[senthil_rajasek]

"... is a cliche at this point and should be considered racist in India... "

How is that racist?

Expressing nationalism is not racist unless in specific other circumstances. In the U.S, Japanese and Korean auto makers were accused of stealing jobs and Latino Americans still are... I see it as a form of nationalism.

[edited: to remove Europe and fix punctuation]

[sremani]

Nationalism ? No Sir, this is protectionism and dare I say, Xenophobia.

[guelo]

Whatever you call it it works really well and India is stupid to play by the colonialist's rules. Look at China, they banned or restricted all the western web companies now they're home to thriving new web giants. With all of India's world class programmers where is India's Baidu or Wechat or Weibo or Alibaba?

[splintercell]

Same place where France's Google, Germany's Amazon is at, they don't need it. China is wasting effort by creating things because they don't wanna use the things rest of the world uses, and the rest of the world doesn't wanna use their things because it would be giving power to a non-liberal democracy.

[kamaal]

>>Same place where France's Google, Germany's Amazon is at, they don't need it.

Germany doesn't have their Amazon. They have their BMW's and Volkswagen's. That's their Amazon.

>>China is wasting effort by creating things because they don't wanna use the things rest of the world uses

So why did Ford have to create his company when Volkswagen existed?

>>rest of the world doesn't wanna use their things because it would be giving power to a non-liberal democracy.

Democracy doesn't mean two hoots in a world where economy dictates everything from domestic policy to international policy.

Absolutely nothing wrong in being self sufficient. Being self sufficient has helped Asian economies more than we know. India and China both have nuclear programs, our own capabilities to run our space programs, and launch our satellite and take of ourselves and our economies.

If anything we should be building our capabilities than depending on other nations.

[coldtea]

>Same place where France's Google, Germany's Amazon is at, they don't need it.

Germany and France are 1/10 the population of India or smaller. India is 2x+ USA populations.

>China is wasting effort by creating things because they don't wanna use the things rest of the world uses, and the rest of the world doesn't wanna use their things because it would be giving power to a non-liberal democracy.

Then of course US citizens can have their cake and eat it too, both using what "the whole world uses" AND having control over them because its their services.

[sremani]

You need to read the glorious days of protectionism and economy of India from 1950-1990. 4% growth has its own nick-name, "Hindu rate of growth".

[kamaal]

This has been debated to death. There is no evidence to prove this was wrong.

People who are this childish to question government policy right after independence should understand prevailing conditions then. India just got free from a colonial power which had sneaked in with trade as a excuse and then ruined pretty much everything for the next 3 centuries.

Conditions prevailing, Nehru did what he could. He saw what had emerged from partition riots and saw secularism as the most natural outcome. He realized the only way Indian borders that would ever be secure is we learn to be self sufficient, not just militarily, or with advanced weapons like Nuclear weapons. But with our indigenous economy, with our own industries, with our trained workforce and our own technology and manufacturing capabilities.

If anything you should thank them, what we were was a predominantly peasant economy(like Bangladesh), we now have means to defend any invasion, we have our own nuclear weapons, we have our own space program, we developed a lot of early industrial and manufacturing capabilities. We built our own engineering, medical other academic institutions purely out of nothing. The period between 1950-1990 was a period of institution building.

If you wish to look what has become of other countries with over zealous ideas look at Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Sri Lanka.

In fact bulk of engineering education infrastructure in cities in Bangalore directly derives from industries like ITI, BEL et which were established in the city, fueling the demand.

[splintercell]

> Germany and France are 1/10 the population of India or smaller. India is 2x+ USA populations. <

All I am saying is that there is no need of creating the same piece of software by a different team of people just because of NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here). India should spend time in creating other things.

China created its own search engine because they want a feature i.e. censorship, which Google doesn't offer them. France and Germany don't need their own search engines because there is nothing in Google which they want but latter doesn't offer.

All I am saying is that India should focus on making unique things specific to Indian population only. For instance create a Horoscope matching service similar to OkCupid, now that makes sense. Housing.com makes sense. Indian Facebook doesn't make sense.

[coldtea]

>All I am saying is that there is no need of creating the same piece of software by a different team of people just because of NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here). India should spend time in creating other things.

It's not just NIH. If you're in the small leagues you get to use whatever other players offer, but if you're one of the superpowers, like China is and India wants to be, it makes sense to have your own infrastructure that you control.

>China created its own search engine because they want a feature i.e. censorship, which Google doesn't offer them.

Not just that. First, there's surveillance of its citizens. China might be OK with doing it to their own citizens, and the US might be OK with them doing it to their own. But neither the US nor China would be OK with the other doing it to their citizens. Now, a second rate player, like Spain or even Germany (who even was under US governance for a long time after WWII) might be OK with it, and an aggregate big player like the EU might not yet have the power of coordination and political might to fight this situation.

Second, most of the western internet (from news outlets to social media) mostly features and touts the western internets and viewpoints on any matter, from cultural issues to trade agreements. I'm not talking of Chinese government propaganda here either (that of course also exists). I'm talking about all kinds of issues, where there are different national interests at stake. Now, this situation is convenient for the US population, who follows its own websites, never watches e.g. Brazilian or French movies or listens to e.g. Spanish or Chinese pop, and sure as hell never reads foreign newspapers or uses foreign social media platforms anyway ("never" here used as a proxy for "in insignificant amounts"), as all of their media/websites put the culture and interests of the US (or of some US based companies) first.

Of course people sharing those interests and culture (e.g. US citizens, British etc), these media/services might even appear "totally neutral" -- as if they're just describing out objective reality. Or they'll point to things like FOX vs X progressive channel, to show how there's variety of opinion as if that covers the whole spectrum.

People outside the US reading those outlets and using those services though (because of them being early technological pioneers, having the infrastructure and the money, etc) do have this problem -- that the majority of stuff there is more often than not against their national interests/culture/sensitivities/political views/etc.

>Indian Facebook doesn't make sense.

A US based web service having access to all the private data for the Indian population makes even less sense. Would Americans feel the same way if Facebook was, say, Russian? Conveniently they seldom, if ever, have to use a non US-based web service of such scope. It's always the others who have to use theirs.

[thaumasiotes]

> the rest of the world doesn't wanna use their things because it would be giving power to a non-liberal democracy

Let's not get carried away. The rest of the world doesn't want to use their things due to a combination of (a) not knowing about the things; and (b) the things being in Chinese.

[kamaal]

Not sure what you are talking about. Indians have been more than welcoming to other people. We have been screwed over thousands of years now.

Refusing to be screwed and looking after your interests isn't racism or xenophobia.

[splintercell]

In India Nationalism is a good word, whereas in the rest of the world it's an awful word because the rest of the world saw what Nationalism eventually takes you to (WW2, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan).

Nobody in US who opposes foreign labor in US would ever wanna be called a 'Nationalist', it is the same thing as being called a racist(actually, it might even be worse).

[rohmish]

Nationalism could be considered good thing if you are in early to mid 20th century. But today when we are this global, being this nationalist makes no sense. Yes I understand nationalism here is grounded in our freedom history but in todays world it makes no sense.