
How India Became America - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/how-india-became-america.html?hp
======
unhappyhippie
As an Indian who has spent all but two years of his life in India, when I read
stories like this I think of two possibilities:

1\. Propaganda by affluent and successful Indians claiming the country is as
successful as they are.

2\. Westerners overstating Indian progress to feel more comfortable that there
is a friendly and reliable challenger to China from the developing world.

I don't know, I may be wrong on both counts but the reality is that we are a
dirt poor country with not just deep institutional problems, but also moral
and psychological ones.

~~~
mds101
>the reality is that we are a dirt poor country with not just deep
institutional problems, but also moral and psychological ones.

I was searching for the words to express this for more than ten minutes before
I read your comment. The key here is 'moral and psychological problems'.

To cite just one example, there was a lot of ruckus about the 2G Scam and the
Lokpal bill recently. We believe that the guy who got 17200 Crore rupees in
kickbacks is a corrupt SOB and should be punished to the maximum extent, but
when it was revealed that a leading anti-corruption crusader was actually
stealing money from the sponsors who invited her for talks, we dismissed it as
a 'small amount'. This kind of 'it's not a crime if its done at a small scale
but it's a crime if its done on a large scale' mentality is present among
nearly everyone.

Also, another huge problem with Indians is that we as a people do not wish to
risk anything. As a result we will never fight for something that should be
rightfully ours (like a Government that does it's job). Urban voters are
generally brainwashed by the charisma of our politicians or are bought
wholesale with a few thousand rupees and a bottle of liquor. Rural voters
don't really care who they vote for. As a result we keep alternating between
the same two sets of thugs. Will we get out on the streets and protest for
better governance like the arabs did? Never.

So, the West can paint many pretty picture and call it India, but this is a
country in massive disarray, and the fact that it hasn't already collapsed is
purely by chance.

~~~
shriphani
A bigger problem is the insane benefits someone rich can reap with just a
savings account in India. The large interest rates that you get in the State
Bank and the enormous loopholes that everyone exploits essentially means that
there's an entire class of people whose interest earned on savings is
sufficient to land them in the top 5% of the population.

Why would anyone be motivated to take risks after such a deal ?

Also, no government can solve India's problem. 600 people (few uneducated,
several underqualified and some with a shady past) to make decisions for a
diverse 1 bn population? That doesn't scale in any way whatsoever.

~~~
kubrickslair
Well, one can get many multiples of the investment if they focus on real
estate as opposed to the savings account. The rich are indeed getting
fabulously rich.

And all the while the conditions of the real poor are in fact getting worse.
And as someone whose family/ community falls into the capitalist class I see
condition of most of the employees degrading first hand. The so called middle
class is in some sense living in a bubble, working semi-coolie jobs for MNCs
(for the most part) and thinking that their more hip lifestyles are in some
ways representative of a sea change in India.

------
suprgeek
(Speaking as person who has spent 10+ years in each country) India is no where
close to America. There are so many enormous fundamental differences that
anyone making such a comparison needs to be looked at as naive at best.

\- India's population id 4X that of America

\- More than half the population is below the poverty line

\- India is amongst the most corrupt nations in the world
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_perception_of_corrupti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_perception_of_corruption)

\- The level of very basic Infrastructure (Roads, Water, Electricity,
Sanitation) is non-existent in Villages, poor in most cities and tolerable in
the so-called "Metros" (top 8 cities) - 6 hours of power cuts are common in
summer in the Metros

\- There is more stress on "Exam taking" than on "learning". Sports is limited
to Cricket - a nation of a billion people boasts of 1 -2 Gold medals in the
Olympics. Mediocrity in everything.

\- Indians by and large "play it safe" in everything. The level of innovation
is very low (witness the number of international awards won by Indians IN
india -Nobel Prize, Fields medal etc is next to zero). A very twisted shortcut
based method of "Jugaad" is praised so he who discovers the best method of
beating the system is rewarded.

I despair for my country. We are headed in the wrong direction and keep
accelerating. <rant-off>

~~~
wisty
> Indians by and large "play it safe" in everything

If you're an Indian businessperson, you have two options - copy the US and
make a good ROI, or risk everything on creating a new product for a
potentially better ROI. The choice is obvious - it's far cheaper (and more
beneficial) to play catch-up than innovate.

The question is - why is India still playing catch-up?

I don't know that much about India. I'm guessing that corruption is one part.
I've heard Indian culture can be anti-business. Perhaps politics are more
sectarian than policy-based - they don't vote for a party because it has good
policies (or seems to have good policies), but because they identify with the
candidates (same religion, caste, region, family, whatever). Democracy doesn't
seem to work when elections are fought on sectarian lines.

~~~
mds101
I believe you misinterpreted his words. Being an 'Indian businessperson'
itself is not done much because of the 'play it safe' attitude. Yes, Indians
are _that_ risk-averse.

~~~
furiouslysleepy
Well, most people around the world are averse to business. Is there really a
bigger proportion of Chinese or Russian or Egyptian businesspersons than
Indian? (In fact, India has a handful of extremely business-minded communities
-- the Marwadis and the Gujaratis, and to a lesser extent the Punjabis,
Sindhis and Malayalis. If anything, India does relatively well on this
metric.)

~~~
tathagatadg
Interesting point ... Do you think the geography of the region played a big
role in keeping the tradition alive? I'm always surprised to see how my
community (Bengalis) are so resistant to business - even though I have read
Bengali traders ventured into overseas trading way back in history. What I
felt was Calcutta becoming the capital during British India, generated a lot
of government jobs for 200 years. That growth led to the downfall of the
entrepreneurs in our region.

Growing up in Calcutta my Mariwari and Gujrati friends were always excited to
talk about business. It was clear how their parents encouraged it. I was
clearly taught business is a strict NO-NO. Get a stable job and settle down.
When I look back, in a class of 60 odd people in my computer science undergrad
class 95% "settled down". Only two dared to kick their job and go for a
startup.

~~~
furiouslysleepy
Perhaps... I'm not entirely sure why this is the way things are. The histories
of specific Indian communities are often completely fascinating, and I wish
there was more literature on the subject and I had more time to read it. :)

------
paraschopra
Author has a very laser-focused view of India. The country is much more
diverse that this article supposes. There is still extreme poverty, religious
bigotry, no-holds barred traffic lawlessness, corruption, discreet money and
hundreds of other very-Indian issues.

Americanization of India is limited to metros and big cities, and there too
you see a mind-boggling mix of poverty and abundance.

~~~
enraged_camel
"There is still extreme poverty, religious bigotry, no-holds barred traffic
lawlessness, corruption, discreet money and hundreds of other very-Indian
issues."

So does America. The point of the article is that there are some very uniquely
American things - consumerism, fast-food, Starbucks, etc. - that have
infiltrated Indian culture. I interpreted it as an observation independent of
a value judgment.

~~~
sliverstorm
Those issues will always exist everywhere. The key is that in India, they are
orders of magnitude worse.

~~~
allochthon
It's got many, many more people. I'm sure I would be boggled by the logistical
problems simply of running the public transportation system in a large city.
It's not easy to do things at large scale, as we've learned with Web
development.

------
edderly
Before the elites in India consider themselves comparable to America, I would
hope they address the swingeing poverty and piss poor literacy.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_r...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate)

~~~
pavanky
1) Literacy The problem with the 75 % literacy is that many of those
uneducated people are old and can not be taught now. The literacy of youth is
about 85% which is still bad, but the number is gaining exponentially and
should be near American levels in 15 years. That is less than a generation.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India>

2) Poverty

India has been free for 65 years. This was after 200 years of Britain
stripmining India of its resources. Our politicians were at fault to go into a
socialistic cocoon for nearly 45 years before liberating India's potential.
And look at progress that has been made in the last 20 years. The poverty has
fallen by 10 percentage points, while the population has increased by ~ 30
percentage points.

I don't necessarily agree with the writer's views, it looked more like an
anecdote than an actual analysis / story.

But to quote numbers without actually analysing them is just plain bad.

~~~
wisty
I don't think the "resource strip-mining" probably wasn't _that_ big a factor.

The big problem was, they used "divide and conquer". The British were masters
at it - find a minority in a region, and give them guns and military
assistance. The minorities can now be relied on to keep the rest of the
population under control, and they can't rebel against the British for fear of
a reprisal from the majority.

The problem is, it leaves a real mess when the Brits leave.

~~~
furiouslysleepy
No, resource strip-mining was a HUGE problem, and was compounded by the fact
that India missed the Industrial Revolution at least partially because the
British willfully sabotaged Indian attempts to gain technology.

(It was in the interests of the British to force India to sell them raw
materials at low prices, feed it to industries in Britan, and sell it back to
India as a finished product. In those days, gold was money, and India had a
lot of gold.)

------
irahul
India is a big, diverse country in terms of people, culture and economy. The
article is pigeonholing a country with over a billion people in sparse
categories. Any article talking about "India" is mostly generalizing based on
a small dataset.

The filty rich, people dressed in filty clothes, and "people in between" co-
exist in India. The first experience of India starts right where the airport
ends - the crowd of touts and cabs fighting for your attention will come as
quite a shock if you haven't faced it already.

The divide between rich and poor will become more profound once you leave the
airport and enter the city. One second you are in a neighourhood rivaling the
most plush cities in the world, another you are standing by a heap of garbage,
watching children in rags hunting the trash for recyclable objects which they
sell to earn their living.

India, specially the big cities, are complete chaos, owing to their large
population. Someone from a quite neighourhood will be a bit taken aback when
he is subjected to insane amounts of traffic accompanied with honking. For the
most roads, you will have to jaywalk. However, don't concern yourself too
much, as this is standard practice and drivers are used to it.

Apart from the traffic, cows and other animals roaming the strets isn't
uncommon. They are big, but mostly harmless.

As far as society goes, the Indian society takes pride in being closely knit
and valuing familial values. You will find people living with their parents,
which is very uncommon in the west. Also, people don't display intimacy in
public - even married people generally keep distance. On the other hand, boys
with hands over other boys' shoulders, and girls holding each others' hands is
a common sight.

Also note that the Indian states differ in culture at the macro level, and the
country loves to fragment itself at both macro and micro levels. People from
the northern part of India(believed to be Arayn descendents) and people from
southern India(believed to be Dravidian descendents) are an example of culture
difference at a macro level, and Tamil(South Indian) brahmins differentiating
themselves from Non-brahmins is an example at a micro level.

India, as a country, has a different sense of privacy and personal space.
People will ask all sorts of personal questions, without meaning any offence.
It's just the Indian version of small talk, and they feel delighted if the
same questions are asked of them.

Talk about programmers - you will find the bell curve at work. But since the
number of people who are supposedly programmers is large, and you mostly come
across the middle of the normal distribution, it's easy to get the impression
that most people are incompetent.

~~~
vacri
That being said, even if you only market to the Indian middle class, that's a
market of over 100 million people.

~~~
irahul
True, but I was objecting to presenting India as one coherent, consistent
entity which it is not.

------
kghose
I could write a bit more, but the summary of what I would say, having lived in
India for about 10 years, mostly during my turbulent teens, is:

1\. Poverty is not a virtue. 2\. There was evil in the old days too

~~~
farnsworth
I don't have any specific experience with India but I am also always a little
skeptical with attitudes like that in the second half of the article. It seems
to just be another instance of 'the good old days' syndrome. Especially the
anecdote about violence - surely there were never murders in India before
McDonald's moved in.

~~~
furiouslysleepy
I especially love the part about Panchayats losing their authority -- those
old fucks need to all resign, and quickly.

I'm not being anti-tradition or whatever. Panchayats routinely carry out
horrific human rights violations against women and lower casts. This barbaric
system has to be replaced by actual courts.

~~~
abhaga
A very broad generalization. You are confusing Panchayats with "Khap
Panchayats" and other traditional community panchayats which have been in news
for honor killings and such. These panchayats are traditional bodies with no
powers sanctioned by law or constitution.

Separate from that, there is a whole system of local governance based on
panchayats. These bodies play a very important role in letting the local
people participate in decision making process for things which are going to
affect them. Members of these panchayats are elected through proper electoral
process and are not "old fucks" usually. It is a form of decentralization of
power which is sanctioned by law and is a good thing.

~~~
furiouslysleepy
Ok, I looked it up, you're right.

I've never lived in a village, my perception of Panchayats was wholly informed
by the news.

------
acak
I'd have to say the more appropriate title is India is _on the trajectory_ to
become America.

But there are several caveats.

America doesn't have huge pockets of the population isolated in illiteracy,
poor sanitation, lack electricity/clean water and such like.

Societal transitions-wise, it faces many of the challenges that America did in
the 50's and 60's with a few more complexities. The opportunity exists for a
great story provided there is no major war or natural calamity that depletes
or hijacks its course over the next couple of decades.

One thing you can be thankful for is that the democratic system, and people
power, continues to thrive as proven in this weeks elections in the state of
UP. Powerful governments, bullying party organizations and divisive agendas
were voted out and people with the message of development and unity were voted
in (of course, whether the people campaigning this way follow through is
another question)

Notice I didn't mention corruption. A relevant challenge, it is another
discussion for another day. Though India's corruption challenges exist
starting right at the grass roots level, even America hasn't found a way to
effectively take it out everywhere.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttar_Pradesh_legislative_assem...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttar_Pradesh_legislative_assembly_election,_2012)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Lokpal_Bill>

------
vacri
Having Starbucks is a measure of success?

At this point, I'd happily like to point out that my country - Australia -
weathered the GFC better than pretty much anyone else and has an exceptionally
strong currency, low unemployment, and is generally up near the top on any
quality of life measure. Starbucks came here, opened nearly a hundred
stores... and failed horribly - they were too shortsighted to see that we
already had a quality coffee culture (born of our Italians, Greeks and Turks)
and their shitty coffee made no inroads here.

(an aside - the one and only time I've had anything from starbucks was an iced
chocolate in LA on a hot day - and it was _gritty_ )

So I read this article and wonder if they've totally misread another market.
Whatever the case may be, having Starbucks is _not_ a sign that your country
is successful.

~~~
ebiester
The funny thing is that Turkey (Or at least, Istanbul) has quite a few
Starbucks. (And Gloria Jeans, for whatever reason, really took hold there.)
But the point is that if you have a Starbucks, you have people who can afford
Starbucks.

~~~
vacri
That's a good point, but opening a single store (as in the article) is nothing
to hang your hat on - pretty much every country has a social elite who could
support a few stores.

In the heart of Hanoi there's a KFC (there's a few throughout VN, at least in
the tourist areas) and the Vietnamese economy is booming... in Vietnamese
terms. They're still incredibly poor with a 30% inflation rate, and the KFC is
charging Vietnamese prices, not western prices. KFC may have plonked some
stores down and localised them a bit, but that doesn't mean that the locals
have anything like a western quality of life.

I found it interesting that although the food in the KFC was different (though
still fowl), it was the same experience in terms of disinterested teenage
staff, overloud music, and grimy plastic seating...

------
dimmuborgir
Link bait title. The author is advertising his upcoming book.

The gist of the article is that anything other than Socialism is 'American'.
Since when houses with concrete roofs, foreign brands, shopping malls, office
buildings and being optimistic represent only America? The author needs to
travel other parts of the world.

Articles like this which draw parallels between two countries often do
disservice to both the countries. America is not all about consumerism and
India is not all about a poor imitation of America.

------
mukundmohan
For most of the last 2000 years, India has been the #2 economy. Except the
last 200 years. <http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/08/history-of-world-gdp/>

------
nsns
This article is almost unbelievable in this day and age. While there is a
constant shift in values in urban India towards the West, it was never the
case that "Ancient social structures are collapsing under the weight of new
money", this is pure Orientalism, India is (and was) always changing like the
rest of the world is, it was never "frozen in time", like some Western
commentators like it to be (as well as some Indian ones, such as "R. K.
Narayan, that great chronicler of India in simpler times", times were never
"simpler").

The urban Indians did drift considerably westward during the last two decades,
while most villages and towns regressed economically and never adopted Western
values (hence the growing "red corridor").

The last two decades were marked by the rise of the Indian Middle Class in
urban India (encouraged by the Indian PM Manmohan Singh and his Neo-liberal
agenda), and middle classes all over the world seem to share similar values
and perspectives. The author might benefit from researching some more, and
relying less on his personal impressions and his obsolete (even colonialist)
hermeneutic.

------
freshhawk
That's a really interesting piece.

The "good old days" bit at the end was a bit obtuse. Clearly life expectancy
and quality of life has gone up. People are less likely to die a horrible
death. Even if there are more violent crimes driven by new money and disparity
between classes, if it isn't just increased connectivity and a huge amount
more news making more people hear about violent crime more often, then people
are still better off.

But it seems like everywhere people are driven by their crappy human risk
assessment system. The west has been inundated with the stats about crime
rates going down but the "fear of crime" going up (seems like the fear is more
correlated to the news cycle than the crime rate but that's besides the
point).

So the irrational "good old days"/out of proportion fear of rare events thing
seems be another common American and western trait. I guess he's inadvertently
supporting his premise with this misunderstanding as well.

------
olegious
Shopping malls and American brands != America. The same article could have
been written about any developing country.

------
ajju
India needs to do a better job of copying America's two best Institutions:

(1) The research University.

(2) The second act: tolerance for failure

~~~
tathagatadg
High five for (2).

------
nsns
There are some excellent investigative magazines in India, check these out if
you're looking for in-depth coverage of the Indian situation:
<http://www.epw.org.in/epw/user/userindex.jsp>
<http://www.frontlineonnet.com/> <http://www.openthemagazine.com/>
<http://www.tehelka.com/>

~~~
pramodbiligiri
I'd add The Caravan to that - <http://www.caravanmagazine.in/>

------
harichinnan
Another disillusioned Indian here. I'm in the middle of a month long vacation
after living in US for 3 years.

After a boom of 10 years, we now have really good highways in most part of the
country. However I saw at least one bullock cart, some stray cows and people
trying to cross a 4 lane US Interstate like Highway. Also the entries to
highways were ill-planned. Traffic regulations and speed limits were not
updated in light of recent developments.

Tamil Nadu, one of the growth engines of Indian economy gets 10 hr power cuts
everyday because the chief minister refuses to open a newly constructed
nuclear power plant.

Engineering colleges in India track their students round the clock and report
to parents on their activities. Someone I know goes to a school where they
conduct "aptitude" classes 3 saturdays+ one sunday a month for preparing
students to attend Infosys(Wipro, TCS)( All three have the same business
models, body shops) interviews. Kids literally buy their thesis(project) from
companies that have a ready made project for them, so they could focus more on
getting into one of the Body Shops.

Also I just read that many of the companies that got into "emerging
"(Airlines, Telecom) Indian economy are either running on losses or never made
a profit.

------
sgarg
I came across this article last summer, also featured in the New York Times:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/world/asia/09gurgaon.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/world/asia/09gurgaon.html?pagewanted=all)

I think it is a much better analysis and look at the underlying issues that
plague India as it struggles to deal with modernization and globalization. The
article in this post wasn't quite an analysis but more of a description or
summarization of the what is happening. The article from last summer, while it
doesn't exactly cover the same scope and exact subject matter, focuses on many
of the same phenomenon. Definitely worth checking out.

------
troels
As someone who knows little about Indian society and have never set foot on
American soul, I'm obviously a bit limited wrt the subject matter. That said,
this text reads to me as a shallow piece of nationalism. The comments here
(which are - I might add - much more interesting to read) seems to confirm
that.

I'm wondering if the author is naïeve or if it's deliberate propaganda. If the
latter - which groups would promote such views and are they dominant in India?

------
Chirag
This article references Bangalore & Chennai for the most parts. Both the
cities have higher majority of educated people is higher and large influx of
"MNC Incomes". Cliche as it may be the "real" India is still in villages.

You can't make statement like "India Became America " based on 5-10 cities in
India.

As majority of India doesn't have

\- Basic Education

\- Basic Health services

\- Electricity

\- Minimal Infrastructure to grow (including Road, Housing)

------
opining
India will never be America. It is WAY too crowded.

------
g-garron
The whole article is comparing India to US, when the title says America.
America is from Alaska to Argentina/Chile in the south Pole.

And yes, India is far from being U.S.

------
tokenadult
There are a lot of interesting comments here, and I especially appreciate the
comments from people who know India (a place I have never been). The author of
the submitted article says he grew up mostly in India and in Minnesota, the
place where I was born, grew up, and now live. The article seems to suggest,
with its anecdote

"She leads a simple life (impoverished even, by American standards), but she
is immeasurably better off than she was a couple of decades ago. She grew up
in a thatch hut. Now she lives in a house with a concrete roof, running water
and electricity. Her son owns a cellphone and drives a motorcycle. Her niece
is going to college.

"But not long before we talked, there had been a murder in the area, the
latest in a series of violent attacks and killings. Shops that hadn’t existed
a decade ago were boarded up in anticipation of further violence; the police
patrolled newly tarred roads."

that crime will increase when "Americanization" happens to a society. I think
that is a mistaken conclusion. I have lived overseas, for two three-years
stays, in Taiwan, both before and after Taiwan's democratization. Reduction in
crime seems to depend crucially on both effective law enforcement and on a
civil society that builds cohesion and community norms against crime. Rapidly
transforming societies--in whatever direction they are transforming--seem to
suffer a breakdown of social order and an increase in crime rate. That's just
what was happening in the United States as I grew up. But today crime rates in
the United States are actually much lower, for nearly all types of crime, and
especially for violent crime, than they were in my early adulthood. My
Minnesota neighborhood and the whole large suburban municipality surrounding
it is essentially crime-free, with almost the only life-threatening form of
crime being driving while drunk. My whole family, including my young children,
can walk or bicycle anywhere within more than a five-mile radius at any hour
of day or night and have no fear of any kind of crime. I have urban habits
formed in childhood of looking the door of our house every evening, but it's
no worry if we ever leave the house without looking it up, and possessions
like bicycles and skateboards and patio furniture can be left outdoors
unattended for days on end with no one stealing them or damaging them.

More generally, in view of the many interesting comments here, I think India
has a much brighter future from today than, say, China. India has a great many
problems, according to every person from India I know, but India has a free
press and moderately fair elections and a great deal of openness about talking
about societal problems. China, by contrast, does not permit such open
criticism of corruption, political favoritism, and police inaction against
crime as is routine in India. Both because India has a government that must be
accountable to voters and a free press to watch the government, and because
people from India have access through the English language to the consequences
of different political and economic systems around the world, I expect India
to fix more of its problems more smoothly over the next few decades than
China, and ultimately to be a leading example for countries around the world
in how to build a cohesive, diverse, and thriving society with much freedom to
choose the best of the traditional and modern.

------
prtamil
This is American governments trick to trick those Non Resident Indians to move
to India.

~~~
tathagatadg
This gave me a good laugh!

------
meenriquez
I have a lot to say, but I think one statement can say it all: NOT EVEN CLOSE

------
marajit
Nothing but propaganda.

------
tmsh
How America Became India

<http://youtu.be/g1-9vw8cUi8>

