Tyler Cowen @ Marginal Revolution, has the following quote about Indonesia which could just as easily apply to India -
Then Suharto looked at [James] Wolfensohn. "You know, what you regard as corruption in your part of the world, we regard as family values."That is from Sebastian Mallaby's The World''s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations.
that comment goes both ways, too.
it's food for thought to keep me up while doing my laundry tonight....
yes family values really does = corruption. I wish we were white instead.
(Who by that logic, enjoy less corruption because of a lack of family values).
Let me clarify in really simplistic terms (that is all you can think when in the midst of folding laundry)
In some cultures, general etiquette requires that you give a gift to someone you intend on doing business with. In American business culture, that's seen as bribery - but in, say, some Latin American countries, it's just good manners.
On a more economic plane, the IMF/World Bank gives loans to extremely poor countries, charges them (very low) interest, and basically gets to tell them how to run the financials of their country. Usually this entails devaluing their currency to boost export sales, and structuring the budget so more money can go towards debt repayment. In American eyes, this makes good economic sense and helps people in the Developing World get a good American work ethic. However, to people in these world's poorest countries, a devaluation of their currency makes it doubly hard to buy ANY imported products, not to mention pay back the loan, and the structural adjustment of the budget routes money away from anything that could build infrastructure and worth for the country -- education and health care, especially -- and uses it to pay back a debt it will probably never be able to pay back. They see this structural adjustment as corrupt and immoral, while the West sees it as character-building, generous and lenient, because the interest rate is 1%.
There is never one definitive view of history or morality. It is always interesting to think on such things.
i think the quote was primarily aimed at the rampant nepotism / graft in SE Asia (and India).
I've got relatives, for ex., who were truly surprised that I didn't use my vast powers to get my sister (who couldn't care less about software) a job at Microsft back in the day.
