Indian Made

I don't like Chinese manufactured goods. The reason is much more about poor quality than the fact that raw materials travel 9,000 miles to get there, are manufactured by some of the poorest wage slaves citizens in the world, then travel 12,000 to the U.S. to immediately break and then get deposited into our landfills.

However...I don't hold Indian manufacturing goods in the same light. The Indians make good stuff; they just don't make a lot of it.

My dad grew some hops this year in Colorado, and I used some of his whole hop flowers in my beer brew last week. I needed a strainer, I bought it on-line, and it was...made in India:


This strainer will last the rest of my life. It's build correctly, uses good materials so it won't fall apart in a few years; it's a fine tool.

I'm wondering...twenty five years ago, why didn't India grow a huge wage slave manufacturing base? Why did the Chinese dominate this sector with such poorly produced shit? Why couldn't China have turned to services rather than industry? I asked this question of both my Bangladeshi and northern Indian co-worker. It has much to do with a lack of liberalization they say. I don't know how to interpret this, other than to say India has cultural limitations on how they organize themselves. They aren't geared towards globalization.

For whatever all that means, I still think my Indian fid, strainer, and punches are far superior to any Chinese made item I own, and I wish there were more Indian products. Seeing how the U.S. is dumping all of our manufacturing jobs overseas, let us parse our future wealth to India.