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Corruption in India

to Dominic,
Can you be more specific regarding India has a better educated population? It seems to me to be the general consensus that China is actually doing better in this regard.
And again, can you be more specific about your point that Indian people have more rights despite having a just as corrupt if not worse political system than China(based on corruption perception index)?
I believe economic growth pushes political reform. and accusing Chinese people for being stupid doesnt seem like a wise argument.
 
blaming British colonial rule some 70 years ago (and lest face it most of the people who ran the show back then are dead) doesn't really help
I absolutely agree with you on this. Blaming of course doesnt help with current situation.
I feel like there might have been a miscommunication here. Throughout the whole discussion, I never tried to identify a solution to India's corruption problem as that is clearly beyond my ability and understanding. I was merely discussing the one of the possible contributing factors to India's problem, i.e. the British colonization.
 
FEnzo

I am curious as to whether countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, etc were included in the study. Including them skews the result, because all they gotta do is sell oil and get money. They aren't real economies IMO. The amount of effort gone into developing a country like Japan/South Korea is much more than developing Saudi Arabia/UAE.

As you mentioned that low income leads to high corruption, I would like to point out that most of the times the people who actually bribe are rich people, because they are actually able to afford the high costs associated with it. A poor man, who earns less than $2.5 a day, can hardly afford to pay for his meals, let alone pay the bribes.

However, GDP per capita is just component of a country's success; others include, HDI, ease of doing business (if you can't do business, you won't create jobs.) There are tons of examples of billions of dollars waiting to be invested in India. It takes decades to get clearances, acquire land, and start a business in India, and by the time that business starts, millions more join workforce. Other measures include, number of world class universities, number of patents per capita acquired, life expectancy, number of PhD's/ 100k, crime rate ( you can't live in a country in which every day you get a death threat from mafia; money then is immaterial)- Talking about it, I heard numerous such cases in UP state of India etc.
 
I feel pity to say that the analytical skills of these (would be) quants are at best mediocre.

First off, the British ruled India for 190 years, not 300.

Second off, according to the logic of the above people, Switzerland is poorer than India. Compare apples with apples and not apples with oranges. India's population is 1.2 billion; therefore, it is but obvious it would have higher GDP than Switserland. Similarly, according to your logic, India is richer than Australia/Canada/Singapore. This is but laughable. Also, you forget to mention the massive population explosion that happened in Europe and in the Americas from 1800 to 1950's. In 1947, for instance US population was 144 million. India was 300 million, and US didn't even exist in 1600's. The fact is India's share of world population declined dramatically to about 10%.Probably 50% of the world lived in India back in 1700's. As far as I remember, massive number of people died in Europe due to black death back in 1400 (anywhere between 40-60%). By the the European population would have recovered, India's population would have risen a lot- to make European contribution to would population negligible.

Next time, mention per capita income, not rubbish GDP. It is a massively flawed way of comparing standard of living in 2 countries.

And no the British didn't rip-off Indians. Stop blaming the British. The Indians themselves are responsible for fighting among themselves and allowing British to rule. I never hear Americans complaining that the Britishers ripped them off. Further, Indians were so closed minded that they never allowed Industrialization, resulting in extremely high prices of goods in India (hand made). Whereas, the British produced cheap goods (not because of cheap labor but because of extremely efficient industries at that time).

Infact, I'd say that British gaveIndians a legal system, without which it would be in even bigger chaos. They abolished sati (the act of women burning themselves when their husband died, a very inhumane act). The British gave Indians railroads; ironically, many trains in India continue to run on those some 150 year old tracks, which haven't been replaced- courtesy corruption in India.

But the biggest contribution of the British was the English language; as a result of which many Indians can get jobs in many American multinationals- these jobs though mundane are still better than being unemployed (there are no benefits in India).

Yes, the British did exploit India, but it was nowhere near to what the mughals did- the muslims. They were the true villains. They forced people to convert into Islam, in many cases killing people. There are numerous historical accounts on this, particularly on what Aurangzeb did. They robbed the temples. Also, in a way they converted our open society into a highly closed one. They couldn't tolerate other religions. The couldn't tolerate any change, and when you stop change, the society becomes stagnant.Yes, the British sent mercenaries, but they didn't force people, by threatening to kill them, to convert their religion. In fact, India stagnated the day Muslims started their rule here.

India's peak was in the Vedic times. It ended with the end of the rule of the Mauryan's and the Gupta's.

If British were bad, then the muslims too were NOT any better.

I stopped reading at 'pity'. I suggest you to shorten your argument, may be add a pinch of rationality, and a bit less rant if you expect others to read you. This might explain the flak you get from a lot of delusional people.
 
As captivating as the title of this thread is, the content is really poor, almost embarrassing for this forum.
 
As captivating as the title of this thread is, the content is really poor, almost embarrassing for this forum.
Embarrasing? definitely not. I can't tell if the content is poor but seems like an interesting discussion (although very polarising).
 
I will talk in whatever way I want; you do NOT need to preach me that, and keep that display of offending/intolerable language to yourself or to your mates (who can tolerate it).

I think you are the one who is actually posting embarrassing/disappointing comments on this thread. Your language clearly depicts that. If this thread does not hold to your esteemed standards, do NOT read or post on it, as simple as that. Start your own thread that holds to your high standards.

This is my last comment on this useless argument, because you are a troll, and there is no point in feeding you.
 
I've said what I wanted to say. You can go on with your rant now..
 
Corruption is a thing. It is a prominent feature of many developing countries. I am not overly familiar with India's history and culture, so I will comment on Russia and perhaps it will give some insight.

... and structures that exist beyond the means of the government with the anemic, non-existing and non-enforced taxes can afford (which are therefore de facto non-paid... $100 a month isn't a salary...). And you can't really start over - you need a legal system in place. Corruption is just a way to Westernize that system, and keep police on the streets. Not necessarily policing the mob, but policing something at least ...

Yes, some if it translates to other places. Corruption isn't so much a matter of bad moral character by some individuals but built into the institutions of a society. If the country is poor and cannot afford to pay its civil servants and police living wages and you have great income and wealth disparity -- well, the rest follows. In the most corrupt countries, you have to buy your job and every promotion thereafter. Your taking bribes then is not a matter of poor moral character but the only rational economic decision you can make -- you have to pay off the loans you took to get the job in the first place. The political leadership of a country can make a determined effort to stamp out corruption -- but it has to start by setting an example. The Ba'athist government in Iraq (before Saddam), for example, ran a clean government -- though officials were paid little. But income and wealth disparities were not great, the political leaders did not live ostentatiously, and penalties for transgressing the laws and regulations were draconian. In contrast, a scumbag thief like Asif Zardari (aka "Mr. Ten Percent") sets a bad example for the whole country and contributes to an atmosphere of cynicism and graft. Come to think of it, there's quite a lot of corruption in the United States as well -- campaign contributions are effectively bribes which buy legislation, buy sympathetic ears in DC and state capitols, and ensure federal and state contracts. And not only campaign contributions, but promises of jobs to politicians or even straight cash under the table.
 
I will talk in whatever way I want; you do NOT need to preach me that, and keep that display of offending/intolerable language to yourself or to your mates (who can tolerate it)

Sounds like a nursery kid ...and talking of offensive language , if i may remind you sir that it was you who started calling people delusional if they did not agree to your viewpoint. The analytical skills of people dropped to zero (according to you) if they thought british rule did more harm than good. No one said corruption is good or India has utopian governance or all the problems faced by India today are because the British rule...Everyone is entitled to their viewpoints... You see India as a failed state and I see despite all problems(which most developing nations have) ,far from being a failed state, India can be the superpower in years to come...
Even developed nations have their problem, sharing an analysis by an analyst:

"Look the US is into a long-term secular decline. I have spent many months there even as recently last week and this has been a very long chunk of time in which we had a lot of time to do a lot of ground level analysis and what is happening there and whatever I have seen is in a very bizarre sort of way, it tells me that probably the US individual is poorer than most Indians as we stand right now. Because you might have a nice house and you might have a nice car in the garage, but all that is backed by a ton of debt. So ultimately does not belong to you and you have negative net worth. Whilst our poor they live in slums, they do not have a car because nobody will give them that debt. So then who is rich and who is poor is a very-very involved discussion and may be you should have a show on that. Outwardly they look rich, outwardly we look poor, but net of debt I am not so sure.

Consumer spending there is just going to keep declining. The housing market will never ever come back. Whatever I have seen, I was in New York State and I saw every third house being up for sale. For $200,000 you can buy a five bedroom house with a two-acre estate attached to it and still there are no buyers by the way and these houses have been on the market for a year, six months, nine months. I do not think the US can ever come back in any meaningful way. You might have cyclical bumps on the way up once in a while, but that whole trajectory is way down. They have outlived their sort of debt-laden ways, it is not going to come back that is one.

Europe of course we do not need to discuss much. Say for the fact that for whatever it is worth the European nations including Britain they have at least talked about austerity, talked about talk of trimming deficits, talked about belt tightening. In the US the A word the austerity word is a strict no-no, still do not want to believe that the good times are over for good, they still want to believe that the spending the way out of trouble is the only way out and which I find absolutely insane financial advice. So that part of the world is a basket case. Come closer home, ultimately emerging markets are not uncorrelated to those markets. We will be correlated even though emerging markets overall have done moderately okay relative to DMs. That is because of the disaster in Europe, but without that I do not think EMs can stand all on their own two feet because we are still in a global pool of equities and then we brought it down closer to where we are within the context of India.

There is no doubt about that. I am not saying that Indian markets would not emerge winners out of this entire rubble. If anything will emerge winner, I think it will be Indian markets unless of course we see agitations of the kind that we are seeing right now intensifying and derailing a duly-elected, Constitutionally-elected government and making a complete mockery of all due process of law and Constitution. If that were to happen, then all bets are off, but if the middle class regains it senses and goes back to doing work instead of going and doing dharna in various places, we are very-very fine."

But I feel even such dharnas are important as they awaken people to corruption. They suddenly make being honest a cool thing.
 
Fenzo, a serious problem for people like me is that Chinese education certificates don't correlate with reality all that well. It may have more graduates than any civilized country but the average quality ain't good, made worse by the fact that the education system is corrupt as well.

Indian education certificates generally are honest.

As for rights, I'm not sure even where to start, torture by the Indian police is rare, ordinary citizens can take the government to court not only with some hope of winning,but also without their daughters being kidnapped and gang raped by government goons. There is freedom of expression that compares favourably with some western nations, they have great freedom of religion, are allowed to have children, move about in their own country without permission, and live in their home without it being stolen by a corrupt official.

The legal system in India is like some awful parody of the British one as it was 100 years ago, but it is mildly honest, if slow.

A subtle, but important right that Indians have is that they can leave India.
That's the differerence between citizens and slaves, whether one is talking of the Roman Empire, the 19th century USA or China.

Yes, there are barriers against Indians coming to a given country, but that is racism in that other country not a defect of the Indian state itself.

It may seem here that I'm biased towards India, when quite the reverse is true.
If there exists any measure of the quality of your country, no matter how trivial where you don't beat China, then your government can reasonably be said to have failed.
Indians should be ashamed that they don't outgrow China.
 
darth

FYI, according to sjain's comment you too write like a castrated elephant. Infact, that comment would apply to anyone who has written more than 1 line, as he could barely go beyond 2 words.

Are you in some other world? Did I not mention that there are positives and negatives of everything. The Britishers coming to India had a largely positive effect- there were negatives too. Come to think of it, the Indian govt. didn't rule India any better than the British. Also, how long are you gonna rant that the Britishers are responsible for the present mess - corruption. India got independent aeons ago. Look at Singapore/NZ/Australia/HK before giving excuses. Your analytical skills would be considered zero if say to someone that India is the richest nation in the world because it has X dollars of GDP. If you had read carefully, GDP has nothing to do with general well -being of people. If India had 50% of world's population and just 33% of world's GDP, it wasn't by any measure the richest country in the world. Infact, Britian's per capita income was twice as high as that of India back in 1700's.
 
@ darth

You see India as a failed state and I see despite all problems(which most developing nations have) ,far from being a failed state, India can be the superpower in years to come...

Look the US is into a long-term secular decline. I have spent many months there even as recently last week and this has been a very long chunk of time in which we had a lot of time to do a lot of ground level analysis and what is happening there and whatever I have seen is in a very bizarre sort of way, it tells me that probably the US individual is poorer than most Indians as we stand right now. Because you might have a nice house and you might have a nice car in the garage, but all that is backed by a ton of debt. So ultimately does not belong to you and you have negative net worth. Whilst our poor they live in slums, they do not have a car because nobody will give them that debt. So then who is rich and who is poor is a very-very involved discussion and may be you should have a show on that. Outwardly they look rich, outwardly we look poor, but net of debt I am not so sure.

Try explaining that to millions of Indians who cannot afford to go to college/school because the first thing that PSU banks demand is collateral. If they were that rich, why would they even avail a loan.

What followed the above was total hogwash. There is no point in discussing it. There is a massive difference between economy and what I called a failed state. For this reason many countries such as Russia aren't any better.

If you ever paid attention I said that India was a failed state because of quantum of corruption being so high that the Indian govt. is not even willing to pass a lokpal bill, which by itself is no guarantee that corruption among politicians will reduce. They threw Anna Hazare into jail, for protesting against corruption. What Mr Kapil Sibal stated about Anna Hazare was outrageous. Earlier the govt. passed the modified lokpal bill, without including P.M. Is this some kind of joke?

The people of India want an end to this corruption, but the govt. is doing the least it can. In fact the govt. has chickened out. When there is a total disconnect between demands of people ( legit demands at that) and what govt. does, it is a failed state. It is disgusting when all the govt. wants to do is save its butt by trying to end Anna's fast. They should instead focus on what Anna and India want.
 
to DC,
again, I am afraid I have to reject your argument on education. I have read articles about how some Indian students having to pay their instructors in order to pass the course and, due to low pay, Indian professors spend much more time working rather than teaching. Of course, I am not the expert in this topic, other people might be more eligible on this topic
So you are saying Chinese people can't leave their own country? where did you get the idea? I thought there are 300k chinese students in the US alone.
and entry barriers has nothing to do with racism. its necessary for social stability and security. of course, sometimes its just pure politics.
I agree that you are not biased towards India, but I do believe that you are biased against China.
I feel like you are taking the economic growth in China for granted, which is quite common I believe
It's as if people believe that any developing country can pull off a double digit growth rate for decades...nobody is willing to admit that the government they criticize so much is the contributing factor behind this tremendous economic progress....
Let's at least give the Chinese government some credit for that.
And in response to your earlier claim, I do believe that prioritizing economic growth makes hell of a lot more sense than political change.
afterall, when you dont have access to clean water, food and shelter, would you even give a rat *&% about politics?? lol.
not saying political reform is not important, but economic progress solves the more fundamental problem IMO.
of course, focusing on the economy alone might cause problem as well, thats why Beijing has been revising its plans by putting a greater focus on the so called "harmonious" society. whether that plan works or not is a different story...
 
See.... sjain is not Kadar khan of bol radha bol that he can't see after 6 o clock ( read after 2 words) , all he meant was that your highness has written such nonsense that he didn't want to read after 2 words...

And i beg you please don't rate my analytical skills to zero... My career will be doomed ... No uni will offer me admission... Tsk tsk

I don't know after independence ratio of India's contribution to GDP/labour force but it would be worse that 33/50 I guess... Now please upgrade my Analytical skills from zero...
 
I don't agree with the point that Indians don't go to school/college because of lack of funds. FYI there is no collateral required for loan of less than Rs. 700,000. All the government institutes have scholarships for students whose parents' income is less than Rs 500,000.
 
I feel pity to say that the analytical skills of these (would be) quants are at best mediocre.

First off, the British ruled India for 190 years, not 300.

Second off, according to the logic of the above people, Switzerland is poorer than India. Compare apples with apples and not apples with oranges. India's population is 1.2 billion; therefore, it is but obvious it would have higher GDP than Switserland. Similarly, according to your logic, India is richer than Australia/Canada/Singapore. This is but laughable. Also, you forget to mention the massive population explosion that happened in Europe and in the Americas from 1800 to 1950's. In 1947, for instance US population was 144 million. India was 300 million, and US didn't even exist in 1600's. The fact is India's share of world population declined dramatically to about 10%.Probably 50% of the world lived in India back in 1700's. As far as I remember, massive number of people died in Europe due to black death back in 1400 (anywhere between 40-60%). By the the European population would have recovered, India's population would have risen a lot- to make European contribution to would population negligible.

Next time, mention per capita income, not rubbish GDP. It is a massively flawed way of comparing standard of living in 2 countries.

And no the British didn't rip-off Indians. Stop blaming the British. The Indians themselves are responsible for fighting among themselves and allowing British to rule. I never hear Americans complaining that the Britishers ripped them off. Further, Indians were so closed minded that they never allowed Industrialization, resulting in extremely high prices of goods in India (hand made). Whereas, the British produced cheap goods (not because of cheap labor but because of extremely efficient industries at that time).

Infact, I'd say that British gaveIndians a legal system, without which it would be in even bigger chaos. They abolished sati (the act of women burning themselves when their husband died, a very inhumane act). The British gave Indians railroads; ironically, many trains in India continue to run on those some 150 year old tracks, which haven't been replaced- courtesy corruption in India.

But the biggest contribution of the British was the English language; as a result of which many Indians can get jobs in many American multinationals- these jobs though mundane are still better than being unemployed (there are no benefits in India).

Yes, the British did exploit India, but it was nowhere near to what the mughals did- the muslims. They were the true villains. They forced people to convert into Islam, in many cases killing people. There are numerous historical accounts on this, particularly on what Aurangzeb did. They robbed the temples. Also, in a way they converted our open society into a highly closed one. They couldn't tolerate other religions. The couldn't tolerate any change, and when you stop change, the society becomes stagnant.Yes, the British sent mercenaries, but they didn't force people, by threatening to kill them, to convert their religion. In fact, India stagnated the day Muslims started their rule here.

India's peak was in the Vedic times. It ended with the end of the rule of the Mauryan's and the Gupta's.

If British were bad, then the muslims too were NOT any better.
 
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