5 ms·

I am not sure what's going on at NY Times. They seem to write a lot of articles focusing on negative things about India. In a country as large as India, you can

• pmarreck 11y ago
  It's not just nytimes lol https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/14/more-people-die-taking-selfies-in-india-than-anywhere-else-in-the-world/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/14... ...just saw that one yesterday To be sure, I love India (from afar), but they have a looooooooooooot of work left to do to become anything close to a first-world nation. Fixing infrastructure and cultural issues (neither of which will be easy) would be a massive first step. Also, India is so large that trying to claim that "India is like this" or "India is like that" seems futile, as evidenced by your (admittedly anecdotal) example.
  • indians_pro 11y ago
    >but they have a looooooooooooot of work left to do to become anything close to a first-world nation. ur bias is leaking. being a 'first world' nation (a very arbitrary classification in the first place) is not a necessarily desirable attribute for a country to have. u can keep ur defacto oligarchy, ur mind numbing culture and media, which brainwashes citizens to conform and support foreign wars at enormous expense to human life and effort (through wasted tax money), let us keep our poverty, culture, and sane values... normally i wouldnt be so forthright and defensive, but the arrogant blindness of the comment really struck me as needing a counter, however unsupported by sources it may be (at this point, the futility and greed behind these wars and the global interference of wester nations, one in particular, is common knowledge).
    • TraderDuck 11y ago
      > which brainwashes citizens to conform and support foreign wars at enormous expense to human life and effort Lol. Not that I disagree about the americans spending too much on defense, but how can you say this with a straight face while India continually engages in a military dick-swinging contest with Pakistan? How are things in Kashmir these days?
      • indians_pro 11y ago
        haha. ha ha ha. a lot of pakistans intelligence services are financed by the cia (seriously, search it) and it is well-documented that the 'militants' coming over the border r paki agents. the dick swinging is over ownership of Kashmir, and no surprises, US-published maps of India do not include Kashmir as part of it. and india is never the aggressor in borded encounters, this is verifiably true. please i sincerely request u to watch this - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qVHzAinRH4g https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qVHzAinRH4g - to see the sort of propoganda us regularly engages in to dupe the global discourse. it is a very intense 1 hr watch and i daresay ull enjoy it more than many movies. noone has anything against americans themselves. just that their money is going to finance a govt that is increasingly mort aggressive at establishing global domminance, and that too using underhand tactics. please watch it and tell me ur opinion of it. my american friends liked it a lot.
        • TraderDuck 11y ago
          > india is never the aggressor in borded encounters, this is verifiably true. Wow, and you're accusing the americans of being brainwashed? A 5 second google search will turn up tons of incidents where India was the aggressor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014–15_India–Pakistan_border_skirmishes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014–15_India–Pakistan_border_... And yeah, Pakistan is obviously doing some awful stuff too. But you're not gonna convince anyone sensible that India is completely innocent.
          • nsenifty 11y ago
            > And yeah, Pakistan is obviously doing some awful stuff too. But you're not gonna convince anyone sensible that India is completely innocent. "some awful stuff" such as three invasions, several incursions by army regulars and by proxy, actively financing and training militant groups that attack India? Are you seriously comparing that with a couple instances of artillery shelling? Pakistan also routinely provides artillery cover fire for militants infiltrating into India.
  • dudul 11y ago
    "India is so large that trying to claim that "India is like this" or "India is like that" seems futile" Out of curiosity, which country is small enough to be able to say "Foo is like this" "Foo is like that"? Brazil? Italy? Switzerland? What's the right size to be able to qualify a country with one sentence?
    • arjie 11y ago
      Solid point. It's homogeneity vs. heterogeneity that matters, rather than the size. And being heterogeneous in one respect doesn't guarantee heterogeneity in others. For instance, America is a large country, and has people who live all sorts of lives. And yet when asked whether women have the same rights as men, the responses are incredibly homogeneous. On the other hand, opinions about whether abortion is morally acceptable are significantly different between urban (and suburban) populations and rural populations. America is large. And you can very well claim that Americans believe men and women should be treated equally. No futility there. And India is no different. There are issues with opinions which have broad appeal there and issues on which opinion is divided. Nothing is served by pretending that some group of individuals is so diverse that there is no issue on which they overwhelmingly favour one opinion. That's rarely (if ever) true.
    • nine_k 11y ago
      Vatican? San Marino? Andorra?
      • dudul 11y ago
        Are you completing my list or answering and saying that everybody in Vatican/San Marino/Andorra is the same, and that it is acceptable for example to say "everybody in Andorra is nice", or "everybody in San Marino likes gold"?
    • pavanky 11y ago
      There are plenty of small countries with populations smaller than medium sized cities. But that's besides the point. People here don't use the same brush to paint the entirety of US (or Europe), but they openly do so for many larger developing countries.
  • whelp 11y ago
    I love India too (from afar far far away...), but I got to correct this for you: > ... but they have a looooooooooooot of work left to do to become anything close to a <strike>first</strike> second-world nation.
    • wavefunction 11y ago
      India is a developing economy and a society that is rapidly modernizing, bringing many folks into a brighter future as quickly as they can from my perspective. I'm a white American who has visited different parts of India three times over the past four years and each time I find the amount of progress and change remarkable. This doesn't mean that there aren't many issues and major tasks to tackle but I find the resilience and pluck of the whole spectrum of Indians I've met to be commendable and invigorating.
• herbig 11y ago
  What part of India are you from? Rural or urban? The article seems to be focused on women in rural communities. Also, I don't think India is unique in negative coverage. With a newspaper as big as the NYT you're bound to find something negative, but every country gets primarily negative coverage, including the U.S. That's the news that sells.
  • harigov 11y ago
    Urban, but I am also not well informed on social issues. I don't deny the existence of whatever issue that the article mentioned but I just find it interesting that they don't showcase any progress India makes in these regards.
    • addicted 11y ago
      Because India has made very little progress in rural areas. We've largely regressed. Just look at the farmer suicide situation. This is my biggest frustration with the urban Indian middle class (which forms a very small slice of the population). We are almost completely unaware of how the rest of the country has been suffering over the last many years. A very visible example of this was the BJP India Shining campaign, which led to a massive electoral defeat. The BJP thought India was doing awesome because their entire worldview was centered around the Delhi middle class, while the rest of the country looked upon buses driving by with India Shining posters as a cruel joke. And the BJP faced the consequences in that election.
      • harigov 11y ago
        Maybe you are right. However, please remember that economy is as much dependent on public outlook as it is on other fundamentals like infrastructure, literacy, health, etc., If people think that the country is going somewhere, they will be excited to take risk and move forward in their life. So I don't see anything wrong with India Shining. With respect to rural India, I honestly don't know enough to comment.
• addicted 11y ago
  Actually, the real question should be what's going on in India. Your personal anecdote about not knowing women who don't work due to family pressures is ridiculously easily contradicted by the actual statistics. But here's a personal anecdote as well. My father's company had a female worker quit after she was promoted to basically being 2nd in charge from a fairly low position in HR (she's really brilliant) because her family insisted she had to have a child, and once she did they insisted she quit the job (she was offered 6 months maternity leave, as well as the ability to work from home. Her family was against it). He's also seen 2 other women have to quit their jobs because of family pressures in the past 2 years. So he's seen more women quit work in the past 2 years because of family pressures than the entire 2 decades he was running the company prior to these 2 years. And this is in Mumbai, not a distant rural village. Everytime someone writes/says something negative about India the first (and often, the only) response is to whine about the messenger instead of actually doing something about the issue at hand. After we do nothing to actually fix the issues, we wonder why people keep writing about all the issues India has.
  • deleted 11y ago
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  • rustynails 11y ago
    I had a look through New York Times on India (note: I have no connections with India, it was in response to a poster's comment about prejudice toward India and its subsequent brash dismissal that caught my attention). Many of the articles on India are negative. However, bad news sells. So, I wouldn't have expected anything different. There were some general non-negative articles (Whales dying on shores, LGBT laws gaining momentum). There was an absence of positive articles about India from a quick search. By contrast, I looked at Australia in the New York Times. Most of the articles were on sport and bushfires, so, there's definitely a different focus and attitude. Australia seems to be social events, India social unrest and injustices. I consider the New York Times to be prejudiced at times though. However, the article in question was well written, despite a lack of explanation of why there are less women in the Indian workforce than there were in the past. One example of NYT prejudice I remember was about Australia's first female PM, Julia Gillard. The NYT described Australians (collectively) as misogynistic because we dared to criticise a female Prime Minister about her looks. I searched at the time and found ONE media reference to a criticism from Germaine Greer - a prominent feminist - about Gillard's fat ass (I saw 'ditch the witch' after this article). I contrasted this to other PMs: John Howard in a bondage pose with his nose up George Bush's ass among many personal attacks on him (conveniently ignored), tony Abbott in his budgie smugglers and exaggerated lips, etc. The NYT must have had very big blinkers (or my prejudice comment holds). The reality is that India does bad things AND the media is very prejudiced. I think the dismissal of prejudice in the media is dangerous. Maybe, a letter to NYT suggesting some positive things in India may help raise awareness.
• rajathagasthya 11y ago
  Not to mention the racist cartoon which New York Times published in 2014 after the success of India's Mars mission and it's subsequent apology. There is clearly history of focusing on negative things about India, but bad news sells. The 'New York Times' Publishes Racist Comic About India's Space Mission: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharanya-haridas/the-new-york-times-publis_b_5903118.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharanya-haridas/the-new-york-... New York Times Apologizes For Racist Cartoon On India's Space Program: http://io9.gizmodo.com/new-york-times-apologizes-for-racist-cartoon-on-indias-1643314583 http://io9.gizmodo.com/new-york-times-apologizes-for-racist-...