It has been quite a while since I last posted here. After a hectic month with exams, projects etc, now I have some time to spare for writing!
This post is more of an exercise to you. No, I would not ask you to do some weight training... You just need to follow the instructions which I have written below. (as you are reading this article online, I assume you have a basic knowledge of internet).
Step 1: Log on to google.com (NOT google.co.in)
Step 2: Type in, "Why do Ind"
Step 3: Observe the suggestions made by Google for your search query.
Here is some insight on how Google pops the list of suggestions. Compared to so many of its innovative products, the Google Suggest isn't that great a product. It is developed on the statistical model of the machine learning technique. What happens in this model is, if a query is given multiple times from various users, it is considered as a highly relevant one. Such relevant queries are stored and sorted based upon their respective relevance!
Coming to the actual perspective of my writing, if you are an Indian, you would have been hurt by the list of suggestions that appeared, for the query that I asked you to enter. But don't conclude that the westerners have a negative bias towards Indians. Having lived here for a fair amount of time, I can safely say that they aren't bigoted.
Many people follow up the earlier exercise that I suggested by replacing "Why do Ind" with "Why do Amer". To your surprise, the suggestions that pop up now are not as awful as they were earlier. So does this mean that an average American has the tendency to stereo-type Indians?
To this, I would say, "YES". Even we Indians tend to stereo-type Americans, don't we? So, if your question is why do Americans stereo-type Indians in a negative way? Here comes my answer...
If an Indian is less educated and has little knowledge about America, he would, in all probability, not have access to the internet. So, there is no question that such a person would use Google. If an Indian has access to internet, is educated and has some knowledge about America, he/she would not enter such a query about America as he/she would have the great American dream in mind. This is also the same case with other developing countries like China, Brazil et al.
But almost 85% of Americans have the access to the internet. They have more opportunity to see Indians than Indians have the opportunity to see Americans. So, they get curious to know about our culture and tend to feed such queries. And because of the British Raj, an average Indian would have some knowledge about the western culture. The Americans who enter such queries are generally semi-literate kind of people, I would say. A truly educated person, no matter from which country he/she comes from, will never make such insensitive assumptions.
I know I have not put a full-stop the old debate about, how an average westerner feels about India: Good, Bad or Ugly. This was my perspecitve, which may or may not be correct! The choice is all yours...
