I can see why so many of my foreign correspondent colleagues are drawn to this posting, this enormous, vast country full of so much promise and so many contradictions and complexities. You can feel the great hope for India’s future everywhere but on the next corner there is the relentlessly depressing face of poverty and despair seen in the street kids who beg for change and the deformed and deranged who hold out their hands. To unpack the story of India for American readers — to capture the essence of this place – takes talent and knowledge and the only way to do it is to live here. I spent some time with Indian reporters at the Press Club of India, where they gather and drink warm beer on hot nights in a dusty garden. It’s a great club and the press corps is alive and crackling here.

I also hung out for an evening at the Foreign Correspondents Club at the invitation of my friend and colleague Phil Reeves, who is the NPR correspondent here. I talked to reporters from British and American papers and heard a persistent complaint. That is that their newspapers have one staffer here in New Delhi and that too often their editors expect them to cover the whole region, which pulls them away constantly from one of the best running stories in the world, which is India. We are hoping to change that by having at least three correspondents who live in India and write only about India.

So while I was here I met with a long list of candidates — good story tellers and reporters and photographers and videographers who have applied to Global News Enterprises. Between interviews, I’ve become obsessed with going out to the newsstands here and marveling at the booming newspaper industry. Hundreds of English and Hindi newspaper mastheads cram the shelves of the news kiosks. India is the world’s most vibrant and growing newspaper market. I buy up the papers even the Hindu language ones that I can’t read and devour the English language editions. The papers are crackling with news in the last few days. There are new angles coming out about the Islamic fundamentalist bombers who struck last month. There are big headlines on a probe ordered into the stampede at the Hindu temple in Jodhpur that killed 215 people. And there are horrific and chilling accounts from the southern district of Orissa about a spate of attacks by Hindi fundamentalists on scores of Christian churches

By far the biggest headlines are on the nuclear deal with the United States and large photographs of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who is in town to finalize the deal. It is one of the most important economic and security relationships India has established in the post Cold War era and it is a huge topic of discussion. Although the media here does not make much of this fact, I thought it was meaningful that it was approved by congress on Gandhi’s birthday.

One of the most important aspects of my trip to India has been an awakening to the fact that this country more than any other is where we need to flood the zone. There is a vast horizon here not only for important news stories, but also for business opportunities for our syndication team at Global News Enterprises.

There are 1.2 billion people in India and an estimated 250 million of them read in English. English language newspaper circulation is up a steady 5 percent a year across the board. The Times of India has the largest circulation (2.2 million daily) of any English language newspaper in the world — a splashy, brash paper that has taken the country by storm. The Hindustan Times, which is widely considered by old school journalists to have the edge editorially, comes in a close second at 1.7 million. The reason English language newspapers are growing at such a stunning rate is that the population is aggressively learning English and literacy rates across the board are growing as the middle class expands. The middle class understands that English is the language of globalization and they are doing whatever it takes to be sure their children are fluent in English. It is a perfect storm for a wild growth of newspapers, and it opens a huge market possibility for us.

But most importantly this country provides stories that need to be told. And I’m thrilled to be putting together our team of correspondents here who will help us get our arms around the Elephant.