[AndrewP]

Will this mean that the BBC Hindi Service, Punjabi Service etc etc will no longer be produced by BBC staff, but published under the BBC name? I wonder how this will affect views of independence of the new service, especially if the BBC turns out not to be the majority stakeholder.

The breadth of Indian reporting from the BBC will probably also suffer from this, with only 90 people remaining to cover the entirety of India for the BBC. What about reporting from Sri Lanka, where Tamil (one of the remits of the new company) is one of the official languages.

I won't share my opinion on the direction India is heading in, but in any case I hope the new company's editorial standards continue to match those of the BBC World Service.

I reckon there may be a major story breaking in India soon.. I recall someone said "as soon as cuts are made to the language services, there's always something that happens there right after" (paraphrase, of course)