How the Presidential Campaign Is Being Viewed Around the World

Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesThe latest presidential debate played on televisions at Moscow State University.

As our Moscow correspondent Ellen Barry reports, the way news organizations in other countries portray the United States' presidential campaign “reveals as much about how they see themselves as it does about the American political process.”

The same can be said for much of the global conversation on social media platforms during Monday night's final presidential debate on foreign policy. Some noted on Twitter that their countries were not visible at all, as neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney discusse d the debt crisis in Europe; India; South Africa; or the thousands of people killed in the drug war in Mexico.

In the Middle East and North Africa, others, including this blogger from Beirut, commented that both candidates bestowed much attention on Israel without discussing Palestinians.

Okay if I am an Israeli u convinced me to elect u as a president (both of u), if I am an #Arab do u even care abt my opinion? #debate

- Beirutiyat (@Beirutiyat) 23 Oct 12

Elsewhere around the world, our correspondents shared these reports about how the campaign is being viewed in Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, Poland and South Korea.

The View From Brazil

The main newspapers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro feature daily coverage of the race, analyzing every shift in the polls and sending correspondents to interview voters in states including Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire.< /p>

Shock emerged in Brazil and other countries, for instance, over Mr. Romney's assertion in the Oct. 3 debate that he would end the subsidy for PBS, as previously reported on The Lede. The claim by Mr. Romney focused attention not only on the issue of government assistance for public broadcasting, an idea that enjoys broad support in Brazil, but also the deep cultural ties between the United States and Brazil. After all, a Brazilian version of “Sesame Street,” called “Vila Sésamo,” was first broadcast in the 1970s, including a character in the prominent role of Garibaldo, or Big Bird.

Reflecting a broad current of support in Brazil for President Obama, Brazilian news media appeared to be relieved when the Obama campaign released ads attacking Mr. Romney for suggesting that PBS could lose its funding.

Yet while American campaigns still provoke interest in Brazil, other issues are gaining prominence. This week's issue of Veja, Brazil's most influential news magazine, offered an example of this shift in its cover article. It had nothing to do with Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney; instead, it discussed the ushering in of new political leadership in China, which has surpassed the United States as Brazil's largest trading partner. -SIMON ROMERO

The View From China

The timing of the American presidential vote - just two days before the opening of the 18th Communist Party Congress - has meant that despite the campaign's anti-China themes, it has attracted little attention in China. But there is no doubt that the government is monitoring the election, and officials in top financial institutions are well informed, and concerned, about the combat against China in the campaign, experts say.

After the debate last week when the candidates vied for anti-China barbs, the Chinese Foreign Ministry chided the candidates, suggesting that they raise the level of their discourse. “We hope the U.S. Republican and Democratic cand idates will get rid of the impact of election politics and do more things conducive to China-U.S. mutual trust and cooperation,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei.

Until the first debate between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney, when the president fared poorly, the Chinese took it almost for granted that Mr. Obama would be re-elected. But political experts say that China would find a way to work with Mr. Romney, whose business background is considered a plus by some. Though his threat to name China a currency manipulator for keeping the renminbi at an artificially low level is not appreciated, analysts say he would find it difficult to follow through on his pledge because the value of China's currency against the dollar has risen substantially in recent years. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama's record on China has been viewed with increasing skepticism.

“There has been a downturn in the relationship in the last two years because he and Hillary Clinton announced the reb alancing,” a plan to deploy more military assets to Asia, said Sun Zhe, director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. -JANE PERLEZ

The View From Germany

A lot has changed since Mr. Obama's race to the White House electrified the world, overturning expectations about race at home and abroad and bringing “Yes, we can,” into the political lexicon around the world.

At the start of the presidential primary season in December 2007, Christoph von Marschall, Washington bureau chief for Germany's daily Tagesspiegel newspaper, published a book titled “Barack Obama - The Black Kennedy.” When primary season rolled around this year, Mr. Marschall brought out a book with a very different name and a very different feel.

“What's Wrong With the Amis,” the book was called, using the German nickname for Americans, with the subtitle “Why They Hate What We Love About Barack Obama.” When he returns home for rea ding tours and other public events, the two most frequent questions he receives illustrate the gap between Germans and Americans on the president, Mr. Marschall says: Why didn't Mr. Obama close Guantánamo Bay, and what do Americans have against health care?

Christoph von Marschall being interviewed by Manouchehr Shamsrizi, a blogger working for a Bertelsmann Foundation project, at the America Center in Hamburg.

Andreas Etges, an expert on American history at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, said the 2008 campaign broke precedents in the German news media, with front-page articles in daily newspapers about state primary victories by Hillary Rodham Clinton or Mr. Obama. This year, Mr. Etges said, despite the disillusionment factor, the coverage started early again, wit h German news media keeping people abreast of every fluctuation in the race for the Republican nomination.

“It's definitely way more than Germans report on any other elections internationally, even on our neighbors,” Mr. Etges said. In Berlin, many Germans pride themselves on their fluency in the nuts and bolts of the horse race - the breaking polls in the swing states, the intricacies of the Electoral College. “In spite of all the talk about American influence going down, the interest Germans have shown still illustrates what importance they think the American elections will have,” Mr. Etges said. -NICHOLAS KULISH

The View From Japan

Interest in American presidential elections is always high in Japan, which relies on the United States to be both its military protector and an important market for exports.

As in past elections, the major newspapers and television news programs have run daily reports on the campaign that can rival those of Ame rican news media in their level of analysis and detail.

However, political and media analysts say the interest is much lower this time than in the 2008 election, which mirrored events in Japan at the time. In 2009, Japan held a historic election of its own, when an opposition party took power, ending almost six decades of virtually uninterrupted one-party rule by the Liberal Democrats.

Analysts said that as Japan gropes toward a stronger multiparty system, interest is high in how the United States' system works, and particularly in party primaries. Parties in Japan choose their leaders by an internal party vote, and although internal votes have become more public and transparent in recent years, Japanese voters still feel they want a bigger voice in the process.

“In Japan, the election of party heads is still not open to the people,” said Takeshi Suzuki, a communications professor at Meiji University in Tokyo. “There is intense attention here in how A merica, our senior colleague in democracy, chooses its presidents.”

Mr. Suzuki said this was particularly apparent in one way that coverage this time has been different than in the past: Japanese reporters are spending more time on the campaign trail, particularly in closely fought states like Ohio. In the past, reports often dealt with abstract polling data and general observations, he said. This time, Mr. Suzuki said, reporters have done more on-the-ground coverage of whether the candidates have succeeded in wooing women or minorities, and the prospects for states' going red or blue.

Analysts said interest was also keen in economic policy, largely because growth in the Japanese economy still relies heavily on whether American consumers buy its cars and electronics. This has led to close attention of the candidates' economic agendas, and particularly on issues important to Japan like whether the United States will prop up the dollar, which is near historic low s against the yen.

“The only chance in the short term for the yen to go down is for the United States economy to pick up,” said Tatsuhiko Yoshizaki, chief economist at the Sojitz Research Institute. “The expectations are high, so people in the market are watching this one very closely.”

Initial reaction in Japan to the final debate, on foreign policy, was dominated by unease at the focus on the Middle East.

“Too many topics went ignored, including the euro crisis, the Guantánamo base, immigration, nuclear nonproliferation, global warning. And of course, relations with Japan and the U.S. troops in Okinawa,” Daisuke Nakai, a New York-based staff writer for the daily Asahi Shimbun, wrote on Twitter. Okinawans have long been upset at what they see as their disproportionate burden in hosting more than half of the American troops in Japan; their grievances spiked recently with reports that a woman was raped there by two American sailors.

“Mr. Obama reiterated that the United States is a Pacific nation, but at least judging from this debate, I don't get the sense that the region is a priority,” Mr. Nakai said.

Japan has become increasingly concerned about China's growing power in the region, including its claims to an island chain controlled by Japan.
-MARTIN FACKLER, HISAKO UENO, MAKIKO INOUE AND HIROKO TABUCHI

The View From Poland

In Poland, one of Mr. Romney's stops on his overseas tour this past summer, all the major newspapers, magazines, online platforms and television stations are giving the election considerable air time, although there too the intensity of the coverage has dipped since the frenzy of attention after the last campaign. That has not stopped leading outlets from throwing manpower at the race.

On Twitter, Mr. Romney's criticism about the decision to remove missile systems in Poland prompted discussion in both Poland and the United States, with a commentator s aying the move was intended to win Polish-American votes.

Romney: pulling our missile systems out of #Poland was unfortunate #debate

- Anna Zamejc (@stell7) 23 Oct 12

Mitt makes a beeline for Polish-American voters in Ohio on missile defense …in #Poland. #debate #2012debate #RCWdebate #tcot

- Tom Nichols (@TheWarRoom_Tom) 23 Oct 12

The state-run television network TVP will send five additional correspondents to the United States for Election Day and will operate with six film crews. The evening news will be broadcast from Washington on Nov. 6 and 7. The biggest commercial television station, TVN, is sending three additional correspondents to help its usual correspondent cover Election Day.

In spite of the serious repercussions that Mr. Romney's tough stance on Russia could have for Poland, many people there are more focused on enjoying the gaffe s and the jokes. Less earnest news outlets are running items about light subjects like cookies with the candidates' faces on them or a poll of which candidates' wives looked better when they both wore pink to the debate. -HANNA KOZLOWSKA

The View From South Korea

After the second presidential debate, some newspapers in South Korea dedicated a full page or two to the subject, displaying photos and graphics and charts and describing how President Obama turned more aggressive. The daily Chosun Ilbo reported that “China,” as well as “jobs” and “economy,” were key words in presidential debates, and that that seemed to reflect American unease over China rising as a “superpower” and what it called a populist political need to “blame the American economic crisis on China.”

Still, South Koreans are preoccupied with their own presidential election in December, and they see little difference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney on North Korea - the one issue in the American election that really interests many South Koreans.

“In the past, people here believed that there was a clear difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties on North Korea,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a political scientist and North Korea expert in Dongguk University in Seoul. “But after Obama came into office, such a difference was gone and in South Korean eyes, Obama was not that different from Bush when it comes to North Korea.”

Mr. Koh said the outcome of the election could affect Korea's vote, because “liberals and conservatives here will argue that their candidate can work better with the new U.S. president. People here don't like a discord between Washington and Seoul on their North Korea policies.” -CHOE SANG-HUN

For some, the debate raised more questions than answers.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, posted on Twitter:

Unbelievable. An entire fopo debate with NO mention of Europe, Eurozone, Africa, anywhere in Asia other than China.

- Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) 23 Oct 12

Stayed up the Obama v Romney debate & suffered all day at work. Didn't help i despise coffee. Was it worth it ? Aint got a clue. Just had to

- Stuart (@The_Benevolent) 23 Oct 12

Another Pricey Watch Disappears in Russia

Andrey Konoval, via LiveJournal A recent photograph of a billboard greeting visitors to a zoo in the Russian city of Izhevsk, featuring the region's president and a leopard cub born in April.

Six months after the Russian Orthodox Church admitted that it had altered a photo on its Web site to remove what looked like an expensive watch worn by its leader, Patriarch Kirill, another fancy watch has disappeared from a portrait of a leading Russian - this time, the president of Udmurtia, a small ethnic republic in Russia's Volga district.

Andrey Konoval, via LiveJournal Until last week, a poster at a zoo in Russia showed what appeared to be an expensive watch on the wrist of a regional official.

Andrey Konoval, via LiveJournal A Russian blogger's photograph of a large sticker of a plain watch pasted on to a portrait of a l ocal official.

In both cases the watches appeared to be Breguet time pieces worth tens of thousands of dollars, which are so often found on the wrists of senior figures in Russia's ruling United Russia Party that one blogger has suggested the political grouping should be renamed “the Party of Breguets.” The main difference between the two cases is that while the patriarch's watch was deleted from a photo by digital sleight-of-hand, the pricey watch pictured on the wrist of Udmurtia's president, Alexander Volkov, was literally covered up, by pasting a very large sticker, bearing the image of much plainer watch, on to a billboard at a local zoo.

Catching public figures sporting luxury watches has become something of a hobby for Russian bloggers in Moscow, but it is rare in Izhevsk, the rundown capital of Udmurtia. On Monday, a local journalist and blogger, Andrey Konoval, documented the alterations to the large portrait of Mr. Volkov in a post on his b log, illustrated with before and after pictures and two brief video clips, showing the revised version of the billboard, and the blogger's unsuccessful attempt to peel the sticker off.

Video posted on YouTube on Monday by the Russian journalist and blogger Andrey Konoval, showing that a portrait of a regional official outside a zoo was altered by adding a large sticker of a plain watch to the poster.

Video posted on YouTube by Andrey Konoval, a Russian journalist and blogger, showing a large sticker added recently to the portrait of a regional official.

Although Mr. Volkov has held his post for 19 years, being president of a backwater populated by speakers of an obscure Finno-Ugric language means that he is not often in the limelight. Eight years ago, my colleague C.J. Chivers visited the presidential palace for a celebration of Udmurtia's most famous export, the Kalashnikov. A few months ago, Mr. Volkov found himself hosting a state reception for the Buranovskiye Babushki, a local pop group made up of six elderly women who managed to finish second at this year's Eurovision song contest, singing their hit, “Party For Everybody.”

In that context, when Mr. Volkov looked at his calendar for May 21 of this year and saw that he was scheduled to pose for photographs with a newborn leopard cub born at the local zoo six weeks earlier, he might well have looked forward to the occasion. Now however, there appears to be a concerted effort underway in Udmurtia to alter or delete the images taken that day.

That effort ap pears to have started about ten days ago, after a blogger who writes as pravdorub-rus reported that a photograph of Mr. Volkov holding the leopard that day, reproduced in a large poster greeting visitors to the Izhevsk zoo, showed him wearing what looks very like a Breguet Classique Grande Complication, worth about $120,000. As the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti noted, “the sum slightly exceeds Volkov's annual salary.”

A press secretary for Mr. Volkov, Viktor Chulkov, admitted on Monday that the designers of the poster had glued a new watch over the Bregeut, but said that neither watch was ever worn by the President in real life. “In my opinion, this is an attempt to make a scandal out of nothing,” Mr. Chulkov told a government newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta.

Instead, he added, the designers of the poster dreamed up both of the watches themselves. “The designers, who were handling the preparation of the poster, say that they wanted to embellish their work,” he said. “Why they embellished it like this,” he added, referring to the Bregeut, “and then they decided to stick something on top of that â€" we are trying to that figure out.”

Mr. Chulkov also said that he spends several hours a day with the president and has never seen either watch on his wrist.

After the disappearing watch was reported in Mr. Konoval's blog post, however, the Russian news site Rusnovosti.ru dug up and published four photographs that appeared to show the Bregeut on Mr. Volkov's wrist, including one very clear image from a local news site, IzhLife.ru, of the president clutching the baby leopard in almost the exact pose documented on the billboard.

Izhlife.ru, via GoodNewsAnimal.ru A photograph published in May by a local news Web site in the Russian republic of Udmurtia showed Alexander Volkov, the regional president, cuddling a leopard cub at a zoo.

It proved impossible to track down the original report that photograph illustrated, since IzhLife.ru's entire Web site seems to have been taken down, although new reports were published on Tuesday on both the IzhLife Facebook page and the IzhLife YouTube channel, describing developments in the regional parliament and auditions for the Miss Russia pageant in Izhevsk.

If the IzhLife Web site was taken down as part of an effort to scrub the images of Mr. Volkov's watch from the Internet, the revisionist historians behind the scheme appear to have been foiled by the editors of GoodNewsAnimal.ru, a Russian Web site dedicated to scouring the Web for images of cute animals. Captivated by the photograph of the baby leopard, that Web site documented the president's visit to the zoo in great detail, copying the IzhLife photo and even adding video of the fateful photo-op, proving that the image on the poster was not a figment of the designer's imagination.

Follow Andrew Roth on Twitter @ARothmsk.

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.

Image of the Day: Oct. 23

Sajjad Hussain/Agence France-Presse - Getty ImagesA pillion rider leads a horse on a crossing in New Delhi. With the onset of the wedding season, horses are in high demand in India.

Does India Still Need Khap Panchayats?

Graham Crouch for The New York TimesMembers of a khap panchayat, or unelected village council, in Sisana, Haryana, in this May 2011 file photo.

Khap panchayats, which predate India's constitution by centuries, have recently been under the microscope after a series of rapes in Haryana were followed by shocking statements from khap members that seemed to blame women for the crime.

Critics have asked whether these all-male, unelected village councils should be allowed to exist in modern India. The groups, generally made up of men from one gotra, or subsect, of a caste, settle disputes and set unofficial laws about marri age and daily life in hundreds of villages through Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

While the Supreme Court and others have questioned their legality, eliminating them is unlikely, social scientists and law experts say. “We cannot ignore them; we cannot wish them away,” said Anand Kumar, a professor of sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

While the role and prestige of these groups are shrinking in some ways, as younger generations become exposed to more modern ideas through urbanization and the media, they often have staunch supporters in legally elected local politicians, Mr. Kumar said.

Khaps are “waning at the social level, but are getting rejuvenated by political parties in our country,” he said. Politicians want to cash in on “primordial ties” to garner votes, he said, so after every election these groups get more powerful.

Mr. Kumar said that politicians seldom back these khaps publicly, but they have an implicit agreement to support each other. Mr. Kumar pointed to a Baliyan khap leader, Mahendra Singh Tikait, who died in May last year, as an example. Mr. Tikait championed farmers' rights in Uttar Pradesh, and it was his constituency of farmers that helped the Janata Dal party, led by V.P. Singh, take over the central government in 1989.

Mr. Tikait was also a leader of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, an Indian farmers' association, but never ran for office. In July 1990, when the then-chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, discouraged a farmers' assembly led by Mr. Tikait and arrested him, nearly 70 state assembly members threatened to resign, according to The Hindu newspaper, and Mr. Tikait was released.

Politicians publicly distance themselves and their parties from the khaps' stances but stop short of any other action.

“No power has been given to them to talk against the constitution, and some of their statements are illegal,” Gee ta Bhukkal, Haryana's minister for women and child development, told India Ink in a telephone interview.

But when asked if the state was taking any action against what she thought was “illegal,” Ms. Bhukkal, a member of the Congress Party, which is in power in Haryana, said, “We don't need to take action against them. They are old, traditional institutions.”

Om Prakash Chautala, who heads Haryana's opposition party, Indian National Lok Dal, told India Ink last week that the khap panchayats have “no role to play in politics.” He said that his party did not share any special relationship with these groups.

The khaps are declining in numbers, Mr. Chautala added. In the olden days, in the absence of judiciary these groups often acted as arbitrators, but with the modern day legal system “we don't need to go to them,” he said.

Recently, Mr. Chautala supported the statements of a khap member who said that lowering the marrying age will help r educe the number of rapes because young girls' sexual needs will be met through their husbands. After scathing criticism, Mr. Chautala retracted his support.

Information about the numbers, demographic distribution and specific political influence of existing khaps is hard to find, but academic experts say these institutions can be more powerful than locally elected panchayats.

“Khaps seem to do well in areas where politically elected panchayats are weak,” said Rani D. Mullen, a professor at the College of William and Mary, who wrote a book on village-level democracy in India.

The question of the legal validity of khap panchayats has been often raised in the courts. In April 2011 the Supreme Court of India described them as “kangaroo courts,” which were “wholly illegal.”

Not everyone agrees with the highest court's recommendation to weed out these institutions, with some supporters arguing that they have social value.

“There are ple nty of tyrannical police officials, plenty of incompetent and corrupt judges in India who pass very retrogressive judgments,” said Madhu Purnima Kishwar, a professor at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. “But no one says ban the police and the law courts. By what right do they demand a ban on khaps, simply because some members have undemocratic views?”

She said that most “educated elite” in India don't know anything about the vital role played by these “age-old institutions of self-governance.”

Khaps can play a positive role in society, said Ms. Kishwar, citing the example of a sarpanch, or elected village council head, in Bibipur village in Haryana, who has roped in the local khaps in the anti-feticide campaign that he has started in his village. Haryana has one of the worst child sex ratios in the country.

Ms. Kishwar said that khap members have a fundamental right to free speech and free association, just as other In dian citizens do, and that if they perform a criminal act, they are also liable for punishment under the Indian Penal Code.

The Supreme Court judge Gyan Sudha Misra, who was part of the bench that questioned the actions of a khap panchayat in the April 2011 ruling, told India Ink that “khaps are not created under any legal provision in the Indian constitution. They are a congregation of individuals, under the age-old custom.

“Assembling peacefully and taking law and order in their hands are two separate things,” she said, adding that “the extreme measures that they ask people to execute do not have legal sanction.” If khaps make “comments that are inflammatory or they issue Taliban-style diktats, legal action can be taken” by contesting such orders before a judge, Ms. Misra said.

Legislation could be introduced to ban the illegal measures of these institutions, Ms. Mishra said. “But nothing has been done yet because such a step may have poli tical fallout.”

No Improvement for India\'s Railways, Former Minister Says

Piyal Adhikary/European Pressphoto AgencyA railway station in Kolkata, West Bengal, March 14, 2012.

Two trains hurtled toward each other at 60 kilometers per hour in Andhra Pradesh last week, as railway officials waited on the sidelines, watching.

About two hundred meters from what would have been a massive collision, the trains screeched to a halt, and the officials heaved a sigh of relief.  The latest test of the Train Collision Avoidance System was declared a success.

The system is designed to prevent collisions by automatically applying a train's brakes when it detects another moving or stationary locomotive on the same track.

It is a much- needed step toward improving the safety of a network that is called the lifeline of India but has claimed many lives.  In 2010, nearly 28, 000 people died in railways and rail-road accidents.

“The railway system is going on and on without any improvement,” a former railway minister, Dinesh Trivedi, said this month at a launch party for “Around India in 80 Trains,” a book by Monisha Rajesh, at the Blue Frog Club in Delhi. “It was only because of the people” that the railways still managed to function, he added.

By “people,” Mr. Trivedi might have been referring to the 21 million riders who use  the Indian rail system daily, on 108,706 kilometers, or about 68, 000 miles, of track,  making it the largest railway network in Asia.  But at the Blue Frog, he talked about the 1.3 million people the system employs, one of the largest work forces in the world.

Courtesy of Roli BooksFormer railway minister Dinesh Trivedi, left, author Monisha Rajesh, center, and journalist Vrinda Gopinath at the terrace of Blue Frog Club in New Delhi, Oct. 4, 2012.

During a conversation with Ms. Rajesh, moderated by the journalist Vrinda Gopinath, Mr. Trivedi spoke at length about the problems ordinary rail employees face and how they soldier on. “While corruption is a huge issue, people are very good at the ground level,” he said.  He recounted incidents of sweepers returning large amounts of money left behind on trains, and of track maintenance workers losing their lives trying to prevent accidents.

Ms. Rajesh agreed with Mr. Trivedi's focus on “the people.”  But for her, she said, it was “the porters and the chai wallahs,” or tea sellers, “and the passengers who make it their business to ensure you are always taken care of” who made traveling on Indian trains memorable.

Ms. Rajesh's book chronicles her 2010 mission to rediscover India, a country she had become estranged from, and one that had left her with some bitter childhood memories. Her parents were first-generation migrants to Britain who returned to Chennai 20 years ago, in the hope of settling down. Two years later they were back in Britain, having endured “soap-eating rats, stolen human hearts and the creepy colonel across the road,” Ms. Rajesh said.

For her trip, she traveled around India on 80 different trains over four months, riding everything from luxury and high-speed trains to Mumbai's famous locals and a Lifeline Express, which is literall y a hospital on wheels.

Kevin Frayer/Associated PressVillagers after undergoing eye surgery inside the Lifeline Express train in Jagdalpur, Chattisgarh, in this July 18, 2011, file photo.

Both the former minister and the now-seasoned train traveler said safety was a primary issue on the rails.  Though nearly 40 percent of accidents last year were caused by staff errors, Mr. Trivedi said his sympathies lay with them, especially with the so-called loco  pilots, or drivers.  A trained air pilot himself, Mr. Trivedi reflected on a system that is not modernized and requires the loco pilots to be “100 percent alert at all times.”

“I traveled in 80 trains and lived to tell the tale,” was Ms. Rajesh's one-line reply to a question about her safety. In an interview later, she said that while planning her  journey she made sure to take newer trains for overnight trips, “as the stats show that most accidents happen at night on older mail trains.”

She decided to travel with a male companion, a Norwegian photographer, because traveling alone did not sound like a good idea, she said.  But that invited an inconvenience of its own: questions like “Are you two married?”

“Initially we tried explaining that we were not romantically involved, but later we realized it was just so much simpler to say we were married,” she explained. Her approach to securing her personal belongings was equally pragmatic: “I never traveled with expensive stuff and kept my important things in a cloth purse around my neck when I slept.”

The safety of one's stomach is another concern when traveling by rail in India. Mr. Trivedi said he “could never understand or accept that all the food that you are supposed to be eating is stacked near the toilet,” at the rear of the train coaches.  “It looks so unhygienic,” he said. During his tenure, he said, he talked to suppliers (and to Eurostar) about how to improve food service.  Ideas included a trolley system, a move towards packaged food and more variety on the menus.

Mr. Trivedi was critical of the heavy subsidization of rail travel, which results in fares that don't reflect the system's true costs. “This is unreal, it cannot work,” he said.

Earlier this year Mr. Trivedi clashed with Mamata Banerjee, the fiery chieftain of his own party, the Trinamool National Congress, who sacked him unceremoniously after he proposed raising fares. Though he continues to be associated with Ms. Banerjee's party, Mr. Trivedi said at this event he was spe aking in a personal capacity only.

Concerns about the rail system's financial health continue to haunt the ministry. “We need money” to ensure the viability of rail services, the Railway Board chairman, Vinay Mittal, argued at a presentation recently. The current minister has initiated the “controversial process” of revising fares with the establishment of the Rail Tariff Authority, The Deccan Herald reported last week. The setting up of such a body had been proposed by Mr. Trivedi in his budget, before he stepped down as Railways Minister.

The Man Who Sparked Bollywood\'s Love of Foreign Locales

Courtesy of UTV Motion Pictures and Dharma ProductionsA still from the 2012 film “Ek Main Aur Ek Tu.”

If Bollywood audiences are accustomed to seeing exotic locales, they have one man in particular to thank: Yash Chopra.

Mr. Chopra, who died Sunday, was a towering figure in Hindi cinema, credited with popularizing shooting in foreign locations, which has become a must for big-budget productions. Just this year, “Players” was shot in New Zealand and Russia, “Ek Tha Tiger” in Cuba, Turkey and Ireland, “Housefull 2” in Thailand, “Agent Vinod” in Morocco, Britain and a host of other countries, and “Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu” in the United States.

While Mr. Chopra was not the first Bollywood director to shoot overseasâ€"that was Raj Kapoor, for the 1964 film “Sangam” â€"he was certainly the most prolific, regularly using picturesque foreign scenery for his romance-focused films. An entire generation of Indian filmgoers was first exposed to the Netherlands' celebrated Keukenhof tulip gardens in his 1981 movie “Silsila,” a story of a love triangle starring three actors who were rumored to be in a real-life one: Amitabh Bachchan, his wife Jaya Bachchan and the actress Rekha.

Eight years later, Switzerland served as the backdrop for “Chandni,” starring Rishi Kapoor and Sridevi, which made bright chiffon saris a fashion sensation. In 1993, the song “Tu Mere Samne” in “Darr,” which helped propel Shah Rukh Khan to superstardom (Juhi Chawla also starred), also featured snowy Swiss peaks.  But it was the 1994 blockbuster “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” which Mr. Chopra produced but did not direct â€" with its famous scene of the actress Kajol missing her train after  disembarking to buy a cowbell, and its chart-topping song “Tujhe Dekha Hai To Jaana Sanam” - that cemented Mr. Chopra's reputation for glamorous foreign settings.

Mr. Chopra had a special affection for Europe, and for Switzerland in particular. He first visited more than 50 years ago, staying in bed-and-breakfasts all over the country. In 1971, he honeymooned in Gstaad with his new bride Pamela, apparently promising her that he would try to have at least one song or sequence set in Switzerland. But it was not till 1985 that he first filmed there (“Faasle”).  After that, there seems to have been no looking back. All told, Mr. Chopra shot scenes for 10 of his movies in the postcard-pretty nation, thereby promoting the country in In dia as a tourist destination.

Switzerland reciprocated the affection. Two years ago, Mr. Chopra was named honorary Ambassador of Interlaken. Jungfrau Railways named a train after him, an honor bestowed on only one other person (Adolf Guyer-Zeller, who founded the railway route more than a century ago).  A lake in Alpenrausch, one of the filmmaker's favorite locations for shooting, was renamed Chopra Lake, according to the film Web site imdb.com. Mr. Chopra's company has a stake in a travel agency that promotes Indian group tours to Switzerland.  He was due to leave for Switzerland to film a song sequence for “Jab Tak Hai Jaan,” starring Mr.  Khan and Katrina Kaif, before he contracted the dengue fever that led to his death.

Yash Raj Chopra was born on Sept. 27, 1932, in the pre-partition Punjabi city of Lahore, in what i s now Pakistan. The youngest of eight siblings, he had planned to be an engineer before deciding to follow his older brother, Baldev Raj Chopra, a journalist turned filmmaker, to Mumbai.

His made his debut as a director with the 1959 film “Dhool Ka Phool,” which dealt with Hindu-Muslim relationships and the taboo subject of illegitimacy. Two years later, the brothers made “Dharmputra,” which dealt with the trauma of partition; there was violence at some of the cinemas that screened the film.  Mr. Chopra did not make another overtly political film, although “Veer Zaara” in 2004  revisited the subject of India-Pakistan relations by way of a love story involving an Indian Air Force officer, played by Mr. Khan, and an affluent Pakistani girl, played by Preity Zinta.

Strdel/Agence France-Presse - Getty ImagesBollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, left, with director Yash Chopra in Mumbai, Maharashtra, in this Dec. 3, 2009 file photo.

In 1971, Mr. Chopra formally separated his business from his brother's, founding  Yash Raj Films. By then he had already won two Filmfare awards for best director, in 1965 and 1969. His 1975 film “Deewaar” cemented Mr. Bachchan's reputation as a major movie star and action hero.  Yet a year later, he cast Mr. Bachchan in the huge romantic hit “Kabhie Kabhie,” demonstrating a willingness to take risks, given that Mr. Bachchan had been typecast as an “angry young man.”

The 1980s were a fallow period for Mr. Chopra, but the losing streak ended late in the decade with “Chandni.” from the n ineties on, Yash Raj Films delivered considered hits, pioneering big-budget,  family-friendly romance cinema, often involving dramatic sets, chart busting musical scores and elaborate costumes. In the 1990s, Mr. Chopra's devotion to filming in foreign locations, along with his use of affluent Indian characters, began to attract a more international audience, especially among the Indian diaspora.   He was the first Bollywood director to shoot in Germany, for “Dil To Pagal Hai” in 1997.

Soon most Bollywood films were following Mr. Chopra's pattern; more than 200 movies till 2010 have featured scenes filmed in Switzerland alone, for instance.  In 2006, Mr. Chopra set up a 20-acre, state-of-the-art movie and sound studio in Mumbai for Yash Raj, which is also rented to other production companies.

Mr. Chopra directed 22 films â€" including “Jab Tak Hai Jaan,” which has yet to be released - and produced 53. He won eight Filmfare awards for best director, and held many honors, including India's third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan, and the French Legion of Honor. He is survived by his wife, Pamela, and two sons, Aditya and Uday.

Developing Countries Turn to Each Other for Conservation

Noah Seelam/Agence France-Presse - Getty ImagesExecutive secretary for the Convention on Biological Diversity, Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, left, India's minister of environment and forests, Jayanthi Natarajan, center, and South Korea's vice minister of environment, Jongsoo Yoon, at the Convention on Biological Diversity in Hyderabad.

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged money for helping developing countries meet conservation g oals at the United Nations summit on biodiversity last week, conservationists and policymakers applauded the promise.

Not so much for the amount â€" which, at $50 million for two years, was just a fraction of total global spending on biodiversity â€" but for what it meant in a world where conserving nature is an activity largely financed by the West.

“That's a great initiative,” said Lasse Gustavsson, conservation director of the World Wide Fund for Nature. “It won't go far, but you're now seeing this tendency for strong leadership on conservation from the emerging economies.”

After intense negotiations at the 11th convention on biodiversity, which came to a close early on Saturday in Hyderabad, rich countries finally agreed to double their contributions to conservation projects by 2015. But on the meeting's sidelines, top government officials and environmentalists discussed new ways in which developing nations could pre serve their natural habitats. According to government officials, activists and other people involved in the negotiations, many developing countries went home poised for more cooperative efforts like Mr. Singh's pledge.

With developed countries mired in the global economic slowdown, placing tighter control on their budgets, developing countries are increasingly turning to new sources of financing to protect the environment. As emerging economies like India, China and Brazil become wealthier and more confident, there has been a rise in so-called South-South cooperation, in which developing countries provide each other economic and technical assistance.

“We now live in a flat, multipolar world where you're starting to see the middle-income countries become international donors,” said Rachel Kyte, vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank. At this convention, she said, “a level of practicality influenced the negotiations.”

In addition to Mr. Singh's pledge, South Korea, which will host the next round of biodiversity talks in 2014, has put $40 million in a fund to help developing countries invest in being green. The Brazilian Development Bank, the world's largest development bank, maintains a $120 million fund to fight deforestation in the Amazon and finances rainforest protection around the world. China has set up programs to train African scientists in conserving biodiversity. Dozens of other regional efforts have sprouted across Latin America, Africa and Asia.

These investments are a fraction of what developed countries have pledged for protecting biodiversity in developing countries, which will reach about $10 billion annually by 2015, and are even slighter compared to the estimated $80 billion to $200 billion it will cost per year to curb the loss of the world's biodiversity. (Even the Brazilian Development Bank's Amazon fund is financed largely by Norway.)

Still, convention delegates sai d these pledges are a harbinger of a future in which larger developing countries, where conservation often takes a back seat to goals like poverty reduction, play a more active role in saving the environment â€" not just at home, but also abroad.

“The world was always seen as a North-South divide,” said one Indian negotiator, who requested anonymity because the talks are confidential. “Now you are talking about developing countries themselves helping out. South-South cooperation was never institutionalized around biodiversity before â€" that's the symbolism of India's pledge. $50 million may not seem like a lot of money, but it helps a country like Guatemala.”

To satisfy their need for energy and raw materials, emerging nations have sent cheap technology and aid to their less-developed counterparts since the 1990s. Trade between developing countries remained a bright spot during the global financial crisis â€" as imports and exports slowed down across the West, countries in the south stepped up to fill the gap.

Negotiators said they now expected to see even more South-South cooperation in financing conservation. Much of the world's biodiversity is located in developing countries, where large sections of the population still depend directly on forests and wetlands for survival. Developing countries can benefit, the negotiators said, from their common ground in balancing the pressures on their environment with the pressure to reduce poverty.

“It's becoming increasingly more difficult for the North to commit to providing resources, so more South-South cooperation is inevitable,” said Geoffrey Wahungu, head of the Kenyan delegation to the summit. “Developing countries would like to look at natural resources as natural capital, so you have to look at like-minded development partners to share experiences about cutting costs and using technology in conservation.”

Recently a few nations have looked at ways to integrate their spending on development with the conservation of nature. An August 2012 study by the Indian government found that it already spent nearly $1 billion per year on development programs that had environmental benefits but that there was much more scope to make poverty-reduction programs greener.

“What is happening right now is that funds are being diverted from poverty alleviation to look at forests,” said Damodaran Appukutta, the study's author. “So you have to have a complete paradigm change in the way of looking at conservation, where protected biodiversity is integrated into development.”

But for all the hopes of future South-South cooperation, most developing countries aren't ready to fully take over the reins from the West.

“If we forgo the economic benefits that come from not using our resources sustainably, then developed countries also have an obligation to contribute,” said Mr. Wahungu, the Kenyan delegate.

Mr. Gus tavson, the W.W.F. conservation director, said, “We want to see that South-South cooperation is strengthened, but not necessarily at the expense of the already developed economies taking the issue as seriously as everybody else.”

There is also the question of how developing countries can lead on international conservation efforts, said Pavan Sukhdev, special adviser to the United Nations Environment Program, while ecosystems at home are unaccountably damaged during mining and other big-budget development projects.

“Given that corporate interests determine economic direction and resource use, we have to be careful that the demand for profits doesn't outweigh the need for conserving nature in India,” said Mr. Sukhdev.

European delegates accused large countries like China and Brazil of giving lip service to South-South cooperation while continuing to receive contributions from Western countries.

“Some of the countries that receive funding have much larger economies than most of the donor countries,” said Ines Verleye, a top delegate for the European Union. “The irony is that these are countries that talk about South-South cooperation, and yet they're the biggest recipients of aid and take it from the least developing countries that really need it.”

In all likelihood, any fundamental shift in who leads the world's conservation efforts will take time. Still, economic and environmental experts at the convention saw a new trend emerging from the changing global landscape.

“People know that the progress being made in these global conferences just isn't fast enough,” said Ms. Kyte of the World Bank, “and they're not waiting.”

A Conversation with: Author Shankkar Aiyar

Courtesy of Bandeep SinghShankkar Aiyar.

Shankkar Aiyar is the author of “Accidental India: A History of the Nation's Passage Through Crisis and Change.” An award-winning journalist and columnist, he has reported on the political economy of India for more than 30 years.

In “Accidental India,” Mr. Aiyar analyses major turning points in India's recent history, from economic liberalization in 1991 to the passage of the Right to Information Act in 2005. Tracing the genesis of each of these changes, he argues that the key decisions made in the country since independence have not arisen from foresight and planning but have been the accidental results of crises.

He recently spoke with India Ink about the book, the current crisis in India and the problems with India's model of governance.

Q.

When did you first start to notice this trend? How did the idea strike you that this was a repeated pattern?

A.

The genesis of this book can be traced to when I reported on crates of gold from the Reserve Bank of India being furtively loaded on an aircraft. I thought that this was no different from an ordinary household that pawns its jewelry to get out of a crisis. Over the past 30 years, as I have reported on the political economy of India, I have seen this repeated in micro- and macro-events.

Q.

Why does India seem to need to wait for a moment of crisis to react? What do you think it is about India that makes the country need a critical condition to change?

A.

The answer is hidden in the granularity of politics. Because we are a diverse nation and there are diverse interests, the political leadership is unable to communicate what I define as the national interest and resorts to what is electorally profitable. Meanwhile the bureaucracy tends to sustain the status quo, as disruption is not convenient for them and the voters tend to accept what is morally satisfying. Because of all these factors, change has been stalled in the country. In the wake of a crisis, people tend to accept disruption and change because the choice is taken away from them.

Q.

Yet, as you discuss in the epilogue, not every crisis leads to change.

A.

When the crisis is not vociferous the problems continue unabated. For instance, a country that has been able to move forward in issues as complex as space technology and nuclear technology has not been able to resolve malnutrition. While malnutrition is a problem that has been arou nd for a long time, because the crisis is silent it doesn't get addressed. We have had a program to address malnutrition for over 25 years, yet we are faring miserably. The life expectancy at birth is better in countries like Iraq and Guatemala than in India.

Q.

What is it about this model of governance that necessitates a crisis?

A.

Decision is locked in India in the many layers of government. At every level, groups with vested interests sustain the status quo by stalling change. Inefficiency in the system enables those in positions of power to manipulate the system.

Q.

You say that the much-touted “Hindu rate of growth” is but a reflection of “the Indian rate of change.” In what way is the trajectory of growth in India related to India's pace of change?

A.

The moment you clear up the multiple layers involved in the process of decision making, you will speed up the process and remove inefficiency from the system. At present the process of taking decisions takes painfully long, while the implementation takes even more time. By the time it is possible to judge the outcome of the decision, the person who made the decision is possibly not in power anymore â€" so there is no accountability in the system.

If a country says we are going to spend x amount on roads, at the end of the year we must know what amount what spent, how many kilometers were added, how that money was used. That system of checks and balances does not presently exist in India.

Q.

India today is also poised at a moment of change. The current administration has been put in the spotlight with a number of charges of corruption, and there is pressure on for immediate reforms. How does this notion of accidental change relate to the current phase of India's trajectory?

A.

Crisis robs the po litical establishment of all excuses and alibis and ends indecision and procrastination. We've had a slowdown for nine quarters but the government has been in perpetual denial for the last two years. It does not take an economist to know that a combination of high inflation and low growth is bad news, but yet nobody acts on it until Standard & Poor and Fitch said they would review our rating. The fear of a junk rating alarmed the political establishment, and then we saw announcements from the finance minister to improve the investment climate and so forth.

Once the crisis abates, the follow-through ends. In 1991 we dismantled the Licence Raj, and it should have followed that we got rid of the whole complex permission system. But that didn't happen. The momentum ended as soon as the 1991 administration was confronted with electoral results in Karnataka and some other states. According to the World Bank we are still ranked 132 out of 183 countries in ease of doing busine ss. So obviously, not many changes have been made.

Q.

Is this a symptom of a vacuum in leadership and a lack of vision in the country?

A.

Vision comes from your understanding of what needs to be done. Every government in India that comes into power has a vague agenda but no specific plan. On any issue, all the parties have a similar articulation of the problem but none of the parties will articulate a solution.

As Indians we are overinvested in promises and underinvested in performance. As voters, Indians seek promises and don't reward those who perform. It is a very curious truth, but this kind of system could not have been sustained without the unstated cooperation of the voters. They have let it happen. I would like to see the leaders of political parties stand up and say that these are the five or six big issues that we need to resolve, let us all agree that they need to be resolved and let's create a p lan to do it. Governments should come in with an agenda and there should be a midterm and annual outcome report to judge how much they have achieved.

Q.

You have said that the Unique Identity scheme is a way to “prevent the poor from being robbed and the corrupt from being enriched” and could become “the basis for reforms.” Can this mechanism be used to bring about institutional change?

A.

One of the reasons why most government schemes fail is that there is no mechanism to identify the poor. The Unique Identity scheme allows you to identify the targeted people and get past the process of delivering commodities to people â€" which is where the siphoning and corruption takes place. In a system of direct transfer there is less chance of leakage.

Q.

Is there a danger in relying too much on crisis to deliver the trigger for change?

A.

The danger is embedded in the notion of crisis. In a crisis the situation is like a basement sale, there is no room to negotiate the best deal. You are faced with a fait accompli and you deal with it. You don't get the best deal, which is why it is not a good idea.