amitabha@rochester.UUCP (Amitabha Mukerjee ) (10/24/85)
Today's New York Times seems to have given more than a proportional share to covering Rajiv Gandhi's tour on the occasion of UN's independence. He merits a front page picture and a separate news story while the speeches of the other world leaders are all abstracted on the next page. Today's TIME, in it's coverage, mentions that "80 international leaders, including Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and India's Rajiv Gandhi.." will be visiting the UN. Apparently Reagan will be meeting with only Rajiv Gandhi and Zia-ul-Haq from the non-"industrialized democracies", maybe as a demonstration to Russia of US links to the third world. Also, the quality of the reporting on India seems to be rather upbeat. Last week's TIME interview of RJ read quite well, and also the Festival of India has been getting rather favorable coverage in the media. Last month the London Times published a full page RJ interview and several articles which seemed very well balanced. Several other unusual forums, like this months Popular Photography, "Electronics" (last month), "Smithsonian", etc. have been carrying articles on India. This seems a far cry from the spirit of the "India and the media" discussion we had several months back: From: <kumar@hplabsc Mar 5 > > > India as a country does not figure too prominently in the news > media in the United States, but when it does, it is more often > depicted as a poor, hot, overcrowded, undernourished, ex-British > colony, rather than the new, emerging nation that it is. Few of > my American-born friends are free from the stereotype of India > that the media cultivates. Has something really happened in these few months? At the government level, I see little change, if any. The relations between India and the US have not changed much as evidenced by the recent decision from the state dept. refusing India's request for a CRAY and suggesting six VAX'es instead (due to defence reasons). So what are the reasons behind this? Or is it all a temporary phase? Of course, the festival of India has indeed had an effect on the imagination of the media. Also the image of a young, vigorous leader in such a vast soporific country has an element of drama. It may also be (as suggested by the NYT article (10/23)) that Rajiv has already managed to assume a leadership role in global politics. Whatever the reasons, the media coverage of India seems to have gone up a notch, at least for the time being, and I can only hope that this will lead to increased awareness and maybe an improvement in the undeservedly poor relations between these two large democracies. - Amitabha Mukerjee (khuto) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ UUCP: ..!{allegra, decvax, seismo}!rochester!amitabha ARPA: amitabha@rochester.arpa ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
reddy@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU (10/27/85)
I recall that when Reagan gave a national address about the KAL flight downing, he quoted Times of India, and it was the only newspaper he quoted. I guess the American Govt. is paying more attention to India, in general, compared to the last few years.
das@orstcs.UUCP (das) (10/31/85)
Maybe it just boils down to Rajnesh or Rajiv ! -------- p.s: Believe it or not Oregon State offers a course Rajnesh or Ghandhi !