No sex please, we’re Indian!

E-Commerce News: News: EBay India Head Granted Bail in Sex Case — Weird story poorly reported.. If you read this story in the US media you really don’t get much and it sounds fishy.

The head of online auction house eBay’s (Nasdaq: EBAY) Latest News about eBay India unit was granted bail today following his arrest in connection with a sex video being sold on the Web site Relevant Products/Services from Verisign — Free E-Commerce Start-up Kit.

Avnish Bajaj, a U.S. citizen, was asked by the Delhi High Court to surrender his passport and not leave the country without the court’s permission.

He was asked to pay two sureties of approximately US$2,000 each

The U.S. State Department said yesterday top levels of the U.S. government were concerned over his arrest.

SO why was the government concerned at all? Well when you read the reports out of India you can see that this situation is not only a debacle but a huge threat to e-commerce everywhere. The best run-down of this is provided in an excellent column by Ashok Malik running in the Indian Express. Read it here. We learn that much of the fuss is over a video clip sold by a teenager. It was taken with his phone cam.

There is some weirdness going on in India that is under-reported in the USA. Here’s an interesting story from the BBC from a few years ago. A lot of anti-Western sentiment stews in India.

The move to drive beggars and eunuchs off Bombay roads is the brainchild of the local culture minister, Pramod Navalaar[sic], who sees himself as a state appointed guardian of Indian culture against what he describes as evil western influence.

Some of his past decisions, like banning advertisements showing models in the nude and stopping barmaids from working late evenings shifts, evoked a mixed response from the generally fun-loving liberal elite of Bombay.

This guy is actually Pramod Navalkar who is now the head of one of the political parties. From what I can tell (you Indian readers can correct me on this) he’s the Jerry Falwell of India. The anti-Western subtext in South Asia seems well expressed in the following Pakistani essay blaming sateliite TV for all the social problems in the region. Of course the thousands of beggars throughout the region seem to pre-date the invention of TV altogether. Nobody talks about that.

Most of our leaders proudly yearn for a “liberal democracy,” ignoring the fact, pointed out by Amstrong Williams in the Washington Times (September 1, 1995) that “laissez faire liberalism has created a do-your-own-thing, self-indulgent, personal ethic.” And we are quietly following the same doctrine; unmoved and unprovoked by whatever is going on the screen of our televisions. This moral myopia and celebration of degrading content and mindless entertainment under the label of “progress” and “liberalism” must force us to look for answers to the following simple questions.

According to Amrit Dhillon of London Observer Service: “India is being asked to accept in five years changes that have crept over the West in several decades. Elderly Indians watch agog as they hear all manner of intimate practice exhaustively discussed on the Oprah Winfrey show on satellite, while children, when asked for a kiss, reply, ‘All right, but not ‘Santa Barbra kiss, OK?'” In India no one is unaffected by the transformation brought about the satellite TV.

My question: why are they watching Oprah in the first place? This whole complaint is specious.