TIME magazine’s 20-page article on India and it’s fast changing cities starts with Jim Erickson’s inference that the nations growth is real and ends with Mira Nair’s more thoughtful remark on why India arrives when the West thinks so. In between are references to the Mumbai bars, the mafia, J.R.D Tata and the usual clichés like the slums, the IT boom, the call centres and everything else that you expect in an India-related article.
Rather unfortunate that a magazine of such a high calibre offers hardly anything insightful or introspective in this surprisingly positive article about India. Alex Perry’s write-up about Mumbai makes such sweeping generalisations and glaring errors that makes you wonder why these foreign correspondents not spend more time on research before writing inane observations. His reference to Mumbai being the setting of Vikram Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’ only goes on to prove how he has brought in terminologies without proper background knowledge. Vikram Seth’s ‘modern-classic’ as he calls it is set in an imaginary city in North India and does not even have one reference to Mumbai.
The full article can be accessed here.
June 28, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Thanks WUJN (that’s my new short name for you
) India seems to be the flavour of the season. I’m going to India next week to do a 60 page country report for my magazine – 10 days, three cities. I will keep this post in mind.
June 28, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Woke is much easier
Have a safe and fruitful trip. Which cities are you covering? I heard it is is raining like mad everywhere.
June 28, 2006 at 6:22 pm
The Jacob Maha Rath Yatra will start from Delhi and end in Bangalore via Mumbai
June 28, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Reading busybee (busybeeforever.com) gives a much better insight into Mumbai or for that matter any metro pol of India.
June 28, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Its more like they want to jump and do the coverstory on the bandwagon labelled India.
I believe the greatest tradegy of India Inc is there exists no Innovation despite the names of IIT, IIM, ISB, the BITS, RECs, etc etc…
We exist since we can reproduce what the west innovated.
On a different note, I seem to like your style of posts. Visually a treat.
Thanks!
June 29, 2006 at 3:25 pm
I don’t know. I thought the comparison between India and China was quite insightful, and new, as was the India that lack of good government may actually be good for entrepreneurship. The Tata piece was also quite sobering for those so keen on India as a consumer market — essentially it says it isn’t one (yet).
June 29, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Hey Bill,
The India-China comparison was partly shown in a Mckinsey report earlier this year. But certainly there were some good points(Coverage of Mangalore for example), it is just that the style of writing appeared to be trying hard to jump into the ‘india is hot’ bandwagon rather than analysing facts.
June 29, 2006 at 7:43 pm
FYI…just try looking for a website for the major international airports in india. We claim to do every other companys data keeping and IT processing. We dont have a website where i could go and check for arrival and departures.
On a totally different note, the average IQ of the chinese is 110+. The average IQ of an indian is 80. Sorry, if we are emotional about it, but it seems to be the truth!
June 30, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Ashwin, whats the source for these average IQ stats? Do you know about the flaw of averages. And sampling a few for surveys in countries like India and China to pass judgement about the whole country (to speak for 1 bn plus people) is a dangerous thing.
I am not questioning IQ comparisons, may be the truth for all you know. But I hate the US style stats gathering exercises.
June 30, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Exactly the the point I wanted to make. In my 15 years of Indian education, I have never had my IQ tested (thank God!). I’m not aware of any body or agency that does that in India.
July 1, 2006 at 10:30 am
This maybe a good place for to begin reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iq_and_the_wealth_of_nations
http://news.com.com/Coding+for+fame%2C+and+dollars/2100-1007_3-6067549.html?tag=nefd.lede
thanks
July 2, 2006 at 8:53 am
Ashwin,
Though it might be true that Chinese has better IQ levels than Indians, I do not think there is an efficient enough method to determine a persons IQ, let alone the average IQ of a nation. (as silkboard and mutiny said). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iq_and_the_wealth_of_nations#Critique also suggests the same.
In a country like India, where each state, each town, each village has a social domain associated with it which is completely different from another, estimating a nations IQ with some tests is a complete joke.
The best thing I like about Wikipedia is that it is honest enough to admit that it is not an authoritative source of information by any means – whatever you see has an opposing theory as well since it is based on contributions by ordinary people around the world.
July 2, 2006 at 11:02 am
Your points are well taken. My reference to IQ’s was based on my previous comment on this post where i stated the following:
I believe the greatest tradegy of India Inc is there exists NO INNOVATION, despite the names of IIT, IIM, ISB, the BITS, RECs, etc etc…
We exist since we can reproduce what the west innovated.
There isn’t any originality in what we do, I was hoping to address that problem from an IQ prespective. Everyone seems to be hyper about how can someone find the mean for a sample size of 1.2Billion. Well! I was merely using the average as a means to point towards something, Not reflecting on someone’s natural ability.
July 2, 2006 at 11:39 am
Ashwin,
I think you are right on the lack of innovation part if you take it on a global stage. Maybe due to lack of initiatives from the govt or just from the people themselves. And lack of an environment which encourages innovation.
But things might change in future as we move on.
December 21, 2007 at 7:44 am
Maybe cultural indoctrination would work? The average iq in Japan is around 106…probably because the Japanese train their children to be fantastic engineers from toddlerhood:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2435046286370275454