Monday, July 03, 2006

Indian government, media's obsession with America, Britan: World has 218 more countries other than US and UK

Israel attacked Palestinian Prime Minister's office and damaged it. The airstrikes are getting fiernce. In Gaza buildings, power stations, bridges were destroyed.

Strangely, this action which Israel calls 'collective punishment' has failed to attract our attention in India.

Indian government and media seem detached. What I am worried is that newspapers are not just concerned, they may take sides, but they should report.

Its a big humanitarian crisis for Palestinians. Unfortunately in India, we have seen how during the cold war everything wrong was attributed to CIA and US while there could be nothing wrong about Russia [USSR] then.

In those days, the journalists and writers who went to Russia and returned would write romantic details about the country like a girl who held spade or worked in factory and in the evening went for a date and during the night read literature--epitome of civilised society.

Similarly, once Israel was eternal enemy for us. So much that we didn't play sports with them. Remember how it was only after Rajiv Gandhi's intervention that we could play Israel in the Davis Cup. As long as Yasser Arafat was there he bonhomie remained though since Narsimha Rao's times we got to see Palestine getting off our national consciousness.

Now that everybody in India's middle and upper-middle class have found their Eldorado in US and software revolution has eclipsed all, politics, morality, international affairs, we give a damn to all. We just don't care what happens in the world except US and to an extent UK.

Just to remind that there are 220 countries in this word!