Such radical takes are always a hit on HN because they are essentially playing to the gallery. Leaving social media is futile if you don't take efforts to maintain contacts with your friends and families in other ways.
> hate for capitalism is pretty old in certain parts of the world.
I would like to have a different take. India has a strong merchant class since aeons and market economy was never a taboo culturally. You can see that in the entrepreneurs like Bansals, Agrawals, Shahs that are at the helm of Indian Unicorns. So yes, there is a skepticism about 'western' capitalism, but not for market economics.
> One of my first memories is waddling along to the ration shop (cheap subsidized government shops) with my mother to buy rice and kerosene for cooking.
Man you just rekindled those memories. I still remember the dusty ration card book (from PV Narsimha Rao's times, I guess).
> people here tend to look down on these cheap curry-consultancies
HN is very parochial when it comes to outsourcing and the vitriol some people here have for H1-Bs is sad. Our stories are the other side of the coin which shows that these curry-consultancies are making some real dent in the universe for the rest of us.
Background: I come from a non-UC, rural yeoman farmers family. I grew up in rural India and used to spend my summer and winter vacations working on our family farm along with my cousins. I was the first Engineer in my family and studied in a Government college, and most of my batchmates were from a similar background, with over 50% of them being lower classes.
I have witnessed India's progress from the front row and it is something my parents or grandparents could never have imagined. Many of my friends went on to achieve great prosperity, some being C-level at Unicorns, others helping build Indias nuclear submarines etc. There is substantial wealth in the hands of my 4th tier town folks and I can see the signs of (relative) prosperity. Most households have people working in the private sectors and the wealth does trickle down.
I visited a Govt. hospital recently and I was surprised to see that it is not an ugly damp place it used to be. Granted, it is not on par with NHS or US hospitals but neither is it a god forsaken place.
The infrastructure is also much better than it was in the 90s. My grandfather would be shocked to see the Nagpur Metro and would think Aliens built it.
I am also proud of the fact that India does take special care of wild life and is actively working to preserve the amazing biodiversity it has. Of course there will always be pressure from humans, but the heart is at the right place.
My apologies that this discussion got heated and turned into a slug fest. Caste is a sensitive topic for me as I've personally seen it's ugly manifestations in several occasions. You seem like a well-read man albeit with a one-sided view (dare I say, with a western gaze) so I'll try to explain my points in a amicable way:
- Toxic empathy: Toxic empathy is when a person over-identifies with someone else's feelings and directly takes them on as their own. There is an active group of upper caste (Savarna) activists trying to milk the lower castes' lived experiences and making it about them. I was pointing to that hypocrisy.
- I can assure you that Savarna is not a casteist slur, it is a real word used in the Dalit lexicon. It is akin to calling a White person "Caucasian". It was used by Babasaheb and other dalit pioneers and it is a staple word in Ambedkarite literature. I implore you to read real dalit voices from India like Dhasal, Hansda Shekar, Daya Pawar to get a real picture.
- I also find your claim that Indian women or Indian Muslims or Indian Dalits don't have any such stories. (sorry paraphrasing). I have seen first-hand what strides India has taken post 90s and downtrodden peoples kids have climbed up the rungs and are doing great. India is definitely not a wonderland like the Nordics or USA, and has a long way to go, but it is definitely not the case of only Upper castes are progressing and women, muslims and dalits are shunned at the bottom of the society.
India is going through a flux and the casteism is definitely a bane to our society, but we can not eliminate it if we do not understand how it manifests. Peace out, Atta Deep Bhava.
P.S. These are the 3 links I shared after a cursory Google search
It’s telling that you skipped the real criticisms about your toxic empathy and lack of solutions to the casteism problem. Grovelling in firanghi forums and seeking gora validation by finger pointing will not help eliminate the problem in rural India. Avarnas are not a karma farms for savarnas on the internet.
> extrapolation and generalization from personal experiences leads to biased perspectives.
I agree, biases should be avoided. My point is that GP had a biased view of casteism which doesn’t help in eradicating it from the roots. He seems to be pasting the same links that confirm his bias and seeking internet validation in an article that has nothing to do with casteism. The real need is to bring the change on the ground by understanding the problem better.
No we should definitely discuss and eliminate casteism, no disagreement on that. But you don’t comment “White male privilege” in all the other posts, right?
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There are tons of posts by Indian women, Muslims and Dalits that show that they’re also ascendant, but if you only look at -ve aspects you will always find dirt.
I grew up in rural area and I’m not a savarna. I studied in Govt institutions and most of my non-Savarna batch mates are doing just fine. We don’t need savarna apologists to tell us what is the ground reality.
Thus is a dog whistle for casteism. This is a standard modus operendi of a certain section of opinionated people to drag caste into any discussion about India. Caste is a complex topic but this discussion has nothing to do with it.
the deracination in this comment is astounding. I grew up in rural India all my life and this cartoonish casteism is no longer part of the mainstream Indian society. There will be isolated cases, but I’ve seen times and again people freely drinking water from a _pyau_ irrespective of the caste of the person.
I implore you to take a rational look at Indian society and not rely on WaPo/NYT to know your own land.
> they have been succesful in maligning him as a racist for speaking the truth.
This comment is so full of intellectual dishonesty. Razib Khan's controversy is a result of his so called cancellation by Left-liberal media like NYT/Times which are decidedly against Hindu nationalism.
In fact, Razib Khan is the founder of Brown Pundits, which is arguably more center right and has more Hindutva supporters than left-liberals. I found Razib Khan and Omar Ali both to be a prudent and neutral observers of the developments in subcontinent and are more leaning towards Hindutva (in its original spirit)
> Every topic about India I comment on, not only it gets downvoted pretty heavily
Playing a devil's advocate here, would you think there's another side to the debate? India is no binary system like US and is a thriving and functioning democracy. I understand the penchant for people to downvote dissent, but could there be another side to the argument rather than "Indian's are Hindu Nationalists"?
> You've implied multiple times that there's something spooky going on without evidence
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. HuffPo is no saints and in the world of global info warfare, I wouldn't be so quick to give them a clean chit. See how Al Jazeera etc operate with a state backed agenda for an example.
> A xenophobic movement with a...
This is such an incoherent rant riddled with falsehoods without any evidence. RSS is no xenophobic movement even if the biased wikipedia page paints it that way. If you have grassroots Indian experience, you'll know that they want to revive Hindu right, while preserving Dharmic values. I don't agree with all their attempts, but it's laughable how brown sepoys quickly jump to it's criticism without substantial data.
You seem to have a fixed agenda and reiterating the same unsubstantiated claims against imaginary bogeymen. The economist links you've mentioned can be easily summarized as an opinion piece and I can provide several more similar links from SwarajyaMag that say otherwise.
What a coincidence, I literally saw the comment on the Supabase thread about PostgREST yesterday. I wonder how does this handle server side tasks like sending emails etc?
Such radical takes are always a hit on HN because they are essentially playing to the gallery. Leaving social media is futile if you don't take efforts to maintain contacts with your friends and families in other ways.