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by jargnar 3667 days ago
A very real, slightly non-obvious problem is the size of the Indian population itself. There are so many people here that, competition is a stronger emotion than community. To an extent that sometimes it is considered normal to put someone else at risk for your benefit, while self-empathizing along the lines of "Hey, if I don't do it, someone else will stamp on that person to move ahead in life."

Competition is everywhere.

- Want a seat in a University? Compete with, literally a million others for just one seat.

- Want a train ticket to travel within India? Login to the IRCTC exactly at 8 am, and pray that the next 5 seconds is your lucky time.

- Want to travel via local train? Hang on to the windows outside (Mumbai).

Too many people that -- it is dangerously becoming almost culturally normal to prioritize your life over someone else's. Combine this with the corrupt administration, and poor infrastructure... and it is painful to think about.

We're forgetting humanity at the cost of too many humans to compete with.

That being said, there are definitely people who do help. Helpful people in India are in fact, extremely helpful. I've received help myself. But these days, the probability of that happening is perhaps decreasing.

8 comments

Fun fact, the train ticketing systems in India and China using Apache Geode for their backend.

Anyway, back to the point, I agree with you. Indian's population situation is really insane. Last time I was in India was in 1998 and the traffic situation was totally insane. All the red lights had "relax" written on them in English in an attempt to calm drivers down.

You'd think the 2nd most populated country in the world would be able to chose from that pool of talent; find the right people to help solve these major problems plaguing the nation.

But it doesn't work that way. People struggle to get out. My dad had dreams of returning. He visited after retiring and said the water is still unsafe to drink, the air unsafe to breath and a flat in Delhi was over $300k USD. Decades after he left, the situation has only gotten worse.

Isn't it the case that when you go to university, you don't choose your major but rather it is chosen for you based on your entrance exam score?
You get to choose, but the people who scored better get to choose first. So depending on the engineering job market situation, your choices are limited by your score.
What is wrong with Apache Geode?
How does pointing out a systems use imply something wrong with it?
It was randomly pointed out in the context of a discussion that might be summarized as "the problems India has," so it could reasonably be read as a slight on Geode. I don't think it was meant that way, but I had to read it a couple of times to determine that it wasn't.
Nothing. The article mentioned Indian and China and trains and I learned from some Geode guys at a talk a while back that both their government use Geode as their ticketing backend store.

I just thought it was a fun fact. I haven't used Geode myself, but it looks fairly well designed.

> - Want a train ticket to travel within India? Login to the IRCTC exactly at 8 am, and pray that the next 5 seconds is your lucky time.

This if incorrect. Train tickets are available online round the clock (almost). It's the "tatkal" (last-minute / emergency) bookings that opens at 10 AM. The system is under immense load, and despite that the availability has improved over the past 2 years.

Indian rail network, despite its shortcomings, is pretty amazing I think. It moves the nation. It's also one of the largest employers in the world [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers

> culturally normal to prioritize your life over someone else's

I think this is common to the US as well. Of course I think my life is more important to someone else. That's why I drive like an idiot, cut in line, take without asking, talk loudly on my phone in quiet places, smoke/vape wherever I want, etc.

India is populous but USA is populous as well, and Japan is dense as well. The problem isn't too many people, it's insufficient per-capita wealth/opportunity.

A billion people for a thousand seats is the same problem as a million people with for seat.

Actually there are a lot of business opportunities. Certainly not enough to accommodate the whole population, but then again not everyone is in a position to take advantage of available opportunities.

What is really lacking, is access to information and in many cases people just dont want to pursue said opportunity. Everyone instead wants to do that one thing that made that guy rich.

There is a saying in Hungarian that could be translated as "the prayer wheel spins faster yonder", that is referring to the extreme levels of population that is observed in India and China.

I think there are too many people in the world overall, and it is unsustainable. The planet could do better with a fourth or fifth of its current population.

> competition is a stronger emotion than community.

yep i guess this is a rule: as population increase, humanity decrease

that is why is really cool to live in small towns

>it is dangerously becoming almost culturally normal to prioritize your life over someone else's

Uh, yes? I prioritize my own life over the life of any other individual. I hope others do too, or else I worry about their sense of self-worth.

That doesn't mean I don't care about anyone else, just that I do care about myself slightly more than I care about any random person.

Has India reached / is it reaching Peak Child? I know predictions globally are for ~9Bn people, I wonder how much of that will be in India.
India is projected to be one of the twelve countries who together will account for 50% of the world's population growth until 2050, at which point it's assumed India will host 1.7 billion humans. Asia will in total have gone from 4.3 to 5.2 billions, which is by far not as dramatic as the projected growth of Africa from 1.1 billion now to 2.5 billion in 2050.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

> Indian people I have talked to are enthusiastic about the prospect of edging out China in terms of future economy, and population size is seen as the primary means of achieving that.

Huh? The problem with that statement is the sample size. Even if you talked to every Indian person you know (presumably anywhere between 100 and 10000), it will be less than 0.001% of the total population of India.

Edit: Grammer.

Yes, it's anecdotal, that's why I had prefaced the entire paragraph with a huge disclaimer. But I see how complementing a string of google-able facts with some personal impressions and experiences might be perceived as gratuitous, and that's why I removed it now.
Good, now edit your spelling too!
No, they haven't. As of 2013, the UN projected India's population to surpass China by 2028, and peak at ca. 1.6 billion in 2050, and fall back to about 1.5 billion by 2100.

For comparison China is expected to start declining around 2030, and fall to around 1.1 billion by 2100.

How in the world can someone make anything but a wild ass guess about what the population patterns will be 84 years from now? Even 20 year predictions are dubious IMHO.