China building fire

The leading internationl news today was about a high rise building completely burned by a fire in China. One reason the building couldn't be saved was because the fire fighters did not have equipment that reached beyond the twelfth floor. I was immediately reminded of all the new construction of very modernistic high-rise buildings in Bangalore and Gurgaon . Do the fire departments there have equipment to extinguish a blaze on higher floors? India is no stranger to enthusiastic and unsafe fireworks use during Diwali season.

Westernization or modernization

A friend commented on the last post "I especially felt for you being Indian and India becoming too Westernized. There's a lot of crap we import to the rest of the world and they love it. On the other hand, who understands entrepreneurship and business creation better than the US? It's the one thing that's really in our DNA to offer the rest of the world"

I would call it "modernization" rather than westernization. It was long overdue in India. I am definitely not hankering for the days of the closed economy. It is really wonderful to see the opening up of the marketplace, the wealth of opportunity it brings and the resulting affluence.

The west went through modernization first, they made a lot of mistakes and the results are evident for everyone to see. I feel it is completely unnecessary for newly modernized countries to make the same mistakes. We can just look over and see what decisions turned out for the worst, or what could have been done better. For that one needs leadership that is sorely lacking in the government. The legal system and government in India needs modernization too, to keep up with the times. There is hardly any consumer protection. Do children must go through abuses in childcare centers and be burned down in building made poorly, must people be poisoned by pesticides and other pollutants in drinking water before laws to protect consumers are enacted?