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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

India has nuclear power (and weapons) and aircraft carriers. To all intents and purposes, it's a developed nation. Underestimating India on the assumption that it is "developing" or "poor" is a mistake that will bite competitor nations on the arse if they're not careful.

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You will have to see it to believe it. Nuclear power or Space research are just one off achievements but the general GDP per capita speaks volumes.

Once our director visited India, where I live, considering expansion of the insurance business. He went back shocked that India needs at least 20 more years to be even considered for a systematic underwriting. Such is the state of development, government and people.

Its unfortunate but true that India is far away from being considered a developed nation. Education or Patriotism cannot change much in a extremely corrupted political system which controls everything in the country.

It's actually the education system that is largely responsible for the "extremely corrupted political system", among other issues.

Could you elaborate on this? How does the education system largely account for corruption? Is it not cultural? I remember a when discussion of corruption in China, education was not the largest factor. It was a more historical, societal attitude.

Does the schooling method promote corrupt behavior?

Most teachers in Indian Engineering colleges are not practitioners. The profession has extremely low pay compared to other options and hence one of the least preferred one among professionals.

Most universities do not go after high performing engineers to join the faculty , but just mass recruit new college passouts who later climb the job ladder to reach senior positions.Add to this all the reservations based on caste and religion. Except for IITs and some government run engineering colleges, its a very weak educational system in place.

The situation in government departments is not different. New college passouts prefer well paid private jobs than the ones in public sector.

Bad teachers and less talented engineers in public sector: A recipe for corruption.

A big cultural problem also amplifies this: a majority of the middle and upper class families want their children to become engineers.

Our country does not need any more corporate drones, we need better politicians.

Being in India is like being in Mexico and being in California..Depends on which part of India you visit...

While India is booming in many ways, it still cannot be called developed. There is still a huge divide between the rich and poor and poverty is still a major roadblock.

So it's a developed nation with a huge underclass.

But doesn't every developed country depend on a large pool of cheap labour (i.e. poor people, working for low wages)?

You could look at is as Europe and the US just outsourcing their cheap labour, whereas India keeps it in-house?

Certainly not.

Could you elaborate, please?

There are countries where all of the largest expenditures (except oil) are for products produced domestically by the non-poor classes.

Even here in the US. The only significant things that I, personally, spend money on that are significantly made overseas are my car, oil, and computer. Even if the price of those all doubled, it would still be only a small part of my budget.

The outsourcing epidemic is somewhat overstated.

I don't live in the US, but I was under the impression that the vast majority of consumer goods for sale were fabricated in China (or perhaps assembled from parts fabricated in China). Is that not your perception?

I may be wrong, but also, your purchasing habits may not be in line with the majority.

Or maybe you aren't talking about the US? I think the same is true of the UK - are you talking about other European countries? Which of them still has a significant manafacturing base?

The vast majority of my spending is not on consumer goods. I accept your point that I don't know the actual numbers for typical people.

What you are not getting is that while outsourcing does mean cheap labour for Europe and US, it is not necessarily cheap for India(you mentioned keeping in-house). What you think is cheap are standard wages in India. It is cost cutting for US companies but not for Indian companies.

No, I do get that. Perhaps I wasn't clear.

I was trying to point out that these same pool of people (low-paid workers in India and/or China) are necessary to the economies of all developed economies. And so it's not really fair to say India isn't a developed economy simply because it contains this pool of people.

True. There's a long way to go before India can be called developed. However, the good thing about the moon mission is that it is a testament to the quality of the engineering talent at ISRO. Given that ISRO is significantly behind other options as a career for Indian engineers, the fact these engineers themselves are so competent is good news for the engineering ecosystem in India.

I am well aware of the situation in India, while it is true that there are competent engineers at ISRO, it is also saddening that the govt. is not allocating sufficent money for research. Most of the brightest talent is absorbed by private companies as it is a much better choice compared on monetary basis.

The point here is not whether India is developed or not. Nobody in India realistically expects India to become a "developed nation" for another 30 years. The point here is progress... Going to the moon wasn't even thought of 10 years ago...

"Poverty is still there, 80% of the population live on 20 rupees (25p) a day, according to a survey, but a large well off group has also emerged. Some 250 million are reckoned to be very well off, many of them very rich."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6946800.stm

Having just gotten technology from half a century ago isn't a very good metric for labeling a country developed.

Yours is really a poor definition for “developed nation.” A more standard definition of development is based the amount of available capital in an economy. Compared to W. Europe, Japan, N. America, etc., India has a pitifully low amount of capital, per capita (also a poor population: 25% is still below the official poverty line, etc.). Interestingly, one of the chief factors slowing Indian economic growth may be that it has avoided specializing in products requiring cheap unskilled labor (e.g. textiles), as China, etc., have, instead wielding protectionist policies which supported local capital but ultimately weakened its ability to compete on the world market, and other regulation, like draconian labor laws, which have discouraged direct foreign investment. See <http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/01/why...;

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