Belindia

English

Etymology

Blend of Belgium +‎ India, coined by Brazilian economist Edmar Bacha in the 1970s.

Proper noun

Belindia

1. A hypothetical country combining traits of both Belgium and India.
   • 2010, Fredrick B. Pike, FDR's Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos‎^[1], University of Texas Press, →ISBN:

     In Belindia more than a fifth of the overall population simply lacked the means to purchase adequate food. In Belindia, moreover, the richest 20 percent of the population at the beginning of the '90s earned 32.5 times as much as the poorest 20 percent, “an inequality greater even than Bangladesh's.”

   • 2022 January 26, Naiara Galarraga Gortázar, “Nearly 20 years on since famous snapshot of inequality in Brazil, little has changed”, in El País:

     Brazil has become Belindia, a term made up in the 1970s by economist Edmar Lisboa Bacha, to describe a fictitious country made up of Belgium and India, with the laws and taxes of a small rich state, and the social reality of a large, poor nation.