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Comment by ashwinaj | Hacker News Reader

I recently made a trip to India; just a week earlier me and a few friends were talking about driver less cars, automation, AI etc.(you know the usual SV talking points) When I landed there all this futuristic talk flew out of my head; it is a very different world out there.

I am reminded of this feeling, because this author sits in his/her nice comfy office in Mountain View mouthing off on something with no understanding of ground realities; to me this is absurd. When I say reality, I mean actually living there. Taj Mahal selfies and elephant rides are not counted :)

Does anyone care about privacy in India as much as they do in the US? I seriously doubt it. Let's be real, most of us (Indians in the US) did not even know what privacy meant and we don't really care about it. If we did, we wouldn't be posting on FB, Twitter, Instagram etc. or signing up for a time share presentation just to get a 3 day hotel stay ;)

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Most Indian's, wouldn't care about a constitution, demonstrably don't care about sanitation, and are easily sidelined by superstition.

Yet, they try every day - to over come that with whatever tools and education in front of them.

MANY people in India, aside from the brigade yelling "efficiency and progress", do not value efficiency and progress.

So they do care, and will definitely care once they realize they were sold a bum dream.

> demonstrably don't care about sanitation, and are easily sidelined by superstition.

Exactly, thanks for making my point. There are such fundamental problems in India that privacy laws are the least of the layman's problems.

Do you seriously think someone who doesn't have basic ameneties (that we take for granted) cares about this? Get real, they don't.

Why do you think Ambedkar made the constitution with the protections he did?

Why did Gandhi fight for dignity and freedom at the same time.

A country is not its GDP, the GDP is valuable because it serves the country.

You deeply underestimate the intelligence and drive of the people, as well as the protections people need.

Do you think all these people in the west don't see this? See this math on privacy vs efficiency? They do. And they've seen what it does, and it's been bad enough that it's been burnt into them through generations.

We agree to disagree.

> Do you think all these people in the west don't see this? See this math on privacy vs efficiency? They do. And they've seen what it does, and it's been bad enough that it's been burnt into them through generations.

I won't be using the people in the "West" as a benchmark to determine what is right or wrong. There are equally dumb, superstitious people in the West as they are in India. Source: [0][1][2][3][4][5] and many many more...

[0] https://today.yougov.com/news/2016/12/27/belief-conspiracies... [1] http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_Nati... [2] http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18710759/kyrie-irving-cle... [3] https://www.adl.org/education/resources/backgrounders/militi... [4] http://www.newsweek.com/what-does-alt-right-movement-want-52... [5] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senate-dems-block-sanctuar...

I'm sorry, but my rights are not up for your disagreement or discussion.

Wait sanctuary cities ? What does that have to do with anything? Conspiracy theories? The alt right...?

What?

This isn't even an argument, it's a bunch of links and assertions which have no theme other than "look bad", the same way a caveman would point at a furnace and a campfire and say "look fire".

There's a specific narrow import and meaning to my sentence, and it is the specific and narrow context of how they have seen and value privacy because of the historical context they came out of.

It's not a statement that they are magically perfect in all context.

By symmetry if you expand the remit to include every ounce of stupidity committed by people in the west, we in India will crush them outright.

Just a few days ago the govt effectively outlawed cattle slaughter, including buffaloes as part of the prevention of cruelty to animals, but they left out pigs, goats, and chickens. Not to mention fish.

And this is the a very pro development government. Forget the shenanigans of the people.

If you open the field to bringing up superstition and bad governance in the west, the saying "people in glass houses should not throw stones" comes to mind.

> By symmetry if you expand the remit to include every ounce of stupidity committed by people in the west, we in India will crush them outright.

Yeah right. You have a very rosy picture of how people are in the West. I've lived in 3 countries, there are stupid people everywhere. It's not an exclusive domain of India.

> value privacy because of the historical context they came out of.

What historical context?

I got no issues with the Aadhar card, so I'm staying put. Why don't you stop trolling, drop your smartphone/computer and instead go out there to make a difference.

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