Not OP (and not a fan of his whataboutism plus you don't deserve to be downvoted) but I think the issue is that India is so large and diverse that commentators can be right and wrong at the exact same time when painting a brush with the term "India".
When social and political norms can vary within individual states, let alone the entire country, it causes people to feel reporting about very negative or very positive news is propaganda one way or the other.
A lot of this is then further inflamed by IT Cells from parties across the board, especially because most NRIs are getting news about India via the internet plus social media.
Add to that the fact that most Western media isn't biased (I've worked with them), but might write articles using a broad brush that pisses other NRIs off and then we all devolve into regionalist or casteist bickering.
Eg. When the Unnao tragedy happened (which was horrible), it was reported in some western media that it was in India and broad brushed as an Indian issue. A number of Tamil and Malayali friends too offense to that and began saying "oh, it's actually Uttar Pradesh. Bhaiyyas are always like that" and regionalist shit like that, which obviously pissed off the UP+Bihari wale in my office.
On the side, you can see propagandists like Agnihotri inflaming Hindu-Muslim tensions by bringing up the Kerala Story as if every single Malayali Muslim is a future Jihadi and inflaming Hindi-Southern tensions by making a number of idiots assume Malayalis are a 5th column, which is an extremely horrible broad brushed assertation
And finally, a lot of people say that BJP voters are illiterate and illiteracy is pushing back India. As someone with family from small town India who has known illiterate people, they are smart as you and I. Just because they didn't get the opportunity to learn to read+write doesn't mean they can't think rationally and logically. So for NRIs from lower middle and working class (as a lot of NRIs increasingly are now), it feels very classist and insulting.
Basically, what I'm getting at is that we use our prior experiences and background to understand a country, but when you are dealing with a country as large and diverse as India it automatically falls apart.
> Add to that the fact that most Western media isn't biased (I've worked with them)
Have you forgotten the New York Times job ad for South Asia Business Correspondent for India?
Since you say Western media isn't biased and that you have worked with them, I would like to see at least one huff piece published by Western media on Modi/BJP. Surely there has to be at least one article to counter all the anti-Modi/anti-BJP articles we keep seeing propping up in the Western media. If you can't find even one piece that can counter-balance the mainstream narrative about India and its ruling political party then it isn't actually "unbiased". The tilt towards one side of the political spectrum is pretty obvious to all those who have been seeing Western media play its game.
> so large and diverse that commentators can be right and wrong at the exact same time when painting a brush with the term "India"
Yeah and since when has Western media ever understood this nuance? The bias is deep seated and pretty obvious to observers like me who fall on the other side of the political spectrum.
> Have you forgotten the New York Times job ad for South Asia Business Correspondent for India?
The NYT is not the primary source of truth for policymakers in the United States.
I agree there are a number of issues with the NYT's Delhi office, and a lot of that stems from bad pay.
The media ecosystem in the US works the same way as how the media works pin India. I haven't seen very nuanced discussions about American institutions in the Dainik Jagran, Hindustan Times, or WION either.
> Yeah and since when has Western media ever understood this nuance?
In the Media that is actually consumed and read and used by policymakers like when I was on the Hill, as well as in the educational programs that bring future Americans into the Foreign Service.
> The NYT is not the primary source of truth for policymakers in the United States.
I don't have any issue with most current policymakers in US (for the past decade at the very least). Surprisingly most US lawmakers have their own individual views on India (unaffected/not influenced by Western media) and have a good working relationship with the GoI (including Modi and more specifically Jaishankar). This includes policymakers from both sides of the political spectrum (Republicans as well as the Democrats). Thank God for that. Else if they actually believed half the articles that came out of papers like NYT or Washington Post, they would have a totally warped understanding of India. And a really negative one at that. Policymakers pre-Bush era got most things about India wrong (and paid a price for it too with WTC bombings, 9/11 and finding Osama Bin Laden hiding close to their Ally's military complex). US Policymakers have changed their outlook and very few actually hold on to the anti-India stance that they once had. That's welcome.
My issue is with the common citizens getting a warped view of India. That's all.
> In the Media that is actually consumed and read and used by policymakers like when I was on the Hill, as well as in the educational programs that bring future Americans into the Foreign Service.
That's good to know. But Western Media still has a lot to catch up vis-a-vis being unbiased. They still heavily tilt towards parties that are non-BJP. That is fine if that is their intended outlook. But at least let it not pretend to be unbiased then.
> The media ecosystem in the US works the same way as how the media works pin India. I haven't seen very nuanced discussions about American institutions in the Dainik Jagran, Hindustan Times, or WION either.
Yes I agree with you that Indian media is biased too. Most of the media outlets are pro-Modi/pro-BJP. And in a way it should also be seen as a counter to Western media outlets and continuous disinformation/propaganda that kept coming from there. Let us not forget that people who work in Media organizations also have their own individual biases and they typically hire people who subscribe to their biases. It is not always necessarily a money thing (where the ruling party pays a media organization to speak in its favour). Many a times it is purely for ideological reasons.
Much the same as NYT or WP. The only problem is when NYT/WP is that it proclaims itself to be unbiased. That's when I go "Come on man I know you aren't. Quit the pretence".
Also Indian media typically is reactionary. We don't particularly have nuanced discussions about the West because first and foremost we don't have our own statistics bureau that can create all sorts of indexes that the West creates out of thin air. Some of the Western Indexes are based on factual research but most of them aren't. And we just typically counter them in a reactionary manner. We do not invest efforts into actually coming up with actual statistics or at least indulge in counter-propaganda. That appetite simply does not exist. Many of these Western statistics, stories and news articles go unrebutted.
Like I gave an example of World Happiness Index. Let us take World Press Freedom Index. India ranks below Afghanistan in World Press Freedom Index. 11 spots behind Afghanistan. This is a total joke. Is the West actually trying to say that Taliban, which is ruling Afghanistan now, has more Press Freedom than India? You see how these nonsensical statistics go unchallenged? Because what would you even counter these with? It is that ridiculous! Surely if everything was so bad in India we wouldn't be a thriving and one of the fastest growing economies in the World today. We would all be on the streets rioting (like what happened in Sri Lanka) and storming Modi's residence. Most of it is hyperbole.
When social and political norms can vary within individual states, let alone the entire country, it causes people to feel reporting about very negative or very positive news is propaganda one way or the other.
A lot of this is then further inflamed by IT Cells from parties across the board, especially because most NRIs are getting news about India via the internet plus social media.
Add to that the fact that most Western media isn't biased (I've worked with them), but might write articles using a broad brush that pisses other NRIs off and then we all devolve into regionalist or casteist bickering.
Eg. When the Unnao tragedy happened (which was horrible), it was reported in some western media that it was in India and broad brushed as an Indian issue. A number of Tamil and Malayali friends too offense to that and began saying "oh, it's actually Uttar Pradesh. Bhaiyyas are always like that" and regionalist shit like that, which obviously pissed off the UP+Bihari wale in my office.
On the side, you can see propagandists like Agnihotri inflaming Hindu-Muslim tensions by bringing up the Kerala Story as if every single Malayali Muslim is a future Jihadi and inflaming Hindi-Southern tensions by making a number of idiots assume Malayalis are a 5th column, which is an extremely horrible broad brushed assertation
And finally, a lot of people say that BJP voters are illiterate and illiteracy is pushing back India. As someone with family from small town India who has known illiterate people, they are smart as you and I. Just because they didn't get the opportunity to learn to read+write doesn't mean they can't think rationally and logically. So for NRIs from lower middle and working class (as a lot of NRIs increasingly are now), it feels very classist and insulting.
Basically, what I'm getting at is that we use our prior experiences and background to understand a country, but when you are dealing with a country as large and diverse as India it automatically falls apart.