1) saying that Indians are smarter than Americans because Indians are the wealthiest ethnic group is a bit wrong because this is a case of selection bias. only the smartest Indians can move to USA. so you're comparing the smartest Indians with the average American.
in terms of education, the average Indian is far behind the average American.
2) i don't understand why Indians are so risk averse. my family, like yours, took a risk that paid off and I'm the beneficiary. but despite having the financial safety net, my family is still risk averse. maybe because of scarcity mindset? its so difficult to understand India.
3) related is how we look down upon wealthy people. its like we've come to agree that we should all be mediocre and ok with being poor and so whoever works hard and becomes wealthy should be looked down upon.
point 1 is based on data. point 2 and 3 are rather self-observations therefore have a higher probability of being wrong.
1) I never compared Indians to Americans. I called Indians generally adaptable and intelligent. The comparison was with other immigrants, who too are usually the top percentile of their own countries
2) This piece is a result of me thinking the same for many months. One cannot help but go deep into our historical psychology. There's a lot to say on that front than I have said in this piece, and some of it may not be palatable, but I do not see any other avenue for exploring - it has to be cultural + structural/political
But I think the preference for safety over risk-taking is slowly cultivated from childhood itself. There are many perspectives from which it can be seen; the one prominent which I think is "what kind of people does our culture celebrate?" To understand this, let's go back to our hunter-gatherer tribe time. During those times, food was scarce so you had to take risks, go out, risk your life, and feed the tribe. When the hunters came back from the hunt, they were celebrated by everyone in the tribe for their risk-taking ability, and eventually they became the high-status group in the tribe which takes risks. And now high-status men get to mate with other high-status/fertile women. Now there is a small kid in the tribe who watches all this and understands that if he wants to become a part of that high-status group, even he needs to take risks and prove himself, and so he starts taking risks from childhood.
This exact mechanism is broken in India of "What kind of people does our culture celebrate?" In India, people like godmen, politicians, sarkari babus, Bollywood stars, cricketers are put on the pedestal and celebrated like anything else. Most of them have never innovated, never taken risks in life, never worked crazy hard; they basically don't have the vision. How would you expect these people to inspire the next generation? On the other hand, people like Narayan Murthy are bashed for saying 90-hr work week. I was like what's wrong in that? i get potential negative impacts of extreme overwork but on a large scale , hmmm maybe he should have framed it in a better way for the masses Eventually, I realized people just lack the DAMN VISION; they have never experienced working with such people, the energy they bring into the room. Sorry going off track with the rant. Okay, so now this behavior, or maybe the reward system to say, gets reinforced into the young generation and then everything goes downhill.
Tell me why GIFT city, even after pouring billions of dollars, having world-class infrastructure, is failing. It's because people there lack the culture which innovates. Most Gujaratis have just made money from trading business, which is good but you can't expect to get to the next level doing the same thing which you did for last few generations. WE BASICALLY NEED SOMEONE TO GIVE THE RIGHT VISION TO INDIA.
And this is the exact point where I believe Chinese stepped in and fixed it. So I had once gone down this rabbit hole of a top Chinese official called Wang Huning who went from being a professor to one of the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, served under 3 leaders. He basically had gone to America during his early days as a professor on some university program; there he tried to understand what makes America so special. So he wrote a book on it "America Against America." It was a nice read but one thing he pointed out heavily at that time was that culture was the main driver in America - every kid had the confidence they could achieve whatever they want. Later he went back and wrote more on it in Chinese (I could not find translations so I have just read his only one book). Later somehow the top officials saw something in him, brought him into the policy-making thing, and his ideas started shaping China. He was a strong proponent of "cyber sovereignty" and maybe the reason for China forcing Google and other US companies to step out.
Okay so I think the way he tried to fix it was through content moderation on Chinese platforms. Banning Xi Jinping memes is one thing but shaping the country's narrative is another. This is no joke when people say Chinese kids see science and education content, and how they promote and celebrate Chinese youth winning Olympics videos. These types of things slowly change the culture in small ways but on a larger time scale, the whole attitude of the youth gets changed. No wonder now companies like Deep Seek are coming out of China full of cracked engineers competing straight head to head with America's autistic engineers; it's really amazing to watch now how actually innovation has started to happen in China instead of the US.
So yeah, this is what I think why Indian culture is so risk-averse. There's another point of status which is connected but ah, some other day.
Some terms copy-pasted from Google for ease of understanding:
"Cyber sovereignty"—the idea that each nation has the right to govern its own digital space according to its own rules and values. This principle is a cornerstone of China's digital policy and serves as an ideological justification for tight state control over online content. While he isn't building the algorithms himself, his advocacy for cyber sovereignty influences the kinds of policies that regulatory bodies (like the Cyberspace Administration of China) enforce. These policies, in turn, require technology companies to design algorithms that filter or prioritize content in ways that align with state-approved narratives.
In my view, these are very broad generalizations that aren't simply useful, Palash. The success of Sindhis or Parsis can be better explained by the simple fact that they're trading communities. And business however small gives you cash flow and often requires moving to places, giving you more exposure and, thus better chances of socio-economic mobility. Trading communities throughout India are rich and urban, be it in Gujarat or Tamilnadu. And they were already better resourced than the majority of India who lived in small villages and barely set foot outside of them in their lifetimes.
Similarly, the success of Indian Americans in the USA is because they are indeed the best of us. They either went there with education or had enough resources to migrate decades back when India was even much poorer. Owing to their background, they got the opportunity to work and advance and as any Indian would do, they completely nailed it with their hard work and intelligence.
Most Indians in India are eager to work and take risks, but unlike China and some other countries, our state was never able to give us that opportunity to take risks and get rich.
You know It's bonkers how my village has changed just in the last decade. Why? The government built the canal, water reached to every farm, Private banks started giving big loans on rural lands. Boom!
The reason Indians are risk averse is because there's scarcity, they are poor and not the other way around. Poverty does that to you, whether you're Indian or anyone else. And then the question is why are we so poor? Blame that on luck or whatever, It's because our early leaders who had absolute Power over this giant dominion, took a path of development that simply didn't work and could never course correct. We're living in the shadow of that path to this date.
thought provoking, very well written post sir.
some thoughts -
1) saying that Indians are smarter than Americans because Indians are the wealthiest ethnic group is a bit wrong because this is a case of selection bias. only the smartest Indians can move to USA. so you're comparing the smartest Indians with the average American.
in terms of education, the average Indian is far behind the average American.
2) i don't understand why Indians are so risk averse. my family, like yours, took a risk that paid off and I'm the beneficiary. but despite having the financial safety net, my family is still risk averse. maybe because of scarcity mindset? its so difficult to understand India.
3) related is how we look down upon wealthy people. its like we've come to agree that we should all be mediocre and ok with being poor and so whoever works hard and becomes wealthy should be looked down upon.
point 1 is based on data. point 2 and 3 are rather self-observations therefore have a higher probability of being wrong.
suggested reading - https://www.dataforindia.com/
Thanks Ram.
1) I never compared Indians to Americans. I called Indians generally adaptable and intelligent. The comparison was with other immigrants, who too are usually the top percentile of their own countries
2) This piece is a result of me thinking the same for many months. One cannot help but go deep into our historical psychology. There's a lot to say on that front than I have said in this piece, and some of it may not be palatable, but I do not see any other avenue for exploring - it has to be cultural + structural/political
3) I agree.
Very well written Palash.
IDK I might be wrong, I am just an idiot
But I think the preference for safety over risk-taking is slowly cultivated from childhood itself. There are many perspectives from which it can be seen; the one prominent which I think is "what kind of people does our culture celebrate?" To understand this, let's go back to our hunter-gatherer tribe time. During those times, food was scarce so you had to take risks, go out, risk your life, and feed the tribe. When the hunters came back from the hunt, they were celebrated by everyone in the tribe for their risk-taking ability, and eventually they became the high-status group in the tribe which takes risks. And now high-status men get to mate with other high-status/fertile women. Now there is a small kid in the tribe who watches all this and understands that if he wants to become a part of that high-status group, even he needs to take risks and prove himself, and so he starts taking risks from childhood.
This exact mechanism is broken in India of "What kind of people does our culture celebrate?" In India, people like godmen, politicians, sarkari babus, Bollywood stars, cricketers are put on the pedestal and celebrated like anything else. Most of them have never innovated, never taken risks in life, never worked crazy hard; they basically don't have the vision. How would you expect these people to inspire the next generation? On the other hand, people like Narayan Murthy are bashed for saying 90-hr work week. I was like what's wrong in that? i get potential negative impacts of extreme overwork but on a large scale , hmmm maybe he should have framed it in a better way for the masses Eventually, I realized people just lack the DAMN VISION; they have never experienced working with such people, the energy they bring into the room. Sorry going off track with the rant. Okay, so now this behavior, or maybe the reward system to say, gets reinforced into the young generation and then everything goes downhill.
Tell me why GIFT city, even after pouring billions of dollars, having world-class infrastructure, is failing. It's because people there lack the culture which innovates. Most Gujaratis have just made money from trading business, which is good but you can't expect to get to the next level doing the same thing which you did for last few generations. WE BASICALLY NEED SOMEONE TO GIVE THE RIGHT VISION TO INDIA.
And this is the exact point where I believe Chinese stepped in and fixed it. So I had once gone down this rabbit hole of a top Chinese official called Wang Huning who went from being a professor to one of the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, served under 3 leaders. He basically had gone to America during his early days as a professor on some university program; there he tried to understand what makes America so special. So he wrote a book on it "America Against America." It was a nice read but one thing he pointed out heavily at that time was that culture was the main driver in America - every kid had the confidence they could achieve whatever they want. Later he went back and wrote more on it in Chinese (I could not find translations so I have just read his only one book). Later somehow the top officials saw something in him, brought him into the policy-making thing, and his ideas started shaping China. He was a strong proponent of "cyber sovereignty" and maybe the reason for China forcing Google and other US companies to step out.
Okay so I think the way he tried to fix it was through content moderation on Chinese platforms. Banning Xi Jinping memes is one thing but shaping the country's narrative is another. This is no joke when people say Chinese kids see science and education content, and how they promote and celebrate Chinese youth winning Olympics videos. These types of things slowly change the culture in small ways but on a larger time scale, the whole attitude of the youth gets changed. No wonder now companies like Deep Seek are coming out of China full of cracked engineers competing straight head to head with America's autistic engineers; it's really amazing to watch now how actually innovation has started to happen in China instead of the US.
So yeah, this is what I think why Indian culture is so risk-averse. There's another point of status which is connected but ah, some other day.
Some terms copy-pasted from Google for ease of understanding:
"Cyber sovereignty"—the idea that each nation has the right to govern its own digital space according to its own rules and values. This principle is a cornerstone of China's digital policy and serves as an ideological justification for tight state control over online content. While he isn't building the algorithms himself, his advocacy for cyber sovereignty influences the kinds of policies that regulatory bodies (like the Cyberspace Administration of China) enforce. These policies, in turn, require technology companies to design algorithms that filter or prioritize content in ways that align with state-approved narratives.
now that i reflect its a quitea double edge sword
In my view, these are very broad generalizations that aren't simply useful, Palash. The success of Sindhis or Parsis can be better explained by the simple fact that they're trading communities. And business however small gives you cash flow and often requires moving to places, giving you more exposure and, thus better chances of socio-economic mobility. Trading communities throughout India are rich and urban, be it in Gujarat or Tamilnadu. And they were already better resourced than the majority of India who lived in small villages and barely set foot outside of them in their lifetimes.
Similarly, the success of Indian Americans in the USA is because they are indeed the best of us. They either went there with education or had enough resources to migrate decades back when India was even much poorer. Owing to their background, they got the opportunity to work and advance and as any Indian would do, they completely nailed it with their hard work and intelligence.
Most Indians in India are eager to work and take risks, but unlike China and some other countries, our state was never able to give us that opportunity to take risks and get rich.
You know It's bonkers how my village has changed just in the last decade. Why? The government built the canal, water reached to every farm, Private banks started giving big loans on rural lands. Boom!
The reason Indians are risk averse is because there's scarcity, they are poor and not the other way around. Poverty does that to you, whether you're Indian or anyone else. And then the question is why are we so poor? Blame that on luck or whatever, It's because our early leaders who had absolute Power over this giant dominion, took a path of development that simply didn't work and could never course correct. We're living in the shadow of that path to this date.