For one, if reincarnationists have it right, you're better than six times more likely to reappear as an Indian than you are as an American.

I've often thought how appropriate it would be were bush and cheney to come back as Iraqis...

I did inhale.

I have always been fascinated by the east west split divided by the Himalayas. Indians after all are our Sanscrit language based cousins.
The Chinese something else.
China and India have a lot of similarities and a lot of different outcomes.
China is working on Indian type problems with a harsh authoritarianism that gets things done...just like Mussolini in Italy, the trains will run on time or someone is going down to the river to get a bullet through the head and the organs harvested.
India is free chaos. You can do just about what you want. It is more or less a functioning democracy, although like us, they have removed their leader with a bullet sometimes.
The Brits, as commercial managers for decadent Mughals, and then as imperial delusionists, tried for several hundred years to bring order to India. After Cornwallis was defeated at Yorktown, his next assignment was to go to Calcutta to clean up the East India Company civil service. He succeeded with that quite well. However, it didn't really last.
The Brits really went home with their tail between their legs in 1948, whipped and defeated by India. That empire never was a plus for Britain.
Think about Ghandi. Lawyer educated in London ends up in a loin cloth living an ascetic existence while bringing down an empire.
Next time try visiting one of the Yoga Ashrams, say at RishiKesh, and try to get more into the head space of India. That is probably her biggest gift. And the fact that she sure can mess with western mind.

I've been wondering why some of the nastiest, most corrupt Republicans are Indian immigrants, and now I know. From what SP describes, the Indian upper class has an attitude towards government that fits perfectly with today's Republicans, that government is a way for you to get rich, and any other considerations can go to hell. Repugs revel in their disdain for the poor, the middle class and the environment.

Look at the dilapidation of New Orleans after Katrina and you can see the beginnings of Bobby Jindal's vision for Louisiana's future. Their governor has the same attitude as an Indian politician.
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Good times for Smiley! :-D

Were small, average just over 5 ft tall. After "emigrating" to Australia, their children were neary 6 ft tall.

Short lives form Pollution, poor diet & poverty. Education has a poor return on investment (beacuse the educated die young).

aka: Poor, nasty, brutish & short.

but these are not issues that cropped up in the last few years, but systemic issues which have been in Indian society for decades. For example, there are enough laws about trash on the streets, but imposing the law is impossible because these laws were put in place without popular acclaim and thus are disdained by the populace. A systemic solution is needed, which imposes rewards and punishments to get society to the desired space. For example, if someone paid $1 for a pound of trash, all the trash in the streets would disappear overnight. But who would make this payment, and what economic reason they would have to do so, are not clear.
Net net, enforcement of the law is pitiful, and economic forces are not aligned to solve the issues you recognize such as transportation, utilities and others.

SP's "india moment" when the country finally got to him is familiar to any regular traveler to the subcontinent. Mine was in the 90s sometime when I tripped over a hole in the pavement & hit my head on a low hanging street sign. I had spent the day going from bank to bank trying unsuccessfully to cash travelers checks. "I hate this f--ing country" were the words which came out of my mouth. I looked around, embarrassed. People understand english & so many indians had treated me with kindness. SP enjoyed Kerala because he was welcomed by friends. The hospitality ethic does not work its magic in big cities unless you are lucky. Read Naipaul's Wounded Civilization for the connection between class structure & filth: upper caste hindus cannot engage in cleaning without "polluting" their souls. This means only lower caste/class people do this work. Cleanliness is indeed a strong religious/cultural value; but uppercaste/middle class people must rely on the patience and desperation of "untouchable" individuals. In the 90s our hostess had a big wad of keys hung from the waist of her sari; it provided access to the many doors of the house including the ones entered from the back only by the "sweeper" who came daily to clean toilets. Other keys were for each cabinet & closet in the house including the fridge: unaccessible areas for the servants. No hindu housewife could do that work without losing the respect of her husband & family. I suspect these attitudes may have evolved--but their vestiges remain.
It is a terrible contradiction: cleanliness is indeed next to godliness; but cleaning is the path to perdition. Result: enslaved masses and entrenched filth. (Or maybe it's the other way 'round: rich people who want to avoid nasty work created a system which allowed them to rely on individuals whose behavior in a previous life put themselves on the wrong end of the class divide?) Do not malign the Indians: the paradigm is worldwide. We are lucky to live in a country where its edges are blurred by a minimum wage & immigrant labor eager for any sort of work. The underlying impetus is no different.
Learning how to deal with the overarching cruelty of Indian society was a great challenge. At first I tried to pretend these were visits to the moon & had nothing to do with me personally. I made paintings of the many beautiful places & people. I felt criticizing Indian social structures was inappropriate; I still believe that on some level although in 2004 I came home and made some large, deeply sad paintings. Read Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance; somehow it helped me cut through the denial: India's misery really is somehow "our" misery.

Well, yes, I'm willing to say that "Indian" work attitudes do perhaps result in uniquely characteristic shabbiness--leading to SP's conclusion that "Indians don't care." Hard (=dirty) work, the burden of lower caste/class Indians, is not respected since in a theological/political system invented to ease life for the elites these burdens can be justified as emblematic of "bad" living in previous lives. But ask yourself about the last time any minimally powerful american suggested raising the wages of janitors. Other cultures are more inclined to clean up their messes, or at least move them to dumps in the Sahara. But the tendency of the powerful to enforce (one way or another) social structures in which they do not clean toilets is (not so remarkably) general.

doesn't have class structure--divisions just aren't as obvious, but based on money which affects which social class they'll belong.

A listing, not exhaustive by any means: The lowest paid: immigrants, Hispanics and blacks routinely are made up servants, drivers, gardeners, etc. Students, women and mixtures of ethnicities are salesclerks, car washers, delivery personnel, etc. Next are blue-colour workers, ranging from semi-to skilled. White collar jobs ranging from clerks to middle management. Then management, executives up to the highly paid. Professional class and intellectuals. The wealthy class is divided into nouveau riche and old money.

Class structure appears in all societies.

Subtle snobbery: Clothes lines. Labour for getting clothes clean isn't acceptable.

By-laws outlawing cloth lines seems to be a Canada specific idiocy. I never heard about such a thing neither in the US nor in Germany before I came here.

Fortunately I live in a neighborhood not affect by such ridiculous rules but if I was I'd happily ignore it and let the suing ensue.