DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

In the small Bombay theater that showed big films, his father brought him — over and over again — to see the biggest of them all. With every one of his 18 viewings of “Mughal-e-Azam,” a hit 1960 musical about a forbidden romance between a prince and a courtesan, the young boy fell more in love. The rays of light, beamed in black and white, opened to him a world at once majestic and lost. The music swept him to places that only later in life would he fully understand. India, cinema and music — they would all change, too.

Persons: —, ”, Sanjay Leela Bhansali — Organizations: Alankar Talkies Locations: Bombay, Mumbai, India

☆ India’s Silicon Valley Faces a Water Crisis That Software Cannot Solve
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-31 | by ( Damien Cave | Atul Loke | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The water tankers seeking to fill their bellies bounced past the dry lakes of India’s booming technology capital. Their bleary-eyed drivers waited in line to suck what they could from wells dug a mile deep into dusty lots between app offices and apartment towers named for bougainvillea — all built before sewage and water lines could reach them. At one well, where neighbors lamented the loss of a mango grove, a handwritten logbook listed the water runs of a crisis: 3:15 and 4:10 one morning; 12:58, 2:27 and 3:29 the next. “I get 50 calls a day,” said Prakash Chudegowda, a tanker driver in south Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore, as he connected a hose to the well. “I can only get to 15.”

Persons: bougainvillea, “, ”, Prakash Chudegowda Locations: Bengaluru, Bangalore

They fanned out across the vast country, knocking on doors in the name of a cause that would redefine India. These foot soldiers and organizers, including a young Narendra Modi, collected millions of dollars to be socked away for a long fight to build a grand Hindu temple in Ayodhya, in northern India. The bricks, the campaign’s leaders declared, would not just be used for the temple’s construction on land occupied for centuries by a mosque. They would be the foundation for a Hindu rashtra, or Hindu nation, that would correct what right-wing Hindus saw as the injustice of India’s birth as a secular republic. Mr. Modi, today the country’s prime minister, will inaugurate the Ram temple in Ayodhya on Monday — the crowning achievement of a national movement aimed at establishing Hindu supremacy in India by rallying the country’s Hindu majority across castes and tribes.

Persons: Narendra Modi, Ram, Modi Organizations: Mr Locations: India, Ayodhya

The anthem they stand for at the beginning of every game belongs to a republic that was toppled two years ago. Yet Afghanistan’s athletes have become the unlikely — and widely celebrated — heroes of the Cricket World Cup that is underway in India. In a tournament followed by hundreds of millions of people across the globe, they have defeated the defending world champions and two former titleholders handily. When they win, players sing and dance from the dugout, to the team bus, to their hotel rooms. The Afghan cricket team’s accomplishments are amplifying what has already been an astonishingly speedy rise in sports history.

Organizations: Cricket Locations: India

Purbasha Roy held her 9-year-old daughter’s hand and pointed toward the towering art installation: blooming pink buds symbolizing embryos, menstrual cups shaped to form a bouquet, fallopian tubes descending from corners of the ceiling. The work, part of a makeshift pavilion to worship the Hindu goddess Durga, was designed to break taboos in India about menstruation. And it had a clear target: A half-man, half-bull demon at Durga’s feet, an organizer explained to Ms. Roy and others, represented the “moral police” — India’s patriarchal society. The pavilion was one of hundreds, many politically pointed, that dotted Kolkata during a five-day festival called the Durga Puja, an event that brings this muggy, sleepy city alive each year as if jolted by a high-voltage current. Part Mardi Gras, part Christmas, the festival, which ended on Tuesday, is the most important religious celebration for Hindus in this part of eastern India.

Persons: Purbasha Roy, Durga, Roy, ” Locations: India, Kolkata

☆ India Spends Big on What It Needs Most to Catch Up to China
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-11 | by ( Jason Douglas | Vibhuti Agarwal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

India Spends Big on What It Needs Most to Catch Up to China The country is building fast in an effort to address gaps in its infrastructure that have long held back its economyIndia had about 90,000 miles of national highways at the close of the fiscal year in March, almost double the more than 49,000 miles it had a decade earlier. Atul Loke For The Wall Street Journal

Persons: Atul Loke Organizations: Street Locations: India, China

Bangladesh’s multiparty democracy is being methodically strangled in crowded courtrooms across this country of 170 million people. Nearly every day, thousands of leaders, members and supporters of opposition parties stand before a judge. Charges are usually vague, and evidence is shoddy, at best. But just months before a pivotal election pitting them against the ruling Awami League, the immobilizing effect is clear. About half of the five million members of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, are embroiled in politically motivated court cases, the group estimates.

Organizations: Awami League, Bangladesh Nationalist Party Locations: Dhaka

The grubby lanes of Musallahpur, in the north Indian city of Patna, heave with the foot traffic, banners and vending carts familiar to commercial hubs across India. Musallahpur is filled with brick-barn classrooms where 20-somethings crowd themselves and their heavy backpacks to train for standardized employment exams. With nearly 1,800 applicants for every one of the state’s top-tier jobs, they know it is the ultimate long shot. A thousand miles to the south, in the city of Coimbatore, a busy automotive parts entrepreneur, M. Ramesh, faces the flip side of India’s profound employment challenge. If the government has far more potential workers than it needs, Mr. Ramesh has far too few.

Persons: Ramesh Locations: Musallahpur, Patna, India, Coimbatore

A second passenger train, heading in the opposite direction, then struck some of the dislocated cars. More than 2,200 passengers in all were onboard the passenger trains, according to railway officials, and at least 23 cars were derailed. The other passenger train was a Yesvantpur-Howrah Superfast Express train, running from a commuter hub in the southern city of Bengaluru to Kolkata, the capital of the northeastern state of West Bengal. Site of the train crash An initial government report said that the Coromandel Express passenger train derailed while traveling at full speed. In 2016, 14 train cars derailed in India’s northeast in the middle of the night, killing more than 140 passengers and injuring 200 others.

Persons: Ashwini Vaishnaw, Vaishnaw, Derailments, Jitendra Prakash, Narendra Modi, Modi, Modi’s, Amit Dave, Suresh Prabhu, Mr, Mujib Mashal Organizations: Chennai Coromandel Express, South Eastern Railway, Express, Coromandel, INDIA, Economic, Disaster Management, Reuters Rail Locations: India, Balasore, Odisha State, Shalimar, Chennai Coromandel, India’s, Howrah, Bengaluru, Kolkata, West Bengal, Odisha, Bhubaneswar, Odisha’s, Bihar, Pukhrayan, Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad

It’s time for practice: a two-mile run, a couple hours of batting, bowling and catching drills, and lots of giggles. The girls, including his own daughter, all refer to him as “veera,” meaning elder brother in Punjabi. Mr. Shergill’s wife, Kamaldeep Kaur, helps coordinate with the 20-odd families through the team’s WhatsApp group. For the girls, the daily routine is an escape from the boredom of village life. After each practice, they lie in a circle, their backs to the grass, their faces to the sky’s fading light.

☆ The Year in Pictures 2022
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( The New York Times | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +57 min

Every year, starting in early fall, photo editors at The New York Times begin sifting through the year’s work in an effort to pick out the most startling, most moving, most memorable pictures. But 2022 undoubtedly belongs to the war in Ukraine, a conflict now settling into a worryingly predictable rhythm. Erin Schaff/The New York Times “When you’re standing on the ground, you can’t visualize the scope of the destruction. Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 25. We see the same images over and over, and it’s really hard to make anything different.” Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb 26.

Search resuls for: "Atul Loke"

11 mentions found