Real India Archives - Open Source with Christopher Lydon

THIS WEEK'S SHOW: October 1, 2026

"A juvenility of moral imagination that is at the core of this."

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, 2012

Real India: a land soon without tigers, and maybe orchids

Suprabha Seshan -- a gardener and guardian of the land, living for the last 17 years in the wild rain forest of Kerala, near the southwest tip of India --...

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, 2010

Real India: Ashis Nandy’s ‘intimate enemies’

NEW DELHI — Ashis Nandy has a big idea about “loss and recovery” in the history of colonialism. The bumpersticker version is that the conquerors and colonists lose in the...

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Real India: Namita Gokhale: the revolution will be written!

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Namita Gokhale (34 minutes, 17 mb mp3) NEW DELHI — Namita Gokhale — novelist, publisher, sparkplug of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival —...

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, 2010

Real India: On the Couch with Sudhir Kakar

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Sudhir Kakar (17 minutes, 8 mb mp3) NEW DELHI — Sudhir Kakar has built a Freudian bridge to the alternate universe that is...

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, 2010

Real India: Tarun Tejpal’s heart-ache for "the idea of India"

In the slick commercial media of New Delhi, Tehelka is the strong-minded reformist alternative. It could remind you of The New Yorker and The Nation back home. Tehelka is fearless...

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, 2010

Real India: The BBC’s Mark Tully on Poverty and "Tinderwood"

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Mark Tully (40 minutes, 19 mb mp3) NEW DELHI — Mark Tully is something like the Edward R. Murrow of India. He has...

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, 2010

Real India: Shashi Tharoor, the ‘NRI’ who came home

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Shashi Tharoor (41 minutes, 20 mb mp3) NEW DELHI — Shashi Tharoor is the global Indian who came home — who scored a...

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, 2010

Real India: M. A. Baby and "Kerala Communism"

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with M. A. Baby (29 minutes, 14 mb mp3) TRIVANDRUM, Kerala — M. A. Baby is giving us an introductory dose of Indian leftism...

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, 2010

Real India: "I’m the Village Guy"

Click to listen in on Chris’s conversation with Barathi Raja Reddy in Tamil Nadu. (17 minutes, 8 mb mp3) Barathi Raja Reddy is the Indian entrepreneur we didn’t expect to...

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, 2010

Real India: Novelist Paul Zacharia Shares His "Confusion"

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Paul Zacharia. (33 minutes, 15 mb mp3) Paul Zacharia is a novelist and story writer eminent in the Malayalam language and in Trivandrum,...

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, 2010

Real India: Walking the Slum Side of Bangalore

Click to listen in on Chris’s slum tour with Brindge Adige. (54 minutes, 26 mb mp3) BANGALORE — Brinda Adige, a self-starting social activist, in yellow sari, is our guide...

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, 2010

Real India: At Koshy’s Cafe, The Talk of Bangalore

Click to listen in on the conversation at Koshys Cafe. (35 minutes, 16 mb mp3) “… And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation,...

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, 2010

Real India: Confidence-building in the new "Women’s Work"

Click to listen in on Chris’s visit to the Ubuntu workshop in Ramanagar. (22 minutes, 11 mb mp3) RAMANAGAR — We drove out about 50 kilometers south and west of...

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, 2010

Real India: A historian’s cautions on "the Indian Century"

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with the Ramachandra Guha. (58 minutes, 28 mb mp3) BANGALORE — Ramachandra Guha, the provocative, critical historian of India After Gandhi, has vitality and...

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, 2010

Real India: Social Entrepreneurship as a Family Affair

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with the Chhiber-Mathew family. (46 minutes, 22 mb mp3) BANGALORE — Neelam Chhiber met her husband Jacob Mathew in graduate school, the National Institute...