Why Indians r so fastidiously clean.??..to Everybody..

[Guest guest]

Hello everybody.,

I liked the debate..and his thoughts..on, " Why Indians r so fastidiously

clean..and India still remains..incredibly dirty?? " ..and give Full Marks.,to

Rishabh.for placing his thoughts.

Well done..

On,that note..we (me and my dear biwi)...would also..rue over the same fact,many

a times..,when we compare..with clean green well maintained.., western world

images..of their country side..coupled..with shocking notes..that these,same

Goraas,..have the most..unclean personal hygiene...,and so also,most of..the

local Arabs..out here..

..

Plus,I would also add,another interesting point,...,that..even,..where family

values..r concerned,....

An..Indian family,probably due to it's small size..and good upbringing,..have

less messier internal tussles,inside closed doors..and yet..more incidence of

Lawlessness..and Crimes..on the open streets.

..while,

The locals..out here,with 4 wives,high divorce rates,many children,no parental

guidance,and messier finances,higher incidence..of physical abuses etc..behind

closed doors..have very less crimes..out on the streets.

..

Strange,but true..again..

Bye

Shyam(84)

University aceptance

I am pleased to inform that my son Rishabh Parag shah had applied for

undergrad admission to US.

He has been accepted at the following universities:

UNIVERSITY / COLLEGE US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT RANKING

University of Chicago top 10 Universities in the world

Carleton (MN) amongst top 5 Liberal Arts & Science colleges in the US

Claremont McKenna (CA) amongst top 10 Liberal Arts & Science colleges in the

US

son (NC) amongst top 10 Liberal Arts & Science colleges in the US

Grinnell (IW) amongst top 10 Liberal Arts & Science colleges in the US

Bentley (MA) leading University of Business studies in US

Marquette (WI) with the prestigious Ingnetous Scholarship,

Apart from academics, Extracurricular, & US based tests he had to write about

20 essays, approx two to three for each university.

I wish to thank and acknowledge the editing assistance (official) he received

from our moderator Dr. Kishore Shah.

On behalf of my son & family I take the opportunity of this forum to sincerely

thank him.

We are now spoilt of choice.

Can any body suggest which place to select, Rishabh is interested in perusing

ECONOMICS, ETHICS, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, PHILOSOPHY AND FINANCE.

I am also attaching two interesting essays he wrote.

Parag (1980)

Indians through the Particle accelerator

I am proud to be an Indian. India's rich past has contributed much to the

progress of civilization. Indian epics like the Bhagwat Gita and the Panchtantra

have been regarded as the fundamentals to moral development. The concepts of

zero, the principle of magnetism, the smelting of metals, the game of chess and

weaving of cotton have their origins in India. Columbus credited

with discovering the Americas actually went out in search of India. Even the sub

atomic particle Boson has been termed after S. N. Bose an Indian scientist.

India has become a land of diversities and paradoxes. Our last election was

won by an Italian woman of Roman Catholic lineage who made way for a Sikh to be

sworn as a Prime Minister by a Muslim President, in a nation that is 81% Hindu.

It has the world's second largest pool of trained scientists and engineers but

40% of the country is still illiterate. Bullock carts are still an indispensable

mode of transportation; yet its satellite programs are amongst the most advanced

on earth. Four out of the top ten richest men in the world are Indians; yet

one-thirds of the world's poor live in India.

I appreciate the cultural diversity. But the paradoxes trouble me.

Recent developments at the CERN have convinced me that every field has " Higgs

particles " . A particle that is fundamental to the existence of an idea, entities

that combine to frame our thoughts. There are three thoughts about India that

disturb me. I wish to put them in the particle accelerator, smash them up and

have a glimpse of the new secrets revealed.

· Is the suicide rate among Indian farmers higher than normal?

· Why Indians are are so fastidiously clean but India remains incredibly

dirty?

· Is India really worse off than Sub-Saharan Africa?

Processing....

Is the suicide rate among Indian farmers higher than normal?

The question why Indian farmers commit suicide has been the nucleus of

newspaper articles and journals. Newspapers clamor with statistics like, 'An

Indian farmer commits suicide in every six minutes.' Such thoughts often evoke

feelings of pessimism, melancholy and cynicism. Isn't it ironic that a country

in which nearly two-thirds of the population is agrarian, suffers from

malnourishment? Well, maybe if we can put this idea into the linear accelerator

we may discover the Higgs-particle that imparts mass to it.

A total nine hundred thousand suicides happen annually in the world. So the

average for India, with one sixth of the world's population would be one hundred

fifty thousand. The average norm for the Indian farmers could be one hundred

thousand a year, given that two thirds of the population is engaged in

agriculture. However the highest figure for Indian farmer suicides in a year,

reported in 2006, was around seventeen thousand. Suicide amongst the farming

families in India seem to be well below the normal world average. Ramon

Magsaysay award winner journalist P. Sainath wrote a book 'Everybody loves a

Good Drought' where he highlighted the vested interests who wish to benefit from

tragedy. While farmer suicide statistics seem exaggerated and questionable,

there's nevertheless much reason for anguish. I feel that one should cultivate

empathy for farmers rather than evoke feelings of pity.

Why are Indians so fastidiously clean but India so incredibly dirty?

Forbes magazine ranks India as the dirt capital of the world. It might take a

pack of wild horses to keep an Indian away from sitting under a tap every

morning; so complete is our fidelity to bath and ablutions. But on the other

hand filth accumulates and multiplies outside our homes as if it were a law of

nature. Can the duality be explained in terms of the Hindu other- worldliness?

But other Hindu neighbors like Vietnam, Myanmar and Sri Lanka do not display

dirt with the same gritty brazenness as India does. Hence there is no straight

correlation between poverty and filth. Compared to India, many poor

neighborhoods all over the world from Latin America to Asia look powdered,

painted and dressed up. Anthropologist once clarified that dirt was

simply 'matter out of place'. Food on plate is the way it should be, but becomes

dirt when on the floor. It is then a question of how Hindus define dirt or

'matter out of place'. According to the Hindu caste principle, all substances

that come out of one's body, like perspiration, excreta, menstrual blood, spit

even hair are polluting even to oneself. Whatever can be expelled from the body

must be brought out. Once such substances are out of home they are 'quite in

place' and hence no longer dirt. Besides 'Wipers' and 'Washers' mark the

ideological divide between the West and the Indians. For the Indians, the

'Wipers' (who use toilet paper) are uncaring of personal hygiene. For the

'Washers', cleanliness is next to godliness. No worship, Hindu or Muslim, begin

without some form of ablution. Personal cleanliness is the key to salvation.

Indians have concepts that are entirely alien to the rest of the world. The

concept of 'Jootha' (on drinking water directly from the bottle one makes sure

that the lips do not

touch the rim of the bottle, otherwise it becomes 'Jootha' and no one else

will be able to drink from the same bottle.) is unique here. There is no other

nation that is obsessed with 'spitting' as ours. Stairwells of our buildings are

blotched with 'paan' stains. When we take off our slippers at the entrance of

our homes, we do so out of the sense of not dragging the dirt from the streets

into the sanctum of our house.

So after smashing the question in the particle accelerator, one can come to

the conclusion that it would be wrong to say that Indians have no qualms

regarding dirt. It is just that they see dirt in a manner different from the way

it is viewed in the West.

Is India really worse off than Sub-Saharan Africa?

World Bank in its recent report says that poverty in India is worse than

Sub-Saharan Africa with higher proportion of the population living on less than

two dollar a day. Is it the absolute reality? Let us analyze the statistics.

If one were to convert $2 into rupees (1$ - Rs 45) - the income of average

Indian is Rs 90 per day. A person can be branded malnourished if he consumes

less than 2100 calories a day. Now a traditional Indian Vada Pav (Indian Burger)

costs about Rs 5 at a street stall and provides 300 calories. Seven Vada Pavs a

day provides 2100 calories & cost Rs. 35. This means

that a poor Indian can meet his calorie requirements and save Rs 55 ($1.2) at

the end of the day, by eating at a local street stall. Doesn't sound bad, does

it? News doesn't cook food. Is something hidden under the veil of statistics? If

you belong to the top ten percent of India, you are experiencing living

standards that you never dreamed of. But if you belong to the bottom forty

percent you are experiencing levels of deprivation you never dreamed of in your

life time. There is no bread in one India and cake for the other. Thousands of

people in the urban centers are rushing to weight loss centers. Millions of

other Indians are desperately trying not to lose any more weight. This paradox

is highlighted by researcher Raj Patel at the University of California, Berkley,

in his book 'Stuffed & Starved'-what lies behind the world food crisis. I am not

oblivious to the fact that a person earning $2 a day has a family to support and

unforeseen expenditures to meet. All I am trying to convey is that our poverty

analysis systems should take a more holistic approach and not brand anyone as

poor just by looking at one perspective. Poverty statistics are figures of

confusion. If one marks the poverty line as $1 a day then Sub-Saharan Africa has

more 'poor people' than India does. If we raise it to $2 then the story does not

remain the same. So how do you measure poverty? Should one measure it with

respect to the dollar (World Bank -$1, Asian Development Bank -$1.35), the

purchasing power parity (World Bank _$1.25) or the amount of calories a person

consumes? When there is despair there is hope. There are problems, but a lot of

them can be solved. This can be done only through optimism and hope which are

the Higgs particles that imparts mass to the universe. Nobel laureate Professor

Yoichiro Nambu has said that in physics, the idea of symmetry refers a kind of

equality or equivalence in a situation. At the subatomic level, for example one

should not be able to tell whether you are watching the event directly or in a

mirror. Particles behave just like there alter egos, called antiparticles. If

any of these rules is violated, the symmetry is broken. One big broken symmetry

arose after the big bang, when a tiny bit more matter than antimatter was

created. Because these two kinds of particles annihilate each other when they

meet, that excess of matter was responsible for seeding the universe. Similarly

if we break the stereotypical ways of judging people and events, a new dawn of

understanding may emerge. This could well be the Mechanism of spontaneous broken

symmetry, the Higgs mechanism of the evolving society.

Depression 2.0

Since 1929 there have been periods of boom & bust in the global economy. The

wise say " This time, it's different. " It's never different. It's always the

same, but with bigger numbers. It reminds me of the quotations from

Santayana's, Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, 'Those who cannot remember

the past are condemned to repeat it.'

The economic cycles are associated with the feelings of Greed and Fear. It was

greed, rather than the absence of fear that was prevailing in the past few

years. Regulation was disregarded, and so was risk, which had been whisked away

by whiz-kid 'quant's' They devised exotic financial instruments like derivatives

and CDO's, creating a financial enstein the likes of which had never been

seen. Great fortunes were made with the motto 'profits at any price'. Warren

Buffett, the world's most successful investor called these derivatives, which

almost no one understood, " weapons of financial mass destruction. " This lack of

fear became an orangery of greed and ignorance. When greed exceeds fear, trouble

follows. It reminds of Mahatma Gandhi's famous quote, " The world has enough to

meet our needs, but not enough to satisfy our greed " .

In 2006 economy was booming and the world was awash in cheap money thanks to

the low interest rate regime followed by most Federal Banks. There was little

fear of buying a house on 'No Doc mortgages, by the NINJA's'. " House-price

appreciation " would increase the value of the collateral, if borrowers couldn't

or wouldn't pay. The myth that 'prices of the assets never go down only interest

rates do' fuelled the debt binge. A rising tide lifts all boats. Not only

households even big Investment Banks took risks of using borrowed money. To keep

profits growing, they borrowed huge sums; their debts were about 35 times their

capital. If you borrow 35 times your capital and those investments rise only 1%,

you've made 35% on your money. If, however, things move against you a 1% or 2%

drop in the value of your assets puts your future in doubt.

In the US, consumer confidence rose to near-record levels. This high level of

confidence, shared in many other countries as well, was related to the booming

markets and booming economy of that time. The booming markets and economy were

in turn substantially buoyed by the 'feedback loop' of Profit and Consumerism.

But recently, confidence has been fading. When people expect a good performance

from their investment assets; they tend to bid up their prices. People have this

idea that the market must keep going up, with no mathematical evidence or model,

that confirms that notion, said Shiller, author of the book " Irrational

Exuberance " .

Economies are built on trust, but now that trust has been replaced by fear and

pessimism. " At this moment confidence is even more precious than gold or

currency " said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. The world now is in the grip of a

downward spiral of deleveraging, having accumulated debts beyond what's

sustainable. Households and financial institutions are being forced to reduce

them. The pressure to do so results from a decline in the price of the assets

they bought with the money they borrowed. It's a vicious 'feedback loop', a

giant 'snow ball'. When families and banks tip into bankruptcy and 'throw in the

towel', there is 'Capitulation selling', and more assets get dumped on the

market driving prices down further and necessitating more deleveraging. This

process of 'panic selling' has gained so much momentum that Warren Buffet has

called it the " Financial Pearl Harbor " . Canadian newspaper Globe & Mail quoted

New York Market analyst Steve Yardani, " It is bit like a California forest fire.

The fire squads are out there trying to contain it, but it just keeps spreading

till you are out of trees or the wind changes " .

The bursting of the debt-fueled property bubble and the crippling losses

suffered by the banks have set in motion a chain reaction that could lead to a

21st century version of the Depression. The underlying cause of the Great

Depression according to Milton Friedman and son Schwartz in their book

'A Monetary History of the United States: 1867-1960', was not the stock-market

crash but a " great contraction " of credit due to an epidemic of bank failures.

Every financial bust comes with a catchphrase; Tulip-mania, South Sea Bubble,

The Great Depression, The dotcom bubble and others described in MacKay's

classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of the Crowds. Whether

there is a short, relatively mild recession like that of 2001, or a version of

what the world went through in the 1930s: Depression 2.0, is a million dollar

question?

This is no longer an exclusively American crisis. European banks are going

under as well. Growth rates in the euro zone and Japan have turned negative.

Emerging markets too are suffering. Stock markets in the 'BRIC' economies

(Brazil, Russia, India and China) are now down about 60% or more on the year.

The notion that Asia has somehow " decoupled " itself from the U.S. now seems

fanciful. How could they after all, having pegged their currencies to the

Dollar, under the 'Bretton Woods' system, to avoid a repeat of the 'Butter

wars'. When Fannie and Freddie were on the brink of collapse, many were

surprised to learn that a fifth of China's currency reserves were composed of

their bonds. China has accumulated a huge hoard of dollar-denominated bonds. No

foreign nation stands to lose more from a U.S. financial collapse. A quarter of

exports from Asia are bound for America, and with consumer spending in the U.S.

slipping, the manufacturing engines that drive many Asian countries are starting

to sputter. The most vulnerable are those with high dependence on exports, such

as Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam. In China, weak export orders combined with

rising costs are forcing tens of thousands of small factories to close raising

unemployment. China and India will be affected with the drop in American demand

for goods and services. The crisis may have originated in the US, yet Asia's

shiniest growth stars may be among those paying the biggest price. It is indeed

true that " when U.S. sneezes the entire world catches a cold, some even get

Pneumonia " . No country has enough 'raincoats' to weather the global financial

'storm'.

A year ago, people were questioning if the subprime crisis that began in the

summer of 2007 in the United States would spread to India. It was pointed out

that since India was not a major investor in US subprime mortgages; the

institutions of subprime lending were not prominent in India. Moreover, the

Reserve Bank of India did not follow the policy of the Federal Reserve in the US

of cutting interest rates to near zero levels at the height of a real estate

boom. The Indian economy had 'Decoupled' from the west. Now, a year later, after

a September 2008, which showed massive financial collapse in the US, India too

has been hit by the crisis. The seemingly inexorable rise in the Indian stock

market has been clipped. The Sensex rose about eight-fold from 2003 to the

beginning of 2008, but now has had a correction; it is down about 60% from its

peak. India's property market, which has seen a 30% to 50% annual price growth

in recent years, is weakening. Consumer confidence locally is being dented by

sliding share and property prices. Steep declines in asset values pose worry not

only for economic growth, but also social stability, as ordinary folk watch

their personal wealth evaporate. Even though the commonly-identified causes of

the crisis in the US, the subprime mortgage revolution and the extremely loose

monetary policy, were not in evidence in India, outcomes have been similar.

Should we be surprised? Actually, the similarity of market behavior across

countries is evidence that something else, deeper is at work. The fundamental

problem is the swings of overconfidence and greed & now pessimism and fear

shared by millions, billions of people. Projections of gloom & doom can become

self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Great Depression was greatly depressing because it was global. The

combined output of the world's economies declined nearly 33% from 1929 to 1932.

The unemployment rate soared in the U.S. and Germany to a peak above 25%, World

trade collapsed by two-thirds. Booms & busts were transmitted from one country

to another through trade & financial flows. We no longer live in isolated glass

houses. Today when the 'world is flat', linked together by instant

communication, 'Geography is History' and global capital movement is a difficult

servant to master. Internet & Television have transmitted fear at lightning

speed across the globe. Former Prime Minister of U.K. Tony Blair speaking at the

Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on the theme 'We stand together or we fall

together' said that be it the economic challenge, terrorist threat, climate

change or the battle for resources; all are global, interconnected and

interdependent. To rephrase Donne, " Now no nation is an island, entire of

itself " . International affairs and business not only intersect but are

interlinked. That's how it was supposed to be post 1940's, under the Bretton

Woods financial architecture, that brought an end to the old colonial order of

imperial trade & ushered in an era of open world economy of interdependence.

That the world is a global village is best represented by the Sanskrit phrase

'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' which means the world is one family. Swami Vivekananda

began the era of Globalization in 1893, at the world parliament of Religions, by

opening his speech with the line, " Dear brothers and sisters of America " . I

strongly believe that if my brothers and sisters of America are going to face

financial hardship, my brothers and sisters of India or for that matter anywhere

in the world are not going to be immune from the affliction