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Narendra Modi’s India
We explain what to expect from his third term.
By Alex Travelli
I am most interested in stories about India’s economy and the people and companies who shape it. I travel around the country extensively and also to neighboring countries.
India has been said to have the most diverse economy in the world. I work to shed light on that contention. Many things are going on in the world’s most populous country, and the challenge of trying to understand its dynamics keeps me busy.
Sometimes South Asia needs to be seen from a bird’s-eye view or from even higher. I also get to write from relatively small, surprising spaces, about human-scale enterprises of the kind that spring up in India.
I used to work as an editor and correspondent for The Economist, moving from its bureau in New York to Hong Kong and finally New Delhi. Most of my time with The Economist had me stationed happily with its Asia section.
I started my career in journalism after quitting a doctoral program in philosophy. My earliest jobs were in television, first as a freelancer from India in the late 1990s, followed by several years with ABC News in New York and a long stint in the Persian Gulf. I grew up in suburban Chicago and attended Deep Springs College and Harvard.
I follow our ethics policy, like all Times journalists. I’m committed to writing with accuracy, fairness and empathy in every article. Protecting my sources is of the utmost importance. I maintain strict confidentiality for interview subjects who feel that they need it. I also take the trouble to offer it to those who may never have considered it. But I also work to verify what anyone tells me. I do not own stock in any of the companies I cover. My personal savings are invested in various index funds, none of which I have direct control over. If I have a personal connection to anyone connected to a company I may cover, I excuse myself from the story.
Email: [email protected]
X: @travelli
Anonymous tips: nytimes.com/tips
We explain what to expect from his third term.
By Alex Travelli
In Turkey, India and elsewhere, where some feared authoritarian leaders would consolidate power, democracy has proved surprisingly resilient.
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The prime minister will keep his job, but his aura has been diminished and his leadership has fundamentally changed as the country’s multiparty democracy springs back to life.
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Though Narendra Modi will take up a third term as India’s leader, the election was closer than expected, forcing him to rely on coalition partners that don’t share his Hindu nationalist agenda.
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This was featured in live coverage.
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Stock markets in Mumbai have surged as big global investors hope India can become a source of growth. It won’t be so easy.
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India’s welfare programs improve lives. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party uses its vast machinery to ensure the handouts also create loyal voters.
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Mr. Musk has built a constellation of like-minded heads of state — including Argentina’s Javier Milei and India’s Narendra Modi — to push his own politics and expand his business empire.
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The direct language used against the country’s largest minority was a contrast to the image Prime Minister Narendra Modi presents on the world stage.
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A shrub in impoverished Nepal now supplies the raw material for the bank notes used in Asia’s most sophisticated financial system.
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Global tourism brought a modern economy to the country’s thousand islands. For many Maldivians, the teeming capital beckons.
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As Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a third term, India’s growth has received the attention of the world’s investors but inequality has deepened.
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Narendra Modi has kept India on its swift upward path among the world’s largest economies. Many Indians are better off, though wealth gaps have widened.
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The United States has passed a law that could end in a ban. When India did it, people adjusted quickly, and Instagram and YouTube built big audiences.
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Lists of donors and beneficiaries cast government contracts and police investigations in an unflattering new light.
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The law sparked lethal riots when it was passed. Now, after a four-year delay, it has come into force on the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s re-election campaign.
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Asia’s two giants are crowding the island nation with building projects, tossing its newborn democracy to and fro.
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A three-day pre-wedding ceremony for the son of one of India’s richest men raises the bar for extravagant festivity.
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Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries will control what is left of Disney’s grasp at India’s burgeoning media market.
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This time they want a stronger guarantee that they can make money selling their wheat and rice crops.
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The companies that make iPhones are bringing their factories to one corner of India, to graft them onto a network of manufacturers.
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Its site is sacred to Hindus, and it also represents the much more recent victory of Hinduism as a political identity.
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The movie “Annapoorani” was about a female chef overcoming caste prejudice. Hindu activists said it hurt their feelings.
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Some in the Maldives were critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to nearby Indian islands to promote tourism, seeing it as an attempt to draw visitors away from their nation.
By Alex Travelli
Long-term investment in India by businesses is stagnant, and foreign money is falling, even as the government is driving growth with infrastructure spending.
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Two- and three-wheeled vehicles, used by billions of people, are moving away from fossil fuels to batteries faster than cars in countries that have made the energy transition a priority.
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The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation is joining forces with the Adani Group, strengthening ties to India and an embattled conglomerate.
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Schools shut down and residents were told to stay indoors as the government seems unable to avert an airborne calamity with multiple culprits that descends at the onset of winter.
By Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar
While most Indians travel by road or rail, the country is engaged in a major expansion of its aviation industry to serve the needs of its middle class.
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The notifications suggested that many opposition figures could be under “state-sponsored” surveillance, but even Apple said the warning could have been a false alarm.
By Alex Travelli and Suhasini Raj
Though it expanded the definition of discrimination, the ruling was a sharp setback for petitioners seeking a landmark victory on marriage equality.
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A glacial lake’s overflow swept away more than 100 people in the Himalayan state of Sikkim in India. Climate change is aggravating the threat of such phenomena.
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The sweep caught up the founder and contributors of a left-leaning news website, according to other news outlets and those raided. A Times investigation had linked the site to a pro-China network.
By Alex Travelli, Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar
India’s government, seizing on the world’s desire to reduce reliance on China, is offering billions to build an entire semiconductor ecosystem on vast empty plots.
By Alex Travelli
This was featured in live coverage.
By Alex Travelli
This was featured in live coverage.
By Mike Ives and Alex Travelli
The Chandrayaan-3 mission makes India the first country to reach the lunar south polar region in one piece and adds to the achievements of the country’s homegrown space program.
By Hari Kumar, Alex Travelli, Mujib Mashal and Kenneth Chang
ISRO, the country’s counterpart to NASA, is busy making way for a private enterprise
By Alex Travelli
This was featured in live coverage.
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China wants to expand the five-nation bloc, but the members’ conflicting interests may get in the way.
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Some 40 countries that have largely remained on the sidelines of the war were invited to talks on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, as Ukraine redoubles international efforts to isolate Moscow.
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India’s main opposition leader was kicked out of the legislature after a defamation case that his allies called politically motivated. He can also now run in next year’s elections.
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A gunman who killed Muslim train passengers and a Hindu march that turned riotous underscore how the partisan stances of India’s top Hindu leaders have given license to chaotic elements in the country.
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With at least 140 registered space-tech start-ups, India stands to transform the planet’s connection to the final frontier.
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In some places, educated young people are desperate for steady employment in the world’s most populous nation. In others, factory owners struggle to retain workers.
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This was featured in live coverage.
By Victoria Kim and Gaya Gupta
This was featured in live coverage.
By Alex Travelli and Mujib Mashal
This was featured in live coverage.
By Alex Travelli
This was featured in live coverage.
By Lazaro Gamio, Leanne Abraham, Ana Swanson and Alex Travelli
This was featured in live coverage.
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India, a critical security partner of the United States, now buys huge amounts of Russian oil, purchasing one of every two barrels shipped at sea.
By Lazaro Gamio, Leanne Abraham, Ana Swanson and Alex Travelli
The president who declared “the battle between democracy and autocracy” to be the defining struggle of his time has concluded that he needs to accept some imperfect but important friends.
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Some doctors believe the high number of fatalities is tied to the temperatures. But the authorities are still trying to determine how many people died and what exactly killed them.
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An outburst of ethnic hatreds has fractured an ancient kingdom and turned neighbors into enemies.
By Suhasini Raj, Alex Travelli and Saumya Khandelwal
Train travel in the country has gotten much safer, Friday’s disaster notwithstanding, but the government still puts high-profile projects ahead of basic safety improvements, analysts say.
By Alex Travelli
Officials suggested human error, even sabotage, could have led to the crash that killed 275, as crews raced to restore service and families struggled to reach the site to identify loved ones.
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The sequence of events as three trains collided in one of India’s deadliest rail accidents.
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This was featured in live coverage.
By Alex Travelli
This was featured in live coverage.
By Alex Travelli
This was featured in live coverage.
By Alex Travelli and Karan Deep Singh
This was featured in live coverage.
By Anushka Patil
This was featured in live coverage.
By Hari Kumar, Mujib Mashal and Alex Travelli
The disaster killed at least 288 people, and a preliminary government report described it as a “three-way accident” involving two passenger trains and an idled cargo train. Officials were investigating possible signal failure.
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Three trains, with more than 2,200 people onboard, were involved in the crash in Odisha State, the deadliest such disaster in decades. The death toll approached 300.
By Alex Travelli, Victoria Kim, Erin Mendell and Isabella Kwai
Investors have again rushed into the conglomerate controlled by Gautam Adani after a panel signaled that the investigation into the company’s finances was getting nowhere.
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Violence erupted over a question of who gets to claim special tribal status.
By Alex Travelli and Suhasini Raj