One of the first things 62-year-old Joseph Lelyveld did upon returning to India after 15 years was to take a walk in Delhi's Chandni Chowk. It's changed vastly from the time he was here as a correspondent (1966-69) but that was nothing compared to the changes he saw when he was driven down to Mayur Vihar and Noida. ``So many huge apartment complexes,'' he marvels.For those who think Abe Rosenthal is the only old India hand in The New York Times or at least was before he retired (or they retired him, they won't say which) Pulitzer Prize-winning Lelyveld's ascent as the Executive Editor of The New York Times is either a remarkable coincidence or a singular demonstration of India's importance in the scheme of things.Lelyveld, who has been executive editor since 1994, and before that was correspondent in London, Hong Kong, Washington and South Africa, is too discreet and cautious to say either (although he does say that ``Abe and I take India very seriously''), haunted as he is by dark visions of hisinterview with The Indian Express being splashed about as the imperialistic firangi spouting anti-India sentiments. Somewhat reassured, he did meet up with KAVEREE BAMZAI between appointments with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Congress President Sonia Gandhi, before flying off to Calcutta to meet State Home Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, and from then on to Hyderabad, where he and his Foreign Editor, Andrew Rosenthal (son of Abe and born in New Delhi), will meet the hottest address on the dot.com circuit, N. Chandrababu Naidu.Excerpts from a conversation conducted even as Lelyveld puts on a perky yellow tie to accompany his colleague Rosenthal to meet Vajpayee and discusses his evening schedule with wife Carolyn who has just walked in to the hotel laden with shopping bags.What does it feel like being back in India after 15 years?Oh, well one of the first things I did was to walk through Chandni Chowk, which you can imagine was a different experience from 30 years ago.The scale of things is just so different. Then we took a quick drive down to Uttar Pradesh and then Haryana and though it's just a superficial impression, those large glass apartment houses, there was nothing like that development when I was here last. Of course, it also raises a lot of questions in your mind about the prosperity at the top, in the middle class, and it not filtering down to the bottom.What about the politics of India? How has it changed? In fact, Barbara Crossette wrote in The New York Times recently that both India and Pakistan were less concerned about each other and America?I am not sure I can quite make that judgement and I think Barbara, who is a wonderful correspondent, has been some years out of India now. You have the phenomenon of a large middle class and you have such large numbers of Indians who live and work in the US. In fact, we have a growing South Asian community in our city and The New York Times is very interested in making new readers of them. Also, I thinkthe liberalised economic reforms signal an increased engagement with the outside world. So, I'm not sure what the truth is. But India like most large countries - China, Russia, and even my own country - is rather insular. These countries don't very easily perceive the outside world. On the other hand, if you live in Holland it's hard to be insular. I don't know. India doesn't look more insular to me.But hasn't The New York Times coverage of India also changed quite a bit? I saw stories recently on the Ambassador car, on sex workers in Sonagachi fighting AIDS and on the population policy.Yes, we've had a wonderful string of correspondents, except myself. But now the couple we have here, Celia Dugger and Barry Bearak, are doing the best coverage we've had in a long time. It's more diverse. It's in the nature of the post-Cold War world. People are interested less in regimes and more in countries. We should be interested in issues like international health, environment, poverty andnon-proliferation. All of that impinges on politics. I don't think our readers want to know which party actually leads what coalition.So, is there a conscious decision at The New York Times to move away from politics?It was in the nature of the Cold War world to know how countries were aligned. And it's in the nature of post Cold War world to worry about the problems we all face in common. Political alignments seem so much less important now.But, of course, India is never seen in isolation from Pakistan especially when you have the bomb and Kargil.Well, shooting and nuclear testing do tend to focus the mind on the relationship. But I think we're quite capable of seeing India in isolation from Pakistan, especially when the two countries aren't engaged in a period of great tension.We in India like to congratulate ourselves on our democracy especially in comparison with Pakistan. Is that a tricky thing for you to handle?I think it matters less to us than it does to ourgovernment. Politics and Indo-Pakistan tensions most of the time do not rank at the top of our agenda. Not for the readers. I think they're much more interested in social change in India, the progress or the lack of progress. They would like an insight into the society. I think that Indo-Pakistan relations are a matter for specialist rather than general readers.
