This is Jennifer Marsh writing from home in Boston. Last weekend I had the opportunity to go to the annual Harvard India Conference, hosted by the Harvard Kennedy Center and Harvard Business School, because Atul had been asked to be one of the speakers at the event. He was willing to bring me along for the experience, in a marketing and PR capacity, to take pictures and network with other attendees who might be interested in Fair Observer, and seek out of some potential new fans or supporters. I was attending this conference with very little knowledge of what it takes to launch a company or social entrepreneurial venture in India, or what it would take to be a successful media or cinema mogul, and virtually no knowledge specific to Indian agribusiness or health care—all of which were panels of discussion led by fantastic leaders in their fields, and that I was able see for myself before attending Atul’s panel at about 3 P.M. Sunday afternoon.
Due to his role in the creation of Fair Observer, Atul was asked to speak at the conference about his experience with new and digital media on a panel entitled “Indian Media: Global, Representative, Autonomous?” What I found interesting about Atul’s participation was that Fair Observer isn’t really an Indian website, although it of course has great writers and contributors who focus on India whether it is the Indian economy, culture or politics. Fair Observer is a global enterprise, with contributors from all over the world, focusing on topics of global import. The other speakers on the panel with Atul were Yashwant Deshmukh, the CEO of YRD Networks a communications consultancy based out of India, and Ravi Prakash, who is CEO of TV9 one of the leading TV networks in India, both of whom are old friends of Atul’s from India. I had already been extremely inspired by several speakers throughout the day, particularly by those on the panel entitled “Harnessing India’s Demographic Dividend: Role of social development actors in skilling India’s marginalized youth” due to their successful ventures in launching skill development programs, and other social entrepreneurial ventures in India, like Ponnam Ahluwalia, the founder and president of Youth Entrepreneurship and Sustainability (YES); and so, by the time 3 P.M. rolled around, and we were nearing the end of an long, albeit very educational day… I have to admit that I was almost pleasantly surprised to find that, in-between snapping pictures for the Fair Observer blog, I was now at one of the liveliest discussions I had seen all afternoon.
Atul in a bright orange kurta and the two well-suited media moguls sitting beside him, were not afraid to interject and interact with audience before the pre-allotted time for “questions and answers” at the end—and one moment in particular stood out to me. While the other panels spoke when asked to speak on a specific topic by the moderator, Atul did something I didn’t see on any other panel. Early on, he asked for a show of hands, “Who gets most of their news about Africa from the Economist?” and about 10-12 hands go up. He asks next, “The Wall Street Journal?” and a few more hands go up. After going through various other standard American publications, all receiving a sputtering of raised hands, and one participant reminded Atul to have included the Guardian as an option—Atul finally asks the audience members to raise their hands if any of them actually got their news on Africa from an African publication? –Or news on China from a Chinese publication?
Among the extremely well educated audience, not one person raised their hand to answer, “yes,” to this question. I have been passionate about working at Fair Observer since I first got the opportunity, particularly in today’s limited and self-serving media climate, but it was actually in this moment that I realized that Fair Observer is not only a great source of news analysis, it’s a necessary one. Fair Observer fills a vacuum in media space right now—we live in an ever-increasingly globalized world, yet virtually all of our news is filtered through a one-dimensional cultural perspective—our own. To learn about China, shouldn’t we get our news analysis from the Chinese, at least in part?
During the lunch period I got into a discussion with a man who works at a successful staffing agency in Boston. He made the point that in America, business is simply done better. He said that India, despite its tremendous growth, and a population whose number will overtake the Chinese in a matter of decades, still tends to fall behind because the businessmen continue to copy or recreate business models that have been proven to succeed somewhere else, typically America. In Europe he said they don’t work as hard. His point overall was that there was greater ingenuity in America, and just a higher intellectual atmosphere and a desire to truly work and achieve success. While I thought he made some interesting points, I immediately took issue with the notion that Americans are the leaders in business intelligence, and the world’s leading intellectuals. I told him my opinion, that in this country one of our major failings was taking such a belief too much to heart—in America, more so than in Europe, we close our selves off from the news and events taking place around the rest of the world, as if they don’t affect us. The local news I get at home is about whether teenagers in the school district have found a new way to sneak cigarettes into their lockers; or how spring has sprung on the North Shore. Yes, I realize this is only local news, but such programming is typically the only news that enters the homes of countless Americans. When I lived in France I remembered the local news station in Montpellier would discuss local developments, the local weather report, etc., but additionally it would also focus on topics of global import. We dumb ourselves down in this country—and I don’t think we will continue to produce the next generation of leading businessmen if the dumbing down continues any longer, or without new media initiatives like Fair Observer. So I handed him Atul’s card. And all this being said, there were several people that sought Atul out of their own accord, after the panel had concluded. I hope that the number of people who recognize the importance of global media perspectives continues to grow in my fascinating country, the US of A.
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