Hello there folks, hope you had a really good diwali, here's to great learning from us: another edition of Gradeup Magazine.
Q: If Sundar Pichai is an American citizen, serves a company in America and pays taxes, why should Indians boast about him being brought up in India?
A: For any poor, depressed community there is a strong need for role models who look like them. This is the reason why feminists push for more female representation in the board rooms and why Dalits keep a full suited imagery of Ambedkar.
A suppressed group has a terrible problem with the “I can’t” syndrome. Children there assume that they are destined to be low and believe that successful people have something different that their group cannot have. After years of doctrination, their belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
India as a whole is a suppressed group. Since the dawn of colonialism we don’t have very many success stories to look up to [as a friend of mine recently posed: can you name one engineer born in independent India who is your engineering role model?]. Many of our students buy into the racial idea of Indians being a weaker group.
What the success stories of Kalpana Chawla, Subramaniam Chandrasekhar, Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella does is it helps partially break the clutches we put on ourselves. Their stories show that you can succeed in the brown skin and they could thus become role models.
It really matters nothing on what colour of passports they have, where they live and what their attitudes towards India are. What really matters is, they can succeed and so can other brown skinned people studying in poor schools and growing up in a rote based system.
That belief is a very powerful thing.
As the next stage, we also have to create powerful role models at home - to break the next round of illusion that brown skinned people have to settle in the white lands to succeed. Once such role models emerge, more confident students will bring their best without worrying about visas.
Let’s not try to underestimate the power of role models.
Q: If America were in place of India, facing constant firing from Pakistan then How will American defence tackle this?
United States’ response might not be very different from India’s.
Pakistan’s establishment most likely hid America’s most wanted terrorist. Osama brazenly attacked New York and other cities in a bigger way than Pakistan’s attack on Mumbai. Osama Bin Laden killed Americans everywhere and he was happily living next to Pakistan’s army HQ. What did the US do? Bomb Pakistan? No. They did a surgical strike and continued to work with Pakistan. Pakistani leaders knew Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan, says former defense minister
US knows most of global terrorism comes from Saudi Arabia. They might also know that Saudi Arabian establishment is supporting these groups in various ways. American soldiers die due to these actions. Saudi Arabia Can't Hide From the Truth. What do the Americans do? Work with the Saudis.
Cuba emptied its jails and sent its most ardent criminals to the United States. Criminals 'in exodus from Cuba': US fears Castro emptying his jails. What did the US do? Bomb Cuba? No. They just gritted their teeth and moved on.
US faces a massive drug war in its south. A lot of illegal immigrants and drug lords easily cross over into its borders. Although US is often displeased with the efforts of the Mexican government in tackling this, they continue to work on.
In 1986, Libya sponsored terrorists bombed a discotheque frequented by US soldiers. 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. US did a bit of attack in return, but didn’t do anything significant. Then Gaddafi bombed an American airline killing 243 passengers. Pan Am Flight 103. Gaddafi continued to stay on and the Americans resumed attack on him only after he was a spent force.
In 1993, the American special forces fighting in Somalia were gruesomely killed and paraded. The movie Black Hawk Down portrays those incidents well. What did President Clinton do? Pull troops out of Somalia.
During the cold war, Americans knew that China, USSR and North Korea were in various ways helping the North Vietnam it was fighting. What did the Americans do? Fight China or USSR? Nope. Despite having far more arms than China, they shouted hard in the UN and that’s it. Chinese and Soviet involvement in Vietnam
US did go after the dead snakes - like in case of Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan - weakened by decades of war. Pakistan’s army and population is bigger than all of them put together, is nuclear armed and has long borders with India. Again, in all these cases, US made a bad problem worse by destabilizing an already fallible structure.
Some Indians have this weird notion that Pakistan problem could be solved in a major showdown. Indian leaders always knew it would not. Vajpayee knew. Nehru knew. And Modi knows. Their rhetoric all toned down once they were in charge of managing affairs.
American ships and planes and cities were attacked through actors from supposed allies. In comparison, both Uri and Pathankot involved lesser casualties. Why do you think US would immediately bomb?
Pakistan is partly like Saudi Arabia - in that parts of its establishment is funding terrorists, while other parts might pretend to fight it. How else could you answer the terrorist bombing of Pakistan’s police academies, military bases etc.
Pakistan is partly like Somalia - in that there is massive anarchy in waiting if India gets there and assuming India can destroy their army. Even a nuclear armaggedon will not reduce the problem. Pakistan is not just a sponsor of terrorism, it is also its biggest victim. Terrorists kill far more people in Pakistan than in India. [Fatalities in Terrorist Violence in Pakistan 2003-2016 and South Asia Terrorism portal].
We cannot change our neighbors and we cannot change our neighbors. We have to protect ourselves and continue to do business. We have no other alternative.
In most ways terrorism from there is like the earthquake. We can do very little to prevent. What we can do is to protect ourselves and strengthen our structures.
Q: Why does India have the largest number of people living below poverty line?
India has the world’s largest poor population for the same reason why it has the world’s second largest non-poor population. It is a large country and absolute numbers in socioeconomic indicators don’t make much sense. In percentage terms, it is about the average in the developing world with half of the world doing much worse. List of countries by percentage of population living in poverty.
There is plenty of research on how India got to that point. The answers range from colonialism to industrialization. However, that is the past. The real exciting thing is the change that is happening.
In the past 20 years, India has been quite fast in bringing down the number of poor. In 1981, nearly half were under the World Bank’s poverty line. Now, the numbers are less than 20%. That is significant. The only other major country to pull off poverty this drastically, is China.
If you want to stick to the absolute numbers, here is the kicker. In 1981, about 400 million Indians were above the World Bank defined poverty line. Today, the number above that line is close to 1 billion. In short, 600 million Indians got above the poverty line somewhere in the last generation. Sure, it is not perfect and the Chinese are doing a better job at this etc. That is a massive achievement.
India’s Growth Is Helping Reduce the Number of Poor in South Asia, World Bank Says
Comments
write a comment