wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

The society announced on Wednesday that Dr. Vishakha Desai is leaving her post as president and chief executive officer in September to join the Guggenheim Foundation as a senior adviser for global policy and programs.

The search continues for 140 people – 129 of them Pakistani soldiers – buried by an avalanche near the Siachen Glacier 12 days ago. Orla Guerin from our partner the BBC reports from the rescue site.

India test-fired a nuclear-capable missile last night, capable of reaching 3,100 miles and within range of China's key cities. India joins the U.S., China, Britain, France and Russia as the only nations with these kinds of weapons. David Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for our partner the New York Times.

Akash Kapur, the child of an Indian father and an American mother, spent his formative years in India and his young adulthood in the United States. He talks about moving to India permanently in 2003 to watch the country’s growth and modernization first-hand. In his new book, India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India, he describes the complex and often contradictory country that he found.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo tells the story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai, India. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity is based on three years of reporting, and it gives a glimpse into the lives of Annawadi residents, including Abdul, a Muslim teenager who scavenges for recyclables; Asha, who is seeking a route to the middle class through political corruption; and her daughter Manju, who will soon become Annawadi’s first female college graduate. When terrorism and the global economic recession shake Mumbai, suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal.

Today in India an explosion tore through an Israeli diplomat's car on the streets of New Delhi, Israeli officials said. The driver and a diplomat's wife were injured. The explosion took place close to the Israeli embassy. Meanwhile in Tiblisi, Georgia Israel's Foreign Ministry said an attempted car bombing in Georgia was thwarted. 

Curator John Guy discusses “Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India, 1100-1900,” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition includes some 220 works selected according to identifiable hands and named artists, dispelling the notion of anonymity in Indian art. The high points of artistic innovation in the history of Indian painting are demonstrated through works by 40 of the greatest Indian painters, some of whom are identified for the first time.

The Asia Society inaugurated its new Asian Arts & Ideas series this month with “The ‘Chindia’ Dialogues." Listen to a conversation between historian Jonathan Spence and the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh.

Three years ago this week 10 gunmen lay siege to the city of Mumbai. They arrived by boat from Karachi, Pakistan and for for three days, they launched a series of attacks on two 5-star hotels, a train station and a small Jewish hostel. A total of 166 people were killed, and more than 300 were injured. The mastermind behind the attacks, called India's 9/11, was an American citizen named David Headley, who spent more than two years mapping out targets and creating a plan for the attacks.

India instituted a Right to Information law a few years ago that's very similar to the Freedom of Information Act in the US. The law has worked well as an anti-corruption tool but there's only problem. Some of the people who've used it have been killed afterwards. Bloomberg reporter Mejul Srivasta talks to Bob about how India is trying to protect its whistleblowers.

Tortoise - Gigantes (Mark Ernestus Version)

Arundhati Roy discusses the Maoist insurgency in India and the fight against corporations looking to exploit the rare minerals buried in tribal lands. In Walking with the Comrades, Roy takes readers to the unseen front lines of this ongoing battle, chronicling her months spent living with the rebel guerillas in the forests. In documenting their local struggles, Roy addresses the larger question of whether global capitalism will tolerate any societies existing outside of its control.

To explore the sometimes problematic confluence of the two countries, The Asia Society will launch its new Asian Arts & Ideas series with a forum called “The ‘Chindia’ Dialogues” on Thursday. The talks run through Sunday.

From London and Athens to Israel and India, and now, Wall Street, protesters all over the world are taking to the streets, and their complaints are not that different. Income inequality, unemployment, austerity measures imposed by governments thought to be inept and removed from the will of the people have fueled protests around the globe. Like the protests of the Arab Spring, which have toppled authoritarian governments in the Middle East and Northern Africa this year, these protesters utilize social media to organize, and shun traditional political institutions.

It's a big season for Indian art at New York City museums. As the Brooklyn Museum wraps up its "Vishnu: Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior" exhibit this weekend, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens a major show of art from the subcontinent on Wednesday, called "Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India, 1100-1900.” See images from the show here.

Thant Myint-U describes the remote region suddenly a geopolitical center of the world—Burma, where Asia’s great powers appear to be vying for supremacy. Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia looks at the ways China and India are becoming exposed to each other as never before, and how the basic shift in geography will lead to unprecedented connections among the three billion people of Southeast Asia and the Far East.

Ever wonder what it's like to work at a call center in Delhi? Hear Siddhartha Deb, creative writing teacher at the New School and journalist, who went undercover at just such a place, discuss his study of post-globalization India in the book, The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India.

EVENT: Siddhartha Deb will be at the Barnes & Nobles in Tribeca on Warren Street at 6 p.m. tonight.

A battle over anti-corruption legislation has led to major protests and hunger strikes in India. Mira Kamdar, senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and associate fellow at the Asia Society, fills us in on what’s going on there for today’s Backstory.

Amol Sharma, Wall Street Journal correpondent in New Delhi, discusses the anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, his hunger strike starting tomorrow, and his popular movement.