Niven Charvet tells his Indian friends why he prefers China to India:
Linked by kuffir. Join Blogbharti facebook group.My belief in humanism, my love of my own language, a certain libertarian cast of mind – none of these could really explain why I am more comfortable in China than in India.
To me India is a land of separation, China a land of integration.
Although there is still a preference for male children in China, once a child is born, the girls and boys are near equals. This has not come about for particularly nice reasons but from the realization by the Chinese that they could not feed an ever-growing population and their implementation of their one child policy. The Chinese family invests heavily in this one child, whether male or female, urban or rural; an investment of love but also of money particularly for education. So the Chinese are, overall, far better educated than the Indians and the sexes are far less separate. In China, women are mostly strong individuals; in India, they are second class citizens.
I agree with all points mentioned above. But find the inference a bit lame. I do not think calling women in China as ’strong individuals’ and women in India as ’second class citizens’ bolsters your argument. Either it is simply a wrong choice of words or you are giving yourself misplaced reasons for your belief :) Women in India may be ’second class citizens’ in the sense that they are definitely in a weaker position apropos laws and perception. But I would say that women here are definitely strong. I have no meter to say whether they are stronger than Chinese women or not as I have not been to China and not met any Chinese women. And I am not talking about today’s young modern women either. I am talking about the mothers who had a large hand in forming today’s young women. I talk of my mother and the mothers of my female friends who themselves knew less about the world, came from backwaters of backward states, but were wise and ambitious about what they wanted for their daughters: Not marriages or well-paying jobs(though I am sure those figured too – A mention: My friends and I are in our late 20s, in well-paying jobs and unmarried) but strong-willed individuals aware of their rights. You do a disservice to such women and to women like me who were brought up by them.