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|| Satyameva Jayate || » . » On Remittances, Media Houses and Covert Evangelism
- If you have never heard of “Grow India“, I don’t blame you. I was alerted to this combined “effort” of Remit2India and WorldVision via two separate emails yesterday morning (Thanks to M Balaji and S Venkat).
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Sounds pretty harmless, right?
Except that “Remit2India” is the flagship brand of TimesofMoney (a part of the prestigious Times Group) and is the “most preferred online remittance channel for overseas Indians across the globe”. In short, it has tremendous reach and a very large customer base.
World Vision is in a league of its own. As I had mentioned in a recent post,
This is the same organisation one of whose employees is suspected of being involved in the murder of Swami Laxmanananda in Kandhamal…(This) Seattle-based Christian organization with strong evangelical roots…(is) also the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization whose budget has roughly tripled over the last decade.
It boasts of around 40,000 staff members in nearly 100 countries. That’s more staff members than CARE, Save the Children and the worldwide operations of the United States Agency for International Development — combined.
Officially, World Vision
…is a Christian humanitarian organization working to create lasting change in the lives of children, families and communities living in poverty and injustice. World Vision serves all people regardless of religion, caste, race, ethnicity or gender.
Unofficially, it appears to have a different agenda:
We analyse every project, every programme we undertake, to make sure that within that programme evangelism is a significant component. We cannot feed individuals and then let them go to hell.
—Ted Engstrom (former president of World Vision International)
- I find it odd that the only organisation TimesofMoney found worthy of partnering in the noble cause of uplifting the poor in India turns out to have an evangelical Christian streak. Imagine the ruckus had TimesofMoney partnered with a “Hindu” organisation to promote rural welfare schemes in India. But then I forget, we are a “secular” country.
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
