Similarities and differences between Indian and Brazilian culture (maybe a bit OT dunno)

[shirish शिरीष]

Hi all,
I dunno whether this will be an appropriate list or not for the
discussion I have in mind. I was looking for debian-offtopic or
debian-casual or something similar to that, but not finding it hence
using this list. I am guessing debian-br-geral stands for
debian-br-general or something ?

I did think for couple of days whether or not I should talk about it
but seeing that we, Indians are now world leader in internet shutdowns
and self-censorship perhaps I could use this opportunity to push back.
This will be a long mail and I would be using links directly below a
paragraph rather than numbering them. I hope people CC me if they
answer me for the points or queries I raise.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/how-india-became-the-global-leader-in-internet-shutdowns/articleshow/72886376.cms

Last year for Debconf I had found few things although am not sure how
much of them is/was true or not. I am gonna be using a few youtube
links which could be instead be used with https://www.invidio.us/
instead of using youtube.com, just need to use the file hash and it
works while privacy is maintained.

For instance you could use

https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=eU1WUnvis-8

instead of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU1WUnvis-8

The difference in the video is nothing, it's only that your
credentials don't go to youtube/google. No need to mention the irony
that I am using gmail :)

which comes to one of many questions -

The first question is from the video itself, although the video lesson
itself raises many questions. Although while I would not go through
all aspects and questions which piqued me, one which kind of stayed
with me was the part about Entrudo, apparently a festival which was
and is still done in Portugal (this is at around 23:30 minutes in the
video) where the American teacher speculates that the Portugese bought
it and it was a celebration of a big water fight with limes. And limes
as he contends or speculates was to prevent a disease called scurvy.

The samba bit which he talks about also comes a bit later which is
also shared and contended in another series of travel documentaries.

I saw from Rio to Lima - The World Longest Bus Journey made by DW ( A
German TV production company) there seems to be lot of similarities at
least nature-wise and the destruction of nature, we seem to be on the
same page. The documentary is in 5 parts. Is the transoceanica still
do that journey ?

The first episode in the series can be seen at -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ODFlqURxY

One of the episodes talks about ethanol as how huge swathes of forest
land has been converted to agriculture and that too for sugarcane so
that ethanol can be derived from. A similar thing has happened way
back in the 70's and continues even today for rice and wheat in India.
Even the traditional ways of planting crops has been perversed and
things are very bad food inflation wise. I wouldn't want to get into
whole lot of specifics otherwise it would be much more longer but if
somebody was interested to know more/discuss more about agriculture in
India and issues as been seen and known by people, feel free to
contact me on-list or off-list .

What also seemed interesting at least to me is there seems to be
passenger train network unlike India where we simply couldn't function
without Indian Railways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Brazil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_India

Again, I am a huge rail fanner so if anybody wants to talk about that
aspect, feel free to ask me off-list and on-list about the same. There
is some development going on but both our needs and wants for the
railway network would be something which will take anywhere between
15-20 years or more even though nowadays we do have all sorts of
semi-automated machines to lay the network, do stamping,
electrification and what not. There are national projects to do
doubling and where doubling is already done, to have quadrupling of
lines.  Almost all lines are satured by congested on the Indian
Railway network. I am sure people would be curious or have questions
so feel free to ask.

On the Samba front,  from what I know bollywood did experiment with
samba music in the 70's but it probably was a bastardized version of
what perhaps is known as samba in brazil hence not sharing any of the
songs as just don't know how people will react to it. Later, Indian
music was more into pop, melody and sufi which continues to this day.

The other interesting aspect which the documentaries highlighted is
the inequality which seems to be very similar to India. We have both
class and caste differences which lead to social inequity and has been
there for many a decades.

Corruption seems to be similar as in India, perhaps it's a world-wide
phenomena.

Lastly, I was curious by 'Il packet' where perhaps India is a bit
better. There are places in India where something like 'Il packet' or
using hard drives for sharing movies, soap operas or updates are used
but few and far in-between. Bandwidth is available, although perhaps
not as much as some other countries, but not bad for a casual user.
For instance, for using instant messaging or similar web apps. it is
within budgets of most people. Just sharing an operator who is perhaps
not the most competitive but still you may find they are attractive -

https://www.91mobiles.com/recharge-plans/bsnl-prepaid-3g-data

FWIW ,  1 USD = INR 71/-

As far as creative industries goes, India just doesn't have bollywood
but also has a wide range of healthy regional cinema. We have had soap
operas since 1980's in Hindi as well as various other languages. Web
series has been a recent phenomena but perhaps the most enduring,
popular and controversial of the lot has been sacred games. Of course,
nowadays and going ahead, there seems to be more and more niche genres
which will be created.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Games_(TV_series)

One of the interesting vlogs I found is of an Indian guy who is living
in Brazil for last couple of years and shares about the differences
and similarities between the two countries

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKZuPAg_Z8zbsrprUYeqY-A/videos

One of the contentions that Mr. Raja shared was that in Brazil, it is
possible for a waiter to become a manager in a restaurant whereas in
India, that is a post usually occupied by a person who has done M.B.A.
in hospitality or something. Whether he will have experience or not is
a different thing altogether. I dunno how much of that is true or not.

I hope people will share what they think/know on the above things.
Feel free to cut parts out which do not interest you and if you want
to talk about only aspect or the other.

Sadly, most documentaries I have seen do not talk about Brazilian
economies and how they work.  Do you have social welfare or not for
instance ?  If there is , is it privatized or nationalized ? Apart
from tourism which perhaps is the biggest engine for brazil as
revenues are concerned, are there any others ?

Looking forward to know.
-- 
          Regards,
          Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
  My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com

E493 D466 6D67 59F5 1FD0 930F 870E 9A5B 5869 609C



-- 
          Regards,
          Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
  My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com

E493 D466 6D67 59F5 1FD0 930F 870E 9A5B 5869 609C