The things that come to my mind are

-The country has a set goal to improve in tech industry, aiming to rival big countries like China.

-The people definetly know their spices. While they use it a bit too much at times, it certainly works well.

-The country is overpopulated, leading to talented people having harder time to succeed.

-If you’re watching an Indian man’s tutorial on any topic, you can assume it’ll work well.

-It has a noticable split in religious beliefs.

-fuck the remote scammers operating from Kolkata. The people in India also hate these people.

It was the loudest and smelliest country I’ve ever been to.

I’ve never seen a country where the cross-country sleeper train bathrooms had literal holes on the floor to shit and piss out of. You saw the tracks wizz below you from the toilets. No plumbing, just excrete onto the tracks.

Chennai train station had the strongest most overwhelming diarrhea smell I ever experienced in my entire life.

Dudes were creepy as hell. They see you’re white and then you’re swarmed everywhere you go. People trying to scam, trying to appoint themselves as your tour guide and won’t stop following you and trying to guide you to “the mall”. Calling you Harry Potter because you wear glasses. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I was a woman there. I shudder to think.

Crossing the street means walking into oncoming traffic and hoping and trusting everyone to just drive around you. Absolute fucking chaos. The people are not warm or friendly. They stare and get too close and touch you all the time. I kept having people touch my shoulders and try and touch my face when I was in public or queuing.

I never ever want to return to India ever again. I don’t recommend any of my friends go there. There were very few positives about that trip other than it being an eye opening experience as to how over 1 billion humans on the planet live.

At a risk of downvote oblivion, this is what comes to mind to me. Keep in mind that this is just what I perceive about India through all the media I’ve consumed so it can come across as a bit prejudiced. I’m sure there’s more nuance.

The good:

• Amazing food, rich culture
• Seemingly big into tech.
• Very colorful.
• People seem generally friendly.

The bad:

• So. Insanely. Chaotic.
• Basic sanitation and infrastructure seem stuck a few decades ago.
• Female emancipation is lacking as far as I can gather.
• A lot of inequality in general.
• The weather seems like hell to me.
• Even though they’re big into tech, it comes across to me that the government and general population is still stuck in the mid 90’s regarding devices (pc’s etc, smartphones excluded).

I hope that India doesn’t make the same mistakes my county (America) made, such as trying to be a major international player while ignoring the people in need at home. They’re already going that way, but there’s time to change course.

Also, I’d like them to fix their issues with Pakistan. That border was drawn by the British specifically to cause problems, and falling into that trap is letting the previous colonizers win.

So from the perspective of being in the United States. Remote Indian work it’s cheap but of extremely low quality. This ranges from call center workers to programming and engineering work.

This is usually a sign of the company trying to cheap out and having poor products in general. So it’s kind of a compounding problem.

Politically India seemes racist, nationalist, and terrible on climate change. I’m from the USA so yes I know we are not great on these topics as well.

Having been to India a few times from inside here it’s what I’ve noticed in the country.

The poverty and wealth gap between Indians and westerners means almost everybody wants money from you and to up charge you. From beggars, to chai vendors, to high end stores and hotels. They also love hidden fees and you have to be vigilant about details. This puts me on a constant tense alertness when dealing with people that gets very draining.

I’ve also spent time with an indian family during holy. My western friend was dating a member of the family and we went for a visit. The family was very generous and welcoming. It was the only time in India when I was relaxed and able to chat and enjoy the company.

Racism and classism abound. The ways different ethnic groups treat each other and try to force the use of their language on the other group. For example a Hindi and Malayalam language standoff when I was in Kerala.

Or when at a store that sells stone art has two clearly miserable lower cast people working a human powered cutting tool for the tourists when you can hear the sound of high speed electric tools from the back room.

Animals other then cows are treated horribly. Elephants in particular always looked miserable and broken.

People with government jobs are arrogant and lazy. From customs and immigration to the national parks. I arrived 20 min before closing at a national park to buy tickets for a late night tour that was latter that evening. The ticket both was empty with one other person waiting. Two minutes before closing the guy came to the window in a towel because he had been showing before getting off work.

The belief in crap science abounds. I got an ayurvedic massage that wasn’t a very skilled massage and then the guy tried to give me medical advice. Several people tried to explain that the ayurvedic guys were just as good as doctors. On way out another of the ayurvedic “doctors” tried to sell me a medicine that he assured would remove belly fat and regrow hair. This from a fat bald man.

The fiet time I was in India Modi had just won his first term as Prime Minister while I was there. There was a huge procession of angry young men yelling and pushing people out of the way. I assumed they were from the losing party. My driver informed me that no they had just won the election.

It was clear that this wasn’t a jubilant celebration of success. It was a angry group that now had the power to do what they wanted.

I know i’ve been negative and there is a fair amount of nice things in India but they always are fleeting and overshadowed by something. In the multiple times i’ve been to India i’ve never had a bad meal and there are a lot of nice people. I just think they are constantly at odds with each other.

The most Indian moment I had was drinking tea while enjoying the smell of the spice fields. Then the wind shifted and all I could smell was the stench of shit and diesel from the cesspool over the hill.

I know India has a booming tech sector and produces tons of great engineers which is cool. I hate their scam call centers its disgusting.

I’ve never been but I’ve seen traveling vlogs and the news and it looks so unbelievably polluted and gross. With all the money and education I would expect basic infrastructure to be in every city. The country still has a lot of natural beauty and historical sites well preserved, big respect for that.

As for generalizations about the people. I see a lot of videos of indians mobbing and doing crazy acts. When they are abroad they tend to mostly interact with other indians and shut others out but generally follow the law and arent violent. Women’s rights are pretty awful. Sellers are too pushy.

In general my perception of Indians normally comes from the ones I’ve met who grew up in New Zealand and I have a good perception of them. When I have to exclude that and only think of India as a country my perception is very negative.

I wouldn’t view India as a world leader in any field but may be ignorant of some specialities? I know there is innovation but nothing major springs to mind. I’m being lazy though - that can likely be looked up and verified with stats.

Technology wise, it appears to depend on western countries outsourcing work, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but isn’t a good thing either since the draw to using India isn’t skill but cost. If the cost goes up, the west will stop outsourcing there and go to some other low cost base. (I’m not saying Indians aren’t skilled, just that’s not the primary reason why outsourcing there is happening, it’s all about exploitation from the west in search of more profit).

Politically it seems to have been a dumpster fire for some time and looks like it’s trending towards more national extremism. Though that doesn’t seem to be unique at all - feels like the world is shifting to more fascist tendencies.

The caste system is especially cruel and I regularly read stories that it’s going strong with no signs of stopping. I find that morally repugnant.

The amount of scams against innocent people that originate from India is shocking, and it really appears as though corruption is so high that it’s not going to get better any time soon.

Professionally, I deal with Indians semi regularly and it’s overall positive. Personally, I’ve come across a few assholes but the majority have been decent people and none of the issues above ever come up.

• Biggest democracy in the world
• Wouldn’t consider it a world leader, to me it often seems more like they refuse to take a clear stance in world affairs, so they can continue positive relations with authoritarian countries like Russia
• Rapid development, but still a lot of extreme poverty and inequality
• Chaotic cities
• Great food, especially for vegetarians like me
• Religious extremism/conflicts seem prevalent

• large
• tap water can be dirty
• great curry
• massive population
• caste system
• makes many YouTube tutorials
• has some beef with Pakistan
• likes to bob their heads
• arranged marriages
• spices
• really hot and humid
• as other people have mentioned, can be a bit unruly at times

I think it has a rich history and culture. That being said, I’ve never been, but the news that comes from there doesn’t make me form a good opinion. I always hear about horrific sex crimes against women, or gang rapes, or murders. I’m certainly not going to say that’s all they do, but that’s the bulk of news I hear about it. I hear about the scam centers that seemed to be baked into society. I hear about the caste system, the lack of cleanliness and infrastructure, I hear about the overcrowding. Yes, I hear that they work towards better tech, but the news I hear from there has places India squarely on the “Do not visit” list.

India gets my respect for its very long history, and the fact it invented buddhism.

But Indian code is terrible. It degrades my respect for the country because it’s just consistently really bad.

A lot of Indian code seems like someone tried to fix a broken car window by caulking a fish tank into place. You confront them and they’re like “What? It’s glass isn’t it? It’s exactly the same”

Now I haven’t seen a lot of Indian code. I’ve seen the output of maybe ten different devs in India, and of that sample it’s all bad. Like really bad.

They work hard and get shit done, but it’s always some kind of hacky kluge made from copy-pasted code.

It’s unclean. It’s full of tech debt. It’s redundant. It’s often not even indented correctly.

I heard your country outpopulated both China and my own country: The United States.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/

I also hear the same things about those countries in particular, especially on Twitter anyway.

I don’t discuss world countries like that at all.

I’m religious, so I only believe what my religion (Christianity) says about the world itself.

I only believe what the Bible says only, but I do think it’s cool that your country is growing too.

Horrible place and bad English.