Why is Western media so biased against India?

 

 After the CoP 21 debate, there were some rather tasteless cartoons about India. First, Rupert Murdoch’s Australian ran a cartoon, of a turbaned family trying to eat solar. Amanda Wise, an associate professor of sociology at Macquarie University, slammed the cartoons and told Guardian Australia. “This cartoon is unequivocally racist and draws on very base stereotypes of third world, underdeveloped people who don’t know what to do with technology,” Wise told Guardian Australia.”

“India is the technology centre of the world right now and has some of the most high-tech industries on the planet in that part of the world. The underlying message is that people in developing countries don’t need all these technologies to do with climate change – they need food. But actually it is people living in poverty that will suffer the most through food security, sea level rises, dropping of the water table.”

The imagery as she points out is 1950s symbolism. She added: “This is really old imagery he has drawn on. Thin, starving people wearing turbans, who are so starving they are going to chop up solar panels. That is 1950s symbolism. We have moved on. The rest of the world has moved on.”
The Australian defended its cartoon with the old-school 'freedom of speech argument', saying that people missed the joke:

“We stand by this cartoon and believe it is a strong example of Bill Leak and The Australian’s exercise of its commitment to freedom of speech. The cartoon does not intend to ridicule Indians but the climate change activists who would send poor people solar panels rather than give them something they need – cheap power, aid and a hand up,” the statement said.

“Those following the debates in and around the Paris conference run in our pages would have realised the target of the cartoon was not Indians. It was quite the opposite. Our readers would have – and, in fact, have – understood this.”

Similarly, sometime before that the New York Times had published a cartoon showing an elephant on the rail tracks, blocking the ‘climate train’.