Author Archives: amardeep

Indian Elections: Can You Help Make Sense Of Them?

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I realized five years ago, when the Congress Party came back into power after everyone had seemingly given them up for dead, that Indian politics is way too complicated to try and predict, especially from the outside.

Still, I wonder if readers have been coming across insightful articles or websites that explain what is happening in individual states or regions of the country, or analyze trends in a useful way. If so, could you put your recommendations in the comments below?

Here are two things I’ve read in the past day that I thought were interesting: the New York Times, on Narendra Modi, and Soutik Biswas, at the BBC, on why the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai is not likely to be a national election issue.

This time around, it seems impossible to read too much into what is happening on any given day. Nor does it seems necessary to pay all that much attention to the to and fro between the Congress Leaders, the BJP leaders, and third front leaders. It doesn’t seem particularly consequential in terms of how people vote. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing remotely similar to the glut of daily tracking polls we had in the U.S. with the elections last year, nor are there websites like 538.com, which synthesized all the polling data coming in. (Are there such polls and websites? Have I simply been missing them?)

It does seem clear that the steady, incremental shift from national to regional politics is continuing in the current election. On the one hand, that is bad, because it means that whatever government comes to power at the center will be inherently weak and coalition-based. On the other hand, that weakness at the center can also be a good thing in terms of maintaining overall stability — not always easy in a country with 1 billion people. Even if a far-right or far-left party comes into power next month, they will not be able to do anything too drastic for fear of losing coalition support.

Second, it seems like “Hindutva” has seemingly lost some of its force as a national issue. The BJP and its allies might still prevail, but they’re playing the “nationalism” card more than the communal card.

Third, caste politics seems to be more prevalent than ever. I find that to be one of the most depressing and deadening things about Indian politics.

Fourth, Varun Gandhi is Ram, Shashi Tharoor is on bail, and Sanjay Dutt’s daughter in New York is pissed at him. Continue reading →

Obama on Pakistan: Focus on Civil Society and Military

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Here are some excerpts related to Pakistan, from President Obama’s 100 day press conference last night:

QUESTION: Can you reassure the American people that, if necessary, America could secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and keep it from getting into the Taliban’s hands, or worst-case scenario, even al Qaeda’s hands?

MR. OBAMA: I’m confident that we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure, primarily, initially, because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.

We’ve got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation.

I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan, not because I think that they’re immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan; more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile and don’t seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services, schools, health care, you know, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of people.

And so as a consequence, it is very difficult for them to gain the support and the — the loyalty of their people. So we need to help Pakistan help Pakistanis. And I think that there’s a recognition, increasingly, on the part of both the civilian government there and the army, that that is their biggest weakness.

On the military side, you’re starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally. And you’re starting to see the Pakistani military take much more seriously the armed threat from militant extremists. (link)

What do people think of this statement? I have a couple of thoughts below. Continue reading →

Two “Lucky” Films

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Since my son was born two and a half years ago, I have pretty much given up on staying current on Indian cinema. It’s difficult to get out to the movies, and our local Indian store really doesn’t seem to have a very good collection of stuff. I saw more Indian movies on the plane from Mumbai to Newark in January than I probably did in all of 2008.

On a recent day-trip to New York, we picked up two DVDs of what might be termed “anti-Bollywood” Hindi films that might get us back in the habit, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, and Luck By Chance.

By anti-Bollywood, I mean films that try to be “realistic” rather than sentimental, and that have limited use of songs to accompany, rather than interrupt, the plot of the film (the “diegesis,” for you film geeks). Many conventional Bollywood films don’t have written scripts, and star-power, branding, and memorable songs often have more to do with the success of those films than acting skill, or good, believable stories. In the old days, the emphasis on realism in Indian cinema was mainly the province of art-house directors, and mainly involved glum themes and a certain ponderousness. Happily, in the past few years, with the rise of Indian multiplexes, a realist sensibility has started to take hold on the margins of Bollywood itself. To my eye, the movement started with gangster films, and directors like R.G. Varma. But now it seems like we’re increasingly seeing a broader range of themes and styles of filmmaking in this space: an anti-Bollywood Bollywood. (Meanwhile, the same-old same-old of Hindi commercial cinema sputters along, effectively unchanged.)

Below are my brief reviews of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Luck by Chance. Continue reading →

“Slumdog” IT Workers: Rush’s Outsourcing Limbomb

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On our shiny new news tab, someone posted a link to a Rush Limbaugh transcript, where Rushbo uses “slumdog” as something akin to an ethnic slur:

CALLER: Perseverance. America, you have to persevere, you have to be patient. … What really irks me is with corporate America, people saying, “Rush, can I get my job back? Are you going to be able to get my job back from something that’s been outsourced and the corporations are going all over, out of the country.” Why don’t these people invest in America, invest in corporate America, become stockholders. The CEOs and the boards of directors pay lip service to their shareholders. Invest in America and invest in yourself by investing in corporate America. Wouldn’t that help?

RUSH: It might. No question about it. But the whole thing about outsourcing, even President Obama slipped up. I love this, ’cause the teleprompter, that teleprompter sometimes sneaks things in there that are not in Obama’s best interests to say, but the teleprompter nevertheless makes him say them. Obama got a call during his virtual town meeting about outsourcing jobs, he said, “Look, those jobs aren’t coming back.” There’s a reason they aren’t coming back. They’re outsourced for a reason, an economic reason, and they’re not coming back. If you’re sitting out waiting for a job that’s now being done by a slumdog in India, and you’re waiting for that job to be canceled, for the slumdog to be thrown out of work, and you to get the job, it ain’t going to happen. It’s not the way economics works. Even Obama’s teleprompter got him to admit that. (link)

Continue reading →

In a Recession, H-1Bs Get the Boot

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I’m a life-long Democrat, but one aspect of the Democratic party message that has at times bothered me in recent years is the tendency towards protectionism. It was one of the things (among many) that annoyed me about John Kerry’s campaign, and I was somewhat relieved that Obama wielded this axe a bit more lightly during his campaign, at least after Iowa (notice how most of that talk about NAFTA disappeared too?).

During a bad recession with spiralling unemployment, of course, any earlier caution we might have seen from politicians regarding protectionism is going to be in danger. Congressional politicians from both parties are increasingly turning to populist language to ensure their own political survival. And the easiest group to pick on politically in recent years, by both Republicans and Democrats, has been immigrants, since they can’t vote anyway.

As many readers may already be aware, the recent American economic stimulus bill contained explicit language concerning foreign workers in the U.S.: Continue reading →

We Are Fatter Than We Think We Are

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An African-American friend of mine on Facebook recently jubilantly posted a link to this article about a recently-discovered problem with the BMI Index, a number widely used to determine body fat levels — whether people are underweight, healthy, overweight, or obese.

The BMI index was calculated with reference to caucasian body types. But people from different ethnic backgrounds have bodies that might be constructed slightly differently, so one BMI might not accurately determine everyone’s body fat level. A more direct measure of body fat can be found through Dual X-Ray Absorptiometry (DXA or DEXA), which measures body fat directly, rather than as an index. Here are the basics:

BMI is a formula that estimates a person’s body fat using only his/her weight and height. The result is then used to determine weight categories: 18.5 and below is considered underweight; 18.6 – 24.9 healthy; 25 – 29 overweight and 30+ obese.

“This scale was created years ago and is based on Caucasian men and women,” says Bray, “It doesn’t take into account differences in body composition between genders, race/ethnicity groups, and across the lifespan.” (link)

The good news for African Americans and bad news for Asian Indians is after the jump: Continue reading →

Mullahs on the Radio in Pakistan

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One of the mistakes of some coverage of extremist movements in different parts of the world is the presumption that ideologies are simply generated and transmitted in a vacuum: those people are just crazy, and you can’t change them. In fact, with the consolidation of Nazi Power in Germany after 1933, and, more recently, with the events leading up to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 (see this), the specific medium through which extremists propagated their ideas — namely, the radio — mattered a great deal.

Radio also figures keenly today in some of the most unstable regions of Pakistan, an issue explored in depth in a story in this month’s issue of Himal Southasian, “Mullah Radio.” In some regions of Pakistan, including the Swat Valley and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), militant Islamists have been particularly effective in spreading their message via FM radio. One key figure is a guy named Maulana Fazlullah:

[Maulana] Fazlullah set up an illegal FM radio station, known as Fazlullah FM, broadcasting on 92 megahertz. The technology to do so was not only quite affordable, costing as little as PKR 15,000 (less than USD 200); it was also completely portable, thus allowing its owners to easily outpace the authorities’ attempts to shut them down. Despite the broadcast’s relatively small coverage area (it was at first unable even to reach the rim of the Swat Valley), Fazlullah’s nightly tirades against the Americans and then-President Pervez Musharraf quickly earned him a degree of fame among the locals, who dubbed him the ‘Radio Mullah’. (link)

The particular ins and outs of Radio Fazlullah are also worth attending to: Continue reading →

The Rapid Rise of Aziz Ansari

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Comedian Aziz Ansari has, seemingly overnight, gone from being another Indian-American hopeful comic (in the same bracket as blog-friend Hari Kondabolu), to the next Desi TV star (potentially the same bracket as Kal Penn and Aasif Mandvi).

There is a great profile of him, which focuses on his unique style of comedy, in the Wall Street Journal today (of all places). Aziz has a starring role alongside Amy Poehler in the upcoming NBC show, Parks and Recreation. He’s also in the current “bromance” comedy, I Love You, Man, an upcoming Seth Rogen starrer called Observe and Report (another movie about a mall cop? really?), as well as in a Judd Apatow film called Funny People coming later this summer (where Aziz will apparently play a comic disposed to extreme profanity). From nearly unknown to three big comedies and a Prime Time TV show with one of Saturday Night Live’s biggest stars… Wow.

As a side note, I have also been following Aziz’s insane Twitter feed, for the past couple of weeks. At first I thought the man is simply out of his mind (he is currently on a “campaign” to save rapper Ludacris from drinking too much Mangosteen juice), but at some point I started to think that the whole thing is an elaborate in-joke. The closing paragraphs of the WSJ profile give a little perspective on what Aziz is up to:

Mr. Ansari moved to Los Angeles a year ago, and his comedy is often fueled by references to pop culture and celebrities. He has launched a Twitter feed, where he sometimes alludes to imaginary plans with famous people he doesn’t know. According to the feed, in recent days he has eaten brunch with the R&B band Boyz II Men, had sushi with “Blood Diamond” actor Djimon Hounsou and beaten World Wrestling Entertainment star John Cena in a push-up competition. None of this is true. He has made a few real celebrity friends. Last year, he got permission from rapper Kanye West to use Mr. West’s “Glow in the Dark Tour” as the tongue-in-cheek name for his own, far smaller stand-up tour. Mr. West came to one of the comedian’s shows, and the two struck up a friendship.(link)

I have my doubts about whether Twitter is just another social networking fad or something bigger, but at least from the Twitterers I follow (a rather limited number), Aziz definitely takes the art of the funny & surreal 140 character message to a whole other level.

Continue reading →

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Shashi Tharoor Enters the Political Fray in Kerala

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Earlier today in my Google News feed, I was surprised to note a story in the Indian news about Shashi Tharoor’s campaign for a Lok Sabha seat in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Tharoor, whom we’ve written about relatively often at Sepia Mutiny, was until 2007 the Under-Secretary General of the United Nations. He is currently 53, which makes him practically a baby in Indian Political Years; he could certainly have a significant political career ahead of him in India if things work out. The nation-wide Parliamentary elections start in India next month.

Tharoor is running as a Congress Party/UPA member. He has started a bilingual website to articulate his campaign platform. Here is his recent announcement at the Huffington Post, explaining roughly what he’s trying to do:

On Thursday night, 19 March 2009, the Indian National Congress party announced my nomination as its candidate for the Lok Sabha (the Lower House of Parliament) at the forthcoming General Elections. I will contest from the capital of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram (known more familiarly as Trivandrum).

It’s a huge turn in my life and involves a further “reboot” two years after leaving the UN. The seat is currently held by the Communist Party of India, which has nominated its general secretary. There are also candidates from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a former Congress Member of Parliament, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as well an independent candidate who has already outspent the rest of us and whose posters have been plastered across the city. Rumours are circulating of a sixth possible entrant into the fray. Psephologists would have about as much accuracy as astrologers in predicting the outcome of such a complex contest.

Thiruvananthapuram is only about 40% urban Рthe rest of the constituency, stretching to the southernmost tip of the country, is rural, and includes a large coastal community dependent largely upon fishing. As I embark on this voyage, every clich̩ about sailing into uncharted waters and choppy seas applies to me. (link)

Continue reading →

Wajiha Ahmed: A Second Take on Last Week’s “Long March” in Pakistan

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In addition to regular comments to blog posts, I often get emails from readers expressing all manner of opinions. This week, following my recent post on the protests in Pakistan, I received a note from a graduate student in Boston named Wajiha Ahmed that was intelligent enough to provoke me to spend a little time replying. Wajiha had also, a few days earlier, published an Op-Ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (it was written while the protests were just beginning). Wajiha’s response to my response was essentially a full-fledged essay. I asked her if she would slightly revise her comments in defense of the Long March protests into something for Sepia Mutiny, as a sort of one-off guest post. She agreed, and the following is a one-time guest post by Wajiha Ahmed.

The comment Wajiha most objected to was actually made by me in the comments of the original post. I said, “I think there are some people looking at this that are thinking that what is happening is not simply the expression of free speech, but a rather naked attempt at a power-grab by Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif. Given the security crisis in the country, a protest movement like this could be seen as irresponsible.” In my first email to Wajiha, I also wrote:

What prompted me to suggest that Sharif was acting irresponsibly was a personal conversation with a friend here in Pennsylvania named [KC], who comes originally from Lahore. [KC] said to me last week that the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in particular left him feeling extremely depressed, since it’s beginning to seem that the militants are increasingly coming down out of the hills, and their kind of Islam is increasingly driving the agenda of the country. Given what has happened in Swat and NWFP in the past few months, it may be that the real cultural-political undercurrent that needs to be addressed is the growth of that militancy. Not because of *America’s* war on terror, but actually for Pakistan’s own internal security and stability.

Below is Wajiha’s response to those points.

Guest Post by Wajiha Ahmed

I’m writing this post in response to Sepia Mutiny’s reporting on the second Pakistani Long March to restore a deposed independent judiciary and Chief Justice. The sentiment has been that a) it was irresponsible and could have possibly destabilized Pakistan, and b) energy should have instead focused on the ‘real’ problem Pakistan faces: growing ‘sympathy’ for militants. As I see it, however, we just witnessed one of the largest broad-based, secular, non-violent movements for the rule of law and democracy in Pakistan’s history. Of course, one event is not going to change everything. But democracy is not an event, it is a process. Therefore, rather than being reported with cynicism, this important civil disobedience movement should instead have been encouraged and celebrated. In the past year, Pakistanis have successfully forced out a military dictator (Musharraf) AND compelled an authoritarian leader (Zardari) to listen to their voices – a rare, uplifting story in these trying days.

Continue reading →

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