WHY HAS THE WEST PROGRESSED SO MUCH MORE THAN INDIA SINCE THE 1940s ?

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. 

India's rising temperatures are already deadly..

India is now two and a half times more likely to experience a deadly heat wave than a half century ago, and all it took was an increase in the average temperature of just 0.5 degrees Celsius, a 2017 study shows.

The findings are sobering considering that the world is on track for far more warming. Last year, a record high of 53.5 degrees C was set in the southwest Pakistani city of Turbat.

Even if countries are able to meet the Paris Agreement goals in curbing climate-warming carbon emissions, that would still only limit the global temperature rise to an estimated 2 degrees C.

The study shows that while India's average temperatures rose by more than 0.5 degrees C between 1960 and 2009, the probability of India experiencing a massive heat-related mortality event—defined by more than 100 deaths—shot up by 146 percent.

The study also found that the number of heat wave days increased by 25 percent across most of India. Areas in the south and west experienced 50 percent more heat wave events, or periods of extreme heat lasting more than three or four days, in 1985-2009 compared with the previous 25-year period.

India is already seeing new deadly highs. Last year in May, India recorded a record 52.4 degrees C in the western city of Jaisalmer.

The vast majority of India's 1.25 billion people are poor and have few options as temperatures hit sweltering levels, drying forests and riverbeds and wiping out farm animals. Very few have the protection of air conditioning.

Most in India rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, and climate change is likely to hurt their crops.

Many who work as farmers or in construction will have to shorten their work days by 2-3 hours within four decades, simply because it will be too hot outdoors, according to a 2016 report by the U.N. Environment Program.

Most Indian cities and states are not prepared to handle more heat, even if they understand the devastation it can wreak. In 2010, some 1,200 people died in a heat wave in the western city of Ahmedabad, prompting city officials to introduce seven-day weather forecasts, extra water supplies and cool-air summer shelters.

After more than 2,500 were killed in heat-ravaged areas across India in 2015, nine other cities rolled out a plan to educate children about heat risk, stock hospitals with ice packs and extra water, and train medical workers to identify heat stress, dehydration and heat stroke.

But the nine cities cover only about 11 million people, not even 1 percent of the country's population.