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Story Archives of 'India'
Self Defense for Indian Women
By Peter Aronson on Monday, August 24, 2009.
They may not talk about it much, but Indian women know that violence against women is rampant in their country. The perpetrators are not just strangers on buses, streets and in fields, but also fathers, uncles, husbands and even sons. With hardly anyone to turn to, some women are learning how to stand up for themselves. Women are training other women in self defense — in secret, behind closed doors.
Rickshaw Advertising
By Peter Aronson on Thursday, August 13, 2009.
Many people in the central Indian state of Bihar rely on an ancient form of transportation: the bicycle rickshaw. These three-wheeled vehicles are slow-moving and not especially lucrative for the drivers, who huff and puff through city streets.
Now an Indian businessman has an idea that could turn bicycle rickshaws into moneymaking vehicles: outdoor advertising. But will the drivers see any of the profits? The World Vision Report’s Peter Aronson brings us this report.
Aravind Adiga's New India
By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, June 25, 2009.
In May, more than 400 million people turned out to vote in India’s national elections - by far, the world’s largest expression of democracy.
Peaceful elections and the significant rise of India’s economic power aside, the country still faces rampant corruption, widespread poverty, illiteracy and preventable diseases. A series of bombings in Mumbai last November highlight longstanding animosity between India and Pakistan.
Locally, tensions between Muslims, Hindus, and other groups continue to play out, and the gap between the rural poor and the urbanites working in high-tech startups and the glimmering office towers of Bangalore and Delhi remains wide.
The writer Aravind Adiga delights in exposing the contradictions and complexities of his native country. Last year he was awarded the Man Booker prize for his debut novel The White Tiger.
His new collection of short stories, Between the Assassinations, has just been released in the U.S. The stories are set in the period between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and her son Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. We spoke to him by phone this week while he visited Australia. He explained what the Gandhi dynasty means to India.
Another point of discussion: whether those who are enjoying India’s newfound wealth, especially the young people working in the information and technology industries, are in touch with the many people at the bottom of the economy.
Digital Dumping Grounds
By Virginia Prescott on Tuesday, June 23, 2009.
When containers of old computers first started arriving in West Africa a few years ago, the Ghanaian government welcomed them as donations. It soon became clear that as few as 50 percent of the donated computers were in working condition or showed any hope of being fixed.
Broken, discarded computers up in massive piles outside of Ghana’s most impoverished slums. There, children melt down toxic plastic casings to retrieve scraps of valuable metals inside. Emmy-award winning journalist Peter Klein and a team of grad students from the University of British Columbia traveled to Ghana, China, and India to find out where our used electronics end up. The result of their investigation airs this week on PBS's Frontline/World. Producer and correspondent Peter Klein joins us on the line to tell us more.
Watch the trailer for "Digital Dumping Ground":
(Photo by Vibek Raj Maurya via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Global Voices: Obama in Turkey, India's Elections
By Virginia Prescott on Tuesday, April 7, 2009.
President Obama meets today with religious leaders in Turkey during his landmark two day trip to the country. Yesterday he stressed that the US “is not at war with Islam.” It’s part of a wider effort to extend a hand to the Muslim world. Here’s part of a message he delivered celebrating the start of Iran’s traditional new year holiday:
“The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities. And that place cannot be reaches through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.”
For more on how Iranians are responding to Obama’s gestures of goodwill and other international news, we turn to Deborah Dilley. She’s a writer and editor for Global Voices Online, which tracks conversations taking place on blogs across the world.
Stories Discussed in Today's Roundup:
Iran: The New Year Starts With a Message From ObamaGlobal Job Losses and Returning Migrant Workers
Colombia: National Police Force has YouTube Channel
Indian Elections 2009: The Impact of Socially Conscious Corporate Campaigns
(Photo by Chuck Kennedy/White House Photo)
The Elephant, The Tiger and the Cell Phone
By Laura Knoy on Sunday, March 8, 2009.India has transformed almost overnight, from a poor developing nation in the 20th Century to a 21st Century world superpower. India, the world’s largest democracy celebrates sixty years of independence this year. We talk to the author of a new book that examines how well his home country will adapt to going from a sleeping giant to its new standing as a modern, connected world leader.
Guest
- Shashi Tharoor, author of The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell Phone: Reflections on India, The Emerging 21st Century Superpower
An Uncertain Future for the 'Stache
By Brady Carlson on Wednesday, December 31, 2008.
There was a time when police in India were given bonuses to grow a bushy mustache, as nothing signified authority and wisdom quite so well. But now, young Indian men are saying goodbye to handlebars and walruses as the country becomes more urban and Westernized.
Jazz Inspired By India
By Virginia Prescott on Tuesday, December 9, 2008.
Like many boys growing up in Boulder, Colo., Rudresh Mahanthappa liked sports and played in the school band. Lucky for us, Rudresh's brother convinced him to take up the saxophone so he could tour with the school jazz band.
Rudresh's passion for jazz led him to Boston’s Berklee School of Music. There he joined a group that toured India. Rudresh was captivated by the carnatic music of south India, and began to compose works integrating ancient and new world traditions with a distinctive tone and fluid originality.
Rudresh is a rising star in the jazz press, he’s been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and made eight albums as a leader or principal. His newest is called Kinsmen.
AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories From India
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, December 1, 2008.After a series of harrowing days, the siege of Mumbai is over. Mumbai police released on Sunday what it hoped would be the final tally of dead and wounded in the city’s terror attacks: 188 dead and 313 wounded. The ramatic attacks sharpened international attention on a major hub of India's economy, a powerful engine that is pulling the country away from poverty, illiteracy, and brutal lives cut short.
On this December 1st, the 20th annual World AIDS Day, we’ll look at a much quieter force hobbling the country: the estimated 2 to 3.1 million people affected with HIV/AIDS. The human cost of the crisis there is complicated by a lack of understanding about how HIV is spread, and by the systematic poverty, discrimination and corruption that permeates Indian culture.
Negar Akhavi is a journalist and editor of AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories From India. It brings together 16 acclaimed writers who encounter the sex workers, truck drivers, transvestites, infected spouses, and others whose voices have largely been silent. The collection begins with a foreward by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, who writes about conventional wisdom and "half-understanding," as he puts it, creating great gaps in our reasoning about why people get AIDS. The book is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Negar Akhavi joins us from The Christian Science Monitor studios in Washington, D.C. We're also joined by Aman Sethi, a Delhi-based reporter with the fortnightly newsmagazine Frontline. He traveled with some truckers along a lone east-west national highway, who play a big role as so-called "bridge populations" in the spread of HIV.
(Photo courtesy of World Bank Photo Collection)
Global Voices on Mumbai
By Avishay Artsy on Sunday, November 30, 2008.
Our friends at Global Voices have put together an extraordinary selection of blog posts on this week's tragic events in Mumbai. As armed terrorists stormed cinema halls, hotels, hospitals, and other public places in the Indian city, killing 195 and injuring more than 300, bloggers responded with real-time updates from the ground and responses from around the world.
