
The Jungle Prince of Delhi - vo2maxer
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/world/asia/the-jungle-prince-of-delhi.html
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nikhizzle
Partition was of course a great Trauma to many families. But to us two
generations down who were only told the good parts, it was a strange social
experiment. One of the things I find most fascinating from knowing a bit about
my family moving from Lahore to Delhi and Calcutta (and saw echoed in this
article), was how much social advantage remained when 50% of the people you
knew moved together at one. And then it was also fascinating how quickly that
advantage evaporated for the next generation in a changing India. My
grandfather and his siblings, arrived to or quickly acquired in India
relatively cushy private sector or government jobs. Frankly, In today’s world
jobs they would not be qualified or hired for. They continued a life of
extreme advantage. My parents generation, caught between new and old India had
a much higher level of struggle to make it. I can’t comment on the current
generation first hand, because my parents chose to leave instead fight it out
there.

And now the metamorphosis has come full, with meritocracy beginning to show
its beautiful egalitarianism in India.

Can’t wait to see what comes next. India of 2050 is one of the things I look
forward to the most in old age.

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kranner
As someone who has lived in India for most of his life, I can assure you we
are very far from being meritocratic or egalitarian in any way. People are
weighed down by the poverty, caste and religion of the families they are born
into. Very few escape this fate. You can point to a few success stories but I
can tell you of thousands more that will never escape the general
circumstances of their birth.

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throwGuardian
Wow - that is a strong accusation against a nation with laws to prevent just
this, with oodles of "quotas" in education and government employment. Do you
have any large scale research or evidence to back this?

Au contraire, the largest upliftment from povery, and massive social mobility
is what has driven India's 8%+ growth rate for more than 2.5 decades

~~~
justaguyhere
Those _quotas_ are very much part of the problem. There are thousands of kids
who have to settle for their second, third, fourth choice of college, because
someone else needed to get in, even if that someone had scored less (often
times laughably less) than them in the qualifying exams. Because you know,
_quotas_

I am sure it all started with good intentions - you set aside a portion of
admissions for the historically oppressed people, they come up - they win,
society wins and everyone wins at the end. Right? In practice though, it is
more used as a weapon by politicians to expertly divide and conquer votes,
kinda like redistricting in the US but much worse.

There is a reason for brain drain ...

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embit
On a slightly different note, this is superb journalism. This is what keeps me
reading New York Times.

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rajekas
I grew up in Delhi where every landlord and most of my neighbors were refugees
at one point. A good friend's father had a large hole in his forehead from
having an axe taken to it during the riots.

Unfortunately none of them thought of turning themselves into royalty; they
were content being traders and hustlers. It strikes me that it would be very
hard to perform that act of self-transformation today with Google and Facebook
monitoring my every move.

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pattisapu
> It strikes me that it would be very hard to perform that act of self-
> transformation today with Google and Facebook monitoring my every move.

Could social media make it _easier_ to do today?

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neonate
[http://archive.is/iYBQy](http://archive.is/iYBQy)

~~~
dreen
FYI my corporate DNS blocks archive.is, but changing the TLD to .today works

[http://archive.today/iYBQy](http://archive.today/iYBQy)

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shriphani
What an amazing story! I have heard so many incredible stories about the
partition - some good, some bad.

It is just what displacements do I guess - the upheaval lifts some boats,
sinks some and the world goes on.

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v77
Wow, what a story, well told.

