Jenny Taylor's blog

We travelled through a seeming paradise all day yesterday to get to the edge of hell. All day the calm beauty of the Orissa countryside seduced us. White long-horned cattle against deep red sandstone-mud cottages; thatched hay-ricks on stilts, the harvest safely gathered in. An old man in a fine white handspun dhoti walking calmly behind his single cow, umbrella aloft against the still fierce winter sun. A small boy with a string of shells and tiny bells around his loins. Women in dazzling saris washing clothes in ponds full of lotus flowers.

India, the home of Bollywood; the world’s biggest democracy; the new super-power. India the land of dreams. This is what it’s convenient for us in the West to believe about this enormous country.  But leave Delhi by train and it’s impossible to avoid the truth.

There are angry stirrings; mutterings and grumblings can be heard in the wine-bars and pubs in Canary Wharf. What is the source of this unhappy atmosphere? Amongst the financial and multi-national oil and investment companies it is the economy that clouds over the sunshine of their lives. However, for the journalists of Canary Wharf, another sinister cloud is spoiling their post-work pint: the phenomenon of so-called ‘Soft Jihad’ or ‘Libel Tourism’.