Asklemmy

From afar, I love the food. I’d love to visit and learn more about the country but as a woman I don’t feel safe going there.

I'm pretty indifferent to India. They do have cool stuff, but they also have... not so cool stuff. All in all, it's India.

Far too overpopulated in most parts, with all negative societal and environmental effects. Huge disparity between poor country and rich city. Has a space programme and developed industry and science. Calls itself the biggest democracy but isn't one.

Is this correct?

We feel like the world revolves around India and our culture is superior to that of others.

Welll ok, i'm swiss and think so too. Probably most countries/cultures think this of themselves. I know from Manga that Japan and South Korea do too. And from Reddit/Lemmy for Americans.

I wonder in what ways does India believe they are the world leader of anything? India is just another country America outsources things to. Its way over crowded, weather is insane and the people seem to be stuck in the past in terms of acceptable hygiene and women's rights.

That being said, i still would love to eat some indian food and witness India's culture as a tourist.

They try to scam you on the phone and their movies suck or are impossible to take seriously. Is a parody of Hollywood. And Hollywood is already a parody of former Hollywoodland.

I hope that India doesn’t make the same mistakes my county (America) made, such as trying to be a major international player while ignoring the people in need at home. They’re already going that way, but there’s time to change course.

Also, I’d like them to fix their issues with Pakistan. That border was drawn by the British specifically to cause problems, and falling into that trap is letting the previous colonizers win.

I visited India back in 2008 and I loved it! However, since then I have realized that I am transgender, so I probably won't go back unless the culture shifts toward being more friendly to queer people. That sours my taste for the country, unfortunately. I also escape fundamentalist Christianity, so I am very suspicious of fundamental and conservative religion, which I perceive as having a strong presence in India.

I don't see India leading in innovation or technology. I see China, Japan, South Korea and the US as being leaders that way. I do see India as up and coming due to its population spike, it definitely feels like development is happening fast!

I can speak to an unfortunate trend where our country (US) imports poorly trained Indian medical doctors who provide poor people with shitty medical care. This is a whole industry. I was exposed to it while working in the medical imaging field and I'm sure that it kills poor people in this country every day. Both of the most blatant criminal abuses coming from medical doctors that I was personally close to (one committed insurance fraud by performing unnecessary heart surgery on patients who DID NOT NEED IT the other sexually assaulted women on his examining table) also were, sadly, Indians.

It's MUCH easier to get a medical degree in India than it is in America, if you're high caste. Meaning high caste students in India who would NOT pass medical school in America become doctors all the time and then immigrate.

Once you have that MD after your name, in terms of legally establishing a private practice in America, your Indian MD is just as good as one from Harvard or Colombia. And Insurance companies FUCKING LOVE YOU because you charge 70% what the guys from Harvard or Colombia charge. They have programs in the Insurance industry to help reach out to immigrating Indian doctors and get them into network with the Insurance providers.

So I had a job travelling all over the US setting up, repairing and supporting medical imaging computers for private practices and what I saw in 4 out of 5 Indian owned clinics was

• Dirty facilities.
• Old, poorly maintained equipment (I have stories about having to support 5.25 inch floppy drives in 2010).

I also saw

• People sent away with unanswered questions / incomplete diagnosis because the doctor only had 20 minutes for each patient.
• Doctors who spoke English so poorly their patients could not understand what they were being told (especially when said doctors were treating Mexican people who spoke English as a second language anyway).
• A doctor who berated an autistic woman because she was moving too slowly and he had lots of other patients to see.
• Not to mention doctors failing to understand some of the basic functions of the medical imaging tech I was supporting for them in ways that were disturbing like "You have the tools here to provide a higher level of care to your patients but you DON'T KNOW HOW to use them."
• Also lots of doctors that were arrogant and dismissive towards me, a highly skilled engineering professional.

I got to contrast this with a couple of black doctors in the South who had shabby clinics in old buildings and old poorly maintained equipment but ENTIRELY different attitudes towards their patients and LOTS of white and Asian doctors who run the kind of clean, modern clinics I myself as a white collar professional from a privileged background had previously taken for granted.

I want to be VERY clear this is NOT a race thing. It is a socio-economic / cultural problem.

The two things that I think of when I think of India are that it's way too overpopulated and also way too hot.

Aside from that, there are a lot of academics I've seen from India that are genuinely helpful on YouTube but also a lot of scams. Speaking English with an Indian accent almost instantly creates a sense of distrust in Americans simply with how many times we each personally have received scam calls or talked to someone in an Indian call center who swears their name is 'Derek Johnston' or other similarly fabricated name.

Extremely dirty. Why does nobody care about all the shit and litter out there? What caused such ignorance to form?

I really like the food, movies and most people I've met from India are extremely nice.

What I don't like is the huge inequality, treatment of women and the lack of hygiene in the big cities.

It's definitely a country that has been on it's way up for a while now, things could be really good for India in the future.

My basic view of India is of a super diverse country with a fascinating history and cultures, and really great food. Politically I see a country that unfortunately is leaning in a more authoritarian direction as time goes one, and one that is getting increasingly unequal to its inhabitants. I really think India has so much potential but little will to actually improve.

I had my biases, due to the large number of tech support scammers from India... Until my mother got scammed by chiropractors, and my whole family (including me) got their teeth mutilated by a malpracticing dentist in the US trying to profit off unnecessary dental proceedures. Scammers are everywhere there's corruption; they just take different forms.

I hear that India is fun for parties and weddings, but also that it's extremely dirty and a dangerous place to visit. I'm a man, but I especially wouldn't want to be a white woman visiting, I've seen videos of how they'll stare with no regard for how she feels - Indian men have a very poor reputation when it comes to how they act towards European/US women.

Send bobs.

But seriously I can’t help but think of the good foods. I’m curious if India does food diplomacy like Thailand does.

Culturally, not a fan, for many reasons others have mentioned - and the whole caste system thing tends to sour a lot of the otherwise positive aspects.

That said, the food is EXCELLENT, and that must not be overlooked.

Sadly, I have nothing good to say, other than the food is delicious.

BJP/RSS - right wing fundamentalist zealots have taken over India. It's gross, it's dangerous and frightening. It's what we hope America will not become with Trump and Heritage types.

My general impression is that India are really good at scientific innovation and so on but only because the incredible inequality allows India to channel its resources so that it can be on par with other countries a fraction it's size.

If they did the work required to lift the poor regions out of poverty, and sometimes just straight up feudalism, the country would become a proper superpower with far reaching cultural impact but right now India seem to slide further into Hindu nationalism so now it's more of a worry for everyone else if India became another dictatorship like china.

A massive tangle of diverse kingdoms that have never quite hit their full potential. Current political situation is grim and disappointing and I am not particularly optimistic for them.

All of this is IMHO so keep that in mind.

Politically it's pretty extremist from what I can tell. Not just that but support for that extreme political stance is also rather high. Neithe of which is a good thing in my book. Other news I get to know about also tend to paint a pretty grim picture when it comes to human rights, rich/ poor divide and acceptance of people who have different preferences. I also mostly remember having met people how you described in the opening.

To say how it is, my opinion is not exactly good. Primarily because of how they act a d their political choices. Though I chalk some of that up to a lack of education. And it's also not so bad that I'd rather not deal with them. Just that I have a healthy dose of " oh no, not one of those guys again. This will get exhausting, isn't it" whenever I see someone that fits the description.

Honestly, off the top of my head I often like the people who come to England but as far as the country itself I don’t really think about it much. First thoughts are that it’s a massive country that’s heavily polluted and kinda obsessed with making money without much care for how they do it, such as how much of the world is making sacrifices to stop buying gas from Russia but India’s just undermining their good intentions for profit. I think if Pakistan invaded they’d expect the whole world to rally around them.

I'm sure thoughts are influenced by the fact that the company I work for has a sizable presence there, but the very broad view I've developed is 'outsourcing superpower'. It rarely seems that India is the owner or originator of things, but they end up doing a massive amount in supporting companies from the USA during what is our night hours. They also seem to have an exceptional dedication to their work despite from what I've seen the managers being kinda over-the-top with the demands on them.

I used to work with a young woman who left one of the wealthy families there to get out of an arranged marriage who had all kinds of interesting tales on how things worked there. Talked a bit about their 'gold room's where they stored all their savings and if they needed extra cash would just shave off a piece from a brick.

I've no significant opinion of India beyond anti-Modi, and that's a product of John Oliver. Most of my engineering team are Indian and some I like, some I tolerate. And a fear of Indian traffic by reputation alone.

But you could swap "American" with "Indian" in that first paragraph, change nothing else, and it be largely (if not entirely) accurate.

India appears to be a country that contains multitudes and is hard to pin down. It has a problematically large contingent that is deeply islamaphobic. The country suffers from low regulation and prejudice as well as a shitty right wing president. But much of it is beautiful with rich culture. The prominent religions are pretty benign when compared to american christianity as far as I can tell