Originally Posted by
NiceView
India's problem is how to grow in the right way and minimize corruption. At least it doesn't have to risk a possible rewrite its political system as China does down the line.
The article indicates that British aid is part of a process to convince the Indians to buy British arms. The government arms industry in India is controlled by a few ex-servicemen (ie. corrupt ex soldiers mostly) in cahoots with politicians and yes they do naughty deals. One of my erstwhile pals was caught trying to flog a missile to the cops, and he was plenty rich already. And he'd been to all the right schools abroad, and people who didn't know his past (which made this look like a robin Hood moment) swore he was a gentleman. Probably because he bought them drinks.
Anti-corruption in India, however, is catching on more and more, and Indians are very vocal about it, and it's a big part of broadcast and movie culture, an open sore. Indians abroad that are returning are not about to accept the culture that their families had to put up with post Independence when the economy was handed over to an elite to develop and a bureacracy to leech. In another decade the middle class in India will be gigantic (already almost as big as Europe in population on Indian terms, though earning less) and they have most to lose through corruption and least to gain. Whereas poor people can use a corrupt system, and rich people can benefit from it, a massive middle class means that the poor have to educate themselves and the rich cannot control them. And educate themselves they will! As someone put it to me recently, while your average European is well aware of whom the local football star is, in India, everyone knows who the local celebrity teacher is. Celebrity teacher. Absorb that. Something we don't have in Ireland because we don't worship the way the Indians do.
Education, in a land and culture defined by religion, is a religion itself. Tamil or Gujerati, Hindu, Singh or Muslim, every Indian aspires for an education equally and fervently.
And they owe a lot of that to the Brits, in a strange way. In fairness, while the Irish may have been crap at using the Empire for anything, the Indians got a taste for secular University through scholarships to England and while they may despise the British charity they love the British education system. Shame we Irish never moved with the times when the Brits were around. When I was in school, I heard about the brave hedge school teachers that taught you Greek up to the age of 12. For some reason, nobody lauds the Irish engineers and scientists who were educated in the UK and who changed the world. There were, in fact, many of them.
In India, before during and after their Independence, it has been a mark of distinction to receive a scholarship to Cambridge. Yet, in Ireland, you'd keep your mouth shut about it if you knew what was good for you.
Go India!
PS yes, I know there is crushing poverty there, poverty crushes the rights of women and children and I can tell you I hate spending time there because of that, but I tip my hat to the indomitable Indian spirit that won't be poor forever.
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