[ElCapitanAmerica]

> Like I said -- then they ain't "Third World" anymore, now are they?

They are, more than half the people in India live in abject poverty. Just take a little trip down there, and when you come back, let me know if that's 3rd world or not.

[Alberta's Child]

I think it's safe to say that the ones that live in "abject poverty" sure aren't going to your local university for their PhD. in microbiology.

[XBob]

122 - "They are, more than half the people in India live in abject poverty. Just take a little trip down there, and when you come back, let me know if that's 3rd world or not."

I haven't been there for a few years. Are they still stealing stamps off letters, forcing you to go to the Post Office and watch them being cancelled, in order to be assured that they get through the system?

[valkyrieanne]

They are, more than half the people in India live in abject poverty. Just take a little trip down there, and when you come back, let me know if that's 3rd world or not.

When I was in engineering school (back in the Pleistocene - ha ha), the Indian engineering students I met were almost exclusively Brahmin. (They were very comfortable discussing the caste/class aspects of Indian life; I didn't even need to ask to find out.) This means that, for India, they were of wealthy backgrounds. Most had fathers who had studied in England or Europe.

My husband worked with *many* Indians a few years ago, and it hasn't substantially changed.

One reason India *is* able to provide technical workers on the cheap is because India is a country *very* severely divided economically. The poor in India are still largely terribly poor - thus they're willing to work for "pennies" at the internal jobs within the country. Indian engineers may be making 1/4 of US ones, but they have servants, for instance. That's because there's such a huge "underclass" of very poor within that country, and not a lot of incentive to change it from within.