Sainath doesn't mention anything new. However a couple of random thoughts came to my mind.
- We in India blame the government for all its inefficiencies.
- The brightest amongst cannot think of democratic methods to make the government more efficient.
- Whether its a thin republican type government or a big-fat democratic type government, apathy to the "other" classes/castes seems very innate to us.
- Bill Gates' idea of creative capitalism seems cool - but I don't see how to engineer such thoughts into the majority of the society. There has to be some memetic masala that will help us.
- At an extreme tangent: Given our cultural heritage of inheritance and caste do you think as a society we could be as philanthropic as the americans ?
http://indiatogether.com/2009/feb/psa-crisis.htm#
In India, too, job losses are now finding some mention. When covered in the media, it's mostly about jobs in the IT sector. Or those lost in related fields in the organised sector. While these are not small, only a handful of reports look at the awful hit taken, for instance, by migrant labourers. Millions of these are people who left their villages seeking work when there was no other option. They found it in construction, in laying roads and other poorly paid work. And, keeping afloat in oppressive conditions, many still managed to send something back to their families. Now, as one of them told us: "There is nothing to send back to the village and nothing to go back to the village for." And what about all those small farmers who moved towards growing cash crops for export markets that have collapsed? And do we get to ask questions of the policy experts who brought it all to this point?
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