What if majority of the people are actually poor and deluded?
Open defecation is a big problem in India, majority of the people can't afford T@oilets, Further Indian is the home of world's largest poorest people with huge slums so your tall claim to leave behind China in progress just a deluded day dream even Chinese tier 5 or 6 cities better then Indian tier 1 cities.
Few years back i visited Delhi and as soon as stepped out of the air port I witness huge piles of rubbish and on my way I see many Indian men peeing openly in Public places and rest of my stay in old Delhi was a nightmare not because of people since they are very nice but because of huge crowed and piles of rubbish everywhere which stinks like a hell.
The majority of people are poor, not deluded. What delusion do they suffer from? Would you care to elaborate?
Yes, open defecation is a practice, particularly in rural areas; that is why there is an active campaign to eradicate open defecation, to spend money on toilets, to educate people to build and use toilets, to point out the particular humiliation and hardship that women face, all in a nation-wide effort to wipe out this old bad habit. About half the people have no access to toilets; that translates to 650 million people. It is not difficult to imagine how huge a task it is even to build enough toilets for this number.
You talk about claims to leave China behind in progress; I wanted to point out that the thread is on innovation and competitiveness, not on present levels of development. You do understand the difference, it is to be hoped. It is not about Chinese tier 5 or 6 cities, in comparison with Indian tier 1 cities, it is about the ability of enough individual Indians to display innovation, to display competitiveness and to strive to overcome physical constraints and difficulties. You have in your post not dealt with that aspect, but with physical infrastructure and with present levels of poverty.
Again, your post mentions the lack of toilets and urinals; the point is that an enormous amount of work remains to be done, and it cannot be accomplished overnight. Sanitation services for such numbers also is not a simple task; from an urban-rural split of 20% to 80% in 1947, it is approximately 40% to 60% today, while the population has gone up enormously. Please visualise what this means. A tidal wave of people has shifted from the relatively wide-open rural space to the constricted confines of our cities, which were built to accommodate a small fraction of those who live there presently. Every single gainful achievement since independence has been diluted by the impact of these huge numbers.
Having said all of which, it is nowhere evident that the entire mass of Indians, or even a significant segment is deluded. Poor, yes, coping with primitive facilities, yes, but why deluded, unless there is a religious jibe in the use of this phrase?
That is why I had asked the Chinese member, who had lost his temper during an argument and who then used these terms as a broadcast insult against the entire country, to edit out these terms and to confine himself to the facts and the reasoning that he used based on those same facts. That is also why your intervention, by diverting attention away from the remarks to your personal, unfortunate experiences.
Please allow enough time for the Chinese member to review his original post, and, perhaps, to amend it in a manner that would please all sections of those reading these posts.