India Insight

Here are my picks for the best Reuters India stories of the year:

Sahara – massive, splashy … and mysterious
By Tony Munroe and Devidutta Tripathy
KHALILABAD, Uttar Pradesh - Like millions of Indians, Jag Ram Chaudhary invested with the Sahara conglomerate – 1,300 rupees a month in his case – to put away money for a rainy day. Read more here.

ANALYSIS – India’s deficit-cutting plan faltering as clock ticks
By Ross Colvin and Rajesh Kumar Singh
NEW DELHI - Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has banned government officials from holding conferences at five-star hotels, restricted travel and ordered a freeze on hiring to fill vacant posts. Read more here

INSIGHT – Punchups, kidnappings mar India’s efforts to privatise power
By Sanjeev Choudhary and Ross Colvin
NEW DELHI - It is rough being an employee of Torrent Power Ltd in Agra. Furious residents regularly take staff of the power distributor hostage or beat them up, stone-throwing mobs besiege the firm’s high-walled compound, and one official recently had to be hospitalised after he was hit on the head with a brick. Read more here

ANALYSIS – What slowdown? For some firms, India’s economy still humming
By Tony Munroe and Matthias Williams
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI - India’s economic growth may have slowed to a near-decade low, but you wouldn’t know it from the pace at which Britain’s Costa Coffee and many other consumer-focused companies are expanding. Read more here

INSIGHT – How Sonia Gandhi was persuaded to back India reforms
By Satarupa Bhattacharjya and John Chalmers
NEW DELHI - It had been a brutal August for the Congress party: economic growth was wilting, the monsoon rains were failing and the opposition had it cornered on yet another corruption scandal. Read more here

The media watches everyone but itself, commented an argumentative friend the other day.

How many ‘sting operations’ has the media done on any of its own, say on the ‘Paid News’ controversy?

I was at a loss.

The morality of sting operations is a debatable topic but the larger point demanded a response.

The war of words between the billionaire Ambani brothers took an unexpected turn when younger sibling Anil offered an olive branch to elder brother Mukesh in a bid to resolve a feud over the split of the Reliance business empire in 2005.

The widespread coverage the Indian media has given to the squabble between the brothers has led to a debate on social networking sites such as Twitter, with some accusing news organisations of playing host to a reality show or soap opera that stars the Ambani family to boost ratings.

Prominent columnist Vir Sanghvi wrote through his Twitter account virsanghvi: “Do you think some network should plan a reality show on the Ambani battle? Or are they doing it already on the news?”

The concept of a televised war was born in January 1991, when news networks reported live on the missiles slamming into Baghdad and millions watched from the comfort of their living rooms as tracer fire lit the sky above Iraq's capital. A decade later,  the world watched in minute-by-minute horror as the twin towers came crashing down in New York. 

Now, with the ferocious militant attacks in Mumbai, we have arrived in "the age of celebrity terrorism". Paul Cornish of Chatham House argues that apart from killing scores of people, what the Mumbai gunmen wanted was "an exaggerated and preferably extreme reaction on the part of governments, the media and public opinion". 

It's too early to tell if governments will respond with extreme reaction, but the saturation coverage of the drama in the world's media would suggest that, at least on this level, the killers were successful.