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I am aware of the deficiencies, but also very aware of the progress being made. There is no magic wand to wave to make people not be like people and change a vast, diverse population into something they are not.
What is about "a vast, diverse population into something they are not"? Are you saying India can not be a middle-ish income country like China/Thailand/Malyasia etc. I would like to believe that wise choices by the electorate and good leaders and some luck can transform the country (or any country). Japan/South Korea/Thailand/Malaysia all did it. Some of those countries are vast, some diverse and some had less advantages than India.
If you believe in the opposite that then are you not giving into the ideas in the "Clash of Civilizations" or worse "Genetics as IQ" crowd?
India has a very vibrant local economy which does not show up in nominal GDP. By GDP by PPP, India is the third largest economy in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)). I consider India to be a solid middle income country, not any less that other countries you are talking about.
I am actually fairly proud of the changes I see in India in the last 20 years. I Some of the key changes I have seen (by no means complete): 1. Improvement in road transport with a nationwide single toll provider. 2. Indian railways has always been there as an affordable means of transport. 3. Getting a passport is now a couple of days and less than 24 hours with tatkal. 4. Healthcare is free for all. Yes, it varies from state to state, but government hospitals are available for everyone. Even otherwise, it is affordable. 5. Air travel went from just for the rich to middle class. 6. Government and publicly funded schools are reasonably good (The project director for Chandrayaan 3 came from a government school).
And yes, I am also very aware of the issues - political class abuses the power to enrich themselves. Different states have different development indices. But perfection is not needed for improvements.
Thank you for the clarification
Using net migration as a statistic for the health of a country is no more (or less) valid than the TFR or longevity or anything else equally plausible.
Q: Say that Sundar Pichai or Vinod Khosla had not left India? Would their impact on India larger or smaller?
I would say India is better off that they left, maybe you differ?
It's always about culture.
The British Empire employed a strategy of divide-and-rule: it encouraged and amplified the caste system, and also encouraged the partitioning of society along religious lines. On top of that, it layered the English class system, and a horribly-botched partition.
I don't mean to imply that Indians don't have agency; they've had 80 years to fix the mess the Empire left them with, but things are getting worse (IMO).
I don't like empires. I look forward to the breakup of Great Britain. I think the USA is struggling to hold itself together. Most complaints about China are about the imperial domination of ethnically-distinct regions by the Han. The current war in Europe is a war of imperial conquest. I wonder whether India might be too big and diverse to manage, too?
80 years isn't a long time, and over many years I expect it will be sorted out.
/me not been to India for 40 years, opinions based mostly on mainstream news
Please don't take HN threads into political, nationalistic, or ideological flamewar, or any other flamewar. We ban accounts that keep doing this, and we've had to ask you more than once before, so please stop.
But this is your sub so I will stay away from comments on this sub.
But is this the way to talk about the party that has the support of 80% of Indians? Hate to see such uncultured speech.
@dang please flag parent comment.
https://swarajyamag.com/politics/about-80-per-cent-indians-h...
Just look at the kind of baseless and denigrating comments people spew around. What more proof do you need.
I'm not suggesting that happens all the time, or even most of it. But relative to other online discussions it does quite well.
The next step up would probably require limited access and verified qualifications. Or something along the lines of StackExchange (which does, yes, have its own problems).
I am half expecting someone to come up and say it goes against their freedom of speech. No, but I like StackExchange, it provides helpful information many a times. How many times have I visited HN if I wanted to know something versus how many times [...] StackExchange. There's definitely value there even for those not participating, but it takes away the back-and-forth of a discussion.
Even people who don't have the qualifications on paper but who have done sufficient research can add good content.
The problem is people disparage and speak in a condescending way under the pretext of facts, which makes it look legitimate, but there's racism and bigotry hiding underneath. I think people need to be more selective and careful with their usage of words if they want to maintain a scientific decorum, and not politicize matters.
So far as I've been able to trace the origins, it's actually an adaptation of free-market ideology and promotion, and was likely suggested to Oliver Wendell Holmes by Francis Wrigley Hirst, former editor of The Economist, a publication literally founded to promote free-market ideals.[1][2]
But ... is a marketplace really the forum in which ideas are best formed and developed? Or even transmitted? Because ... my understanding is that this takes place far more often in studies, libraries, workshops, laboratories, and academies. Usually amongst a small set of people qualified in the task they are undertaking. Yes, there's often correspondence amongst that group, and there may be distributed work or teams. But one thing it distinctly is not is the absolute hubbub and all-comers-invited nature of the marketplace.
I've yet to see a full critique of the notion, though Jill Gordon's "John Stuart Mill and 'The Marketplace of Ideas'" comes quite close. Among other points, she makes clear that Mill never actually used the phrase, and had some sharp concerns with what are now key elements of it.
<https://www.pdcnet.org/soctheorpract/content/soctheorpract_1...>
Ultimately, markets reward characteristics which are strongly at odds with information in various ways. This appears both in how markets for information goods are tremendously skewed and have enormous deadweight losses (actively impeding access to information to virtually all), but also in what types of information are promoted and advantaged by marketplaces --- rarely that which has a strong truth valance, or which stands against orthodoxies.
(Markets aren't the only structures which stand against information, but given that they're often portrayed as the essence of informational genesis, the conflict is highly notable.)
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Notes:
1. Holmes didn't quite coin the modern form, but came quite close and strongly influenced the ultimate formulation. The Hirst connection is revealed in Thomas Healy's book The Great Dissent: <https://www.alumni.columbia.edu/content/great-dissent-how-ol...>
2. See The Economist's Prospectus: "[A] weekly paper, to be published every Saturday, and to be called THE ECONOMIST, which will contain— First.—ORIGINAL LEADING ARTICLES, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day" <https://www.economist.com/unknown/1843/08/05/prospectus>