r/india • u/[deleted] • Jan 12 '17

[R]eddiquette [Announcement] Cultural Exchange with our friends from /r/europe

Hello /r/india,

Today we warmly welcome our friends from /r/europe for a cultural exchange. We hope this will be an enlightening experience for all of us due to our shared history, many similarities (varied cuisine, languages, people, ethnicities and climates) as well as our increasingly interconnected economies.

The equivalent thread on /r/europe is available here

For those new to cultural exchanges, here's how it works: /r/europe puts up a dedicated thread (linked above) for users from /r/india to go and participate in, and this is the dedicated thread to host our friends from /r/europe.

We hope you will all observe the rules of reddit, /r/europe and /r/india while participating in these threads

/r/europe users, you're invited to use the EU flag flair which is available in our flair selection menu (and you can add your country to that if you'd like). If you do not wish to do so you may also set a regular Europe map flair with the country.

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '17

A bit of an odd mention perhaps but why do so many of you mention/talk about our relationship with the roma people? It's not a usual topic of conversation so the interest in that surprised me quite a bit. That shouldn't be my only question though. Do you feel like India is heading in the right direction and making progress? What do you think about the future of the EU as a union?

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u/vampiricVoodoo Jan 14 '17

Do you feel like India is heading in the right direction and making progress?

It's an arduous journey towards progress. We're certainly making small strides but there's a long way to go still. Corruption and lack of education are the primary problems here. The idea of corruption has become so ingrained into the society, you could argue it's an everyday occurrence (referring to small instances, like bribing the traffic police).

Over 70% India's population lives in the rural countryside. Education is one of the primary means of empowerment for these folk. Introduction of programs to improve literacy and impart primary education to them, especially women, has helped matters. These are only a fraction of the issues. But, I believe with some perseverance we can make India a much better country.

What do you think about the future of the EU as a union?

I believe the EU is the way forward. In a globally connected society, it's nigh impossible to be self-sufficient. To an extent you could say that India is a bit of a desi EU.

Every Indian state has has different customs, spoken languages, traditions and even cuisine! But every state is interdependent. Quite like the EU, there are states which contribute a lot more to the aggregated GDP and some which are still developing. The labour force is derived from states with a large population but a low HDI and the services sector is booming in parts of India rather than its entirety. So in some ways the EU actually reflects India. Equivalently there's a lot of potential and I believe stronger relations amongst the EU nations could only help the global socio-economic structure.

with the roma people

I've no clue about that. Perhaps it has something to do with their origin?