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Comment by tinuviel | Hacker News Reader

So many sweeping generalizations, broad strokes and racist undertones in your comment. If you’ve led a middle class life in india, you’ll know most people don't dream of gaining power and sweet corruption money. They dream of honest work and pulling themselves out of poverty and being successful. The country has been wildly successful at this and has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty through economic liberalization and reforms, and has taken great strides in eliminating corruption through technology. Read about their mammoth push to get everyone a bank account and direct benefit transfers.

The people you allude to be dreaming of a cushy govt job that allows them to be corrupt is a tiny tiny % of their 1.3B population.

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Most people do dream of gaining power and the sweet corruption money, whether they can or not is a different matter. Your comment is the perfect example of what I was alluding to, trying to have a discussion on India's problems gets you labelled for "racist undertones".

> and has taken great strides in eliminating corruption through technology.

Please enlighten me with one example. What great strides have been taken in eliminating corruption. Go to any small town and most prime real estate is owned by government servants. Go to a big city and most prime real esate is owned by politicians or their adjacent entities.

> Read about their mammoth push to get everyone a bank account and direct benefit transfers.

This just removes a very very small slice of the corruption pie. If this is the best example from a long time then things don't look good.

> The people you allude to be dreaming of a cushy govt job that allows them to be corrupt is a tiny tiny % of their 1.3B population.

Just look at the numbers of people studying for years for the various Government exams. It is not tiny by any means. And 1.3 B is not the right yardstick, but the number of youths in that age group.

I gave two examples. Direct Benefit Transfers & getting everyone bank accounts. They did reduce last mile corruption.

The people I allude to are a substantial portion of the population

>> Under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), a national mission to ensure access to financial services, about 341 million accounts were opened between August 2014 and January 2019, with aggregate deposits of around US$12.5 billion as of January 2019. Of these accounts, 181 million were opened by women.

>> As of January 2019, 440 schemes covering farm and non-farm subsidies, social protection payments such as pensions and public workfare programmes, scholarships, academic fellowships, conditional cash transfers, and other government payments implement DBTs across 56 ministries, with Rupees (INR) 2,16,844 crores (US$ 2.1 trillion) transferred in total in 2018–19 (Direct Benefit Transfer Mission, Government of India Citation2019)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614524.2019.1...

Please provide sources and data before, again, painting with racist broad strokes. I know the internet has a hate boner for India and anything the country it has done positively but please dont let the rhetoric blind you.

If you lived in India you’d know there are substantially more people joining the formal economy instead of lining up for govt exams.

There are cynical ways to look at this—which the opposition has pointed out in India— but this end result is net positive.

I think you might be underestimating the govt exam people though. People who work in government do know how rampant is corruption, the higher ups are more accountable and do curb on corruption by transferring once it gets caught , but a lot of corruption cases are silenced. Take the recent case of delhi justice, clear example of what I am speaking about, it's not that uncommon in govt on levels where's there more managerial competition for power and money.

The opposition is brainless at best and is a walking zombie with no notable leaders and leadership at helm.

The end result of DBT, UPI and other tech initiatives is a transformational positive and will form the bedrock of reforms and future growth.

The govt exam people, again, are a tiny tiny minority. For example - 1.1 million people took the country’s main Civil services exam that has a success rate of less than 0.1%. A vast majority of these 1.1M have no serious prep. To put this in context - India produces around 10 million graduates each other. Vast vast majority find employment in formal and informal sectors.

Govt corruption is a feature on India at this point. The economy has seen mid to high single digit GDP growth with it over the past few decades and will hopefully continue to grow to become a $10T and $20T economy over the next few decades with or without govt policy/reform tail winds and corruption head winds. So no, India is not screwed.

power laws, generally as prior, top 20% of people roughly control 80% of outcomes, the top 5% of Indians including the ones in government are the people who're going to steer the country.

> Most people do dream of gaining power and the sweet corruption money

No. This is false. Most people just want a stable, peaceful life. People want their children to become: 1. Take their profession if it is cushy (profitable business, law practice, etc.) 2. Become a doctor, 3. Move abroad and become an academic/engineer, 4. Have a government job due to stability (most departments don't have any opportunity for corruption, where I live, people drool over becoming govt. High School teachers, which is a very chill job, yet tenured and stable, but 0 money under the table), 5. Have an IT job, 6. Become self-employed and earn big bucks, etc.

You are talking in extreme delusions.

> Go to any small town and most prime real estate is owned by government servants

This is so so wrong. Most land in small town are owned by relatively richer business-owners, who pays zilch in income taxes. In a small town, the richest people are the local bar owner, marble merchant, B2B traders, etc.

If govt. servants do have land, it is become they have very easily available loans, and have a stable, regular, increasing income for 20-30 years which also compounds when saved.

You are being too kind. Looking at other comments on this thread I feel there is an uncompromising and immovable hatred/racism against India and Indians. They feel India is perpetually flawed with no progress whatsoever and is screwed no matter what it does.

Yeah, you are right. Yes, what you say exists, and it is apparent in many comments here. But when writing my comment, I will assume no malice, only ignorance. Because, I don't want to go even close to being racist as an answer to racism.

India is making visible progress. The problem of corruption persists. That is the truth.

Two of the world's largest powers don't want India to rise and do better. And their rich and say in algorithms and propaganda machines is total and complete. People's perspectives are shaped by the major powers. So, I am not really surprised by such takes.

As an example, the propagandistic megaphone of an app controlled by one of India's adversaries. The algorithm of which is extremely biased on purpose, or tuned on purpose. It was laid bare during the most recent conflict India was involved in. I am also pretty sure that there are bot armies on X that, under fake profile, spread falsities about India. There is also one religious-political block on social media that hate India and is unrelenting in spreading falsehoods. The app was about to be banned in the US, but the kin of the Leader of the Free World received 300M USD in "investment" in their crypto firm.

The legacy media is not far behind. They highlight only the negative things. I remember when India landed on the moon, FT made a map, where they named USA, China, Russia, and "other countries" where it was only India.

Do you expect any different in this setup?

I am too tired of these bot accusations, like it almost seems like everyone is using bots at this point, or majority of people are non-botted, accusing each other of using bots; sure some sides may be using it more or less than others,but I need some data for such claims which compares it with other sides, and puts it in proportion.

Honestly the FT thing might be automated, or more of a product of ignorance, majority of people as you have mentioned in your previous comments don't go hating some far off land which they're not in wars with.

I’m Australian by heritage, but have spent plenty of time in India and have more recently married and moved to India. The intense focus on getting government jobs (far beyond the point of irrationality, in my opinion, completely wasting years on a remote possibility), I can attest, from experience in West Bengal and Hyderabad, among lower- and middle-class Christians. But I wouldn’t say it need be about corruption: in fact, for many types of government jobs there’s not much opportunity for corruption (e.g. most of nursing). The biggest reason I’ve heard is the stability and certainty of a government job. My wife was once such a seeker for this reason.

As a private employee, you can be let go easily, whereas as a government employee, even dying may not lose you your job. I know a case where a man had a job in the post office, and died, and his widow was expected to inherit the job, and has done for five or ten years, although she is grossly incompetent at it (they would literally have done better to pay her twice as much to stay away).

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