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For an example of how "one political faction" can manufacture trends, check this out - https://twitter.com/Kirangandhi/status/1188354450458468352. They contact famous personalities (in this case athletes who had represented India at the Olympics), give them a text ("I thank @narendramodi for his initiative to honour and empower...") and ask them all to tweet it at the same time. Then they use their vast network of fake accounts to amplify it. Same thing yesterday, when they requested cricket players with large followings to implicitly criticise Greta Thunberg and Rihanna for "interfering" in India's affairs.

It's so easy to co-opt this too. One person got access to the shared google doc where they store the next tweets that need to be trending and changed it to something critical of Modi. It was promptly tweeted out regardless by government ministers who said "working for the middle class is low on the agenda of Modi Govt" and "Modi govt has not made inclusive development as the focal point".

(https://twitter.com/free_thinker/status/1095571793233043456?...)

Third rate Indian suppliers? I’m not sure if you’re implying that the price is low or the quality is poor. If it’s the latter, you don’t know much about Indian pharma companies. Btw, Indian pharma companies selling high quality anti retro viral drugs to African countries at low prices is why HIV is relatively under control right now.

Case in point, the fascists in India became very concerned about Trump being deplatformed. They decried it as a lack of tolerance, because they knew there’s no difference between what Trump does and what they do.

How racist do you have to be to equate people in Chinatown with the virus? At a time when there were less than 10 cases in the US, the risk of visiting Chinatown was minimal.

And it's curious that you focus on Chinatown in February instead of 300 days of minimising mask wearing and calling for LIBERATING states from coronavirus restrictions.

I think the 2020 experience has taught us a bit more about people. 9/11 was horrifying and traumatising, but perhaps less because of the death toll (3000) and more because you could see footage of those people dying, played over and over. Sure, 3000+ people died of Covid yesterday, but they all did it out of sight. So it’s possible for some people to dismiss it for any number of reasons - statistics aren’t accurate, those people had other underlying health issues, they would have died of the flu anyway. Most of all, we only see the statistic. We don’t have to actually watch someone die because the virus prevented them from breathing, far away from their family.

Speaking of which, this is also probably why the BLM movement gained widespread support. Statistics showing unequal policing have existed for a long time, but they are easy to ignore. Any person who watched the 8:46 video of a man being suffocated couldn’t ignore it.

We like to think we’re data driven, but we’re actually emotionally and visually driven. Statistics should convince people, but it doesn’t. A video of towers falling or a man being suffocated are much more likely to change people’s minds.

How?! After reaching 100 million searches in a month, Google should stop serving search queries? How weird would that be?

If you’ve already reached your 30% cap, what incentive do you have to improve your service?

This is such weird regulation. Rather than set rules for a level playing field it seeks to dictate outcomes. Telling payment providers that they can’t exceed 30% of total payments is as absurd as telling Apple or Samsung to not exceed 30% of the smartphone market.

They’re supposed to stop selling or rate limiting when they’re reaching their cap?

I’d love to get the input of the blind devotees of the supposedly pro business Prime Minister of India. There’s no shortage of you lot on HN. Could you please explain how making an app stop working in the best interests of Indian consumers?

But please don’t try “The central bank is independent” as an explanation. No one believes that, least of all you.

Yeah it’s a great business to be in. As long as the climate doesn’t change, you’ll be pumping out electricity from a plant at an unbeatable price - since there’s no input apart from maintenance costs. How long do solar panels last before you need to replace them though?

Since you’re so on well informed about this here’s another question. I notice that battery prices are roughly halving every 3 years. At what point does it become cheaper to attach batteries to Indian solar plants than it is to operate coal powered plants?

Bruh did you miss the part where OP said “developing world”? They’re talking about projects in India, where the grid looks very different from the US grid.

I’ve had this question for a long while but no one to ask it to. You might have the expertise required to answer it.

When I see new solar projects that have tendered absurdly low prices, are the bidders bidding with today’s solar prices or are they betting that solar prices will fall further, allowing them to eventually make a profit? For example Adani solar won a contract to supply energy at INR 3 or $0.05 per kwh. Is that the price of building and operating a solar in 2022 or is it the price that the winning bidder hopes it’ll be in 2024 when they’re building the second and third phases of their contract?

The point the others are making isn’t about your standard of living, but your compensation.

If you hadn’t been tied to a single employer, maybe you would have gotten a job with an employer who paid more. You would have been able to reach your savings goal without living so frugally. Your employer at the time was comfortable paying you a relatively small amount because you couldn’t go anywhere else.

They’re not asking immigrants to live more lavishly. They’re asking for immigrants to be paid more so there’s less downward pressure on wages.

> I think 6 years should be enough

I’m guessing you don’t know very many Indians?

According to ground realities. In a well functioning representative democracy, voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.

So if you want to be the one politician that values non-citizens’ rights over citizens’ rights, good luck getting re-elected.

Or you could set up an autocracy and try to manage this anyway. For further reading, I recommend the book The Dictator’s Handbook or CGP Greg’s 20 minute summary of it.

I flagged this comment for being obtuse and accusing a person of a crime when they just want privacy.

Nor can they use ignorance as an excuse - they're Indian.

I've never had any trouble discussing this with European and American colleagues or owning up to my own privilege.

But I can see how many Indians would find it awkward to talk about, especially if they think that the caste system is on it's way out because things are better than they used to be. Some might feel that discussing it with non-Indians puts India in a bad light.

To which I say, it's not me who's painting India in a bad light, it's the people who are discriminating on the basis of caste in 2020. People who say "oh, I'm only against reservation and those who benefit from it" and treat such people terribly. And we can only get rid of this disease by shining a light on it.

To be fair, it requires a lot self awareness and external education to learn about your own privilege and how difficult (relatively) other people have it. It's not easy.

For people who discuss this with Indian co-workers - don't be surprised if they find this bizarre or far fetched. For most upper caste folks, it appears as if the caste system doesn't exist because they've never been at the receiving end of it. Most people (me included) would be tempted to say - I've never discriminated, I've never seen it happen in front of me, I'm confident none of my friends would do it so therefore it doesn't exist.

But it does. It's heartbreaking that my fellow Indians have to deal with this in 2020. Just like BLM educated some white people about the existence of racism, how it manifests, how it affects people etc., we need a similar movement to educate upper caste Indians.

I've also seen the same people say "if we completely ignore caste, it'll go away". It won't. I personally can't tell you what someone's caste is based on their name because I don't care enough to find out the mapping between name <=> caste. If everyone was like this, there wouldn't be a problem. But I know for a fact that there exist people who can map name to caste and these people also discriminate on the basis of caste. These people might only be a minority but they can have a disproportionate effect. As long as they exist, the rest of us can't adopt an ostrich approach to the caste system.

This isn't an argument over say Italian vs French cuisine. That's undecideable.

This is an extraordinary claim that by taking Indian food to the UK, stripping it of it's spice to suit the locals somehow made it better. It'd be like claiming Italian cuisine became better without the tomatoes or Mexican cuisine better without the beans.

“Obviously” the King of Breakfasts?

I’ve eaten the Full English. I’ve also eaten Idli-Vadai-Pongal-Chutney-Sambhar and I prefer the latter. There’s nothing objectively better here. We prefer what we grew up eating.

You’re being heavily downvoted but I can’t imagine by who or why. Certainly not by people who’ve eaten Indian food in both India and the UK.

While there are a few good restaurants, most Indian restaurants in the UK are bland beyond reason, catering to the common palate. There’s nothing wrong with liking bland food or restaurants catering to that preference, but let’s not make this extraordinary claim that it’s better than the food in India. For most part the food is plain and plays it safe. For example, it’s rare to find Indo-Chinese, a cuisine nothing like Chinese or Indian but a staple of cuisine in India.

India's economy won't be affected by the loss of PUBG. But it will without certain critical parts of the manufacturing supply chain. I don't know what those parts are, but the Chinese govt will know. A good example of this in action is banning exports of rare earth metals to Japan in 2010, affecting Japan's electronics industry.

14 out of 34 of the writers in that list are from places other than US/UK [1]. Even the included works by US/UK authors like Shakespeare and Orwell and Huxley aren't merely Anglophone culture - I'd argue they're a part of human culture. Are films by Kurosawa like Ran (King Lear) and Throne of Blood (Macbeth) any less Japanese because he was inspired by Shakespeare? I'd argue not.

Could they have made a better list? Certainly, and perhaps even they would acknowledge it. Of course we can nitpick - I agree with almost none of the selections related to software. But I think "done" is better than "perfect".

[1] - Murasaki Shikibu (Japan), Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russia), Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), Salman Rushdie (India), Nadine Gordimer (South Africa), Ben Okri (Nigeria), Arundhati Roy (India), Umberto Eco (Italy), Haruki Murakami (Japan), Roberto Bolaño (Chile), Stanislaw Lem (Poland), Jung Chang (China)

The world is much more inter-connected than it was then. The cost of a war with China is orders of magnitude more than the cost of a war with Germany. In fact, for the first several months of WWII, British and French citizens barely noticed the war.

War with China would be extremely painful, every single item that modern life depends upon apart from food will suddenly become scarce. That acts as a powerful deterrent.

> it needs to find allies

No shortage of Chinese allies - 70+ countries supported China's recent change to Hong Kong's laws (https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1193422.shtml). Certainly none of these countries are bastions of freedom - North Korea, Venezuela, Chad, Myanmar, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan. But all of them support China to the hilt. Tanzania didn't even stop with an endorsement of the HK law, they also felt it necessary to mention that Taiwan is a part of China. Turns out Chinese loans go a long way in creating a sense of gratitude.

All countries barring the US need China more than China needs them. And China only needs the US until it has semiconductors of it's own.

The US and EU were asleep at the wheel these last 30 years - allowing China to grow powerful without also creating a counterweight like India. Now the world's dependence on Chinese manufacturing and Chinese consumption means that no one dares to criticise China, and there's no shortage of countries lining up to praise every action of Comrade Xi's.

That's why China can screw over every neighbour, taking what they please. Who's going to stop them? Is Vietnam or Malaysia suddenly going to stand up to China? No, they will merely grumble. Is India willing to provoke an actual war? No, they will merely ban TikTok and call it a day.

> They'll drop it as soon as something cheaper comes around.

My bet - nothing cheaper comes along. Because Reliance's biggest competitive advantage is close links with the government, regardless of the party in power. A hypothetical competitor would find it difficult to get spectrum allocated, have trouble with land usage rights, tax issues like Vodafone had.

There is a reason foreign companies set up joint ventures with Reliance, Tata, Birla etc. Ostensibly it's because these companies "understand" the Indian market. In reality, it's because they have spent decades "lobbying" political parties and will continue doing so for several decades more. A company like Sky wouldn't know how to get started with political lobbying, wouldn't be comfortable with outright bribery, can't make a long term commitment to staying in India. So they set up Tata Sky - they supply the tech, Tata supplies the connections.

It is not.

Steam has lower prices in some countries. Factorio sells for the equivalent of $12 in India while it sells for $30 elsewhere. Most games are similarly discounted. That said, someone who buys it from Steam can't gift the game (or presumably extract a key) to someone in a different country. If you bought the game in India, only an Indian account can play it.

See my points about undue influence by the BJP over the Court. Realistically this influence meant there was no other decision those judges could take, even though it was ridiculous to award land based on "fervent religious belief", with no proof other than scripture. Worst of all, the destruction of the mosque was unlawful even according to judges themselves and yet they saw fit to compound that injury by taking away the land under the mosque and awarding it to groups allied with the original destroyers of the mosque.

You're right about the BJP claiming credit for it. We're going to hear about nothing else for the next four years, especially during state election periods.

I asked you to be more specific and you've dismissed it as "just my opinion". It's impossible to respond to that. Good day.

Quick summary of the situation in India

- In 2014, Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister on a plank of "development for all". Since the BJP's pedigree was one of Hindu nationalism (aka Hindutva), this was a change welcomed by many. He had a good track record of development as Chief Minister (equivalent of Governor in America).

- After a couple of major missteps (invalidating all high value currency notes, tax changes), growth started to slow. While it had been 7-9% between 2004 and 2014, it was now 5% or less.

- The BJP started to capture and subvert institutions that make India function as a democracy including the Courts[1] and the Election Commission[2]. They intimidated and coerced the media into toeing the BJP line [3].

- In 2019, the BJP won re-election. In this campaign, there was no talk of development (because there was precious little of it), no discussion of rampant unemployment. The BJP tried to convince us that the main issue was Pakistan (it wasn't) and how they were an existential threat to the nation (they weren't) and how Modi had "taught them a lesson" (he hadn't).

- Since then, Hindutva has made a big comeback. It is now priority #1, above unemployment, above low growth.

- The BJP is staking everything on killing the separatist movement in Kashmir and removing all special privileges of Kashmiris, building a temple over a destroyed mosque, and removing illegal Muslim immigrants. Though seemingly disparate, all of these facilitate the broader goal of establishing a Hindu Rashtra - a nation of Hindus, by Hindus, for Hindus. One where the secular Constitution of India is no longer valid.

- To enforce this, the BJP has resorted to totalitarian tactics, including the effective house arrest of millions of Kashmiris, coupled with an internet blackout. Thanks to the aforementioned capture of the Courts, the Supreme Court has done nothing to right this injustice [4].

That's where we are now.

On a personal note, writing this down broke my heart. I love my country and I grieve to see what is being done to it.

[1] - https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/judging-the-judges/ci...

[2] - https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article29618205.e...

[3] - https://thewire.in/media/punya-prasun-bajpai-bjp-media

[4] - https://scroll.in/article/935432/analysis-supreme-court-orde...

If you have a specific issue with what GP said, please state it. Vague accusations are impossible to respond to.

If your contribution is "people are biased", that's not too helpful.