I have never been to India and have no intention to travel there. My imagination is that it is overcrowded, the people there are mostly polite, hard working but not especially skilled. It is definitely a relatively poor country with a lot of inequality and crime.

One of the largest countries in the world and a hell of a lot of ethnic diversity, so it’s hard to make generalizations. Kerala and, say, UP are very different. But here’s my attempt.

Geopolitically as an entity it’s currently suffering from some of the same things the world’s other largest countries (China, US, Indonesia) are suffering from - namely: populist leaders and a large group of poorly educated people in the population propping them up.

Consequently there is way too much militant nationalism and complacency about aggression towards other nations, territorialism, persecution of certain ethnic minorities, religious fundamentalism. All the biggest countries have those traits at the moment, so it’s not specifically a reflection on India.

In terms of resource and development it’s dealing with a similar situation to other ex colony LICs - years of resource exploitation left it with a low GDP per capita and consequently major challenges when it comes to provision of infrastructure (eg pollution management), health, education, living standards etc.

India has made huge strides in the past but the current wave of populism relies on leveraging social conflict (as it does elsewhere in the eorld) so I think that growth has slowed. For the same reason the fault lines along ethnic, religious, caste lines - which colonialism entrenched or deepened within the region - are still a big aspect.

My personal experiences with Indian people is that just like from anywhere else there are good and bad. Cultured, well educated people are easier to deal with because there is more shared knowledge. Statistically speaking, many of the world’s worst arseholes you are going to meet are going to be from India, China and the US, and that holds up.

Fantastic food. Entirely too rapey.

Norwegian here. Not that often I think of India tbh, but here is a short bullet point list

• Massive overpopulation
• Rich and dirt poor at the same time
• Castes
• Politically governed by nationalists
• Rape stories
• Massive market thats the only reason we care about India
• Good tech industry (moon landing?)
• Don’t go to Kashmir
• Holi
• Bollywood
• “Indian” food (know that some protein in some sauce with nan and rice is not all an entire subcontinent can offer)

Last show I saw about India was that James May show on Amazon

On India itself, its impressive that it’s the world’s largest democracy. Indians are well educated relative to similarly poor countries and have high English literacy, which is why many believe it could outpace China.

I admire their charitibility. My local area has a large Indian population as I live near a large hindu temples in the US. There is always cheap, high quality food for those in need (1$ for a large plate of food). The kitchen is operated by volunteers and rely on donations and food banks. I Believe this is also common practice in many temples within India proper.

There are plenty of unsavory things such as the caste system but overall harbor a lot of respect for the country and people.

I can speak to an unfortunate trend where our country (US) imports poorly trained Indian medical doctors who provide poor people with shitty medical care. This is a whole industry. I was exposed to it while working in the medical imaging field and I’m sure that it kills poor people in this country every day. Both of the most blatant criminal abuses coming from medical doctors that I was personally close to (one committed insurance fraud by performing unnecessary heart surgery on patients who DID NOT NEED IT the other sexually assaulted women on his examining table) also were, sadly, Indians.

It’s MUCH easier to get a medical degree in India than it is in America, if you’re high caste. Meaning high caste students in India who would NOT pass medical school in America become doctors all the time and then immigrate.

Once you have that MD after your name, in terms of legally establishing a private practice in America, your Indian MD is just as good as one from Harvard or Colombia. And Insurance companies FUCKING LOVE YOU because you charge 70% what the guys from Harvard or Colombia charge. They have programs in the Insurance industry to help reach out to immigrating Indian doctors and get them into network with the Insurance providers.

So I had a job travelling all over the US setting up, repairing and supporting medical imaging computers for private practices and what I saw in 4 out of 5 Indian owned clinics was

• Dirty facilities.
• Old, poorly maintained equipment (I have stories about having to support 5.25 inch floppy drives in 2010).

I also saw

• People sent away with unanswered questions / incomplete diagnosis because the doctor only had 20 minutes for each patient.
• Doctors who spoke English so poorly their patients could not understand what they were being told (especially when said doctors were treating Mexican people who spoke English as a second language anyway).
• A doctor who berated an autistic woman because she was moving too slowly and he had lots of other patients to see.
• Not to mention doctors failing to understand some of the basic functions of the medical imaging tech I was supporting for them in ways that were disturbing like “You have the tools here to provide a higher level of care to your patients but you DON’T KNOW HOW to use them.”
• Also lots of doctors that were arrogant and dismissive towards me, a highly skilled engineering professional.

I got to contrast this with a couple of black doctors in the South who had shabby clinics in old buildings and old poorly maintained equipment but ENTIRELY different attitudes towards their patients and LOTS of white and Asian doctors who run the kind of clean, modern clinics I myself as a white collar professional from a privileged background had previously taken for granted.

I want to be VERY clear this is NOT a race thing. It is a socio-economic / cultural problem.

India gets my respect for its very long history, and the fact it invented buddhism.

But Indian code is terrible. It degrades my respect for the country because it’s just consistently really bad.

A lot of Indian code seems like someone tried to fix a broken car window by caulking a fish tank into place. You confront them and they’re like “What? It’s glass isn’t it? It’s exactly the same”

Now I haven’t seen a lot of Indian code. I’ve seen the output of maybe ten different devs in India, and of that sample it’s all bad. Like really bad.

They work hard and get shit done, but it’s always some kind of hacky kluge made from copy-pasted code.

It’s unclean. It’s full of tech debt. It’s redundant. It’s often not even indented correctly.

India appears to be a country that contains multitudes and is hard to pin down. It has a problematically large contingent that is deeply islamaphobic. The country suffers from low regulation and prejudice as well as a shitty right wing president. But much of it is beautiful with rich culture. The prominent religions are pretty benign when compared to american christianity as far as I can tell

I don’t see much about India in the news. I have a friend who worked in a small town for a month during medical school and talks about the poverty and the number of people she saw sleeping on every flat surface in the city.

I work in public education in the US. With Indian families I’ve seen two very different attitudes, which leads me to believe that culturally they either serve others or expect to be served. Most are kind, pleasant, and very appreciative of anything we do for their kids. Others expect us to bend every rule for them- start and end times, attendance, bus times/routes, etc. Our Indian families tend to carry and feed their kiddos longer than others and it seems like little kids (especially boys) ‘rule the roost’ as parents often say things like - he won’t go to bed, won’t stay at the table to eat, won’t get up in the morning, etc. You want to say, “He’s 5. You’re the mom. Set some rules.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jun/15/the-architecture-of-modern-empire-arundhati-roy-review

Of Modi, who was chief minister of Gujarat in 2002 when more than 1,000 Muslims were slaughtered in an inter-communal riot, she observes: “The courts, the press, the parliament are not functioning as checks and balances. If they were, he would be in jail today.”

I hope that India doesn’t make the same mistakes my county (America) made, such as trying to be a major international player while ignoring the people in need at home. They’re already going that way, but there’s time to change course.

Also, I’d like them to fix their issues with Pakistan. That border was drawn by the British specifically to cause problems, and falling into that trap is letting the previous colonizers win.

A massive tangle of diverse kingdoms that have never quite hit their full potential. Current political situation is grim and disappointing and I am not particularly optimistic for them.

Sadly, I have nothing good to say, other than the food is delicious.

I’ll share my perspectives on Indian colleagues. Not Indians raised Americans (who are more Americanized), but Indians who are from India.

Like others, I feel like this is a general sweeping comment that can be seen as racist and inaccurate. I agree. I try my best to keep it in check.

Indian women come off as entitled. They are both strong because men in India have been rude/off-putting to them, but also demanding. I recall one Indian woman tell me how she used to get catcalls and even had some pretty rape-y language thrown her way and she shrugged it off, calling those men pathetic. But then in her own words, “Would have been treated like a queen” by those toxic men.

Indian men come off incel-y. Not just the young ones, but the married ones too. My one “friend” made a pass at my 14-yo cousin. I now keep him at arms length. The married couple, the husband was a total creep to my wife. Then he defended himself saying that’s normal Indian men behavior. His wife was upset, so maybe it wasn’t? Either way, I didn’t appreciate it.

I only know about a dozen Indian folks in my circle. And again, Indians born in America are completely different.

When I think of india, I think of scam centers disguised as tech support.