agreee???

I thought the "royal" family did recieve special prevelidges He he sorry I couldn't resist.

Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, and Calcutta are all filled to the brim and then some. India needs new urban centers. There are some "Green" Development projects and Industrial Parks in the works but these aren't enough. What India really needs is a Fascist regime headed by me mixed with good ole' fashioned nationalism.

There are already too many people in India's cities. More than 39 million people migrate from rural areas to cities each year. It leads to strained resources, create more slums. Why need more people, unless the existing infrastructure of the cities is upgraded or create new urban centers near the rural areas. And what about agriculture? Industrialization is not everything. Food safety is more important that industrialization. There should be some balance. We need to concentrate on agriculture.

India needs Fascism!

Interesting, but how is India going to do that? China did it because all the land is own by the government, so it is simple to upgrade large towns or old cities to new cities by taking over the land. Another problem is that China's and Singapore's government are the same ones for a very long time, unless they fix this it would take a long time to do this.

import food ?

So u guys think India needs to ditch Democracy and become a one party nation like Singapore and china in order to progress????

MM Lee was talking about the turning of the rural small landholdings into large landholdings so that agriculture can be mechanised for maximum yields, but that entails a drift of rural folks into the towns and cities looking for work. If that is not thought out in the urban expansion planning, India cannot develop like China...

what do u think?

Maybe the best approach is to ensure the rural population is getting educated and expand the development of urban areeas at a faster pace. That way they will be better prepared and more productive when they eventually do move to urban areas, and those urban areas will be ready to take them.

As for agriculture, most productive agriculture is highly mechanised so what use is a massive rural population.

But the only way to become a rich country quickly is to urbanise quickly. The USA would not be rich if it still had a population of hillbillies, or the UK rich if most of its population were still straw eating country bumpkins.

I was in India a few years ago but only for 2 weeks, I apologise if what I'm about to say is wrong and offends anyone but this was the impression I got while I was there.

The emblem on the Indian flag is a cotton mill I think it is, and its to do with Ghandi in a sense liberating the lower caste people and encouraging India to become essentially one large cottage industry. Cottage industries were fine in the 50's and 60's but in todays world, cottage industries cannot compete against multinationals, hte operational costs are too high. I feel it was due to this that the overall mentality in India is still based on the small home operated businesses where to progress, you really need these businessmen to take a few steps further and become globally competitive.

Take Singapore for instance, everthing the Singapore govnt does is aimed at making her not just regionally competitive but globally as well.

I think the spinning wheel in the Indian flag is a reflection of Dharma? Maybe i am wrong....

I been told that some states in India are beyond hope of education or business orientation, for e.g. Bihar, even Indians themselves think that the state of Bihar is beyond redemption despite its ancient reputation as a religious holy place.

I think its sad that although officially the caste system does not exist in India, in practice it still does. There are still people who in my opinion still regard themselves as untouchable and get treated as such. Forgive me if I'm wrong but when I was in India, I still felt that people were judged based on which caste they belonged to. It is hard enough even in a country where meritocracy rules to break the cycle of poverty, it makes it all that much harder when you grow up in a society which dictates who you are based on who your parents are. I don't mean to be critical but when I was in India, although I loved the country and the food, it saddened me to see so much poverty. It's hard to complain though because the people seemed happy enough, which goes to show that happiness is not purely dependent on what one has. Still you'd like to think that people should be entitled to the 3 basic things in life, food, clothes and shelter.

Caste is mental. Instead of feeling sorry for people who feel sorry for themselves, give them pride!!! India needs a strong right-wing/nationalist movement.

Is there any form of trade between India and SE Asia that can increase exponentially the lives of the rural populations there? Howabout we invest in capital infrastructures in the rural areas?

I don't like the idea of a nationalistic government in India, because that is why India is backwards. It refuses to admit foreign investment, ideas and capital!

This nationalistic tendency has surely somehting to do with the caste mentality, don't let the foreign impure entities pollute the mother-land type of thing...

Without the lingering effects of the caste system a rural peasant will still probably remain a rural peasant throughout his life, that's just the way it is. Caste plays a very small role in urban life, class is the new thing. People read about the caste system and think India has some sort of feudalistic society, when this isn't entirely the case.

The main effect of the caste system in modern Indian life are the cultural disparities that remain b/w the descendents of most "lower" caste and "upper" caste individuals. This will change as a more Western class system permeates India(which has already happened in the urban areas of India).

Your last sentence makes no sense. India still needs a strong right-wing movement.

But what is the difference between caste and class. Essentially in my opinion its just a different pharse to mean the same thing. Maybe if one lives in India one becomes used to the way things work there but in my opinion the "wealthier" people just don't seem to care. Often I heard about what a pest the poorer people are. I was only in India for 2 weeks and I admit thats not a long time, and perhaps what I felt is not a true reflection of what is happening in India.

3 things that I saw concerned me,
1) a disregard for the poor
2) a lack of social concience
3) a prevaling class/caste system

Food security is very important for a nation. If a nation doesn't produce enough food for it's people it can be blackmailed by other nations in times of crisis.


Ditching democracy in not a solution. What India needs is an honest government.

China has lot to do to be a model to other countries. Also there is no transparency in China so proper statistics are not available.

About Caste system in India. Caste system was essentially a division of labour in society. It is essentially a class system, in which each caste has it's own rich and poor. So a high caste person can also be poor and a low caste person can be rich. Division between rich and poor exists all over the world. Foreigners make very inaccurate guesses about caste system, they fail to understand the logic behind it and it's impact on contemporary India.


Do you really think that visiting a country only for two weeks makes someone an expert on that country? I was born and brought up in India and still I feel that it takes more than a lifetime to understand this country.

The emblem of India is the lion capital of Ashoka.


Mahatma Gandhi started khadi movement to produce handwoven cloth by the Indians themselves. It was a kind of economic movement in order to encourage people not to buy clothes produced in Britain.

India's Textile Industry is one of the largest textile industries in the world. India earns approx. 27% of the foreign exchange from exports of textiles. The textile industry contributes about 14% of the total industrial production of India.

It would be discriminatory to compare Singapore and India. They have totally different scenarios. Singapore is very small and have a minuscule population in comparison to India.

@ jiggy, i actually noticed that the indian intellectuals who are based in Singapore are very pro-Bush government these days, particularly since the Bushies gave India the 'green light' to access nuclear technology as a way to checkmate the Pakistanis and Chinese. Maybe that's why the trend for right-wing governance is strong in India these days. No more socialist left wing liberal type of Congress parties, ya? Does that mean though the likes of BJP or Shiv Senna etc are gonna be prominent in future for the subcontinent? What kind of right-wing nationalism are u espousing?

@ vaman, i agree there's no way to compare Singapore to India. Singapore is a tiny place while India is vast. Even as we criticise the existence of caste mentality, this is changing in India as Dalit movements are happening not just as urban movements, but taking roots in rural populations .. (I read about that in VS Naipaul's Million Mutinies). It will take generations for India's population to become prosperous in a way that is sustainable.

But wht i don't understand is why LKY chooses the old fashioned Industrialization Policy of moving the rural populations to the urban cities as a means of industrializing? I mean, the way i look at it, the world shifts from industrializing and agriculturalizing... you got to have a balance of both no matter what.

I don't think Ghandi was totally wrong in advocating self-sustaining cottage industry as a way for India's poor to empower themselves and free their destinies from oppressive local landlords and fuedal Raj. It was a powerful emblem for empowerment of the poor and helpless. In China, the rural populations aren't exactly the poorest these days. They are well-fed, secure and probably better off than the millions of migrant workers that roam the coastal cities for seasonal work.

I think the Thai's are the same. The rural peasants in the northern Issan probably lead a more secure life than the migrant urban workers who ply the streets of Bangkok selling pad thai noodles in the streets, or worse, their bodies in the sex trade!

Someone in the China forum mentioned about volunteering for education in the rural populations. I live in East africa at the moment, and what got me really worked up is the teaching syllabus for the rural schoolkids are totally stuck in the 70's, aimed at keeping an impoverished rural population under control of sustainable farming methods. There is no aim to connect the mindset of the rural population to the wider global environment and cultures/trades/practices. There is simply an agenda of "mushrooming" the rural peoples. And if u go to the rural villages, you don't see how the government has done anything to connect the communities to the global trends at all...there's no community sense of spirit, no government sponsored centers where the villagers come together to share in the news of the world-at-large, only shacks of Coca-Colas selling cokes and bread, and more shacks selling moonshine liquor to the masses of young boys and girls who are pissed fart drunk each day with their fathers, while their moms struggle for hope in the community churches and sometimes get laid by the local pastors for small favours. The only entities that attempt to inject some semblance of humanitarian aims on a global awareness campaign are the development workers from NGOs funded by foreign governments. They have practically replaced the local african governments in providing the link to the outside world for these rural folks.

I wonder if something like that happens in India alot as education is often sidelined by religious traditions and rituals that keep the people stuck in their stations and gender roles in life. I liked reading VS Naipaul's observations in "Million Mutinies", he talked about the ladies' magazines that were in circulation in Bombay urbanites, how some are targeting the wives of lower caste folks who are crammed into the tiny apartments... how their minds are subtly influenced by traditional indian notions of the wife, mother and care-giver to the men in their lives.

Anyways, I have been to India and stayed in Delhi and Bangalore. And it's true to say that 2 weeks ain't enough to judge a country's potential.

@ jiggy, i actually noticed that the indian intellectuals who are based in Singapore are very pro-Bush government these days, particularly since the Bushies gave India the 'green light' to access nuclear technology as a way to checkmate the Pakistanis and Chinese. Maybe that's why the trend for right-wing governance is strong in India these days. No more socialist left wing liberal type of Congress parties, ya? Does that mean though the likes of BJP or Shiv Senna etc are gonna be prominent in future for the subcontinent? What kind of right-wing nationalism are u espousing?

@ vaman, i agree there's no way to compare Singapore to India. Singapore is a tiny place while India is vast. Even as we criticise the existence of caste mentality, this is changing in India as Dalit movements are happening not just as urban movements, but taking roots in rural populations .. (I read about that in VS Naipaul's Million Mutinies). It will take generations for India's population to become prosperous in a way that is sustainable.

But wht i don't understand is why LKY chooses the old fashioned Industrialization Policy of moving the rural populations to the urban cities as a means of industrializing? I mean, the way i look at it, the world shifts from industrializing and agriculturalizing... you got to have a balance of both no matter what.

I don't think Ghandi was totally wrong in advocating self-sustaining cottage industry as a way for India's poo

I'm thinking something akin to Germany circa 1935(minus the human ovens). I already formulated military and anti-corruption plans.

As I said I'm not an expert on India, and if you read my post again you will see that I admitted that from the start. I still feel the caste system doesn't apply so well in todays world as it did at the time it was incepted. To be honest in my opinion, it is one of the things that is probably holding India back, for your career/life to be determined by your parents, rather then your talents, is in my opinion outdated. It is good if you are born to a caste that does well financially but I guess not so good if you are not. Most countries in the past had a form of caste system, where your profession was handed down from your father to yourself. This was during a time where general education was limited and the only way to learn essentially was from your parents. Now that general education has improved around the world, including India, you don't need to recieve your vocational training from your parents. besides the caste system is more then simply a division of labour, it is as you've admitted also a class system where one caste is deemed better then others. I know even in Australia, some Indian parents still forbid their daughters in particualr to marry someone who was deemed to be in a lower caste then she is, though from what I understand it is more acceptable for a man to marry a girl in a "lower" caste, but I'm happy to be stood corrected. And if I'm wrong in anything I have written here, I apologise and please feel free to correct me.

I pretty much have the general outline for indoctrination/propaganda completed too. I just need someone who has a superior understanding of economics and civics than me to finish hashing all of this out. JAI HIND!!!

post it dude! we can help ya with the Fourth Reich!!

Generally, you keep the specifics of these sort of things secret.... :P

I really don't know why you would be against a Fascist/Nationalist India. It's just what the doctor ordered.