Public concerns in any society do and do not reflect economic, cultural, and political realities. Americans prioritize the economy, cost of living, and government overreach.
Fuel prices, the cost of college, and healthcare are major pain points, with high premiums and out-of-pocket expenses hurting households. Social debates around gender ideology and school shootings reflect anxieties over identity politics and public safety.
India’s public is concerned with positive discrimination/reservations, freebies and cash handouts (tax revenue), unemployment, and religious and caste debates. Opaque police powers curtail freedom of expression. There are also rapid urbanization and demographic pressures in many districts by tech employees and DINKs with zero civic sense and concrete jungles. Why should we pollute rivers?
Common Ground in Challenges
Both nations grapple with littering, cleanliness, and inadequate infrastructure. In Bharat, littering is normalized, leading to clogged drains, polluted waterways, and health hazards. Even the rich dump their waste on roads and rivers.
America, while cleaner overall, still faces urban litter problems, but accountability and anti-littering norms make it less severe. Corruption is rampant in both nations, but public servants in the latter do not extort to fulfil basic duties and responsibilities.
Victimization narratives echo across both societies, fostering division. In the U.S., systemic racism keeps Black communities disadvantaged due to historical white oppression. In India, lower castes are perpetually oppressed by Brahmins. These false narratives perpetuate a cycle of blame and hinder collective progress. Depending on the government, a right-wing (tolerable graft), secular, or communist ministry owns and administers temples in India, not mosques or churches.
Both nations struggle with leftist divisive impacts on education, coming of age, policy, discrimination, and more.
Issues Unique to Each Nation
The Sackler family, through Purdue Pharma and pharma reps, enticed doctors to hook citizens on OxyContin, leading to over 4,50,000 deaths since 2000 and a $7.4 billion settlement in 2025.
India reports negligible overdose rates, lacking such widespread pharma- and capitalist-driven epidemics.
Conversely, India faces endemic corruption in everyday affairs. Police custodial deaths average five per day, with torture routine and accountability low. Basic dignity is absent in officials, contrasting America’s comparatively more structured and non-abusive bureaucracy and police accountability. Indian society lacks this despite our culture valuing respect for elders.
America
Americans can draw from India’s strengths to embrace strong family bonds. Second, they can adopt affordable healthcare models and other low-cost and natural systems.
Third, USA should incorporate resilience and frugality.
India
Indians can benefit from community support, prioritizing due process and accountability to ensure dignity in public services. We should promote cleanliness via strict anti-littering norms and civic responsibility, and maintain public spaces. Indian society should encourage respect across hierarchies and classes for greater unity.
Neither America nor India holds a monopoly on societal perfection; both are vibrant democracies with challenges through diversity, rapid change, and human frailty—and have long waiting lines in government appointments.
America, despite its wealth and infrastructure, wrestles with a pharma-fueled drug and mental health crisis, healthcare costs, and intense political divisions that have breached science, academia, and the justice system. Anyone who doubted the mainstream narrative of Coronavirus disease 2019 was deemed a traitor, far right, conspiracy theorist, and more.
Indians contend with everyday indignities, entrenched corruption in basic services, and cleanliness challenges amplified by scale and mindset. The freebies vote does not come from “how should my life improve,” the champagne socialist and class liberal vote does not come from “ancestral knowledge and loyalty,” and the minority vote does not come from “those who sing Vande Mataram.”
Indians should give importance to non-academic expertise, enforcement of rules, more accountability, and commitment to clean public spaces. And the ability to speak your mind to seniors.
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