Ladakh Flash Point

@AndrewS

One of the biggest problems with India is how badly education policy seemed to have been executed in the post-Independence era.

In 1997, Amartya Sen complained about the ridiculously low literacy level in India, which was about 50% on average. There's been substantial improvement to date, with literacy rising to around 70% for all adults and 90% youth literacy.

When you compare it to what happened in China, with both Communists and a cultural emphasis on educational mobility, China and India started at the same literacy levels. By 1978, though, China reached the same level India is right now in terms of total adult literacy.

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One thing that is in India's favor, however, is that India's higher education levels, even if Indian universities are even worse than that of China's, are comparable to China's only 8-10 years back. The economic growth is far worse, and the gap is either static or increasing, but the tertiary enrollment numbers are excellent for the level of development.

Another factor in India's favor is that literacy rates are highly variable by UT. Kerala etc, have very good literacy rates, as does Gujarat. It's places like UP and Bihar that are backwards.

manqiangrexue said:

Commended my ass. China sent back 60+ POWs without much fanfare. They were pretty much all sent back by the time the news even reported they were captured. That's what the Indians should be reminded of.

What kind of idiot soldier goes off by himself to find a yak at a time like this? What happened to all the drones that could have been sent to search for it? If it was a valuable asset, an armed team should have been sent to recover it after it was located by drones. He deserves a demotion at least.

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I wasn't expecting much chivalry from Indian Army. I almost want them to parade the soldier and piss China off enough to start kicking their ass and settle this dumb dispute that they started. But if they release the soldier without fanfare, then its commendable knowing how low their standards are. No bloodshed is always a better outcome.

Perhaps that soldier was a real idiot for straying into the Indian side and getting caught. Or maybe he got jumped by Indian soldiers. Maybe its intelligence failure. Shit always happen in any army. No matter how modernized. There are many times where US army gets troops ambushed or captured by inferior enemies like Iraqi troops or Taliban.

Looks like the Indians are making more noises about this capture. First, he is an armorer, then he is a spy. If they start parading the soldier or hold him for longer. They must get ready to pay the price.

Inst said:

@AndrewS

One thing that is in India's favor, however, is that India's higher education levels, even if Indian universities are even worse than that of China's, are comparable to China's only 8-10 years back. The economic growth is far worse, and the gap is either static or increasing, but the tertiary enrollment numbers are excellent for the level of development.

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Please provide evidence of this, such as papers published, etc.

Inst said:

@AndrewS

One of the biggest problems with India is how badly education policy seemed to have been executed in the post-Independence era.

In 1997, Amartya Sen complained about the ridiculously low literacy level in India, which was about 50% on average. There's been substantial improvement to date, with literacy rising to around 70% for all adults and 90% youth literacy.

When you compare it to what happened in China, with both Communists and a cultural emphasis on educational mobility, China and India started at the same literacy levels. By 1978, though, China reached the same level India is right now in terms of total adult literacy.

===

One thing that is in India's favor, however, is that India's higher education levels, even if Indian universities are even worse than that of China's, are comparable to China's only 8-10 years back. The economic growth is far worse, and the gap is either static or increasing, but the tertiary enrollment numbers are excellent for the level of development.

Another factor in India's favor is that literacy rates are highly variable by UT. Kerala etc, have very good literacy rates, as does Gujarat. It's places like UP and Bihar that are backwards.

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Again, that is indicative of the caste system.

Lots of money for universities for the elite, whilst nothing is left to bring up the masses with basic literacy and numeracy.

In China, Korea and Japan for example, it was the other way around.
Lots of money for basic education, and less for tertiary university education.

The development studies have also shown that basic education has the highest economic returns of any spending, far in excess of tertiary university spending. This fact has been well established for decades now. But how does caste-based politics translate into diverting money to poor

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Plus the last PISA results with India showed Indian students at the bottom of the world rankings in basic literacy, numeracy and science. Gujarat and Kerala are exceptions. The vast majority of India is really badly educated.

And the educational impact of COVID in India over the past 6months and the next year will be truly staggering.
That will set back India years, and a lot of that blame can be traced directly to the rash decisions made by Modi.

AndrewS said:

Plus the last PISA results with India showed Indian students at the bottom of the world rankings in basic literacy, numeracy and science. Gujarat and Kerala are exceptions. The vast majority of India is really badly educated.

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India only participated with PISA using the two provinces Tamil Nadel and Himachal Pradesh in 2009. India finished second to last beating Kyrgyzstan. Where did you get the data about Gujarat and Kerala?

Yak story really doesn't make sense. He was probably a scout on intel gathering with a story of looking for lost yak if captured. Both sides understand any captives are almost immediately returned in good shape since the clashes in June and the more minor ones after. China's captured many Indian soldiers in May and June. Both incidents returned the captives pretty quickly afterwards in good shape and looked after any injuries they had without inflicting more.

India did not behave so well with the Chinese liaison officer who got out of the vehicle to talk but hopefully those actions are now behind them since there is bilateral understanding of expected behaviour now. If they did anything violent like bhakts are encouraging, well they are going to set a precedent for the IA since the PLA have captured dozens more IA in the past and likely will if these sorts of confrontations continue.

This guy isn't some random militia if the ID and rank is true and since Shiv Aroor has publicly given it, there is much better chance it is accurate. I doubt this is some yak searching mission where he went alone. Definitely something weird from the PLA. More capable drones can be expensive for low level recon missions but they could conduct small recon missions with small commercial drones which would do it much better than a set of human eyes. So why was he sent if he was sent for something? LOL Indians asking them to check him for Covid is actually a pretty good call. Who knows. I doubt the PLA are low enough to send a Covid positive soldier (much higher chance of Indians being Covid positive) but honestly why send one guy to go yak searching or performing recon which could be done cheaper, safer, and better with a $200 drone. Doesn't add up at all.

The soldier was helping locals to find a yak and was lost. PLA informed India side the situation and asked Indian's help to locate him.

From the PLA Magazine Weibo account


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Inst said:

@AndrewS
One thing that is in India's favor, however, is that India's higher education levels, even if Indian universities are even worse than that of China's, are comparable to China's only 8-10 years back.

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I see a pattern of you making very strong assertions without backing up with solid evidence. It smacks of intellectual sloppiness and throws everything you say in doubt.

First of all, , in terms of top educational institutes in world top 500, research impacts and enrollments. More details data and ranking can be found at , , , . For academic institution research impact, see the authoritative . In all of these, China has far more universities in world's top-50, top-100, top-200 than India has (if any). In terms of research impact, Chinese academic institutes' contributions are just below those of the US's, but are far above every other countries. India is far below. These are indications of the quality of India's higher educational institutes relative to that of China's.

Secondly, the structure of India's higher education is also problematic. It has more enrollments in college and postgraduate levels, but much smaller in vocational and adult education, compared to the same distribution in China. Considering India's development stage, it would seem that India should have more enrollments in the latter.

Inst said:

One thing that is in India's favor, however, is that India's higher education levels, even if Indian universities are even worse than that of China's, are comparable to China's only 8-10 years back. The economic growth is far worse, and the gap is either static or increasing, but the tertiary enrollment numbers are excellent for the level of development.

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In 2011, China had 5 universities among top 500 (Peking #205, Tsinghua #221, Zhejiang #338, SJTU #343, Fudan U #388) ()
In 2011, India had 0 universities among the top 500. ()

<<Fast forward 8-9 years>>

In 2020, China has 39 universities among top 500. () (not even including HK or TW)
In 2020, India STILL has Zero (0) among the top 500. ()

So how is India comparable to China 8-10 years ago?