[HN Gopher] India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN
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India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN
Author : cryoz
Score : 316 points
Date : 2022-11-07 17:35 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (economictimes.indiatimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (economictimes.indiatimes.com)
| jialutu wrote:
| I am really baffled by this claim, since I've been observing the
| Global Hunger Index for a while, where India has consistently
| fared worse than even DPRK (North Korea), and is almost the same
| level as Afghanistan, a country that has been at war for 20
| years. https://www.globalhungerindex.org/
|
| I am not sure if these 2 reports are contradictory, or whether
| they are in agreement with each other (since the GHI score for
| India has been trending downwards). Does anyone who is more
| knowledgeable on this please explain?
| rajeshp1986 wrote:
| The reason for this is the population is so large that absolute
| numbers will be still very high. There are still millions of
| people that need to be lifted.
| 3qz wrote:
| freeCandy wrote:
| https://archive.md/9UPfu
| InTheArena wrote:
| This is one of the messages that need to be pushed hard -
| globalization - with it's implications on the "first world"
| global middle class - has helped make this possible.
|
| It's like talking to people opposed to GMO rice. They are fine
| with an ideological position that GMO foods should be eliminated
| until you point out the alternative is hundreds of millions dead
| of starvation.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Why does globalisation automatically deserve credit for
| progress in two major economies with the most government
| planning?
|
| Have evaluated alternative hypotheses? Maybe Education or
| Scientific Literacy or something else deserves this credit.
| anuvrat1 wrote:
| It's quite easy to see, the early growth is hard carried by
| export of manufacturing from China and services from India.
| Yes, you can say, this wouldn't be possible without Chinese
| government infrastructure and incentives push and Indian
| government early push for premiere education, but that would
| have been useless without customers that are global markets.
| arein3 wrote:
| It is like cars in a city in a way. You can build larger roads
| but then more people will start driving.
| seibelj wrote:
| Capitalism wins again! Better than trillions in government and UN
| dollars. Only productive enterprise and real business activity
| can lift hundreds of millions out of poverty - there is no
| substitute.
| Kukumber wrote:
| It has nothing to do with capitalism, it's all about strong
| government, strong institutions and the people who understand
| and pursue a common goal i.e: a synchronized society
|
| If anything, capitalism wins at:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-11/india-s-d...
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| Not OP, but I think what he's referring to is communism
| declining a generation ago:
|
| > Following liberalizing economic reforms in the late 1980s
| and early 1990s, India is now one of the world's fastest
| growing economies, as well as the second most populous.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110520002800/https://www.ers.u.
| ..
| Kukumber wrote:
| This is exactly what i'm saying, without the people
| deciding one the policies and the tools to use, it's
| nothing
|
| Otherwise we see other kind of societies:
|
| https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/cartel-capitalism/
| brosinante wrote:
| Didn't China (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-
| release/2022/04/01/l...) and the USSR
| (https://borgenproject.org/tag/poverty-in-the-former-
| soviet-u...) do similarly?
| twblalock wrote:
| Both of those articles demonstrate that the improvement
| happened after those countries allowed market economies.
| epistasis wrote:
| Most communists and socialists will refer to both the USSR
| and China as capitalist projects on accelerated timelines.
| They were trying to speed-run from feudalism, through
| capitalism, to communism.
|
| At least that's what comes up when you mention the problems
| that these countries have.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| China's unprecedented generational explosion into the middle
| class happened only after Deng Xiaoping instituted market
| reforms. Economically, China is certainly more socialist than
| the west, but far more capitalist than it was in the 1970's.
|
| Same with USSR/Russia, post-communism.
| [deleted]
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| At least currently, Russia is far below USSR median PPP
| income, inflation adjusted.
|
| Life has gotten worse for the average person in Russia in
| the last 40 years, not better - by almost every measurable
| metric.
|
| And that's with all the low cost tech they can import -
| like $20 cell phones and pirated Hollywood movies.
|
| If China is on one end of success, Russia is on the other.
| janef0421 wrote:
| Market reforms are not intrinsically capitalist.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| Yes but these were. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese
| _economic_reform#:~:tex....
| AnnikaL wrote:
| Your second link refers to poverty being reduced after the
| fall of communism, when former Soviet states instituted
| capitalist reforms.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| There was a massive drop in living standards in the former
| Soviet Union after the introduction of capitalism in the
| 90es. Average life expectancy dropped something like 10
| years, corresponding to millions of dead.
| wiseowise wrote:
| And that's an issue of capitalism, not impotent economy
| that has been drained by decades of poor planned economy
| of communism?
| snovv_crash wrote:
| It also coincided with massive increase in the supply of
| available alcohol.
| kurisufag wrote:
| >There was a massive drop in living standards
|
| that tends to happen when the government runs resources
| down to near-zero, forcing the new system to start from
| scratch.
|
| had the conversion occurred earlier, when the USSR was
| still a reasonably successful state, I suspect it would
| have gone nicer.
| purpleflame1257 wrote:
| The millions dead in the Holodomor and the Great Leap forward
| certainly don't have any need for money anymore.
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Only after they gave up a planned economy.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The west is shooting itself in the foot with socialism while
| Asian countries are lifting people out of poverty at an
| unprecendented rate.
|
| Inequality is a feature, the pie grows larger:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtJwAYJ9B08
|
| Instead of lifting poor class upwards, the west wants to pull
| everyone else down. Reducing quality of life and regressing in
| every metric of progress. The future is in Asia, places like
| Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Malaysia,
| Singapore. Socialism is so easily captivating to average IQ
| voter class in USA, it is a fight every generation has to go
| through. Countless examples of failures won't convince people.
|
| The likes of Greta Thunburg have changed their tune from
| climate alarmicism to just destroy Capitalism all together:
| https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/15885879870379786...
|
| Capitalism branding has been damaged by equating it with crony-
| capitalism which is what most people think it is.
| tinktank wrote:
| A tweet to a writer of a book with bad faith arguments
| (https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/review-bad-
| scienc...) and a youtube link to a talk by the president of
| the Ayn Rand institute does not an argument make.
|
| PS: You might find this information on how her old was
| financed amusing (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn-rand-
| social-security/). I know I did.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Maybe I should have listed Milton's books. Just because
| professor is part of Ayn Rand institute, you're not arguing
| about the points presented in the lecture, but instead
| discarding his credibility by association. There is a
| massive amount of 200+ years of history of Capitalism
| that's difficult to succintly address here.
|
| Here is Alex Epstein's Google talk about climate alarmicism
| that aligns with Shellenberger's post:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6b7K1hjZk4
|
| Shellenberger's book review (first one that shows up on
| google search) is just following the same tropes of Climate
| catastrophization. The article doesn't steelman
| Shellenberger, but instead reduces it down to "... yet bad
| science, strawman arguments, cherry-picking facts, and ad
| hominem attacks on scientists, media, others"; ofcourse
| written by folks at Yale "Climate Connections" blog.
|
| Here are a couple of alternative reviews:
| https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/apocalypse-never-
| the-...
|
| https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id
| =...
|
| Climate arguments have no counter balance. The media
| routinely ignores the otherside of the equation and never
| provides a balanced view of how we can tackle it. Instead,
| the zeitgeist created by progressives for last 50 years is
| that we should depopulate, regress, and reduce quality of
| life and ultimately become state dependent. The same group
| of scientists and environmentalists that also ran the
| campaign against nuclear energy.
| wiredearp wrote:
| It's not hard, really, given that you will need to make only
| $1.90 per day to automatically become declassified as poor [1].
| If anything, capitalism makes this harder to do achieve [2]
| which probably explains why the limit is set so low.
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/international-
| poverty-l...
|
| [2]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X2...
| baybal2 wrote:
| standardUser wrote:
| It's a _mixed economy_ , with massive government inference in
| markets, just like literally every single country on the
| planet.
| RGamma wrote:
| If this plays out the same like it has in the mature economies
| since neoliberalism then whelp, our biosphere's done for...
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| How wonderful! In the influx of bad news it stands out as an
| awesome accomplishment.
|
| Congratulations, India!
| Proven wrote:
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| One of the best things about living in India is watching families
| move from lower or lower-middle class to middle-class status.
| Usually, all it takes is someone from the family landing a white-
| collar job.
|
| While the tech bodyshops (TCS, Infosys, etc.) might have a poor
| reputation in the US, these companies have been absolutely
| critical in helping move tens of millions into middle-class
| respectability.
| nsenifty wrote:
| My first job was in Infosys back in 2001. Coming from a lower-
| middle class farming family, it was a huge deal. My monthly
| gross was something my dad (farmer) + mom (school teacher)
| would earn in an entire year. I remember my dad proudly putting
| a portrait of NR Narayana Murthy (founder of Infosys) on our
| wall - it is usually reserved for gods/ancestors or revered
| sages.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| When I see Indian developers, I have in my mind that they're
| similar to Chinese: the whole village bands together and
| gather resources to give that one kid a university education
| and a good job, so that that one kid returns to the village
| many years later to help people out of poverty.
| rsgrafx wrote:
| I have an uncle who came from Malaysia to the US in the
| 70's to do his studies. He was "given the task by his
| village elders.." as he would say and they did exactly that
| pooled resources and made sure he finished school. When I
| heard his story I was so moved. He's built everyone in his
| village a house, invested in many businesses now, literally
| changed lives of countless families and friends.
| deepzn wrote:
| not villages necessarily, families look out for each other,
| everyone's own kin.
| synergy20 wrote:
| agreed, I feel it's not village-based at all, it's more
| of kin based, or family based.
| spoils19 wrote:
| That's awesome to hear! Our family does something similar -
| we have a line of portraits above our family photos of the
| various CEOs that have hired us throughout the years - namely
| coal and oil company owners.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| My FIL funded their maid's kids education. The son got into a
| decent engineering school and landed a job at TCS. The
| daughter studied nursing and got a job at a large chain
| hospital. The kids bought their mom an apartment and a car.
|
| Its just amazing to watch - this woman's mom, grandmom,
| aunts, uncles were all peasants or did odd trades. Now
| because of a single generation, the entire family could dream
| of middle class dignity.
| deepzn wrote:
| real cool, thx for sharing!
| acchow wrote:
| Is TCS/Infosys/etc taking a risk on hiring
| untrained/undertrained employees and putting in the effort to
| train them? Or did they get training through a
| college/university?
|
| If the latter, I'd say education is helping pull these people
| out of poverty.
| GordonS wrote:
| IME (I led offshore teams of Indian devs for years), the
| quality of the in-house training
| TCS/Infosys/Cognizant/Capgemini etc provide for employees
| is... poor. They seem to focus on quantity over quality,
| presumably so devs have lots of "relevant" training to pad
| CVs with.
| Dharmakirti wrote:
| Indias software sector is so starved of talented resources
| that they have already started tapping into rural areas. e.g.
| navgurukul.org
| akudha wrote:
| Not everything is rosy though. In cities like Bangalore, real
| estate is super expensive, thanks to software salaries. The
| same is happening in second, third tier cities now.
|
| But generally speaking, yes, all it takes is one person from a
| family landing a white collar job. And life becomes
| (relatively) much better
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| India's physical infrastructure has honestly fallen way, way
| behind our digital infrastructure.
|
| Absurd that I can go a month in India without ever using cash
| or cards, order everything I want from anywhere and have it
| delivered within a day (or even minutes), yet it can
| sometimes take me 45 minutes to travel 3k and that my car's
| suspension breaks down at 50k kilometers because there is no
| public transport and the roads are filled with sinkhole sized
| potholes.
| db1234 wrote:
| Not everything is rosy anywhere in the world. One can find
| issues with any positive story. I would rather have expensive
| real estate problem due to high paying jobs than poverty.
| akudha wrote:
| During my dad's time, it was much easier to buy a house on
| a modest salary. And the houses were well built too. These
| days, it is near impossible to buy a house unless you are a
| very high earner, as all available real estate is being
| gobbled up by "investors", aka, who have high paying jobs
| (mostly software).
|
| It is good that we are elevating people from poverty. All I
| am saying is it creates a different set of problems. But
| yeah, overall it is good that we are able to pull more
| people up from poverty.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Buy an acre of land in a remote location and build a
| house? Programming is a remote job, you have to enjoy it.
| That's my plan anyway.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| Real estate will get more expensive due to political greed
| than any other kind of development. The supply of real estate
| is artificially constrained by the political class, so any
| kind of development (say hypothetically manufacturing instead
| of software) will make it expensive. There used to be a time
| when new land for building houses was frequently sold by the
| government in the form of new "colonies", but that has
| completely stopped. The local political greed (municipal
| corporators, mayors, MLAs) has destroyed most Indian cities
| due to lack of planning, and this small fish only cares about
| short term money they can make.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| A big reason why Gurgaon real estate is more expensive than
| Bangalore despite having way more land and poorer jobs is
| government corruption. All those bribes and backroom deals
| get siphoned off to buy apartments and land. These buyers
| can hold forever because their cost basis is practically 0.
|
| I'm actively hunting for an apartment in NCR and get
| painfully reminded of how poor I actually am.
| 1024core wrote:
| There was a time when we were living in Delhi and we used
| to drive down to Jaipur, where our extended family was.
| We kids looked forward to the drive, as it meant nice
| stopovers, snacks, etc.
|
| After leaving Delhi we would , after an hour or so, make
| our first stopover in a little village called ....
| Gurgaon! There we would have chai, samosas, etc. In those
| days Gurgaon was separated from Delhi and a sleepy little
| village.
|
| When the capital expanded, those villagers became instant
| millionaires.
|
| A lot of comments in this thread are crediting TCS,
| Infosys, etc for lifting people out of poverty, but
| another factor was the skyrocketing realestate prices.
| Small-time farmers who could barely make ends meet
| suddenly were sitting on million-dollar land holdings.
| akudha wrote:
| What you are describing is one part of the problem.
|
| I have friends who earn in dollars. They can easily afford
| to buy a couple of apartments _every_ year. They do this
| and let those apartments sit vacant for a few years,
| waiting for them to appreciate. When many people start
| doing this, it artificially inflates the prices.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| That can be solved with tax/other laws. Guess who will be
| most impacted by those laws? Not people with one or two
| apartments as much, but those who do in large scale -
| that is again politicians and their helpers who help
| launder illegal money this way. If there are loopholes in
| the law, people will abuse it but we have to realize the
| loopholes are not meant for the layperson but the
| powerful few who abuse it at much higher scale.
| rendang wrote:
| Sounds like a job for Georgism (if you are up for radical
| economic transformation) or a vacancy tax
| anthropodie wrote:
| Those millions who moved to middle class are also helping the
| layer below them. These lifted households are spending their
| wealth on house helps, local grocery stores, taxis/autos and a
| whole lot of other local businesses. This trickle down effect
| then boosts development in cities where these IT hubs are
| located. Even more students then want to join these IT
| companies and enjoy the lifestyle of their seniors thus
| continuing the cycle.
|
| P.s. We spend money in local shops because the stores like
| Walmart have still not penetrated the Indian market as they
| have outside India.
| dirtyid wrote:
| I think in a few years India will find focusing on middle
| class is not enough. There's finite demand for
| domestic+outsourceable white collar jobs for 1.4B internal
| market + ~400M English speakers around the world. PRC has 10s
| of millions of white collar jobs + 100s of millions of
| manufacturing that pays better than trickle down
| housesitting, but there's still 100s of millions more stuck
| in informal economy while both countries are stuck with
| another few 100s of millions of subsistent farmers because
| keeping agriculture low tech is an essential jobs program.
| Even by PRC standards, India is hyper Deng's "let some get
| rich first" scheme that's going to cause long term uneven
| development issues.
| adamc wrote:
| There are lots of reasons to think the PRC is about to hit
| a very rough patch as globalism shrinks.
| naravara wrote:
| Shrinking globalism has a lot of causes so I don't want
| to overstate the case here, but one big part of the drive
| to pull back from it is the PRC's own currency
| manipulation and leveraging of its manufacturing
| bottleneck for geostrategic aims. They have themselves to
| blame partly.
|
| But really, their demographic precipice is what's going
| to stall them out. I hope their political system is
| functional enough to let it transition into something
| that can continue functioning after the end of a turbo-
| growth economy without collapsing into a Putin-esque
| kleptocracy or go the way of 20th century Argentina with
| constant coups and general political chaos.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Agree completely. We've tapped out our services potential.
| We now need large scale manufacturing. Income inequality
| and unemployment are very real problems, and its only
| getting worse. Only manufacturing can create those kind of
| jobs at scale.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| You seem to be close to the situation. Do you think Indian
| Walmart is a future inevitability?
| [deleted]
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| One of the challenges is real estate and parking. Most
| major Indian cities are extremely crowded with little in
| the way of parking space or affordable commercial land.
| Most large stores in major population areas invariably have
| to pivot to the higher-end to justify the real estate
| costs.
|
| Driving out 45 minutes just to buy groceries seems futile
| since every neighbourhood will have dozens of grocery
| stores that will deliver right at your doorstep (and now,
| half a dozen quick delivery apps too).
| makestuff wrote:
| Not op, but Walmart owns Flipkart so I think that is their
| play for India expansion.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is how Walmart and other companies spread into
| things like India - you might even see a few Walmarts
| open as a "higher class American-like" store, but the
| vast majority will be in things like Flipkart that are
| directly aimed at the market.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Some cities have "Big Bazaar" which is similar to a Walmart
| (smaller though, the Indian market doesn't have the variety
| of brands and products other countries do). There certainly
| are a lot of other similar stores. A more American thing
| that isn't readily available is like a Costco, bulk
| shopping would be pretty tough there, and people are fine
| to go out on a more regular basis to pick up fresh
| milk/veggies.
|
| No American big box retailer will ever be built. Indian
| government doesn't allow foreign companies to come in and
| set up shop very easily (at best they can get in with 49%
| ownership like Starbucks/Tata). Additionally the logistics
| situation is very different. Less ports, roads between
| cities built differently than USA, traffic across states is
| not a right like USA and various
| restrictions/inspections/fees can occur. It's worth keeping
| an eye on IKEA's expansion specifically in India. They
| really want to grow the marketshare, they have the right
| price points, and people seem to genuinely like and want
| them around. But lots of artificial hurdles which i suspect
| are caused by local traders/shops knowing how much business
| IKEA will take from them.
|
| Indian Amazon is approaching the utility of American Amazon
| and are pretty good about taking advantage of the existing
| couriers and air cargo which takes care of some of the
| interstate logistics I mentioned. The funniest part to me
| is that every individual item you order comes with it's own
| delivery person, there isn't yet much work to consolidate
| packages. The current generation is growing up with Amazon
| though and I anticipate many future improvements.
|
| I also see a dead comment in this thread saying India
| doesn't have malls... I've never seen more malls in an area
| than I have in big Indian cities. A lot of them are pretty
| good!
|
| Source: many extended visits to india
| anthropodie wrote:
| We actually have D-Mart and they are quite huge but not
| comparable to Walmart. These are present at multiple
| locations in tier-1 cities but are hardly present in tier-2
| cities. The thing is even though these are very popular
| they are not shutting down local shops in the region that
| they are located. The sheer demand is so high that people
| get things from local shops instead of standing in long
| queues at D-mart.
|
| To answer your question, yes Walmart can happen but it has
| to be ready for some serious competition because other than
| D-mart other big player JioMart backed by Reliance has
| entered this space recently.
| baybal2 wrote:
| pvsukale3 wrote:
| Yes, there is a company called Dmart and they are doing
| really well. Recently one opened in my area and local shop
| owner mentioned that it is killing their business. People
| are flocking to Dmart for discounts.
| pvsukale3 wrote:
| I have personally seen this transition. Some folks who started
| from tier 2 cities got access to white collar jobs because of
| MNCs like TCS, Infosys. Now they have improved skillset through
| Internet courses and are now working on much higher pay at
| product companies.
|
| MNCs are essentially doing what colleges fail to do in India.
| Teaching people how to code, talk to clients and bring them
| into formal employment.
| piva00 wrote:
| Be careful with that, I saw the same happening in Brazil
| between 2002-2012 just to start unraveling quickly after that.
|
| Our economies and societies are still pretty fragile, any
| political shock can start a downwards spiral. Stay vigilant.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| If the commodities boom is any indicator, Brazil should be
| hitting a purple patch soon enough.
| bergenty wrote:
| I think the difference is India is a major startup hub that
| mostly caters to the local market so the effort to shift to
| more resilient income streams not completely dependent on the
| global market are underway, something Brazil did not do.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Entirely possible India hits a lean phase and stays stuck
| where it is. Truth be told, everything from infrastructure
| to basic law and order are far behind even a "middle income
| trap" country like Thailand. Too early to pat ourselves on
| the back.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > While the tech bodyshops (TCS, Infosys, etc.) might have a
| poor reputation in the US, these companies have been absolutely
| critical in helping move tens of millions into middle-class
| respectability.
|
| The same goes for most "slavery" jobs. A lot of people's
| fortunes has turned all over the world by working under
| "inhumane" condition for American or European companies.
|
| These are actually good jobs in respect to state of play in
| these countries. The harm comes from degrading the employment
| standard in the rich countries where it's impossible to compete
| with places like China when they work under these conditions
| and as a result the jobs with "humane" conditions disappear in
| the wealthy countries or get worse.
|
| Overall though, the world becomes a better places as the people
| in the developed countries get their stuff for cheap and people
| in the developing world catch up.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Have to agree. Anyone who has lived in a third world country
| knows that a formal job is better than a no job, and that
| many would absolutely love to work for, say, Foxconn for a
| steady paycheck.
|
| Some of those stories about workers at Foxconn committing
| suicide also neglect to mention that the factory town has 1M
| workers who all live and work there, and that the suicide
| rate is actually lower than that for a city of equivalent
| size, or that 1M people living together might hurt themselves
| for any number of reasons (debts, unrequited love, adultery,
| etc), not just work.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| Technically, India did not do this. The people lifted themselves
| out of poverty because, finally, India's government had granted
| them enough freedom to pursue their happiness.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Economic freedom follows rule of law. And enforcing rule of law
| is not a passive activity. Free markets are only possible when
| governments take an active and benevolent role in society
| jimbokun wrote:
| Doesn't "India" include the Indian people?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| What are you going to suggest next, a company consists of
| employees and a chair is made of atoms?
|
| To neoliberalism, Countries and Companies are like the
| ghosts. They have a will of their own, they are immaterial
| and can't be pinned down.
|
| Together with the omnipotent and omnibenevolent Invisible
| Hand they form the Trinity and Haunt the stock market.
|
| If there is a recession, it is never a structural problem in
| the market, it is always because the consumers have sinned.
| sabujp wrote:
| Why does the US need to stick to a 2% inflation rate? India's has
| exceeded 5% for decades
| (https://www.worlddata.info/asia/india/inflation-
| rates.php#:~....). Indian stock market shows no signs of
| recession. If you held since 1990 (or inception) (data from tv
| https://www.tradingview.com/x/rGnAJxlH/) :
|
| Ethereum +9110%
|
| India NIFTY50 +6059%
|
| Bitcoin +5566%
|
| Nasdaq100 +4705%
|
| Shanghai SSE Composite +2307%
|
| NIFTY100 +1709%
|
| SPX S&P 500 +908%
|
| SSE50 +227%
|
| SSE100 +67%
| itspi wrote:
| I don't comment but also hate reading popular threads like this
| but I will do it anyway because someone was interested in hearing
| from someone living in India.
|
| There's so much emphasis (from comments) on information
| technology services contributing to this. This is a recent
| phenomenon. Growth due to IT services was extremely concentrated
| in a few cities and most took their family there.
|
| India was never a nation state before becoming a federal
| republic. Poverty was not widespread uniformly over the
| subcontinent. Over-reliance on agriculture and lack of trade
| meant factors like climate patterns disproportionately affected
| people in the lower social order.
|
| Government definitely played a role in establishing energy
| infrastructure, educational institutions, introducing healthcare
| schemes and before that, smart people played an even bigger role
| with the constitution.
|
| India's growth can be traced to a small list of landmark
| decisions which caused chain reactions.
|
| - 1950 Constitution and enforcement by institutions
|
| - 1954 Midday Meal Scheme
|
| - 1956 Non-Aligned Movement
|
| - 1961 Green Revolution
|
| - 1970 Operation Flood
|
| - 1991 Economic liberalisation
|
| Looking back, just liberty guaranteed by Constitution wouldn't
| have worked because of the caste system.
|
| I can add more if someone's interested.
|
| - itspi
| aerovistae wrote:
| Interested in comments from anyone who lives in India or has
| experience/familiarity with it as to whether reality on the
| ground matches the rosy picture painted in the article.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Firstly, thanks for posting this. Everything done to help
| alleviate poverty is wonderful, no matter how it is achieved.
|
| I'm American, but of Indian origin. Our family visited many
| major cities in India when I was a child (early 90s) and it was
| heartbreaking. We just kept wondering -- how does anyone begin
| to fix poverty that is so vast? We gave a lot of charity (esp
| schooling support) over the years but it always seemed like
| just scratching the surface of a vast problem.
|
| We havent been back since -- but i'd say every family helped is
| a positive step. Solutions do not need to be 100% comprehensive
| at the start. I look forward to more economic success for the
| people of India, and for people everywhere.
| bergenty wrote:
| In my parents generation, very few people finished high school
| and college degrees were rare. If we go back to the village now
| (in southern India), pretty much all the people my age go to
| college, have professional degrees and have generally moved
| away from the villages or abroad. But they all send money back
| and most everyone is visibly comfortable at this point.
| boruto wrote:
| Grand father had 6 children, Father and family used to eat red
| chilly burnt over coal to satiate hunger(What I heard).
|
| My father dug water wells, Did farming on small piece of land
| he inherited. Got a bachelors degree but ended up working as
| accountant servant for local landlord. When I was in college in
| late 2000's he earned 60 dollars per month. We lived in a one
| room house. He did that same job for 45 years from morning 10AM
| to evening 10PM. I used to wait for him sleepy just so he
| brings some candy or snacks for me.
|
| My first job out of collage was 14000 dollars per year. I
| bought a house, a bike. My father quit his job joined another
| where he works on his terms at the age of 73 now.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Purely anecdotal, please don't ask me for data, sources etc.
|
| It seems to me the government is doing a good job of supporting
| those at or below abject poverty. There are food security
| programs, free medical aid, education, and I guess even
| housing. Of course the poor have to wade through bureaucratic
| and corrupt system. But with digitization it's getting fixed to
| an extent.
|
| That said, the huge challenge I see is in the so called middle
| class segment. For a reasonably educated person the jobs just
| don't exist any more. So the mullion of people who join the
| work force every year have to fight for a few thousand jobs.
| And they live their life precariously, just one or two jolt
| away from falling back into poverty. For a vacancy of 10
| clerical posts tens of thousands jobless people turn up, some
| of them way over qualified. This cohort is really getting
| disillusioned and is easy to manipulate and radicalize.
|
| India is a hugely complicated, vast, and diverse country, it
| can't be comprehend by one person or even group. So you will
| come across all kinds of contradicting views all of which could
| well be true simultaneously.
| rajeshp1986 wrote:
| I can tell my experience. Not just me but everyone I know moved
| from poverty to lower-middle or middle class in just 20 years.
| When I was 5 years old, we were living in a village with no
| electricity. Having 2 square meals was a luxury only some house
| holds had. Many farmers & daily wage workers had only enough to
| eat one meal a day. My family's biggest fear while I was
| growing up was what will happen if my father felt sick and
| couldn't work. I am thankful those days are behind us.
| nsenifty wrote:
| Posted my anecdote elsewhere in this thread
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33510940
| aravindgp wrote:
| India did make progress in lifting poverty. The numbers wary
| according to context but yes in absolute numbers India did make
| significant progress. Most of it is done by IT and pharma
| industry.
| as1mov wrote:
| I can give me 2 cents (or paisa hah), apologies if it gets a
| little sentimental, I am drunk. Looks like I've ascended on the
| Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
|
| Grew up in a poor family with my dad as the sole earner taking
| care of my mother and 3 kids. Mum used to do minor clothes
| repair work for neighbours for some extra money, but it wasn't
| much. One of my first memories is waddling along to the ration
| shop (cheap subsidized government shops) with my mother to buy
| rice and kerosene for cooking.
|
| Things were hard for quite a while (I was about 12 or 13), it
| didn't really change until my oldest sibling got a job at
| Infosys after finishing university. Now that I look back on it,
| what they were paying him wasn't much, but for us it was a life
| changer. We could afford daily essentials without any hassle.
| No longer we needed to buy things on credit from the grocery
| stores, no longer we were worried about not being able to pay
| the electricity bills at the end of the month.
|
| It did change the trajectory of our life dramatically, as it
| allowed me and my other sibling to afford university. I did a
| bachelors in Computer Science and eventually managed to move to
| Europe for work after a few years. We are in a much better
| position than we were 15 years ago.
|
| I know people here tend to look down on these cheap curry-
| consultancies for their dogshit services but at the other end
| of the line there are real humans too. Same dreams and
| ambitions as you do. It's true that these companies pay their
| actual employees peanuts and treat them like shit, but
| sometimes that's good enough when the baseline of what life
| gave you to begin with was wayyyy less.
|
| This is just anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt, but
| this was a similar story for many of my friends from childhood.
|
| It's a little funny that people here assume that everyone on
| this forum is some FAANG engineer earning $400k in SF, there's
| also a small section of us little people hanging out in the
| corners :)
| Dharmakirti wrote:
| > One of my first memories is waddling along to the ration
| shop (cheap subsidized government shops) with my mother to
| buy rice and kerosene for cooking.
|
| Man you just rekindled those memories. I still remember the
| dusty ration card book (from PV Narsimha Rao's times, I
| guess).
|
| > people here tend to look down on these cheap curry-
| consultancies
|
| HN is very parochial when it comes to outsourcing and the
| vitriol some people here have for H1-Bs is sad. Our stories
| are the other side of the coin which shows that these curry-
| consultancies are making some real dent in the universe for
| the rest of us.
| throwaway1207 wrote:
| Thank you for sharing your journey. As a fellow Indian with a
| similar trajectory, I can totally relate to this.
|
| Although I do fall in the FAANG engineer earning 300k+ in New
| York, I do believe most of us are the same(desi engineers in
| TCS/Infosys or on site FAANG) for whom programming/CS/tech is
| a passion and ambitious/adventurous/lucky to be able to get
| out of poverty/lower middle class, we hustle and make the
| best of the hand we are dealt, not everyone gets lucky to
| crack the FAANG lottery and clear the leetcode hoops FAANG
| companies throw at you. Personally I feel you should change
| your attitude to think the peanuts they give you is enough,
| of-course while keeping your humility and remembering your
| humble upbringing to appreciate the pay/privilege many others
| dont have/wont ever get just due to dumb luck, unless some
| crazy innovation like miniature nuclear fission reactors that
| give humanity potentially infinite energy and makes everyones
| life luxurious , in a world of finite resources and potential
| over population its inevitable there will some overpaid, some
| underpaid engineers, yet both these sets are paid
| significantly higher than many many others from a non
| engineering disciplines.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| As a fellow Indian who has had a similar trajectory as yours,
| thank you for sharing your story.
|
| The point you said about Infosys paying salary that is good
| enough to escape poverty trap can't be emphasized enough.
| Infosys, TCS, and similar companies gave lifted hundreds of
| thousands of families out of poverty trap.
| [deleted]
| Dharmakirti wrote:
| I can tell my personal story if that matters.
|
| Background: I come from a non-UC, rural yeoman farmers family.
| I grew up in rural India and used to spend my summer and winter
| vacations working on our family farm along with my cousins. I
| was the first Engineer in my family and studied in a Government
| college, and most of my batchmates were from a similar
| background, with over 50% of them being lower classes.
|
| I have witnessed India's progress from the front row and it is
| something my parents or grandparents could never have imagined.
| Many of my friends went on to achieve great prosperity, some
| being C-level at Unicorns, others helping build Indias nuclear
| submarines etc. There is substantial wealth in the hands of my
| 4th tier town folks and I can see the signs of (relative)
| prosperity. Most households have people working in the private
| sectors and the wealth does trickle down.
|
| I visited a Govt. hospital recently and I was surprised to see
| that it is not an ugly damp place it used to be. Granted, it is
| not on par with NHS or US hospitals but neither is it a god
| forsaken place.
|
| The infrastructure is also much better than it was in the 90s.
| My grandfather would be shocked to see the Nagpur Metro and
| would think Aliens built it.
|
| I am also proud of the fact that India does take special care
| of wild life and is actively working to preserve the amazing
| biodiversity it has. Of course there will always be pressure
| from humans, but the heart is at the right place.
| [deleted]
| abhinavm wrote:
| It is true. A lot has to do with the reforms of 1991-96.
|
| It is only when you think back that you realise how bad the
| situation was back then and how much had changed.
| newsclues wrote:
| Hasn't there been recent news about toxic pollution in the
| region?
|
| What good is lifting people out of poverty, if they are lifted
| out of poverty and placed in a toxic urban environment?
| gandalfgeek wrote:
| This line of reasoning needs to be stopped. If you haven't
| lived or grown up through India's pre-capitalist era you have
| no idea what you're talking about. Ask any Indian about it and
| I think they'll tell you that urban pollution is a small price
| to pay for the distance they've come in terms of overall
| quality of life and wealth.
| abhinavm wrote:
| A major source of pollution is stubble burning, which is of
| rural origin.
| Choco31415 wrote:
| That article was specifically about India's capital. It's also
| possible that problem can be fixed in the future, so people are
| lifted into a clean urban environment.
|
| Also, last I recalled, London faced similar issues before and
| is in a much healthier state nowadays.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| If they aren't in poverty you have more options for reducing
| pollution.
|
| When someone is so poor that they can just barely feed
| themselves and their family, you can't realistically expect
| them to do much to reduce pollution. You can't really enforce
| pollution regulation because they can't pay fines and tossing
| them in prison only makes things worse.
|
| When they're able to afford some luxuries they're capable of
| devoting more thought towards their environment and can afford
| to spend more for more environmentally friendly living.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| The move away from socialist economic policy has been a great
| boon for the Indian people. But a lot needs to be done still to
| root out the corruption and wastage of the socialist days
| Qtips87 wrote:
| jp42 wrote:
| Current Prime Minister of India is from 'Other Backward Class'
| and and President is women from tribal community.
| db1234 wrote:
| More than 50% of Indian MPs are lower caste and minorities
| https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/only-39-mps-are-politi...
| Indian PM and president are from backward caste. Reservation
| for lower caste in government educational institutes and jobs
| is more than 50%
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India#States. So
| much for upper caste having complete control of democracy and
| lower caste being "the most disenfranchised and marginalized
| communities". I'm not saying all problems are solved. It's a
| work in progress like any other democracy but progress is being
| made slowly and steadily.
| arcen wrote:
| This literally reads like some misinformation campaign hit-
| piece. I would suggest reading up on actual news sources that
| function within India and speaking to Indians who live in
| India.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Can you explain this dichotomy then? You say people who vote
| are lower caste, and those who "don't vote" are upper caste,
| yet the upper castes control the government.
|
| Are you saying then that the voting is fraudulent? Or that
| lower caste voters are voting against their interests? Or that
| there are restrictions on the candidates that are available so
| voters are only given the illusion of choice? E.g. for lunch we
| can choose between KFC, Taco Bell or Pizza Hut, but they're all
| actually the same company.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| While the first sentence is correct, the rest is just nonsense
| based on misinterpretations. What evidence do you have that
| voting is largely lower caste?
|
| If anything, the voting system in India is among the best, most
| transparent and most accessible in the world and that is really
| something amazing.
|
| Beyond voting, India is largely an electoral autocracy and
| their idea of "democracy" is really stretching the definition
| so you are accurate there.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| This opinion is offensive. India is a functioning democracy.
| Your claim is that the people who vote are lower caste and
| upper caste won't vote hence democracy is invalid. Are you
| suggesting democracy is only valid if upper caste people vote?
| kodyo wrote:
| He seems to be suggesting that upper caste people don't need
| or care about democracy, which is true of all democracies.
| Qtips87 wrote:
| What I am saying is that upper caste don't need to vote
| because they have complete control of the country. Democracy
| confers power to the people because you would assume people
| who vote can affect policies to their favor but this is not
| the case for the people who vote in India. They are totally
| disenfranchised and marginalized.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| the accurate statement is that a small slice of India's
| upper castes have control. They dominate many sectors but
| you seem to assume that caste and economic class are
| interchangeable. they are not although there is a strong
| correlation due to generational wealth.
| soared wrote:
| He's claiming the votes are valid, but the votes do not
| translate to outcomes like they do in a democracy like the US
| because governmental power is still controlled by upper
| castes.
| yutijke wrote:
| Is this your lived experience? I am finding it hard to believe
| when the Prime Minister of India comes under what is classified
| as a "Backward" caste there. The President of India, Droupadi
| Murmu comes from a historically disadvantaged tribal
| background.
|
| The political parties and political commentariat in India
| heavily emphasize Caste and other identitarian aspects as the
| building blocks of building a coalition rather than policy.
|
| Political parties field candidates who belong to a particular
| ethnic community and pander to their sentiments to secure their
| votes. And the historically disadvantaged communities achieve
| representation in this manner.
|
| While I agree that Caste is a major issue in the Indian society
| (with a lot of variance between regions and across social
| strata), saying that "backward" castes are denied political
| representation and agency is extremely dishonest.
| Qtips87 wrote:
| India's political system has all the forms but none of the
| substance of a democracy. Yes Modi is from a backward caste
| but his policies are biased towards the upper caste and he is
| beholden to the upper caste support. The proof in the pudding
| is how well off the lower caste compared to the upper caste
| in the last seventy year. And the answer is the lower caste
| is worst off compared to their upper caste counterpart after
| seventy years of upper caste rule.
| yutijke wrote:
| Disadvantaged communities seem to be improving their status
| as far as I can see. https://theprint.in/opinion/education-
| levels-of-sc-st-obc-ri...
|
| That BJP only works for the upper caste is inaccurate. Like
| every political party in India they pander to communities
| for votes. Freebies and subsidies for disadvantaged groups
| like ration and gas is a card they have played in
| sufficient numbers. Recently they have increased
| reservations (affirmative action) for Scheduled Castes in
| Karnataka, I believe. This and their rhetoric are pretty
| much the building blocks of their campaigns.
|
| You can say it doesn't work in the long term, but only
| working for upper castes is not what it is.
|
| Our political system enables people of various backgrounds
| to rise in the ranks of politics regardless of their caste
| (I have given examples up the thread) or religion (we've
| had Presidents, Chief Ministers, Governors and Prime
| Ministers from Hindu, Christian, Sikh or Muslim
| backgrounds).
|
| The medicine is working. If you are frustrated that it is
| not working fast enough or the way you expected it to, the
| reason is far simpler and what every Indian knows about.
|
| When you have many "Backward" caste politicians and leaders
| with a predominantly "Backward" caste voting base who do
| not work to improve the status of their communities and
| instead just want to line their pockets, it should be
| obvious what the problem is. Rich people ultimately just
| want to make themselves richer, especially in a system that
| enables it with rampant corruption. That the Rich person is
| from a disadvantaged background does not matter. Whatever
| you may want to call it you cannot explain this away as
| Upper Caste Hegemony.
|
| Note: I am _not_ saying that casteism, doesn't play a role
| in Indian society and politics, but it is not one and only
| explanation for our problems. Repeating this again due to
| the tendency of many people to explain away every problem
| in the Indian society with "Is this Casteism?",
| synergy20 wrote:
| Per my observation over the years, India immigrants are unique at
| hi-tech job market, when one India became a manager, over one or
| two years, all his team is pretty much filled up with people from
| India, this is unseen in other ethnic groups like Chinese,
| Japanese, or any other races. I can not stop thinking if they
| violated Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws in US.
| praz4HN wrote:
| Sounds suspiciously like anecdata...
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| I've heard this before. So now you've got two anecdata.
| koshergweilo wrote:
| That's very interesting because my boss is Indian and he hired
| only one other Indian person out of like ten new hires over the
| years. Then again, my company does have a lot of diversity and
| inclusion folks looking over the hiring process, so either D&I
| in my company is unusually effective or your anecdote is just
| an anecdote.
|
| Maybe we shouldn't be painting millions of people with the same
| brush because of some patterns our brains happened to notice
| speakspokespok wrote:
| A roommate in college was from a small rural village in Vietnam
| and a first gen college student. It took his entire extended
| family to pay the cost of tuition (international student rates).
| At the age of 18 he was putting in 60 -70 hours a week to his
| studies, as the responsibility he felt to his family to earn that
| sacrifice was overwhelming and less than an a perfect score
| visibly upset him. Not knowing any better I once said 'but you
| got a 3.9...', his reply was 'My father skips meals for me!'.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Do millennial and gen-z Indians have a similarly skeptical view
| towards capitalism held by so many young people in NA and the EU?
|
| I had a friend tell me the other day that I couldn't be anti-
| racist if I wasn't anti-capitalist, because capitalism is by
| inherently racist. Ever since 2018 or so it seems as if anti-
| capitalism has become part of the mainstream progressive Western
| viewpoint, while I don't remember that being the case in the
| 2000s. Are these views held around the world, or do I just have a
| very well-selected sample?
| xmprt wrote:
| I think India is already quite socialist to begin with so anti-
| capitalism isn't a very strong sentiment there. There's also a
| lot less centralization and fewer monopolies. I probably
| shopped at my local small business much more often than I went
| to a big box store in India whereas in the US, I can't remember
| the last time I was able to conveniently do business at a small
| business.
| umeshunni wrote:
| > I had a friend tell me the other day that I couldn't be anti-
| racist if I wasn't anti-capitalist, because capitalism is by
| inherently racist.
|
| I think you need to get more educated friends.
| joenot443 wrote:
| FWIW, she has a Masters in French Lit from one of our
| relatively well-respected schools, but obviously I completely
| disagree with her on most political topics. These kinds of
| stances are more common than you'd think in Canadian academic
| circles.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Most young 'anti-capitalists' in the West are still generally
| capitalists who prefer socialization for certain essential
| industries like healthcare or are disillusioned by the
| gerontocracy trading the future of the young to further
| maximize their own comforts (see: housing, education, anything
| to do with green energy or big tech). The kinds of people
| you're talking about are fringe extremists.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Quite the opposite. It is due to the shift away from socialism
| (after the USSR fell) that many of these things are possible.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Have you tried leaving home and touching grass? Because
| everything you've wrote doesn't make any sense.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Which part, specifically, confused you? Was it 'well-selected
| sample'? Was it the notion of anti-racism? Neither of these
| are terms I coined, but they're fairly well defined in my
| social groups. I'm happy to clarify any topics you're
| unfamiliar with.
| renewiltord wrote:
| No. Liberalization of the economy is either what made all of
| this possible or in any case is what preceded this. An anti-
| capitalist viewpoint is associated with kids of rich parents
| who study what are generally viewed as non-productive subjects.
| The general view is that winning means getting your kids on the
| next step of the ladder in a profession that will move them
| upward in socioeconomic status.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| South Asia was captured by the East India Company, and the
| wealth of its people systematically extracted over centuries.
| This is different from the many other local wars and invasions
| that happened in India before and during this time, where
| either the invaders left after stealing wealth once, or they
| stayed and generally tried to improve the area they captured.
| Systematic extraction of wealth was only a feature of
| capitalist firm made of people who said they were distinct from
| you, and superior (please note 'race' was invented by
| Europeans).
|
| So, hate for capitalism is pretty old in certain parts of the
| world.
| Dharmakirti wrote:
| > hate for capitalism is pretty old in certain parts of the
| world.
|
| I would like to have a different take. India has a strong
| merchant class since aeons and market economy was never a
| taboo culturally. You can see that in the entrepreneurs like
| Bansals, Agrawals, Shahs that are at the helm of Indian
| Unicorns. So yes, there is a skepticism about 'western'
| capitalism, but not for market economics.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I don't see how we disagree. I am aware that capitalism and
| market based economies are not one-to-one. The share-holder
| system is what results in massive exploitation in
| capitalism. Market economies can also exploit but not in
| the same dispassionate way that share-holders do.
| morbidious wrote:
| Racism and capitalism are two entirely different things
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Such an awesome accomplishment.
|
| Also, it's interestingly a huge black eye to the CCP: news of
| this Indian accomplishment will be censored in China, because it
| proves that nations can progress without forced-
| sterilization/-abortion/-1-child-policy/authoritarianism/ etc.
| ardit33 wrote:
| I think this is a world wide trend as well. Humanity is
| progressing with every generation. (this is true even in
| Africa).
|
| Some countries progressing faster though, (China being one of
| them).
| Shoue wrote:
| In absolute terms, yes we are seeing advancements in
| tech/medicine and the like and that will always help more and
| more people, but in more relative economic terms it's
| questionable whether the gap between poorer nations and
| richer ones is actually closing, because there is economic
| evidence that the gap is actually widening:
|
| > Net Resource Transfers (NRT) for all developing countries
| have been mostly large and negative since the early 1980s,
| indicating sustained and significant outflows from the
| developing world (see graph below)
|
| https://gfintegrity.org/press-release/new-report-on-
| unrecord...
| dirtyid wrote:
| Wut, India started from a better state, took same amount of
| time, to progress 1/5th as much, while still having north
| korean tier food insecurity. Dooming generations and hundreds
| of millions of avoidable deaths due to being stuck in poverty
| for longer than need be. There's nothing to be envious about.
| Also eliminating rural poverty + building rural infra is the
| actual hard part that takes time and resources. We'll have to
| see if India has the resources to even get there, PRC didn't
| until $6000 gdp per capita. India and by extention relying on
| democracies to develop still a case of what not to do. Also
| India did their own sterilization / family planning campaign.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| The truth hurts...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| diordiderot wrote:
| And all the Chinese got was 2.5x GDP per capita
| svieira wrote:
| "That's a chain of office you are wearing; may I see it? Why
| Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the
| whole world ... but for Wales?"
|
| https://youtu.be/bLIsqYKDqY8?t=214
|
| To put it another way - how many children are an acceptable
| sacrifice for mammon? I say "none".
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| They also have 300% debt to GDP compared to 84% for India.
|
| We'll never know how much more advanced India would be if
| they invested as much in infrastructure.
| Aunche wrote:
| > They also have 300% debt to GDP compared to 84% for
| India.
|
| You're comparing the total debt of China with the national
| debt of India.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| India doesn't have "private" corporations which are just
| an extension of the state.
|
| All the mega banks in China are indistinguishable from
| the state - you're looking at 100% of debt to GDP on
| their balance sheets alone.
| scarmig wrote:
| I think the relevant figures here would be how much of
| each countries' banks' balance sheets are de facto
| liabilities to the state. I can buy that Chinese banks
| incur more liability for their government than Indian
| banks do for theirs; I don't buy the idea that China is
| 100% liable for its banks' balance sheets while India is
| 0% liable for its banks' balance sheets.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| AFAIK, ICBC is China's largest bank, and it's main
| purpose is to finance government construction and keep
| the debt off China's balance sheet.
|
| Such a bank does not exist in the US or any major EU
| countries. They issue bonds and keep the debts on their
| balance sheets.
|
| I'm skeptical India has any such equivalent.
|
| The same is true for all the major banks in China. The
| main difference in China is that - since the bank is an
| extension of the state - the state directly decides who
| does and very importantly WHO DOES NOT get funding.
|
| The companies that do get funding are often times GSEs.
| This is federal debt... Pretending otherwise is pedantic.
|
| Sure, I'm with you - count Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's
| debts as the US Federal Government's debt.
|
| India and almost every other country don't have any
| equivalents.
| dirtyid wrote:
| You're comparing national debt with total debt.
|
| PRC national debt gdp is ~70%, LOWER than India ~90%.
|
| Also PRC has 5.5x the GDP / per capita vs India.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| That's including debt held by "private" corporations that
| are extensions of the state.
|
| All the mega banks in China are indistinguishable from
| the state - you're looking at 100% of debt to GDP on
| their balance sheets alone.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why would it be a black eye to the ccp when they've lifted
| twice as many from poverty as India? And far higher growth, gdp
| per capita, etc. weird comment
|
| https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...
| Montaque wrote:
| Linked article is roughly double the time frame referenced
| for India. Its in the world's largest democracy. Benevolent
| dictatorships work for as long ad the dictator(s) remains
| Benevolent.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| Because the CCP's (more specifically Xi Jinping's) entire
| thesis is that democracies are incapable of producing good
| outcomes.
|
| A lot of the move towards authoritarianism that we've been
| seeing in the world has been driven by the success of the
| "China model".
|
| If India is successful to a similar degree as China, that
| shatters this belief, especially since there are very
| significant questions about the Chinese economy and how
| stable it is. A lot of the numbers appear to be made up in a
| way India simply cannot do.
|
| And if Democracies can achieve success, Chinese citizens
| themselves may consider it as the better alternative as it
| might indicate that China's economic success was less the
| result of the CCP and more because the Chinese government
| chose to move towards a Western capitalist economic system a
| couple of decades before India.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| ... but India isn't successful on the same scale as China.
| India's middle class is not secure nor are successive
| generations guaranteed to remain middle class. That wealth
| is just not there.
|
| India's real middle class is just one financial disaster
| away from poverty. China on the other hand has been
| immensely successful at lifting millions out of poverty and
| securing them firmly in the middle class.
|
| Also, if you think India cannot and does not make up
| numbers, you are completely wrong. See most recently their
| COVID numbers. See in the past their economic data that was
| treated at par with garbage by the global community.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'm curious to see a source that says the modern CCP states
| that democracy cannot succeed in general.
|
| The CCP stance is that democracy wouldn't work for China.
| Whether that's actually true or not is debatable of course.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-politics-xi-
| idUSBRE...
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Their stance relies mostly on the same tired canards that
| India disproves; that an uneducated populace, rural
| areas, etc are hindrances. They are, but they're not ones
| that Communism/Authoritarianism solves - And India has
| some authoritarian properties, too.
|
| The 2016 Indian banknote demonetisation is perfect
| example of how a somewhat democratic state can pull off
| large scale action that China refutes as a possibility.
| Was it pretty? Was it effective? Who knows. What matters
| in this argument is that it's the kind of corruption
| fighting mechanism that China likes to cite as the domain
| of their heavenly mandate and not possible for
| democracies.
|
| Again, China can keep yelling that their way is the only
| way for China, but there does need to be a little more
| supporting basis than that.
| scarmig wrote:
| > Again, China can keep yelling that their way is the
| only way for China, but there does need to be a little
| more supporting basis than that.
|
| Says who?
|
| Running a society is hard. You can't simply compare the
| reality against a hypothetical guaranteed better outcome
| that would happen under democracy, even ignoring the
| claim ( _at best_ contentious) that India has done better
| than China for the last couple decades.
|
| An equally a propos comparison would be the Soviet Union
| and its attempt at a transition to democracy. Life spans
| and material wellbeing collapsed, and even their
| political system ultimately backslid, to something as bad
| as the USSR. You can say that they just did democracy
| wrong--which they certainly did--but that doesn't solve
| the core issue that getting democracy right is a really
| hard problem. If the CCP had committed to democratic
| reforms under Deng, maybe it would have worked out
| better; but it also might have created turmoil and mass
| death, as attempts at democracy did in the USSR. And if
| the latter happened, rubbernecking Westerners would just
| say "well China did democracy wrong"; democracy never
| fails, it can only be failed. It's easy to call for from
| afar, but when your society's well-being is on the line,
| it's a much scarier risk to take for abstract benefits.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Are those numbers from China?
|
| Is there a reason to trust them if so, considering they would
| be coming from a brutal, authoritarian dictator?
| mc32 wrote:
| I wouldn't doubt that they are roughly accurate.
|
| The question is is the growth worth the pound of flesh the
| CCP takes as its right in return for that growth and social
| stability?
|
| Another fair question is could it not have been achieved
| through a more humane system of governance?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| You've just met with cognitive dissonance
| bergenty wrote:
| I think the idea is we can have both democracy and paradigm
| shifting changes in a very short time span that hasn't really
| been proven out recently.
| scarmig wrote:
| 1) At this point, the CCP internally considers the 1 child
| policy a mistake. I'm sure this news won't be widely published
| within China, but mentioning it is not going to get anyone into
| trouble. Plenty of people complain about the one child policy,
| and so long as you don't call for the downfall of the CCP
| because of it, you're fine.
|
| 2) India has its own sordid history with coercive
| sterilization. During the Emergency, millions of people were
| sterilized, under varying levels of compulsion.
| odysseus wrote:
| Regarding 1), the documentary "One Child Nation" (currently
| included with Amazon Prime) goes into China's history with
| their one child policy in detail - from people who lived
| through it.
|
| It is fascinating how they went from "One Child" to their
| current policy without admitting any mistake at all.
|
| ---
|
| As for India, not only have they had problems with forced
| sterilization, they've also had problems with parents wanting
| a son at any cost: https://www.theguardian.com/global-
| development/2021/dec/27/f...
| vkou wrote:
| 32 years ago, GDP per capita in China and India was $300.
|
| Today, GDP per capita in India is $2,200.
|
| It is $12,500 in China.
|
| I'm not sure that 'Six times faster growth, and eight years of
| life expectancy, and seven times fewer people facing hunger and
| food insecurity' is as much of a black eye as you think.
|
| I could think of quite a few Americans who would happily
| embrace a one-party state, if it meant that they wouldn't lose
| five sixths of their wealth and income, and eight years of
| their life, and have a one-in-seven chance of having to
| seriously face starvation. Most of them, actually.
| ohiovr wrote:
| Life under a king can be great but it always depends on the
| king.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| This makes absolutely no sense given how everybody in China
| knows that western countries are richer. China is not North
| Korea, there is no information blackout. The average Chinese
| knows a lot more about, say, the US than the average American
| about China.
|
| Chinese policies are meant to solve Chinese problems (whether
| they are successful is a different discussion). The government
| is in the business of producing results, ideology is secondary.
| richard___ wrote:
| Why do so many people on HN hate on China? What's your
| relationship with Chinese people in your personal life?
| m4jor wrote:
| Because China is the number one threat to democracy and the
| US.
|
| They also are responsible for stealing hundreds of billions
| of dollars of IP from the US every single year.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_intellectual_pr.
| ..
|
| And masters at stealing R&D and tech from US companies for
| their own use
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_spy_cases_in_t.
| ..
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-hackers-took-
| trillions-...
| paxys wrote:
| USA is the number one threat to democracy in the USA.
| There's no point continuing to blame China, Russia or
| whoever else for domestic problems.
| [deleted]
| m4jor wrote:
| Nation-state hackers from Russia and China are certainly
| running active campaigns in US elections to disrupt or
| manipulate them.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/chines
| e-h...
|
| Best evidence of this is the previous 2020 elections.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| We literally elected people that are telling us our
| elections are rigged. Even if Russia and China
| orchestrated it, we're stupid enough to eat it up.
|
| _" Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says
| they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians
| come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't
| pass through a membrane from another reality. They come
| from American parents and American families, American
| homes, American schools, American churches, American
| businesses and American universities, and they are
| elected by American citizens.
|
| This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to
| offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage
| out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going
| to get selfish, ignorant leaders."_ - George Carlin
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| That sucks, but the US lacks moral authority to point
| fingers as the US has such long history of manipulating
| elections all over the world, overthrowing democratic
| leaders. The US even actively spied on European citizens
| through PRISM at a scale never done by either China or
| Russia. When Snowden exposed the US, it just shrugged
| "everybody spies on everybody".
|
| Okay, if so, then why complain about Chinese spying? They
| are just doing what the US is even more guilty of.
|
| As a westerner I would love to see the US stop
| embarrassing us in front of autocrats.
| coding123 wrote:
| Maybe your solution is to set up a firewall and block any
| articles written out there that gets the wrong people
| elected.
| largepeepee wrote:
| Sure they are, which countries aren't interested in the
| most powerful country that constantly exports their
| problems.(our debt is YOUR problem)
|
| But the coverage is probably outsized to their actual
| impact compared to the hundreds of billions spent by the
| local monopolies trying to influence the elections
| themselves.
|
| Trump ignoring his personal issues for a moment, has
| shown with his rise and fall, just how much of the media
| are just working together - I have never seen all of them
| including interestingly enough CNBC and Fox constantly
| dismissing the same candidate in unison for months
| towards to 2016 election.
|
| Add the tech monopolies into the mix for 2020 and it was
| another eye opener.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > with his rise and fall,
|
| Not being daft, but what fall? Sure the non-Right media
| wants to paint him as a has-been, but that's revisionist
| history, and wishful thinking.
|
| Key fact: Trump in losing received more votes than Obama
| in either of BO's victory. Yet Obama is generally painted
| as popular and love, and Trump a nothing?
|
| I'm not a fan of DT but a false hope in a false narrative
| is an opportunity for him to exploit.
| latchkey wrote:
| CIA Officer Frank Snepp Discusses Planting Stories in
| Vietnam
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwerBZG83YM
| paxys wrote:
| And the USA is doing the same to other countries. It is a
| given that this happens, and will continue to happen. You
| measure how strong a democracy is by how well they can
| resist such campaigns. If some random Russian bots can
| trigger a coup in the strongest and richest country in
| the world then, well, that's on us.
| e-clinton wrote:
| "the US is doing the same to other countries"
|
| Source?
|
| "If some random Russian not can trigger a coup"
|
| It's still an act of aggression regardless of whether the
| US is equipped to deal with it. While I agree that the US
| does lots of shitty things, we have way more checks and
| balances than our key enemies. For one, it is the people
| who elect those who represent us.
| zmaurelius wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_i
| n_r...
|
| I think it would be naive to think similar programs are
| not being enacted in the present day.
| aylmao wrote:
| John Bolton has been directly involved with foreign
| policy at least since he first worked at the State
| Department (the department responsible for the USAs
| foreign policy and relations) in 1989.
|
| He has openly been a an advocate for military action and
| regime change by the US in several countries[1]. Recently
| he also openly mentioned his role in helping plan coups
| d'etat in an interview, when asked about the events on
| January 6th that followed the 2020 election:
|
| "As somebody who has helped plan coups d'etat-- not here
| but you know (in) other places-- it takes a lot of work."
| [2]
|
| Also, tragically enough, he in fact served as the 25th
| United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Just a
| reminder, when listing its principles, the _first point_
| of the UN 's _foundational charter_ reads: "The
| Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign
| equality of all its Members."
|
| The USA counting a self-proclaimed "coup planner" as
| their ambassador to the UN can give us an idea of how
| fundamental interfering (ie, "hacking") other nation's
| affairs is to their foreign policy, and how little it
| respects the sovereignty of nations.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bolton
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRvMJDTrL2E
|
| [3]: https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2.shtml
| quonn wrote:
| Those programs did not remain hidden then, why would they
| now?
| vetinari wrote:
| > "the US is doing the same to other countries"
|
| > Source?
|
| Not even hiding it: https://content.time.com/time/covers/
| 0,16641,19960715,00.htm...
| SadTrombone wrote:
| If in 2022 you're seriously asking for a source for US
| interference in sovereign nations and their elections,
| you have some serious reading to do.
| helij wrote:
| Please, please know your history[0] before speaking.
|
| [0]https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-
| spies-eur...
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| I don't like the CCP, but in practice the US conservative
| movement is probably the biggest threat to democracy in the
| West today. They are spreading the idea that elections need
| not be respected and spread conspiracy theories people are
| eating up all over the world.
|
| For instance when we started getting problems with
| vaccination of people in Norway it was not due to China but
| fake news and conspiracies pushed by the radical
| conservative movement in the US.
|
| The US holds a special position in advancing and protecting
| democracy, but is itself turning into a liability. China is
| a concern but first priority has to be to fix American
| democracy before it drags the whole West into the mud.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I wouldn't say the conservative movement as a whole, but
| the MAGA folks currently ascendant in the Republican
| Party are certainly a threat.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > threat to democracy
|
| > billions of dollars of IP
|
| I like how your make claims about important societal
| issues, but the evidence provided is all about money.
| bergenty wrote:
| It's the exact opposite. I don't think anyone hates the
| Chinese people, just the CCP and primarily because it's
| authoritarian and fast becoming the US' main rival.
| richard___ wrote:
| Raise your hand if you hate the CCP and you have a Chinese
| ex. There is already one guy who said as much in this thread.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| As a Chinese I want to say thank you for posting this. It's
| really ridiculous...
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| I just have an issue with the CCP and their apologists. That
| is primarily who people refer to when they say China. It is
| pretty common speech. Same when talking about America doing
| something, we refer to the US government primarily, not its
| people.
| boxed wrote:
| The heros in the story of Chinas amazing numbers of people
| lifted out of poverty is Deng Xiaoping and his successors.
| They've been basically thrown out with Xi. So modern China
| is unfortunately on the totally wrong trajectory.
|
| It's ok to say "China was going the right direction between
| years X and Y" without being an "apologist".
| ohiovr wrote:
| Deng was a heck of alot better than the guy before him.
| _zamorano_ wrote:
| It's the double standards, you know. Not being able to vote,
| and so... While the US and its war machine has lost track of
| destroyed countries in this last decades in an Orwellian
| permanent conflict.
|
| But the bad guys are the chinese, who hasn't been involved in
| a war in 40 years.
| Gil-galad wrote:
| It's not the Chinese people, they are in general awesome
| people. It's the CCP.
| dabernathy89 wrote:
| "Why do so many people hate brutal, authoritarian
| governments?"
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| My relationship with Chinese people is great. I have a
| chinese ex, whose mom is hyper critical of the CCP and hates
| communism. They're not Han chinese, they're one of the less
| desirable ethnicities, and they didn't feel well treated.
| Anyways.
|
| Authoritarian regimes are bad. The fact that this
| authoritarian regime has mongoloid/asiatic facial features is
| irrelevant. I hated GWB's expansion of the security state and
| two senseless middle eastern wars, I hated Obama killing
| American citizens without trial, and I hated Trump's...
| everything, basically, but admittedly withdrawing from
| Afghanistan was p cool. Stopped clocks etc.
|
| Anyways it's totally consistent with wanting a just world to
| also hate the largest authoritarian regime in that world.
| This "but what if it's because you're racist?!?!" line is an
| absurdity
| [deleted]
| TotoHorner wrote:
| Hating the CCP != hating Chinese people.
|
| Amazing that this needs to be said...
| [deleted]
| burntbridge wrote:
| And when there is a war?
| iwillbenice wrote:
| burntbridge wrote:
| Forced sterilization is something India did do.
| yorwba wrote:
| The United Nations Development Programme announced it 20 days
| ago on their official WeChat account and the post is still up:
| https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/JAY6_fef5htRqbnOQwnoFg
|
| Also, re: "without forced-sterilization"
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30040790
| pxue wrote:
| sure, no forced sterilization.
|
| just nation level apathy on child mortality in lower class
| citizens.
| gandalfgeek wrote:
| I grew up in India in the 90s, saw first hand the transition from
| the disastrous socialism of the Nehru era to open markets,
| capitalism and deregulation. (The end of "license raj".)
|
| It started with PV Narasimha Rao as PM and Manmohan Singh as his
| finance minister in the early 90s. Thankfully Singh himself had a
| fruitful tenure as PM later. All it took for India to take off
| was the shackles of govt control to come off.
|
| Sad to see that the lesson hasn't been learned and even today
| there is a strong strain of socialist reasoning calling for more
| govt control on markets.
|
| Concrete example: before deregulation one had to pull strings
| (e.g. have family or friends in the civil service) to get a phone
| to your house, then wait a few months after approval to actually
| get the wire to your house. That was also the era that there were
| two channels on TV, both state controlled (Doordarshan) that
| broadcast maybe 5-6 hrs per day.
| softveda wrote:
| The license raj is still there for business, except maybe some
| sectors like tech startups. Yes there has been improvements in
| citizens life like mobile phones etc. But official harassment
| and bribery is as prevalent as before. Want to get a passport
| issued or renewed have to pay Rs 500 to the police. Just last
| week a mother and her kids died as they were turned away from a
| govt hospital as they could not show the Aadhar id card. Read
| the Indian news and this kind of cases as their every week.
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| >both state controlled (Doordarshan) that broadcast maybe 5-6
| hrs per day.
|
| We just had one channel DD1 It would start in the evening
| around 7 pm I think with this tune
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-7JmGB9BRA
| damagednoob wrote:
| I don't understand poverty statistics. With this news, the UK now
| has more people living in poverty than India (16% vs 22%?). If it
| is valuable to judge poverty on relative income, you would think
| the rational course of action would be mass immigration from the
| UK to India but that is clearly not the case.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Discussions about poverty is usually confused by the two
| competing definitions:
|
| - Absolute Poverty: If you have less than $X/day, you are poor.
| This measures living standards.
|
| - Relative Poverty: If you're in the bottom x%, you are poor.
| This measures status.
|
| Without knowing anything, it sounds like this measurement is
| more on the Relative Poverty side.
| Shoue wrote:
| Relative measures are important because it's an indicator of
| how fairly domestic resources are being allocated. You can be a
| poor country but have resources fairly allocated among the
| population, and you can be a rich country and have resources
| unfairly allocated among the population. It's a good indicator
| of how well people at the bottom are being taken care of, and
| the ideal scenario is a rich country with low income
| inequality, which the Nordic countries are probably the best
| examples of.
|
| You can use measures that are less country-specific like the
| Gini coefficient and UN R/P to measure domestic inequality
| between countries:
|
| The UK has a Gini coefficient of 35.1, a UN R/P 10% of 13.8
|
| India has a Gini coefficient of 35.7, a UN R/P 10% of 8.6
|
| For reference, Norway has a Gini coefficient of 27.7, and a UN
| R/P 10% of 6.1
|
| (higher = more inequality)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
| Neil44 wrote:
| That is very interesting. But I think the answer to the
| parents question about why people are not boarding rubber
| dinghies from the UK to India is that in absolute terms
| poverty is not the same in the two countries.
| advisedwang wrote:
| > With this news, the UK now has more people living in poverty
| than India (16% vs 22%?)
|
| The severity of poverty in rich western nations is easy to
| underestimate. There are people in the UK who are underfed,
| can't afford heat, have to work multiple jobs etc. This kind of
| poverty does look different than poverty in India - better in
| some ways, but worse in others - but it is still poverty.
|
| The data on relative poverty is hard to trust, but we also
| can't trust gut feelings about which countries "must" have more
| poverty. Perhaps it is true that UK does have a higher fraction
| of people in some kind of poverty.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Have you been through the process of emigration before,
| especially as a person in poverty? You make it out to be like
| just packing up a suitcase and setting up in a cushy new place,
| the reality is so far away from that.
| bergenty wrote:
| I don't know the answer but I'm sure they're defined
| differently. Poverty in India means making less than $1.90
| dollars a day. By those standards the UK would have zero
| poverty so their numbers are clearly self defined at a much
| higher standard than the UNDP global standard.
| DimitriPetrova wrote:
| Apparently the Multidimensional Poverty Measure is defined as;
|
| An index that captures the percentage of households in a
| country deprived along three dimensions of well-being -
| monetary poverty, education, and basic infrastructure services
| - to provide a more complete picture of poverty.
|
| There's also the Multidimensional Poverty Index which has an
| alternate definition
| jimbokun wrote:
| But is there a greater percentage of people in UK deprived
| along any of those dimensions?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Uk has 4.1 million children in poverty, or 30%. It now more
| food banks than macdonalds.
|
| Poorer counties often have large families, government
| programs for food distribution and many people growing
| their own food.
|
| You might have empty bank account but you will have
| something to eat and some roof over your head, even if you
| are crashing at family place or it's illegal construction
| on a land thats not technically yours.
|
| If you are poor in London you will just starve and freese
| to death
| jialutu wrote:
| > Uk .... now more food banks than macdonalds.
|
| Holy cow! I just checked this fact and it's true!
| https://fullfact.org/electionlive/2019/dec/9/food-banks-
| more... That said, it shouldn't be a suprise since there
| are food bank donations everywhere these days. Truly
| depressing.
| deathgripsss wrote:
| It must be relative to that nation. From my experience the
| UK IS becoming an incredibly segregated nation along
| economic lines. I don't find it hard to believe that 22% of
| the populace are in relative poverty. This is very
| different from absolute poverty, of which I'm sure India
| has a higher percentage.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Three cheers for Brexit and Tory rule I suppose.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I think that's just a measure that is meant to vary over time
| for a single state rather than vary over states for a single
| time. India struggles with problems of feeding, sheltering, and
| hygiene for its population.
|
| Ultimately, the purpose of that statistic for the state to be
| able to tell whether its policies are working. The state,
| therefore, must construct measures that show progress when it
| makes progress and show regress when it makes errors. A measure
| that ultimately shows 0 progress even when real progress is
| made, is not that useful to the state.
|
| A data nerd may want to normalize definitions (I certainly do
| and the MMR and IMR measurements are ones I find particularly
| annoying) but ultimately a state measures for its own purposes
| and not mine.
| bparsons wrote:
| These are two very different definitions.
|
| The international definition of extreme poverty means living on
| less than $1.90 a day. It is the basic ability to survive.
|
| The domestic poverty threshold definition in the UK is whether
| or not you are able to maintain a fairly stable middle class
| standard of living.
| atentaten wrote:
| > India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN
|
| At what costs?
|
| I've heard this narrative before as it has happened in many
| Western countries and it is continuing to happen in China. I
| don't have the answer, but I always wonder about the costs of
| lifting so many people out of poverty, for example, there could
| be costs related to: environment, quality of life, traditions and
| values, mental health, etc.
|
| Along with that thought experiment, I wonder how did they get
| into poverty in the first place. A lot of areas that are now
| declared as poverty zones today may have been poor in the past,
| but were self-sufficient and self sustaining.
| vhanda wrote:
| > I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place. A
| lot of areas that are now declared as poverty zones today may
| have been poor in the past, but were self-sufficient and self
| sustaining.
|
| Well, when the British left in 1945, roughly 15% of the country
| was literate [0], now that is up to 77% [0]. From here [1], it
| seems that poverty was around 45% of the population (361
| million). It also says the rate varied based on how the monsoon
| season went, which makes sense for a primarily agrarian
| society, especially one which had to import food to meet their
| needs till 1965 (roughly).
|
| so, basically, the British didn't leave India in a good place.
| See [2]
|
| [0] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India#/media/File:...
|
| [1] - https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACR801.pdf
|
| [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place.
|
| Human history is basically nothing but suffering and
| starvation. 80% of the population was living in extreme poverty
| before the industrial revolution.
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-populatio...
| feyman_r wrote:
| >> there could be costs related to: environment, quality of
| life, traditions and values, mental health, etc.
|
| quality of life, mental health: are you implying folks in
| poverty were perhaps happier before? If so, you're probably not
| familiar with life in poverty.
|
| environment: while there are larger issues that could likely
| surface (more consumption of electricity, additional waste
| etc.), the environment in which they lived most likely improved
| (sanitation, medical help, gas instead of wood-burning stove,
| cow-dung as fuel, water-borne diseases); this comes from
| personal experience having lived close to one of the largest
| slums a long, long time ago.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place_
|
| Humanity has always, by current standards, been dirt poor and
| living near starvation levels.
|
| The last 250 years of industrialism has changed that
| enormously.
|
| To answer your question, they got into poverty because they had
| always lived in poverty, since the dawn of time.
| achow wrote:
| The UNDP Report (pdf link)
| https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/2022-10/2...
| anm89 wrote:
| I think these statistics are all BS. If you took away all of the
| game playing involved in defining poverty and then measured the
| total number of people in the world living in poverty after our
| massive population growth over the last decades, you will find
| that the sum of human misery due to poverty is by far the highest
| it has ever been and is only increasing.
|
| But this way a bunch of self righteous people like Gates and
| Pinkerton can play statistical games and say everything is great.
| No, it's great for them.
| soared wrote:
| I'm not sure what this comment is saying? Poverty as a
| percentage of population has steadily declined globally, same
| with starvation, etc.
|
| 70 years ago 50% of the world lived in extreme poverty, today
| it's 11%.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-livin...
|
| The population in 1950 was 2.5 billion, so 1.25 billion living
| in extreme poverty. Todays population is 7.6 billion, so 840
| million living in extreme poverty.
|
| Undernourishment has the sametrend, data once 1991:
| https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_...
| factsarelolz wrote:
| Thanks to the United States of America wether it be through legal
| or illegal means.
| morbidious wrote:
| Yes, thank you America for crippling your own economy for the
| sake of India. Please give Biden the peace prize for his
| humanitarian efforts.
| zuminator wrote:
| The article is talking about India's economic development
| during the period 2005-2021. How you mangle that into an
| anti-Biden remark is bizarre.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Globalization certainly, to the degree that the United States
| has pushed and opened borders, absolutely. To the degree that
| pseudo-communistic countries have reformed their legal systems
| to respect the rule of law and property, that has little to do
| with the United States.
|
| The guy who can't get a lifetime job at a shirt factory,
| steelworks, or software job in the USA also "paid" for this.
| quicklime wrote:
| The global economy is not a zero sum game, and globalisation
| worked well for the USA as a whole.
|
| Americans just didn't share that newfound wealth with the
| lower classes as well as India did.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Actually, multiple studies have shown that yes, while some
| did get richer in the USA, the cost of globalization -
| worldwide - was mainly born by the middle class. People in
| poverty received governmental assistance.
|
| And as someone who is in India frequently, the idea that
| newfound wealth was shared as a deliberate policy mechanism
| with lower classes is somewhat ... discredited.
|
| I believe in globalization - but the US government should
| have done a better job helping people with it's impacts,
| and the developed world should stop pretending that there
| was no cost to others to make it happen.
| verisimilitude wrote:
| Hmm. If you are saying we are all interconnected, relying on
| the diverse resources, products, and gifts from around this
| small planet to do the things we want to do, e.g. care for our
| sick, advance the common good, protect the vulnerable, provide
| stable sources of food _so that_ our global population can grow
| in a safe, equitable, sustainable manner toward lives full of
| fulfillment and wonder, away from subsistence living that
| steals time and health and hope from those stuck with no other
| choice, then, yes.
|
| But if you mean the US should take credit, then, no.
| factsarelolz wrote:
| The US has injected untold billions into the Indian market
| through off shoring phone support. India has made hundreds of
| millions of dollar scamming America's most vulnerable
| population.
| another_devy wrote:
| US has not injected billions into India! Capitalist
| companies trying to find cheaper and disposable labour has
| done it. Of course the US Government police allows that but
| the policy is there because of these companies not other
| way around.
|
| > scamming America's most vulnerable population
|
| Nothing from that goes to Government taxes or public
| benefits. These people are not out of poverty by scamming.
|
| please try not to down punch some positive news from "Third
| world countries" if you don't have any constructive
| criticism
| nigerianbrince wrote:
| They redeemed.
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