Published date: Jun 1980, New Delhi

Beginning with this issue, New Delhi becomes an Asian newsmagazine. Thirty-nine of the 211 nations in the world are located in Asia. In land area, this huge continent accounts for a fifth of the globe. In terms of people, more than half the human population lives here. The total gross national product of all the Asian nations accounts for one-fifth of the global GNP. Yet, Indians know very little about their fellow Asians and vice versa. Indian newspapers and magazines, when they are not talking about domestic politics, are full of what is happening in the west. Other Asian nations, it would seem, are worth writing about only when a Bhutto is hanged in Pakistan or when Russian troops 95 storm Afghanistan. India too makes news in other Asian countries only in crisis situations.

So much so that an average Asian knows more about what’s happening in the western countries than what is happening in countries in his own continent. Is this not the reason for the conflicts and tensions that prevail in this part of the world ? If the Chinese get to know the Indians a little better, if the Indians know a little more about the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis and if the Pakistanis try to understand the problems of their brethren in Iran and Afghanistan and so on, may be the misunderstandings that exist in their relationships with each other will hopefully disappear in the not too distant future. One can’t be certain but who knows?

One way of going about achieving this objective is to tell the people of the region what life is like in different Asian countries. It is unfortunate that there are no newspapers of magazines published in Asia which are circulated in the whole continent. No country in the region has a publication that reaches all places in this sprawling continent and projects an Asian image, an Asian view of things. This is a glaring vacuum and New Delhi is making a sincere and humble beginning to try and fill it.

For this fortnight’s cover story, Correspondent Chaitanya Kalbag and Picture Editor Raghu Rai, after conquering vexing problems like transportation, met dozens of civilians, politicians, administrators and Army and paramilitary men and travelled extensively through the Imphal Valley. While Rai mourned the absence of ‘real action’, he succeeded in capturing hundreds of images of the tense, troubled times Manipur is passing through. Kalbag had an eerie vision of how South Vietnam must have been in the early years of the war there. “Maintaining liaison with opposing camps,” he says, “was like walking on thin ice. One dreaded its giving way.” They returned with a startling story.