As we see, in the case of America, these dividends are much larger. So much larger that they are not even comparable to what is described in the article.
>mixture of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, where the Chicago economists came in and their shock therapy and large divestment
But that's not what happened in the USSR. Gorbachev simply make government open and transparent for people, rejected totalitarian oppression, and it immediately became clear that the party had almost zero support.
And since it is impossible to have near-zero support without totalitarian oppression, the tops of the Communist Party (led by Yeltsin) decided to go cash out and simply divided among themselves all the assets under the party's control.
That's it. It had nothing to do with Chicago economist and shock therapy, which was just an excuse for dividing government assets.
And it's not like wealth and health of ordinary people suffered to any significant degree. It's just that before Gorbachev and Yeltsin all the statistics were fake, and people were repressed for contradicting it. But after the coup, no one cared. In fact, the only ones at a loss were middle level party bureaucrats, who did not have any real assets under their control, but occupied an extremely privileged position in the Soviet system and parasitizing on the body of an oppressed society.
1. A referendum with the wording
""" Do you consider it necessary to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which the rights and freedoms of a person of any nationality will be fully guaranteed? """
Got 77.85% of the vote, and the union only collapsed after internal political struggles led to the individual republics pulling out of their own accord.
2. Just five years later, the honest-to-god Communist Party candidate won %40.73 of the votes in an election against the incumbent Yeltsin -- despite such allegations of voter fraud that "At a meeting with opposition leaders in 2012, then-president Dmitry Medvedev was reported to have said, 'There is hardly any doubt who won [the 1996 election]. It was not Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin.'"
So clearly your statement
> And since it is impossible to have near-zero support without totalitarian oppression
can't be correct, unless you're alleging that Yeltsin was secretly using totalitarian measures to support his opposition in the 1996 election.
> the tops of the Communist Party (led by Yeltsin)
Yeltsin was an anti-Communist, he opposed the leadership of the Communist party. The actual "tops of the Communist Party" were divided between the Gorbachev-led liberalizing faction and the hardline faction, both of whom wanted to preserve the USSR -- but in the wake of the coup attempt by the latter faction, both were discredited and it was Yeltsin and the other regional leaders, not the heads of the central CPUSSR, who came out on top.
> It's just that before Gorbachev and Yeltsin all the statistics were fake, and people were repressed for contradicting it.
This is just conspiratorial thinking. Here, I found the most aggressively western-capitalist source I could think of: https://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF124.chap4.html -- even Rand Corp. describes a drop of population growth rates from 6-7% to net negative over the course of the liberalization of prices.
Edit: To add to it. In Italy, you eat pasta for lunch. To buy cheap pasta you go to Pam/Conad/Carrefour/Aldi/Lidl supermarket chain and buy Pam/Conad/Adli/Lidl branded ones as usually they are the cheapest buy vary in quality. But here getting cheap Rice, for lunch, is different. In Italy, to buy basic milk you do the same and probably the cheap whole fat one is branded by the supermarket. Here, you go to the diary, which gets from a collection of local farmers. To buy eggs, you don't go buy supermarket branded eggs, you could pay someone in your neighborhood with animals to supply. I've never seen supermarket branded eggs until I reached the west to be honest.
> pay taxes to the government
Here, at their turnover local stores are exempt from income tax
It's actually easier to have meaningful oversight over a single larger firm than a bunch of local stores. The thing is that what people often refer to as "ill social effects" of large businesses are not proven to any meaningful extent. At least the gain in efficiency is quite real and can be readily ascertained.
Corporates have power to sway governments/FDA/X in their personal favor (unlike a common individual for his own personal favor). As bigger the power of entity gets to the power of government, more government looses power over it, more at the discretion of its decision makers its users become. Why would a rational actor not do bad for profits if they can get away with it? Why would an entity, with a power, not exercise it, if net benefit to self is positive?
They don't have everything - but it's quite possible to live here without having to visit a big chain supermarket. Those chains do exist here and we do use them and online shops like Amazon and Flipkart occasionally for the rare stuff. The point here is that the small shops aren't 'large' private entities. These store owners are in a similar social class as you are and often know you personally. They even help you get the best deals and personally deal with product quality issues. A similar 'middle-class' supply and logistics chain also exists behind them - so it isn't easy for any big player(s) to disrupt and (co-)monopolize the market. They all pay their regular taxes to the local government and spend their earnings in the same local economy. Their economic incentives also align with yours - inflation hurts them as much as it hurts you.
The advantage of this is that multi-billionaire chain owners with their own cartels can't decide when to hoard stuff and drive up profits and inflation. This is very useful in situations like the big-chain-driven post-covid inflation and the current anti-oligarchy protests seen in NA. I was in NA during the post-covid situation. It always felt like a part of that inflation wouldn't have happened if small stores existed everywhere there. Boycotts also work better if you have alternatives. So I made it a point upon return to Kerala to tell everyone how important they are. I shop almost exclusively from them these days.
If we look beyond the foreign remittance, there are quite a few issues in the state. Unemployment is much higher than national average[1] Kerala youth are struggling with the drugs problem, in high numbers.[2] Very little industrial investment because its a state with communist government and not industry friendly. There are towns where every household has someone abroad. Only the elderly are living in those big houses.
[1]https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/kerala-am... [2] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/kerala-is-in...
Coming literacy, what does that mean? They all know how to read & write in a particular language? OR they have passed minimum undergrad?
> The valuables have been accumulated in the temple over several thousand years, having been donated to the Deity, and subsequently stored in the Temple, by various Dynasties, such as the Cheras, the Pandyas, the Travancore royal family, the Kolathiris, the Pallavas, the Cholas, and many other Kings of both South India and beyond.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Most scholars believe that this was accumulated over thousands of years
Remember that most Roman gold ended up in India. India was the main far East recipient and trading partner of Rome, not China (trade with China was mediated by Indian kingdoms). And that was one empire with which South India traded. It's unfortunate that a lot of narratives about India are driven by the North. The South is way more interesting, in my opinion (I'm biased).
It's not from North India though. North India is not on the land-based trade routes between the Middle East and the Far East due to mountains along Myannmar.
It's from Central Asia and the Middle East, who's views are often followed by Indian Muslims for political scoring against Non-Muslims. A lot of the people in Central Asia and the Middle East absolutely hate Indians and South Indians, so they often tend to write narratives that avoid India. So something like discussing direct contact between the Middle East and the Far East but avoiding India. If you want to read about the genuine geopolitics of ancient India then read some historic texts from the Far East.
The idea of there being a strong conflict between the north and the south is something driven by corrupt left wing separatist and regionalist politicians in South India, but most North Indians don't think like that.
I mean even customs that are 'Indian' in the diaspora are often north indian customs. It's fine, but it'd be like asking a new Yorker to make southern bbq
https://walkabout165.blogspot.com/2008/03/maybe-if-i-disable...
(also mentioned in the 3rd image caption of https://walkabout165.blogspot.com/2008/05/retrospective.html , observation on intepreting what wealth means)