Courtesy of Corbis
A year ago, we launched India Ink, The New York Times’s first country-specific blog/news journal, with a promise to provide “more in-depth, on-the-ground coverage of the world’s biggest democracy — and of a people who know that no matter how far they roam, their hearts will always be Indian.”
Since then we’ve reported from India’s major metropolises and minor villages, from Jaipur, Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, London, Mumbai, Israel, New York and numerous other locations. We’ve covered Tibetan protests, expensive wedding planners, living at (or below) the poverty line in India, “meaningless cricket,” the difficulties of “flying while Khan,” Indian women who suffer after divorce, Bangalore’s “Maybe Virgin” generation and hundreds of other topics.
Along the way we’ve gained millions of readers, inspired thousands of comments and, hopefully, prompted some serious and not-so-serious discussions.
A year on, things seem a bit darker in India. Economic growth forecasts have been sharply downgraded, from over 7 percent in 2011 to as low as 5 percent today. The energy and optimism that surrounded the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement have morphed into a still-potent disdain for the current governing parties but one that is accompanied by more pessimism. What seemed like a one-time request by the government, asking social media companies in India to censor and screen content, now could be read as a more sinister plan to curb criticism and dissent.
Looking back at the top essays and articles we wrote in the past 12 months, you could say that one running theme is conflict – not physical conflict, but a conflict between the way things are, and how our readers and the subjects of these articles want them to be. Our writers, and readers, seem frustrated and thrilled with India and the position of Indians around the world in equal measure, and they despair of the shortcomings they see, while working to fix them.
Here are our top posts from the past 12 months, by number of readers:
1. Why I Left India (Again): The I.T. professional Sumedh Mungee’s heartfelt essay on hating the man he became when he returned to India, which we published in October 2011, is still getting responses. An excerpt from the essay:
Perhaps three thousand years of history have made us Indians a little too familiar with one another for our own good. We’ve perfected Malcolm Gladwell’s “blink” — the reflexive, addictive and tragically accurate placement of other Indians into bullock carts, scooters, airplanes and who knows what else. These issues exist in all countries, but in India, I could see the bigotry in high fidelity and hear the stereotypes in surround-sound — partly because it is worse in India, mostly because I am Indian.
2. An Open Letter to India’s Graduating Classes: Mohit Chandra, a partner with an international consulting company based in India, innocently submitted this to India Ink after interviewing job candidates. He (and we) didn’t anticipate the hornet’s nest it would stir up when it was published in May. An excerpt:
Today, we regret to inform you that you are spoiled. You are spoiled by the “India growth story”; by an illusion that the Indian education system is capable of producing the talent that we, your companies, most crave; by the imbalance of demand and supply for real talent; by the deceleration of economic growth in the mature West; and by the law of large numbers in India, which creates pockets of highly skilled people who are justly feted but ultimately make up less than 10 percent of all of you.
3. India Asks Google, Facebook to Screen User Content: Our report on the private meetings that the acting telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal held with top executives from social networking sites in India showed both the government’s discomfort with Internet criticism and its misunderstanding of how technology works. An excerpt:
At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi. “This is unacceptable,” he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way to monitor what is posted on their sites.
In the second meeting with the same executives in late November, Mr. Sibal told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not technology, the executive said. The three executives said Mr. Sibal has told these companies that he expects them to set up a proactive pre-screening system, with staffers looking for objectionable content and deleting it before it is posted.
4. Meet Aparna, Mumbai’s Teenage Sex Educator: Neha Thirani’s article on Aparna, the 16-year-old daughter of a prostitute, who candidly and cheerfully conducts sexual education classes for underprivileged girls, inspired a flood of offers for help to further Aparna’s education. An excerpt from the article:
When sex workers like Aparna’s mother would become pregnant, the “doctors would treat them so badly,” Aparna recalls. “They would yell at them, and even slap them sometimes. They would say things like ‘You go and pick up anyone’s child and come to me with your stomach swollen. When you were doing it, you enjoyed yourself and now what happened?’ ”
These encounters made Aparna want to become a gynecologist. Even when she was younger, she would share with her friends and peers whatever sexual health-related information she could find.
5. Being Sikh in America: Amardeep Singh’s essay, penned after the shootings at a Wisconsin gurdwara in August, detailed the sometimes perilous position in which Sikhs find themselves in America, where they are often mistaken for Muslim, or just singled out for being different. An excerpt:
In light of the Wisconsin shooting, many Sikhs are now suggesting that we renew our educational efforts about Sikhs and Sikhism. These are well-meaning and valuable efforts, but here’s the thing: I am not sure that the shooter would have acted any differently even if he had known the difference.
As I have experienced it, the Sikh turban reflects a form of difference that can provoke some Americans to react quite viscerally. Yes, ignorance plays a part and probably amplifies that reaction. But it may also be that visible marks of religious difference like the Sikh turban are lightning rods for this hostility in ways that don’t depend on accurate recognition.
This top five list is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. We’ve had Sonia Faleiro’s keenly observed and often heartrending reporting on communities outside the Indian mainstream (like this one on Durga, a girl who lives on a pavement in Mumbai); Samanth Subramanian’s Long View column, looking at current events through the lens of history, Naresh Fernandes on music and Mumbai, Vivek Dehejia on economics, Saritha Rai from Bangalore and the longtime New York Times reporter Hari Kumar on politics and corruption, and dozens of other excellent writers.
To our India Ink audience: Thank you, thank you. If there’s something you’ve loved or something you’ve hated, or something you just want to get off your chest, send us an e-mail at IndiaInk@nytimes.com or leave a message in the comments below.