> farmers resort to suicide when they are unable to pay back their small loans
The govt. pays a lot of money to farmers. 21% of farm income is from govt. subsidies. (Subsidies that the US and other developed nations have been fighting to stop, so that they can compete in Indian markets).
Farmer suicides have been more or less constant for many decades now. Its a sad situation and the causes of suicides are many and varied.
The current govt. has brought in a lot of technology driven improvements to distribution of subsidies, eliminating middlemen, etc.
The current farmer protests are mostly by rich farmer middlemen from Punjab, who will see their commissions reduces significantly if farmers start selling in markets with real competition.
> when "elected governments" act as the nazi party and "image" is worth more than lives of ordinary citizens
This could potentially mean very many things. It would help if you could be specific. Just shouting Nazi and lives of ordinary citizens means nothing.
> have people disappear as they like
Not very knowledgeable on this subject. Would love to hear more.
> when journalists are arrested and people killed for speaking against this "Elected government"
Most incidents I have seen are for deliberate instances of mis-information and shoddy journalism, leading to tense situations. I would be glad to hear of any instances where journalists have been wrongfully arrested.
The example you cite is for a journalist who was arrested based on a complaint from a Woman's Union, and that was for his posts of FB rather.
I never support suppression of free speech and news media, but the North Eastern states of India have a unique situation because China is fomenting a lot of separatism within the states and it is internationally knows that it claims Arunachal Pradesh as its own.
> This email group is monitored by two people in the banks offshore centre in Hyderabad. They worked super hard and always SMASHED their job; but holy crap it was soul crushing.
4-hour workweek and such books have taught Westerners to de-humanize Indians and give them the most menial jobs imaginable at next to nothing salaries
> (very legitimate) resentment felt toward businessmen, farmers and politicians by salaried Indians
Resentment toward farmers? You gotta be kidding me. I agree with the argument that most of the illegitimate wealth get invested in India in one way or other and most of it might not be present in Swiss banks and several other things from the article, but above comment shows the author has no idea how Indian society is operating internally. I have lived both in village and in the city, I've seen salaried city/village people having many opinions/feelings for "farmers" but resentment was not one of them.
>At the same time you talk of "temple beggar jobs and 60 year old women doing road maintenance".
> Am honestly unable to reconcile these opposing narratives.
India is a massive complex country, just like the US. It has plenty of physical and cultural space to accommodate both those narratives. You might consider visiting there to see both play out at the same time for yourself - it's fascinating.
But you don't need to look as far as SF to India to find such opposing narratives. SF entrepreneurs with vast amounts of capital are in close proximity to many people right in the Bay Area working for low wages in marginal and informal jobs (day laborers, child-care workers, domestic maids), and even people in jobs that involve human oppression (human trafficking, etc).
> Too often despots and their cronies get countries into economic trouble, countries that have been taken advantaged by Western interests for hundreds of years.
Agreed.
> When the country collapses, the IMF and World Bank subjugate the country to Western interests further often to the destruction of the environment and detriment to upward mobility of the population.
Can you give me any concrete examples of IMF reforms making a country worse off economically?
> Using statistics like reduction of extreme poverty or wage growth when not taking into account other factors like inflation or mortality for example
Okay, mortality in India has fallen steadily from 1% in 1991 to 0.7% in 2020. And inflation doesn’t have a clear pattern but it’s never returned to its 1991 peak of 13.5%.
I’m not just cherry-picking stats here! India has actually gotten way way better in the last few decades, and the rate of improvement rose dramatically after the 1991 reforms!
Wow, I had never heard about this. I found an article about it in case anyone else is interested: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11997571
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