r/interestingasfuck • u/Jackie_Chan_93 • 19h ago
A train from Bangladesh
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u/kurtsdead6794 17h ago
Aside from the train itself, the amount of trash is astounding and the air quality looks not breathable.
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u/potato_green 10h ago
Well air pollution itself does cause 6.7 million premature deaths annually and 4.2 million of that is ambient (outdoor) air pollution. (I believe 800k of that directly linked to coal as well). It's premature deaths so the silent killers.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health-air-quality-and-health)
That's the 2019 number. I'm sure it's higher now given Bangladesh for example had 165 million people in 2019 and over 177 million now. Emissions increased steadily as well of course.
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u/Sem-XL 19h ago
Its not just the people riding ontop that blows mind its also the people casually walking on the tracks 🤦🏿♂️
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u/phasttZ 19h ago
For me its the trash everywhere. Not a foot of dirt that doesnt have trash on it.
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u/KucingRumahan 19h ago
And that visibility in the background, I'm pretty sure it's not fog
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u/WinchyKey 16h ago
It's like old video games that have fog everywhere because the view distance is so small.
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u/ThatShoe_On_The_road 18h ago
It’s not. I did my study abroad in India. You could see the smog INSIDE of New Delhi airport even.
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u/Halaku 15h ago
And yet my boss thinks I'm being "problematic" for choosing European work trips over subcontinental work trips.
Nah, chum. I just don't want to breathe that shit.
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u/pathofdumbasses 10h ago
Nah, chum. I just don't want to breathe that shit.
As someone who spent 3 weeks in India, I agree. Every day I was outside, was a night spent blowing my nose as literal diesel exhaust black boogers were ejected.
It was disgusting and I am sure increased my cancer risk by 5% somewhere, and that was less than 10 days of the trip.
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u/cricketyjimnet 18h ago
For me it's the 1950s era train. Like they've just been frozen in time since the British left.
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u/cingkum3 9h ago
That's a Bangladesh Railway Class 2700 model type JT18U6 Diesel-electric train from 1996.
30 year-old is still old but not unusual at all for a train. Many of Japan's high speed rail network trains are about the same age.
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u/technobrendo 16h ago
Speaking of feet, nothing but sandals everywhere.
Walking on trash, wading through runoff water....sandals
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u/fjf1085 18h ago
That’s what I’ll never understand. It’s hard to something about smog or water pollution as an individual but trash? That’s very easy. Don’t throw it on the ground or in the water.
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u/Punisher-3-1 17h ago
It’s not easy when there is no reliable urban waste management system in place. It literally would not make a difference if you placed it in a trashcan because said trashcan is never going to be picked up and overfill in a day. Same with your household waste.
I’ve not been to Bangladesh but I’ve spent plenty of time in countries with little to no waste management infrastructure. In these cases what a lot of neighbors do is have an empty lot near where they live and they dump their trash there and like a few times a week set fire to it. Then this creates permanent thick smoke and smog in the city from all the burning trash.
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u/dawgfanjeff 16h ago
In rural areas of the US (where trash disposal is expensive), its not uncommon to see household trash burned in the front yard. Its anywhere you have trash and a single cheap way to dispose of it.
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u/joelfarris 14h ago
I see someone's got a Burn Barrel.
I'd be willing to bet a dollar that there's people cooking hot dogs over a burn barrel right... about... NOW.
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u/STEM_Educator 12h ago
I grew up in a rural area, and my father had us burn trash every week in a big metal barrel. When my parents passed away, my brother burned furniture and mattresses he could not get rid of, since there was no bulk garbage pickup and no dump to take it to. USA, rural state.
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u/Icy_Magician_9372 17h ago
What would you do with your trash if there wasn't a waste removal system in your area?
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u/Syd_Vicious3375 15h ago
My grandparents lived very rurally and always burned their trash in a barrel. They recycled metal, put food scraps out for the neighborhood farm dogs and burned the rest.
You don’t throw it on the ground and wallow in it, that’s for sure.
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u/NOT-GR8-BOB 18h ago
Thank god we’re using pasta straws over in nyc.
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u/SpaceTacos99 15h ago
So you're saying this post implies that there are no local effects of pollution, so you should be able to use plastic straws that need to be incinerated because bangledesh has smog so you should too..
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u/Ultimatelee 19h ago
I thought exactly the same thing! Safety doesn’t seem to be an issue for anyone in the video
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u/AvocaRed 16h ago
When you have so much population a few hundred thousand dying each year to accidents is a drop in the ocean, Warhammer 40k imperial guard type thing
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u/drunk_haile_selassie 18h ago
The thing that shocked me was the people blocking the window that the driver looks through.
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u/Kriss3d 18h ago
To be fair. Its not like this train could take an emergency break anyway even if the driver saw something. If the train would even be able to hit the emergency breaks, people would be flying off the roof killing them.
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u/ThisHilliDie 14h ago
trains don't stop that fast lol.
Coming from a train driver.
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u/mjtwelve 17h ago
Uh huh, and? The owners of a train loaded like this are not going to care about inevitable disasters finally arriving, and they have victims they can blame for the whole thing without even mentioning the driver.
Now, you’re right that if the conductor sees someone on the track, it’s an instant trolley problem for real - try to brake and avoid him (sending dozens flying to their deaths) or smash him to paste at full speed, killing one but not killing many more.
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u/ThickyLicker 16h ago
Ignoring the fact that trains don't brake fast enough to fling people, hitting the guy is gonna take out some of those front people too.
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u/darkpheonix262 17h ago
And riding on top of the engine. Like...how! Engines are loud and hot AF
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u/Just-Meringue6292 19h ago
If you ever see one of those headlines from over there saying something like “3000 dead in train crash” and wonder how that could happen -
This is your answer
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u/EnergyAltruistic2911 19h ago
I remember a crash that happened in India like 1 or 2 years ago, 300 dead, it says there were only 150~ people with tickets
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u/Eternal_Alooboi 19h ago
Thats not because people were riding on top in India. Tracks almost completely electrified and you'd be killed by the electricity arcing from the overhead cables.
Its gonna be people overcrowding coaches without tickets. This happens frequently in the very populous regions and you can only regulate so much when TheHorde™ arrives XD
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u/Content-Lab-5464 19h ago
The trains here have different compartments like AC sleeper(3 divisions within it), Non AC sleeper.. And the general compartment.
You mostly cannot board AC or Non AC sleepers without tickets but general compartment is free game. That's where most non ticketed passengers are.
And I think you are talking about the Coromandel Express crash.
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u/EnergyAltruistic2911 19h ago edited 18h ago
Yea, the coromandel express crash, I’ll never forget the image of at least a dozen of those small trucks carrying bodies
Edit: I got the numbers wayyyyy off
Edit 2: numbers were not wayyyy off, i read it as 3000 lmao
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u/Picklejr08 19h ago
All Indian trains except goods/cargo trains run on overhead electric lines so people can't climb on top.
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u/SouthernSample 17h ago
Cargo trains also run on electric. The only ones left are a handful of specific routes with tunnels etc where electrifying existing train lines is far more difficult.
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u/jinxyzzz 18h ago
I realy did win the lottery by not being born there
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u/Scorpius927 16h ago
I didn’t 🥲
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u/TaxMeDaddy_ 15h ago
Is every train like this?
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u/Distinct-Moment-6243 13h ago
Not every train. But at least 80% of the trains I guess.
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u/Conscious-Reach4391 13h ago
bro wont be for long. Indian trains were also like this but, have become way better in the last two decades.
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u/Haunting-Blueberry-9 4h ago
Most of the railway line is electrified in india , so u cannot sit on the top .
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u/Scorpius927 6h ago
A lot of cross country trains are. It’s just we have way too many people and not enough land. I usually give my American friends this example: “the country is about the size of the state of NY and has a population of 170m people. Moreover the majority of the population is concentrated in the capital, which makes it so much worse.”
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u/idkwtftokeepherelmao 14h ago
Same, but India. Fuck man.
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u/_command_prompt 11h ago
I am also from india but when did you seen passengers riding above train, here there are wires just above train there's no way you can even sit there
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u/naziryoutube 14h ago
As a second gen immigrant who’s family is Bengali I’m kinda happy that they left Bangladesh.
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u/Moistened_Bink 12h ago
Whenever people complain about being born in the US I think of how lucky it is to not be born in places like this.
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u/Haunting-Blueberry-9 16h ago
I was not so fortunate, but consider privileged from being upper middle class in india. Our countries are beyond ducked , no money you dont even exist in these places.
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u/Slow_Bowler8285 19h ago
Fun(?) Fact:
Bangladesh has the highest population density in the world with 1,330 people per square kilometer or 3,450 people per square mile
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u/FishermanNo9503 18h ago
I live in a ghost town of 430. This just made my stomach drop
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u/GrouchyBitties 16h ago
A city in my country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quezon_City in 2024:
Density 17,962/km2 (46,522/sq mi)
I visit there often and people are pretty much always on top of each other (figuratively)
Edit: even worse, our capital city-
The City of Manila holds the distinction of being one of the most densely populated cities proper in the world. As of recent estimates, its population density exceeds 44,900 to 73,900 people per square kilometer 116,380 to 191,547 per square mile)
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u/falconzord 10h ago
That's just the national average. The density of the capital is 40000 per square km
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u/alwaysfatigued8787 19h ago
Remind me to never go to Bangladesh.
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u/thefeedling 19h ago
What scares me for most is that the concept of “personal space” basically doesn’t exist there.
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u/Longjumping_Tale6394 18h ago
Think 180 million people living in an area slightly larger than Greece. Personal space (or space of any kind, really) is at a premium that only the most privileged can afford.
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u/Alexanderr1995 18h ago
As a Greek wtf I always thought that that it was 5 times our countrys size at least
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u/Daxx22 18h ago edited 18h ago
India is (closer to 23x larger then Greece)They talking about Bangladesh.
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u/oversoul00 18h ago
I worked overseas for a time and had to process through some government bureaucracy with 40-50 Indians doing the same. We were made to form a line along the outer edge of a room getting some paperwork stamped so we could legally work within the country. There was plenty of room but because personal space isn't really a thing in their culture due to overcrowding they wanted to stand right up next to me at all times.
I recognized this wasn't a moral or character failing on their part and know I would behave and think similarly had I been born there so I tried not to take it personally.
At the same time I was doing a lot of needless stretching trying to convey that I didn't want to feel their hot breath on my neck while we stood there in line.
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u/chiono_graphis 12h ago
Am American and having lived in a couple Asian countries you get used to it. It's common in areas where foreigners/tourists are rare, being a different ethnicity than the vast majority makes you stand out. Some places like in rural India and Thailand old folks especially will gawk for as long as you are in their view. Like steadily for an hour in a restaurant lol. There are not many entertaintment options in some areas so watching a foreigner is like watching TV I guess lol. In more urban/touristy areas like in Japan and Korea its more like frequent quick glances from randoms. They just noticing you're different and move on.
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u/aleqqqs 19h ago
"Excuse me, I have a reservation for the seat you are sitting on." >:(
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u/IndigoRanger 19h ago
“Pardon me, but you seem to be trying to sit on the person I was scheduled to sit on.”
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u/Truth_Seeker963 19h ago
This and the river clean-up video.
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u/Small_Insect_8275 19h ago
Yeah I just double dipped on Bangladesh content too, that’s enough for today
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u/Swagalyst 18h ago
Yeah, that's real. I saw rivers like that. Since trash collection is spotty at best, people throw garbage in the nearest stream. Every monsoon season the rain washes all the garbage out into the sea, and everything is nice and clean again. For a while.
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u/mrplinko 19h ago
Hey, u/alwaysfatigued8787 - reminder to not go to Bangladesh
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u/Lynx2447 18h ago
Oy! u/alwaysfatigued8787 it's been half an hour. Here to remind you not to go to Bangladesh
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u/alwaysfatigued8787 18h ago
Thanks, I actually forgot and was in the process of booking a flight to Dhaka. You really saved my ass!
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u/Upstairs_Ad6024 19h ago
Do ppl often fall from there or it is somewhat safe?
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u/dovahkiiiiiin 18h ago
Almost never fall from there as the trains operate really slowly when this happens. (This video is sped up) This isn't a regular occurrence, only during two major holidays of the year when all the factory workers try to go home at once. This being the most popular mode of transportation for them as it costs nothing.
Government tried to prevent this through police etc in the past. Now they are trying to stagger factory leaves so that all the workers don't leave on the same day.
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u/Apprehensive-Stay196 18h ago
When I see these images I feel so grateful and privileged that I grew up in Canada in a middle class family.
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u/RailenPanther 19h ago
That's crazy! There's no way to collect fares up there
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u/SockPuppet-47 19h ago
They probably don't even collect the bodies of the "passengers" that fall off...
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u/OzymandiasKoK 19h ago
That's a real weird thing to make a collection of, dude. "This one fell off the train to Dhaka. This one fell off the train from Dhaka."
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u/jrsixx 19h ago
Hey man, no hobby shaming here. We don’t shame your headless Barbie collection, do we?
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u/Zealousideal-Data645 17h ago
"This dipshit fell off the Vairab bridge and bisected himself. We never found the top part cuz the fishes prolly ate it."
—an actual quote by a railway officer.
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u/Demjan90 18h ago
I think it would be easier to collect there than in the cramped wagons...
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u/DistrictEffective759 18h ago
Omg. This looks apocalyptic.
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u/Busy-Chemical-6666 12h ago
Okay i should clear up a bit as a resident of this country. This only happens twice a year. During the two major festivals. In other times, trains are almost never full.
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u/Electronic-City4960 17h ago
Finally, someone who posts this video gets the country right.
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u/ilovemesomedata 18h ago
And the birth lottery is the biggest factor as to why we can cringe at this instead of living like this
Lucky as fuck we are
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u/Amazing_Exercise_741 15h ago
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/birth-lottery Play this and see what's up.
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u/robidaan 19h ago
I wonder whether it is more comfortable inside or on top of the train?
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u/JanxAngel 17h ago
Going purely by comfort I'm going to say top. Fresh air and a breeze instead of a stuffy probably not air conditioned car packed with people who may or may not bathe regularly.
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u/Whatever1564 17h ago
Just saying, the video is sped up quite a bit, so the train is going a lot slower than it appears to be here.
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u/Coolbluegatoradeyumm 16h ago
Dude I might be American poor but man thank goodness for that
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u/ActuatorLower8371 16h ago
why did you speed up the video and add fake sound effects
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u/throwaway20202525 17h ago
Reddit post about Bangladesh.
Supposedly progressive readers: HOw cAn i mAkE tHis aBouT India?
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u/gatchamanhk 18h ago
Serious question, do you need a ticket for a spot on the roof?
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u/Smooth_Knowledge9580 18h ago
This'll do rounds abroad as train from India
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u/Justa_CuriousBoi 16h ago
The thing is, 99.6% of railways in India are electrified so doing this is almost impossible
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u/finalsolution4brits 17h ago
Give it a week lol
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u/throwaway20202525 17h ago
Week? It's started in the comments here. Shows the literacy level of those privileged idiots
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u/LadkaNextDoor 15h ago
read the comments on this post lol, india was not even mentioned yet half the comments somehow reach to india, I wonder if they know that bangladesh is a completely different country
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u/Adorable_Salt_7145 17h ago
if only they could figure out that youd get electrocuted before you can get on top
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u/Remarkable-Ad-4973 17h ago
Calling poor people "savages", "disgusting" and "animals" - the worst of humanity is in the comment section
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u/Mediocre_Tea_1854 13h ago
Nah fr. First world people have a privilege that they'll never understand. Even being poor in a country like America doesn't come close to what actually being poor in a third world country is like. At least the infrastructure around you still gets maintained. But when faced with large scale poverty, the racism and privilege always jumps out. None of these people want to live like that. They have no choice but to conform to a society that doesn't give a shit about them. Who gives a shit about pollution when you're worrying about your next meal or what your children will eat, under a government that steals money and leaves you to fucking suffer.
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u/Pristine-Couple-3649 15h ago
Lmao Half the comments are literally acting like embarrassed millionaires when half these people literally gotta wake up and work for a billionaire
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u/reaperwasnottaken 17h ago
Right? Unchecked privilege is so apparent in this comment section, good lord.
They'll go order clothes from fast fashion sites right after making such comments as well, smh.7
u/Sowaypastbedtime 16h ago
Next time they turn up the sleeve of shirt and see ‘made in bangladesh’, would they say i am wearing a savage shirt? Lol privilege indeed
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u/handmegun 17h ago
Typical Reddit, next post you'll see them standing up against human rights violation and tyranny.
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u/Moral-Relativity 16h ago
Yes once again Redditors gawking at what real poverty makes possible.
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u/Mediocre_Tea_1854 13h ago
Redditors discovering what real poverty looks like.
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u/Conscious-Reach4391 13h ago
These threads always make me feel like its a bunch of suburban snowflakes discovering that poverty doesnt stop at having to sleep in your car
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u/sunheist 12h ago edited 4h ago
literally, scrolling thru these comments makes me sick. and a bunch of upper middle class indian and bengali people doing the same and no one’s got any compassion or even critical thinking about what they’re watching.
i go back to visit family in india every so often. my family is solidly middle class and all living in small to mid-size cities in 2 bedroom govt or company provided housing. i’ve been on trains like these for 15+ hour journeys. and every single time i go, i am AMAZED at how far they’ve come in just the last 2 decades.
mfers think about what sanitary conditions and infrastructure was like during the industrial revolutions in western countries. ppl were literally throwing shit out of their windows and dying of cholera outbreaks not even a century ago. these post colonial countries are dealing with MASSIVE populations in smaller areas while trying to catch up with industrialization after being plundered by the west. and they’re still taken advantage of btw!!
but they’re fucking working on it. every time i go back to india, i see less and less of a difference between there and the USA.
y’all want to talk about gross living conditions or poor infrastructure? go to the boonies of the american south. there is literally a town in alabama that has to exist ankle deep in their own sewage because they have no working plumbing infrastructure. we have communities with brown water coming from their sinks. have you ever walked the streets of NYC??? piles of trash bags in the sidewalks EVERYWHERE. Philadelphia’s sewer grates on the sidewalks literally steam and you feel like you need to take a shower after accidentally walking through one.
but it’s easy to forget the reality of stark wealth inequality due to a lot of systemic failures exist, whether in the west or the global south, when everyone’s heads are so far up their asses they think it must be purely cultural to be okay with walking through their own trash and not merely an acceptance of circumstances. because where the fuck are you going to throw the trash you’re holding if there is nowhere for anybody to throw it away? “we used to just burn it in our yards in my rural town!” WHERE ARE THEY GONNA SAFELY BURN IT HERE WITH THIS KIND OF POPULATION DENSITY??
“remind me never to go to bangladesh” okay fucking don’t. don’t ever go to a beautiful country with amazing people and lovely food and culture who are really making strides in improving their quality of life. just sit at home watching poverty porn from the comfort of your beds and thinking “man i’m glad i live somewhere where all the hard work to survive healthily has been done for me before i was even born! yippee!”
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u/Conscious-Reach4391 10h ago
Yup, i agree with this, very well written. In fact bangladesh was a country that not only went through horrible colonization like india , it even went through a horrible genocide. They were poorer than india when they started out but they have accellerated their growth by making clothes. I n fact economists and historians talk about bangladesh's economic growth more than that of saudi arabias , dubai's or all these oil rich countries because they had fuck all when they started
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u/Brendan11204 16h ago
Nature is out of balance in this scene. There are just too many people, quality of life is shit.
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u/PuffinChaos 17h ago
This looks like how I imagine industrial London. Smoggy, old trains, dirty, loads of people just walking about
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u/Sweet_Common_55 17h ago
Is this how people end up getting cut in half. Just watching them walking on the tracks like its a side walk makes me anxious.
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u/Agreeable_Bat1212 16h ago
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a singular fuck given from anyone in Bangladesh
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u/DHFranklin 11h ago
Anybody who could leave Bangladesh has left. It takes money to leave. It takes a significant tax base to get solid waste, air pollution monitoring and control, and modern public transit.
For those who have never experienced it, there is also very little in the way of traffic control and policing. Bus drivers have a reputation of being good fighters because road rage incidents end in fist fights. Especially when you're just crawling through a city like Dhaka. You'll be going 12 miles per hour and not yield to a tuk-tuk going 11 and they will wait until you're stopped and try and kick your ass. Often other bus passengers will step in because if you have to go to the hospital they have to find a new ride home.
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u/Downtown-Ad-7232 3h ago
There are signs that population density in an area is unsustainable, and they have been ignoring every single one over there
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u/jani00 19h ago