Loading ...I think one of his points was that while western societies have a share of corrupt, lying devious people and officials, in India:
a) everyone (with very very few exceptions) is like that; and
b) even most of the corrupt westerners have some compassion. The good samaritan looked after the jew. The good Indian would think that the right thing to do would be to laugh at the jew, and feel better for it. Very difficult for us to comprehend.
In other words, it’s their culture, which while it might have been suppressed for a while by a century of British rule has returned to the surface.
My interest in the article is because a niece is going to India as a missionary next year. I’ve sent it to her as it ties in with many snippets that I’ve picked up over the years. Westernised Indians saying that the British were the best thing to happen to India, and how it will fall apart with their departure, exactly as this article says. Mission organisations like Thankyou!, Compassion etc being unable to operate in India due to the corruption – the culture can’t even allow people to help for free without a bribe being given! The attitudes of an Indian neighbour to tradesmen, tenants, builders etc. One of the final comments about housing really resonates – the neighbour bought an ordinary single level house on a seventh of an acre, demolished it and built a mansion occupying almost the whole block. With extra high ceilings upstairs and down it towers above the surrounding houses, and I literally lost count of the number of bathrooms it has. It is totally out of character with the suburb and needless to say is despised and hated by the neighbours. Oh, and he’s now paying $55,000 for a fence to go around the property as per the article …..
So I think that, just as different races have different physical characteristics (black people can run. Boy, can they run!! But they can’t swim) so there are cultural differences that they may find impossible to overcome. Hence his warning about allowing too much migration from the subcontinent. And my warning; because of this culture, we can’t expect India to provide the next reflationary impulse for the world economy. The culture creates so many economic inefficiencies, not just financial but the time required to get things done, govt. permits etc. that it just can’t happen. The one thing we can probably rely upon is their continued purchases of the metal as uncertainty and strife grow.