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Comment by pavs | Hacker News Reader

For me India is the biggest disappointment of them all. They promoted the hell out of Indian athletes in Olympics before the games. They also consider China to be their biggest competition in every level (economy/military/living standard).

Whenever I try to get in to discussion with my Indian friends in the most respectful manner and try to tell them China is several orders of magnitude ahead of India in most things; I get ridiculed or brushed aside.

I have found that there are two things you can never reason with, religion and nationalism.

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You are right that India is something like 2 orders of magnitude behind China, and that their Olympic performance was horrendous.

However, 4 medals is actually an all-time record for India, a 33% improvement from last time and I believe only the 2nd time India has had more than one medal!

2 of the medals came from middle-class athletes, but the other 2 came from people born in remote villages. Things are improving, albeit extremely slowly.

May be you have met wrong sort of Indians (nationalistic) ? I along with nearly everyone I know - understands that India is far behind China. We truly suck as society. Rate badly on corruption, infrastructure, women, minority rights.

There is nothing to defend.

Largest democracy? Governments can change without wars/madness.

Forward drive? At least the Indian nationals I meet in UK. Bags of self confidence and focus.

India has a lot of things to be proud of. There is no doubt about that. But I am not a fan of "largest democracy" as something of an accomplishment. I always interpret it as "a democratic country with a serious population problem".

The population density (according to duckduckgo) of India is about the same as the English one. England is doing fine, though perhaps getting a bit too old.

Sure. Look at my other comment below. We are def. proud of democracy, freedom of speech and lot of small things we take for granted and none can deny self confidence in young educated Indian.

But we are not China.

Don't put the blanket statement out there. In the case of China, they can be very nationalistic, but you only need to look on their weibo network to see how dissatisfied they are with the state of affairs inside China, whether on infrastructure safety, government corruption, wealth disparity, etc. edit: I mean to say here that nationalism does not necessitate blindness or irrationality.

That being said, India is taking some especially big kicks to the groin right now. What with the starving people due to inability to distribute an abundance of food, the massive power outages that have gained global attention, and disappointing economic performance compared to the other BRIC countries, maybe your Indian friends are more defensive right now precisely because they're hurting so much?

Have you ever visited India or lived there for a long period of time? I am not just parroting talking points from major newspaper. I have visited and lived both in China and India in several cities for reasonable amount of time. While China is no beacon of civil rights and other things most people in western civilization takes for granted; they are still far ahead of India IMHO YMMV.

You have setup a straw man here, I hope you realize that. I have never been to China but I will accept that living conditions there - are better than India.

However, we _are_ somewhat proud of our democracy (even though we hate it most of the time) and compared to China human rights situation and freedom of speech is more respected in India. Yes, you can pick few cases where - some right wing idiots pulled a stunt here and there but those things were criticized by everyone and afaik govt. and police does seem to work to protect that freedom.

I think you somehow didn't take the left turn at Albuquerque. My statement was:

Don't put the blanket statement out there.

Your blanket statement was:

I have found that there are two things you can never reason with, religion and nationalism.

I wasn't responding to your comparison of India and China, I was responding to your blanket statement. I gave an example of how your blanket statement is not so universal, drawing an easy example a country in your discussion topic. I have nothing to add to the discussion on comparing China and India, as I feel that's been discussed comprehensively enough.

I noticed a disproportionate number of Indian names in mathematics (i.e. seemingly beyond even the huge population, though I haven't checked stats). I was told that mathematics is respected in India, and there are annual examinations for admittance to prestigious mathematics-focused schools. So at least they are nurturing that talent, more important than athletic ability (IMHO anyway).

Yes, generally Indians know there's far more important things in life than nudging an extra 0.03 secs off a world record for a 100m something.

A different take on this [1]:

> The human and financial costs of that, I believe, are something we as a nation can ill-afford.

[1] http://greatbong.net/2012/08/07/some-thoughts-on-the-olympic...

While I do have problems with the simplistic portrayal of China in this article, I agree strongly with the first section: The nationalism that the Olympics typically brings out in people, is disgusting. It's an event that is supposed to bring the people of our world together, but it just seems to make us more hostile instead.

I concluded some time ago that nationalism is another form of religion.

Or at the very least they share many of the same irrational and sociological attributes.

I'm not so sure about the promotion part. I doubt if anybody realistically expected India's medal tally to be too different from what was achieved. I personally am quite happy with this, compared to what we got earlier and the kind of importance that sports (except cricket) get in mainstream Indian life.

Comparing India with China on Sports? - I think your friends are extremely nationalistic Indians.

Isn't part of it that there are relatively few Olympic sports that are big participation sports in India which really limits the pool India are drawing from?

Just offer to play the Chinese at cricket.

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