Soutik – our blogger
Originally uploaded by bbcworldservice
The BBC has long had a thing about railways. One recalls The Great Railway Journeys and Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar, which was broadcast on the BBC.
And now there's the BBC India Election Train running across India, covering
the general election. It's starting a bit late. As this Wall Street Journal
graphic shows, almost half the 543 parliamentary constituencies had already gone
to the polls by the time the train pulled out of New Delhi at the weekend.
But the BBC's Soutik Biswas (see picture) is doing a nice job giving a chatty, picturesque
account on his India Election Train Blog. The accompanying interactive map is a gem too. I am reminded of the BBC's Talking
America blog which covered the presidential election last year. But while
the BBC used a bus to cover the US election, in India it can afford a luxury
train.
Biswas in his airconditioned coach is definitely enjoying greater luxury than
Theroux or Gandhi, who travelled third class. Gandhi's railway journey across
India was memorably depicted in Sir Richard Attenborough's film, Gandhi, which won
as many Oscars in its time as Slumdog Millionaire. Unfortunately I couldn't find
any videoclip on YouTube to show the exhilarating railway journey. It was one of
the highlights of the movie.
So was the BBC's India Election Train inspired by Gandhi or Theroux's The
Great Railway Bazaar? (Theroux has retraced the journey in Ghost Train To The Eastern Star.)
The "election train" shows how India has opened up, allowing the foreign
media to cover the elections in a special train.
Indira Gandhi used to see the foreign hand behind every problem. Now the
foreign hand is everywhere from telecoms – Bharti is partly owned by Singapore's
SingTel – to banks: ICICI Bank's stakeholders include the Singapore sovereign
wealth funds Temasek Holdings and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation
(GIC).
Few could possibly better describe the change than the BBC's former India
correspondent, Mark Tully, who can still be heard on the World Service. More
than 60 years have passed since India became independent in 1947. But few cover
India better yet than the BBC.
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