Is life cheap in India?

[Reality,,its here.Accept it.]

Have you ever felt that life is cheap in India? That we in India are much more casual and accepting about the news of death than most other people.



I was thinking about an unrelated topic when this thought stuck me.



I was busy dicussing with a friend about the lowly pay that duty doctors get in corporate hospitals when i came to realise that India was the only country where the healthcare professionals make much less than their counterparts in other countries. And when we extended our discussion, we realised that behind all this pay inequality the person who pays and suffers is the patient. Even then we do not seem to care when we do not get what we pay for even in life and death situations. so i was just pondering if Life was really cheap in India.

[Never!]

you know why living in India cannot be cheap? it's becoz most businesses are run by organizations that monopolize them! They either kill the competition or put them on their own track. A simple example would be the mobile operators. Before BSNL ventured into hyderabad, Airtel, Idea and Hutch were ruling the hyderabad skies. But there was no competition. When Airtel hiked the rates to 1.99/min, Idea and Hutch would follow suit. And if Idea lowered it to 1.79/min then Airtel and Hutch would follow suit. Then Hutch would hike it to 1.89/min and Airtel and Idea followed suit. If we thought that they were competing it was wrong. All they did was collude among themselves. Now somebody tell me if living can become cheap in here!

[Reality,,its here.Accept it.]

you know why living in India cannot be cheap? it's becoz most businesses are run by organizations that monopolize them! They either kill the competition or put them on their own track. A simple example would be the mobile operators. Before BSNL ventured into hyderabad, Airtel, Idea and Hutch were ruling the hyderabad skies. But there was no competition. When Airtel hiked the rates to 1.99/min, Idea and Hutch would follow suit. And if Idea lowered it to 1.79/min then Airtel and Hutch would follow suit. Then Hutch would hike it to 1.89/min and Airtel and Idea followed suit. If we thought that they were competing it was wrong. All they did was collude among themselves. Now somebody tell me if living can become cheap in here!

OOO, did i say anything about living in india ???? If i caused any confusion, let me clarify , I was talking about "LIFE" not cost of living.

[s]

Speaking in cruel financial terms, of course life is cheaper in India, Reality. An Indian would get a much smaller payout from an insurance company when compared to an American, because it is supposed that all else being constant, an American's productivity is higher. Case in point, 400 people die in a train crash in India, a little blip on the media radar screen. 40 people die similarly in the US? International disaster. Value of life apparently has an intense postive correlatiuon with potential lifetime income and current avergae per capita income.

[Reality,,its here.Accept it.]

Speaking in cruel financial terms, of course life is cheaper in India, Reality. An Indian would get a much smaller payout from an insurance company when compared to an American, because it is supposed that all else being constant, an American's productivity is higher. Case in point, 400 people die in a train crash in India, a little blip on the media radar screen. 40 people die similarly in the US? International disaster. Value of life apparently has an intense postive correlatiuon with potential lifetime income and current avergae per capita income.

Is it just the financial loss in relation to loss of productive manpower or just that we think there are too many of us around that we do not tend to react much when some thing like that happens.

[s]

well i think the financial/productivity is linked to too many of us being around. if there were fewer of us=more resources per head=more productivity. you're perfectly right on that count. there are too many easy replacements available for one human life.

[Ashwin]

I think this is a good question/ issue. When there are basic necessities missing in this country. When people are dieing of starvation, lack of basic healthcare and then poverty...such news will not make headlines.



I thought about this a few years back when 20000 to 40000 people had died in the Gujarat earthquake. Something like this will be mentioned in the United States news for two days...maybe half a minute the first time and 10 seconds the second time. Whereas if the same thing had happened in Europe or Japan and a similar number of people died. It will be a sad day in the history books. The financial point post above is like the author said a crude version of telling you how much value each country's citizen has. There are other factors but it all comes down to this. Because if GDP is more...so is the average income of everybody and so is healthcare and education.



So in the end ..., people have other things to worry about, whether its people of this country or another.

[Ashwin]

I think this is a good question/ issue. When there are basic necessities missing in this country. When people are dieing of starvation, lack of basic healthcare and then poverty...such news will not make headlines.

I thought about this a few years back when 20000 to 40000 people had died in the Gujarat earthquake. Something like this will be mentioned in the United States news for two days...maybe half a minute the first time and 10 seconds the second time. Whereas if the same thing had happened in Europe or Japan and a similar number of people died. It will be a sad day in the history books. The financial point post above is like the author said a crude version of telling you how much value each country's citizen has. There are other factors but it all comes down to this. Because if GDP is more...so is the average income of everybody and so is healthcare and education.

So in the end ..., people have other things to worry about, whether its people of this country or another.

EDIT: ok...I don't know if I made sense or was in line with this topic...lol...but I am gonna let it stand.