Friday, May 04, 2007

INDIA: A Land of realities among hypes

This country has always amazed me with its differences existing atleast in a big city like Bombay. But, something more has stuck me of late. People in India hype things a lot when some unheard realities are much better to be talked about. Like, the ratio of number of people knowing that India is a contender in developing the fastest supercomputer to the number of people knowing that Abhishek and Aishwarya got married is very less. I understand that in every country, celebrities are given a demi-god status but in India, people fail to recognize celebrities and I remember an instance recently when a policeman in Bihar was warned since he had fined Dhoni for over speeding. We talk about policemen not doing their job, but when they do; we blame them for that. How can Dhoni become a celebrity? Really, what all has he done for the country? As noted in my last post, we hype a lot about our IT services companies without giving due importance to other sectors. We hype a part of India which is booming, completely forgetting the other part. We hype privatization forgetting the debacle of Centaur hotel sale. We hype our culture without understanding other's culture. We brag about our economic growth without knowing economics. I have heard from many of my friends that in India only illiterate people vote. They think getting a degree makes them literate. They often fail to understand the difference between literacy and education. Getting a coveted BTech degree from IIT or MBA degree from IIM doesnt make anyone literate. How many of such guys know which ward do they belong to in a municipal corporation. I haven't seen marking of any ward in any city except Bombay which I have been to. Why dont ever people protest against that? Why the so called very educated people stay away when the auto drivers haggle with them in Chennai? Why are we so illiterate about our rights and laws which we are taught about from our childhood and are very aware about the runs scored by Sachin Tendulkar in each form of cricket?
Next, moving on to movies, we hype movies made my Mani Ratnam, et al without even watching movies like Shwaas(Oscar entry), Dor(Excellent movie regarding women empowerment) etc. These movies don't entertain us because we want beautifully picturized songs or some fight scenes with brilliant camera techniques. We want something other than reality. We always want hype.
Cities: We hype some cities which have an airport size almost equal to my apartment complex here (really!) and label the national capital as "Female molester city" without recognizing the amount of development in terms of infrastructure Delhi has gone through. Go there to believe it.
Finally , how many so called educated Indians know that the best algorithm to determine whether a number is prime has been developed by a Professor and his students at IIT Kanpur?
Kudos to Indian media for keeping Indians in the darkness. NDTV, CNN-IBN and Aaj Tak: kindly go to HELL!!!!

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Well written Sri!

Pretty much agree to your post. In fact, most of the info was new to me as well.

6:27 AM  
Blogger Sriram said...

hey mrinmayee..thanks a lot for reading thru my posts!

1:37 PM  

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