Oh India, So Smart They're Stupid

It is nice to know that India has become a developed nation and has learned much from Western aid organizations in focusing on the real threats to progress highlighted by this article. While The Economist’s Big Mac Index is of course a useful tool, a better armchair measurement of a country’s development is how much time it spends frittering away time on silly minutia.

Two southern Indian states banned the sale of soft drinks produced by Coca-Cola and Pepsi on Wednesday after an environmental group said it had found pesticides in the global giants' products…The two companies have also published prominent newspaper advertisements to say pesticide levels in their products are below permissible levels and way below levels detected in other food products such as tea, eggs, grains, fruits and dairy products.

Hopefully, the politicians will ensure that soft drinks are as pure as the river Ganges. But in the meantime, maybe they will come to their senses and ban tea, eggs, grains, fruits, and dairy products as well.

Furthermore, the officials are taking a very progressive approach and evidently moving to ban second-hand soft drinking:

…drinks [cannot] be sold in schools, colleges, hospitals and anywhere in a 100 feet radius around them.

Tourists should definitely feel safer and healthier next time they have surgery at a South Indian medical facility.

But the highlight of the whole story is the picture of youth (no doubt spontaneously) showing their anger by stamping on the bottles…











…the GLASS bottles.

Tomorrow, there are plans to splash McDonald’s customers with hot coffee to teach them the Socratic error of their ways.