by tyler | Mar 5, 2024 | CNN, india
Here is a look at the life of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL).
Birth date: April 19, 1957
Birth place: Aden, Yemen
Birth name: Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani
Father: Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of Reliance
Mother: Kokilaben Ambani
Marriage: Nita Ambani (1985-present)
Children: Akash and Isha (twins); Anant
Education: Institute of Chemical Technology at the University of Bombay (now Mumbai), bachelor’s in chemical engineering, 1979; Attended Stanford University, 1979-1980
Lifestyle and Wealth
Ambani is a strict vegetarian, teetotaler and an avid fan of Bollywood movies.
At daughter Isha Ambani’s 2018 wedding to businessman Anand Piramal, celebrity guests were treated to an intimate private concert by Beyoncé.
The Ambanis’ 27-story 400,000 square foot tower home in Mumbai is known as Antilia. It reportedly cost $1 billion to build and boasts a spa, three helipads and a 50-seat theater.
RIL is a Fortune Global 500 company and “the largest private sector corporation in India.”
Under Ambani’s leadership, Reliance Industries has grown from a textile and oil and energy company into a sprawling conglomerate that includes retail shops, a mobile and broadband carrier, digital platforms, groceries, electronics and more.
Career, Companies and Family
1957 – After Dhirubhai Ambani returns from Yemen, he starts a small yarn trading firm in Mumbai that he subsequently turns into a thriving textile business.
1977 – The initial public offering of Reliance Textile Industries takes place.
1980 – Withdraws from his MBA program at Stanford University to help build a polyester yarn plant for Reliance in India.
1985 – The company’s name is changed from Reliance Textile Industries Ltd. to Reliance Industries Ltd.
July 6, 2002 – Dhirubhai Ambani passes away at the age of 69. He does not leave a will, sparking a bitter feud between Mukesh Ambani and his younger brother, Anil Ambani, for control of the vast Reliance business empire.
July 31, 2002 – At a board meeting, Mukesh is announced as chairman of the Reliance Group of Industries, and Anil is named vice-chairman and managing director.
November 2004 – A feud between the brothers is made public when the elder Ambani admits there are “ownership issues” at Reliance during an interview with CNBC TV18.
June 18, 2005 – Kokilaben Ambani announces that she has brokered a settlement between her sons to split the $23 billion Reliance Group. Mukesh will control the company’s main oil and petrochemicals assets and textiles along with Reliance Industries, while Anil assumes control of the newer ventures, including telecom and digital businesses. Though separate, both companies will retain the Reliance name.
2008 – Through Reliance Industries, Ambani and his wife, Nita, purchase the cricket team Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League for a reported $111 million.
2010 – The non-profit Reliance Foundation is established, “to provide impetus to various philanthropic initiatives of RIL.”
May 7, 2010 – India’s Supreme Court rules in favor of Mukesh Ambani’s RIL over Anil Ambani’s company, deciding that the natural gas supply price they agreed to in 2005 will have to be renegotiated within six weeks.
September 5, 2016 – Ambani launches a mobile network called Reliance Jio that offers customers six months of free high-speed internet. The move triggers a brutal price war, forcing some companies to eventually quit the mobile market altogether.
March 2019 – Ambani helps pay off a 5.5 billion rupees ($80 million) debt to Swedish mobile firm Ericsson that India’s top court had ordered Anil Ambani and his company, Reliance Communications, pay or face three months in jail.
March-November 2020 – Ambani raises more than $27 billion in investments for Jio Platforms, including $5.7 billion from Facebook and $4.5 billion from Google. Since its inception in 2016, Jio has amassed around 400 million users and launched a streaming service, a video conferencing app, a fiber broadband network and digital payments.
April 30, 2020 – Ambani announces that he won’t be taking home a salary until the impact of the coronavirus pandemic eases.
February 25, 2021 – A car containing explosives and an alleged threat letter is located outside Ambani’s home in Mumbai. On March 14, 2021, Mumbai police officer Sachin Vaze is arrested for his assumed involvement in the case.
August 29, 2022 – While insisting he has no intention of retiring any time soon, Ambani lays out his plan for his children to take over his $220 billion RIL empire, telling shareholders in his Reliance Industries conglomerate that his three children are “first among equals” and are being “mentored on a daily basis by our senior leaders, including myself.”
February 28, 2024 – Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Disney have combined their digital streaming platforms and 100 TV channels in India to create a new media giant worth about $8.5 billion, the companies say in a statement. Ambani’s wife Nita Ambani will be the chairperson of the joint venture.
by tyler | Jun 6, 2023 | CNN, india
A four-lane concrete bridge being built across the River Ganges in the east Indian state of Bihar has collapsed for the second time in just over a year, once again raising questions about the quality of its construction.
Video shows the 3-kilometer (1.8-mile) bridge dramatically crashing into the river on Sunday, sending a plume of debris and dust into the sky and waves rippling across the holy river.
The Sultanganj Bridge has collapsed twice since construction began in 2017, the first time in April last year before Sunday’s catastrophic failure. It’s not clear why the bridge collapsed last year or if those problems had been rectified.
Crowds of people on the river bank can be seen filming the bridge and shouting as it tumbles down. CNN has not been able to confirm reports of any injuries.
On Monday, Bihar’s chief minister Nitish Kumar said he had ordered an inquiry into the incident.
In a statement Monday, the Canadian design and engineering firm behind the bridge, McElhanney, it was aware of the “partial collapse” of the bridge and is “deeply concerned” about the safety and well-being of those affected by the incident.
The company will “cooperate with any investigation,” the statement added.
CNN has reached out to SP Singla Constructions, who was building the bridge, but did not receive an immediate response.
According to McElhanney, the bridge was expected to include four lanes of traffic and a footpath, providing “an important new link across the Ganges.”
It was also expected to ease congestion on the state’s three existing road bridges, the firm said on its website.
The Sultanganj Bridge is not the only one to have collapsed in India in the last year. Last October, a suspension bridge gave way in the town of Morbi in Gujarat, killing 135 people.
by tyler | Jun 5, 2023 | CNN, india
Manto Kumar was traveling on the Coromandel Express with six of his friends when his train compartment began to violently shake like an earthquake.
“Suddenly something crashed into us. Some of the coaches rolled to the other side,” the 32-year-old restaurant worker told CNN from a hospital in India’s eastern Odisha state.
“I got up and wrapped my shirt around my bleeding head. Then, I started looking for my friends. Everyone was shouting ‘save us… save us.’”
One of Kumar’s friends lost both his legs in the crash and was rushed to hospital. He did not survive his injuries.
Their story is just one of hundreds unfolding across the country as India deals with one of the worst train crashes it has ever seen.
At least 275 people were killed and more than 1,000 others injured after the Coromandel Express slammed into a parked freight train, scattering upturned passenger cars that were then struck by a Howrah Express train traveling at high speed in the opposite direction.
Three days later, families are still trying to locate their loved ones, piles of dead bodies are waiting to be identified and hospitals are laboring to treat an overwhelming number of injured passengers.
Morgues in the city of Balasore had earlier reached full capacity, prompting officials to place some of the bodies in school corridors and a business park for families to identify.
For families that have traveled to the city, aching to locate their loved ones, the wait has been traumatic.
“I’ve been to all the hospitals and I’ve found out nothing,” Laluti Devi, who was looking for her 22-year-old son, told CNN, adding she will now travel nearly four hours south to the state’s capital Bhubaneswar, in a desperate attempt to see if he was transported to a morgue there.
Many of the dead are unclaimed, and local authorities are struggling to deal with the sheer scale of the disaster.
On Sunday, the state government released the photographs of more than 160 victims, many in horrific condition with gruesome injuries, in a bid to help families identify the bodies.
That leaves people facing the agonizing task of scrolling though picture after picture of mangled victims on the off chance they might come across their missing loved one.
A distraught father arrived at one of the identification sites after receiving a WhatsApp photo of his dead son.
“I was looking for my son since (Saturday),” he told local outlet Mojo TV, breaking down as he pointed to the photo. His 23-year-old boy, a laborer, was traveling to the city of Chennai for his job, like many others in the coach with him.
“This is my boy. This is my boy,” the father said through tears after identifying his son’s body.
Elsewhere, two women traveled to several sites, crying with anguish as they tried to locate their missing husbands.
India’s Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said it was his “goal” to ensure that family members could find their missing loved ones as soon as possible.
“Our responsibility is not over yet,” he said.
At local hospitals, doctors were working around the clock to treat injured patients.
In Balasore, a 15-year-old boy was among hundreds of survivors that arrived at the Government Medical College for treatment.
“People who were alive were shouting for help, praying to god,” he said, adding the train was so full, there was barely any room to stand. “Rescue teams were doing their best to save people. A lot of people were crying,” he said.
Laxminaranyan Dhal, a 52-year-old farmer who was traveling alone, said he clung onto the railing of the train for survival.
“I escaped through the broken windows,” he said. “When I got out, I saw a lot of people lying around – many were dead, some were moaning in pain.”
His spinal chord injury has left him in excruciating pain, making it difficult for the laborer to sit or even to stand.
“I cannot farm anymore, it hurts too much. Only after treatment I can start working,” he said.
According to senior railway officials, the Coromandel Express, a high-speed train that was traveling from Kolkata to Chennai, was diverted onto a loop line and slammed into a heavy goods train idled at Bahanaga Bazar railway station.
Its carriages derailed onto the opposite track, where they were hit by an oncoming high-speed train, the Howrah Express, which was traveling from Bangalore.
Many of the travelers were migrant workers, en route to Chennai, an urban metropolis in the southernmost Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where jobs are more freely available.
Survivors recalled seeing crowded coaches, packed with travelers, when it began flipping and rolling from the crash.
Anushuman Purohi, who was in first class and seated toward the end of the train, said he saw many “unimaginable” injuries.
“When we opened the door, that’s when I actually heard the wail of humanity, crying out in pain, crying out for water and crying out for help,” he said.
“There were a lot of people lying on the tracks, they were injured, there was blood everywhere, there were broken bones, and it was time for us to stop thinking about ourselves and help the injured… It was chaos, it was something I can really not describe… I saw a head without a body, I saw skulls crushed, I saw bodies completely crushed by the metal, it was horrifying.”
All Sunday, workers toiled in the scorching heat to clear the wreckage, as rail cars remained rolled in a ditch and passengers’ belongings were seen strewn across the ground. Suitcases, bags, shoes and personal items lined the tracks, alongside wrought metal and charred coaches.
By late evening, the first train resumed movement at the impacted section.
Vaishnaw, the railways minister, and others waved as the train rode down the tracks.
“All the teams did a great job. But there is a lot of pain in our mind and hearts,” Vaishnaw said. “We will find out the root cause (of this incident).”
Anger is growing in India, now the world’s most populous nation, renewing calls for authorities to confront safety issues in a railway system that transports more than 13 million passengers every day.
India’s extensive rail network is one of the largest in the world and built more than 160 years ago under British colonial rule. Today, it runs about 11,000 trains every day over 67,000 miles of tracks.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who swept to power in 2014 on a promise of future greatness, upgrading the country’s transport system has been a key priority in his push to create a $5 trillion economy by 2025.
In the fiscal year that started in April, Modi’s government raised capital spending on airports, road and highway construction and other infrastructure projects to $122 billion, or 1.7% of India’s GDP. But years of neglect has left many tracks to deteriorate.
A report last year by India’s auditor general, an independent office, found the amount spent on track maintenance is falling. “Due to financial constraints, the progress in track renewals is constantly coming down over the last six years,” the report said.
Decaying infrastructure is often cited as a cause for traffic delays and numerous train accidents in India. And though government statistics show that accidents and derailments have declined in recent years, they are still tragically common.
More than 16,000 people were killed in nearly 18,000 railway accidents across the country in 2021, according to latest figures from the National Crime Records Bureau. Nearly 70% were due to falls from trains and collisions between trains and people on the track.
In 2005, at least 102 people died when a passenger train derailed in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh as it tried to cross tracks washed away by a flood. In 2011, scores were killed when a train jumped tracks in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
In another infamous incident in 2016, more than 140 people were killed in another derailment in Uttar Pradesh.
Railways Minister Vaishnaw said authorities have asked the Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s top investigation agency, to probe Friday’s crash.
Authorities have announced compensation of about $1,200 to families who have lost loved ones.
But as teams continue to investigate the cause, no amount of money could make up for the devastating loss of life.
As Kumar, whose friend died in the crash, recalled the horror of Friday’s accident, he reflected on how lucky he was to survive.
“I am blessed to have another chance at life,” he said.
by tyler | May 30, 2023 | CNN, india
A 16 year-old girl was brutally stabbed and bludgeoned to death in a busy public alleyway in India’s capital on Sunday, sparking renewed outrage over the safety of women in the country and violence perpetrated by men.
Video of the incident, which lasted for more than a minute and was captured on security camera, shows multiple people walking close by as the attacker repeatedly strikes the victim.
Only one man is shown attempting to intervene, trying to pull the attacker off the victim before quickly retreating.
The body of the victim, who has not been identified, was found Sunday evening in the Shahbad Dairy area of the northern Delhi neighborhood of Rohini, where the incident took place.
On Monday afternoon, Indian police said they had arrested a male suspect named Sahil in connection with the murder.
Sahil, a mechanic, was detained in Bulandshahr in neighboring Uttar Pradesh state, Ravi Kumar Singh, Deputy Police Commissioner for Outer Delhi, told reporters on Monday.
Delhi’s Special Commissioner of Police Deependra Pathak told Indian news channel Times Now that the initial investigation pointed toward a so called “crime of passion.”
“I saw my daughter was lying on the ground, with her face to the ground,” the girl’s father, Janak Raj, told CNN. “Her organs had come out and her head had been smashed in. She lay there lifeless. There was no point in taking her to hospital.”
“It angers me to know that no one helped my daughter,” he added. If they had helped her, she would have been alive today. I also heard that the bystanders were busy filming videos of the incident. Even if they had screamed, it would have helped my daughter.”
Raj said his daughter helped the family’s finances by tutoring. “I don’t feel alive today,” he said through tears. “I miss her so much. She was such a good child. What do I do?”
The incident is the latest in a long line of killings and rapes that have triggered anger about whether enough is being done both to protect women in India and punish attackers.
“A minor girl is brutally murdered openly in Delhi,” Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote on Twitter. “This is very sad and unfortunate. The criminals have become fearless, and there is no fear of the police.”
“The safety of the people of Delhi is of paramount importance,” he added.
Swati Maliwal, chairperson of the Delhi Commision for Women, told ANI she’s never seen such a frightening incident.
“Delhi has become extremely unsafe for women and girls,” she added.
India has long struggled to address gender violence. A 2018 Thompson Reuters Foundation survey of experts on women’s issues ranked the country as the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman.
The frequency of crimes against women in India also appears to be increasing. According to data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau, crimes against women were 20% higher in 2020 compared to 2013 – the last year before the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power.
Activists say the real statistics are likely just the tip of the iceberg, given that many forms of violence against women, such as rape, are often underreported.
Yogita Bhayana, founder of People Against Rapes in India, said the problem is largely rooted in old societal norms.
“We learn to live with this kind of situation in our country which is very unfortunate,” Bhayana told CNN. “The basic patriarchal fabric is totally rotten and right now we need to fix that.”
“Putting cameras and putting marshals is not going to be enough,” she added. “The work has to be done on the mindset of the men and the boys.”
by tyler | Apr 10, 2023 | CNN, india
The Dalai Lama has apologized after a video emerged showing the spiritual leader kissing a child on the lips and then asking him to “suck my tongue” at an event in northern India.
In a statement Monday, the office for the Dalai Lama said he “wishes to apologize to the boy and his family, as well as his many friends across the world, for the hurt his words may have caused,” adding he “regrets” the incident.
“His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras,” the statement said.
His apology comes after a video of the exchange, which took place during an event in the hillside city of Dharamshala in February, went viral on social media with many users criticizing the Dalai Lama’s actions.
In the video, the young boy can be seen approaching the Nobel Peace Prize winner before asking, “Can I hug you?”
The 87-year-old spiritual leader then invites the boy on stage and points to his cheek and says, “first here,” prompting the boy to give him a hug and a kiss.
The Dalai Lama then points to his lips, and says: “then I think finally here also.” He then pulls the boy’s chin and kisses him on the mouth.
“And suck my tongue,” he says after a few seconds, poking his tongue out.
The identity of the boy is not known. He was at an event with the M3M Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Indian real estate company M3M Group, based in Dharamshala, where the Dalai Lama lives in permanent exile. CNN has reached out to the M3M Foundation for comment.
In response to the incident, prominent Delhi-based child rights group, Haq: Center for Child Rights, told CNN in a statement it condemns “all form of child abuse.”
It added: “Some news refers to Tibetan culture about showing tongue, but this video is certainly not about any cultural expression and even if it is, such cultural expressions are not acceptable.”
The current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the best-known living Buddhist figure in the world.
The principal spiritual leader of the “Yellow Hat” school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama is revered by millions as the reincarnation of his 13 predecessors.
The spiritual leader has been based in India since 1959, following an unsuccessful Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupation forces. He later established a government-in-exile in the northern Indian city of Dharamshala, leading thousands of Tibetans who followed him there.
February’s incident isn’t the first time the octogenarian has sparked controversy in recent years.
He apologized after a 2019 interview with the BBC, during which he said if a female Dalai Lama should succeed him, she “should be more attractive.”
The previous year, he suggested Europe should be kept for Europeans, when speaking about the rising level of African refugees entering the continent.
“The whole Europe (will) eventually become Muslim country? Impossible. Or African country? Also impossible,” he said, adding that it’s better to “keep Europe for Europeans.”
