Indian
Media Watch
How to do hatchet
jobs on India - lessons from BBC ??
Arindam Banerji
(1) On Indian
outsourcing boom:
Today we hear ...
says "The
rush to cash in on India's outsourcing boom will lead to price wars and
could squeeze Indian entrepreneurs out of the market, according to new
research".
"India remains the prime destination of
outsourcing for the American companies as the country turns out 75,000
English-speaking information technology professionals every year and has a
low wage structure, a study has said....Software development and
maintenance, as also business processing, including back-office functions
like accounting, human resources, call centres and data analysis are the
major areas of outsourcing to India, the Forbes Magazine said".
But, this finds no mention, obviously.
(2) On heat wave
deaths:
Then, again
""We don't want the consequences of
this heatwave to be a macabre number, but rather an opportunity to truly
understand the difficulties in the health and social networks, and to ensure
that resources aren't forgotten ..."
"Such
acts seem bizarre but are a common ritual conducted in villages to invoke
the rain gods".
(3) On communal amity
in Goa
"Despite its strong Catholic cultural
roots, Goa currently has a right-wing Hindu nationalist government",
primarily based on innuendo and unproven hearsay. The message - Catholics
are getting cleansed and marginalised, thanks to the damned "yindoos".
But, finally admits that there's nothing
much to report:
"For the moment though, it is Sunday
service as usual in the hundreds of ancient, white-washed churches dotted
across Goa".
NOTE: No mention of Parrikar's achievements - he
just happens to be one of the best CMs in the country
(4) But, Look
who's behind the wheel:
Of course, according to the BBC press release,
we find out that
"Pakistani-born
Abbas Nasir, a former Head of the BBC's Urdu Service, has been appointed
Executive Editor for the Asia and the Pacific Region at BBC World Service.
Abbas Nasir (43) was born in Karachi and started his career in journalism in
Pakistan with the daily Dawn in the early 1980s.".
Abbas Nazir is the same person, whom M.Shiraz
Paracha had complained thus, to Greg Dyke (DG of BBC)
"I was humiliated and victimized not
because of my professional incompetence but because I refused to accept an
implicitly biased and narrow political and journalistic discourse practiced
under the tutelage of Abbas Nasir, the editor of the Urdu section (currently
acting managing editorSouth Asia).
Sir, Working at the BBC Urdu Service for two
years not only affected my studies but also ruined my family life because I
was working in a hostile environment where I was became a victim of my own
talents. My doctor, teachers, friends and colleagues at work all were aware
of my circumstances at work.
At the BBC, I was excluded and ridiculed because, in the management's view, I
wasn't a good Muslim and a patriotic Pakistani...!" -
from public letter available on the web.
For the definition of the leanings of
patriotic Pakistani, we can look up the Nayyar report:
"Four themes emerge most
strongly as constituting the bulk of the curricula and textbooks of the
three compulsory subjects.
1. that Pakistan is for Muslims
alone;
2. that Islamiat is to be forcibly taught to all the
students, whatever their faith, including a compulsory reading of Qur'an;
3. that Ideology of Pakistan is to be internalized as
faith, and hate be created against Hindus and India;
4. and students are to be urged to take the path of Jehad
and Shahadat."
(5) Patriotic
Pakistani
"As we walked along the bustling high
street, we came across a stall belting out the latest Hindi hits - no doubt
the usual pirate copies. This is very much the chaotic Indian way: pirate
tapes, pirate designer clothes and now pirate GM seeds".
(6) Finally, from the
past, we see India has been complaining for a while, now:
Of course, we all know what a patriotic
Pakistani must always do - please refer to the Nayyar report for more.
Things are so bad, that even the some of
the Indian press complained:
"Talk of spin-doctors brings to mind the
sainted British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC has a justifiably high
reputation for factual accuracy. But when some facts are given, some
withheld and others reordered, then the truth becomes an item on the stock
exchange, to be tossed about in an elaborate game of profit and loss. ...
Its former Urdu section chief, Mr Abbas Nasir,
is now the South-Asian news editor. Chinese premier, Mr Zhu Rongji's visit
to Pakistan and General Musharraf's diatribes against India at the official
banquet in Islamabad were duly given prominent coverage on the BBC World
Service news bulletins.
Of the US Deputy Secretary of State, Mr Richard Armitage's call on New
Delhi to discuss America's star wars defence proposal, there was not so much
as a squeak. A few weeks ago, the head of Corporation's Bengali section, Mr
S. M. Ali, was retired following an outcry from Dhaka about his boasted
involvement in the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected
government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in August 1975. Mr S. M. Ali was once a
major in the old Pakistan army and had fought against the liberation of
Bangladesh.
He was picked up by the BBC and vested with the respectability of
authorship. His work on the Cold War in the Himalayas is a tendentious
India-baiting excursion. The Maoist-Mullah Bangladeshi chattering classes
love to project India as a catspaw of the US. Mr Ali was brought out from
the BBC closet to pronounce darkly on the Russian President, Mr Vladimir
Putin's visit to India last October.
As for the recent Bangladeshi atrocity against soldiers of India's Border
Security Force, the BBC paraded one Mr Alistair Lawson from its Dhaka Bureau
to extol the virtues of the Bangladesh Defence Rifles. It was as witless a
performance as any from a Bertie Wooster and wickedly insensitive, but in
keeping with BBC policy of projecting India through a glass, darkly".
Is it time to throw the BBC out of
India, as China has already done for BBC-TV and quite possibly the British
will soon do??