boonhet

Yes, you can also see mopeds and such in the photo. 2 stroke mopeds of course are even worse for emissions than cars. Modern 4 stroke ones not so much, but if you're limited to 50cc, they're ridiculously underpowered, not particularly long lasting, etc. Not sure what the regulations on this area in India.

And sure, you can definitely walk. You can walk on the side of a highway too, nobody's stopping you. Why are people complaining about car centric city design in the US? You CAN walk. It's not safe to in many places, but you CAN.

For real though, some people don't want to walk on what is essentially a highway. It's unsafe. There should be better options for pedestrians.

Why did China develop and industrialize while India didn’t? Why didn’t the same process as in China take place in Indonesia or Philippines or Bangladesh or Pakistan, all of them capitalist countries

China mixes and matches capitalism with state capitalism and socialism. They use subsidies to squash overseas competition, that's why you can get things for basically free, shipping included, from Aliexpress. China has almost as many billionaires as the US - and is going to overtake them soon enough.

They're smart in utilizing protectionism too. It's way harder for western companies to sell things to the Chinese than Chinese companies to sell things to the west. For an example, Volkswagen sells cars through joint ventures with Chinese companies. They can't just have a western-owned company selling the cars.

Why not India? Tough to say. For one reason or another, China became the factory of the world. Since then, they've made a lot of smart decisions to both profit from it as much as possible, and retain their status (just look at Shenzhen. There's no alternative in the world). The other countries you mentioned could never have the economies of scale that China does. India is the only one that theoretically could.

The environmental break even period for EVs is getting shorter and shorter as the power grids get cleaner and cleaner.

It was a somewhat solid argument against buying new EVs to replace working ICE cars over 10 years ago, but now it's really not.

That's what I've heard as well. Unfortunately not a lot of authentic Thai restaurants here in Estonia. Will be sure to try one when I see a promising place and have an evening I'm prepared to spend in agonizing pain.

which is why all poverty alleviation in the past half a century comes from China, which took 800 million people out of poverty and extreme poverty.

Uhhh China has been embracing capitalism for a few decades now, sorry to say.

Problem with the "global south", on the local level, is not even capitalism vs socialism. It's corruption. The corruption of course stems from the poverty. When the leaders of your country come from poverty, had to gain power by force, and suddenly have access to resources... They do tend to abuse their access.

Yes, a functional socialist leadership is the best way forward for any of these countries, but even a well regulated capitalist system would be better than the leaders just selling their country to a bunch of corporations to increase their own wealth.

ITT: Some people want OOP's wife and kid to walk to school on what's essentially a highway. Others seem to realize that there might be a reason why OOP's wife needs the car, and given that OOP's done 65000 km in 15 years, he's not exactly doing a whole lot of driving with it.

There's also suggestions of using public transport, but if that even exists for their route, OOP's wife can't exactly just go walk on a bus, she could get gang raped, because this is Delhi.

We're not talking about a big SUV either. It's a tiny little hatchback, the most city-friendly car possible:

The situation sucks for everyone involved. Whereas in the west we're used to it being just a transit availability issue, in parts of the world there's also the safety issue. Yes, the famous gang-rape-set-on-fire-murder case was 13 years ago, but that doesn't mean Delhi is magically safe now. It's still a huge issue.

What if the walk is on a busy road with no sidewalks?

Guess what:

OP of course says that he's used to walking in worse, therefore OOP's kid should also just walk on the sidewalkless busy road.

I walked (or cycled or took the bus in the winter) to school when I was a kid, but this is not a safe environment, why do we want kids to walk here:

He also posted a photo of the road. It's 2 lanes of chaotic traffic in each direction, no sidewalk. You can't walk there, you'll get hit by something sooner or later. It supposedly also gets up to 44C (of course on an asphalt road the air temp might be higher than that). I choose to believe that because apparently the temperature record in New Delhi is over 50C.

He also posted a photo of the road. It's 2 lanes of chaotic traffic in each direction, no sidewalk. You can't walk there, you'll get hit by something sooner or later. It supposedly also gets up to 44C (of course on an asphalt road the air temp might be higher than that). I choose to believe that because apparently the temperature record in New Delhi is over 50C.

Unfortunately fuel being burned in other countries is still heating up their environment.

Also idk if you've heard, but India isn't exactly a rich place. A lot of people can't afford EVs. Despite the fact that yes, the Indian market has cheap options available. But my man in the tweet has been nursing a Hyundai i10 for 15 years. He ain't exactly trying to spend money on cars.

The entire policy is designed to hurt poor people that are car dependent (if you look at the photo of the street in his other tweet, you'll see why he isn't walking the 1 kilometer. There's no sidewalk).

If the government also gave him a good public transit option with AC, the fuel ban could easily be justified. As it is now, rich people will buy newer cars and poor people will be criminals, or take on debt they can't afford to get buy newer cars.

Honestly if he's done 65000 km in 15 years it may well be that he only uses it to drive routes where you literally can't walk, like this one.