Why is India Poor?

[Guest guest]

How can population explosion be stopped. If this continues, there will be more people, less space, it will get dirtier and dirtier. Corroupt people. God save INDIA, Looks like the people themselves have no interest in improving their country and everyone is flying away.

[Guest guest]

I love the land called INDIA, but hate 70 % of the people leaving there as they are corrupt.

[Guest guest]

What Karmas did the people there do that the country is poor now?

[theist]

I live in the USA. Wealthy nation relative to the world. I can tell you that we have turned this great blessing of a land into a cultural sewer. I am lucky I am single as I could never raise a child here.

 

There is no home in the material world.

[Guest guest]

Theist, I cracked up when I read your reply. I am in a female body from a family of eleven children & never had the desire to raise a child in this culture. I don't think it would be much fun in the Indian culture for a woman unless you were rich & your first born was male.

 

There's no place like home.

[Guest guest]

There are several reasons for India being economically down now, but I wont call it as a poor country since I lived in India for the past 33 years.

 

The first and foremost reason is what every one knows that the present day India is only 57 years old after Independence. During British rule, the country's economy was routed and everything was exported to queen including Gold and with no returns to India. History is there for this that everyone knows.

The politicians who took over Indian Government were primarily the INdian national congress people who were straight forward and honest as long as Gandhiji was alive and after his death, the initial few years of Nehru's administration was good, but after him when his daughter came to power, corruption started. In due course, many parties sprung all over India in regional level due to discrimination in congress and each political party's primary aim was not to make the contry prosperous, but to make clash among people so that they can get votes.

The politicians started the fight between north India and south India first with the national language Hindi and the south Indian politicians especially in tamilnadu they created a scene in such a way that Hindi is not our language. In south, further they started hating sanskrit because all religious scriptures are in sanskrit and Hindi was closest to sanskrit and same script also. So they created an animosity against brahmins. There are villages where people were long time thinking that Indira Gandhi was daughter of Mahathma Gandhi and just voting for congress without even knowing the facts. they even thought thats the only family who fought for freedom as the history books iin schools were written like that by that government. But then another government came later and in course of time, they are also corrupted.

ON the other hand, the politicians also deliberately kept the villages unimproved and kept the agriculturists and village people under educated by not improving the school systems and hospitals etc etc. IN course of time, of late in the past 20 years people woke up all over the country and if you carefully notice, now the political system changes every 5 years and people does not want to give any political party continuous chance for them to have domination. This now awakens the politicians and each state is now improving.

The result is the present day India is now economically well improved, but the money is stagnated in pockets and still villages are not well developed.

 

Amidst all this things, the only thing that is not changed in India is Her religious background, values and morals. YOu cant see a woman taking alcohol or see her smoking. Hardly this happens with the new younger generations of college students who does for fun, or mostly this is done by people in show business industry.

 

Family set up is still the same. Parents duty is to educate the children and children's duty is to take care of the parents when they become old. Kids normally dont throw away the parents. Few exceptions are always there in both the cases where you can find irresponsible parents and selfish kids also but that is here and there. Otherwise elders are respected a lot. We dont call any elderly person by name, even teachers of high school or college professors. Only address them as teacher or as sir, no name and its not respect if you call them by name.

Religious way is part of everyday life, but yet many people dont know the inner meaning of sanathana dharma, but they still blindly have the faith and their faith keeps them moving. Whether Hindus or christians or Muslims or persians or Sikkhs, the moral values are the same which is the Indian value and based on sanathana dharma. Nearly 95% of the marriages are still successful. Many say here that most of them may not be happy, but I tell them the answer that, yes there is compromise, but compromise and solving the confrontation and continue living together forgetting the cracks makes us better humans and this is called family value that distinguishes from animals. Forgive and forget is way of life. I am not saying that everyone is again having morals, there are good number of people who does everything before marriage itself, but the proportion is around 10 or 15% and most men and women are faithful to each other and raise kids with values.

Actually raising a kid in India is much easier than here. Here in US we have risk of drugs, alcohol, free sex from teen age etc, but in India, although these things are there, yet kids somehow realise the values in the environment and 90% of them dont fall for these things. Kids like to flirt, but they dont date and have sex. again there is a 10% exception in anything. There are still separate schools and colleges for boys and girls and very few are coeducation. This is in a large way advantageous when I think of now.

 

It is difficult to explain, about India, but when you live there, you will know that its not poor, but exploited by her own people who are politicians. Its because of this, many people leave the country after higher education. But yet, many also go back or atleast make the country rich in invesments and business while being in other country. Its a unbalanced country economically by being richest on one side, and poorest on other side. YOu have both sides. Constantly rich is the religious values and belief iin God.

Jagdish

[Gauracandra]

I remember reading once (and I'll know I'll get the number wrong), but somewhere I recall the population of India when Bhaktivinode was around, lets say the late 1800s, it was something like 50 - 100 million people. India is like one third the size of the U.S. and three times the population. This gives a density of 9 times that of the U.S. Frankly I think if India had a population of 100 million, it would probably be close to paradise. But so many people its just very difficult to keep society organized. Second, I think during the Cold War India was a big supporter of the Soviet Union. So they did a lot of state control over industry. The problem with this is all the red tape stifles innovation and creativity. I remember seeing a 60 Minutes episode where they showed this one Indian entrepreneur who started a computer type business in India, but because of all of the regulation it failed. So he moved to the U.S. started the exact same business and now is a multi-millionaire.

 

So much of the poverty in the world is due to poor economic programs. It is not due to natural resources. Japan is resource poor, Hong Kong is resource poor. Russia is extremely resource rich (more gold, oil, lumber etc.... than the U.S.). Argentina was once a very wealthy country in South America, now because of bad economic policies they are in debt to the hilt and have major problems.

[Gauracandra]

So India's population in 1900 is a little over 200 million. Most likely in 1850 or so it would have been 150 million. Thats manageable. Today the world tends to think of Calcutta in a bad light, as being very dirty and poor. But I've heard during the British times (when Prabhupada was a youth) it was a beautiful city and very cosmopolitan.

 

Anyways, here is the chart:

 

[Gauracandra]

Just contemplating this chart some more. Right when Srila Prabhupada left India for America, its population was perhaps 450 million (1965). Today, some 40 years later, its pushing 1 billion.

[Guest guest]

i love india i am doing a project mon it you little happy thing