Slashdot Mirror
Third World Research, Development & Innovation
tovarish writes "It is nice to see that countries like India are trying to research communication techniques in backward and rural areas. While tech savvy people like us enjoy the latest gadgets it is quite a challenge to develop gadgets which actually help the poor and illiterate. While India's satellite launches and outsourcing news are already covered in slashdot umpteen times, sometimes her sensible achievements should be covered too."
India isn't 3rd world
The Sudan is 3rd world
It goes back to the fifties and was coined by the French Alfred Sauvy, being analogous to the social classes in pre and post-revolution France. The first world is the U.S., Canada, W. Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc: they have highly developed economies, relying very little on agriculture, are very industrialized, and I'll venture to say democratic. The second world at the time was the U.S.S.R. and perhaps even E. Europe, depending on how you define it; they were also heavily industrialized. Thus, there no longer is a Second World. And finally, every other country was third world, which are often countries which are rural, not heavily industrialized, and generally poor.
A blog like any other.
You need more education on Indian Politics. We DO NOT elect an individual. We elect a party and then it is the decision of the party to field a candidate for the PM's post.
We also cannot have an un-elected leader so our current PM has to win a seat in either our lower house (Lok Sabha) or the higher house (Rajya Sabha).
Please keep to the topic.
We are a democratic country. As for achievements is concerned, here is one - Electronic Voting Machines that was used for our last general elections without any trouble. While a developed democracy is a laughing stock of the world because of its 2000 presidential ballot problems in Florida.
It appears to me that atleast a section of the slashdot crowd seems to think that satellite launches in India are a recent phenomenon. At the risk of repeating the obvious, let me say that India launched her first satellite back in 1976. And has been launching satellites regularly since. The largest number of them are weather and communication satellites (the INSAT series). There are also remote sensing satellites (the IRS). The INSAT series satisfies all of India's communication transponder needs and some transponders have been leased to other entities, bringing in money. INSATs were largely responsible for the communication revolution India experiences in the mid-80s.
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India also launches satellites meant for polar orbits (the IRS series, for instance) from her own soil, has been for some years now.
The latest news in India's space program is the launch of a geo-synchronous satellite (Edusat) that seems to have gotten attention at
But that's just the latest news; as I said, India's been in space for nearly 30 years now.
Population: 1,065,070,607
Japan:
Population: 127,214,499
(from wikipedia).
Please keep these facts in mind before saying anything.
India faced three wars immediately after partition. Two with Pakistan and one with China. Japan didn't face any. Nuclear weapons were a necessity for India.
India has 21+ different official languages. Japan has one. The space program helped put educational and weather satellites in place. And India now sells satellite launches.
It's extremely convenient to compare India and Japan, but it's really a wrong comparison.
Rubbish. India has been self-sufficient in food since the early 1970s. Some aid for health, education and infrastructure does come in, but even that is mostly loans, not "handouts". American and Japanese aid comes with too many ridiculous strings attached, India learned long ago not to get too entrapped with it. As for the nukes: America was worried about war with a country on the other side of the world. India has gone to war with two countries on its borders, one of whom (China) is truly the 800lb gorilla of Asia with whom there continue to be unresolved border disputes, and is an acknowledged nuclear power. You saying India has less right than the USA to nukes? I don't like nukes either, but let's abolish them all, maybe step by step, rather than say the big five can keep what they have and make more while they're at it.