Author Archives: siddhartha

Untouchability: Not Going Away

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Straight from the title, “Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination against India’s Untouchables,” you know that the new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) out today is pulling no punches when it comes to qualifying the extent and seriousness of anti-Dalit discrimination in India today. The comparison with apartheid gained significant political cover two months ago when the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, drew the link in public remarks at a conference in Delhi. Here’s the prime minister:

Singh said: “Dalits have faced a unique discrimination in our society that is fundamentally different from the problems of minority groups in general. The only parallel to the practice of untouchability is apartheid,” he said. “Untouchability is not just social discrimination, it is a blot on humanity,” Singh said.

Calling for a “political, social, cultural and intellectual battle,” against such discrimination, the PM noted that constitutional and administrative measures alone are not sufficient. “Our government is deeply and sincerely committed to the equality of all sections of our society and will take all necessary steps to help in the social, educational and economic empowerment of Dalits. This is our solemn commitment,” Singh said.

Of course the gap between legal remediation and actual practice has been precisely the problem for 57 years, since the Constitution in 1950 outlawed untouchability in all its forms, with further legislation added over the years. The continuing discrimination against Dalits also violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which India is a signatory, as the convention covers not just what its title narrowly suggests but in fact “race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.” At any rate, this gap between theory in practice is well known, and the problem has always been to end the actual practices of discrimination, violence, and humiliation that Dalits encounter across India to degrees that perhaps (probably) vary by region and locality but are never, ever trivial.

Consider a few choice quotes from the report’s summary (you can download it or read the whole report online here): Continue reading →

World of Apu

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Bipin_02.jpgLavina Melwani, who seems to write three-quarters of the articles in the monthly Little India, has an informative piece on desis in the convenience store industry in the current issue. It’s the first focused treatment I’ve seen of the South Asian presence in that business that provides numbers, even if some are estimates, along with anecdotal information and personal stories. A few of the facts:

  • According to trade associations, 50,000 to 70,000 of the 140,000 convenience stores in the United States are owned by South Asians. South Asian owned stores do an estimated $100bn annual business.

  • Over 50 percent of US 7-Elevens are owned by South Asians.

  • 60 percent of South Asian owned stores are independent properties, as opposed to chain franchises – a similar pattern to the motel business, where desis began with independent properties before gradually acquiring brand-name franchises.

In addition to the National Association of Convenience Stores, several desi trade groups have sprung up: the Asian American Convenience Store Association, the Asian American Retailers Association, and the National Alliance of Trade Associations, which is based in the Ismaili community. The AACSA held its second convention in December and a third is scheduled for late May in Florida.

The article profiles a number of desi convenience store owners. It is pretty much the basic immigrant hard-work-make-good story. The risks of the profession are alluded to in passing. One point that stands out is that the convenience store business isn’t just an intermediate stop on the way up to more lucrative or prestigious activities:

[A profiled c-store owner] says the strength of the industry is in its ability to withstand economic downturns. He recalls, “When my son graduated from the University of Texas in 2000 the computer industry was booming. The first job was very good, but then in 2003 he was laid off. So he joined me in the business. The convenience store business is recession proof, because everyone needs bread and beer and lottery tickets. I always felt safe in the convenience store industry.”

Apu from The Simpsons earns a mention, and it’s a positive one:

For long, the only South Asian on TV was Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the owner of the Quik-E-Mart in the TV show The Simpsons. He is known for having worked for 96 hours straight, taken so many bullets that bullets ricochet off the bullets already lodged in his body! He is savvy, brainy and a one-man dynamo of energy. And a Ph.D to boot.

The stereotype has a sliver of truth, as hard work, family solidarity and resourcefulness are at the root of South Asian success in the C-store business. Many owners have professional degrees and include some physicians.

As a side note, the convenience store industry has at least once tried to embrace Apu. Here’s a straight-faced press release from the NACS in 2003. It’s entertaining to see how they twist and turn to explain why Apu may be good for industry image (“Apu encapsulates a number of positive traits found in the convenience store industry”) while never referring to Apu’s ethnicity. Continue reading →

Funky Chickens

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One of the sources of creative vitality in Third World popular cultures is the uncanny ability to seize on local or global events and use them as symbols or metaphor, or simply to re-purpose names and words from the news for the purpose of entertainment that, by virtue of this method of assembly, is never completely innocent and certainly not mindless.

Also evidenced, not coincidentally, in the best hip-hop, this instinct to appropriate the signifiers of large and possibly uncontrollable events and redeploy them in the service of local meaning results in a constant renewal process in which, as one signifier runs its course, another emerges to supplant it, bringing with it new nicknames for objects in regular use — minibuses, beer bottles, bank notes, lengths of cloth — and new jokes and new dances and new fashions.

With “Bird Flu,” her new single, your girl M.I.A. taps into this endlessly rich seam. Vaguely mysterious, unpredictable, global in scope and potentially catastrophic, the bird flu that moved across several continents in 2006 was perfect for semiotic appropriation. Especially since birds, especially poultry, in various stages of ecstasy or distress have long been inspiration for dance moves — the Funky Chicken and the Dirty Bird come to mind. So it’s a chicken stuttering across a dusty village street that sets, in the video, the rhythm for the song, and much dancing, declamation, and additional avian imagery ensues. No connection to the “real” bird flu, and yet, all the connection in the world.

It’s a cool song, but before we rush to celebrate its originality I want to share with you another Bird Flu song that actually predates homegirl’s. Continue reading →

Honest Injuns

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osman.jpgThe selfless cab driver who returns the valuables some schmo left in his car is an urban archetype that never seems to grow old. It’s the sort of embodiment of working-class dignity that civic and business leaders draw on to signify that for all the hubbub and ambient edginess of city life, everything (and everyone) is ultimately in its right place. And in a context where, as is the case in most large American cities, taxi workers tend to be immigrants, every instance when a cabbie can be celebrated for doing the right thing represents that much more balm with which to assuage not only class but also ethnic anxieties.

This week brought two such cases, spanning the North American continent from sea to shining sea, and the heroes in both cases are desi: Indian taxi driver Vinod Mago from Lynnwood, near Seattle, who returned a customer’s wallet with $5,950 in cash, and Bangladeshi driver Osman Chowdhury (pictured) here in New York, whose customer, a jeweler from Dallas, left a suitcase that was found to contain 31 diamond rings rings.

As you may have read, the Chowdhury story comes with the additional piquant detail that the Dallas lady had tipped him only 30 cents on a $10.70 fare. So in the end her misadventure only ended up costing her $100.30, as she gave Chowdhury a C-note as his reward. (Though he initially refused any reward at all, and it may be that he was only prepared to accept the equivalent of fares he lost while dealing with the situation, which of course would make her a bit less of a tightwad and him even more of a saint.)

Here’s a snapshot of Chowdhury’s life according to a BBC report: Continue reading →

She Got Game

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I can’t say that I’m brimming with enthusiasm about the Super Bowl, what with (a) my team not being in it, and (b) the two-week break that precedes it, which really kills the post-season viewing momentum in the name of cramming in seven more days of bullshit corporate hype. Having said that, though, this seems an appropriate time to spotlight the work of Aditi Kinkhabwala, a real-life desi woman sportswriter, who had a Super Bowl-related piece this week at Sports Illustrated’s website. In it, she proclaims her love for Indianapolis Colts linebacker Gary Brackett, whose path to football stardom was several times barred by family tragedy:

Less than a week later, [Brackett’s father] Granville passed away, his heart finally having given out.

Brackett finished that season with 25 tackles. Then shortly after the Super Bowl, in February 2004, [Brackett’s mother] Sandra was rushed to the hospital for an emergency hysterectomy. She never left, an operating-table stroke putting her into what would be a fatal coma.

Brackett went back out to Indy that summer, until, just before mini-camp, he found out his brother Greg had leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. Gary told head coach Tony Dungy the outside shot of staving off Greg’s leukemia was more important than fighting for a roster spot and he skipped the camp.

A few weeks after he made the donation Brackett fought his way onto Dungy’s roster. He again played special teams, before pounding Denver for 11 tackles in his one start in January. And before Greg, despite the transplant, succumbed to the cancer in February.

The other reason Aditi loves Brackett, besides his triumph over the odds, is that he played his college ball at Rutgers. In addition to her column at SI.com, Kinkhabwala is a staff sports writer at the Bergen Record in New Jersey, where her beat is Rutgers sports. She covered the unlikely success of the Scarlet Knights football team this past season, and is now deep in the men’s and women’s basketball seasons. Continue reading →

Transparency, Indian Consulate Style

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Oh this is too rich. Thank you, thank you, thank you to tipster IslandGirl for placing on the news tab the story about the reams of confidential visa application info that the Indian Consulate in San Francisco sent off for recycling to an open-air facility that doesn’t shred, and where anybody can stroll in off the street. The San Francisco Chronicle did just that.

Thousands of visa applications and other sensitive documents, including paperwork submitted by top executives and political figures, sat for more than a month in the open yard of a San Francisco recycling center after they were dumped there by the city’s Indian Consulate.

The documents, which security experts say represented a potential treasure trove for identity thieves or terrorists, finally were hauled away Wednesday after The Chronicle inspected the site and questioned officials at the consulate and the recycling facility.

Among the papers were visa applications submitted by Byron Pollitt, chief financial officer of San Francisco’s Gap Inc., and Anne Gust, wife of California Attorney General Jerry Brown.

The best part, though, are the tin-ear responses by the various Indian consular officials. There’s a semantic argument:

Information on the documents includes applicants’ names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, professions, employers, passport numbers and photos. Accompanying letters detail people’s travel plans and reasons for visiting India.

“As we see it, the documents are not confidential,” said B.S. Prakash, the consul general. “We would see something as confidential if it has a Social Security number or a credit card number, not a passport number.”

A cultural argument:

At the Indian Consulate, Consul General Prakash said there may be a cultural dimension to the level of outrage related to the incident among Western visa applicants.

“In India, I would not be alarmed,” he said. “We have grown up giving such information in many, many places. We would not be so worried if someone had our passport number.”

An environmental argument:

Deputy Consul General Sircar said that in other countries, Indian officials are able to go to the roofs of their offices and burn documents they’re no longer able to store.

“In America, you cannot do that,” he said.

All this stuff was sitting out there, in boxes marked “Visa Applications” at an open-access, community recycling center in Haight-Ashbury. I’m waiting for them to blame Nancy Pelosi! Continue reading →

London Brawling: Another Round in the British Identity Debate

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sun-british.jpgIf you get your news mainly from US outlets, you’ve probably heard by now about the alleged plot foiled yesterday in Birmingham, England, in which extremists planned to kidnap a British Muslim soldier whilst on leave and execute him as a collaborator. There are some reports today that the plotters had as many as 25 targets identified.

But you may not have heard about the big debate that has erupted in Britain, also this week, about the results of a survey and report called “Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the Paradox of Multiculturalism,” by Policy Exchange, which most reports describe as a right-of-center think-tank. The results of the survey that have garnered the most attention suggest, among other findings, that a surprisingly large proportion of British Muslims would like to live under Sharia. There are of course major debates about how the question was phrased and what the responses imply in practice. It is also clear that the British Muslim community is no monolith, and all commentators are zooming in on the fact that more “extremist” or “separatist” stances are much more common among the youngest respondents (18-24) and progressively less so in the older groups. Again, what this means is being hotly discussed.

I don’t have time right now to do the topic justice, but hopefully commenters here, especially from the UK, will give us some perspectives. My man Sunny Hundal is already on the case along with the commenters at Pickled Politics. There are many other views online at the Guardian’s op-ed site, including this one from Dave Hill and this from Timothy Garton-Ash; you can root around the main UK papers for more. Be prepared for fatuous pieces too, such as this one that says folks shouldn’t worry about youth Islamic radicalism in the UK as it’s just the same kind of temporary rebellion that hippie kids displayed in the 1960s. Talk about adding nothing to the debate. Finally, if you have the time and inclination you can read the full report and crunch the numbers; let us know what you find.

However I found the most valuable summation of the discussion in this article at the website Spiked, by the lead author of the report, Munira Mirza (the report co-authors are Abi Senthilkumaran and Zein Ja’far). Here the sister responds to the first wave of discussion and makes some useful points: Continue reading →

Sugar and the City

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New York City has just released preliminary results of a health study that shows that more than one in eight adult New Yorkers have diabetes, while twice as many have abnormally high blood sugar that could be a sign of conditions leading to diabetes. Moreover, of the city’s diabetes sufferers, at least one-third do not know that they have the disease, while many of those who know they have it are not managing to treat it properly. Here’s the NYC health commissioner quoted in the New York Times today:

“This confirms that we as a society are doing a rotten job both preventing and controlling diabetes,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city health commissioner. “We can do a much better job helping people with diabetes get their condition under better control. The fact that there are over 100,000 New Yorkers with seriously out-of-control diabetes, and over 200,000 who don’t even know they have diabetes, is a real indictment of our health care system.”

As disturbing as the overall figures are, he said, they were not unexpected. They resemble estimates made by public health officials, who expected that the disease would be more common in New York City than nationally; diabetes is less prevalent among whites than among most other groups, and New York is a mostly nonwhite city.

Which brings us to the Desi Angle (TM), and it’s a deadly serious one:

But Dr. Frieden said he was startled by some of the specific findings, including the very high numbers among Asian-Americans, especially those from South Asia. The study indicates that more than half of the New Yorkers whose families are from the Indian subcontinent have either diabetes or prediabetes.

Here’s more:

Asians have the highest rates in the city, 16 percent diabetic and 32 percent prediabetic. The cityÂ’s report does not differentiate Asians by region, but officials said that the data in their study and others show that East Asians have below-average rates of diabetes, while South Asians have by far the highest of any large group.

Diabetes afflicts about 14 percent of the cityÂ’s non-Hispanic black population, 12 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of whites.

If I can get a hold of more details I’ll update this post accordingly. Tomorrow the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC (93.9 FM in New York, and live and archived online) will be discussing this topic including the specific case of the South Asian community. Continue reading →

Vultures At Risk

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vulture_branch.jpgI’ve had a warm feeling toward vultures, buzzards and other scavenger birds since the time I attended a wedding in Burkina Faso, the arid, land-locked West African country, back in the early 1990s, and looked up to see clusters of big, bad-lookin’ buzzards hanging around on trees, waiting for the event to be over so they could swoop in for the remnants of the dozen or so sheep that had been slaughtered for the occasion. It was one of those “hey, what’s up?” moments humans can have with animals, when you realize that we’re all in this together, that each creature serves its function, and that the social and cultural practices of one species have significant effects on the well-being of others. I want to say it “humanized” the buzzards for me, which obviously isn’t the right word, but it demystified them and made me appreciate them. Nuff respect to the scavenger birds.

Today tipster Sakshi brings to our attention a fascinating article from Smithsonian magazine on vultures in the subcontinent, which not only offers an interesting glimpse into the lives of these birds but, more importantly, shows how closely we and they — and other species — lead interwoven lives and how fragile that balance can be. It turns out that scientists, picking up on the observations of cattle herders and others in the field, have noticed a substantial decline in the long-billed vulture population in the subcontinent for some years. The disappearance of the lead scavenger has resulted in the accumulation of un-scavenged cattle corpses as well as the growth of packs of feral dogs, in ways that you can read about in the article. It has also placed a new burden on secondary scavenger birds that used to only come in after the larger, more powerful vultures. Those birds in turn have become vulnerable to whatever it is that has decimated the vultures:

… across the subcontinent all three species of Gyps vultures are disappearing. Dead livestock lie uneaten and rotting. These carcasses are fueling a population boom in feral dogs and defeating the government’s efforts to combat rabies. Vultures have become so rare that the Parsi in Mumbai have resorted to placing solar reflectors atop the Towers of Silence to hasten the decomposition of bodies. International conservation groups now advocate the capture of long-billed, white-backed and slender-billed vultures for conservation breeding.

So what’s the cause? After initially speculating it was some kind of virus, scientists now have strong proof that it’s a particular medication that herders give cattle that is toxic to the vultures. This brings into the story the Indian pharmaceutical industry and its history of reverse-engineering cheap drugs, which arguably has done a lot to save human lives but has also resulted in a proliferation of drugs on the market without necessarily sufficient regulation or understanding of appropriate use. The chain of effects goes on:

Public health officials say it’s likely that India’s rat population is growing too, sharing the bounty of abandoned carcasses with feral dogs, and raising the probability of outbreaks of bubonic plague and other rodent-transmitted human diseases. Livestock diseases may increase too. Vultures are resistant to anthrax, brucellosis and other livestock diseases, and helped control them by consuming contaminated flesh, thus removing reservoirs of infectious organisms. Some municipalities are now resorting to burying or burning carcasses, expending precious land, firewood and fossil fuels to replace what Rahmani calls “the beautiful system nature gave us.”

In all, this is a powerful story of interdependence and one that, just possibly, might have a happy ending, as the governments of India, Pakistan and Nepal have grown aware of the problem and taken remedial action. Read the article for that story as well as a rich perspective on the interconnectedness of all things, one that might, at a minimum, help us step back from some of the ridiculous disputes over trivial matters that we humans, including those of us who hang out at this site, sometimes so enjoy wallowing in. There’s also a nice sidebar interview with the article’s writer, Susan McGrath:

Well, I knew that my trip to India was going to be different than most people’s trips to India. All my friends were saying, “Oh you’re so lucky! The crafts! The clothing! The wildlife!” And I spent half my time in India in carcass dumps.

Glad you did, Ms. McGrath. And to the vultures: keep ya ugly heads up, my avian brothers and sisters, stay strong! Continue reading →

Desi Ivy Twerps Still Ivy Twerps

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A few years ago the editors of the late, great mag ego trip published a fantastic Big Book of Racism that must be one of the funniest, edgiest, most on-target treatments ever produced on the glory and ridiculousness of inter-cultural discourse in America through the ages and today. In 300 pages of over-the-top gonzo charts, lists, graphics, mini-essays, and assorted unclassifiable content, the collective turned every stereotype on its head and made fun of everyone on an equal basis using as its great leveler the power of the absurd. A precursor to Borat, in a way, but with much broader scope, knowing detail and subtlety, and without the escape hatch of the visiting-foreigner device. I wish I had my copy on hand so I could excerpt a few of its classic moments, but I don’t, so I can only encourage you to check out what’s available on the Google Books preview and, better yet, just buy the damn thing.

It seems a close reading of this book would also have benefited Chanakya Sethi, the editor in chief of the Daily Princetonian, and his colleagues at the student newspaper of Princeton University. Last week the paper ran its annual “joke issue” made up entirely of fake news and parodies, and as you may know, included a faux op-ed by “Lian Ji.” The reference was to Jian Li, a student who filed a civil rights case against Princeton for not admitting him (and went on to Yale), and the copy included passages like this:

Princeton claims that it increase diversity by rejecting an Asian-American. You make joke? My mom from same province as General Tso. My dad from Kung Pao province. I united 500 years of Rice Wars. I invented Asian glow — new color, new race. Hey, what about yellow fever? Heard that’s hot on this campus. This is as diverse as you can get.

Plus, no-color people all go to Ivy Club; I would have made Campus Club alive again. Plus, I would have created first Asian a cappella group. Plus, I would have starred in first Chinese Opera in McCarter Theater. Plus, I would have join USG, become USG president better than Rob Biederman. Who you think get better deals with Ivy Garden boss anyway? Plus, I know how to make bubble tea. Plus, I would have taken one engrish class and be liberal arts. Writing seminar count, right? Multiply, I make DDR varsity sport.

I’ll spare you the blow by blow account of the ensuing shitstorm: see the New York Times wrap, for instance, here. But there is also a Desi Angle (TM) in that the paper’s editor-in-chief, and therefore presumably the one ultimately responsible for what get published, is desi — as is, incidentally, the next editor in chief, Kavita Saini, who takes over next month. Continue reading →