NRIs whine too much

One thing is for sure - these NRIs whine too much. Either that, or the media is over hyping the vagaries in the life of these NRIs. Hardly a day passes before you see a NRI type appearing on prime time TV and whining about how much racism he has to face in places like UK, US or Australia! Why can't these guys just grow up and get a life. We are now sick and tired of watching these good for nothing whiners hogging all the space on TV.

It is almost as if these deluded NRIs think that people back home don’t have to suffer any oppression at all! Are people living in towns and cities of India never harassed, never bullied, never tormented, never unfairly passed over for promotion, never discriminated due to their caste or religion, never looted by a pickpocket or mugger! Unfairness is a part of life. The NRIs should know that.

Just because you have purchased a ticket to US or Australia, it does not mean that you are leaving all the unfairness of life behind. There is unfairness everywhere. You have to tolerate boorish fools and criminals everywhere. But the NRIs think that a ticket to Australia or US means a ticket to a cushy job, a good house, few credit cards, healthy bank balance and respect from everyone in the society.

That is not how the world works. You have to struggle a lot before you can make your mark in life. The NRIs don’t want to struggle. They think that their struggle should be over the moment they land in US or Australia. The white guys will roll out red carpet for them and go out of their way in fulfilling the needs and desires of their brown skinned guests.

If they meet a mugger in the street, the NRIs call him a racist goon, if they don’t get promoted fast enough, they blame their company for being racist, if the cab driver in Sydney or New York overcharges they whine racism, if the credit card company refuses to enhance their credit limit, they cry racism. For every small thing, they have racism to blame. I won’t be surprised if tomorrow we had a NRI whining racism because he suffered a mosquito bite in Sydney.

Too bad, Indians living in India don’t have the luxury of blaming the so-called racist white guys for their myriad woes. We blame ourselves and we try to solve our problems by bringing changes in our own lives. But the NRIs of this world won’t accept their fault and they are determined to pass blame on the white race. When the NRIs succeed, they credit themselves, when they fail they blame it on racism.

It is because of their obsession with racism that the NRIs are termed ABCD (Angrzi born confused desi). Media should stop taking these puffed up scarecrows seriously.

The fuss of B T Brinjal

It seems as if brinjal has suddenly become the most powerful crop in the country. Everyone is talking about it. But it is still not clear why these so called environmentalists are so much against BT Brinjal. Few years ago there were similar protests against BT cotton. The so-called environmentalists claimed that BT cotton would destroy farmer’s livelihood. But today we have a situation where more than 80% of the nation’s cotton farmers have already voluntarily switched over to BT cotton. In China the cotton production has gone up by many times since the farmers there started growing BT cotton. In US, more than 54% of the crop grown is of the genetically modified variety.

So why are people in India so afraid of genetically modified crops, which is what the BT Brinjal and BT cotton are? Is this an anti-science movement! Certain groups of environmentalists don’t want the farmers to have access to better technology and that is why they are opposing the entry of GM crops in India. The truth is that BT brinjal is compositionally identical to normal brinjal except for the additional Bt protein. This crop has been tested on a number of animal groups to show that it is not toxic to any group. In fact, government must get out of the business of dictating what seeds the farmers in the country can use. The decision should be left to the farmers and to the consumers.

Those who want to grow BT variety of crops should be allowed to do so and the consumers who have no qualms about eating BT food, should be allowed to buy such products from the market. Not everyone in this world is a fan of “organic food”, so such food must not be forced down our throats. One last point – the truth is that nature itself takes recourse to genetic modification all the time. Plants, animals, all sorts of creatures evolve over a period of time, how does it happen, if not through genetic modification. The fear of genetic modification is unscientific and irrational. There are superstitious people who suffer from inordinate fear of eclipses and there are those who fear genetic modification in crops. Such superstitious folks need not be taken seriously.

Fairness cream advertisements

India is a country where even the Gods can be heard lamenting their dark complexion. In a rather morose tone, Lord Krishna sings, “Radha kyon gori, main kyon kala…” (Why is Radha fair, while I remain dark?) If the Gods themselves are feeling insecure about their complexion, then why should the mortals be any different? Both men and women in the country yearn for a fairer skin. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of skin whiteners get sold in the country every year. The cosmetics companies are also spending big bucks on television advertisements to market their products. You can hardly watch TV for an hour without coming across at least one advertisement about a product that promises to make you fairer in a matter of few days.

Most of us would still remember the old Fair & Lovely TV commercial that showed a morose looking father who wished that he had a son instead of a dark-complexioned daughter. Because the daughter was dark, her job prospects were limited and she was working at a low-paying job. Even the prospects for her marriage seemed bleak. Then the daughter decides to do the smart thing. She begins using Fair & Lovely to transform herself into a beautiful and confident girl. In no time, she becomes fair and beautiful and she finds it easy enough to bag a lucrative job as an airhostess. Cut to a coffee shop located in a five-star hotel where she takes wide-eyed parents. In India, millions of viewers who watched this advertisement found nothing wrong with it.

It isn’t as if only women have been bitten by the fairness bug; if anything, the yearning for fairness is not gender specific. It seems to affect both the sexes equally. A case in point is the famous advertisement in which the Bollywood superstar, Shah Rukh Khan was seen playing pivotal role of a “male beauty advisor”. The advertisement for Emami’s Fair and Handsome cream had Shah Rukh advising a sad and morose looking young man to start using the fairness cream from Emami in order to boost his sex appeal. That is what the young man does, and in a matter of days, he is noticeably fairer and viola, he gets the girl. The message in these all too popular commercials is that one must get whiter skin in order to get that dream girl or dream job.

But the most flamboyant advertisement of fairness cream was the one that had Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Neha Dhupia in lead roles. Chopra and Khan were once together, and Chopra still carries a flame for him, and around her neck she wears half a heart-shaped locket. Khan, who has the other half of the locket, is about to propose to Dhupia, but deep inside he has feelings for Chopra. Incensed, Dhupia dumps Khan, and in the advertisement there is scenario where Chopra is looking for Khan at the airport. So here’s the $1 million question: What was keeping them apart? You’ll never guess: it was Chopra’s dark complexion that lost out to fairer-skinned Dhupia. But there is nothing to fear, for Priyanka Chopra has already decided to rely on Hindustan Unilever’s Pond’s White Beauty to get fairer.

These days we are having advertisements from Dove Fairness Therapy that seems bent to prove that a fair skin is a basic necessity for any Indian woman. There is also the Neutrogena Fine Fairness cream that has Bollywood starlet Deepika Padukone playing a lead role. Bollywood’s metrosexual icon, John Abraham has also signed a lucrative deal with a cosmetic company to promote a fairness cream targeted at men. Anil Kapoor’s daughter, Sonam can be seen promoting a fairness cream from Loreal. Today fairness cream advertising can be seen across all prime channels. The makers of these creams are sponsoring all the popular serials. So you have Fair and Lovely sponsoring Seven and Loreal sponsoring a plethora of reality TV shows.

So what if such advertisements raise hackles among those who say such products reinforce age-old prejudices that equate fair skin with good looks. As long as Indians are filled with desire for fair skin, such products will keep getting made and they will be advertised on TV. Look at the matrimonial ads. Everyone wants a fair bride or groom. So why should we blame the ad filmmakers or the cosmetic firms. They are simply catering to a need that already exists in the society. But it is also a fact that these creams are not medicines, they are only cosmetics containing a tiny concentration of skin-lightening components. They are partly effective at best. If any user thinks that he or she will have the skin of Angelina Jolie after using the cream for a week, then they are bound to be disappointed.

Australia – Falsely accused of racism

For the last one-month the Indian media has been harping about the so-called racist attacks on Indians in Australia. During TV debates we could hear words like “White Taliban” being used to refer to Australians. Even harsher languages have been used in newspaper editorials.

But three of the most highly publicised incidents of so-called race attacks have now been proven to have very little to do with race or with the local Australian population. Investigation by Australian police has shown that in two of the murders, people of Indian origin were involved. In the third case, where an Indian’s vehicle was allegedly torched by “racist Australian youths”, it has now been found that it was simple case of insurance fraud. The Indian himself set fire to his vehicle to claim money from insurance companies.

So is the Indian media, newspapers and TV channels, going to apologize for unjustly branding the entire Australian continent as racist? I don't think so. It is time our media got its act together, because if they continue to dish out false propaganda in name of news, then readers are going loose faith in these outlets and move to the Internet to find their quota of news.

These days I am even thinking of discontinuing the two newspapers that I get. I thing the Internet poses as a better avenue of getting latest news. I am really tired of the xenophobia that is being dished out in Indian media these days. These so-called journalists need to tone down the rhetoric and develop a degree of respect for their readers. Otherwise they risk loosing readers.