My personal list of things that are wrong about India: 1. Excessive urban pollution and there is little done by the govt. or concern to do something about the same at an individual level 2. Lack of civic sense and self-descipline in public behavior i.e. walk/talk/behave/drive/park/dispose where you want w/o care for others 3. Poor infrastructure: crumbly roads, irregular water & power, weak sewage systems, poor urban planning etc. 4. Corruption from the lowest level upwards: everyone knows there is corruption in the develped countries, but that is at a very high level and does not affect the common man on a day-to-day basis 5. Excessive beauracracy in the public sector and citizen services: thankfully the private sector is free from this 6. Parochial mindset on caste, religion, language etc. which thankfully has been declining over the decades, but still exists in some strata of Indian society 7. A blind belief that everything West is to be copied - we need to learn to differentiate what is good and bad and imbibe the good things from there 8. Politicians: again improving with every decade but a long way to go
just had a glance over the article , ten things I Hate about India, corruption was one of the points. Why blame India alone? I was in Moscow for three year, they are our father in this matter. To criticize someone is easier then finding a solution for it. I would rather say, people who talk like this may not have seen the whole world. find solutions instead of finding faults or dont complaint
I totally agree to what claude has written.Those who have problems accepting it just because it comes from someone who is not named ajit or amit are living in fools paradise. Whenever i pass through dirty streets, whenever i have to bribe, whenever i face powercuts and whenever i see politicians ruling the roost i hate it. Is there anybody who loves these situations. So why protest? As for charging higher fees for sight seeing places, i think its a disgrace for indian hospitality. ideally these places should be open to public, whether indian or foreign national without any charge and government should pay for its maintenance instead of filling the pockets of politicians and providing them with free perks and airfares.what is the amount of unpaid telephone and electricity bills of all mps and mlas put together? this will suffice to look after all our historical monuments for hundreds of years, leave alone the unpaid taxes of these politicians and beaurocrats.If all this money can be recovered, accounted for, and put to good use, we will have no lack of funds for all the problems mentioned by claud. keep it up. dont remain mum, all those who love india have to look into shortcomings
One of the major drawback of Indians is they want to 'be' like foreigners.They follow western culture although they know it is basically a different culture that cannot be comparable to ours. They forget to match their infrastructure with foreigners while they do all hangamas with western.
4. Discrimination against the white tourist: Whatever the author said is true. This is a complete disgrace to our tourism industry. As I said before, there are large number of people with different mindset. You cant change it in one day. 5. Paranoia about maps: No comments 6. And photographs: I have never experienced such a situation. But whatever done to French television crew was really bad. Again babu's rules. 7. Politicians: I dont want to comment on this because this page wont be enough for it. 8. Neglect for the environment: I completely agree with the author on this. But it is very difficult to control this is in a country with huge population. Take China, and other asian countries. 9. Traffic: Completely TRUE. But as author said, "how there are not more casualties on the road". Indians can survive in French traffic but no way a French person can handle indian city traffic:-)),take mumbai/delhi/bangalore. The worst part which should be taken care of is blocking of traffic for VIP (minister's) cars to go. 10. Corruption:It is better to not comment. Part and parcel of India. If you want some thing to be done in time, this is the only way.God knows when this
these are things the author find it in India, which he/she cant digest.. coz these are never found in their country...
Lot of things said cant/never be achieved in our country due to population growth and mindset of the people...You cant change it in one day.
1. Power cuts: I cant completely agree with the author on this. The main reason is to avoid human casualities due to electric shocks..You have to accept that the electrical connections in rural areas are not of high quality. Mostly we have lines on wooden poles which will fall at any moment or wires which are of such "high quality" that a small disturbance will break it. What she was concerned was "disconnecting vast areas from the network in the night", I agree with her on this
2. Indian babus: I completely agree with the author on this.
3. No access to historical documents: I cant comment on this.. Seems most of the Indians like me are not interseted in historical documents, though they have good idea about county's history. I donno/still not tried how to access historical documents. May be we have to depend on babus (The author must have definitely tried it).
Dear Friend, I feel THE CORRUPTION at every level and in all the depts. should get 1st Place in your list. What about individual taking NO PRIDE in himself being an INDIAN? Will He/She stop any X/Y/Z to misuse the public facilities available- Accountability is totally missing in general.
I wish I could disagree with Mr. Claude Arpi for the comments on India . Sadly, they are very true and there are so load of things that we still need to improve ( a grt deal ).
Its my dream to see a cleaner and better India one of these days...Am sure it isn't an impossible dream..
Mr. Claude Arpi's article is very true. One other thing is that we Indians have a propensity to praise everything Western (read USA) without making an attempt to improve matters in India. Even people staying abroad (NRIs) tend to be very patronizing. We need to take a hard look at ourselves.
