Indian Village Gets Webpage, Makes News

A rural outpost surrounded by rice paddies has a plan to expand its territory into cyberspace. In a report from Reuters Jonathan Allen states that even though the village of Hansdehar hasn't yet installed its first internet connection this move to publicize the names, occupations and other details of all 1,753 residents could provide new sources of revenue and help farmers sell their crops at a higher price. The website http://www.smartvillages.org does not yet appear to be online, or is suffering some server trouble after a flood of traffic logged on after the initial report.

Late last week I was corresponding with my editor at Wired about a story I have in the works when it occurred to me that as far as the American mainstream press is concerned, there are only a few types of stories about India that are newsworthy. Other than occasional political catastrophes, like an arms race between India and Pakistan, or the Tsunami, editors in the states look for two things.

The first set of stories could be summed up as, "Look at those poor Indians get screwed by rich people." This category includes slavery accounts, prostitution, the spread of AIDS, state orchestrated famine, poisoned soft drinks and other types of misery.

The second category reads, "Look at those Indians play with high tech stuff, how improbable!" Every time I read a story about outsourcing to Infosys or Wirpo, about call centers, the Indian space agency, online villages, or the new highway system, I can't stop thinking that the only reason people in the States are interested is because they still think this is an inscrutable and backward country that will never really make any significant strides into the modern world.

About a month ago, I sent a letter to an editor about doing a story on the Navy War Room Leak where spies allegedly used a woman as a honey trap to sneak out state secrets on pen drives. In my pitch I wrote, "It is a wonder that this story has never broken in America."

He replied, "[The story is] fun and salacious, but it hasn't broken here because no body gives a shit about India."

When I read his reply, I was sort of upset. I've spent a lot of time here, and it is difficult for me to think that most of the world still thinks of this country as completely backward and uninteresting. But he also had a point. The Navy War Room Leak story would be big news if it happened in a Western country--it has all the juicy elements it needs to make headlines--but it doesn't fall into the two categories that make India news. No one in the West wants to think that India's navy has secrets worth knowing, or that people here use technology because it is useful, not because it's novel.

In the end, while world-changing events happen in South Asia every day, all the West will hear are reports about villages buying their own web space.