The examples that you mentioned are picked out to just confirm your bias, lack of understanding and maybe a personal inferiority complex - the narrative can be constructed for any country on the planet by picking out facts.
The Indian grandfather who was paralyzed recently in the US - the police officer has been acquited - does that mean that the US police force is incompetent or the jury racist. Going by your arguments its both - and most conscientious Americans havent dont anything to fix it.
Indians (in India) will happily screw over their neighbours - but Indians in America won't ? Is it because they administer a special serum when you take the long flight which makes them conscientious or is it just a convenient argument.
The squalor in India's cities has nothing to do with being conscientious - it is simply because most Indian cities have one of the lowest per-capita civic spends in the world (because of extreme poverty) and lack of autonomous municipal govts.
I'm speaking from experience, and based on what I've seen. In statistics, you don't survey the entire population, but rather you take a small sample. I think I've a statistically significant sampling of experiences.
The police-related issues in the US is a serious threat to personal liberty, and there are a lot of people fighting for it to be corrected. You are entirely wrong when you say "and most conscientious Americans havent dont anything to fix it" -- the people have responded overwhelmingly, and there is huge push and fight underway to correct the moral/social injustice. Just read the news.
I said "Indians (in India)" because, yes, there is a difference. If you surround yourself Americans, and spend time with them on a regular basis, you will naturally, over the course of time become more like them. If you always stick around other Indians, then you will not change. I've had bad experiences with non-family Indian people. Various Indian friends I've had at various points in my life have screwed me over / been a bad friend to me at a much higher frequency than my American friends. These days, I keep people who are too Indian (culturally / identity-wise) at an arm's distance, and avoid getting too close to them.
I've just had really lopsided experiences. The majority of my American friends have been genuinely been friends. In times of trouble, they've sincerely empathized and actually tried to help. A bunch of Indian "friends" I had in the past, would laugh when I got into unfortunate circumstances, and they certainly would not try to help. There are good and bad people on both sides, but the majority of Americans I've come in contact with, have been a much better people, character-wise.
Regarding the squalor, your "poverty" argument is cop-out. Cities like Bangalore, which are filled with tech companies, still look like steaming garbage dumps. Why? Because the people don't care. The cost to clean up the city, and keep it clean on a regular basis, would be tiny. Simply collecting 50 rupees per month from the residents of Bangalore who make above a certain wage, would be, by far, sufficient to make the city speck and clean. What makes me irate is total apathy of the majority of these people about the cleanliness of the public spaces of the cities they live in. I've seen people in nice cars, open their window, and toss garbage onto the sidewalks/streets. It's pathetic and disgusting. It tells something about their character/culture.
I don't think it's right to base my opinion on these certain limited things.
You are taking a purely 'Etic' view of things and supplementing with an 'Emic' view typically gives a better perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic
Purdue's marketing of Oxycontin definitely crossed my line of honesty, BUT there has been, historically, an enormous amount of untreated pain in the US (probably everywhere), because of the stigma around those drugs.
It's ok for someone to develop a tolerance and addiction to the drug if they have the actual pain issue. That is usually less disruptive to someone's life than living with crippling pain. In a way, getting opiate pain medication into the hands of more people is a good thing.
The problem was a little more complicated- 1) Perdue promoted Oxycontin in a misleading way. 2) This happened during an economic downturn with our post-manufacturing economy turning out tons of people on disability, and others without a clear future. 3) Legislators freaked out, making it harder for doctors to prescribe opiates without making it easier for them to prescribe opiate treatment pills like suboxone, which basically forces addicted users of pharmaceuticals onto the street to score heroin.
So it's a social, legislative, and corporate morality problem all at the same time.
In statistics, you don't survey the entire population, but rather you take a small sample -- and I think I've had a statistically significant sampling of experiences.
yikes...
This kind of thing is actually all too common in the United States. One (rather shocking) example of this is/was the promotion of Oxycodone, a drug derived from Opium to doctors all over the US for common cases of pain.[1] Purdue Pharma spent millions promoting the use of Oxycodone for minor cases of pain, and misrepresenting its addictiveness. This has more or less been responsible for the heroin epidemic in the US, with the consequence being thousands upon thousands of lives being destroyed (first through addiction, and then by death).
And I might be wrong here, but in my experience, the vast majority Americans actually care a lot lot more about the common good than Indians. In my experience, a lot of Indians (in India) will happily screw over their neighbors and their country for their own selfish gain. Conscientious Indians are hard to come by. The few who stand up for what is right, get killed[2] or trampled over[3].
One glaring example of this is how people in India have no problems trashing the streets of the very cities/towns they live in. The streets of most major cities in India look like steaminggarbage dumps. I suppose they think: "What do I care? It's public property, not my home." And they litter the streets with garbage.
If a country like the United States, where the majority people are actually a lot more conscientious, moral, and patriotic[4] than most countries has problems of a few screwing over the majority, then there's nothing shocked about.
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/the-new-he...
[2] Satyendra Dubey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Dubey
[3] One of my relatives worked for an Indian government agency. He wouldn't stand for any corruption, and fought against from the inside. The people in the agency literally ruined his life. He even sued some of these people, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court of India, and he actually won the case -- but the compensation he won for all that he had went through was a pittance. He ended up dying in his early 50s from a heart attack, most likely from the stress from all of this. His entire life was consumed by this.
The level of corruption in government in India is staggering. From the highest to the lowest levels of government, everyone cares just about themselves (and their families) and is a Judas to everyone else, their neighbors, and the nation as a whole. It is very sad.
[4] Being patriotic should mean actually caring about the country and people in the country -- that manifests itself in the person's behavior. Not empty words. By this measure, a lot of Indians living in India are some of the least patriotic people in the world.