Life and Bucks!

[blazeofglory]

Today I read an article in the TOI and after reading this heart-sore tale of a person who is going to die pathetically just for want of medication. The destitute was a software engineer in the US and suddenly meets with an accident and gets severely injured. After getting admitted to a hospital he gets diagnosed as inflected with several maladies. He collapses into a paralytic state. As he had not bucks to renew his medical insurances he has not means to buy expensive medicines in the US. He gets deported to India, his country. There he just gets admitted to a missionary hospital.

He comes of a farming background and his mother could not finance his medication.
This person is dying gradually and it happens just he lacks bucks.

This story entails the fact that while money is not that important if things go well off, but under a circumstance of this nature one needs to save some. Generally I do not value money but after reading this dismal account of the penniless, I rethought why money is necessary under some circumstances.

This is nothing of the type that may interests you, but I could not help sharing it as I was moved by the account in the TOI, and could not recount the way it was presented therein.

[HotKarl]

Or America could provide government sanctioned health care, like virtually every other well-developed nation in the world.

[blazeofglory]

Or America could provide government sanctioned health care, like virtually every other well-developed nation in the world.

What you said is a rare case in a country which is on the breadline; for poor people get dumped the way vegetables do when they rot. A great mass of people are poor and the media hype that India is shining an unrepresentative of the masses who die of starvation and a great many farmers committing suicides.

People are living in several centuries simultaneously. While Urban India is waking up, rural India is sleeping agelessly in perpetual slumber. They are over centuries under the same poverty-stricken conditions and the light of economic development does not shine over them.

[chasestalling]

An awful mess to be sure but I have to wonder if there is an opposing viewpoint. I mean if a place denies the very thing essential to his livelihood, why would he wish to stay.

[chasestalling]

Let me sweeten the pill or expose my ignorance which may turn out to be one and the same thing.

Money as far I know is a dirty thing, i.e. it cannot be had unless one is willing to lie, cheat and in extreme circumstances to kill. Jesus Christ would be ground to dust and relegated to oblivion if he were involved.

If I were he, I'd convert to Islam.

[crazyed]

India's situation has a lot to do with the ways in which they stimulated their economy. Pumping money into things like IT and infrastructure is immensely profitable for industrial development, but the idea that it would trickle down to the rural areas has been proven wrong many times in many ways. One example of a country that provided "bottom-up" stimulation for their economy is China, which pumped money into their agricultural sector. Eventually, the newly developed agricultural sector led the way to increased urbanization at an explosive rate.

One thing that is important to remember when discussing life and money is this: the importance of money in your life is determined by what your life is all about. Unfortunately for that poor guy, extenuating circumstances have prevented him from accruing enough cash to keep himself alive.

As for the idea of universal health care in the United States, it's a pipe dream, now more than ever. In a receding economy that has a long way to plummet, not to mention the over one trillion dollar military budget, it's a wonder inflation has stayed low enough for anyone to get health care at all.

Not that all this really burns me up or anything!!

[Etienne]

India's situation has a lot to do with the ways in which they stimulated their economy. Pumping money into things like IT and infrastructure is immensely profitable for industrial development, but the idea that it would trickle down to the rural areas has been proven wrong many times in many ways. One example of a country that provided "bottom-up" stimulation for their economy is China, which pumped money into their agricultural sector. Eventually, the newly developed agricultural sector led the way to increased urbanization at an explosive rate.

One thing that is important to remember when discussing life and money is this: the importance of money in your life is determined by what your life is all about. Unfortunately for that poor guy, extenuating circumstances have prevented him from accruing enough cash to keep himself alive.

As for the idea of universal health care in the United States, it's a pipe dream, now more than ever. In a receding economy that has a long way to plummet, not to mention the over one trillion dollar military budget, it's a wonder inflation has stayed low enough for anyone to get health care at all.

Not that all this really burns me up or anything!!

Heh... India's situation is much more complicated than that I'm afraid. Just like saying Africa could be managed easily with a better administration. It doesn't work like that. Let's stick to India though. If you'd see India you'd realize that it's 1 billion people, and it shows. More than that, it's 1 billion people, the majority being poor, and very poor. People are everywhere and it's a big mess, and believe me culture+poverty+lack of education+pollution+ etc. etc. makes the situation very complex. India is a jungle compared to "western" countries.

They have a big economical development, true, but this means nothing. Their demography is raising faster than the economy, so the country is in fact, getting poorer and poorer, and all the economical development is going to the profit of a minority. So the first place to start would be birth limits like in China, and quick. But then cultural factors come into play, which make this much more complicated than it appears.

And I'm not even talking about pollution in India and many deeply rooten cultural factors which don't necessarily allow a big control margin...

Do you really believe that if the situation could be simple? Don't make me laugh.


People are living in several centuries simultaneously. While Urban India is waking up, rural India is sleeping agelessly in perpetual slumber. They are over centuries under the same poverty-stricken conditions and the light of economic development does not shine over them.

This is very true, and I make the bet that ANY westerner going to India will be shocked, even though he thought he had an idea of it. I'm not saying don't go to India it's a big dump - it is, actually, but not only that, and far from it and I dare say it's an intense, incredible and very rewarding experience.