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☆ Why Does It Take India Six Weeks to Vote?
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-17 | by ( John Yoon | Hari Kumar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When Indians start heading to the polls on Friday, it will be just the beginning of a colossal democratic process. Not until June 4, after six weeks of voting, will India know whether its powerful prime minister, Narendra Modi, will remain in office for a third term. The short answer: India is the world’s most populous nation, with 969 million eligible voters. That’s more than one-tenth of the world’s population, or about four times the number of eligible voters in the next largest democracy, the United States. But, generally, they have taken weeks or months, even without primary elections, because of their sheer scale.

Persons: Narendra Modi Locations: India, United States

☆ Modi’s Party Doesn’t Control All of India. But He’s Working on It.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-23 | by ( Mujib Mashal | Hari Kumar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It is the final frontier for India’s most powerful leader in decades. The news media, the national legislature, civil society, sometimes even the courts — all have largely been bent to his will. But one critical group of holdouts remains: some of India’s richest states, the engine of its rapid growth. The future shape of the world’s largest democracy — and its economic trajectory — may rest on the power struggle that has ensued. Mr. Modi, who is well placed to win a third term in a national election that will begin on April 19, is wielding an increasingly heavy hand in what his opponents call an unfair effort to drive out the governments of the states his party does not control.

Persons: Narendra Modi, Mr, Modi

☆ What to Know About Holi, India’s Most Colorful Tradition
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-22 | by ( John Yoon | Hari Kumar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

A rainbow haze swirls through India, where raucous laughter rings out as friends and strangers douse one another with fists full of pigmented powder. It is time for the ancient Hindu tradition of Holi, an annual celebration of spring. In 2024, crimson, emerald, indigo and saffron clouds will hover over the country on March 25 for one of its most vibrant, joyful and colorful festivals. “Playing Holi,” as Indians say, has spread far beyond India’s borders. People gather around the flames to sing, dance and pray for an evening ritual called Holika Dahan, which re-enacts the demise of a Hindu mythical demoness, Holika.

Persons: ” Locations: India, India’s, Holika

☆ Data Dump Exposes the Fuzzy Lines Between Money and Politics in India
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-15 | by ( Alex Travelli | Hari Kumar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Politics in India is an expensive business, and sometimes lucrative, too. In this year’s election, parties are expected to spend more than $14 billion — as much as in the United States. But there has been little in the way of transparency for the huge sums sloshing around. Reading between the lines of the spreadsheets full of names poses questions about the intersection of government and business in India. Construction companies, gambling impresarios, pharmaceutical bosses and many more corporate entities and individuals had forked over $1.7 billion in bonds since 2019.

Persons: Jairam Ramesh, Narendra Modi Organizations: State Bank of India, Indian National Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party of Locations: India, United States

☆ Lights! Camera! Modi! It’s a One-Man Show on Indian Television.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-03 | by ( Mujib Mashal | Hari Kumar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The people streaming into the holy town came on an intimate quest: to be among the first to seek the blessings of a beloved god they said was returning home after 500 years. These Hindu devotees took leaves of absence from work. They ate with fellow pilgrims, slept in the cold and sipped tea at roadside joints as they waited to see the dazzling new temple devoted to the deity Ram. Early in the morning, as a soft devotional melody played from speakers strung to electric poles, they took purifying dips in a river. But it was another, smaller group, camped on the riverbank in Ayodhya, that made sure the moment was as much about India’s powerful prime minister, Narendra Modi, as it was about Lord Ram.

Persons: Ram, Narendra Modi, Lord Ram Locations: Ayodhya

☆ Pigeon Was Cleared of Being a Chinese Spy, but Served 8 Months Anyway
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-02 | by ( Mujib Mashal | Hari Kumar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Suspicion of foreign espionage, cursive messages in ancient Chinese, a sensitive microchip — and a suspect that could not be stopped at the border. Ravindar Patil, the assistant Mumbai police sub-inspector assigned to the case, was scratching his head for answers. But first, he had to find a place to lock up the unusual captive. So he turned to a veterinary hospital in the Indian metropolis, asking it to retrieve a list of “very confidential and necessary” information about the suspect — a black pigeon caught lurking at a port where international vessels dock. “The police never came to check the pigeon,” said Dr. Mayur Dangar, the manager of the hospital.

Persons: Ravindar Patil, ”, Mayur Dangar Locations: Mumbai, China

Leading up to the temple’s consecration, public spaces around India were thrumming with excitement. Ram is one of the most revered gods among India’s Hindus, who make up about 80 percent of a total population of 1.4 billion. Islam does not appear in the Ramayana, having arrived in India only 1,000 years ago. But it is cast as the primary villain in the Hindu-nationalist telling of India’s history. Now, with a kind of spiritual and political homecoming for Mr. Modi, the Ram campaigners have the temple they had sought for decades.

Persons: Narendra Modi, Ram, Modi Locations: Indian, Ayodhya, India

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 ruling party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tightened its grip over India’s populous northern belt, results of state elections showed Sunday, expanding its dominance of a key region ahead of general elections in which Mr. Modi is seeking a third term. The party, which ruled for a majority of India’s history as a republic, has struggled to claw its way back after Mr. Modi rose to national power in 2014. The Congress party was hoping to use the state elections to build momentum for national elections next spring, but instead lost all three states in which it was pitted against Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. The only victory for Congress came against a smaller regional party in Telangana, in India’s south, where Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist politics has faced resistance. The results of elections in a smaller fifth state, Mizoram, are expected on Monday, but the race there is between two smaller regional parties.

Persons: Narendra Modi, Modi, Modi’s Organizations: Indian National Congress, Mr, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress Locations: Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Telangana, India’s, Mizoram

In page after page of fly-on-the-wall detail, the indictment unsealed in New York this week describes a chilling plot: A criminal operative, on orders from a government official in India, tried to arrange the killing of a Sikh American on U.S. soil. And he was ordered to proceed even as India’s prime minister was on a red-carpet visit to Washington. The plot was eventually foiled, the indictment says. But its damning account leaves open a burning question: Why would the Indian government take such a gamble? Pursuing a vocal American activist in the movement would seem a risk to the momentum in U.S.-India relations as New Delhi expands its trade and defense ties with Washington in unprecedented ways.

Organizations: Washington Locations: New York, India, American, Canada, Washington, New Delhi

Schools closed in New Delhi on Friday, while some diesel-burning vehicles were ordered off the roads and much of the city’s incessant construction was halted, as the authorities tried to mitigate the effects of a thick haze of pollution that has descended on India’s capital, a calamity that has come to be an annual blight. Despite the mandates, and an appeal to people to stay indoors, the measures provided little relief for the city’s many millions of residents. “Breathing becomes heavy and long,” said Ram Kumar, a 30-year-old from the city of Gorakhpur, in the more rural north of India, who supports his family back home by driving an auto-rickshaw in New Delhi. In June, during Canada’s worst-ever wildfire season, New York saw its skies turn orange from the smoke that wafted over, with residents suffering from that type of pollution at a concentration of about 117 micrograms per cubic meter. By comparison, on Friday afternoon in Delhi, the average was around 500, reaching 643 in some places.

Persons: ”, Ram Kumar Locations: New Delhi, Gorakhpur, India, “, New York, Delhi

No nation in the world is buying as many airplanes as India. Its largest airlines have ordered nearly 1,000 jets this year, committing tens of billions of dollars to a spending spree that is unparalleled in aviation. In New Delhi, Indira Gandhi International Airport will be ready for 109 million passengers next year, as it prepares to become the world’s second busiest, behind Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the United States. The enormous aviation build-out, with a surge of investment behind it, has pride of place in India’s case for a greater standing on the world stage. As it moves up the ranks of the world’s biggest economies, India is scrambling to meet the expanding ambitions of its ascendant middle class.

Persons: yearn Organizations: Indira Gandhi, Hartsfield, Jackson Atlanta International Airport Locations: India, New Delhi, United States

Indian lawmakers passed landmark legislation on Thursday that would reserve one-third of all seats for women in the lower house of Parliament and in state legislatures, a move aimed at improving gender parity among lawmakers. The legislation was passed by the upper and lower houses of the Parliament after two days of deliberation and lengthy speeches by lawmakers from the governing party and the political opposition. The bill now requires approval from at least half of the country’s 28 state legislatures before it becomes law, after which it would come into force. Passage in both houses of Parliament virtually guarantees its implementation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the law’s passing in the lower house of Parliament as “a golden moment of India’s parliamentary journey” that is aimed at enabling “greater participation of women in our political process.”

Persons: Narendra Modi

The allegation was a bombshell: that India had been involved in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil in June. Canada’s prime minister leveled the charge on Monday, and an all-out diplomatic war soon followed. Canada pressed its allies to come together to challenge India, with statements of concern issued in Washington and Canberra, Australia. India moved to expel a top Canadian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move, and Indian officials lined up to air grievances with Canada. But behind the plunge in relations to what officials and analysts called the lowest point ever were years of diplomatic tension.

Persons: Canada’s, Canada — Organizations: Canadian Locations: India, Canada, Washington, Canberra, Australia, Canadian, Britain, United States, Punjab

Inside a sprawling golf resort south of New Delhi, diplomats were busy making final preparations for a fast-approaching global summit meeting. Not far away, however, were the remnants of bitter division: grieving families, charred vehicles and the rubble of bulldozed shops and homes. Weeks before, deadly religious violence had erupted in the Nuh district, the site of the resort. Clashes quickly spread to the gates of Gurugram, a tech start-up hub just outside New Delhi that India bills as a city of the future. Mr. Modi, India’s most powerful leader in decades, is attempting nothing less than a legacy-defining transformation of this nation of 1.4 billion people.

Persons: Narendra Modi, Modi Locations: New Delhi, Nuh, Gurugram, India

India has a busy decade of space exploration ahead. In addition to the scientific results of Chandrayaan-3, India is preparing a joint lunar exploration with Japan, in which India will provide the lander and Japan the launch vehicle and the rover. It is therefore preparing its first astronaut mission to space, called Gaganyaan. But the project, which aims to send three Indian astronauts to space on the country’s own spacecraft, has faced delays, and ISRO has not announced a date for it. ISRO will first have to conduct a test flight of the Gaganyaan spacecraft with no astronauts aboard.

Organizations: Indian Space Research Organization, Indian, ISRO Locations: India, Japan

The Indian mission launched in July, taking a slower, fuel-conscious route toward the moon. Vikram out-endured its Russian counterpart, Luna-25, which launched 12 days. Luna-25 was scheduled to land on the moon on Monday in the same general vicinity as the Indian craft but crashed on Saturday following an engine malfunction. India’s recent efforts in space exploration closely mirror the country’s diplomatic push as an ambitious power on the rise. Indian officials have been advocating in favor of a multipolar world order in which New Delhi is seen as indispensable to global solutions.

Persons: Vikram, Narendra Modi’s Organizations: Soviet Union Locations: India, Russia, Soviet, New Delhi

In the early hours of Monday, on a train bound for Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, a police officer took up his service rifle, fatally shot his superior and then killed three unarmed passengers. All three of the passengers were Muslim men, according to Indian news reports. The violence occurred on the same day as a march led by a Hindu nationalist organization in one of the few northern Indian districts in which Muslims are a majority. The rally, which a Hindu vigilante wanted in the murders of several Muslims had promised to join, dissolved into street fighting, which then gave way to a full-blown riot that spread toward Delhi. As shops, vehicles and a mosque were set ablaze, at least five people were killed, including the mosque’s junior imam, the police said.

Persons: Chetan Singh, Modi, Yogi, Narendra Modi, Yogi Adityanath, Modi’s, —, Washington — Organizations: Mr, State Department Locations: Mumbai, Hindustan, South Asia, Delhi, India, New Delhi, Paris, Washington

In recent weeks, families have been rationing their intake of tomatoes, which are fundamental to the Indian diet. They’re omitting tomatoes from salads, keeping the few they can afford for flavoring the main dish. Some, out of fear of even higher prices, have been stocking tomatoes as purée in their freezers. Tomatoes have even found their way to the middle of India’s raucous, and increasingly polarized, politics. A prominent leader of the ruling Hindu nationalist party, Himanta Biswa Sarma, blamed the country’s Muslims for the price rise.

Persons: Himanta Biswa Sarma Locations: India, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh

India’s first attempt at putting a robotic spacecraft on the surface of the moon three years ago ended in a crash and a crater. The mission, called Chandrayaan-3, comes amid a renewed interest in exploring the moon, but in the past decade, only China has succeeded in landing a spacecraft there in one piece. Chandrayaan-3 is the first of as many as six missions that could successfully land on the moon in the months ahead. The Indian Space Research Organization — India’s equivalent of NASA — will begin broadcasting coverage of the flight on its YouTube channel at 4:30 a.m.What is Chandrayaan-3? After the rocket carrying Chandrayaan-3 lifts off, a propulsion module will push the spacecraft out of Earth’s orbit and then allow the mission to enter orbit around the moon.

Persons: India’s, NASA — Organizations: Indian Space Research, NASA, YouTube Locations: China

Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in Delhi on Thursday after the authorities warned of widespread flooding following days of torrential rains that have battered large swaths of northern India. That forced the chief minister of the capital region, Arvind Kejriwal, to shut schools and convert them into disaster relief camps. Many migrant workers, who live on the banks of the river, were camping on the roads alongside it as their makeshift homes were swallowed by the water. Many others were looking for shelter as water enveloped sections of residential areas and historical sites like the Red Fort. So far this monsoon season, officials said, landslides and flash floods have claimed at least 91 lives in six north Indian states near Delhi, and disrupted millions of others.

Persons: Arvind Kejriwal Organizations: Central Water Commission Locations: Delhi, India

Indian officials on Friday arrested three railway workers in connection with a deadly train crash last month that left at least 290 people dead and once again highlighted safety problems across a vast train network that serves as an important lifeline for the poor. India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, which is leading the criminal inquiry into the train accident in the eastern state of Odisha, said the workers were arrested on charges of endangering the safety of passengers, culpable homicide without murder, and tampering with evidence. In a statement, the agency identified the three as a senior section engineer, a section engineer and a technician. The “investigation is continuing,” the agency said. The Coromandel Express, which was traveling from West Bengal, crashed into a parked freight train in Odisha at a speed of 80 miles an hour, resulting in a three-way tangle with another train that was passing in the opposite direction.

Organizations: India’s, Bureau of Investigation Locations: Odisha, West Bengal

Their love affair across one of the world’s most heavily guarded borders had begun on the virtual battlefields of a video game where players bond over having one another’s back against bloody enemy ambushes to become the last survivors. But when Seema Ghulam Haider, 27, a married Pakistani Muslim, sneaked into India with her four children to be with Sachin Meena, 22, a Hindu man, their time together was brief. About two months after they started secretly living in the same neighborhood in Rabupura, a town outside New Delhi, the couple ran into the Indian authorities. “I don’t want to go back,” Ms. Haider told reporters as she was taken away by the police, her befuddled children next to her. I love him a lot.

Persons: Seema Ghulam Haider, Sachin Meena, Haider, Meena, ” Ms, “, Sachin, ” Locations: Pakistani, India, Rabupura, New Delhi

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

☆ Northern India Endures a Heat Wave, and a Wave of Deaths
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-18 | by ( Alex Travelli | Hari Kumar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

An unusually intense heat wave has swept across northern India in the last four days, with some hospitals in the state of Uttar Pradesh recording a higher-than-usual number of deaths. Dozens of deaths were recorded at hospitals there on June 15, 16 and 17. “The number of deaths has been more than normal,” Dr. Kumar said. He told the Press Trust of India, a news agency, that on average, eight people usually die per day. “Most of these are natural deaths,” he told The Times in a phone interview, “most of the dead being elderly people suffering from different ailments like diabetes.”

Persons: there’s, Jayant Kumar, Dr, Kumar, ”, “ Organizations: Press Trust of, Times Locations: India, Uttar Pradesh, Ballia District, Bihar, Press Trust of India

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