At a recent conference, an American asked me if it is safe to drink water from the normal cold water water taps in homes and hotels in Switzerland.

I replied that the rule of thumb is that in every country which went through the Protestant Reformation, one can indeed drink water from the tap.

Not only that, in every country which went through the Protestant Reformation, politics are as clean as the streets, there is a reliable fire service and system of medical care, good schools and universities, scientific and technological progress, care for the poor and a relatively large and prosperous middle class.

With the decline of the influence of the Reformation, trains no longer always run on time in Switzerland, and the educational and medical systems are slowly declining. Fraud is on the increase in companies, and law and order are gradually breaking down in society. Once the rot sets in, it is difficult to reverse.

Even the time-table that one prints out from the internet site of the railway company (SBB) is no longer accurate - e.g. it claims that there is a bus number 113 that takes one from Interlaken West to Beatenberg. No such bus number exists, nor has any such number existed for some time. The right number for the bus is 1.

So even the information one gets from official sources is no longer reliable.

Switzerland will probably never become like China, but it seems to aspire to becoming like India or Africa - unless the moral, ethical and social influence of the Bible is brought back into Switzerland.

But the sad thing is that even most Christians here do not understand that. So it falls to Hindus such as myself to point out such elementary things. Sphere: Related Content