The Diesel Generator: India\'s Trusty Power Source

By HEATHER TIMMONS

NEW DELHI - They are smelly, noisy, polluting and expensive - and increasingly, they are what keep India running.

The massive electrical grid failures that India experienced on Monday and Tuesday would have been catastrophic in many other countries, leaving hospitals without crucial power for lifesaving machines, airports paralyzed and businesses shuttered.

But in some parts of India, particularly urban areas, office parks and wealthier neighborhoods, the failures were barely noticed. State-run electricity is already so unreliable that residents and businesses long ago resorted to buying private diesel generators to produce their own.

In Lucknow, for example, the Vivekananda Polyclinic and Institute of Medical Sciences, a private hospital, was using three generators Tuesday to keep dialysis machines running and air-conditioning on in the wards, said Sachendra Raj, the hospital's manager.

Six hours after t he blackout started on Tuesday, Dr. Raj said he was unfazed. “It's part and parcel of our daily
 life,” he said. The situation in his state, Uttar Pradesh, may get worrying once residents' smaller generators run out of power, he said, but his hospital's industrial-size generators will last longer.

Entire industries and neighborhoods rely on diesel power, including India's massive call center and outsourcing campuses, private apartment buildings and small shops. The city of Gurgaon, south of New Delhi, has been heavily dependent on diesel for years. Even the most utilitarian things, like the telecom towers that help power India's much-vaunted mobile phone revolution, are often powered by diesel.

Estimating how much diesel Indian consumers use to make up for the state's energy shortages, or how many people own such generators, is difficult. More than two billion liters, or 5.3 million gallons, of diesel are used every year just to keep India's rural and urban digital communication network running, according to one 2010 report.

Diesel fuel in India is subsidized by about 13 rupees (about 23 cents) per liter, about a  third of the sale price, and when the cost of these subsidies is taken into account, diesel is more expensive, on a per-kilowatt-hour basis, then even the most expensive renewable energy in India, a 2010 World Bank report said.

An extremely hot summer and the recent power failures have meant a booming business for diesel generator sales. “This is a good year for us,” said Irfan Ali of Sunshine Diesel Engineers, a rental and sales shop in Noida, a suburb of New Delhi. “Power cuts have been more frequent.”

After reports of power failures began on Monday, calls to Mr. Ali's shop doubled, he said. Some customers are renting generators, while others are buying a second one, he said.

Sruthi Gottipati and Niharika Mandhana contributed reporting.

In India, Travelers Stuck, Villages Dark and Security Fears Rise

By RAKSHA KUMAR, ANURADHA SHARMA and HARI KUMAR

India's massive grid failure Tuesday stranded travelers, shut down water supplies, snarled commutes and left residents sweltering in the heat. An estimated 600 million people were affected around the country. Here are a few of their tales:

Arindam Saha, 45, an employee with a credit-rating agency in Kolkata:

I usually take the metro rail to commute between my home in Dumdum [in the north], and my Theater Road office [in the south]. Today I left the office at 6.30 p.m. and by the time I reached home, it was well past 10 p.m. Generally, the journey takes only about 40 minutes.

What I saw out on the streets was something I had never seen before. There was utter chaos. People were out on the streets in huge numbers trying to get home, trying to hop into the next available transport. Not only were buses filed to the brim, people were hanging from all sides. I just could not manage to get into a bus.

Finally I managed to get a taxi, which I, too, shared with someone going in the same route. There were traffic snarls everywhere in the city and after a struggle of over three and half hours, I managed to reach home.

Kirti Shrivastava, 49, a housewife in Patna, Bihar:

There is no water, and no idea when electricity will return. We are really tense, even the shops have now closed… after all, until when will they run on inverters [batteries]? Now, we hope it is not an invitation to the criminals!

Shakeela Bano, 68, a housewife in Deoria City, Uttar Pradesh:

We don't have water due to the power shortage! Since our cold storage is dysfunctional in our village, the prices of vegetables are skyrocketing. Adding insult to injury, there is a rumor that there will not be any electricity for a long time.

People are collected in groups in front of their houses, to gain comfort in crowds.

Mukteshwar Prasad Sinha, 62, from Dhanbad, Jharkhand:

[There is a] water problem because of no electricity. [There is] no tension because of security yet. If the blackout continues we might face security threats.

Jaswant Kaur, 62, who boarded a train from Ludhiana to New Delhi this morning, and missed her connecting train to Nagpur, and spent an additional 1,000 Indian rupees (about $18) to reach New Delhi:

Now my pocket is empty. I am hungry. I am tired. The government is responsible for all the hardship to me today. The government should compensate me for the loss.

India's Ministry of Power announced Tuesday evening that the electricity had been largely restored in Delhi and the Northeast. Yet outages remained common in eastern India and elsewhere in the north, leaving millions of people in the dark.

How did India's power failure affect you? Please leave us details of your experience Tuesday in the comments below.

India\'s Long Struggle for Power

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

India's power outages this week were the nation's largest, but they reflect a long-standing national problem.

“India has long struggled to provide enough electricity to light its homes and power its industry around the clock,” Vikas Bajaj wrote this April. “In recent years, the government and private sector sought to change that by building scores of new power plants,” he wrote, but that campaign “is now running into difficulties because the country cannot get enough fuel - principally coal - to run the plants.”

Clumsy policies, poor management and environmental concerns have kept fuel production low, he wrote, and the power's sector's problems have “substantially contributed to a second year of slowing economic growth in India, to an estimated 7 percent this year, from nearly 10 percent in 2010.”

Before this week's massive outages that covered several state, one city in particular already had severe problems this year. “In northern India, where the mercury crossed 40 degrees Celsius - 104 degrees Fahrenheit - every day for the last month, Gurgaon, an outsourcing megacity that is home to more than 1.5 million people, is facing an acute power crisis,” Pamposh Raina wrote in July. The reason: five of the six plants that supply Gurgaon weren't experiencing technical malfunctions, and the sixth was out of coal, power officials said.

A number of new initiatives have been tried across India over the years to address the power shortage:

Even after the nuclear disaster in Japan last year, Indian officials said they would move ahead with ambitious nuclear plans, Heather Timmons and Vikas Bajaj wrote in March of 2011. “India, with 20 nuclear reactors already in operation, plans to spend an estimated $150 billion adding dozens of new ones around the country. Its forecast calls for nuclear power to supply about a quarter of the country's electricity needs by 2050, a tenfold increase from now,” they wrote.

Later in 2011, Mr. Bajaj wrote about “India's ambitious plan to use solar energy to help modernize its notoriously underpowered national electricity grid, and reduce its dependence on coal-fired power plants.” The plans include huge solar farms in western India, where dozens of developers, “because of aggressive government subsidies and a large drop in the global price of solar panels, are covering India's northwestern plains - including this village of 2,000 people - with gleaming solar panels.”

So-called “husk power,” or electricity from methane gas released by rice husks, could also hold hope for rural India,
Andrew Revkin wrote in 2009.

Electricity innovators were aimed at India as early as the 1950s, according to this article that ran in The New York Times in July of 1958. It introduced an American-designed device that “may revolutionize the live of ru ral India.” The invention? An “electric generator and pumped, powered by bullocks.”

Image of the Day: July 31

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

India\'s Power Guzzlers to the North

By NIHARIKA MANDHANA

India's fundamental shortage of energy has been well-documented: the country does not generate enough power to meet the fast-growing demand for electricity from factories, institutions like hospitals and subway systems and private homes.

Whether or not this shortage had any direct impact on the power outages Monday and Tuesday is still being determined by central government authorities.

But one thing is certain: some individual states, particularly in India's north, have been drawing much more power than expected. When this happens, state authorities are warned by various regional authorities about the excess usage, and penalties may be imposed. Still, the supply of power often continues uninterrupted, sometimes straining the system.

On Monday, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission in New Delhi reprimanded electricity authorities in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Har yana and Uttarakhand. Officers have been summoned to a hearing, scheduled to be held in two weeks.

Uttar Pradesh tops the states in power overdraws, according to the latest report from the National Load Dispatch Center, which monitors national power use. In June, Uttar Pradesh drew 750 million units more of power than it had scheduled, or 25 percent more than expected.

Punjab and Haryana also surpassed their limits by significant margins, about 7 percent and 13.5 percent, respectively. West India has shown great discipline, led by Gujarat, which drew about 30 percent less power than the state's assigned quota. The eastern region, which also suffered a grid collapse Tuesday, consumed 7.5 percent less power last month than was expected.

“I want to inform the states not to draw more power that your quota allotted,” India's minister for power, Sushil Kumar Shinde, said at a news conference in Delhi on Tuesday. “If you do that, it will create a problem for the nation.”

India Hosts World\'s Largest Blackout

By SRUTHI GOTTIPATI

The colossal power failure that swept through half of India early Tuesday afternoon, causing disruptions in the lives of hundreds of millions of people, has earned India a new and dubious distinction: Host of the World's Largest Blackout.

Some 600 million people were estimated to be affected after power was halted in 11 states in northern and eastern India and in the country's capital of 16 million people. Imagine most of Europe without power, or more people powerless than the populations of the United States, Mexico and Central America combined.

While the numbers are colossal, disruptions in many peoples daily lives were kept to a minimum. After all, India, a nation of 1.2 billion people, sees frequent local power cuts that last several hours a day in some parts of the country. So when Tuesday's unplanned power failure occurred, following on the heels of another power failure the previ ous day, the usual backup of generators and inverters that households and businesses privately own kicked in.

Here some other memorable blackouts, listed in chronological order:

Canada and northeastern United States, 1965: Toronto and New York were plunged into darkness as a blackout strikes Ontario and the northeastern United States, affecting 30 million people.

New York, 1977: The familiar shapes of the world's most famous skyline were all blotted out by darkness on the night of July 13. The blackout lasted alittle more than 24 hours, a period in which 1,000 fires were reported, 1,600 stores were damaged in looting and rioting and 3,700 people were arrested.

United States, 2003: A surge of electricity to western New York and Canada touched off a series of power failures and blackouts that left parts of at least eight states in the Northeast and the Midwest without electricity.

Italy, 2003: One of the worst blackouts in Italy's history left mos t of the country without electricity for hours, interrupting rail and air traffic, jamming emergency operator phone lines and forcing thousands of Romans into makeshift refuges in subway stations. The power loss left nearly 57 million people in the dark.

Indonesia, 2005: About 100 million people, about half of Indonesia's population, were affected by a power outage, which affected residences and businesses and snarled traffic in Jakarta, the capital.

Over Half a Billion Without Power in India as Grids Fail

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“About 600 million people lost power in India on Tuesday when the country's northern and eastern electricity grids failed, crippling the country for a second consecutive day,” Heather Timmons and Sruthi Gottipati wrote in The New York Times.

“The outage stopped hundreds of trains in their tracks, darkened traffic lights, shuttered the Delhi Metro and left everyone from the police to water utilities to private businesses and citizens without electricity. About half of India's population of 1.2 billion people was without power.”

Manoranjan Kumar, an economic advisor with the Ministry of Power, said in a telephone interview that the grids had failed and that the ministry was working to figure out the source of the problem. The northern and eastern grids cover 11 states and the capital city of Delhi, stretching from India's northern tip in Kashmir to Rajasthan to West Bengal's capital of Kolkata.

The failure happened without warning just after 1:00 p.m., electric company officials said.

“We seem to have plunged into another power failure, and the reasons why are not at all clear,” said Gopal K. Saxena, the chief executive of BSES, an electric company that services South Delhi, in a telephone interview. It may take a long time to restore power to north India, he said, because the eastern grid has also failed, and alternate power sources in Bhutan and the Indian state of Sikkim flow into the east first.

About two hours after the grid failure, power ministry authorities said some alternate arrangements had been made. “We are taking hydro power from Bhakhra Nangal Dam,” in northern India, said Sushil Kumar Shinde, the power minister, in a televised interview.

Read the full article.

Life Imprisonment for 21 in Gujarat Riots Case

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“An Indian court on Monday sentenced 21 Hindus to life imprisonment in the deaths of 11 members of a Muslim family during some of the country's worst sectarian violence 10 years ago,” an Associated Press report said.

More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed by Hindu mobs in Gujarat after a train fire, allegedly started by Muslims, killed 60 Hindus in 2002.

“The verdict on Monday was the second in nine cases of rioting and murder pending against hundreds of Hindu hard-liners,” the report said. Verdicts on the remaining cases are expected to be issued within a year, as per the orders of the Supreme Court, the highest court in India. The report noted that India's courts were notorious for long delays.

Read the full report.

Bangalore\'s Seniors Head to Work as \'Traditional Indian Family\' Dissolves

By SARITHA RAI

Sheela Rao, 67, has never written a résumé, attended a job interview or used a computer in her life. She has not ever worked in an office. Yet on a recent Saturday, Ms. Rao, a sari-clad, bindi-wearing homemaker, jostled with 1,000 other elders like her, some in their 80s, at a job fair named “Jobs 60+” in Bangalore.She can cook, sew and teach music, Ms. Rao told anybody who would give her a listen. She is healthy and can work hard, she said. “I desperately need a job and a steady income,” she pleaded with prospective employers.

A job fair for seniors is a paradox in a “young” city where multinational employers from Silicon Valley's hottest social media firms and top Wall Street banks throng colleges to sign up those in their 20s even before they graduate.

The weekend gathering offered a glimpse into the social upheaval in Bangalore and other large cities where older Indians are buffeted by rising living and health care costs on the one side and fading support from their ambitious, globally mobile children.

Adding to the complexity, many Indians retire at the mandated age of 58 or 60, and social security covers only a sliver of the population.

This generation on the cusp of great change has not programmed their retirement finances properly, said Dr. Radha Murthy, an elder care pioneer and medical practitioner, whose nonprofit Nightingales Medical Trust organized the job fair. It is the first age band wedged between the traditional and the rapidly westernizing.

Ms. Rao has five children, all married, and lives in the home of her oldest daughter, a bank employee. There, Ms. Rao has gradually become confined to two rooms at the back of the house, she said. She cooks for herself and has very little independence. For instance, to listen to music she must wear headphones so as to not disturb the family.

Ms. Rao knows many others in the same boat. Across the street is an older neighbor who pines for the affections of her son who works in the United States.

“Young people these days are arrogant because they earn big money. They are only interested in themselves,” rued Ms. Rao.

The 3,000-rupee ($54) monthly pension she receives after her banker husband's death is barely enough to survive on, so she makes pickles and snacks to sell in the neighborhood. The income from such exertions too is patchy, so Ms. Rao went to the job fair to look for a steady job and a regular income.

There were dozens of companies looking for accountants, administrators, teachers and insurance salesmen. But, alas, nobody had a job for an elderly homemaker.

The large Indian family has all but disappeared, and the pressures of urban living are being felt in nuclear families, says Ashok Dey, chief executive of an upscale retirement community called Suvidha in the suburbs of Bangalore.

The elderly who expected to be cared for in their old age, as in the generations preceding them, are finding that their busy children are chasing their own careers and ambitions and have no time, inclination or money for them, said Mr. Dey, who said he and his affluent neighbors in the Suvidha community were not in that situation.

Dr. Murthy said, “It is an India where kids no longer want to spend the summer with the grandparents; they would rather spend it at Disneyland.”

At the senior job fair, a dozen young employees from a large multinational bank were volunteers, and they highlighted the age and wage contrast. One of them, Krutika Kuppuraj, 23, an analyst, was overwhelmed by the tales of despair around her. The Indian value system emphasized respect for elders, but that is eroding fast, said Ms. Kuppuraj.

A few of the volunteers were all too aware that the meager monthly pension that some seniors received is the equivalent of what they routinely spend at a cafe o n a casual outing.

The massive turnout at Jobs 60+ may have revealed only the tip of the problem because India's middle class is adept at keeping up social appearances. “Many middle-class Indians will not tell on their kids or let the ‘all-is-well' facade slip,” said Dr. Murthy.

Until he retired recently, V. Mohan, 64, worked for three decades for a single employer, a university. That day at the fair, Mr. Mohan was not looking for a white-collar job. He was willing to settle for any type of work, he said.

His 6,000-rupee rent ($108) is eating into his 10,000-rupee ($180) pension, and that has made him desperate.

Of Mr. Mohan's two children, one daughter has recently married and lives with her husband. He is supporting the other as she finishes up her Ph.D. Mr. Mohan insists that he does not want her money when she starts working.

Another recent retiree, Chandrajayanthi Mala, 60, a former medical counselor, was at the job fair because she w as already gazing into the future. Her husband is on the verge of retiring. She knows many older people have been dumped by their kids who are in “sophisticated jobs.”

“The future is scary as there is no dignity for elders in the family, no importance to their ideas,” she said.

Her son will soon be married, and she prays that he and his future wife will take care of them. Not willing to totally rely on prayers, however, she decided to join the lines at the fair.

Unfortunately, a cruel outcome awaited many elderly job seekers who did not have any computer or other marketable skills.

In Bangalore, a job market long associated with young, fickle, itinerant workers, the fair's organizers thought they had a unique proposition: the loyalty, experience and cost effectiveness of older employees.

Yet neither Ms. Rao nor Mr. Mohan made the cut.

Saritha Rai sometimes feels she is the only person living in Bangalore who was actually raised her e. There's never a dull moment in her mercurial metropolis. Reach her on Twitter @SarithaRai.

Image of the Day: July 30

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Power Restored to Most of North India

By SRUTHI GOTTIPATI and NIHARIKA MANDHANA

Power has been restored to most of North India by Monday afternoon, after an early morning grid failure that left hundreds of millions of people without electricity.

P. Uma Shankar, secretary of India's Ministry of Power, said that by 4:00 p.m. 70 to 75 percent of northern India's power had been restored. In Delhi, power was 90 percent restored, he said.

Power was supplied first to services such as hospitals, water pumping stations and the Delhi Metro. The shortage was met through a patchwork of sources including a thermal plant in Badarpur, several gas turbines and hydropower from the east, including a project in Tala, Bhutan.

The reason for Monday's outage, which started at about 2:30 a.m., is still unclear.

“This is a one-off situation” said Ajai Nirula, the chief operating officer of North Delhi Power Limited, a joint venture betwee n Tata Power and the Delhi government, which distributes power to nearly 1.2 million people in the north and northwest of Delhi. “Everyone was surprised.”

Mr. Shankar said a three-person team was investigating the outage.

Most of India's northern states use more power than they generate and rely on a complex network of contracts with power plants in other states to keep the lights on. Electricity officials sometimes characterize the situation as a battle between states to secure as much power as they need.

“Until corrective action and preventive action is taken, the system will remain under strain,” Mr. Nirula said.

Tragedy on the Tamil Nadu Express

By HARI KUMAR

More than 30 people were killed in southern India on Monday morning when the train coach they were traveling in caught fire.

The incident took place near the Nellore train station in Andhra Pradesh, on an express train traveling from New Delhi to Chennai known as the Tamil Nadu Express. Only one car, a sleeper coach with 72 passengers, was affected and the fire did not spread, railroad officials said.

Twenty-five injured people have been admitted to Nellore hospitals, and 32 are dead, said K. Sambasiva Rao, a spokesman for South Central Railway, in a telephone interview. The dead included 19 men, six women and three children. The rest of the bodies are too badly burnt to tell their gender. “We have ordered a high-level investigation,” he said.

The fire started at 4:15 a.m., railroad officials said, and was put out by 5:20 a.m., after it was noticed by a station manager in Nellore. A Nellore official told NDTV that the fire may have been started by a short circuit near a toilet. Passengers could not escape after the railroad car's doors jammed, eyewitnesses told reporters. Indian trains rarely have smoke alarms or fire detection systems.

“It is a very tragic incident,” India's railroad minister, Mukul Roy, told reporters. India's outdated railroad system operates at a loss of 200 billion Indian rupees ($3.6 billion) a year, and needs massive investments to update antiquated equipment, but raising prices to pay for improvements is seen as politically unpopular.

“If you do not increase the fares, you are going to turn the railway coaches into coffins,” the former railroad minister, Dinesh Trivedi, warned after he was asked to resign this year, after attempting to raise fares.

“Indian Railways is running 20,000 passenger trains carrying 2.2 million passengers every day,” Mr. Roy said Monday in Kolkata. “A small human error c an make an accident,” he said.

Y. Sampath, 23, a software engineer who boarded the train with his sister, told The Hindu newspaper that he woke up Monday morning after hearing loud screams. “All I could see was black smoke,” he said. Mr. Sampath escaped through one of the doors that was not locked but his sister is missing.

The government has announced total compensation of 500,000 Indian rupees ($9,100) to the next of kin of dead passengers.

A Conversation With: Star India\'s Uday Shankar

By VIKAS BAJAJ

Uday Shankar, a former journalist, became chief executive of Star India in 2007 and has been widely credited for turning around the private TV network, whose ratings had begun to flag in the years before he took over. In 2009, he approached Aamir Khan, the Bollywood star, about hosting a TV show, which went on the air in May as “Satyamev Jayate” (Truth Prevails), and has quickly gained much praise and some criticism for how it has covered important subjects like female foeticide and the sexual abuse of children.

Mr. Shankar is one of the most outspoken media executives in India and has been blunt about the problems of the TV industry in particular. In a recent interview to discuss Mr. Khan's show, he spoke about why Indian television networks do not take on the big issues affecting the country and why many seem to be struggling financially.

How did “Satyamev Jayate” come about?

We were looking to do things differently, and by then we had already worked with a large number of Bollywood superstars â€" Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, we had signed up with Hrithik Roshan. One, so we had worked with all these people and we had not worked with Aamir and obviously I was keen that we do. And two, I also thought if the man brings the same sensibility of doing something very different, very compelling and yet very meaningful to TV, it would be very interesting, and it would be very close to our own positioning of “Rishta Wahi, Soch Nayi” [Same Relationship, New Thinking].

He started working with a few producers. We met several months later, and he had an outline of the idea and then I liked it. It was very different. It was totally out of the current definition of entertainment content.

Why now? Why couldn't this have been done several years ago?

It could have been done a long time ago. But you should also see the evolut ion of Indian TV. Since TV has become so ubiquitous in this country and it has become so big and so successful, people often forget that it's still in its infancy here. We are talking about 2012 and TV is barely 20 years old - the first private satellite signal started in 1992, and then for a long time, for at least seven or eight years, it was a fledgling business. It's only in the last 10, 12 years that TV has started thriving.

Hence, I think, necessarily you have to go through that journey. First, the entertainment that people were starved for - that was seen to be the job of TV. People were doing that. The dramas came in and the dramas had their power, and people got hooked to the dramas so there were more dramas and similarly other forms of entertainment â€" reality shows and talent hunts and stuff like that. And they all had their appeal - the novelty factor and the fact that nobody had seen anything like that.

And also there is another element here that ge ts overlooked. I think policy here has played a very big role in not allowing this kind of thing to happen. The government made this very unscientific, forced and arbitrary decision of separating news and entertainment. They said that you will have to take separate licenses, and in such an early stage to do that - it was totally politically motivated - the effect of it was there was a very watertight segregation of entertainment and nonentertainment content, or what we call news or nonnews content.

As a result of that, institutionally, internally, you did not have sensibilities which could cross-pollinate. That may have played a big role.

It was primarily done to keep the foreign broadcasters out of news. That was the whole intention of segregating that license. And that happened, I think, in 2003, but since then it just became you know a completely watertight category. So companies like Star, Sony, Viacom, who are so-called foreign broadcasters because their par ents are overseas, they got out of news. But they were also the key broadcasters who were setting the agenda.

Do you worry that some may try to say you are violating the terms of your entertainment license by broadcasting a show that could be described as dealing with current affairs?

The show is not news at all. I don't think the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has told anyone to do that. There is no such concern here because it's not news at all. It's just a talk show, people's experiences are being shared. It's not like other people haven't done shows like this. Even when you do very entertainment kind of show - a music show or a talent show - the participants come in and they talk about their lives.

How has “Satyamev Jayate” done relative to your expectations?

The fundamentals look all very strong and robust, but the concept so different from the regular fare that the viewers had got used to that there was always an element of risk. We w ent into it with our eyes open hoping that the show would do very well but prepared that it may not do so well. So that's the honest truth.

The show has done well, but it's not an easy show to do. The amount of research, the amount of work that goes into it makes it a fairly expensive show. The response from the advertising community has been surprisingly positive - no complaints on that score. Overall, we think the show is a viewer success and the show is a commercial success too.

A couple of years ago I heard you issue a call to arms to the Indian TV industry about its troubled financial health. Do you think the industry has sorted out its problems?

It's still a work in progress. One big change in that direction is digitization. People often do not realize how big a catalyst for change it's likely to be, not just for distribution or subscription, but its ability to trigger localization of content is going to be revolutionary. Because bandwidth of cable is so limited that if you wanted to create content for let's say western U.P. [Uttar Pradesh], the economic model doesn't work for it because the cost of distribution is so high. If digitization happens and every cable operator can deliver 500 channels, then the cost of carriage becomes much less.

But in much of India, isn't the problem that there are too many channels competing for a finite number of viewers and advertising rupees? For instance, there are probably more than a dozen 24-hour news channels.

I don't think the problem is over competition. If you see a country of 1.2 billion people and the number of channels, it's actually not that many. If you go and see the number of channels in the United States, India doesn't have too many channels. The problem is sameness of content.

Look at the size of the Hindi market. It's a huge market with 500 million people. Why shouldn't there be a dozen channels? The problem is that each of those dozen channels are gi ving the same news at all points in time. That's both a creative, strategic issue as well as a business issue.

Most of the channels are not making any money. They are losing money and hence their ability to invest in content, their ability to invest in strategy, their ability to invest in talent is really limited, and because you have poor talent, poor resources, you are either replicating content or creating very poor content.

Interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

\'Saving Face\' Provokes Questions in India

By GAYATRI RANGACHARI SHAH

Earlier this month, India and Pakistan concluded foreign secretary-level diplomatic talks that didn't yield much in the way of rapprochement. Yet on July 23 and 24, the two nations shared a bonhomie typical of their cultural diplomacy, when the Oscar-winning documentary “Saving Face,” filmed in Pakistan, premiered in New Delhi and Mumbai.

Brought to India by the Asia Society, the short film drew packed audiences in both cities, with over 550 people turning up in Delhi and about 475 in Mumbai.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, one of the co-directors, was present after the film's screening in Mumbai to discuss and answer questions. The interaction, led by the producer and director Kiran Rao of “Dhobi Ghaat” fame, was a spirited one, with the audience asking about unrelated subjects, from filmmaking to terrorism, in Pakistan.

The Mumbai audience was enthusiastic about “Saving F ace,” which deals with the difficult subject of female acid attack victims in Pakistan's Punjab province. The film follows the lives of two such victims, Zakia, 39 and Rukhsana, 23, who simultaneously try to obtain justice (in both cases, the attackers are their husbands) and try to repair their faces.

One of the film's protagonists is Dr. Mohammad Jawad, a skilled plastic surgeon who leaves a thriving medical practice in London to help acid attack victims. With his irreverent humor and relaxed personality, Dr. Jawad helps lighten some especially traumatic and tense moments in the film. In one scene, for instance, he high-fives Zakia, the incongruity of which elicits chuckles from the audience.

“It was pretty hard hitting,” said Abhi Chaki, a Mumbai resident who saw the film with his wife. “It struck a fine balance between the lighter moments and the more morbid.” Another viewer, Jai Bhatia, said that he “loved the way the film was made, because you s ee the change that takes place.” Mr. Bhatia was referring to a scene in which a path-breaking bill is passed by Pakistan's legislators to punish perpetrators of acid attacks.

The film aside, the audience appeared to marvel at the articulate and poised Ms. Obaid-Chinoy. Ms. Obaid-Chinoy said she initially rejected the offer to work on the film, the brainchild of her co-director, Daniel Junge, because she was just about to give birth in Canada. But after she moved to back to Pakistan, she changed her mind.

“When I began filming, it was very difficult, because it is so visual,” she said, referring to the brutalization of the women's faces. “The hardest part about making this film was that we were not sure if we would have something people would smile about. We had to make sure we had a fine balance, that there were moments when the audience smiled.”

In response to a question about how she dealt with the anger she said she had, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy was ph ilosophical: “We can't expect people to see the light when they've been kept in darkness. These people don't know what they are doing is wrong.”

Another audience member, who said he was held hostage during the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, asked about her views on terrorism. Tearing up, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy said that one of her close friend's father was also a hostage during those days, adding that she had many Indian friends from her college days in the United States.

“We as a nation need to discuss these issues,” she said. “Pakistan does need India. Our generation must broaden the conversation.”

Asked by an audience member if she thought she had a future in Pakistani politics, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy, who lives in Karachi, smiled. “Perhaps. I never close that door.”

Born and raised in Pakistan, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy, the eldest of five daughters, said she grew up believing she could do anything as well as a man. At 17, she went undercover as a journalist to expose Pakistani children from rich feudal families who had access to guns and consequently terrorized their less privileged peers. In response, filthy graffiti about her was sprawled across neighborhoods in her hometown of Karachi.

She thought her father would tell her to give up journalism there and then, but he surprised her by saying, “If you speak the truth, I will stand by you and so will the world.” This year, Time magazine named Ms. Obaid-Chinoy one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

“Saving Face” has yet to be released nationwide in Pakistan because the nonprofit organizations involved with the acid attack victims in the documentary believe that the victims lives could be endangered. Ms. Obaid-Chinoy said she hopes that will soon change.

As for the film's Indian premiere, she found it “incredible,” she said. “So many people have come up to me here and said, ‘Thank you for showing us a different narra tive of Pakistan.'”
 

Grid Failure Leaves Millions Without Power in North India

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tens of millions of people in North India were without power and early morning commutes in Delhi were thrown into chaos Monday after a massive electrical grid failure.

“Yes there are problems with Northern Grid, we are trying to restore it,” an official from Power System Operating, which manages the grid, told India Today without specifying what those problems were.

Power was out in the entire state of Rajasthan, population 67 million, for several hours Monday morning after the grid failure, which happened around 2:30 a.m. Other states affected included Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. An estimated 360 million people were affected by the outage.

Power was also out in many parts of India's capital city of Delhi early Monday morning, and the Delhi Metro, which carries almost 2 million passengers a day, was completely down for several hours. Delhi Metro offi cials said that services were back up on all six of the lines by 8:45 A.M., thanks to hydro-electric power from Bhutan. Services from Noida, an East Delhi suburb, were running slowly and cars were crowded, commuters said.

On Saturday, in an unrelated incident, a cat leapt into a Delhi grid station and was electrocuted, causing a fire that left parts of East Delhi without power for 24 hours. “The cat must have been wet,” a spokesperson for BSES told The Hindu.

Newswallah: Long Reads Edition

By HEATHER TIMMONS

Descendants of former colonial subjects in Asia (and Africa) “can only be bewildered by the righteous nostalgia for imperialism that has recently seized many prominent Anglo-American politicians and opinion-makers, who continue to see Asia through the narrow perspective of western interests, leaving unexamined and unimagined the collective experiences of Asian peoples,” Pankaj Mishra writes in Friday's Books section of the British newspaper The Guardian.

The article appears as Mr. Mishra's newest book, “From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia,” is being released. He writes that “overt violence and terror is only a small part of the story of European domination of Asia and Africa, which includes the slow-motion slaughter of tens of million in famines caused by unfettered experiments in free trade â€" and plain callousness (Indians, after all, would go on breeding “like rab bits”, Winston Churchill argued when asked to send relief during the Bengal famine of 1943-44).”

Western  “neo-imperialists,” Mr. Mishra says, now look as “reliable as the peddlers of fake Viagra,” but still find customers.  Surely not for long, he seems to think, writing that “we have edged closer to the cosmopolitan future the first generation of modern Asian thinkers, writers and leaders dreamed of â€" in which people from different parts of the world meet as equals.”

In a post on the Kafila blog titled “Death and the Factory,”  Shuddhabrata Sengupta examines the reaction to the  recent violence at the Maruti Suzuki factory compared to other incidents in which workers, not managers, were killed. In 2009, for example, at the Lakhani Shoe Factory in Faridabad, Haryana, workers “were struck by a ball of fire, which engulfed them before they could run to save their lives,” Mr. Sengupta writes.

“We h ave heard a lot about one fire in Manesar in the past few days. Why have we heard so little about another fire in Faridabad over the last three years?” he asks.

“Death does not come to the factory riding only bullets and the lethal blows of police lathis,” Mr. Sengupta writes. “It comes casually, with the accident, or in solitude, with suicide. Across the world, there is a growing incidence of workplace deaths.”

In “What is his gameplan?,” Rana Ayyub of Tehelka examines the future role of Sharad Pawar, the president of the Nationalist Congress Party and a recent thorn in the side of the ruling Congress. “The next general election could result in a hung parliament and a weak Congress and BJP - and offer Pawar his last shot at becoming the prime minister,” the article says.  “It's a prize he has coveted since Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991.”

But no one actually knows what will happen, Ms. Ayyub concludes. “There can be only thre e possible options after the 2014 election - a Congress-led government, a BJP-led government and a Third Front government. Typical of Pawar, he can stay relevant in all three situations.”

Newswallah: Bharat Edition

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Jammu and Kashmir: The 13th anniversary of the 1999 Kargil war between India and Pakistan was commemorated at the war memorial in Drass town in Kargil district (Hindustan Times). War veterans, senior army officials and widows of Indian soldiers killed during the war laid wreaths at the memorial. An enormous Indian flag, more than 37 feet, or 11 meters, long, was hoisted during the two-day event.

Assam: The Supreme Court said Friday that it will look into a petition seeking refugee status for Bengali-Hindu immigrants living in Assam, who are believed to have fled neighboring Bangladesh, their country of origin, because of persecution (Indian Express). The petitioners, two nongovernmental agencies, told the court that other eastern and northeastern states also had such populations.

Bihar: Four of the five students accused of raping a teenager in the state capital, Patna, have been arrest ed, the  news Web site IBNLive reported. The incident took place last month; the perpetrators circulated videos of the alleged crime, according to the report filed with the police.

Gujarat: A recent report released by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development drew attention to weak water-treatment systems in the cities of Ahmedabad and Surat (India Express). The channeling of “industrial sewage into domestic wastewater networks and natural streams exerts pressure on existing wastewater treatment infrastructure,” the report said.

Maharashtra: Raj Thackeray, the chief of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), a Hindu nationalist political party in Maharashtra, appealed to the state government to make toll collection more transparent (Daily Bhaskar). He urged citizens not to pay tolls until greater transparency is achieved. “I am not against toll or payment of taxes, but people should get the services for which they pay,” he said. MNS party workers were seen vandalizing property at toll plazas along the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and shutting down toll booths in certain Mumbai suburbs.

Andhra Pradesh: The state has approached the federal government with a proposal to build a second major port (New Indian Express). Visakhapatnam currently is the only major port on the state's 996 kilometers, or 619 miles, of coastline.

Kerala: Tons of grain are rotting in the open while a government agency created to store agricultural produce rents out its warehouses for other purposes (New Indian Express).

Image of the Day: July 27

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

In Conversation With: Tribal Expert Virginius Xaxa

By MALAVIKA VYAWAHARE

The mounting violence in Assam has highlighted yet again the serious conflict between tribal and nontribal communities in India. India Ink spoke to Virginius Xaxa, the deputy director at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Guwahati, Assam, to learn more about the most pressing issues affecting the tribal communities in India and to assess how the Indian state has dealt with their concerns.

The tribal population as per the 2001 census was 84.3 million, or 8.2 percent of the total population at the time.

More than 600 tribal communities are recognized by the Indian Constitution and granted special benefits by the state, including quotas in educational institutions, political offices, and government jobs. Their population is characterized by geographical isolation, a distinctive culture, language and religion and a degree of social isolation from mainstream society. The Constitution also gives areas inhabited by tribal people greater autonomy in their governance.

Mr. Xaxa, who belongs to a tribal community Oraon from Chhattisgarh, has written extensively on tribes in the country. His book, “State, Society and Tribes: Issues in Post-Colonial India,” was published in 2008. His 1999 article “Tribes as Indigenous People of India” is often cited as essential reading for an understanding of India's tribal communities.

Have violent clashes between the tribal and nontribal populations in India been on the rise in recent years?

You have to situate the violence that happened in Assam in context â€"- there, there is a conflict of interest between tribal groups and others. In central and eastern India, the resistance is against development projects like mining projects and state-sponsored policies. There, the problem is not between tribals and nontribals. Don't get me wrong, conflict between tribals and nontribals does exist there as well, but it is not so intolerant.

How is the situation in the northeast different from other tribal areas in India?

The demand for greater autonomy for tribals and the perception of outsiders as exploiters is pervasive in all tribal areas in India.
Assam has a history of interethnic clashes. The Bodos have clashed with not just migrant Bengalis and Muslims but also adivasis [tribal groups also referred to as aboriginals].

Unlike in the central and eastern region, tribals in the northeast are not agitated by the state. This is because historically new states have emerged in the northeast - Meghalaya and Mizoram were part of Assam until they got independence [based on their ethnic differences].

Many people believe getting a separate state is a panacea, that once you get independence all the problems will go away. But some groups continue to feel discriminated, and interethnic conflicts continue.

When the oppressed groups make their assertions, th ey are not welcome, and attempts are made to crush them by the majority. The problem in the northeast today is that both sides have become organized, but rather than discussions and dialogue they resort to violent methods.

The balance of power is being maintained through violence.

There is a perception among the urban population in India that people living in tribal areas are anti-development.

The urban population thinks that these projects coming up in tribal areas will bring about development and this kind of resistance by the tribals is anti-development.

But that is not the case. Tribal communities are not opposed to development.

When I was working with the Khonds in Orissa they told me that, “We are not antidevelopment; we want a development that has a place for us. If you have irrigation projects, make sure our lands are not taken away.”

Their opposition has been because in the last 50 years development that has occurred has gone against their interests. All this while they have been sacrificing. They have not gained anything out of it.

The tribal populations have lost faith in the development. They do not want to be sacrificing themselves anymore.

How have the federal government's policies toward tribals affected the situation?

As far as India is concerned, only when things take a violent turn does the state intervene. They understand only the language of gun, and this is true in other countries too.

In eastern India, too, tribal people have moved into extremist organizations, like the Maoists, but there they are resisting not only the state but the corporate presence too. Earlier, under socialism, it was the development directed by the state. Now, after economic liberalization, it is the corporate sector in charge, facilitated by the state, which they are resisting.

They have become uprooted from their own land and forests. Earlier, they did not oppose it, but now they think enough is enough!

What solution do you see for this alienation of the tribal population in India?

The biggest challenge for the state now is to win their confidence if it wants to continue to pursue its development agenda. But in the northeast it is more a question of sharing of resources and sharing the fruits of development.

Take the recent problem: The Bodos felt they were economically, politically, socially and culturally subjugated by the Assamese society. They did not get a separate state; they got an autonomous council and are trying to get maximum mileage from it, but the region it covers does not exclusively have Bodos in it. Other ethnic groups have been there for decades. How far in history can you go to see who owned the land originally?

(The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.)

As China Eyes Indian Ocean, Japan and India Pair Up on Defense

By AARTI BETIGERI

For two days last month, ships from the Indian and Japanese naval forces held joint military exercises in waters off Tokyo. By military standards, the exercises were small in scale. But they were heavy with symbolism and brought to light another facet of the growing relationship between the two countries - defense.

Their growing collaboration is expected to lead to tighter cooperation in one of the world's most increasingly important regions, the Indian Ocean. And given the shadow cast by the regional giant that separates the countries, it is a relationship that many observers feel is long overdue. (Read more about Japan and India's growing economic ties.)

Such joint exercises might be standard practice in international military-to-military exchanges, but with growing regional tensions - like in the South China Sea, located between India and Japan - they take on a more complex meaning.

“If you look at it through a containment of China prism, it makes sense. Everybody is very worried about China,” said Rahul Bedi, a regional defense expert - particularly the Indian Navy, as China flexes its muscle in the Indian Ocean.

According to an Indian Navy spokesman, Commander PVS Satish, the ships involved covered basic exercises aimed at simply “understanding each other's operational and communication procedures.” Around 1,400 sailors from four ships were involved, including the missile destroyer I.N.S. Rana and the frigate I.N.S. Shivalik.

The joint exercises were part of official commemorations of 60 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries; there has also been a flurry of high-level visits back and forth, including a trip to India last November by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan. There is a lot to celebrate, given that just 15 years ago, relations hit a low point when Japan deeply objected to India's testing of nuclear weap ons.

While they could be seen as simply an attempt to build practical naval experience with each other, the exercises could also be taken as part of efforts to boost India's naval power and project its influence beyond the Indian Ocean.

“This is part of a wider ambition to show the flag regularly east of the Strait of Malacca, now that India is becoming an Indo-Pacific nation and not solely an Indian Ocean power,” said Rory Medcalf, director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute, an Australian foreign policy think tank.

“At sea, both have serious navies. Japan's may be more advanced, for instance, with its strong submarine fleet, but India has the benefit of long experience in the Indian Ocean,” he said.

There are growing fears that the Indian Ocean region might become a battleground in any future regional conflicts. Home to vital shipping routes as well as piracy issues, it is bordered by Australia, Asia and Africa, with India and China at its core. Beijing has been working hard to build up its naval capacities here, including interests in ports in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh - something that has India deeply concerned.

In addition, the South China Sea is particularly geostrategically important, as it is critical to global shipping routes and has enormous potential oil and natural gas reserves. But it is also pockmarked by a handful of worrying territorial disputes.

Still, it is important to note that India is striving to at least maintain what maritime ties it has with China. The ships that took part in the Tokyo exercises stopped in at Shanghai on their way back to India, in the first naval visit by Indian ships to China in six years.

“The ships' visit is a high point of defense exchanges this year, as it is designated by both the countries as a year of friendship and cooperation,” S. Jaishankar, India's ambassador to China, told the Press Trust of India news agency.

In addition, ships from China, Japan and India are all involved in guarding the strategically important Gulf of Aden, in Yemen, from piracy.

While China's neighbors might be keen to curtail its maritime ambitions, they are also trying to engage with the country and retain good relations. Regional powers are swimming around each other, cautiously and nervously, jockeying to assert their own strength but trying to avoid the kind of sea-based conflict that many observers fear is looming.

“It makes sense for them to cooperate against transnational maritime threats like piracy,” said Mr. Medcalf. “The big challenge for all these countries will be to figure out a way of working with China in the Indian Ocean.”

A Conversation With: Bollywood\'s Aamir Khan

By VIKAS BAJAJ

In May, Aamir Khan, the film star, started hosting a first-of-its-kind TV show, “Satyamev Jayate” (Truth Prevails), that deals with large social problems like the caste system, dowries, the overuse of pesticides, medical malpractice and alcoholism. The show has become a national sensation, prompting changes in policy and earning Mr. Khan an invitation to testify before a committee of the Parliament about health care.

Mr. Khan, 47, who grew up in a film family, is widely considered one of the top actors in Bollywood, the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai. In the last decade, he has increasingly performed in and produced socially conscious films that appeal to the moviegoing masses of India. He sat down for an interview with India Ink one recent Saturday morning as he prepared to start shooting for the movie “Dhoom 3,” the third installment of an action franchise.

How d id this show come about?

It's like all of us: you read the papers, you hear about stuff and you see things happening around you which you feel, “You know, I wish things were different.” I used to often feel, “What can I do, what can I do?” And I used to think that, “You know my skill sets lie in communications - that's what I have learned in the work that I do. So I can use my skill sets to contribute in any way to society.” I used to always feel television is a strong medium, and if I can combine my skill sets or whatever goodwill I have earned, along with the reach of TV, then we can actually do something.

So when Uday [Shankar, the chief executive of Star India] came to meet me, he offered me a game show, I think, which didn't interest me, then said, “What would you like to do in TV?” I said, “Look, for me to do TV, I feel that TV is such a strong medium and so powerful. In every home you have a TV. I would like to use that strength to bring about strong social change.”

Shyam Benegal, the respected filmmaker and former legislator, told me that your show is effective because it appeals to mainstream audiences. The same appears to be true of many of your movies like “Tarre Zameen Par,” which is about dyslexia. How do you take entertainment and stuff it with vegetables, so to speak?

I personally believe I am not doing it the way you are describing it. I am not stuffing vegetables. I am not stuffing messaging into entertainment. What I am doing is I am taking something - you can call it messaging for lack of a better description â€"I am taking messaging in its pure form and I am making that interesting for you. I feel that anything can be told in an interesting way.

How did you come up with the topics for “Satyamev Jayate”?

We went through many topics. And for that, Uday was also part of the discussion. We had a list of 40 topics, then we brought it under 20 and then 16 and then 13. It's very difficult to say why we dropped one and kept one. And we had hoped that if the show is successful and people do connect with it, then we could take up those more topics.

So far, most of the shows you have done so far have not been very political.

I don't know why you say that. Health care is very political.

Each show certainly discusses policy, but you don't get into political details, the role of, say, the Congress or the Bhartiya Janata Party in any particular issue.

The thing is we don't take names of anybody. Our purpose is not that. Whether it's an individual, whether it's a political party or company or agency, our purpose is to not name any individual. Our purpose is to look inward.

Let us be positive instead of being negative. Let us not point fingers and find a villain. One of us is doing it. Let's find an answer. The person who is doing it also knows what I am doing. When we say India is spending 1.4 percent of its G.D .P. on health care, who is spending 1.4 percent?

The government.

So we are very clearly saying that government is spending 1.4 percent. It's not right. Is that how we value our health? Is that the only value we can put to health? We are not mincing our words at all. We are just not being accusatory in our approach because that is not our intention. Our intention is to understand.

And everybody is part of our society, including a politician. A politician is as much a human being as you and I. You can't just only blame that person. You and I have chosen him. We have to take as much responsibility.

So you disagree with people who argue that you could have more impact if you named names and held specific people responsible?

Yeah, because I feel first of all I have to genuinely understand that I am part of the problem. The moment that I think I am not part of the problem, then I am not being honest.

We look at these issues and see where we are going wrong. That's the attempt. Can we look for people who have found a way forward? Can we say how have they understood the issue? Maybe they are in the minority and they are not exposed on a public platform nationally. We are giving that platform to them and learning from people who have found a way forward. So the show's attempt is a very positive attempt.

Wherever there are governments doing great work, we showcase that. Sikkim: fully organic. We put that as an example. If Sikkim can go fully organic, why can't every state?

But many agricultural experts say it's not realistic to think that all Indian agriculture can go organic and still produce enough food to feed 1.2 billion people.

Who tells you this?

Agricultural experts.

No, who tells you this? Think again; you are a journalist. I am pointing the mike at you now.

You want me to tell you that the [fertilizer and pesticide] companies tell me this?

Who else? Bingo. Now, l et me tell you India is a country of small and marginal farmers. What's the size of the average farm in India? Less than two acres. OK, why do you need chemical farming for that? Give me one good reason. So if you don't need it, let's not have it. Why are you putting poison in the soil, making it less fertile, turning it into sand? Why? How much water is required? How much more water is required with chemical farming? So you are using more water also, spoiling the soil, as well. And how big is your farm in any case?

India is ideal for organic farming. Please don't believe these people, I request you. America, 500 acres is a small farm. We are not America. In the West, people need to do chemical farming. We don't need to. Our average farm is two acres, we have a labor problem, people don't have jobs. Organic farming is slightly more labor intensive. Great, our guys will get jobs.

How many examples have we placed before you on the show of people who are doing organ ic farming who are time and again telling you that if you do it correctly, your yield does not go down, your soil remains fertile? Why are you turning a blind eye to that? I don't understand. What more proof do you want, yaar?

A lot of people I have spoken to say something changed about you after your 2001 movie “Lagaan,” that you started speaking out more and doing movies that touched on more serious issues than you had in the past. Was the movie a turning point for you?

No, I don't think so. I spoke out during the Mumbai riots [in 1992 and 1993] also. I have never hesitated to speak my mind, ever. “Sarfarosh” was in 1998, before “Lagaan.” It's a highly social, political film. So I don't see “Lagaan” as a turning point.

What kind of influence has your wife, Kiran Rao, had on you?

I think Kiran has had a very relaxing effect on me. She has a lot of positive energy. She is full of life. She has always got a smile on her face, a bright s mile And I think her happy nature is infectious. I think as a person I have always been very closed, you know, right through my life. I think with Kiran coming into my life, I kind of [breathes out] relaxed. That's the best way I can explain it.

Where are you planning to take the show? How do you take it forward?

The first thing we want to do is understand what we have done. We need to take stock. I don't think right now we have fully understood what has happened. I don't think anybody has. And right now we are still in the thick of it. We are still airing our episodes; we are still doing postproduction of the ones that are coming. The last episode comes on 29 July.
Once that happens, I think the next three months the team will spread out once more across the country like they did for two years. And for three months they will travel the country to understand what is it that we have done and what is the extent of the impact of the show. Has it had any impact or not?

And you will go back to doing films like “Dhoom 3” after this?

It's not like this is not a part of my life. All of this is a part of my life. “Satyamev Jayate” is as much a part of my life as “Dhoom 3” is. Neither of the two ends for me; neither of the two is kept aside for me. “Satyamev Jayate” is very much part of my life and always will be. I am looking forward to “Dhoom 3.” It's a great script. See, I only work on things that excite me.

You have said you are not interested in running for office. What do you want to be doing 10 or 15 years from now?

Telling you stories, hopefully. Hopefully, I will still be able to tell you stories. This is what I enjoy doing. I enjoy touching people's heart, touching their lives. Making you laugh and cry, feel.

(Interview has been lightly edited and condensed.)

Narendra Modi Defends His Actions in 2002 Riots

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Shahid Siddiqui, editor of the Urdu-language weekly newspaper Nai Duniya, recently spoke to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in a rare interview. During the hour long conversation, Mr. Modi defended his actions during the 2002 riots in his state that left thousands dead, discussed the long court battles that followed and asked why Gujarat is being “targeted” by critics.

Mr. Modi is considered one of the Bharatiya Janata Party's strongest candidates for prime minister in the upcoming 2014 elections, but the legacy of the Gujarat riots has also made him one of India's most controversial and divisive politicians. Mr. Siddiqui, a former Member of Parliament from Uttar Pradesh, supplied an audio file of the interview to India Ink. The interview was translated from Urdu and excerpted by Raksha Kumar.

There are a lot of questions on the riots for the past 20 years. Those who were burnt in the train in Godhr a, their bodies were brought back to Ahmedabad. Why did you decide to do this? Did you not understand the repercussions of this?

I have answered this question in detail to the SIT [Special Investigation Team] and the Supreme Court. No matter whose body it is, it needs to be returned to the families, right? It was not right for everyone to go to Godhra where there was tension. The second thing is that this train was going to Ahmedabad, and the passengers were all going to Ahmebadad. So how do you get the bodies to reach their families?

You could have silently brought it to the hospitals and handed them over.

That is exactly how it happened. (laughs)

Didn't you take them out on a procession?

No. Listen to the truth. There is no place in Godhra to keep so many bodies, it is an administrative decision as to how to manage these? Now, all the bodies had to go to north [Ahmedabad], so the question was do we shift it individ ually or as a huge lot? Do we shift it in the morning or at night? The administration felt that we should shift it at night to reduce tension. The civil hospital in Ahmedabad is congested. And in 2001, it was in the outskirts. So, 16 bodies were brought into the civil hospital. There was no procession.

When the riots broke out, you would have gotten the information that people are dying? What did you do to stop it?

We announced a curfew, appealed to people to be peaceful. My first appeal was to Godhra, to let the police do their duty. The entire police force was asked to get on this job. There had never been a riot this big in India before, and the first riot in the age of 24X7 media. Earlier the government had the time to organize its machinery as the news broke out only in the following day's newspapers. There will surely be a difference in the speed of the television and police movement! Forces had to compete with the speed of TV news.

Let me tell you wh at happened in the first 72 hours:

There hasn't been even one police gun shot, no lathi charge. There was lathi charge where Indira Gandhi's dead body was kept. They did it there to control the crowds. But, here people were arrested in advance.

But your officials, police and some in the media reported you having told the people to vent out their anger in the first 48 hours? Even Haren Pandya [the late home minister of the state] had said that.

The Supreme Court asked for an investigation to be conducted. We should trust that.

Did you tell the police to stop the rioting at any cost?

Of course! There are shoot at sight orders I gave the police. That is public.

Even at that time I had heard that people were identified and burnt, as though the whole thing was pre-planned.

It is all a lie. Instead, think about how many Muslims were protected then! If they were to be killed systematically, who would have been spared today?

But they s ay you were in the control room.

The SC [Supreme Court] team has investigated this. Wait until their report is submitted.

Did you go to the refugee camps yourself?

I went everywhere and investigated. There used to be PILs [public interest litigation] in the Gujarat High Court very often those days. And some judgements say that the best facilities were provided to the refugees.

What did the PM say to you at that point?

There is a video on that. Atalji [Atal Bihari Vajpayee] said that he has trust in me.

Senior Congress leaders including Rajiv Gandhi apologized after 1984 [communal riots]. And [Jagdish] Tytler was made to quit politics. You haven't regretted your actions or apologized until now. It has been 10 years. You should have done it as a head of state.

You should see the statements I made at that point. From that you will understand what Modi thinks and believes. There was a 2005 interview of mine with Prabhu Chawla. He asked m e the same question and I told him, why should I apologize? If a government is responsible for this, then it should be hanged in the middle of the road. And they should be hanged as a deterrent â€" so that no administrator dares to do this again. They should not be forgiven, because that is encouraging the crime. If Modi has sinned, then Modi should be hanged. But, even after trying sincerely to save many lives, some people want to badmouth me due to political reasons, then I cant answer them.

Is there some sorrow in your heart about what happened? That you couldn't stop it?

First, I think I managed to stop the rioting. I will not admit that I couldn't.

If a correspondent of mine gives me wrong information and I print it, then I, as an editor, will apologize. There will be a case against me, not him.

I will give you all the documents with my statements. And if you are convinced that I was not involved in it, then you should also publish that you were harsh on me. Then you should say that for the past 10 years we have defamed Modi and you should apologize to me.

Even after the riots, your administration was not willing to deliver justice until the Supreme Court intervened. There was no SIT, the accused were all acquitted.

You are mistaken. The SIT deals with only 8-9 cases, here there have been thousands of FIRs [First Information Report] and arrests. Not one person was punished in 1984 riots. Justice has been delivered in more than 50 cases in my state. Only Best Bakery and Bilkis Bano cases have been moved to other states.

Why were there so many fake encounters in your admin?

Let me tell you what is happening in the state where you are an MP [Member of Parliament] from â€" Uttar Pradesh.

Mayawati had said she made 396 encounters to maintain normalcy. In my state there were just 12 encounters.

The national human rights commission has said that in the last 10 years (in this country) 400 have been fake. There is an appeal in the supreme court that these should be re-investigated. So, it is a national issue, why is Gujarat being targeted. If you want to talk about Gujarat, talk about UP , talk about the rest of the country.

Roll Up the Red Carpet: It\'s Time to Sign Off

February 29, 2012, 4:30 pm

By MELENA RYZIK

We've covered the malaise and the hoopla, the puppies, the ladies, the gents and the scene-stealers. It's been an eventful Oscar circuit. Now we've packed away our gowns and our cocktail party chatter - it's time for us to retire our red carpet chops for another year.

But the Bagger would like to end the season on a classy note. Naturally, we turn to Meryl Streep. In the aftermath of her unexpected victory Sunday over Viola Davis, Ms. Streep donated $10,000 to a  Rhode Island school in financial trouble, Reuters reported. She made the donation, through her charity, Silver Mountain Foundation for the Arts, to the Segue Institute for Learning, a charter school in Central Falls, Rhode Island, in Ms. Davis's name. Ms. Davis has been an advocate for the now-bankrupt town where she grew up and is childhood friends with the school's founder, Angelo Garcia.

“We've just been screaming from the rooftops,” Mr. Garcia said of Ms. Streep's donation, though he noted that it was just the start of the $1.2 million the school, with more than 200 pupils, needs to stay open.

Any other Oscar winners want to jump in? Anybody? Angelina? Angelina's Right Leg?

Until next year, everybody.

Pranking the Oscars, Sacha Baron Cohen and Sean Young Edition

February 27, 2012, 4:00 pm

By MELENA RYZIK

4:07 p.m. | Updated LOS ANGELES - Making good on a few days of manufactured commotion, Sacha Baron Cohen arrived at the Oscars red carpet in full “Dictator” regalia. Surrounded by female bodyguards and sporting an obviously fake beard and a fluctuating accent, he spilled what he claimed were Kim Jong-il's ashes on an unsuspecting Ryan Seacrest â€" at least, Mr. Seacrest said it wasn't planned â€" and left, pulled away by (real) security.

Though it caused a momentary stir, the Bagger doubts it will have the lasting impact of, say, Bjork's swan dress. Then again, Mr. Baron Cohen and Paramount, the studio behind “The Dictator,” only need it to be memorable u ntil May 15, when the movie opens.

For an only slightly less staged stunt, we can always rely on Sean Young. The actress, who seems to crash an Oscar afterparty annually â€" or at least tries to â€" went for it again last night. She was arrested after a scuffle as she tried to get into the Governors Ball, The Associated Press reported. Dressed in evening wear, Ms. Young, a star of “Blade Runner” and “Stripes,” was first subdued by a guard in a “citizen's arrest” and then taken into custody by authorities. She was charged with misdemeanor battery at a Hollywood police station, posted $20,000 bail and was released early Monday, according to The AP. The arrest follows incidents at the Vanity Fair party and the Directors Guild Awards in which Ms. Young was kicked out. No word on the brave soul who first restrained her last night, but expect a full TMZ report soon.