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Comment by negamax | Hacker News Reader

Actually it's not as much as enemies of India. I have seen fairly negative comments about India's accomplishments from neutral folks.

My own understanding is that India's rise makes people uncomfortable because they can no longer think that there's this mass of people who's worse off than them. India's accomplishments challenge their worldview and their place in it. I have indeed noticed this trend amongst people who aren't well off themselves. They are extra vocal and vicious in their attacks.

Earlier, this used to affect me. And I would try to correct them, even have arguments. But I have accepted this now. India and others should just ignore them as it's not really a constructive criticism and double down on all growth attempts

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Honestly I think so much of the negative bias towards India (from the US at least) comes from some unfortunate American practices. A lot of our customer service organizations here in the states have a really bad habit of outsourcing the labor to the cheapest bidder, and due to economic differences, the cheapest bidder is often Indian. This means that a large portion of Americans are being exposed almost exclusively to one tiny segment of the Indian population, and usually those that are the poorest (cheapest bidder is cheapest for a reason) and not actually representative of the culture at large. It colors our expectations, and the bias is hard to throw off sometimes, even when we're aware of it.

There's some real technical talent within India, and I've had the pleasure of working with some of that talent during my day job. Even though this mission was ultimately a failure, that it got as far as it did is a testament to their accomplishments. Space is hard.

Bravo team, continue learning as much as you can about where things went wrong, and may your future endeavors be even more successful!

I hugely admire working with my American colleagues. They are indeed far more talented and it has always been a great learning experience. In fairness, if America wants it can cut India off. And the country will be many years behind without these opportunities. I always thought that investment in India is to integrate it into the world better and give people chance to be self supporting. And there's a hope that it will pay off on the world level to everyone. I do understand many Americans suffered from global pressures. But their sacrifices and continued persistence to add value is a great model for all of us. Well, at least for me.

Actually US tried to cut India off many times. It actually supported Pakistan during 1972 war. After India tested second nuclear bomb, US tried to pressurize India by way of restricting many technology transfer but India actually came out stronger. It developed most of those technologies on its own. US even denied the service of GPS system following which India developed its own solution. Unlike China (and Japan in the past), India's economy doesn't depend much on US.

Yes and those embargos indeed put India many years behind. I do think it's quite admirable that the country developed these things indigenously. But we should take the existing good and advances from all around us and leapfrog. And build upon it. Instead of getting into the trap of developing our own. American capitalism is indeed a great example in this regards on economic expansion. They leveraged the global imbalance and came out stronger despite job losses. SpaceX, Tesla, Calico, Boston Dynamics and many others are well footed into the future because of that.

As is often pointed out, a big weakness of India's economy is the poor interconnections with the global economy. In addition, as you have pointed out, this is also a source of, or at least opportunity for, strength.

I am not sure the balance is correct (it's absurd that as a PIO my investment opportunities are better not only than other foreign investors, but citizens too), but it's arguable and worth thinking about.

> Actually it's not as much as enemies of India. I have seen fairly negative comments about India's accomplishments from neutral folks.

When Israel's lander crashed there were lots of negative comments as well.

I think some people are just ... I don't know, just not good people.

Exactly, it’s not so much “enemies of India” as it is merely differing opinions.

I’m Indian (though I emigrated to the west when I was a teenager), and I consider myself pro-Indian, and I also consider it to be pro-Indian to give a voice to India’s less fortunate population. Personally I support programs to reduce poverty with greater enthusiasm than I support space exploration. In my view there is nothing about that that is offensive to India, in fact it elevates the majority of India’s population.

There may also be bad sentiment leaking over from the media blackout and ethnic cleansing in Kashmir. FWIW I think that’s silly and stupid to take it out on the space agency, but it’s also human.

Can you cite a source for ethnic cleansing? Per a Guardian report, if the military is to be believed, five people have been killed in thirty days. That is tragic but not quite on the scale of the claim.

As per guidelines.."Please don't use HN for racial or national or religious or ethnic or any other kind of flamebait. This is all off topic for HN, and we ban accounts that post like this repeatedly."

Im gonna say it because Dang apparently isnt (to this comment)

Thank you. I want to add an aside here: I have chronically abused the rules of this site in the past. I was ignorant as to the mission of Hacker News and how it can help me! I realized that my ideas are worth having a slow, measured conversation punctuated by facts and understanding of other views just as well as my own. I was falling into a trap of politicizing truth and losing my way in the process.

I’m thankful dang gave me the opportunity to change.

If you consider serious allegations of ethnic cleansing to be flamebait, you're the exact phenomenon that enables it.

Secondly, if you think this doesn't play into international perception of India at the moment, I'm not sure what would be on topic.

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