Balaji’s Blog

And another thing…

A follow-up from the previous post.

I have no idea if the sort of thing I am about to describe is common in other countries¹, but it’s another annoying trend.

I can fairly confidently predict in a very short while, a email will be forwarded to me pointing out all the amazing things that Indians have accomplished in recent years.. and Amit Singhal’s name will be added to that list.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I admire what the guy has helped build, but there is a deceptive logic in these sort of emails that bugs me – the philosophy goes “Look at the cool stuff that Indians are doing! So.. we don’t need to feel so bad about the state of our country”.

You know what? We do need to feel bad about the state of our country.

What these people have accomplished is testament to something else altogether – that in the current labour market, people with intelligence and ability are able to find jobs that would better utilize their talent that would have been possible 20 years ago.

But the endemic corruption that India suffers from isn’t improved one bit because of these accomplishments.

The atrocious state of the infrastructure in India doesn’t get any better.

The criminal amounts of money thrown away on incredibly inefficient state enterprises isn’t changed.

The lack of any social security in a country with a huge population of elderly and traditional social structures unravelling isn’t improved.

And let’s not get started on child mortality, infanticide, farmer suicides and education.

If any of these factors show any (and I do mean any) improvement, then that’s a list I will be happy to read.

Lists like these are just placebos – dulling the outrage that we should be feeling.

Okay it’s incredibly late at night… I’m tired and over-worked and this post is probably going to mortify me tomorrow.

So I’m gonna shut up now.

1. more specifically, asian countries with a history of colonial rule [↩]

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 1:27 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.