Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 9/27/83; site hplabsc.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcs!lsuc!pesnta!hplabsc!kumar 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 Date-Received: Sat, 2-Mar-85 21:26:17 EST Sender: kumar@hplabsc.UUCP Organization: Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto CA Lines: 31 Nf-ID: #N:hplabsc:96100003:000:1640 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.