Some how this article feels incomplete but it good read...

Seduced by an elusive idea of India from The Hindu

People may no longer ask you if you have computers in India, but they still wonder whether there is clean drinking water and believe that India, despite its booming economy, remains a "terrible place to be poor," as New Statesman noted in a special issue on India recently. The magazine's South Asia correspondent William Dalrymple voiced concern over the "unevenness" of the boom India is experiencing and pointed out that "much of India remains completely untouched" by it. The jury on India's future was still out, he suggested.

"India is changing with a speed that is astonishing, but ... much still remains uncertain and the country remains as fascinatingly unpredictable as ever," he wrote.

Translated in blunt language, it means that the idea of a "new" and "prosperous" India poised to become a "modern" super power is slightly exaggerated. Eventually, India will be defined not by the swanky new neighbourhoods in Gurgaon but by its crushing poverty that makes the country seem like "one land, two planets," as a headline in the magazine put it.

And what about India's much talked-about "soft power" in this "new era"? Its capacity to influence the world culturally? There is a worry that far from being able to influence others, the country itself is in danger of descending into a cultural black hole. "India goes Bollywood" was the topic of a debate, held as part of the Bonn Biennale, to explore the impact of India's economic boom and increasing "commercialisation of society" on its media.

Is there a danger that artistes and journalists in India are becoming too dependent on market forces? How big is the space for non-commercial art? And to what extent is entertainment replacing serious information and debate?

These were the questions posed to a mixed Indo-German panel, which included Dorothee Wenner, head of programme at Internationale Filmfestspiele. Opinion, as happens on such occasions, was divided with at least one participant — an art consultant from India — strongly opposing the view that space for serious debate back home was shrinking and being taken over by commercial forces. But because there was no consensus does not mean that the issues surrounding the relationship of culture, media, and the market disappear. These are real concerns and, in fact, the debate that took place in Bonn should be happening in India.

Ask any dispassionate observer of the post-liberalisation "modern" India and the answer you are likely to get to the above questions is: yes, artistes and journalists are becoming too dependent on market forces; there is little space for non-commercial art; and serious debate is almost non-existent. In fact, "India goes Bollywood" is a very apt description for what is going on in India on the cultural front — and in much of the media, especially in electronic media, which was supposed to herald a brave new world of information.

Those of us who live abroad and "get" their India through private satellite TV channels (alas, Doordarshan remains curiously invisible) get the sense that culturally nothing is happening in India outside of Bollywood. Watching Indian TV channels is like watching a long Bollywood sequence, only occasionally interrupted by news or current affairs. Even news is not Bollywood-free. Clearly there is a perception in Indian TV newsrooms that the only way to spice up news and make it interesting is to pepper it with filmi stardust — Shah Rukh Khan endorsing a new computer brand; Preity Zinta opening a new jewellery boutique; Amitabh Bachchan on a visit to Dubai; Bobby Deol showing off his new restaurant.

In a sense, what is happening in the media, especially in television, is symptomatic of a wider indifference to ideas in India, whether in the academia or in cultural institutions. And this does not augur well for a country aspiring to become a super power even if only as a "new sort of super power," as New Statesman called it.