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Tag: Sumnima Udas

  • CNN International explores India’s place on the modern ‘Silk Road’

    CNN International explores India’s place on the modern ‘Silk Road’

    MUMBAI: This month, ’Silk Road: Past, Present, Future’ continues an 8,000 kilometre journey across the ancient silk and spice routes, traveling south from Central Asia, across remote snow-topped mountains, to explore one of Asia’s most important corridors of commerce: India.

     

    Following the series’ first two episodes in China and Kazakhstan, this month’s show sees presenter Sumnima Udas explore India’s historic role in the world’s most important trade route and uncover the country’s place in the modern Silk Road. 

     

    India is one of the oldest civilizations on the planet; the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, ancient medicines and even spicy curry. CNN’s Sumnima Udas explores one of the largest wholesale spice markets in Asia, in India’s national capital, New Delhi.  From coriander to pepper to turmeric, spices are a centuries-old staple of Indian heritage.  Decades ago, Indian cooks used to spend hours preparing their spices, manually grinding everything to make their own blends. Today, the process is much easier.  CNN meets India’s self-proclaimed ‘King of Spices’, the 93-years-old, Dharampal Gulati, and learn how his Delhi spice company, MDH,  started in the year of India’s independence, 1947, is making cooking easier for thousands of consumers.

     

    The program also travels south to India’s growing tech-hub, Bengaluru to discover how Indian technology firm Wipro is partnering with the American company GE to design and manufacture low-cost baby warmers for new-borns to help reduce the neonatal mortality rate.  The concept, often called ‘reverse innovation’, is to create and sell new technology for the Indian market at a fraction of the cost that they are normal sold around the world. Sumnima also examines how Ayurveda, an ancient system of healing based on balance and nature is enjoying a resurgence.

     

    India is the world’s second largest producer of tea in the world and drinking the beverage is a national pastime.  Udas treks through the hills and tea plantations of Darjeeling in North East India. This lush, mountainous region, near the borders of China, Bhutan, and Nepal, is world-famous for Darjeeling teas. The program meets Kaushal Dugar, a young Indian entrepreneur who is hoping his three-year-old e-commerce start-up, Teabox, will change the way tea is bought and sold around the globe by shipping tea straight from the field to the consumers, just days after it is plucked in the tea gardens.

     

    Following the India episode, The Silk Road: Past, Present, Future will visit the Arabian Peninsula as it makes its way across the old routes over nine episodes before completing its journey in Northern Italy.

  • ‘Nepal’s Organ Trail: A CNN Freedom Project Documentary’ investigates the brutal kidney trade in Nepal

    ‘Nepal’s Organ Trail: A CNN Freedom Project Documentary’ investigates the brutal kidney trade in Nepal

    MUMBAI: ‘Nepal’s Organ Trail: A CNN Freedom Project Documentary’ highlights the brutal and exploitative organ trade in Nepal which sees the trafficking of impoverished and ignorant villagers as unwitting kidney donors. CNN International Correspondent Sumnima Udas investigates the plight of these trafficked victims who live with severe health complications and the threat of premature death looms large, pushing their impoverished families further into the cycle of poverty and exploitation.

     

    “Organ trafficking is a barbaric trade that destroys the lives of not just an individual, but the entire family,” said Tony Maddox, Executive Vice President and Managing Director for CNN International. “This was a story that needed to be told, and we are dedicating ourselves to highlight this inhuman practice so a change can be brought about.”

     

    The documentary follows the organ trail which begins from the villages of the remote Kavre district in Nepal where villagers are trafficked on pretexts ranging from false job offers to promises of large sums of money for a ‘chunk’ of their body which they are told will ‘grow back’. At the other end of the trail, ailing and desperate patients await kidney transplants which could potentially save their lives. A perfect storm of poverty, desperation and loopholes in the government machinery allow traffickers to continue this exploitative cycle and make handsome profits at the cost of acute human suffering. The trafficked victims are left in a pitiable state. In the words of one victim, he is “just counting my days to die” while holding on to the hope that “the government will take care of my children.”

     

    The half-hour documentary also highlights the efforts of government agencies, anti-trafficking organisations like The Forum For Protection Of People’s Rights and medical organisations to combat the trade. The Nepal government is issuing more stringent counter measures to prevent forgery of documents, hospitals are putting in place measures like DNA testing to prove the biological relationship between donors and recipients and anti-trafficking organisations are working hard to educate vulnerable villagers. While there is still a long journey ahead, activists express the hope that “if all the stakeholders contribute, this problem will be resolved.”

  • CNN appoints Sumnima Udas as India correspondent

    CNN appoints Sumnima Udas as India correspondent

    MUMBAI: CNN International has elevated Sumnima Udas as the Delhi-based correspondent. She will be covering key developments in the country relating to politics, economics, social & environmental and general interest stories.

    She has been associated with CNN since 2001. She joined as a news assistant in New York and then moved to Hong Kong in 2006 as a show producer. Since 2010, she has been producer from Delhi. “The eyes of the world will be trained on India as the world’s largest democracy and emerging economic powerhouse goes to the polls in 2014,” said CNN International Asia Pacific VP and managing editor Ellana Lee.

    CNN is looking at strengthening its presence in this diverse and dynamic region with the inclusion of Sumnima Udas

    Recently, Udas has worked on several assignments such as the Delhi gang-rape, the Bangladesh garment factory collapse as well as the Commonwealth Games corruption scam. She is also the recipient of the Asian Television Awards as show producer for the show CNN Talk Asia, a weekly show that explores personalities of newsmakers.

    She has studied her bachelors at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, USA and masters from Oxford University in UK. She knows several languages such as English, Hindi, Urdu, Nepali and French and has grown up in over ten countries.

    “With her new appointment as Delhi correspondent we look forward to strengthening our presence in this diverse and dynamic region,” added Lee.