India.. Shinning?

Yesterday i was again reminded of an annoying truth about India. We as Indians do an extremely crappy job of marketting our country. I was told yesterday by an aquantaince that they are scared to go to India because they are afraid of the crowds, the chaos and the lawlessness. My jaw dropped to the floor, this person was a native of Mexico, and considered Thailand as a more lucrative tourist locale than India. No offense to those countries but those are not the contries best known for stability. On the other hand, in India there is barely an occasional terrorist attack which has in recent times been dealt with firmly and swiftly.
In my six years in the US i have tried to be a model citizen in trying to portray my country in a good light, I have been asked about the education system in India, the Technological development, occasional questions about Indian politics and the ever popular discussion on that symbol of India "The Taj".
Yet invariably the discussion turns towards the popular monkey man in delhi, the elephant who went on a rampage in karnataka, the man who threatened to shoot himself in the head if Sonia Gandhi did not take over as PM. I understand the significance of sensationalism in our current culture but the Associated Press spiders never fail to collect these stories to place them on the popular websites like MSN and Google. I have rarely seen a mention in these international channels about the fact that India is one of the few countries that has a Nuclear Scientist as thier President, one of the most popular presidents in Indian history. Rarer still are mentions that the Indian stock market has been booming to dizzing heights. That entire university campuses in India have gone wireless (something very recent even in the US).
The perception of India as a backward country is largely media driven and to an extent driven by the representive populace in the US. Some of the very well known stereotypes of Indians in the US are, they are poor people who run 7-11 stores, they stink, they speak in heavy accents, that they steal jobs and every call center is in India. The perception of India is that there are no roads in India, the traffic is chaotic and people must be getting run over all the time, there is dirt and dust everywhere, elephants roam the cities and beggars and thieves stalk people to relieve them of thier possesions. These are all images portrayed in movies and CNN documentaries. There was write up on MSN over the last year where a correspondent visited India, wrote all the above points regarding the place and called India 'one of the most horrible places on earth'. Angelina Jolie recently travelled to my home town of Pune to shoot for her movie because the locale was similar to Afghanistan. The key here was that there are hills and caves around Pune. Pune itself is a very savvy, technologically advanced city with great architecture and history. Yet that description of Pune was never publicized whenever Angelina's trip was discussed, I belive someone missed a great opportunity to introduce the beautiful city of Pune to the western world who read every nugget of Ms Jolie's trip.
The people in India and the NRI population in the US should make an effort to correct some of these perceptions. Yes 7-11 stores are run by a majority of South Asians (Indian and Pakistani) but these stores make a lot of money for these people since they are always open in every block of every city in the US. Indians stink because they are aliens to the concept of Deodarants, I have known friends guilty of this, also the stink is also attributed to the strong smell of spices involved in Indian cooking. These scents stick to the fabric worn by the people in a house where Indian food is made, but i have known a lot of people trying to prevent this by cleaning thier clothes more often and opting for better exhausts. Indians have heavy accents but compare that to the fact that all of them can speak english enough to hold a minimal conversation with an American. How many Americans can claim to do the same on thier travels to France or even India. And yes recently there has been a move to outsource technical jobs and Call Centers to India because there is a Huge Talent pool there. The importance of being an engineer or a doctor in India is unsurpassed anywhere in the world. The courses are absolute, in becomming an engineer students do not take philosophy or phsychology courses to score easy grades. In becomming an engineer in India, i can successfully take apart a computer and put it together again. a feat that would challenge even the most experienced Geek at the local Best Buy.
The stereotypes against the country though are tougher to explain and tougher yet to overcome. To do this, the powers that be should control the caricaturization of the country. The most popular newpaper that is spidered by all the western Websites is The Times of India. They must refrain from sensationalizing the most trivial of news. International spiders pick up the top 5 - 10 news, they cannot have the elephant on a rampage in Karnataka as the top news in a country where so much happens on any given day. Yes the traffic is chaotic in India but the youtubbers should stop making fun of it by putting out of context videos of it everywhere. I am yet to find pictures/video of the excellent Mumbai-Pune expressway anywhere. This is not censoring of news but just prioritizing of it. Ms. Jolie may well shoot her movie in Pune or even adopt a kid from the streets but use her presence to show her the brilliance of Pune and get the press hanging onto her to pick up some pointers for thier writeups. I am sure the producers of her movie may have accomodated that.
The questions that always arise out of such a conversation is 'Who Cares?', 'Why bother?'. We live in an environment where boundaries are fast disappearing. The smallest of incidents have a tendency to snowball into International Disputes. There is a good population of the US that actually belives that each Indian in the US is taking money out of thier pocket. On the other hand there is a sizable population in India that belives the US is nothing but a Hedonistic dance club. There are strippers and promiscuos women running amok on the streets of New York and Los Angeles. There are pin striped gangsters driving thier black cars in Las Vegas. These are the images seen in Indian Movies regarding the US. The truth as always is far from reality. Such a write up will not be seen from an American because they enjoy thier status of being a World onto themselves. There are not a lot of them who are world travellers and those who are, always travel with a chip on thier shoulders not caring what the world thinks of them. Maybe this is an American sterotype. This is why there should be a discussion, communication and truthful representaion of countries to one another.