By 2014 I had spent decades trying to improve the circumstances i found around me in India, for the public good. Both professionally and in my own time / resources. Including giving an entire year, 20 hours a day work for a new political party that we all hoped would address the corruption and low level of governance in our country.
But I could see we were not able to make the change we wanted to. Sure, India has improved in so many ways (including now touching base with the South pole of the moon !) but we still have enormous poverty, hunger, lack of medical care, natural environment that is not cared for, and a low level of governance in most areas of life : urban planning, support to small farmers, job creation, and so on.
At the same time, I had read intensively on what happened in Europe during WW2 and realized how devastated were most european countries at the end of the war. Yet, they had picked themselves up from their bootstraps and their success of most of the countries was for everyone to see.
So my family and I decided to tour the english speaking countries first (except the US and Canada where friends and family had lived for long and we had more feedback). So we went in 2014 to the UK and Singapore (as a South-East Asian inspiration, closer to home), and in 2015 to New Zealand and Australia, to find answers to some questions. Ofcourse this was impressionistic, not a study per se, but surely that counts too. From 2017 onwards we visited Europe too.
We found that farmers were under stress in the UK and Europe too. Many committed suicide because of business failures. But we could see farmers had more support from their governments than in India.
Everyone we met performed some civic duties - their kept their neighbourhoods clean, helped the poor, volunteered at church. We would imagine the percentage of those we knew back home helping others, to be lower.
It was not true that family bonds were weaker in the west we felt.. Everywhere we saw, parents doted on children.. we saw them playing for long periods in public gardens with their children.. north indian parents (whom i have lived amidst) do not seem to spend that much direct time with their children. We saw children and grandchildren supporting grandparents in going to church, or assisting them at farm or with various tasks.
Ofcourse there were gory pieces in UK tabloids of some parent leaving young children locked at home alone, and so on.. but there are plenty of fathers in north india who beat children violently under influence of liquor and so on...
Everywhere we visited in the developed world we saw the rule of law, cleanliness, orderliness, a predictability to life, which was very relaxing.. one could breathe deeper. Indian cities in contrast cause tension when you step out.. because of the noise, disorderly traffic, and lack of normal conveniences of sufficient public transport, smooth pavements to walk on, and so on.
Ofcourse there may still be big-ticket corruption in the West, but it does not always affect residents in an everyday sort of way.
So we felt that there were cultural factors at play here that we needed to know more about.
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