I would like to see more here,I guess it will come,They may need 5or6 indys with all the languages.Every nation needs indys bad,the more the better.

The "cargo cult mentality"
---

The "cargo cult mentality" refers (I believe) to some pacific islands
which were colonised by western countries, either as military bases
or for exploitation of primary resources. The colonisers generally
arrived by plane, and in return for exploitation, provided cargoes
of manufactured goods and luxuries.

When the colonisers left, the locals were upset by the loss of the
cargoes of goods and luxuries, and so looked after the runways
(landing strips for the aeroplanes) in the hope that the deliveries
would continue, since they thought that having a good runway would
be sufficient to tempt the planes back to the island.

This of course failed, since the aeroplanes had minds of their
own, and desires more related to robbery than to having nice landing
strips...

---

India.indymedia is like a very beautiful, well-functioning runway.
But unless activists decide to fly in and out of it, it's not going
to be anything more...

I don't mean to be nasty here, but my point is that india.indymedia
will only work if indian activists find it useful for posting and/or
(preferably "and") if indian
activism-supporters find it useful for getting info. Most IMC sites
take off when activism is organised around a local
anti-global-capitalism protest event.

Vladimir, I'm sure you know the above anyway, but I thought it was worth
repeating. OK, now...

*** what can foreign brothers and sisters do? ***

If you *have lots of time*, there's a lot you can do to be supportive in a way
which could quite reasonably lead to decent content on india.imc:

Look up some of the posts so far and you'll see there are
some links to activist sites and/or meta-sites of activists sites
+ indian newspapers etc.

E.g. from

 http://india.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=112

you'll find the *major* activist sites:

 http://lbbs.org/southasia/southasia1.htm

 http://www.narmada.org

From

 http://india.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=117

you'll find (a newspaper?):

 http://www.tehelka.com

which led to a major political crisis embarrassing for the fascist (yes,
literally fascist) coalition in power.

You'll find plenty of activists you can email to on these sites, even
including a long list of film-makers (on the southasia1.htm site).

Try to tell them why you think
posting or cross-posting to india.indymedia can be useful
to them and why it's worth their time and better - or complementary -
to their existing sites. But keep in mind that the media situations in
Russia and India are very different. In Russia, it looks like you now
have a complete govt monopoly on national TV, whereas India has
(like most democracies) both govt and corporate national TV - still
not terribly diverse - and quite a lot of newspapers...

Or try some newsgroups on indian culture at www.dejanews.com
or your own usenet server - there could be some risk there that
you just get expatriates, and the sangh parivar mob (fascists),
but probably worth a try.

It'll take time, but if your arguments for
using india.indymedia are justified, you'll get the ball rolling for
your email list...

Good luck for getting those cargoes arriving... !