From now on, you will find us at a new address: nytimes.com/world. We will continue to produce web-only India Ink sketches, analyses, narratives and news stories, but they will appear on the World page, along with the rest of the newspaper’s coverage.
Join us at our new home, and continue to follow us at @nytindia on Twitter.
NEW DELHI — On Thursday, as the government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi completed 30 days in office, Mr. Modi, with a perceptible confidence in his political persona, reached out to
the public through a blog post.
His message was marked by a theme of his campaign — that of the political outsider, beset by hostile critics, but nonetheless eager to transform the country through its highest office. He wrote of the “honeymoon period” that previous governments enjoyed — “up to a hundred days and beyond.”
“Not unexpectedly I don’t have any such luxury,” he wrote. “Forget hundred days, the series of allegations began in less than a hundred hours.” He did not specify what those allegations were. Read more…
MUMBAI — On a recent afternoon, 27-year-old Ashwini Agarwal adjusted her sari as she emerged from the crowded outpatient department at the Lokmanya Tilak Hospital, a public facility that
houses the oldest of India’s roughly 14 breast milk banks, established a quarter of a century ago.
She had just donated her breast milk to the bank, to be consumed by another patient’s newborn, a woman who would be unable to breastfeed her own child.
Mrs. Agarwal’s second child was delivered at the hospital four months ago through a caesarean operation, and for a few days after the birth, she was unable to breastfeed her own child. Her newborn was fed mother’s milk from the bank in the initial days.
“The doctors told me how important it was,” she said, expressing her relief that they had breast milk in house.
Her husband, who accompanied her to the appointment, was surprised.
“You mean it was another woman’s milk?” he asked. “Is that even safe?”
Dr. Armida Fernandez, 70, who helped to start the bank in 1989 and now runs her own nonprofit, said that the answer to this common reaction was simple. Read more…
After more than 50 years, Hindustan Motors ended production of the iconic Ambassador, the first car solely sourced and produced in India.
By Vikram Singh on Publish Date June 26, 2014. Photo by Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.
“When the Ambassador car was born in 1957 to a newly independent India, it was the height of style and status,” Nida Najar wrote in The New York Times. “It was standard issue to senior civil servants and government officials; its possession implied status, and its ubiquity was a sign of an earlier, seemingly simpler India.”
“But that icon of the Indian road may have reached the end of the line, pushed from its dominance by changing consumer tastes, an opening marketplace for automobiles and fierce competition,” she wrote.
“In May, the car’s manufacturer,Hindustan Motors announced that it would suspend production of its Ambassador, the final stage in a long decline,” she wrote. Read more >>
MUMBAI — A call center worker far from his native Hyderabad; a Chennai-based developer checking out e-books in Tamil; and a young, homesick cab driver in Mumbai who keeps track of comings and goings in his village in Uttar Pradesh — all are customers of a mobile news application trying to tap into a growing market of online Indian-language readers.
NewsHunt, which can be accessed on smartphones, delivers 100 newspapers and 10,000 books in 11 Indian languages and English. It was started in 2009 by its parent company, Verse Innovation, to serve the growing literate population — 74 percent of India, according to the latest census.
In December of 2013, NewsHunt began offering its readers a selection of 10,000 books, adapted for mobile reading, in nine Indian languages and English.
But Virendra Gupta, the chief executive officer of Verse, said that while 70 percent of its users are bilingual — accessing newspapers in both English and an Indian language — they tend to read Indian languages eight to nine times as frequently as English content. Read more…
The Saturday after Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party’s historic victory in the country’s parliamentary elections was announced, some 40,000 subscribers to a weekly Sanskrit newspaper woke up to a resounding headline:
“Miracle, Miracle, Miracle,” printed in bold Sanskrit over the top of Sajal Sandesh, which means “Gentle Message.”
But for Deven Khatri, who manages an edible oil export business as his day job, there may have been a double meaning in the headline. He saw the election of the Hindu nationalist leader and his right-of-center party as not just a political windfall, but also an economic one.
Mr. Khatri, 42, started Sajal Sandesh in May 2013, partly in anticipation of a new government, which is likely to be friendly toward the revival of the ancient language, and therefore could provide a much-needed platform, promotion and advertising to his fledgling paper.
“The Modi government very much prefers Indian culture, and they are very keen to promote Sanskrit,” he said. “We have met B.J.P. leaders, who have assured us of their support.” Read more…
