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From: kumar@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india
Subject: India and the Media
Message-ID: <2440@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Mar-85 22:11:49 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.2440
Posted: Fri Mar  1 22:11:49 1985
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Nf-From: hplabsc!kumar    Mar  1 19:11:00 1985

India as a country does not figure too prominently in the news
media in the United States, but when it does, it is more often
depicted as a poor, hot, overcrowded, undernourished, ex-British
colony, rather than the new, emerging nation that it is.  Few of
my American-born friends are free from the stereotype of India 
that the media cultivates.  One of the new issues of Newsweek
has an essay about the "Jewel in the Crown" series and the state
of the country it is set in.  The thesis of the article seems to
be that India is in very poor shape, and that the Indians have
no one but themselves to blame.

As someone who was born in independent India, I find stories
about the Raj quite boring.  To look at present day
India through the eyes of an ex-Indian army Englishman, who is 
really critiquing a series based on books written many years ago
about Britishers who have left, is not really to look at India.
While everything the media reports is mostly true, it is only
half of the truth that is India.  India today grows enough grain
to feed itself.  It will soon be self-sufficient in petroleum
(it actually exports crude today, since its own refineries don't
have the capacity!).  And its democracy, young as it is, has 
taken a firm hold, as was obvious during the recent general 
elections, in a continent where totalitarian regimes are
the rule.

I wonder if there is any organization of Indian-born Americans
which is interested in speaking out against such biases in news
reports and projecting what many of us feel is the more balanced
view of the country.  If there are any such organizations, I'd
like to hear about them.