Rushing to demonise anything alien, in fact, is a very effective - albeit skewed - psychological device to maintain any unit as a cogent mass, and we can see that in practice in our mass media sources like Times of India. When a news article bashing two things alien - technology and our (in this case) innocent neighbour Pakistan - comes their way, I can imagine the temptation for some junior editor to score double the points. Well done, Sir, well done.
Had it been the BBC publishing such an article in the UK, it'd have been accused of scaremongering and spreading paranoia, and probably there would be a public litigation to follow.
But in our great nation the general trend would go like this: 10000 media houses share this hoax as authentic news, then after a week, of those very 10000, 1000 media houses will declare this a potential hoax, then 100 media houses would actually press for factual information on this hoax, then 10 would ultimately conclusively find evidence against this elaborate hoax, then the same 10000 would declare it a hoax and deny any responsibility of its viral spread. This is where our space for reliable articles and intelligent opinion pieces vanishes.
The junta, subconsciously, seems to know the incredulity of reportage in India, which is why such news has a culture of just passing through without offending anybody.
That the comment space below the article has been reduced to noise - where such is the reader reward mechanism of ToI, that the more unquestioning-and-gregarious-and-eager-to-share one is, the more fancy badges they get - is why I'm commenting upon it on my blog. Pls take note, citizens.
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