Image of the Day: July 30

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Power Restored to Most of North India

By SRUTHI GOTTIPATI and NIHARIKA MANDHANA

Power has been restored to most of North India by Monday afternoon, after an early morning grid failure that left hundreds of millions of people without electricity.

P. Uma Shankar, secretary of India's Ministry of Power, said that by 4:00 p.m. 70 to 75 percent of northern India's power had been restored. In Delhi, power was 90 percent restored, he said.

Power was supplied first to services such as hospitals, water pumping stations and the Delhi Metro. The shortage was met through a patchwork of sources including a thermal plant in Badarpur, several gas turbines and hydropower from the east, including a project in Tala, Bhutan.

The reason for Monday's outage, which started at about 2:30 a.m., is still unclear.

“This is a one-off situation” said Ajai Nirula, the chief operating officer of North Delhi Power Limited, a joint venture betwee n Tata Power and the Delhi government, which distributes power to nearly 1.2 million people in the north and northwest of Delhi. “Everyone was surprised.”

Mr. Shankar said a three-person team was investigating the outage.

Most of India's northern states use more power than they generate and rely on a complex network of contracts with power plants in other states to keep the lights on. Electricity officials sometimes characterize the situation as a battle between states to secure as much power as they need.

“Until corrective action and preventive action is taken, the system will remain under strain,” Mr. Nirula said.

Tragedy on the Tamil Nadu Express

By HARI KUMAR

More than 30 people were killed in southern India on Monday morning when the train coach they were traveling in caught fire.

The incident took place near the Nellore train station in Andhra Pradesh, on an express train traveling from New Delhi to Chennai known as the Tamil Nadu Express. Only one car, a sleeper coach with 72 passengers, was affected and the fire did not spread, railroad officials said.

Twenty-five injured people have been admitted to Nellore hospitals, and 32 are dead, said K. Sambasiva Rao, a spokesman for South Central Railway, in a telephone interview. The dead included 19 men, six women and three children. The rest of the bodies are too badly burnt to tell their gender. “We have ordered a high-level investigation,” he said.

The fire started at 4:15 a.m., railroad officials said, and was put out by 5:20 a.m., after it was noticed by a station manager in Nellore. A Nellore official told NDTV that the fire may have been started by a short circuit near a toilet. Passengers could not escape after the railroad car's doors jammed, eyewitnesses told reporters. Indian trains rarely have smoke alarms or fire detection systems.

“It is a very tragic incident,” India's railroad minister, Mukul Roy, told reporters. India's outdated railroad system operates at a loss of 200 billion Indian rupees ($3.6 billion) a year, and needs massive investments to update antiquated equipment, but raising prices to pay for improvements is seen as politically unpopular.

“If you do not increase the fares, you are going to turn the railway coaches into coffins,” the former railroad minister, Dinesh Trivedi, warned after he was asked to resign this year, after attempting to raise fares.

“Indian Railways is running 20,000 passenger trains carrying 2.2 million passengers every day,” Mr. Roy said Monday in Kolkata. “A small human error c an make an accident,” he said.

Y. Sampath, 23, a software engineer who boarded the train with his sister, told The Hindu newspaper that he woke up Monday morning after hearing loud screams. “All I could see was black smoke,” he said. Mr. Sampath escaped through one of the doors that was not locked but his sister is missing.

The government has announced total compensation of 500,000 Indian rupees ($9,100) to the next of kin of dead passengers.

A Conversation With: Star India\'s Uday Shankar

By VIKAS BAJAJ

Uday Shankar, a former journalist, became chief executive of Star India in 2007 and has been widely credited for turning around the private TV network, whose ratings had begun to flag in the years before he took over. In 2009, he approached Aamir Khan, the Bollywood star, about hosting a TV show, which went on the air in May as “Satyamev Jayate” (Truth Prevails), and has quickly gained much praise and some criticism for how it has covered important subjects like female foeticide and the sexual abuse of children.

Mr. Shankar is one of the most outspoken media executives in India and has been blunt about the problems of the TV industry in particular. In a recent interview to discuss Mr. Khan's show, he spoke about why Indian television networks do not take on the big issues affecting the country and why many seem to be struggling financially.

How did “Satyamev Jayate” come about?

We were looking to do things differently, and by then we had already worked with a large number of Bollywood superstars â€" Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, we had signed up with Hrithik Roshan. One, so we had worked with all these people and we had not worked with Aamir and obviously I was keen that we do. And two, I also thought if the man brings the same sensibility of doing something very different, very compelling and yet very meaningful to TV, it would be very interesting, and it would be very close to our own positioning of “Rishta Wahi, Soch Nayi” [Same Relationship, New Thinking].

He started working with a few producers. We met several months later, and he had an outline of the idea and then I liked it. It was very different. It was totally out of the current definition of entertainment content.

Why now? Why couldn't this have been done several years ago?

It could have been done a long time ago. But you should also see the evolut ion of Indian TV. Since TV has become so ubiquitous in this country and it has become so big and so successful, people often forget that it's still in its infancy here. We are talking about 2012 and TV is barely 20 years old - the first private satellite signal started in 1992, and then for a long time, for at least seven or eight years, it was a fledgling business. It's only in the last 10, 12 years that TV has started thriving.

Hence, I think, necessarily you have to go through that journey. First, the entertainment that people were starved for - that was seen to be the job of TV. People were doing that. The dramas came in and the dramas had their power, and people got hooked to the dramas so there were more dramas and similarly other forms of entertainment â€" reality shows and talent hunts and stuff like that. And they all had their appeal - the novelty factor and the fact that nobody had seen anything like that.

And also there is another element here that ge ts overlooked. I think policy here has played a very big role in not allowing this kind of thing to happen. The government made this very unscientific, forced and arbitrary decision of separating news and entertainment. They said that you will have to take separate licenses, and in such an early stage to do that - it was totally politically motivated - the effect of it was there was a very watertight segregation of entertainment and nonentertainment content, or what we call news or nonnews content.

As a result of that, institutionally, internally, you did not have sensibilities which could cross-pollinate. That may have played a big role.

It was primarily done to keep the foreign broadcasters out of news. That was the whole intention of segregating that license. And that happened, I think, in 2003, but since then it just became you know a completely watertight category. So companies like Star, Sony, Viacom, who are so-called foreign broadcasters because their par ents are overseas, they got out of news. But they were also the key broadcasters who were setting the agenda.

Do you worry that some may try to say you are violating the terms of your entertainment license by broadcasting a show that could be described as dealing with current affairs?

The show is not news at all. I don't think the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has told anyone to do that. There is no such concern here because it's not news at all. It's just a talk show, people's experiences are being shared. It's not like other people haven't done shows like this. Even when you do very entertainment kind of show - a music show or a talent show - the participants come in and they talk about their lives.

How has “Satyamev Jayate” done relative to your expectations?

The fundamentals look all very strong and robust, but the concept so different from the regular fare that the viewers had got used to that there was always an element of risk. We w ent into it with our eyes open hoping that the show would do very well but prepared that it may not do so well. So that's the honest truth.

The show has done well, but it's not an easy show to do. The amount of research, the amount of work that goes into it makes it a fairly expensive show. The response from the advertising community has been surprisingly positive - no complaints on that score. Overall, we think the show is a viewer success and the show is a commercial success too.

A couple of years ago I heard you issue a call to arms to the Indian TV industry about its troubled financial health. Do you think the industry has sorted out its problems?

It's still a work in progress. One big change in that direction is digitization. People often do not realize how big a catalyst for change it's likely to be, not just for distribution or subscription, but its ability to trigger localization of content is going to be revolutionary. Because bandwidth of cable is so limited that if you wanted to create content for let's say western U.P. [Uttar Pradesh], the economic model doesn't work for it because the cost of distribution is so high. If digitization happens and every cable operator can deliver 500 channels, then the cost of carriage becomes much less.

But in much of India, isn't the problem that there are too many channels competing for a finite number of viewers and advertising rupees? For instance, there are probably more than a dozen 24-hour news channels.

I don't think the problem is over competition. If you see a country of 1.2 billion people and the number of channels, it's actually not that many. If you go and see the number of channels in the United States, India doesn't have too many channels. The problem is sameness of content.

Look at the size of the Hindi market. It's a huge market with 500 million people. Why shouldn't there be a dozen channels? The problem is that each of those dozen channels are gi ving the same news at all points in time. That's both a creative, strategic issue as well as a business issue.

Most of the channels are not making any money. They are losing money and hence their ability to invest in content, their ability to invest in strategy, their ability to invest in talent is really limited, and because you have poor talent, poor resources, you are either replicating content or creating very poor content.

Interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

\'Saving Face\' Provokes Questions in India

By GAYATRI RANGACHARI SHAH

Earlier this month, India and Pakistan concluded foreign secretary-level diplomatic talks that didn't yield much in the way of rapprochement. Yet on July 23 and 24, the two nations shared a bonhomie typical of their cultural diplomacy, when the Oscar-winning documentary “Saving Face,” filmed in Pakistan, premiered in New Delhi and Mumbai.

Brought to India by the Asia Society, the short film drew packed audiences in both cities, with over 550 people turning up in Delhi and about 475 in Mumbai.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, one of the co-directors, was present after the film's screening in Mumbai to discuss and answer questions. The interaction, led by the producer and director Kiran Rao of “Dhobi Ghaat” fame, was a spirited one, with the audience asking about unrelated subjects, from filmmaking to terrorism, in Pakistan.

The Mumbai audience was enthusiastic about “Saving F ace,” which deals with the difficult subject of female acid attack victims in Pakistan's Punjab province. The film follows the lives of two such victims, Zakia, 39 and Rukhsana, 23, who simultaneously try to obtain justice (in both cases, the attackers are their husbands) and try to repair their faces.

One of the film's protagonists is Dr. Mohammad Jawad, a skilled plastic surgeon who leaves a thriving medical practice in London to help acid attack victims. With his irreverent humor and relaxed personality, Dr. Jawad helps lighten some especially traumatic and tense moments in the film. In one scene, for instance, he high-fives Zakia, the incongruity of which elicits chuckles from the audience.

“It was pretty hard hitting,” said Abhi Chaki, a Mumbai resident who saw the film with his wife. “It struck a fine balance between the lighter moments and the more morbid.” Another viewer, Jai Bhatia, said that he “loved the way the film was made, because you s ee the change that takes place.” Mr. Bhatia was referring to a scene in which a path-breaking bill is passed by Pakistan's legislators to punish perpetrators of acid attacks.

The film aside, the audience appeared to marvel at the articulate and poised Ms. Obaid-Chinoy. Ms. Obaid-Chinoy said she initially rejected the offer to work on the film, the brainchild of her co-director, Daniel Junge, because she was just about to give birth in Canada. But after she moved to back to Pakistan, she changed her mind.

“When I began filming, it was very difficult, because it is so visual,” she said, referring to the brutalization of the women's faces. “The hardest part about making this film was that we were not sure if we would have something people would smile about. We had to make sure we had a fine balance, that there were moments when the audience smiled.”

In response to a question about how she dealt with the anger she said she had, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy was ph ilosophical: “We can't expect people to see the light when they've been kept in darkness. These people don't know what they are doing is wrong.”

Another audience member, who said he was held hostage during the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, asked about her views on terrorism. Tearing up, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy said that one of her close friend's father was also a hostage during those days, adding that she had many Indian friends from her college days in the United States.

“We as a nation need to discuss these issues,” she said. “Pakistan does need India. Our generation must broaden the conversation.”

Asked by an audience member if she thought she had a future in Pakistani politics, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy, who lives in Karachi, smiled. “Perhaps. I never close that door.”

Born and raised in Pakistan, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy, the eldest of five daughters, said she grew up believing she could do anything as well as a man. At 17, she went undercover as a journalist to expose Pakistani children from rich feudal families who had access to guns and consequently terrorized their less privileged peers. In response, filthy graffiti about her was sprawled across neighborhoods in her hometown of Karachi.

She thought her father would tell her to give up journalism there and then, but he surprised her by saying, “If you speak the truth, I will stand by you and so will the world.” This year, Time magazine named Ms. Obaid-Chinoy one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

“Saving Face” has yet to be released nationwide in Pakistan because the nonprofit organizations involved with the acid attack victims in the documentary believe that the victims lives could be endangered. Ms. Obaid-Chinoy said she hopes that will soon change.

As for the film's Indian premiere, she found it “incredible,” she said. “So many people have come up to me here and said, ‘Thank you for showing us a different narra tive of Pakistan.'”
 

Grid Failure Leaves Millions Without Power in North India

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tens of millions of people in North India were without power and early morning commutes in Delhi were thrown into chaos Monday after a massive electrical grid failure.

“Yes there are problems with Northern Grid, we are trying to restore it,” an official from Power System Operating, which manages the grid, told India Today without specifying what those problems were.

Power was out in the entire state of Rajasthan, population 67 million, for several hours Monday morning after the grid failure, which happened around 2:30 a.m. Other states affected included Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. An estimated 360 million people were affected by the outage.

Power was also out in many parts of India's capital city of Delhi early Monday morning, and the Delhi Metro, which carries almost 2 million passengers a day, was completely down for several hours. Delhi Metro offi cials said that services were back up on all six of the lines by 8:45 A.M., thanks to hydro-electric power from Bhutan. Services from Noida, an East Delhi suburb, were running slowly and cars were crowded, commuters said.

On Saturday, in an unrelated incident, a cat leapt into a Delhi grid station and was electrocuted, causing a fire that left parts of East Delhi without power for 24 hours. “The cat must have been wet,” a spokesperson for BSES told The Hindu.

Damien Cave is Taking Questions on Drug Policy in Latin America

By DAMIEN CAVE

Forty-one years after President Richard M. Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” is it time for a change? How should enforcement be targeted - and what are the best ways to rein in addiction and the organized criminal networks that make billions from the trade in illicit drugs?

These drug questions and many others are gaining momentum in Washington and in Latin America, a frontline of the drug war for generations. Policy makers who once took for granted that the drug problem could be controlled with tough laws, some treatment, and moral arguments for prevention, now find themselves grappling with a more global, more complicated scourge.

Drug violence has intensified in areas that are neither major producers nor consumers (Central America, West Africa) and while Americans are using far less cocaine, preferring prescription drugs, South America, Asia and parts of Europe are seeing cocaine addiction rise as traffickers explo it new markets.

As Michael Schmidt and I wrote two weeks ago, these changes have led American officials to a collective reconsideration of antidrug priorities. But while Washington tinkers - with significant but incremental changes at home and abroad - Latin America is demanding an overhaul.

As a correspondent based in Mexico, I have seen the arguments over drug policy intensify here and in Central America over the past year, but the most ambitious plan now comes from farther south. I just returned from Montevideo, where Uruguay's president is proposing outright legalization for marijuana, with taxes and regulation. As my story notes, leaders in at least eight other Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, are also calling for open debate about legalization - and not just for marijuana.

“The feeling is that the war on drugs has resulted in profound damage,” said Paulo Teixeira, a Brazilian congressman sponsoring a bill to decrim inalize the use of all drugs. “We are trying to distance ourselves from the U.S. model.”

What could that mean going forward? What are the pitfalls raising concerns, or the benefits supporters hope to gain?

I will be answering questions this week in English and Spanish about drug policy and the drug business here on The Lede. Your questions can be submitted in the comments section below, in whichever language you prefer and you can also post questions or reactions on Twitter by including the hashtag #NYTWorldChat.

Reaction and responses to a select number of questions - chosen for their relevance or insight - will be posted here. Pregúnteme cualquier cosa (ask me anything.)

Leer el artículo en español.

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