Aakar, the fact that Indians, as a people, do not give a lot back is debatable. There are countless Indians who give back a lot of money that they earn and there are countless Americans who do not. Many informed readers have already given examples. What I'm worried more about is the loose way in which you have chosen to frame your argument. Religion and culture might play a role in deciding people's behavior, but they are not always the most important ones, and seldom the only ones. As you rightly said, people are driven by incentives. I would like to add that the more immediate these incentives are, the heavier is the impact. But the truth is that this is true for all societies, and all kinds of life-forms including humans, so your deductions about Indians are at best myopic. You have been tempted to think that low trust among people or a lack of concern for the 'common good', comes as a direct consequence of the way Hindus worship. You even seem to believe that a Hindu's relation with God is 'transactional'. To this, I would only say that either you have chosen to treat a religion very flippantly, or you do not understand it at all. The main reason why some Indians, and a lot others, behave the way they do is because of the paucity of the resources available to them. Unfortunately, for many Indians, it takes a lot of effort even to earn just enough to sustain their families. Social security is non-existant, and unless you run fast enough to outrun others in the race for life, you will soon realise that all the doors seem to close on you. When you consider this, and you consider the plight of children forced to sleep on empty stomachs almost every day as their parents work hard to make ends meet, you would realise that it is not entirely indecent to believe that the society has not done its bit for you. And that's what manifests itself in some of the behaviour you have observed. And of course, religion has nothing to do with it.