Comment by gnufied | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnufied | Hacker News Reader

The problem I think is - The people at lowest rung of our society have very little moral values. The most important thing is to survive. Sure occasionally you meet a auto-rickshaw driver who did not try to charge you more, but by and large every one of them will try to take as much as they can.

I have been with some of the poor people (heck I come from poor background) of this country, took a trip in transport truck from Kolkata to Patna, stayed in cheapest hotels in Varanasi, was part of student group that tried to forcefully occupy a train only to get fired at (one guy got killed) and one thing that is clear as day to me is - the idea that "this is wrong" does not exist when what matters is - "Can I get away with this?"

The gap between middle class and lower class is HUGE. I don't know if there is any other democracy that has such wide gap of income between people. It Us vs Them. Rich and middle class get very little empathy from poor folks. Perhaps it is true other way round too.

I read a blame-Indian-poor comment like this on every HN article about India. I recall one guy upbraiding the poor for public defecation. Because of low morals. As if lack of sewage infrastructure had nothing to do with the fact that people s&*# in the street in India. It's poor morals.

What makes your comment most remarkable, however, is that the linked article says almost nothing about class, or economic development, or anything like that. It's about street harassment of women. And yet, since it's an article about India, someone chimes in with a comment about how low-morals the poor are.

I have tried answering some of it below. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6239844

well as an indian it saddens me to say that i agree with you. also I believe that middle class and rich are the most misogynist among indians. There is no morality that works in india accept "I can get away with this because I have money and power to do so". I think that world will face a lot of problems integrating india and indians in near future.

Are you implying education has little impact on how a person perceives the world around him/her?

Can we deny that, all rapes that were reported in media were done by people from lower rung of our society? Sure for every poor criminal there is a educated bureaucrat taking bribe and doing as he pleases. But we are specifically talking about street harassment and crime against women here, which is fixable by educating people.

"all rapes that were reported in media were done by people from lower rung of our society?"

Wow, thats a strong comment. I am sure you have concrete data supporting that!

i am sorry but i believe you are in some fantasy world my friend. Most of the educated indians dont respect women and everyone knows how much porn addiction and objectification of women is rampant among educated students and other people. I believe that lower class of society learns from the middle and upper classes. in India the meme of rape and abuse towards women comes from idealogy of middle class and rich misogynist men. I also believe this is a result of large amount of female feoticide that happend in past 25 years and is still going on in large numbers. I see future in a pessimistic way because of all this and it saddnes me that after knowing and understanding politics and history of the country , I dont see any way out of this darkness. I live in europe now and I made many friends with people travelling in india and many women from europe just like the girl from the article. Almost every women was harrassed and abused in some point of their journey in some way by someone and this is not dependent on class. I first hand experienced middle class and rich kids from majot metropolian cities taking picture of western women in beaches of goa without their permission and harrasing them. I know the reasons for it very well one of them being not being able to see most indian women naked while growing up and being exposed to a lot of western adult content makes clear distinction in peoples mind to look and see white women as a mere sex object and nothing more. Also movie industry and what ideas they promote about women and sexuality doesnt help much. dont get me started about billion dollar fairness creams industry.........

Even if that's true, the qualifier "reported in the media" is an important one - are there rapes out there by the wealthy that aren't reported, because no-one would take the word of a poor woman over a wealthy man?

Not only are rape and sexual harrassment quite prevalent in wealthy, modern cities it also has a very real presence in those within the highest income brackets of those cities.

What comes with education and wealth is the sophistication to define the context in which said violence takes place. It can be swept under the rug, it can occur between people who know each other and both want it kept secret, it can occur and then be dealt with by a large sum of money. It is quite ridiculous that being poor inherently makes one more likely to be a rapist when there's no evidence suggesting a causal link.

I don't understand your logic, or what democracy has to do with the matter.

I am no expert on India, but I spent enough time there to observe a clear and disturbing trend in male behavior and I have spent enough time in other - developed and developing - countries to have appropriate context for comparison.

An easy place to start would be China, which exhibits some similar demographic issues, but you really never come across this type of behavior there.

There are two problems:

1. Crime against women is specially high. Why is it high? Because - wheels of justice turn really slowly here and perpetrator has a good chance of escaping without punishment. From what I hear, Justice (or sometimes lack of it) is swift in China. That itself is a great deterrent.

2.If you go through all the recent rape cases reported in media, perpetrators are almost always - mostly uneducated and poor. For some it was just entertainment(The Delhi case) and in others just an idea that they can get away with it. There is also sad fact that for many Indian males - women are objects [of pleasure]. An stereotype often reinforced by B and C grade movies (guess who watches those movies).

And isn't it possible that the rich rapists actually can get away with it, and that's why you don't see their names in the media?

Everything you mention in problem 2 is likely true, but these are generally true in most countries around the world, regardless of phase of development: in any country most crime results from the poor or uneducated because they have an impetus for wanting to do it, and ultimately believing they can get away with it.

Regarding problem 1 this might make sense if crime (violent, in particular) was notably higher in India than in other countries with similar income levels, but I do not think that is the case - in fact I would guess it is on the whole on the lower end. Yet women do seem to be heavily objectified ( as pleasure). This is what I found so surprising and upsetting while I was in India.

What you forget are the rape cases that are not reported in the media or do not get the same attention in the international press - The rape of poor dalit(lower caste) women by upper caste men. In some cases its used as a tool for handing out punishment to the unfortunate girl's husband, brother or father.

India's middle class or upper class cannot be so easily exonerated. There are equally horrific stories of women being exploited by well connected and well educated individuals. Please look at [1] and [2]

A slight detour and some anecdotal evidence. I was once at a party in the Film Institute of India, Pune. Pune is one of the more metropolitan cities in India and the environment and the outlook inside FTII is more progressive than the rest of India or so you would think. A guy kept coming to my female Caucasian friends and offered them drugs. We ignored him for a while and now hurt by this he started calling all white women as whores who destroy the sanctity of the college and the nation. The worst part was the group of people around him who supported him.

The problem is at a much deeper level and its present in all stratas of our society.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suryanelli_rape_case [2]http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?205638

Thanks for posting -- that second link is considerably more depressing than the original article.

I completely agree with you on China. I've had encounters which were completely harmless there, but could have taken a sour turn in Germany. Even the homeless are remarkably civil. There are certain areas you should stay out of as a tourist, but everywhere else seems almost laughably safe.

It is really amazing. Collectively, I have spent over two years in China, and have never been particularly cautious about what sort of situations I work my way into. Never once have I felt threatened or unsafe. It is what I admire most about the country.

I'm going to assume that you are male. I can assure you China is pretty damn dangerous for women who go drinking and rape is also common. There is a lot of sexual harassment in the workplace which is typified by power imbalances (you need a job and your boss is a sleazebag). Just because you haven't personally seen it doesn't mean it isn't there.

It certainly can be dangerous, as can any country, and I consider myself lucky to not have had any problems, but I can't think of another country I have been in that felt safer to me. And more time there only verified that feeling. There is a certainly a strong chance I would feel otherwise if I was a woman.

Have you visited Japan? It has great civility and safety, applied to people of either gender and even to foreigners. At least to white ones like me. Japanese say the old order is breaking down in the cities, so I can only imagine how it once was. Yet it remains the most civil place I have seen.

But aren't there seperate gender subway wagons precisely because there were widespread problems with sexual harassment?

I'd find it intresting to get the view of someone who grew up in asia and is ethnically asian, because their view will proably be markedly different from ours. I mean I'm half chinese, but I have the benefit of being male and being a hunxuee'r which most likely changes how chinese people treat me.

Yes, there are such wagons for the reasons you state - though limited to rush hour (about 90 minutes per day) and one per train of fourteen wagons or so and, in Tokyo, only used on some lines. It does seem better here, but I am both male and European so not fully equipped to adjudge.

As a brazilian that have lived in India for some time, I could tell you that the form democracy present in both countries today has a lot to do with incidents such as the reported on the post. The historic distance between poverty and middle-class just grows as the public institutions can't provide basic (or with the minimium required quality) services to the poor: education, healthcare, housing, etc.

I don't agree with the _poor people have a different moral_ argument presented by 'gnufied, but there is an intense feeling of social tension on a daily basis on both countries, which is clearly related to the income gap and the almost tribal mindsets developed by those completely different realities.

Besides the economic factor, India also displays consequences from gender issues liked to its patriarcal society and sexual repression. Unsurprisingly, the lower part of the social pyramid is also the one that suffers more from a conflict between the exarcerbated sexuality pushed by media and the to be said moral values of society. The education system wouldn't reach that part of the population with the same quality as rich or middle-class people, which, as said on other comments, also suffers from that on a lesser degree.

India's Gini Coefficient (Income inequality) is smaller than that of the US and Switzerland, both democracies.

It might however be true that the difference between the middle class and the poor is significantly higher.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com