Blissful ignorance

Asia should help westerners understand the business potential that exists in this part of the world. There is opportunity in ignorance -- so concludes Lawrence Pintak in his interesting article (Viewpoint) published in The Jakarta Post of April 11, 1996.

People generally form opinions by what they read or what they see and hear on TV. The global information bazaar is at present owned, influenced and controlled by western nations. The media, with its international reach, day in and day out, dishes out western fare, right into our drawing rooms. We thus come to know more about the West than vice versa.

Let's take the case of India, the second most populous nation on earth, and the largest and most vibrant democracy in the world. India is the 12th largest economy in the world in terms of GDP and the fifth largest in terms of purchasing power. It has the world's third largest pool of technically trained manpower.

For an average American, these facts may be largely unknown. For him, India may continue to be a land of snake-charmers!

Interestingly, let's remember Christopher Columbus actually set off on a sea-voyage to locate India, but ended up on the shores of America. Had he found India then, history would be very different.

Reverting to the influence of western media, if we read Time and Newsweek, the world's leading magazines, one can observe that they contain excessive and imbalanced news coverage which is biased more towards the West. Only major catastrophes occurring in the East merit attention as lead stories. One of the few rare exceptions, I understand, was in 1931 when Time carried Mahatma Gandhi's picture on the cover as Man of the Year.

Under these circumstances, how anyone can expect westerners to shed their ignorance about Asia? For them, ignorance is blissful indeed!

D. CHANDRAMOULI

Jakarta