Lydia Polgreen New York Times
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Wealthy Dalit businessmen share their journey
On his barefoot trudge to school decades ago, a young Ashok Khade passed inescapable reminders of what he was: the well from which he was not allowed to drink; the temple where he was not permitted to worship. At school, he took his place on the floor in a part of the classroom built a step lower than the rest.
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Why protests and blockades are choking Manipur's lifeline
All summer, Homindon Singh Lisam's phone rang off the hook. As a doctor and hospital administrator in Manipur state, he is no stranger to triage. But this was different. The blockade greatly reduced access to crucial medical supplies at a government hospital in Imphal.
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Corruption in UP's health services makes international headlines
The first doctor to die, a senior government health administrator, was shot on his morning walk last October by two men on a motorbike. Six months later, his successor, a cardiologist, was shot to death while out on a predawn stroll. A third government doctor, accused of conspiring to murder the first two, was found dead in jail in June, lying in a...
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Unique Identity Scheme: India scans 2.4 billion eyes
Ankaji Bhai Gangar, a 49-year-old subsistence farmer, stood in line in this remote village until, for the first time in his life, he squinted into the soft glow of a computer screen.
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Rapes of women show clash of old and new India
The young lovers met at a secluded spot next to a field of wheat at the edge of this sprawling suburb of New Delhi, where the timeless India of mustard fields and bullock carts abuts the frantically rising apartment towers of the budding middle class. They went seeking solitude, but instead found themselves at the violent cusp of old India and new....
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How the poor fight corruption in Andhra Pradesh
The village bureaucrat shifted from foot to foot, hands clasped behind his back, beads of sweat forming on his balding head. The eyes of hundreds of wiry village laborers, clad in dusty <i>lungis</i>, were fixed upon him.A group of auditors, themselves villagers, read their findings. A signature had been forged for the delivery of soil ...
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How India's cities are splitting at the seams
Mahitosh Sarkar came here from his distant village in West Bengal 12 years ago looking for a better life, and he found it. He abandoned the penniless existence of a subsistence fisherman to become a big-city vegetable seller. His wife found work as a maid. Their four children went to school. Their tiny household, a grim but weather-tight room in a ...
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World view: Unlikely person at the heart of India's graft scandal
He was a small-town lawyer from a regional political party in a southern Indian state. By almost any measure, Andimuthu Raja, who had no background in telecommunications or in business, seemed an unlikely candidate to be the government minister presiding over the fastest-growing cellphone market in the world. But he had the only qualification that ...
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Obama is not likely to push India hard on Pakistan
Senior American military commanders have sought to press India to formally disavow an obscure military doctrine that they contend is fuelling tensions between India and Pakistan and hindering the American war effort in Afghanistan. But with US President Obama arriving in India on Saturday for a closely watched three-day visit, administration offici...
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Smaller cities show off growing wealth
For decades this central Indian city was vintage old India: crumbling Mughal-era ruins and ancient Buddhist caves surrounded by endless parched acres from which farmers coaxed cotton.But this month Aurangabad became an emblem of an altogether different India: the booming, increasingly urbanized economic powerhouse filled with ambition and a new des...
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US-India versus US-China on PM's trip
Beyond the surface issues, lies a deeper tension, in which India sees a warmer relationship between Washington and Beijing under the Obama administration as a threat to its own rise as a global power.
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Kerala: Where have all the coconut pluckers gone?
Kerala, a relatively prosperous and well-governed state in southern India, is in the grips of an acute shortage of coconut pluckers that threatens to undermine one of its most important industries.
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Wealthy Dalit businessmen share their journey
On his barefoot trudge to school decades ago, a young Ashok Khade passed inescapable reminders of what he was: the well from which he was not allowed to drink; the temple where he was not permitted to worship. At school, he took his place on the floor in a part of the classroom built a step lower than the rest.
-
Why protests and blockades are choking Manipur's lifeline
All summer, Homindon Singh Lisam's phone rang off the hook. As a doctor and hospital administrator in Manipur state, he is no stranger to triage. But this was different. The blockade greatly reduced access to crucial medical supplies at a government hospital in Imphal.
-
Corruption in UP's health services makes international headlines
The first doctor to die, a senior government health administrator, was shot on his morning walk last October by two men on a motorbike. Six months later, his successor, a cardiologist, was shot to death while out on a predawn stroll. A third government doctor, accused of conspiring to murder the first two, was found dead in jail in June, lying in a...
-
Unique Identity Scheme: India scans 2.4 billion eyes
Ankaji Bhai Gangar, a 49-year-old subsistence farmer, stood in line in this remote village until, for the first time in his life, he squinted into the soft glow of a computer screen.
-
Rapes of women show clash of old and new India
The young lovers met at a secluded spot next to a field of wheat at the edge of this sprawling suburb of New Delhi, where the timeless India of mustard fields and bullock carts abuts the frantically rising apartment towers of the budding middle class. They went seeking solitude, but instead found themselves at the violent cusp of old India and new....
-
How the poor fight corruption in Andhra Pradesh
The village bureaucrat shifted from foot to foot, hands clasped behind his back, beads of sweat forming on his balding head. The eyes of hundreds of wiry village laborers, clad in dusty <i>lungis</i>, were fixed upon him.A group of auditors, themselves villagers, read their findings. A signature had been forged for the delivery of soil ...
-
How India's cities are splitting at the seams
Mahitosh Sarkar came here from his distant village in West Bengal 12 years ago looking for a better life, and he found it. He abandoned the penniless existence of a subsistence fisherman to become a big-city vegetable seller. His wife found work as a maid. Their four children went to school. Their tiny household, a grim but weather-tight room in a ...
-
World view: Unlikely person at the heart of India's graft scandal
He was a small-town lawyer from a regional political party in a southern Indian state. By almost any measure, Andimuthu Raja, who had no background in telecommunications or in business, seemed an unlikely candidate to be the government minister presiding over the fastest-growing cellphone market in the world. But he had the only qualification that ...
-
Obama is not likely to push India hard on Pakistan
Senior American military commanders have sought to press India to formally disavow an obscure military doctrine that they contend is fuelling tensions between India and Pakistan and hindering the American war effort in Afghanistan. But with US President Obama arriving in India on Saturday for a closely watched three-day visit, administration offici...
-
Smaller cities show off growing wealth
For decades this central Indian city was vintage old India: crumbling Mughal-era ruins and ancient Buddhist caves surrounded by endless parched acres from which farmers coaxed cotton.But this month Aurangabad became an emblem of an altogether different India: the booming, increasingly urbanized economic powerhouse filled with ambition and a new des...
-
US-India versus US-China on PM's trip
Beyond the surface issues, lies a deeper tension, in which India sees a warmer relationship between Washington and Beijing under the Obama administration as a threat to its own rise as a global power.
-
Kerala: Where have all the coconut pluckers gone?
Kerala, a relatively prosperous and well-governed state in southern India, is in the grips of an acute shortage of coconut pluckers that threatens to undermine one of its most important industries.
