Neelakantan has a funny post on how to write about India for the foreign media.
Your piece has to start well. Therefore you first create, with good vocabulary, a nice paragraph on the social inequities in India. Keywords to be used are caste, poverty, illiteracy. Statistics like 80% of India lives on farms or 50% of India is illiterate or 70% of India does not use soap can be very handy. Other than percentages, use population figures. 4,32, 1235 houses do not have more than 12 volts of electricity for 3 days of the week would make a great sentence.
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The second paragraph should be about India’s growth in the last few years. Don’t forget to add a sentence in the end of this para to denounce the growth. Keep this para as short as possible. Keywords are myth, haves vs have nots, elitist bias. So, a sentence in this paragraph should read, even though India’s IT and BPO sector has grown, farmers commit suicides.
Whether India has improved since the reforms is open to debate; I don’t have an opinion on it yet since I’m still trying to define improvement. But much writing on India is indeed like this and as any careful reader will notice, it says nothing.
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You’re absolutely right.
This is one of the dumbest post I have seen in the blogosphere. I hate to see such posts linked in Blogbharti. I thought you guys apply your mind before selecting the posts. Linking to posts like this is shameful.
Gaurav: Glad we agree. Heh.
SaneDude: Occasionally, such posts bother people because Blogbharti is perceived to be anti-market and readers feel betrayed when one links to such posts. I would not like to comment on either BB’s politics or mine but while Neelakantan is clearly on the economic Right, I think people who are not will also agree with the basic point being made - that the kind of writing he ridicules, says nothing. Being a “sane dude”, please try to comment more coherently. What did you not like about this post? Calling it “shameful” doesn’t help.
Hello, I am coherent in my comments. I don’t care if he is economic right or not. His post is the dumbest post I have seen. if Blogbharti endorses such posts, I would like to say that Blogbharti stinks big time. I am sorry to say this but I never expected such posts to be linked in Blogbharti. Neelakantan’s post is just a right wing rant. I really don’t understand how it can be considered to be post worthy. Let me ask you, if a guy ridicules people who quote hard data available through surveys, how can it be a good post. It just shows that he can’t even understand the reality. I really don’t see any justification to his post. I am also not bothered about the policies of Blogbharti. it is immaterial to me. If a site links to posts like this, I am seriously wondering what I am doing in that site.
SaneDude: Parts of the post do sound like a rant but isn’t some of what he says true? Don’t a lot of people write articles either without quoting data or by quoting it selectively. In any case, we can agree to disagree. As for visiting Blogbharti, I see no reason why your distaste for my post selection should extend to the entire team. Keep visiting us.
“Don’t a lot of people write articles either without quoting data or by quoting it selectively.”
Blogs do not contain refereed articles. Many of the bloggers seem to be well intentioned people in different occupations and discussing sometimes in areas in which they are interested but do not have expertise. With time, discussions and more data better pictures may emerge. Instead of ridiculing each other and hunting in packs ( I do get the impression that there are groups among bloggers), it might have been better to explain how to get better data. Even experts do not agree and for amateurs it is more difficult when even governments may present data in ways that they think is convenient for them (An example below). My impression is that many bloggers involved in these discussions do not really have time for painstaking analysis and after some efforts they feel that they see the truth and others do not get it. Probably we should try to learn and develop better ways to discuss.
Example:
From http://www.scidev.net/Opinions/index.cfm?fuseaction=readOpinions&itemid=553&language=1
“India’s IT industry is not as successful as it seems and other countries should think carefully before following suit, writes Athar Osama.
…..
In 2003, for example, India claimed to have exported US$8.7 billion worth of software, most of which went to the United States. But US companies recorded just US$420 million worth of software imports from India — a remarkable 20-fold difference.
The GAO believes that this huge inconsistency arises, in part, from India misreporting financial data. For instance, India counts the earnings of all temporary workers in the United States as part of their exports figures. But this is against universally-accepted financial disclosure conventions suggested by the International Monetary Fund. The result is a gross over-representation of Indian software exports.”
it says nothing.
One of the easiest things to do is to ridicule; the only thing that is even easier to give is advice.
I think it is good that many now have a balanced view of “India Shining” since the NDA lost the election on that slogan. Such writing says a lot to me: not least that getting lost in the euphoria of limited success may take away our attention from our myriad problems.
But what does the post you have linked to say? It tells me more about the author of the post than about writng on contemporary India.
How should state-of-the-nation kind of writing about India avoid being banal is indeed a challenging question, and to that extent the post is indeed thought provoking.
Gaddeswarup and Shivam: Lets look at this way. What the author is basically trying to say is that India is on the right path. There are problems, of course, but it’s on the right path. I do not agree with that. As I have said above, “Whether India has improved since the reforms is open to debate; I don’t have an opinion on it yet since I’m still trying to define improvement” which makes it quite clear that I am not in full agreement with the writer of the post. What I agreed with was his saying that a lot of writing on India follows a set pattern (which he has outlined) that I dislike. (Even one of my favourite journalists, P. Sainath has fallen into that trap a couple of times while writing for The Hindu.) I do think that he has brought out that point well - and in a funny way - and I don’t think we should let his political sensibilities come in the way of our enjoying or appreciating it.
Further comments are welcome.
shivam,
i’ve always argued that those opposing the ‘india shining’ campaign and the alleged euphoria associated with it have proven to be the most consistent source of sustenance for that myth. the people have forgotten it, if it ever really reached them, the senior professionals among the pro-reform sections of the media had never given it much attention or respect, the politicians do not debate it, if they ever debate reforms in that terms…and the men who came up with it… dismissed it as a mere positioning idea long ago - many of their own partymen did not support the idea as it came out later.
so why does it persist as an idea up for debate ? my view is that while those who came up with the idea of ‘india shining’ *hoped* that the people would be stupid enough to believe it, those who opposed/oppose it are *confident* that the people were/are stupid enough to believe it….and need to be consistently disabused of this belief.
if you think the 2004 elections restored ‘balance’ in people’s views… you must think the ‘india shining’ campaign was a success. earlier.
swarup garu,
interesting article. and comment.
but your choice of writing as an example leaves me confused: do you wish to point this out as an example of better reasearched writing..or as an impatient expression of opinion?
My impression is that most of us are not experts but in a democratic process, we have to have some idea (both qualitatively and quantitatively) of what is going on. Many bloggers are highly educated people with resources to search for data. A continuing dialogue can perhaps help ( one says that we such percentage of GDP from IT, another may be looks around and sees how it is calculated thus slowly arriving at a better picture. May be another checks whether this income is calculated twice).Even experts do not agree but we have to try; there is no choice. I find that experts specialize too much and they have to produce results quickly and often their focus is narrow ( I have been talking to university professors. Many do not even know basic facts outside their areas.Take a survey of how many university professors know the difference between virus and bacteria or DNA and RNA). I find bloggers look at wider variety of topics and if they do not get in to ideologically rigid stances can provide better perspective and help disseminating information to those without the resources.
From outside, I often do not understand the difference between left and right. I usually take left to mean those who are also interested in the welfare of others; with this definition most bloggers seem to be left. I assume that most can see the benefits of globalization as well as some of the problems.