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Feedback ForumNOW wants to hear from you! Send us your opinions, reactions and ideas about "India Rising"Submissions for this question are no longer being accepted. Previously submitted comments appear below. Comments may have been edited for content or space. Poster: jim swanson Comment: I know people working in the U.S. on H-1b work visas and they told me that Minimum wage in India is about $0.95/ hour and that Software Engineers start out at $4.20/ hour. Why didn't you cover the wage issue? The entire infra-structure was build to exploit the cheap labor. This is especially true in CHINA where minimum wage is $.10/hr... If you go to the AFL-CIO website and search: china minimum wage you will find a document that lists a particular factory where they make $0.18/hr and work 6 days a week / 10 hr days. Google: Perm fake Job Ads and see how U.S. Corporations are bringing in foreign labor to take U.S. Jobs. Google: H-1b visa and read about how more than 65 thousand jobs a year are given to foreign born workers. These Work Visa applications fill up with in 1 hr of the opening... Enjoy as your children are asked to work for slave pay... just as you great-grand parents did befor Franklin D. Rosevelt provided the benefits to the working families that our parents have allowed to go down the drain... and remeber to both republicans and democrates love cheap labor... enjoy the ride... Poster: Ishug Berberovich Comment: This documentary rocks. I hope it will make Americans realise that they should have moved to alternative energy more than a decade ago to reduce demand for oil and other commodities. Why doesn't Bush address this in his brief appearance in the documentary? Extremely well edited and insightful. Poster: Aishwarya Comment: The story rising India is good. But the conclusion India's rising middle class is responsible for rise in fuel and food price is ridiculus. Every human has right to live on this earth equally and work for better life for him and his children. Do American's think that all other country's should work for their prosperity, produce fuel, food ,softwares but should not enjoy it. This is selfish way of thinking. Average American waste more food, produce more grabage, pollute more and what else. So they think they should continue that at the cost of others. Poster: RW Comment: “India Rising?” Like India itself, this title is paradoxical depending on the definition of development, progress, wealth. In the Hindu religion, Laksmi is the goddess of wealth and prosperity. No doubt, those struggling on a day-to-day basis to “make ends meet” might consider India’s growing material progress as a boon of the goddess. But there’s a deeper side to Laksmi. The goddess is sometimes shown with an owl (her mount), signifying the nocturnal or dark forces. The unbridled pursuit of the material wealth may leave one bereft of the only wealth that satisfies the soul: realization of the soul as one with Ever-Existing, Ever-Conscious, Bliss of God. Also, Laksmi sometimes appears with a hand-gesture in which the thumb touches the index finger. This symbolizes the union of the individual with God (or realization of one’s soul nature as mentioned). The other fingers represent impediments to that exalted state of fulfillment: vanity, delusion, and egoism. India already possesses enormous wealth. Its prosperity, its high state of development is reflected in its saints, scriptures, mythology, and spiritual understandings of human nature and existence. (These are things which westerners struggle with on the inside and are generally clueless about.) First, westerners tend to have a concept of saints (other than those formally ordained by institutional edict) as persons of exalted states of consciousness and wisdom or divine personages belonging to millenniums ago. But such beings have graced Indian civilization in the past and recent times as well (examples, Paramahansa Yogananda, Swami Vivekananda, Ramkrishna Paramahansa). Secondly, its wealth is also reflected in its scriptures, especially the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads, gems touching the core on eternal questions of truth, existence, purpose. A third source of India’s wealth is its mythology. To non-Hindus, far from the pantheistic image that this might suggest, the different deities represent different aspects of the Infinite Intelligence. And fourthly, western psychology pales in comparison to India’s ancient understanding of human nature and its workings. Thus, the question: is India’s growing material prosperity at the expense of its vast spiritual wealth? Here’s a thought for a sequel to your show: perhaps the spread of India’s timeless riches to the west will lead to an “America Rising.” Poster: Sarah O. Brooks Comment: This NOW program on India's Middle Class was most interesting and important. I will use it in teaching world cultures regularly. It is more up to date than anything else out there. Please keep up the good work! Sarah Brooks Poster: Holla Comment: I hope those middle class citizens of India and China start saving their money instead of investing it all into credit card companies as we have in America with the hope that they'll be paid well for the rest of their lives. America has shown that all it takes is the expectation for better wages to keep up with inflation for the system to crumble. That happens and suddenly companies like Dell and Mattel start moving factories, customer service jobs, and clerical positions out of these countries and into places where they can pay their workers $5 a day. Trust me, from America, that stinks when wages stagnate when you're in debt. Poster: ROZ mandelcorn Comment: i found your program on india's growing middle class but unfortunately NOW failed to provide a good set of links or resources for the program. for example, i have been trying to find the book the woman spoke of but didn't fully get her name or the book she wrote...sending me on , what i consider to be, an unnecessary wild goose chase...if all NOW had done the right thing and saved me this time consuming task. shame on NOW. Poster: Peter and Grace Kimm Comment: We are fans of your program and seldom miss one. Pete has been involved in economic development in India since the 1970s and has visited there many times. The story of the rising middle class in India (and China)is a great story which many Americans will follow with great interest. However, presenting this from the point of view that this may cause increases in food and energy prices in the United States is a most unfortunate choice. It seems to us that this facet of the story is worth maybe 10% of the airtime, with a lot more emphasis given to the positive and negative aspects in India, to what led to the economic gains and to what can and is being done to make the benefits more widespread. Keep up the good work. We hope these comments are useful. Poster: bch in nyc Comment: The growing Indian middle class is hardly a new story. What really disturbed me about the program was that someone had the temerity to suggest that these Indians, and the Chinese for that matter, shouldn't aspire to the same lifestyle as we in the US enjoy. What gall. And what did we expect when we outsourced hi-tech jobs to India? That they'd take their rising incomes and slink back to the slums? Cars for us but not for you? Steak dinners on our plates but not on yours? Shopping malls in our towns but not yours? The real story is that these growing aspirations aren't a problem. They're an opportunity for good old-fashioned American entrepreneurs to step in and fill the need for increased goods and services in these countries and to develop alternative energy sources here at home. These aspirations are also a much-needed cautionary tale for the careless American consumer--that oil and food resources have finite limits, that we don't have any special claim to any of them and therefore must change our wasteful habits, and that we should butt out of the shameful practice of telling other nations how to enjoy their new-found prosperity. We're already on the verge of sliding into second-class nationhood. The slide will only continue if we gobble up all the world's resources while daring to suggest that the rest of the world stand aside while we do it. Poster: sheila Comment: The world needs farmers and especially small but efficient farmers. Your program gives the usual view that people who live in the city always live better and that therefore vast numbers should leave the land. With technology there is no reason why country people shouldn't be as well educated and as happy with their lives as a worker living in a highrise block of flats. Organic farming is in great demand and much of traditional farming is just that. The idea that people who have more packaged food eat better than those who eat a more limited but fresher diet has been proved wrong over and over again. The so called western diet (ie comercialiszed over packaged and over processed) is far less healthy than many traditional diets. The world should not be led down the same path that we have taken. Much of the dire poverty is the result of development not left behind by it. Poster: Ronald Oates Comment: The third world must rise out of poverty and ignorense.That is what caused 911.We should be glad India is rising.It is inevitable.So if I have to pay a little bit more for food so beit. Poster: gregory sacchetti Comment: when did john stossel come on borad . this consumer drivren bull shit, corporate propaganda is one giant load of crap . your life style is a result of market forces . not greed not the concentration of wealth, not the result of a rigged political system, like gas prices that speculators are driving up , the commodities market is for the big boys record profits for all. no it's the fault of some indian driving a vesper or some Chinese wanting a microwave. Not the fact that most of these jobs were shipped there from here.now at some time their growing middle class will require home grown services but for now corporations are exploiting low labor cost, and everyone knows about corporate benevolence . this may have been the worst effort i have ever seen on your part most shows are very good this one: just feel very short. Poster: Richard Wright Comment: The rising expectations of people everywhere is irrelevant in the face of the fact that global population is over the sustainable numbers now let alone with a doubling rate of fifty years. Poster: Richard R Banna Comment: Regarding your India segment of 6/20/08 you failed to report why India as well as China have this enormouse and unusual economic expansion. You should have pointed out that it is largely the result of American corporate intervension by the relocating American technology and industry because of cheap labor and no regulation by their governments. This outsourcing helped by the Bush Adminisration, and Republican and also many Democrats in Congress has had a devasting effect on our middle class by reducing our standard of living. These two countries along with others may have an emerging middle class but the cost to the Aerican middle class will result in our diappearance. Poster: Shama Comment: Shame on NOW for that program you just aired on India. It presented an incredibly racist and patronizing view of the economic development in India and China. I cannot believe that your program concluded that Bush's stupid and racist remarks have a nugget of truth. Instead of such simplistic us-versus-them non-analysis, your program could have critiqued the downside of the overall consumption-oriented capitalistic economies in the world. The last straw was the recycling of Malthusian fears, centuries after Malthus's theory has been comepletely disproved. It seemed like you did not do any real research on this topic. NOW has a high credibility with its viewership, and you have to realize that you have an enormous responsibility to present information in a careful manner, and with high journalistic ethics. Although I have seen other editions of the show that have been very good, this one was abysmal, and should have been discarded in the proverbial cutting room. Poster: Joseph Yacinski Comment: Having had the privilege to travel to India multiple times during the past 6 years to witness extraordinary individuals who are selflessly devoted to helping the poor in India, one can't help but wonder and hope how the newly prosperous will help the poorest of the poor. In numbers that most can't imagine, those in the lowest classes truly have the most to teach and offer all of us. Poster: sriharsha Comment: I am very surprised at the way things are being projected about India's middle class. Indeed it is a 300 million and odd growing population whose demand for resource is ever increasing. But you should remember India is still an under privileged country and Walmart and mall areas cater to 1% of the entire population. Without much statistics behind, it is a gross injustice to put blame squarely on India for rising current oil/food price. |
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