Guys,
I just had to intervene.
You guys just take Vandemataram's post out of context.
I have been living in India for the past 4 months. Personally I see no difference between India and Canada except for the climate (climate sucks here).
I am having more free time (though I work 6 days a week). In India, only your precense is required for 6 days a week. No one expects you to work nor can you extract work from anyone.
Everyone comes to your office to get stuff for you like car salesman, TV guy, Internet guy etc.. So you need not go an suffer. We pay bribe to get things done faster that waiting in line in Canada.
Recently I had been to 2 hospitals. One was private. Once inside, any CD who is blindfolded and led inside will swear that he is in a Canadian hospital. We were seen by a doctor in 15 mins. The second time, I had to go to a govt. hospital to a stich in my skin. All done in 30 mins and charge was Rs. 0.
To clarify, I am not in Chennai, b’lore or h’bad but in a state capital.
So stop spewing lies ( I mean the people who took V’s comments out of context) just to have a feeling that Canada is better than India.

Peace

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I am a Gents and not a Ladies.

Quote:

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Originally posted by hchheda

Since we are talking about India, corruption and Indian, I would like to share a very thought provoking email I recently received.


Indians are Hobbesian.(culture of self interest)

Corruption in India is a cultural aspect.
Indians seem to think nothing peculiar about corruption .
It is everywhere. Indians tolerate corrupt individuals rather than correct them.

No race can be congenitally corrupt. But can a race be corrupted by its culture?

To know why Indians are corrupt , look at their patterns and practices .

First:

Religion is transactional in India.Indians give God cash and anticipate an out-of-turn reward. Such a plea acknowledges that favours are needed for the undeserving.

In the world outside the temple walls, such a transaction is named- “bribe”.

A wealthy Indian gives not cash to temples, but gold crowns and such baubles.

His gifts can not feed the poor. His pay-off is for God. He thinks it will be wasted if it goes to a needy man.

In June 2009, The Hindu published a report of Karnataka minister
G. Janardhan Reddy gifting a crown of gold and diamonds worth
Rs 45 crore to Tirupati.

India’s temples collect so much that they don't know what to do with it.
Billions are gathering dust in temple vaults.

When Europeans came to India they built schools. When Indians go to Europe & USA, they build temples.

Indians believe that if God accepts money for his favours,then nothing is wrong in doing the same thing. This is why Indians are so easily corruptible.

Indian culture accommodates such transactions morally. There is no real stigma. An utterly corrupt Jaya Lalita can make a comeback, just unthinkable in the West.

Second -

Indian moral ambiguity towards corruption is visible in its history.
Indian history tells of the capture of cities and kingdoms after guards
were paid off to open the gates, and commanders paid off to surrender.

This is unique to India.
Indians' corrupt nature has meant limited warfare on the subcontinent.
It is striking how little Indians have actually fought compared to ancient Greece and modern Europe.

The Turks’ battles with Nadir Shah were vicious and fought to the finish.

In India fighting wasn't needed, bribing was enough to see off armies.

Any invader willing to spend cash could brush aside India’s kings,
no matter how many tens of thousands soldiers were in their infantry.

Little resistance was given by the Indians at the “Battle” of Plassey.
Clive paid off Mir Jaffar and all of Bengal folded to an army of 3,000.

There was always a financial exchange to taking Indian forts.
Golconda was captured in 1687 after the secret back door was left open.

Mughals vanquished Marathas and Rajputs with nothing but bribes.

The Raja of Srinagar gave up Dara Shikoh’s son Sulaiman to Aurangzeb after receiving a bribe.

There are many cases where Indians participated on a large scale in treason due to bribery.

Question is: Why Indians have a transactional culture while
other 'civilized' nations don't?

Third -

Indians do not believe in the theory that they all can rise if each of them behaves morally, because that is not the message of their faith.

Their caste system separates them.
They don't believe that all men are equal.
This resulted in their division and migration to other religions .

Many Hindus started their own faith like Sikh, Jain, Buddha
and many converted to Christianity and Islam.

The result is that Indians don't trust one another .

There are no Indians in India ,there are Hindus ,Christians, Muslims and what not.

Indians forget that 400 years ago they all belonged to one faith.

This division evolved an unhealthy culture.
The inequality has resulted in a corrupt society,

In India every one is thus against everyone else,
except God ­ and even he must be bribed.

Hiren

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TK, Welcome back to CD. Good to know that you are in India and liking it.

Quote:

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Originally posted by tamilkuravan

Guys,
I just had to intervene.
You guys just take Vandemataram's post out of context.
I have been living in India for the past 4 months. Personally I see no difference between India and Canada except for the climate (climate sucks here).
I am having more free time (though I work 6 days a week). In India, only your precense is required for 6 days a week. No one expects you to work nor can you extract work from anyone.
Everyone comes to your office to get stuff for you like car salesman, TV guy, Internet guy etc.. So you need not go an suffer. We pay bribe to get things done faster that waiting in line in Canada.
Recently I had been to 2 hospitals. One was private. Once inside, any CD who is blindfolded and led inside will swear that he is in a Canadian hospital. We were seen by a doctor in 15 mins. The second time, I had to go to a govt. hospital to a stich in my skin. All done in 30 mins and charge was Rs. 0.
To clarify, I am not in Chennai, b’lore or h’bad but in a state capital.
So stop spewing lies ( I mean the people who took V’s comments out of context) just to have a feeling that Canada is better than India.

Peace

---

TK,

You r in India! Let me know your coordinates. pm me.

KM

Quote:

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Originally posted by Iceberg
TK, Welcome back to CD. Good to know that you are in India and liking it.

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I am a Gents and not a Ladies.

Welcome TK.

I agree that India today is very different from what it used to be, mostly because of high interaction with the western world. Indians today work for west, think west, copy west, consume west and work in western timings. So a change is inevitable.

And it is true that traffic is very big issue in Indian metro's. I know that people in my company used to transport thousands of IT people from one end of the city to another for job everyday. There are thousands of buses carrying thousands of people across the city in all metros. Traffic sucks a lot out of you everyday.

Another important think about work life in India is "showing that you are staying late in office and spending 12-13 hours everyday in office is more important than 8 hours of real productive work". Bachelors have pushed this culture up as they are happy in the office chatting with friends, browsing and sitting in AC environment (they may not have AC at home), avoiding rush hour. This becomes a culture eventually when you are expected to be office for as long as you can. This leaves you with very little family time even if you are not very busy in office. Also MNC pay good pay checks but they suck out all that money out of you by pushing you to limits, especially true with small companies, who hire lesser number of people and juice them to the max.

With the emergence of high paying jobs specially in the technology sector, the service industry is offering great services which can help you get your things done easily, without waiting or somebody else can do it for you at a small price. But why is that needed? It is needed because you are expected to spend that time in office and use the service of other people to carry out tasks important to live you life.

Corruption is a very well accepted and socially condoned practice now. You are expected to bribe and that is a culture. You go against it and it becomes very difficult for you to get the job done.

Prices for everything is very high, groceries to real estate. So although everything is available in stores, you spend all your life paying huge amounts of monthly installments. Its easy to find people earning 100 k and paying 60k as mortgage payments and 10-20 k for monthly expenditure. If you have working couple then I am sure we can all understand they will have less time for them and for their children.

Lot of people now avoid getting married early and I have seen 100s of people marrying after 30 years of age. Every wants to settle before getting married and by settling they would mean have a home, car and good paying job. It easily takes 8-10 years or most people to get all this. Because of late marriage, people have no permanent companion for long years and they get indulged in multiple premarital relationships, which was not so popular earlier. This is an important change for all those who used to associate Indian culture primarily with celibacy before marriage and it is almost 100% lost. If you are the odd one out then you are a loser.

The way the current generation is growing up we will find nothing of what we thought India is all about. Because we all know India evolves faster than most of the other civilizations.

Lot of people say that it is easy to find help household tasks and for other requirements in India. I know, while this is true but in practical aspects its not always as helpful as it sounds. Mainly because the people involved aren't professionals and there are many shortcomings in the way the tasks are executed or with the frequency at which the help is really available.

One important issue is availability of basic necessities for everyday lie, namely, electricity, water etc. Electricity supply as become as scarce as it can get because of high demand and low productions, not forgetting all the people who don't pay for it and those who run the corrupt departments. Due to rising population in metros, the demand for water is increasing day by day and cities are under tight pressure to meet those demands. 4 years back, I used to pay 1k for non-potable water per month. And for potable water, I used to buy water cans (Rs 25) in Chennai. The case with other metros may be mild but certainly not drastically favorable.

All in all, there are positives and negatives. But for sure life is as tough as it can get in India, with little family time, traffic woes, day to day hassle with corruption, rising temperature (biggest one for me). So although people earn more than they ever thought about, the life is equally miserable with a false sense of well-being and prosperity.