me some tips
| about SF for a dollar, and I was robbed by someone else
| while walking home late at night.
|
| Neither of those guys seemed mentally ill, but if my own
| country is anything to go by, a lot of these people have
| serious mental issues to deal with, and sitting them in a
| flat isn't gonna solve the underlying issues.
|
| One of my best friends is a social worker for re-
| integration of homeless people, and getting them a flat
| is actually the very first step. A particularly
| illuminating example he told me about is that he often
| has problems with landlords, because the people he is
| trying to house do not shit in the toilet, but will do so
| in the hallway or somewhere else on the property.
|
| There's a _lot_ of work necessary from social workers,
| psychologists and doctors to help people who were
| homeless for a longer preiod of time, and it has to be a
| longterm commitment.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| The ones who can't use a toilet are a handful, and will
| never get off the streets.
|
| Most homeless I have known whom are homeless just want a
| piece of land, with a outhouse, and maybe some fire pits
| so they can cook.
|
| They want a piece of land where cops don't ticket, or get
| harassed.
|
| Homelessness is just going to get worse. It's time to
| open up available federal, state, and local land, to free
| camping.
|
| I've given up on housing. It's too expensive, and comes
| with too many rules.
|
| Most of these guys just want to pitch a tent, and live
| the rest of their short lives out with a bit of false
| dignity.
|
| And the drug use?
|
| I once heard a homeless guy say, if you had to crawl into
| Scothbroom, after a day of being harassed by cops, and
| looking for food; you might want a stiff drink too. Let's
| not forget about the amount of self-medicating going on
| either.
|
| (I know it's easy to throw your hands up, and lump all of
| them together. They are all very different. There are
| some professional beggars out there too. I've noticed a
| lot of foreigners working sympathy beg. Foreigners with
| jobs. Every American homeless person I know would never
| think about begging if they had a roof over their heads.)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The vast majority of homeless people in the US are
| homeless for economic reasons[1], and not because of
| mental illness or addiction.
|
| [1] https://nlchp.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/10/Homeless_Stats_...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Homelessness is not just about finding /funding a home.
| You need food and transportation for a job._
|
| In some sense, you are correct. We've torn down about a
| million SROs and largely zoned out of existence the
| ability to build Missing Middle Housing in mixed use,
| walkable neighborhoods.
|
| This is a primary root cause of lack of affordable
| housing in the US. You need a car to get anywhere from
| the suburbs and it drives up the baseline cost of
| housing.
|
| There are myriad other issues with our housing policies,
| but no it not just enough to build more housing, though
| studies show simply building more helps. It's also about
| building the right kind and we aren't doing that which is
| helping fuel various trends, such as living in RVs, the
| Tiny House movement and other alternatives people are
| pursuing in the face of cities simply not creating the
| kind of housing they need.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
|
| https://missingmiddlehousing.com/
| justicezyx wrote:
| Note that Indian people are suffering way more than than
| their western counterparts. The homeless in US lives a
| considerably better life than Indian homeless.
|
| This is not justifying one or the other. But if one always
| start with humanity as one's subject of discussion, than
| there probably is no meaningful progress to be made at all.
| aerovistae wrote:
| Can you explain how it's better in the US? Seems to me
| like it's pretty hard to get worse than sleeping on the
| pavement and eating out of the trash.
| [deleted]
| macjohnmcc wrote:
| I'd say that it being your life from birth to death is
| worse and your parents and grandparents likely suffering
| the same back who knows how far.
| azernik wrote:
| Interestingly, my family, coming from a recently-developed
| country, does compare them to slums.
| asdff wrote:
| At least in a slum like a favela you have sturdy
| cinderblock walls, a door that locks, some sort of a
| latrine situation solved, running water, and electricity,
| rather than a nylon tent and some debris on the sidewalk
| with no plumbing.
| Aunche wrote:
| Plenty of people live in tents in favelas and Indian
| slums as well.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| That can't be allowed in this country; such structures
| violate zoning laws and are not up to code.
| paxys wrote:
| The one in Portland has a couple dozen people living in it
| and has existed for maybe a year. It is routinely cleaned
| up/moved to different locations as well, hence a "camp". The
| population of a single slum in Mumbai (Dharavi) is over a
| million and has existed since the 1800s. Are you really
| concerned that they don't receive the same international
| attention?
| kbenson wrote:
| I think the point being made is less about international
| attention, and how we (as in U.S. citizens) see our own
| poor compared to the poor other places. The impression,
| which I think has some truth to it, is that often our own
| poor are viewed much more unfavorably than we view the poor
| in other places. When it's the poor across the world, they
| get our sympathy, but when they're in our backyard we just
| want them gone.
|
| It's not about which one is the greater humanitarian
| problem, it's about the hypocrisy.
| bingidingi wrote:
| it might go back to the american superiority complex;
| african and asian homeless people are different and
| distant enough to make us feel good about ourselves (poor
| foreigners), american homeless are "like us" so they
| shouldn't have an excuse (just get a job like i did)
| rcurry wrote:
| A friend of mine, from India, once tried to explain it to me.
| He said "You see that guy on the corner (NYC) selling coffees?
| If he sells 25,000 coffees he can buy a Mercedes Benz. In
| India, you can never sell enough coffees to buy a Mercedes
| Benz." It was an over generalization but I got his point - a
| tomato from a street vendor here costs $1 but in India it costs
| pennies - and the Mercedes still costs $50k. It's hard to get
| your head around that level of poverty.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| Those of us that grew up in the third world know how ridiculous
| Americans can be when it comes to these comparisons.
|
| Anyone can get a minimum wage job and earn a relatively high
| living in the US. In the third world, you can work your ass
| off, be incredibly successful, and still live in squalor.
| retrac wrote:
| I am sorry if my comment was presumptuous or inappropriate. It
| was not intended to be. I prefaced it with a disclaimer trying
| to contextualize how I was trying to relate to the story. I am
| aware I live in a rich country, that food and medical care as
| such are not an issue by comparison, even as a very poor
| person. I saw that the woman in the article earns barely a
| third what I received from the government in social assistance,
| on top of what I could earn. I try to be aware of that. I have
| only seen true slums from afar. Perhaps I have failed in that
| awareness. What I saw was a human story, about trying to find
| love with little resources and not much social standing. It is
| a universal theme and I tried to relate to it in that way, to
| feel what those people feel seeking love and companionship. I'm
| sorry if that was uncalled for and trying to turn the focus
| back on my relative privilege and material comfort. It wasn't
| intended to do so.
| sombremesa wrote:
| I apologize for calling your comment out, it was not exactly
| the kind of comment I wanted to address. I should've provided
| a better example.
|
| My comment was actually not about your comment specifically,
| but about making these comparisons without the appropriate
| cultural context taken into account. I'm not passing a moral
| judgement or saying it's inappropriate, I'm just expressing a
| desire to have these comparisons be more meaningful by
| explicitly acknowledging the context.
|
| I have an issue with making a direct comparison as in "X
| phenomena is the same as Y phenomena", because it glosses
| over a LOT when you compare countries like India and America.
| em-bee wrote:
| i would not consider someone who can spend $100 on average in
| an afternoon to be middle class.
| paxys wrote:
| Middle class means different things in different cities, even
| within the US (and in some cases between cities in a single
| state). You simply cannot classify someone based on a number
| alone.
| yarky wrote:
| I'm not an expert statistician, but why can't you classify
| people's economic class based on the quantile their revenue
| falls in? You can assume a distribution based on the data
| (probably normally distributed) or go all non-parametric
| based on empirical quantiles.
|
| I don't see how this cannot be easily understood with a
| number. Sure, you can never predict one observation, but
| the average in some quantile is quite standard modelling.
| paxys wrote:
| > based on the quantile their revenue falls in
|
| Are you calculating this quantile with respect to their
| neighbors' revenue? The rest of the city? County? State?
| Country? Or the entire world? You will get a different
| answer for each of them.
| yarky wrote:
| That's part of your modelling. If you're interested in
| the neighborhood's income distribution, then use the
| neighborhood's data. If you're interested in the world's
| distribution, then use world data.
|
| This depends on how you want to look at the issue, but it
| comes down to a number yes.
| paxys wrote:
| That's my entire point. You need a (number, location)
| combo to many any reasonable deduction, not just a
| number.
| yarky wrote:
| Sure but that's true about any number, I can't think of
| any number which adds any value without some context. In
| statistics, your population is your context and all
| inference/conclusion depends on the population (local,
| city, world,etc). For social classes, I'd say the more
| local the more representative your number, which doesn't
| mean there isn't a number to represent the _middle_
| class.
| [deleted]
| 0_____0 wrote:
| If that's $100 per half day, integrated over a month that
| comes out to monthly expenditures of $6000/mo, which is
| solidly middle class. Not working class, but certainly within
| reach of a low/mid level Facebook employee.
| em-bee wrote:
| i expect spending here to mean cash you spend while
| enjoying your free time outside. from that 6000 you need to
| subtract rent/mortgage, and any other living expenses. if
| you then still have enough money that you can go out and
| spend $100 in an afternoon on average, then you are no
| longer middle class i would say.
|
| the "problem" here is the average. sure, a middle class
| income can afford to spend $100 in an afternoon once in a
| while. but unless you limit your discretionary spending to
| only these afternoons, you'll spend money on other things
| too. hobbies, travel, etc. if after all that you still can
| afford $100 every afternoon (even if only on weekends
| that's already $800 a month), you got to earn enough that
| you simply never worry about money.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > then you are no longer middle class i would say
|
| Well what are they then?
|
| You can't seriously claim that having just $100 a day of
| disposable income makes you part of the upper class?
| geodel wrote:
| Well I will call them Lower-Upper-Middle class.
| em-bee wrote:
| if you have $100 a day of disposable income, you are not
| going to spend all of it every afternoon. if you do, your
| actual disposable income is much higher.
|
| money for discretionary spending is not the same as
| disposable income.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/disposableincome.asp
| defines disposable income as net income, that means after
| taxes but before living expenses.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/insights/americas-slowly-
| disapp... defines middle class in the US as a disposable
| income from 35k to 106k a year.
|
| if you spend all your discretionary money on going out
| with your friends and not on any other hobbies,
| traveling, gifts, etc, then maybe you can spend $100
| every weekend afternoon.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Ok... but this still isn't even within orders of
| magnitude of 'upper class', is it?
| em-bee wrote:
| EDIT: i used the terms middle class and upper class, when
| i should have used middle income and upper income.
|
| middle class and middle income are often mixed up. upper
| class and upper income less so.
|
| old text:
|
| well if the definition of middle class ends at 106k
| income per year then anything above that must be upper
| class. the problem here is that obviously upper class has
| a very wide range which skews the perception of what
| makes upper class.
|
| of course definitions are just that. the reality is not
| so clear cut.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Upper class starting at around 100k would give America an
| upper class of around a third of the population! I guess
| we're meaning entirely different things since an upper
| class of a third of the population seems like a
| contradiction in terms to me!
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| I assume they're talking about 100k individual income as
| opposed to household income?
| em-bee wrote:
| household of three. the 106k number comes from data from
| 2010. in the same article the range for 2016 is $45,200
| to $135,600 annually for a household of three.
| verall wrote:
| The upper class doesn't need to work for their money. Of
| course the line draws different in every location, but
| the difference between the upper-middle class lawyer and
| the upper-class lawyer is that the upper-class lawyer
| could quit and still pass this privelege onto their
| children.
| em-bee wrote:
| what often gets mixed up is middle income vs middle class
| and consequently upper income and upper class.
|
| apparently, middle income and middle class are often used
| interchangeably even though they don't mean quite the
| same thing, while arguable upper income and upper class
| are much more different.
| benjiweber wrote:
| Upper class means different things in different cultures.
| In UK more of an association with
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landed_gentry than a level
| of income.
| ummonk wrote:
| A low/mid level Facebook employee is very well off upper
| middle class, not middle class.
|
| And most such employees still will save most of their
| income rather than wastefully splurge it on $100 meals.
| jimbob21 wrote:
| Did you actually read that comment about Toronto? He
| immediately prefaces it by saying it isn't in the same realm,
| but can relate because he's poor in his area as well.
|
| I don't think that YOU realize that it is okay to relate to
| common feelings without being the most of that thing. The guy
| from Toronto doesn't have to be the most poor person in the
| most poor area in order to understand their feelings and talk
| about his.
|
| You're gatekeeping being poor. What a weird thing to be elitist
| about.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| He is not gatekeeping being poor. He is pointing out that
| being poor in Toronto is not the same as being poor in Delhi.
|
| You are trying to lump two things together into a category
| that are not even remotely comparable.
| markdown wrote:
| Probably worse in Toronto where you could have food in your
| hands but die from the cold.
| OJFord wrote:
| The article isn't even really about absolute squalor though
| (even if the subjects _are_ destitute it 's not _about_
| that) - by my reading anyway the focus is more 'trying to
| do things when you're among the poorest in your city', or,
| _' dating in Delhi when you're poor'_.
|
| I'm not from Delhi nor by any relevant measure poor, so
| perhaps I'm not allowed an opinion, but having just read
| the article, and not yet the Toronto comment, I find _this_
| thread surprising, and think an anecdote about being in a
| similar - _similarly among the poorest in the city_ -
| situation in a different (richer, poorer, no matter) city
| would gel perfectly with the article.
| strken wrote:
| Why was he pointing that out? It wasn't in question:
| everyone involved in this conversation knows how poor Delhi
| is on a factual level, since it's literally in the article
| we all read. Half the Toronto post wasn't even about
| poverty, it was about how the author would go on dates to
| far away parts of the city so his family wouldn't find out
| he was gay.
|
| Why wouldn't they be comparable? They can be compared
| easily. You're comparing them right now.
| derefr wrote:
| There are two distinct experiences being discussed here:
| the experience of living in absolute poverty; and the
| experience of being down-and-out in a city you can't afford
| the cost-of-living of (i.e. "relative" poverty -- the kind
| you could in theory get away from by "moving somewhere
| cheaper", but where for various reasons people don't tend
| to do that.)
|
| Both the poor person in Toronto and the poor person in
| Delhi are in _relative_ poverty, and have the lived
| experiences of relative poverty in common.
|
| And also, the lived experiences of relative poverty are
| usually what someone means when they talk about "being
| poor." If you live in Dubai and make $50k/yr, but that
| doesn't even get you a crappy apartment two hours away from
| work, so you have to sleep in your car; and all your money
| is going to paying for groceries in a city that has to
| import all its food, and for car insurance that costs more
| than your car, so you don't have any savings -- then you're
| poor, by most people's definition!
|
| But of course, only the homeless person in Delhi
| experiences _absolute_ poverty. They have _two_ problems:
| relative poverty, _and_ absolute poverty.
|
| But the homeless person in Delhi will still commisserate
| with the homeless person in Toronto over the lived
| experiences and troubles that come from _relative_ poverty
| -- a problem they both share -- even if the homeless person
| in Toronto doesn 't know anything about what living with
| _absolute_ poverty is like. They both still get their
| meagre possessions stolen if they stop watching them for a
| few minutes. They both sleep rough and have to actively
| think about how to not die when there 's a heat wave or a
| cold spell. They both probably have a fungal infection
| somewhere on their bodies from their clothes being damp all
| the dang time. Etc.
| [deleted]
| sombremesa wrote:
| > But the homeless person in Delhi will still
| commisserate with the homeless person in Toronto
|
| Perhaps, but it's worth pointing out that these
| experiences are qualitatively different.
|
| In India, being poor (especially if you're a certain
| caste) is tantamount to being non-human. You can be
| jailed, raped, mistreated, killed without consequence.
| Even the middle class is afforded little human dignity,
| the underclass have no real hope. The homeless in Toronto
| can still get some government services without bribery.
|
| On top of that, there's the whole matter of caste which
| won't go away even if you win the lottery.
|
| Someone else here is saying that dating poor in
| Switzerland is the same as in Delhi...that comes across
| as unbelievably tone deaf. Perhaps they missed the part
| in TFA where this couple has to date far away from the
| home. You can get beaten up or killed for being seen with
| the "wrong person" (in this case same gotra), and it does
| happen - quite often.
|
| So it's not as simple as absolute and relative poverty in
| my opinion (though that is a good thought and is
| definitely part of it).
|
| Risking another bad analogy, I would perhaps compare it
| to being the lowest class of worker in a Walmart versus
| being at the bottom of the org chart in Netflix. You can
| both commiserate on how bad your managers are, but your
| lived experiences are not remotely the same.
| beiller wrote:
| I do agree with the broader point that they are not
| comparable, but one interesting caveat with Toronto is
| that come winter time, you're dead due to extreme cold
| and being homeless.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > You can both commiserate on how bad your managers are
|
| And that's all the person you were replying to was
| saying. You can have things in common to talk about, and
| also have things that are so different you can't even
| comprehend them.
| bserge wrote:
| Why are these people seemingly just accepting their fate?
| What would it take for them to riot?
| sombremesa wrote:
| I grew up in Delhi (as may or may not be obvious from
| this thread), and once witnessed the aftermath of a home
| having been burgled.
|
| The policeman on the scene summoned the watchman of the
| gated community and physically assaulted him (drawing
| blood), accusing him of having been negligent.
|
| You can bet there was not a single consequence of this.
| The watchman was one of the underclass, and this is just
| what's expected.
|
| I can't claim to know why things are like this, but
| there's rarely any justice for _anyone_ in India, unless
| you 're one of the elite or ultrarich. The judicial
| system is in shambles and the poor are just not afforded
| much humanity.
|
| What do you think these people could do? Here is an
| example of what happens when the people try to change
| things in a "democracy" [0].
|
| As a bonus, here are some choice videos of Indian
| politics (the second one is relevant to the story in
| footnote):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAOUmnSs5VA
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5s4quyO2W0
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020-2021_Indian_farmer
| s'_prot...
| bserge wrote:
| I'm just wondering, if things are so bad, why are there
| no riots? Doesn't seem like there's much to lose tbh.
|
| In my home country, they stormed the parliament and
| burned parts of it because the wrong party gained power
| (by fraudulent votes). If they were killing low class
| people, there would be riots, bombings and murders all
| around.
| derefr wrote:
| I feel like that's conflating yet a _third_ kind of
| poverty: having no societal respectability. Having no
| social "credit." No
| https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Whuffie .
|
| Being in poverty _but of a high caste_ in India, is
| pretty-standard "absolute poverty."
|
| Meanwhile, being well-off _but of a low caste_ in India,
| is more like being a recently-freed black slave in the
| ante-bellum southern US.
|
| That experience is really nothing _like_ absolute or
| relative poverty. It 's its own kind of horrible. (It's
| an _orthogonal_ poverty, one could say.)
|
| It does lead to a vicious cycle that _connects_ it to
| absolute /relative poverty, though, since having no
| societal respectability means people aren't willing to
| offer you any opportunities to better your situation,
| because they think badly of you and expect you to
| squander them.
|
| But I would say it is nevertheless best to think of a
| _low-caste_ homeless person in Delhi as having _three_
| distinct problems: relative poverty, absolute poverty,
| _and_ poverty of societal-respectability.
|
| I would note that, while a regular homeless person in
| Toronto might not know anything about the sheer
| inhumanity of being of a low caste in India, a _drug-
| addicted_ homeless person _working as a prostitute to
| feed their addiction_ would actually understand it
| somewhat. In both cases, for example, if someone in these
| groups gets murdered or otherwise wronged, the police don
| 't even bother to investigate -- so they have no access
| to justice. The low-caste homeless in Delhi and the
| crack-addicted streetwalker in Toronto would see the same
| looks on people's faces, and understand them to mean the
| same thing.
| sombremesa wrote:
| I agree that the caste issues are orthogonal to the
| others and that these three kinds of poverty come close
| to encompassing the problem being discussed.
|
| And if this were to be the complete picture, why can't it
| express the sheer inhumanity of being of a low caste in
| India?
|
| Take the case of a "drug-addicted homeless person working
| as a prostitute to feed their addiction" in Toronto -
| this person arrived here by their own choices (some
| amount of agency), but you can be born into that
| situation (with the awareness that your children will
| follow the same path) in India. [0]
|
| You can't worry about societal respectability when you
| have no basic human dignity. Perhaps that is a fourth
| kind of poverty.
|
| [0] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/11/28/the-
| indian-cas...
| ReptileMan wrote:
| They are totally comparable when it comes to dating since
| social status is relative. The poor person in Switzerland
| has shittier dating life than the middle income in Botswana
| even if he is making more in absolute terms.
| [deleted]
| sombremesa wrote:
| > Did you actually read that comment about Toronto?
|
| I did. Now that you have that information, perhaps you can
| actually read what I wrote.
| jimbob21 wrote:
| Sure.
|
| > will reduce the comments I see on the internet that try
| and compare Delhi/Mumbai squalor to LA
|
| You want to reduce comments comparing your city's poorness
| to another city's poorness.
|
| > It's not really enough...you should experience it for
| yourself
|
| You're saying I can't talk about poor areas I know about
| because they're not as poor as your city. That's
| gatekeeping being poor, plain as day. But more than that,
| it totally shuts down all conversation about why your city
| might be so poor. What is happening in your advanced poor
| city that isn't happening in other cities?
| sombremesa wrote:
| > You want to reduce comments comparing your city's
| poorness to another city's poorness.
|
| Not _exactly_. My bad, perhaps I should 've provided an
| example of the kind of comment I'm talking about. I can't
| be arsed to go find that comment right now but it's about
| this video:
|
| https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/video-of-man-eating-
| animal-...
|
| The comment I'm talking about begins with (iirc) "The
| same thing is happening in LA..."
|
| I don't know what chip you have on your shoulder about
| this "gatekeeping" but I wish you luck and hope that
| these things aren't happening in your cities, but of
| course you have the freedom to say that they are
| regardless.
|
| I want to add something: I'm just against saying that
| these things are the _same_. I 'm not saying anything
| about better or worse or that poverty isn't poverty.
| Given a choice I might rather be the average homeless
| person in India as opposed to LA, because at least I
| wouldn't be as likely to be there due to crippling
| addictions or mental illness.
|
| That's why I compared it to languages, I don't think one
| established language is objectively better or worse than
| another, but direct translations rarely work well.
| lsiebert wrote:
| Generally my sense is that people are not good at measuring
| their expertise about topics. We infer a lot of data into our
| world views based on paltry facts and analogy to our own
| experiences. We think we understand because our minds paper
| over the lacuna of our knowledge. The more I learn, the more I
| realize how little I know, and how quick people are to believe
| that other people's experience is much like their own.
|
| That's why I ask people to cite sources often, or listen to
| their personal stories, so I can learn more.
| 762236 wrote:
| When comparing, don't compare in absolute dollars, but the
| purchasing power in the local economy.
| snambi wrote:
| There is a difference between the "slums" in India versus the
| ones in USA. The indian slums are just poor with no
| infrastructure. you will find the people in the slums to be
| genuine, kind and hardworking. of course there are exceptions.
|
| The slums in USA are exactly the opposite. The slum dwellers
| are scary to even look at. They don't work and they are anti
| social. They disturb the society.
|
| The slums are happening in USA, despite plenty of jobs,
| government programs and NGOs trying to help them.
|
| I am not one country is better than the other. simply pointing
| out the differences.
|
| Article such as this are written to make Americans feel good
| about themselves at the cost of others, while providing
| absolutely no solution or help to those suffering.
|
| so, either you should help or just shutup.
| johncena33 wrote:
| > Then I read the first comment on this HN thread, which is
| directly comparing this to Toronto.
|
| > [...] Reminds me of learning a new language, where beginners
| try to formulate thoughts in their native tongue and produce a
| direct translation, whereas those who are fluent can skip that
| step completely.
|
| Immigrant brown man living in Toronto here. I don't have any
| dating life. Because dating a brown man is stigmatized, thanks
| to racism and media representation. My upper-middle class white
| therapist couldn't believe that I am at the bottom tier in the
| dating market.
|
| So it's not just some language or cultural barrier. People have
| hard times understanding the predicaments of people from lower
| socio-economic strata even when they live in the same city and
| speak same language.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Immigrant brown man living in Toronto here. I don't have
| any dating life. Because dating a brown man is stigmatized,
| thanks to racism and media representation. My upper-middle
| class white therapist couldn't believe that I am at the
| bottom tier in the dating market.
|
| What did your therapist think was the real issue?
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| The mother of a friend on mine in Pakistan was hiring a part-
| time housekeeper for ~3 hours per day. One housekeeper asked
| for $40 USD/month, and the mother thought that was too
| expensive.
| kshacker wrote:
| Well it depends on 1) the local price and 2) the ability of
| the mother to pay. She may not be able to afford help with an
| American minimum wage.
| flemhans wrote:
| In Mumbai, our friends were pretty well off and had a
| housekeeper who came 2 x 2 hours daily (preparing lunch and
| dinner, doing laundry, and cleaning around). The
| housekeeper, being paid pretty well, had her own
| housekeeper so she could have time for all these
| housekeeping gigs.
|
| The well-off friends had never tried their aircon because
| it "was not that hot" (35 degrees C) and rummaged around to
| find the remote. It was so hot, I couldn't imagine that
| they just accepted it.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > The housekeeper, being paid pretty well, had her own
| housekeeper so she could have time for all these
| housekeeping gigs.
|
| Sounds like her housekeeper should get better customers.
| s5300 wrote:
| She may be fair skinned, her housekeeper may be dark
| skinned. In India, something as simple as that can
| determine how much you may make as a housekeeper. Sucks,
| right?
| captain_price7 wrote:
| Here in Dhaka, we pay around 45usd/month for 1.5hr of work
| per day.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Not disagreeing with your overall point, but amount of money
| (based on currency exchange rates) is a bad way to compare
| poverty levels across different areas. It doesn't take into
| account cost of living which makes a huge difference.
| pm90 wrote:
| Except that cost of living is also pretty high in Indian
| metros (especially Delhi). This is why most of the residents
| live in slums: they can't afford permanent/legal housing.
| From the article:
|
| > But nearly half of the city's population lives in slums
| without basic services and facilities like drinking water,
| garbage disposal or a proper drainage system.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| Even with cost of living comparisons, an American making
| minimum wage can easily afford a mobile phone, particularly a
| cheap $25 phone.
|
| In many parts of the world that mobile phone will require
| substantial budgeting over several months to afford.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > an American making minimum wage can easily afford a
| mobile phone, particularly a cheap $25 phone
|
| It's probably worth noting that "easily" probably doesn't
| belong in there for a lot of people.
|
| This is a really good read, if you're interested
| https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/on-the-
| experience-...
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| Notice that most of this guy's problems come from rent.
| Getting decent housing is expensive, having a long
| commute is a byproduct of high rent, etc. That's caused
| by rampant NIMBYism preventing the construction of new
| housing, and not anything related to American minimum
| wage. If you increased the minimum wage 200% rent would
| also increase 200% because housing is inelastic. This
| exact trend has played out in the SFBA, Seattle, and many
| other west coast cities over the last decade. You can't
| legislate your way out of supply and demand.
| sombremesa wrote:
| I'm not talking about the American middle class in the
| comparison I make in the GP.
|
| I actually have no idea what you're talking about, because I
| didn't mention any amount of money at all.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > So either Westerners don't realize that people in these
| places are making less money in a month than the middle
| class person can expect to spend in an average afternoon
|
| You are making a comparison between two sums of money (the
| amount middle class people spend in an afternoon, and the
| amount poor people make in a month).
|
| Obviously I misinterpreted who the middle class people
| were, but I doubt I'm the only one. I thought you meant
| middle class Westerners.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I read it the same way you did.
| em-bee wrote:
| i am still confused why that makes a difference. to me
| the comment only makes sense if the middle class in india
| is more affluent than the middle class in the US.
|
| https://yourstory.com/2018/03/exactly-indias-middle-
| class-an...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwthere wrote:
| Yesterday someone posted admonishing billionaires who live
| lives without the sort of day-to-day experiences the rest of us
| do. They cited their concerns-- finding enough free time to do
| activities, getting along with co-workers, etc. It's just this
| great disconnect you run into online-- people don't realize a
| great deal of the world would see having those [working-class]
| types of concerns as luxurious and disconnected from their own.
| It's just a gap you see a lot of here, you really have to work
| to remember how bad billions of people have it.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Yep - if you see a guy riding a rickety bicycle with a goat
| slung over his back... think about how he might be one of the
| wealthier people in his community.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Many years ago, I read of a study that measured poverty not in
| terms of income but with metrics like "How many meals per day
| do you get?" and "What kind of shelter do you have?" It
| concluded that less than 1/2 of one percent of Americans were
| poor by standards in India.
|
| When I've repeated that online, on at least one occasion
| someone who lived in India got mad at me for supposedly
| _promoting negative stereotypes_ and told me my info was out of
| date. They seemed outraged.
|
| I spent some years homeless in America. I'm still quite poor
| and frustrated with that fact.
|
| I don't know what the solution is for trying to promote better
| cross cultural understanding. I try to focus on how to get the
| word out in the US that lack of appropriate housing supply is a
| primary root cause of homelessness in this country. It's
| shocking how many people insist that lack of affordable housing
| has nothing to do with homelessness and homeless people are all
| just crazies and junkies who don't want to get better.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > It concluded that less than 1/2 of one percent of Americans
| were poor by standards in India.
|
| I have no trouble believing that.
|
| Same thing with the software industry really.
|
| Source control has been mainstream since the 90's, build
| pipeline, automation and so on. But there are still shops
| around where they'll look at you funny for suggesting using
| git, that swear copy-pasting executables in a GUI is an ok
| way to upgrade and where the versions of languages used are
| at least old enough to have a legal drink. Not a lot, but
| they still exist. You won't find any overlap with what's
| going on in SV over there.
| wil421 wrote:
| There's someone on YouTube I sorta watched from time to time
| when the pandemic hit. He's located in Venice beach, German
| in Venice. He was exposing the homeless issue and lack of
| government response.
|
| Fast forward to now. The city offered everyone a free place
| to go and many took it. There were still a lot of people who
| refused. Now the garbage trucks and police evicted them. The
| garbage people packed a lot of stuff and put it into storage.
|
| What's your take? They were offered housing while they get
| back on their feet and chose not to take it.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| First, some people took it and some did not. Yet you are
| trying to suggest we judge all homeless based on those who
| did not without knowing any further details. Damn them all
| to hell because some were offered housing and said "no."
|
| A lot of services offered to the homeless are really
| terrible. I never stayed in a shelter while homeless. They
| have rules that make it just shy of being a form of prison,
| they tend to not be safe and they often have serious mold
| problems, among other things.
|
| They also offered me no option to continue living as a
| family with my adult sons. Every service I spoke to urged
| me to take shelter as a single woman and to wait-list my
| sons for shelter as single adult men. There were zero
| programs to help us find shelter as a family of three blood
| relatives who still need each other to make our lives work.
|
| I have done a lot of writing about homelessness and housing
| issues over the years. I could direct you to several of my
| blogs if you actually are sincerely interested in my take.
| I doubt that you are. That's likely a rhetorical device.
|
| I am doing what I can to continue researching the issue, to
| provide useful information for small communities to use,
| etc. I don't know how to get traction and I don't know how
| to adequately monetize my work which makes it difficult to
| keep writing about it in hopes of other people benefiting
| because I need to eat and pay rent too. I'm certainly not
| independently wealthy.
| wil421 wrote:
| I've done outreach and volunteer work before. Not sure
| how you interpreted my reply but it was not a negative
| question.
|
| These topics are of interest to me.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I took it as negative because you closed with this:
|
| _They were offered housing while they get back on their
| feet and chose not to take it._
|
| It's full of implicit accusation that the homeless are
| difficult, uncooperative, causing their own problems and
| you can't help them because they are irrational pains in
| the butt.
|
| I interpreted it that way in part because many homeless
| services are so bad they help keep the problem alive
| rather than helping to solve it.
|
| As just one example: Most homeless people have serious
| health issues. It's an underlying cause of their
| financial problems and a barrier to employment.
|
| But if you go to a soup kitchen, you are exposed to other
| sick people, plus cigarette smoke and marijuana smoke. I
| eventually quit going to soup kitchens and just worked at
| finding other ways to keep myself fed because my health
| issues are my number one problem making my life not work,
| so anything that makes it harder for me to take care of
| my health is a very serious problem.
|
| I think we should lower the barrier to food stamps in the
| US. It's a good program that allows you to access food
| from normal middle class venues which are actually clean
| etc. I think we should do all we can to cut the
| bureaucratic costs and as much as humanly possible say
| "If you want food stamps, here you go" without asking
| people to prove they need them.
|
| But I don't expect anything like that will ever happen.
| Talk of UBI appears to be code for "And now rich people
| can say _Shut up. You are getting a check, you ingrate._
| " rather than a genuine attempt to give meaningful relief
| to poor Americans.
|
| Cutting a check is an easy answer to a hard problem, so
| likely won't solve anything.
|
| I've listed my blogs elsewhere in another comment if you
| genuinely want to know more about what I think about
| homelessness, housing issues and community development.
| zamzoid wrote:
| I am wondering why you think a basic income check
| wouldn't help anything, because it seems to exactly solve
| the issue you describe. You sign up for the check (or a
| lot of the times, get it automatically from the IRS), get
| it regularly, and buy food with it. Very little
| bureaucracy compared with food stamps. I agree that one
| must not call those who rely on the checks entitled and
| refuse them any further assistance. I think the best
| thing is to do what we can to help people get back on
| their feet or at least in a stable situation, and a basic
| income check would be only one (albeit major) element of
| that.
|
| I concede that distributing the checks may be difficult
| to those without stable mailing addresses. Then it may
| help to for example allow distribution in cash at the
| local post office.
|
| The pandemic stimulus checks appear to have had a
| tremendous impact in reducing poverty, see
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-government-
| program-cu..., at least based on the studies there. I
| don't know what the path is for this becoming regular
| policy, but the proposed child tax credit is projected to
| greatly decrease child poverty (although it has its own
| problems, it's tough to get people to understand it
| exists and how to use it).
| lapsed_pacifist wrote:
| I'm interested in reading more of your writing. I worked
| with TANF recipients, many of whom were homeless
| (although few of them were unsheltered) and would like to
| hear more of your perspective because I have some
| exposure personally, and also because there is a serious
| problem with providing services to a large number of
| homeless people in my local area.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/
|
| The sidebar links out to other things by me:
|
| Write Pay, Pocket Puter, The Genevieve Files, What Helps
| The Homeless, San Diego Homeless Survival Guide,
| r/GigWorks
|
| I also run r/CitizenPlanners and I'm the author or
| Eclogiselle.com and Project: SRO and The Butterfly
| Economy
|
| http://www.eclogiselle.com/
|
| http://projectsro.blogspot.com
|
| http://butterflyeconomy.blogspot.com/
|
| Things don't get updated as frequently as I would like in
| part because I don't have traction, so I don't get the
| kind of feedback I need to help me figure out what to
| talk about and because I don't get enough from tips and
| Patreon to focus on these projects instead of on trying
| to come up with enough money to survive, but I have done
| a lot of writing over the years.
|
| That list is not comprehensive. It's just stuff that has
| more than a few posts and most of that stuff is still
| being actively developed, just slowly.
| [deleted]
| sombremesa wrote:
| > I don't know what the solution is for trying to promote
| better cross cultural understanding.
|
| I think that's just it: trying to promote better cross
| cultural understanding. That's something I tried with the GP
| here, but I could probably write up an article to be linked
| to in such discussions.
|
| > metrics like "How many meals per day do you get?" and "What
| kind of shelter do you have?"
|
| I think this is a good thought, a focus on qualitative
| differences in lived experience using quantifiable metrics.
| With that approach you're less likely to offend rather than
| inform. Might be best to skip the "less than 1/2 of one
| percent of Americans were poor by standards in India" since
| it seems to suggest that American poverty isn't "real"
| poverty.
|
| I would even go so far as to say that communicating the
| cultural context is far more important than underlining the
| economics, the former of which TFA is attempting to do.
| loopz wrote:
| India has lots of villages, slums and people in between
| having very poor material standards compared to Western
| countries. But people are also much more interconnected,
| rely on each other and find ways to get by. So to get that
| culture, you have to spend at least 6 months and really get
| to know what family values are, and how things tend to work
| out. It's very different than the lonely individualist
| countries. Many Indians actually move back home to be with
| family and friends!
|
| So superficial analyses may just not be very recognizable
| to the population, because of very different value systems
| and nuances.
| sombremesa wrote:
| That's very true, but I think it's possible to a) have a
| fact-based approach without being superficial, and b)
| communicate cultural context without having to plumb the
| depths of the human condition.
|
| Were it necessary to cover the subtle nuances of Eastern
| and Western culture, it would be hard to get anywhere
| with prose. I think it's sufficient to convey enough
| information to demonstrate that the value systems and
| lived experiences are fundamentally different.
|
| The goal is not to "level the playing field" in terms of
| where people are coming from, but to foster more
| meaningful discussions by explicitly taking context into
| account.
| fragmede wrote:
| But it takes the plumbing the depths of the human
| condition to realize that we're _not_ actually a that
| different, and that the fundamentals are the SAME. Airy
| eloquent prose may not have the same effect on the data
| driven as hard metrics, but comparing $20,000 (US) a year
| to the equivalent of $1 US a day, without capturing, in
| prose, that person in the US below the poverty line may
| be going hungry more days a week, and is more exposed to
| the elements, and more likely to be harrassed by police
| /others and more likely to die, _is_ superficial.
|
| Prose is what's needed to communicate effectively. Tables
| and charts simply can't do that by themselves. Even they
| need a legend and labels to be useful.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I'm a former military wife. Just trying to explain how
| military life is different to other Americans was insanely
| hard.
|
| I lived in the same country. I used the same currency. I
| spoke the same language. Yet my life was not like that of
| civilians I knew and their underlying assumptions and mine
| that informed our decisions just did not match up to such a
| degree that I eventually stopped trying to explain my life
| choices even to people quite close to me who simply did not
| get the context and that their decision-making matrix and
| mine were largely unrelated.
|
| I wish you luck in trying to figure out how to do this.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| It's not possible to make people understand. You can try
| it understand others, and some others can try to
| understand you, but you can't make someone's open their
| mind if they don't want to.
| sombremesa wrote:
| Thanks...I think I'm going to give up before I even
| start. The gap is far wider than I had ever imagined.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _Twelve years after they started dating, they married. The family
| disapproved. Surender's grandmother and Preeti's mother were from
| the same "gotra," or clan. Hindu clans prohibit marriage within
| the descendants of an unbroken male line._
|
| The Wiki page on "gotra" suggests they "only" have to go back
| seven generations (I don't know _any_ of my ancestors beyond five
| generations and the father of one of my great-grandfathers was
| never known; would that be scandalous in India?), which seems to
| imply extreme complication. If each female ancestor has her own
| unique gotra, in seven generations there would be 64 gotras.
| Unless there are thousands of gotras, it must be very common for
| a prospective bride and groom to overlap. Little wonder that
| arranged marriages are common.
| webmobdev wrote:
| From what I recall, some temples / priests / elders keep a
| record of this within a community. And yeah, that is one of the
| reasons why marrying outside your community, with or without
| your parent's consent, is such a big deal in India (not just
| with the Hindus who subscribe to _gotras_ but also among other
| communities, as the emphasis on arranged marriages are often on
| "shared values" between the families. It's harder to determine
| what values an "outsider" or their family has, as it becomes
| harder to use your social circles to investigate them. )
| valarauko wrote:
| In practice, there really are several dozen gotras (at least
| among the Brahmins), if not hundreds.
|
| The traditional practice was for Brahmins to declare their
| exact line of descent alongside the gotra, by naming five
| noteworthy ancestors (pravara rishis), starting from the top
| level saptarishi ancestor gotra(one of seven). Some of the
| saptarishis famously didn't get along, and their descendants
| are considered incompatible matches for marriage. When
| considering a marriage alliance from a family with the same top
| level saptarishi gotra, it was considered acceptable if at
| least three of the five pravara rishis were different, ie, a
| distant branch of the family. As families lost their
| traditions, people identified their nodal pravara rishi as the
| gotra, which is how most people today know them. In addition,
| in ancient times the custom was for non-brahmins to state the
| gotra & lineage of their family priest when performing
| religious rituals, and ended up adopting them.
| gopalv wrote:
| > Unless there are thousands of gotras, it must be very common
| for a prospective bride and groom to overlap.
|
| The brahmin communities have a handful of gothras as I
| understand it (7 or 8, depending on who you ask).
|
| The relationship matrix is resolved by only tracking a single
| side of the family tree and making first cousins who are able
| to marry each other without complication on this topic. So it
| doesn't directly fix the inbreeding within insular communities,
| though that was its intention.
|
| My father-in-law spent quite some time investigating this, as
| my clan is matrilineal in ancestry (still very patriarchal,
| just brother-sister family unit instead of husband-wife) with a
| history of cross-marriages from patrilineal men for
| treaties/allies.
|
| Completely pointless pedigree certificate, felt like I was
| being picked for breeding instead of an equal partnership.
|
| A dive into this sort of discrimination almost left me
| wondering why something with political eugenics didn't come out
| of India. Fears which I still have for the 2040s seeing the CAA
| and NRC.
| nikkinana wrote:
| That's eracist.
| jp42 wrote:
| Whenever there is comparison between something in India and west,
| almost always its not apples to apples. There are 1.3 billion
| people, and very wide range of social & economic spectrum, which
| inherently makes comparison very difficult. for the sake of
| example - for "X", you will find many many Indians spending
| vastly more than western people, at the same time you will find
| millions of Indians who could not even dream about X. replace
| anything in X. Another I have seen many families who give freedom
| to girl on whatever they want to do, at the same time there are
| several conservative and hardliners families. its very hard to
| generalized due to sheer size and diversity of India.
|
| IMO without meaningful context comparison between west & India is
| pointless.
| prox wrote:
| An Indian man once told me religion is the only unifying part
| of India. That if that didn't exist, India would fall apart.
| Can't tell of course if that is true.
| bserge wrote:
| That's more likely the government + military.
| chana_masala wrote:
| Dating is so depressing, and it sounds even more soul crushing
| under these conditions.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I disagree. It is the best thing they have in their lives.
|
| Also, you don't really need money to be happy. I used to have
| no money at all when I was young and still had great time with
| girls.
| chana_masala wrote:
| I'd rather practice Brahmachariya and be married
| gopalv wrote:
| Some of this stuff looks very poorly sourced or misunderstood.
|
| > Marrying within the "gotra" is one of the primary reasons for
| recurring "honour killing" of lovers in India
|
| I hope not, because it is such a weird upper-caste nit-pick.
|
| > they talk about their lives and walk around the park, or eat
| aloo-chaat or golgappas at a roadside stall
|
| That is such a still frame of the middle class life in Delhi from
| the 90s. My partner's been dragging me to Green park and AIIMS to
| revisit places which has stayed running for 25 years.
|
| The 2012 Nirbhaya case had a chilling effect on this for young
| couples, which is why the trend moved away from being outside and
| into malls with security cameras.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > The 2012 Nirbhaya case
|
| I wasn't familiar with it but remembered after reading the
| below link. Warning, it's horrific.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape_and_mur...
| factorialboy wrote:
| Unfortunately Indian media is full of "secular" authors
| pretending to be liberal but regularly dishing hate against
| native faiths.
|
| But to be fair, it's not just the news media that's afflicted
| by this disease, bollywood is no better.
| webmobdev wrote:
| I didn't understand your viewpoint. What exactly are you
| angry at in believing the author is "dishing hate" - that the
| author pointed out that marrying within _gotras_ is frowned
| upon or that people are sometimes killed over it (honour
| killing)? Both are facts.
| ummonk wrote:
| People are murdered by family over all sorts of things, but
| random incidents don't imply a general pattern.
|
| Honor killing is a real occurrence but not over gotra-
| incest.
| random314 wrote:
| Standard right wing talking point. Liberal authors
| criticizing the current regime, a Hindu nationalist party,
| are anti nationals. Here criticism of the BJP or social ills
| is equated to hatred of Hinduism. The authors might
| themselves be Hindus, but it doesn't matter.
| namdnay wrote:
| Huh? I don't think any journalist cares what god(s) you
| worship , as long as you don't impose anything on those
| around you
| paxys wrote:
| Yeah that part stood out to me. Honor killings happen for the
| opposite reason - the sides are too far apart in terms of
| religion, caste etc. Gotra is an overall minor concern even to
| hard-liners.
| farmerstan wrote:
| I thought Indians largely looked down on dating, although maybe
| the times have changed in the last 10 years? I have many close
| Indian friends and they are all married via arranged marriage.
| I'm pretty sure their American-born children will not marry via
| arranged marriage though and they have all come to grips with
| that.
|
| I remember talking with one of my friends about arranged marriage
| and she laughed in my face when I asked her what she thought
| about marrying for love. She said that marrying for love is a
| Hollywood myth and if you look around, did it really exist long
| term? She said compatibility was the most important thing, not
| love, which I found very interesting.
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| _> She said compatibility was the most important thing, not
| love, which I found very interesting._
|
| Calmly explain to her that the best thing to do is to spend
| teens and 20s "finding yourself" and "experimenting" and
| "having fun" as a "free spirit" then to "settle down" in your
| 30s when you are "ready" and "know what you want".
| triceratops wrote:
| "Arranged marriage" in an Indian context doesn't necessarily
| imply "parents tell you who to marry".
|
| In many cases it's essentially parent-involved matchmaking.
| There may be a professional matchmaker or family astrologer who
| sources leads. The prospective bride and bridegroom consider
| multiple or even dozens of options, and discuss their favorites
| with their parents or other close relatives. The bride/groom
| visit each other a few times, with families in tow. After they
| reach an agreement, there's a few months-long engagement. The
| couple may stay in touch by telephone, social media, video
| calls, (often chaperoned) in-person visits, and so on. If
| either person finds a major red-flag during this time, they
| have the (rarely-used) nuclear option of breaking the
| engagement.
|
| (Source: I know Indian couples who have "arranged marriages" in
| the way I described).
|
| > She said compatibility was the most important thing, not
| love, which I found very interesting.
|
| Isn't that considered important in the West too? Advice such as
| "you have to agree on money, children, and religion; everything
| else is negotiable" or "you have to be able to make each other
| laugh" is thrown out pretty frequently. It's generally
| understood that relationships have a honeymoon phase, after
| which compatibility is a major factor in staying together.
| People who get married young sometimes don't understand this
| fully.
| watwut wrote:
| The compatibility being important is something I was told and I
| live in Europe. The compatibility is talked about a lot on
| relationship forums too (for example on reddit) - including by
| Americans.
|
| Literally only place where the importance of compatibility is
| considered odd is HN. Here, compatibility and matching is never
| mentioned in debated about relationships. Everywhere else, it
| is considered important.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Something I dislike about the whole "dating" thing (a very US
| cultural influence due to their media) is that what is supposed
| to be a normal socialising event between too people, is made into
| a _consumerist ritual_. So much that two couples walking in a
| park or hanging with their friends is not really a "date" or you
| being cheapskate as, apparently, romance without money is no
| longer romance.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| This is not just a "walk in the park" date. I have seen these
| parks myself, in Delhi and in Mumbai--there are literally
| dozens of couples kissing and having sex in the dark in these
| tiny, tiny parks, hardly 30 feet between couples. It is a date
| of last resort in a gossip-heavy culture--there is no privacy,
| and young people are shamed for wanting to experience love,
| especially if it's with the "wrong" person.
| bboylen wrote:
| Damn thats crazy. Had no idea this was a thing over there.
|
| So different from my experience in the US
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I've never made this distinction in my head.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Me neither, but I do have friends that did!
| nine_zeros wrote:
| I would contend it's easier to date in India. Cheap thrills are
| everywhere, far too many people around for you to stick out of
| the crowd (you just need to be a few train/bus stops away from
| familiar locations).
|
| Strikingly, transportation is cheap. No need to own a car/get
| expensive Uber rides. And street food is plenty and delicious.
| Simple dating is much easier for everyone in the spectrum.
|
| Societal issues on the other hand are still not up to the other
| modern 50% of the country.
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