So you think its “rational” to conclude that a country with a long-term stable government that cannot even adequately provide the basic necessities of life: water, food, sanitation, healthcare etc, to the majority of its citizens (despite having the resources to do so) is a successful state?!

Millions of indian children die every year from malnutrition and lack of clean water and you think that this criminal, callous negligence is excusable?? That’s just unbelievable!

At least to your credit you recognize hindu casteism as a handicap for India, unlike a few posters here who even defend this patent abomination…

“More than 700 million Indians, or roughly two-thirds of the population, do not have adequate sanitation. Largely for lack of clean water, 2.1 million children under the age of 5 die each year, according to the United Nations.” “Their predicament testifies to the governmentÂ’s astonishing inability to deliver the most basic services to its citizens at a time when India asserts itself as a global power.”

If you ask any rational human being the above situation is a ‘culmination of a few hundred WRONGS.” If a blanket statement like blaming a government for all the woes is the take-home message from your rant then you are absolutely delusional. If you are an NRI then I am sympathetic to your predicament. You simply dont know ground realities and are jumping into a problem without a knowledge of history. Post-independence , India was resonably densely populated. Some areas more-so than others. Unlike the West where money was abound and human capital was energetic and abundantly available, Indian policy makers had to contend with caste , creed , regionalism and the chance that the newly independent state would never remain a cohesive country. I doubt any of the people you see investing in India today would have dared to sink a penny in India in 1947. Most Indians themsleves were ready to jump ship and swim to the West rather than stay and sacrifice their lives so that the progeny would awake in a modern and finacially stable India. You need to look at the history of the West (especially of the Frontier states and their 1st 10 generations) to understand how good Indians have it today.

Yes there are problems , but we are NOT A FAILED STATE. If I learnt one thing in Mumbai..its Thoda adjust kar le boss. Door thak jana hai. Kam se kam thoda gaand tikane ka jaga to de!!! (Will you adjust a little dear friend!We need to go far. Atleast give me some space to park a bit of my ass on the seat)!Now if only the whole nation understood the mindset rather than try to siphon off from the system!!!

We fixed one leaky toilet in our house (the flush emptied and refilled several times a day from the leak) and cut our water bill in HALF! It’s not just about being grateful for having something that other people don’t have, but about they fact that we might lose it too. The town I live in, where it rains ALL the time, had a water shortage a few years ago, from one dry summer. Restaurants stopped serving water, some served food on disposable plates, and people were not allowed to water their gardens. Don’t assume that just because you live in the US your water is a ever-replenished resource.

After growing up in Hyderabad, being able to turn on the tap and get running water every day still amazes me. We had 2 hours in the AM and 2 in the PM of running water. You had to poop during those two hours, or you couldn’t flush the toilet. The groundwater that came through the pipes wasn’t potable, so our maid had to carry water from the one municipal tap to our flat in a pot every day; she had to do this for the 5 or 6 households she worked for, and every maid in the apartment complex had to line up for the few hours each morning that this water supply was available. (Lord knows where she got her own drinking water). Then we poured the water into empty Kissan juice bottles and refrigerated it.

When we lived at my aunt’s house in Madras for a year, the groundwater was full of iron. It stained the bathroom tiles red, and you weren’t supposed to drink it or cook with it; washing your clothes in it could be risky. So for drinking water, we went to my other aunt’s well, trekking through several neighbours yards with buckets. In Madras, you had to boil the water before it was safe to drink.

Since everyone had to put up with these problems, it didn’t seem like such an inconvenience, but now one of my single greatest pleasures in life is taking a hot shower without worrying about the water running out.

There are few issues at play that nobody in the comments has alluded to:

1) Fresh water supply, and its proximity 2) Ground water table, and how deep it is 3) Rivers

and most important

4) Pollution

In India, often (excluding Thar desert, and adjoining arid areas), the ground water table is fairly shallow. However, overpopulation has totally mucked up the ground water. Parts of India has semi-arid like conditions due to man made conditions.

But in parts of Nepal, and Bangladesh, the groundwater has anthrpogenic arsenic in it.

(And Anna – I understand that you were making a different point involving gratitude and privilege and charity and the virtue of moderation. I am not responding to those thoughts – I agree with what you expressed. I am responding more to the general nature of the problem.)

Be careful. You will start a virtual war over here.

But, in the 80s, we get a phonecall…Thatcher answers: ‘Hellooo?’ ‘Hi, it’s Africa here’. ‘Yeah what do you want?’ ‘Um, well, we’re all starving and that’. ‘Oh… well you shoulda thought about that, before you wanted INDEPENDENCE.’ ‘Yeah well we didn’t know there’d be a drought’ Drought? I’ll give you drought. We had a drought here in the long, hot summer of 1976. We had a hosepipe ban in Reading. We’ve all got our problems. Cor, imagine my mum carrying buckets of water back and forth. For the garden. Having to sneak out after dark to water her roses. With her back.

I heart Ricky. Season two of Extras starts in the States on 1/15. Or you can find it all on You Tube, I suppose.

Back to the issue at hand.

What are India’s engineers doing? One would think that the indian government would harness its native brainpower to solve the immense problems facing its citizens, instead of relying on the kindness of foreigners.

We are talking failed state here folks:

“More than 700 million Indians, or roughly two-thirds of the population, do not have adequate sanitation. Largely for lack of clean water, 2.1 million children under the age of 5 die each year, according to the United Nations.”

“Their predicament testifies to the governmentÂ’s astonishing inability to deliver the most basic services to its citizens at a time when India asserts itself as a global power.”

As someone who spent most of my school/college days in dormitories(aka hostels/boarding schools), my observation has been that people from the ‘water belt’ were more responsible in water consumption when they had unlimited water supply.

All those places I stayed, had unlimited food and water luckily. Similarly, people from upper middle class were more responsible in not wasting the food being served when the food was in the buffet.

P.S: There were exceptions.