Monthly Archives: August 2007

Hindi Chini Behen Behen

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Hindi Chini behen behen.jpg

An anonymous tipster left a link to an “awww”-inducing story from Beijing, China, on our news tab.

After Bollywood films, classical Indian dance has caught the imagination of the Chinese, with a young woman actively promoting Bharatnatyam among her compatriots, especially the tiny-tots.
For 33-year-old Jin Shan Shan, a Jawaharlal Nehru University alumnus, it has always been a passion to become an exponent of Bharatnatyam. She has established a school for Bharatnatyam here. [The Hindu]

Like Amreekans, the Chinese are dabbling in many things desi, like Bollywood, yummy food and of course teh yoga. Can’t forget that yoga.

Aside: Is there a better cultural ambassador? We have millions of confused, middle-aged, New Year’s Resolution-keepers all across this land, taking Yoga at Bally fitness and the like, trying not to fall over when they’re attempting an Ardha Chandrasana. 😉 Now people can add incense and twisty poses to the pottu, when they assemble a stereotype. 😀 Don’t get your chuddies all twisted, yaar. I’m just high off the cuteness in that picture (that’s Jin Shan Shan and her adorable daughter Jessie, in Beijing).

While Bollywood films, Indian cuisine and yoga have become popular in China, learning classical Indian dance is also gaining ground here, Ms. Jin said. Around 50 Chinese children were attending classes every week to learn the intricacies of the classical dance. [The Hindu]

Wouldn’t it be amazing if the arts accomplished what the Panch Shila couldn’t? Yes, yes it would be. Then again, will hundreds of stomping little kids have any effect on China’s “take” on Arunachal Pradesh?

In November 2006, China and India had a verbal spat over claim of the north-east Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. India claimed that China was occupying 38,000 square kilometres of its territory in Kashmir, while China claimed the whole of Arunachal Pradesh as its own.
Recently, China denied the application for visa from an IAS officer in Arunachal Pradesh, saying that since Arunachal Pradesh is a territory of China, he/she won’t need a visa to visit his/her own country. [viki]

An irresponsibly naive idealist can hope, right? Be the change you wish to see? Continue reading →

Obama, Osama and Tancredo

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The big news of this morning is that Musharraf has backed down from declaring a state of emergency after flirting publicly with the idea:

Pakistani president Gen. Pervez Musharraf, under intense pressure from his own advisers and the U.S. government not to curtail civil liberties, has rejected the option of imposing a state of emergency to deal with a deepening political crisis, top government officials said Thursday. [Link]

Of the reasons offered for why he might declare a state of emergency, my favorite was “It’s Obama’s fault!”

Tariq Azim, the Pakistani information minister, … said some sentiment coming from the United States, including from Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama, over the possibility of US military action against al-Qaida in Pakistan “has started alarm bells ringing and has upset the Pakistani public”. [Link]

That’s right – Barack Obama, a presidential candidate who isn’t even the front-runner for his party’s nomination has so scared the Pakistani public that the little General might have to declare a state of emergency to calm things down! I didn’t wanna do it, Ms. Rice, but Obama was gonna make me!

Of course, this excuse is completely bogus. Musharraf’s likely motives for considering a state of emergency were purely domestic: a state of emergency would postpone upcoming elections, and sideline that pesky supreme court before it decides that he cannot be both President and head of the army at the same time. He also could have used rising domestic insecurity, including a wave of suicide bombings, as a pretext, but that would have made him look weak.

Mr. President, there are better scapegoats than Obama. Why not blame the September 11 commission or the Washington Post, both of whom have advocated the same policy ? Or better yet, how about Tom Tancredo who has gone far further than any of the above. If any US Presidential candidate is scaring the Pakistani public, it should be Tancredo:

Tom Tancredo continued to defend his comments that threatening to bomb Muslim holy sites would be the right way to “deter any kind of aggression” from terrorists and said that anyone who wouldn’t do the same “isn’t fit to be president” on Sunday morning. [Link]

If that doesn’t start “alarm bells ringing” I don’t know what will!

Related posts: 1, 2

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Does Diversity Cause Us to Mistrust One Another?

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Via Ruchira Paul and 3QD, an article in the Boston Globe about the work of Robert Putnam, a Harvard University political scientist. The Globe summarizes the gist of the article as follows:

It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

“The extent of the effect is shocking,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.

The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation’s social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam’s research predicts. (link)

What makes this all more interesting is the fact that Robert Putnam is not himself a conservative, but a progressive-minded scholar who supports diversity. He didn’t expect these findings when he started this project, and has worked hard to make sure they are understood correctly — though anti-immigrant conservatives have definitely been eating this up. Continue reading →

Deporting the Disabled

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I was half-listening to NPR’s Day to Day today, when I heard the words, “because of his skin color” repeated a few times; predictably, that got my attention. It turned out that the man being discussed, Pedro Guzman, was developmentally disabled and had been mistakenly deported to Mexico. Because of his skin color.

A wrongly deported U.S. citizen who was missing for nearly three months in Mexico ate out of garbage cans, bathed in rivers and was repeatedly turned away by U.S. border agents when he tried to return to California, his family said Tuesday.
Pedro Guzman, 29, was picked up at the Calexico border crossing over the weekend. He was released to his family on Tuesday.[WaPo]

…yes, but according to Frank Stoltze at NPR, he was set free only after a court ordered it.

Guzman was shaking and stuttering and appeared traumatized, his family said at a news conference. Family members said they plan to seek medical attention for Guzman, who was not at the news conference.
“They took him whole but only returned half of him to me,” his mother, Maria Carbajal, said in Spanish while crying. “The government is responsible for this.” [WaPo]

To hear his Mother weep on the radio was painful. On NPR, she said that “he may be back home, but he is not the same.” His brother mentioned that Guzman is now afraid of people.

“What a nightmare,” I thought, and I was reminded immediately of some of us, and how black humor has permeated our banter with each other, with friends who aren’t citizens. “Be careful, you’ll get deported!” and the like are now uttered frequently and followed with uneasy laughter.

Guzman’s ordeal commenced in May, after he completed jail time for trespassing.

Mr. Guzman had served about 20 days of a jail sentence for misdemeanor trespassing and vandalism until May 11, when, in a screening of inmates’ status, he apparently indicated he was from Mexico and was turned over to the immigration agency, which deported him to Tijuana. [NYT]

The Los Angeles county jail authorities summarily deported him without bothering to check his birth records, which would’ve proven that he was born in Los Angeles. Of course, these same authorities are insisting that he showed “no signs of illness”.

Guzman has issues even remembering his family’s phone number, which left him lost to forage through trash in Tijuana, while his relatives desperately searched for him, for almost three months.

Said Guzman’s attorney from the ACLU:

This government deported Pedro Guzman because of his skin color. Did not believe him when he said he was a U.S. citizen, born in California, because of his skin color. [NPR]

Continue reading →

Woman on top – is it better?

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On July 25th, Pratibha Patil became India’s first female President. Because the Presidency is largely a ceremonial position, this is less significant than Indira’s ascension to the PM’s throne over 40 years ago.

Patil may be far from an exemplary figure, dogged by a long list of controversies including her advocacy of eugenic sterilization, allegations that she protected her brother from a murder charge, and her habit of speaking to dead people without being Haley Joel Osment, but at least she can do little harm as President.

What interests me more is the general question of whether the gender of a politician matters. Certainly, it’s hard to argue that there was anything about Indira’s reign that would reveal her gender.

However, at least at the village level, there is some compelling evidence that gender does indeed matter, but that female performance is unappreciated. Economists examined the effects of a 1993 constitutional change that reserved one third of village council leader positions (randomly allocated) in Bengal and Rajasthan for women. This is what they found:

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  • Female pradhans spent more on public goods preferred by women. [Link]
  • Female pradhans are objectively better – they provide more public goods, the quality of these goods is at least as good as elsewhere, and villagers are less likely to pay bribes. [Link]
  • Despite that, “voters are less satisfied with the performance of female pradhans than with that of male pradhans in providing all services, including drinking water, for which quantity and quality is objectively better … Surprisingly, those unhappy with women leaders include both men and women, and they blame women even for the service levels of those goods that the GP doesn’t provide.” [Link]

    • That’s right – women’s performance on the job is objectively better, they are less corrupt, but even so male and female voters are less happy with their performance and blame them for things entirely outside their control. While President Patil may have come to disfavor based on her own actions, in general it’s the story of Fred and Ginger for women politicians – they have to do everything that men do, but backwards and in heels.

    Continue reading →

    Key Suspect in Satender Singh Murder Fled U.S. [3 UPDATES]

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    In memory of Satender Singh.jpg Breaking news: mutineer Mark, who has done an outstanding job of keeping the SM community apprised of the aftermath (or lack of) of Satender Singh’s vicious, senseless murder, points us to The Sacramento Bee, for news we have all been waiting for, about this hate crime:

    A month after the death of a Fijian man on a river beach, Sacramento County Sheriff’s detectives have identified the man who allegedly threw the lethal punch and then fled the country, officials confirmed Tuesday.
    Sheriff’s spokesman Tim Curran said that 29-year-old Andrey Vusik of West Sacramento is the key suspect in the July 1 assault on Satender Singh at Lake Natoma — an act of violence many of Singh’s friends and supporters say was fueled by homophobia and hate.

    Singh was salaciously enjoying himself, by hanging out with his friends, hugging them, dancing around…you know, very gay activities. He should have known better than to hug people. Or dance.

    Vusik was identified as a suspect from witness statements, according to Curran. Sheriff’s officials would not specify what country he fled to and said they do not know his precise whereabouts.
    “We believe he’s out of the country and we’re working with the FBI to locate him,” Curran said.

    Well, at least there’s this:

    Vusik’s relatives here are cooperating with homicide detectives, Curran said.
    A warrant for Vusik’s arrest on suspicion of manslaughter was issued July 27. It remained unclear Tuesday when or whether Vusik would return to California to face charges.

    For those of us who wondered about whether it would be considered a hate crime:

    Curran also said investigators have uncovered information — including statements made before Singh was punched — that could support a hate crime enhancement should the District Attorney’s Office decide to file that count.

    Wait, there’s more:

    Detectives have also questioned a second suspect connected to the assault: Aleksander Shevchenko, 21, also of West Sacramento. According to authorities, Shevchenko was also involved in the altercation. He was arrested late Monday on suspicion of intimidation, also a hate crime.

    Satender died almost exactly a month ago, after being punched and then striking his head on the base of a picnic table so hard, he damaged his brain stem. The group which attacked Satender had been harassing him and his friends all day, for their ethnicity and their perceived sexual orientation. For shame. Continue reading →

    Macho, macho man

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    Every time Obama goes down to Devon Avenue he seems to raise a ruckus (see previous post). This afternoon in Chicago:

    A small group of protesters assembled this afternoon across the street from an Indian restaurant in Chicago where Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama was holding a fundraiser.

    The mostly Pakistani group chanted anti-Obama slogans in response to a threat the Illinois Democrat made last week about his willingness, if elected president, to launch unilateral American military strikes against Al Qaeda havens in a remote border region of Pakistan.

    “Obama, hypocrite,” the group repeatedly chanted, as some of the 25 or so assembled held signs that read “Sen. Obama, Good speaker. But no clue what to speak” and “Obama equal Osama,” a reference to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. [Link]

    To recap, the main reason this small group of Pakistani Americans were protesting Osama Obama was covered here recently by Amardeep.

    “Barack Obama is advocating bombing an entire nation. This man is not our friend,” said Andy Thayer, a spokesman for the Chicago Coalition Against War. “Hillary Clinton is also not our friend. She called for not taking the nuclear option off the table…” [Link]

    Hold up there Andy. He might have advocated a little bombing but at least he swore it would not be nuclear! Stop painting things with such a wide brush. Presidential candidate Joe Biden recently pointed out the obvious by the way. We already routinely violate Pakistani sovereignty (probably with SEAL Teams). We just got to be hush hush about it so that the Pakistani population doesn’t give Mushie a hard time because of it.

    “… in order to look tough, he’s undermined his ability to be tough, were he president. Because if you’re going to go into Pakistan — which is already our policy by the way, if there’s actionable intelligence — you need actionable intelligence from moderates within Pakistan working with you. Now if you’re already going to say I’m going to disregard whatever the country thinks and going to invade, the likelihood you’re getting the cooperation you need evaporates. It’s a well intended notion he has, but it’s a very naïve way of figuring out how you’re going to conduct foreign policy…” [Link]

    Continue reading →

    Blame it on the rain

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    Monsoon rains come every year, but the flooding caused by this year’s downpour has been some of the worst in decades for India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

    19 million people have been displaced by the deluge. That’s roughly the entire population of New York State, the 3rd largest state in the union, or around the entire population of Sri Lanka.

    Put another way, these monsoon floods have already produced nineteen times as many refugees as Katrina did. Katrina scattered up to one million Americans, and that was the largest American population displacement in 150 years.

    The biggest danger from the rain isn’t drowning, it’s the disease that it brings once water supplies get contaminated:

    “Entire villages are days away from a health crisis if people are not reached in the coming days,” … UNICEF’s health chief in India, said in a statement.

    The threat of waterborne disease is high because wells have been contaminated by floodwaters … In Bangladesh, there were 1,400 reported cases of diarrhea in the past 24 hours… [Link]

    The danger is worse because floodwaters have closed the roads to many villages, so aid workers can’t easily distribute food and clean water. The Indian air force has air dropped food for 2 million people in Bihar. This is going to be a serious task, one that will require both government and civil society working together, something they are lousy at doing.

    Continue reading →

    “King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan”

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    Also out in the U.S. this week: Anupama Chopra’s King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. As the title suggests, King of Bollywood is a full-length book meant for a general readership, looking back at the life and career of Shah Rukh Khan — aka, the “Badshah”. Chopra traces the various changes in the Bombay film industry in the 1990s, and argues that Shah Rukh is in many ways the face of the new, Yuppified, transnational Bollywood. From earlier conversations on SM, I know that some readers are a bit sick of Shah Rukh, though I would argue that Amitabh Bachchan has been far more over-exposed in the past few years (Shah Rukh has been only doing about one movie a year). The question Chopra is interested in isn’t “is Shah Rukh Khan a great actor,” it’s “how and why has Shah Rukh been such a success in the Bombay film industry given his outsider status?”

    Derived nearly entirely from face-to-face interviews, there’s a lot of factual material about Shah Rukh Khan in Chopra’s book that I didn’t know — and I suspect that all but the most diehard fans won’t know most of it either. Continue reading →