India is definitely the flavor of the season here in the US.
It has been for some time now, earlier though they were the inevitable articles on the rise of outsourcing in India. I was pleasantly surprised though, to see two programs on an another uniquely Indian entity, Bollywood on major TV news magazines.
Aishwarya Rai was all her giggly self on CBS's venerable TV magazine 60 minutes and Bollywood was the subject of a 30 minute segment on ABC's Nightline.

I liked this quote from the latter :

"I would say what soccer is to sport, Bollywood is to entertainment," said Richard Corliss, a film critic for Time magazine and a self-confessed Bollywood fan. "That is to say, it's only a minority taste in the United States, but throughout the Indian subcontinent, in North Africa, the Middle East, Asia straight through to Indonesia, large parts of Eastern Europe, it's the most popular form of entertainment in the world."

Monsoon Wedding first, then to a certain extent, Bend It Like Beckham and ofcourse Lagaan which was nominated for the Oscars have furthered the cause too. Bombay Dreams(which I happened to watch on its penultimate showing on Broadway) though, a brave attempt to sell Bollywood style song and dance to the world masses was simply not good enough.

Is this important ? Do we have to be "validated" here in the US ? Is it just a plug for the release of Gurinder Chadha's Bride & Prejudice soon to be released in the US ? I tend to think that its very important and is a welcome development. One reason that the US is revered (and also despised in some places) all over the world is the soft invasion that its been so successful in affecting in the form of Hollywood and the McDonalds. Bollywood in some way, also "sells" India to the biggest consumer of all, the US. It showcases our culture and our life in a much more effective way then anything else, we are something else, other than the smart science and math wizards, we have a way of life too which is interesting and entertaining, wouldn't you buy some of it oh great flush-with-money Uncle Sam ?
On another level, its a whole confidence thing, even pride in who we are. We should be careful of jingoism ofcourse, however I do think that now many Indians have a new sense of belief in who they are, and realize that they are OK ! :)

Even the CIA seems to think so ! Zakaria talks about this "confidence" in his latest article too.

To understand how much and how fast India is changing, look at its response to the tsunami. I don't mean the government's reaction but that of individual Indians. In the two weeks after the tidal wave hit, the Prime Minister's Relief Fund, the main agency to which people make donations, has collected about $80 million. After the Gujarat earthquake of April 2001, it took almost one year to collect the same amount of money. And remember that the 2001 earthquake was massive (7.9 on the Richter scale), killed more Indians (30,000) than the tsunami appears to have, and also got intense media attention (Bill Clinton headed the fund-raising efforts). What has changed in these four years is the most important new reality about India: the growing wealth, strength and confidence of Indian society.

This change in attitude helps on every level, for long the IT industry in India has been reviled as a back office producer of software services. People ask for all this IT brouhaha in India, name one Indian product which is widely used all over the world. It will come. The natural cycle which ends on a product, involves a huge amount of investment and again a core belief in oneself, both of which is happening know. MIT's Technology Review says so too, in this article, Two Sides of Outsourcing,