[todayiamme]

Um, I am not exactly an arm chair critic. I actually think that in order to find a solution to a problem you need to look at the truth first.

I can't tell you how I feel when I walk by a child slaving in a teashop. That child doesn't know the meaning of loyal dissent. That child doesn't have people speaking up for him/her. That child needs to have a future and I am willing to spend a large part of my life trying to give them one. However, in order to do that you need to see the truth.

I have not written a single opinion in that post except for the observation that this state is slowly disintegrating and although I might be wrong I have tried to prop it up with data. If you feel hurt by it then I am sorry, but this is what the cards are and I would rather spend my time deciding how to play the hand.

[lewstherin]

I am making the below post assuming you are Indian citizen. Lets look at the truth then.

> when I walk by a child slaving in a teashop.

You know quite well that child labor is illegal in India and we have a huge enforcement problem. When you walk by such a child, why don't you report this to the cops? Why don't you pass on this information to CRY or some such NGO. Have you tried speaking to the guy who employs the kid and tried to get the child enrolled in some school?

My point precisely is that as a dispassionate observer, you are not doing anything to solve the problem. I will state why I believe there is reason for hope.

When I had gone to get my driver's license in Hyderabad, I was turned down on the pretext of not knowing some archaic clauses because I did not come through an agent and hence had not bribed the person incharge. However, next time round, there was a redhat system on which I had to give my test (no more answering questions to some guy). Now there is a very clean smooth system with very little scope of corruption.

A billion plus population and a poor one at that will lead to chaos. To jump from that to a country disintegrating calls for quite a leap of faith. I highly doubt that there has been a study of failed states to definitively conclude that your figures lead directly to a disintegrating state.

[todayiamme]

Have you ever realized that we are all addicted to hope?

I think that you ought to read Collapse(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_... by Jared Diamond ). Whatever he has written is so profound that I still haven't finished the book i.e. I need time to assimilate it in. You see, everything is a part of a complex chain of causality and in order to figure out anything while avoiding infinite recursion we need to create mental models of those interconnections and analyze upon that. I can't go into the data ad infinitum to prove the point. I need to pick up blocks of concepts and hold them up as black boxes in order to observe how the bigger box behaves with them.

This means that my comment can extend as long as I want and I can write entire books on the constructs of this scenario, but we need to stop it somewhere. This is why I have taken that so called "leap of faith". I am open to the possibility that I am wrong, and I hope that I am wrong, but that doesn't make the problem any less pressing.

[lewstherin]

That book does sound extremely interesting. Will definitely be reading that.