Monthly Archives: August 2007

Dalrymple on Pakistan’s 60th

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William Dalrymple has a nice “state of the union” type essay in the Guardian, on the occasion of Pakistan’s Independence Day. (Incidentally, happy Independence Day! Here are two photos from Flickr relating to ‘Azaadi2007’ that mark the celebration: Karachi, yummy mithai at the Quaid e Mazar Mazar e Quaid; and a building in Islamabad, all lit up.)

Considering where Pakistan is and where it’s going, Dalrymple starts with the good news and then surveys the bad. First, the good:

On the ground, of course, the reality is different and first-time visitors to Pakistan are almost always surprised by the country’s visible prosperity. There is far less poverty on show in Pakistan than in India, fewer beggars, and much less desperation. In many ways the infrastructure of Pakistan is much more advanced: there are better roads and airports, and more reliable electricity. Middle-class Pakistani houses are often bigger and better appointed than their equivalents in India.

Moreover, the Pakistani economy is undergoing a construction and consumer boom similar to India’s, with growth rates of 7%, and what is currently the fastest-rising stock market in Asia. You can see the effects everywhere: in new shopping centres and restaurant complexes, in the hoardings for the latest laptops and iPods, in the cranes and building sites, in the endless stores selling mobile phones: in 2003 the country had fewer than three million cellphone users; today there are almost 50 million. (link)

This confirms what I’ve often heard from friends about Lahore and Karachi in particular — there’s a lot of growth, which many people aren’t really aware of.

On to the long list of challenges and serious problems facing Pakistan, which Dalrymple divides into three categories. For Dalrymple, the first two categories are topics we have all heard a lot about in recent years: one is the lack of a culture of democracy, and the second is the threat of radical Islam. But it’s the third problem Dalrymple talks about, education, that I found interesting: Continue reading →

Money for nothing

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Over at Marginal Revolution Tyler is putting his money where his mouth is. He has just published a book where he makes an argument for how to best help people. Now he wants to follow through and give money to people in India. They don’t have to be engaged in charitable work at all, they just have to do something with it that helps India, and they get the money no strings attached:

2. Send your email to DiscoverYourInnerEconomist@gmail.com. Only emails to this address will be considered. The email must contain the legal name (as documented on ID papers) of a person who will receive the money, his or her state in India, and the city of his or her local Western Union branch. You can be the person yourself, or you can send the information on behalf of someone you know.

3. With your email, send a one sentence proposal of how the money will help India… Proposals of all kinds are eligible, including using the funds to help expand your steel factory, and yes using the money to open a new call center. But you must not give the money to beggars.

4. Only one email per person is allowed.

5. By the end of the week I will send $1000 to India, via Western Union. One person will receive $500, the other recipients will get $100 a piece; I will email the wire numbers to each approved person… If/when Discover Your Inner Economist is published in India, further names will receive transfers. I will send at least the net, post-tax value of my Indian advance. [Link]

Continue reading →

Barkha Dutt on Nasreen: A Double Standard?

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Barkha Dutt is a rising star in the Indian media — one of the journalists that makes the Indian news channel NDTV worth watching. Though she gets stuck doing silly stuff sometimes (I saw her interview Brad Pitt a few months ago; oy), Dutt is one of the few journalists that I’ve seen on Indian news channels who isn’t just a glorified “news reader.”

She’s also a very sharp columnist. This week Dutt notes a double-standard in the way Indian secularists have responded to the recent physical attack against Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, in which a number of elected officials actively participated. Nasreen, for those who don’t know, is a controversial author — she’s from a Muslim background, but has essentially renounced Islam. She’s in exile from Bangladesh after getting hit with a Fatwa; for the past several years, she’s lived in India, though the government has refused to issue her a permanent residency visa.

In a recent column in the Hindustan Times, Dutt compares the assault on Nasreen to an event that took place in Vadodara, Gujarat, just a few months ago, where politicians from the Hindu right sacked an art exhibit at the University of Baroda: Continue reading →

Will the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal Get Nuked?

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Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is facing the threat of a mutiny from the left parties in his coalition government over the recently-finalized — but still not finally approved — U.S.-India nuclear deal, also known as the “123 Agreement.”

As he addressed Parliament today, some members of Left parties staged a walk-out, while others made so much noise that MPs who actually wanted to hear what was said had to use their translation headphones. On the right, the BJP has also been critical of the deal, though I tend to think it’s more because of political opportunism than anything else: one gets the feeling they wish they’d pulled this off.

Thus far, the Congress Party hasn’t seemed seriously concerned about a collapse of the government; no one is yet talking about votes of no-confidence, mid-term polls, or rejiggering the deal to make critics happy.

Are the Communists and others on the left bluffing when they say they’ll walk away from the Coalition government over this? I tend to think so, though I could be wrong. Indian politics — with the combination of regional and caste parties in addition to the left/right axis — is often so complicated, it makes the U.S. system seem laughably simple. Still the Times has a certain wry tone in its summary of where the opposition is coming from:

At one point in Mr, Singh’s speech, the Left parties, which provide crucial support to his Congress-led coalition government, walked out of the house. The Left has opposed the nuclear accord with the United States since it was announced, less over the specific provisions of the accord than over the general principle of closer ties to America.

“We do not share the optimism that India can become a great power with the help of the United States,” Prakash Karat, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said on Saturday. (link)

(This is where I sniff in Prakash Karat’s general direction.)

For those who have kind of let the whole U.S.-India nuclear deal slip past them in recent months, Siddharth Varadarajan has a good point-by-point summary of the agreement here. And the full text of the agreement, released by the U.S. State Department, is here. Continue reading →

Some Idol News, for Idle Mutineers

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A Chinese Guru Nanak.jpg

An anonymous tipster (thanks!) updated our news tab with the following story, which I found quite interesting:

After the Chinese-made kirpans (daggers) nearly wiped out local manufacturers of one of the five ‘K’s of Sikhism, it is the turn of Guru Nanak Dev’s idols with ‘Chinese characteristics’ to flood shops across Punjab. [link]

Yes, apparently the figurines make the Guru look like a “Lama”, i.e. Tibetan. But more on that (and the Kirpans!) later.

The figurines, which have been in the market for some time, are available for Rs 100-150. They are popular gift items, with the smaller ones finding a perch on car dashboards “since it reassures the driver of divine protection”, as one user put it.
The larger versions are seen in restaurants, stacked along with statuettes of deities of other faiths. Not everybody, though, is pleased. In fact, the Sikh clergy have issued directions to the community to refrain from buying these idols.
The order ostensibly stems from the fact that idol worship is banned in Sikhism. Idol worship, including performing of ‘aarti’, was prohibited by Guru Nanak himself, while Guru Gobind Singh even declared that those indulging in such practices would be ostracized from the faith. [link]

The fantastically-named Sikhi Wiki has this to say regarding idolatry:

Idol worship was heavily discouraged by all sikh Guru’s. This was believed to have been a manipulation by the preistly (sic…no pun intended) caste to keep the power in their hands. The concept of ‘worship’ does not exsist (sic) in Sikhism, sikhs may only bow down to Guru Granth Sahib for respect, and may mediate on God’s name (nam simran). [link]

What I’m wondering is, who is buying these figures? Maybe they aren’t Sikh? Or is that irrelevant?

Is this the real source of conflict and potential teeth-gnashing:

Moreover, the Chinese-made idols sport a Chinese look, like slanted eyes and Mongoloid features. [link]

Continue reading →

Hyderabadis in Blackface?

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It’s been an adjustment, to experience this website’s growth and witness our readership change. People leave, others join, many lurk. While I miss some of our now-absent personalities who were prolific with their pondering (Punjabi Boy, Jai Singh, DesiDancer and Espressa come to mind), I’m thrilled about our new commenters, who are expanding our discussion and bringing their unique points of view to our cacophonous, rowdy, online adda. I’m especially looking at our first-gen contributors, like Runa and Malathi, because for stories like the one I’m trying to blog, I think their perspective is invaluable, for helping us find nuance and context. What I’m trying to say is, HELP.

Al Mujahid for Debauchery left this on our news tab:

Unbelievable. Pakistani actor Moin Akhtar (a muhajir/Indian origin himself) plays Hyderabadis from India in blackface in this ‘comedy’ show.

Wait, WHAT? And here is where the DBDs come in, because I don’t understand the clip below or know who these actors are, and as I’ve stated before, I like to get as much information as possible before I get my outrage on– and believe me, I could rage about actors in blackface.

What on earth is going on? And would someone who watches desi tv please tell me that this an uncommon practice? I fast forwarded through the clip, but I don’t get the greasy, huge-black-glasses-equipped, buck-toothed character, and by “don’t get”, I mean my spider sense is tingling. What, if anything, do all of you know? Continue reading →

Rainbow Six

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On Friday, CNN carried an alarmist headline that read, “Sources: U.S. assessing Pakistan nukes if Musharraf falls.” The implication here is that Musharraf’s grip on power is beginning to wane and is cause for concern all around. From the article:

U.S. military intelligence officials are urgently assessing how secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. Pervez Musharraf were replaced as the nation’s leader, CNN has learned…

Three U.S. sources have independently confirmed details of the intelligence review to CNN but would not allow their names to be used because of the sensitivity of the matter…

The current review is a result of recent developments in that country, including the prospect that Musharraf could still declare a national emergency that would give him sweeping powers…

The United States has full knowledge about the location of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, according to the U.S. assessment.

But the key questions, officials say, are what would happen and who would control the weapons in the hours after any change in government in case Musharraf were killed or overthrown. [Link]

Although this sounds like an escalation or something truly new and fantastic, it’s not. In the month following Sept. 11th, 2001, Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker wrote a provocative article titled “Watching the Warheads.” In THAT article there were many more revealing details (if his sources were reliable) than are revealed in this newest blurb by CNN.

… an élite Pentagon undercover unit–trained to slip into foreign countries and find suspected nuclear weapons, and disarm them if necessary–has explored plans for an operation inside Pakistan….

…operating under Pentagon control with C.I.A. assistance, whose mission it is to destroy nuclear facilities, past and present government officials told me. “They’re good,” one American said. “If they screw up, they die. They’ve had good success in proving the negative”–that is, in determining that suspected facilities were not nuclear-related…

The American team is apparently getting help from Israel’s most successful special-operations unit, the storied Sayeret Matkal, also known as Unit 262, a deep-penetration unit that has been involved in assassinations, the theft of foreign signals-intelligence materials, and the theft and destruction of foreign nuclear weaponry

A senior military officer, after confirming that intense planning for the possible “exfiltration” of Pakistani warheads was under way, said that he had been concerned not about a military coup but about a localized insurrection by a clique of I.S.I. officers in the field who had access to a nuclear storage facility. “The Pakistanis have just as much of a vested interest as we do in making sure that that stuff is looked after, because if they”–I.S.I. dissidents–“throw one at India, they’re all cooked meat…”

Intelligence officials told me they believe that, in case of an imminent threat, the Indian military’s special commando unit is preparing to make its own move on the Pakistani arsenal. [Link]

Continue reading →

55Friday: The “Enter Sandman”* Edition

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grey day in sf.jpg

This Friday, after reading a few of your comments on my last post about Sir Ben, I was struck by how many of you fervently appreciated his work in The House of Sand and Fog. In fact, I was so affected by your opinions, I was inspired to put up (finally) a new edition of the 55Friday.

I love creating an open space for all mutineers to get creative and if you care to grace our thread with a perfect little gem of nanofiction, which spans just 55 words, I eagerly await reading what you’ve imagined.

If, however, you feel like doing something different, perhaps we can do a little “writing exercise” to clear away the cobwebs, since it’s been a wee while since we 55ed. Sometimes, when my English teacher wanted to stir things up, she’d write a sentence on the board and then one-by-one, we’d have a few minutes to add to whatever came before us. At the end of this process (there were only 12 students), she’d read our ad hoc story.

So, I found a sentence from The House of Sand and Fog, and if you’d like to, you may write one to come after. And then someone can follow you, and so on. Normally, I’d say “leave an ‘I got next’ comment” if you want the subsequent turn, so we don’t have two writers scribbling simultaneously, but I get the feeling that won’t be necessary. 😉 If by some miracle you all like this, then you might want to start doing that, with the caveat that if it’s been more than 10 minutes, you lose your turn.

Alternatively, if reading all that exhausted you, you can use our THoSaF sentence as fodder for your 55-word flash fiction. Just let your mind meander so you can exercise your atrophied creativity, and write something. That’s the entire point. 🙂

Here’s your prompt:

My daughter, Soraya, was married on Saturday and I feel already there is a hole in my chest with her gone.

Ready, Betty? Continue reading →

Time for some Ben Kingsley

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Time magazine asked mostly-desi* actor Krishna Bhanji ten reader-submitted questions in their August 13th issue; on their website, there were several more “online extras”. I picked the eleven most mutinous inquiries for you to procrastinate with– the entire interview is on their website, where incidentally (for all my fellow Lego-lovers) this Picture of the Week should inspire smiles. Now let’s get back on topic and learn about the actor who, for better or worse, is part of every ABD’s childhood. kingsley.jpg

1. What do you look for in a role? —Catherine Raymond, BELLINGHAM, WASH.
I look for the echo inside me. Maybe we’re all born with our future coiled up inside us like a spring, and we just unravel this coiled spring and work it out. I’m sorry if this sounds a bit bizarre. I’m trying so hard not to be pretentious because I’m always called pompous and pretentious.

First Gandhi-related inquiry:

2. How would Gandhi play the role of Ben Kingsley? —Mills Chapman, VILLANOVA, PA.
He was an astonishingly quick and witty judge of character, so I bet he could have done a very good impersonation of me.
3. Would you change anything about your acting career? —Grant Curtiss, ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.
No. It’s a bit like The Butterfly Effect, that amazing science-fiction novel, where if you go back and alter one molecule of your past, the present that you’re enjoying will disintegrate.
4. Have you ever felt compelled to pursue any political issues? —Ross Davenport, PERTH, AUSTRALIA
I’m only strong as a storyteller. I’m not strong as a politician. Hopefully, with my journeys around the world, having visited the Pakistan earthquake zone, a girls’ school in Afghanistan and some refugee camps in the Palestinian areas, then I’ll be stronger as an actor at choosing the right kind of material.

What’s in a name?

5. Why did you change your name (from Krishna Bhanji)? —Andrew Lawrence, FAIRFIELD, CONN.
It was a way of getting to my first audition. My dad [who is Indian] was completely behind it. My first name, Ben, is my dad’s nickname. My second name, Kingsley, comes from my grandfather’s nickname, which was King Clove. He was a spice trader. It’s a bit late to change it back now.

Continue reading →

TV Saves

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I generally cover the “economics beat” here on SM and one of my favorite nuggets is the complex interplay between econ and culture. There’s a certain non-PC’ness there that I love to indulge although it admittedly leaves many feeling a tad uneasy. Why non-PC? Well, if culture and economics are intertwined…. and since econ outcomes are (generally) measurable…. and it (generally) ain’t too hard to say that richer is better than poorer…. you end up treading dang close to quantifying how one culture might (generally) be better than another.

A purveyor of oppressively unrealistic bourgeois imagery or the fountain of liberation? The numbers are starting to come in…

A mighty sticky ball o’ wax indeed but a subject we’ve nevertheless hit on SM a couple of times (here, here and here, for ex.).

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p>There are a couple of important “pressure escape valves”to keep in mind though. First, cultures are as non-uniform as they are notoriously difficult to define (“model minority” discussions – for ex here – usually wade deep into this territory). Second, and in our case perhaps more importantly, the economic + technology machine’s dynamism necessarily turns around and affects the host culture. This impact is both for better and for worse with a range of attitudes on where it all nets out (shouldn’t be hard to figure out where I land )

While we’re quick to note the emergence of social networking or blog culture on the Internet, the real, important change happens at a comparatively more pedestrian level, and often with far less cutting edge tech. This latter effect is profoundly visible in India (and, of course, China) and is now yielding some fascinating new research looking at the effects of a liberalized television market on rural Indian women…

Continue reading →