You only think India is “fucked up” ???

You also think that you are to blame for it.

I litter and you blame yourself?????

sounds good

Fay who is assuming that you have some British superiority complex?

Secondly I really resent the fact that people are assuming that I have some British superiority complex just because a) I have opined that not thinking twice about dropping litter is incredibly scummy, and b) I have stated my observations that this happens a lot more in India than in Britain.

I have made attempts to understand why b):
1) “In Britain along with industrialisation and the massive increase in non bio-degradable waste came huge investments in city infrastructure.” – this chimes exactly with Jens reasoning.

2) “And Pete is right, a lot of the Indian middle class do not have to clean up after themselves in their own home. Maybe some take this mindset into the wider world. It is a reasonable supposition to make.” – Shawn, your objection to this explaination is flawed – people aspire to be higher class, just because a lower class person does not have someone to clean up after them in their home doesn’t mean they don’t feel that it is someone else’s job to clean up after them in the streets. Their, that’s my armchair sociology done for today!

And Tom, you are talking about the 14 year olds with aspirations to not-give-a-shit-or-whatever that I mentioned.

This was really interesting stuff from my point of view – both the blog post and the comments. I am Norwegian. My country under Danish and Swedish rule for 500 years; we were never a colonial power. And I am a theologian, who last year lived in Chennai studying religion from the perspective of the Dalits – from the Indus valley civilization to the immigration of the Aryans, to the coming of the British and up to today.

And as I do believe that the caste system is a fundamentally oppressive system founded on the Aryan need to control the darker skinned descendants of the Indus Valley civilization, I also know that the Europeans who arrived in India in the 15- and 1600s did not react negatively to it, as they were accustomed to the feudal system in Europe. Historically, Europeans have been more interested in exploiting India than helping the country develop structures for a more equal society.

So when you are a European in living in India, it is important to be able to keep two thoughts in your head at the same time:
- Yes, coming from an egalitarian European tradition, you will find that India is in many ways fucked up.
- But: The West is very much to blame for having contributed to keeping it that way and making it worse in modern times.

So when it comes to littering, the British could of course have contributed much more than they did to build better sewage systems and change how people handled their waste. But they didn’t. And that is partly why it is still as bad as it is. Gandhi was mad at Indians for littering as much as they did, and mad at the British for not doing more, because he’d lived in England and South Africa and seen how it could be handled differently.

And in the same way, the British could’ve done much, much more to liberate the Dalits. But they didn’t. The most important Dalit liberator was an neither Hindu nor British. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism, and had to fight both the Indian Hindu majority and the British to make India become a more just and free society.

The old guy is not intentionally teaching his kid, its just a habit he picked up from his parents. There was no special thought process involved there.

both u and Fay state that “the fact that middle and upper class people are so used to having other people do their dirty work” Not True it is not only the middle class who litter everybody does.

Where you come from You are probably punished (fined) and socially penalized if you litter.

and dude Ash is right just because u litter it doesn’t mean u r uncivilized. Going to war and killing, (for what) that would be more like uncivilized. and anyway to quote yourself “you might see people throwing rubbish in Edinburgh (and even I couldn’t believe how many guys were pissing in the doorways after a few drinks)”

so dude stop judging, clean up after your mess in your pad, dont pee on the bloody street just because other indian dudes do it and pete dude u really cant get lucky with the people u go around calling uncivilized and thoughtless.

Hopefully Fay’s observation of “I can only imagine some 14 year old with aspirations to not-give-a-shit-or-whatever would do such a thing” is correct!

To put my 2p in, I’m forever astounded by the distinct lack of respect that my countrypeople (I’m in the UK) have for the world around them. I’m a teacher, and I’m routinely amazed by the attitude my kids show to litter: they’ll drop it wherever they’re standing- inside, outside, sitting down, standing up- and when I confront them about it and tell them to put it in a bin they are genuinely affronted: “That’s the cleaner’s job”. It drives me to distraction.

It was a megalomaniacal warmonger called Tony Blair who went to “liberate Iraq”. I wouldn’t say the country sided with him.

There’s no ‘allowing’ a party to exist. Let the BNP say what they want and give them the disrespect they deserve. Yes they are dangerous, exploiting people’s legitimate concerns to garner support for their views, but keeping the debate open and making sure people are properly educated is a much better way of tackling them than ‘not allowing them to exist’. Or at least it certainly is within the context of British history and culture.

I don’t want people to make comparisons with anything else, I want them to discuss littering in India. Why would an educated, wealthy middle class Indian teach his daughter that it is acceptable to throw your litter out the window? What’s the thought process? What’s the reasoning?

My guess:

In Britain along with industrialisation and the massive increase in non bio-degradable waste came huge investments in city infrastructure. Thus an ability for a person to dispose of their waste without littering. People obviously had to be educated to ‘find a bin’, but ‘finding a bin’ has become part of the mainstream culture. This didn’t happen in India, and ‘finding a bin’ is not the mainstream attitude at present.

That does not, however, excuse a guy, who can read signs requesting for him to not spoil Ooty by throwing litter, to spoil Ooty by throwing litter.

There is no excuse for dropping litter – particularly when there are bins!

And Pete is right, a lot of the Indian middle class do not have to clean up after themselves in their own home. Maybe some take this mindset into the wider world. It is a reasonable supposition to make.”