Evan Spiegel,
Sir, You said that “India is a poor country” and trust me I’ve no problem with what you said because this is what you believe. I would like to thank you!, as here, you forced me to think over the problem of the vicious circle of poverty in my country. Sir, in India, the moment you stop your car at the traffic red light, you see a woman with a child in her arm running closer to you or a little boy with running nose banging your car window or a handicapped old man asking for alms. This is a common sight in India. You will find many of these people in both the railway and metro stations, tourist spots, in temples and in many areas where there is a regular crowd. At times, out of sheer pity or out of fear from being cursed by God, we tend to give them some coins, and if not then we simply ignore or shoo them away.
Yes, frequent floods and droughts cause heavy damage to agriculture. Moreover, absence of timely or excessive rain, severely affect country’s agricultural production. The growth of population here exceeds the rate of growth in national income but also lowers the per capita income which tends to increase poverty. Our farmers are committing suicide, living in the atrocious conditions where they are unable either to pay their debts or to earn basic livelihood for their families. This year they even did protest at Parliament Street where they asked for their dues sanctioned by our beloved ministers during budget session which was estimated around Rs. 40,000 crores. If we can give this much portion to our farmers then how can you say us poor? (in spite the fact, that we ourselves don’t know where it actually goes- to pocket of a farmer or somebody else?!)
No one has the right to say us poor because I think you’ve never heard about the number of scams our country had, where thousand crores rupees were involved. Let me tell you about that too- bofor scam, fodder scam, Harshad Mehta scam, common wealth scam, chopper scam, Telgi scam, coal scam, 2G scam etc etc. ( I just stopped myself writing about more because I’ve my final exams next week and I haven’t read anything yet.)
I really don’t know, why our people are cursing you. You are not the first person to say such things about India, we already have many Indian brothers who have already published their books and articles saying India is the world’s poorest country. “India super poor, not superpower,” said Shashi Tharoor to Deccan Chronicle.
But at the same time, we have had APJ Abdul Kalam, I’m sure, you must have heard about this great personality and his works. In his book Lead India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium Kalam said, developed India by 2020, or even earlier, is not a dream. It need not be a mere vision in the minds of many Indians. It is a mission we can all take up and succeed.
According to the report by New World Wealth, India has been ranked seventh in the list of top 10 wealthiest countries in the world, which was topped by the United States with total individual wealth of $48,700 billion.
India has huge natural resources in terms of natural gas, coal and metal ores. India is the second largest country in the world in terms of GDP. It’s around $2290 billion which is around Rs 1,53,43,000 crore. Demographics-wise India is the country with the youngest population. This means that the dependency ratio is the lowest. So, we are a rich economy, we do have everything that is needed to make our citizens wealth, it is just that we need to be a bit more productive.
Evan, but when you say- SNAPCHAT is not meant for Indians, it’s for rich people not for poor like us. I won’t agree with you here, “India has bypassed Japan to become the world’s third largest Internet user after China and the United States, and its users are significantly younger than those of other emerging economies,” Global Digital Measurement and analytics firm comScore has said in a report.
Unfortunately, due to your remarks on our poor status, You’ve already lost many Indian Snapchat users which must be causing you a heavy loss.
PS: One more thing to say, this is a friend of a person (Swati Garg) who does a lot of snapchats in a day that I can’t even count.
Yours truly,
Shweta Kukreti
Think&Thought! 