Author Archives: Abhi

About Abhi

Abhi lives in Los Angeles and works to put things into space.

The knives come out for Gupta

Posted on by

Aasif Mandvi wasn’t the only person to allude to the fact that Sanjay Gupta’s coming nomination makes life harder for all of us non- attractive neurosurgeon journalists. Sandip Roy, writing at New American Media, also tries to prepare us all for how hard it is going to be for us regular desis to play keep up with the Guptas now:

…I fear it’s a mixed blessing for the rest of us much more run-of-the-mill South Asians. It’s exciting to see someone who comes from your stock make it big. But another neurosurgeon-makes-good story is going to make us look even more like underachievers.

“What’s the matter, beta? Why can’t you be more like that nice Sanjay Gupta? Not just a neurosurgeon but on CNN AND meeting Obama for three hours?”

Not only is he dashing and articulate. Not only did he do brain surgery on a 2 -year-old Iraqi boy while embedded during the Iraq war, now he might be the new Surgeon-general. Let me pause, and reel in the envy!

And his only qualm, according to the Washington Post is “is said to involve the financial impact on his pregnant wife and two children if he gives up his lucrative medical and journalistic careers.”

Golly. This is a South Asian parent’s dream. He’s 39 and he’s already followed the four stages of a good Hindu life – childhood, education, family and now a sort-of-renunciation-and-service… [Link]

I completely agree with Roy’s analysis. This is the reason I have been pretty bummed ever since the Gupta nomination even though I agree he is a good pick. In fact, there has been a sort of let down ever since Obama got elected. He promised that we could all “Be the change.” How can that be true though when 300,000 people submitted resumes for ~7000 “change” jobs? Its like musical chairs and I, like may of you, am left without a seat. I’m the wrong kind of doctor, just a blogger and not a journalist, and I’m not quite so…model-like. I can’t even complain that he had access to a better education at an elitist school since we went to the same school. In short, I’m rapidly turning into a bitter hater, much like conservative pundit Stephen Colbert who basically implies in the clip below that Gupta isn’t qualified since he is a “dick eater”:

Continue reading →

Sex selection accompanies immigrants to America

Posted on by

The San Jose Mercury News has an article highlighting some soon-to-be-published findings by economists at both Columbia University and the University of Texas who were studying Asian immigrant communities. The findings indicate that the practice of sex selection among Asian immigrants does not stop at American shores as many of us would like to believe:

Researchers are finding the first evidence that some Asian immigrant families are using U.S. medical technology to have sons instead of daughters, apparently acting on an age-old cultural prejudice that has led to high ratios of boys to girls in parts of China and India.

The new research, produced by independent teams of economists who arrived at similar conclusions, focused on Indian, Chinese and Korean families who first had girls and then used modern technology to have a son…

For some South Asian couples, having a boy is a “status symbol,” said Deepka Lalwani of Milpitas, the founder and president of Indian Business & Professional Women, a nonprofit business support network. “If a woman has male children, she feels in her family, certainly with her in-laws, that her status will go up because now she is the mother of a male child…”

Such cultural pressures may explain the recent findings. A Columbia University study suggests that Chinese, Indian and Korean immigrants have been using medical technology, most likely including abortion, to assure their later children were boys. And a soon-to-be published analysis of birth records by a University of Texas economist estimates there were 2,000 “missing girls” between 1991 and 2004 among immigrant families from China and India living in the U.S. — children never born because their parents chose to have sons instead. [Link]

Perhaps I’ve just been very naive but I was quite surprised by this finding. Given that the prime reason for preferring sons in Asian countries is that sons serve as a social security net, I just assumed the practice would be swept aside in America given that there are alternate means of obtaining social security and that women here have a greater ability to rise up the socio-economic ladder and support the family. I guess I did not put enough importance in the desire some of these families have to preserve their names through a male heir.

Continue reading →

Paging General Gupta. The country needs you…STAT

Posted on by

By about 3:30p.m. eastern this afternoon, every South Asian American in the country (and their mother) had already heard that Sanjay Gupta was on the verge of being announced the next Surgeon General of the United States:

President-elect Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN and CBS, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

Gupta has told administration officials that he wants the job, and the final vetting process is under way. He has asked for a few days to figure out the financial and logistical details of moving his family from Atlanta to Washington but is expected to accept the offer.

When reached for comment today, Gupta did not deny the account but declined to comment.

The offer followed a two-hour Chicago meeting in November with Obama, who said that Gupta could be the highest-profile surgeon general in history and would have an expanded role in providing health policy advice, the sources said. Gupta later spoke with Tom Daschle, Obama’s White House health czar and nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, and other advisers to the president-elect. [Link]

The choice of Gupta is very obvious when you think about it. It adds a touch of star power to Obama’s administration, will get lots of kudos (and donations) from the South Asian American community and, perhaps most importantly, adds another health care policy wonk to the dream team to be headed by H&HS Secretary Tom Daschle. You know all those rich Indian doctors that tend to vote Republican? Maybe not anymore.

CNN released a statement saying, “Since first learning that Dr. Gupta was under consideration for the surgeon general position, CNN has made sure that his on-air reporting has been on health and wellness matters and not on health-care policy or any matters involving the new administration…” [Link]

Taking this job, which will result in a large paycut for Gupta, will also set him up very nicely to run for office in Michigan in the future. Through some contacts I heard the rumors a few months back that Gupta at least thought about or was encouraged to run for mayor of Detroit to replace the disgraced Kwame Kilpatrick.

As a college senior I once invited Dr. Gupta to the Midwest Indian American Students’s Conference at the University of Michigan (he is an alumnus). It was before he hit the big time but I remember him being really genuine and laid back. And of course who can forget his exploits with the Devil Docs at the beginning of the war where is switched between reporting for CNN and scrubbing in to brain surgery.

There is another really good potential outcome as a result of this appointment. I know a lot of desi doctors who look a lot younger than they really are. Patients always make comments to them like, “uhhh…are you old enough?” Now these desi doctors can point to Sanjay Gupta who is the top doctor in the land and also looks pretty young and say, “umm, like yeah.”

What I really wanted to do was to end this post with the really funny Gupta/Dobbs CNN ad from a few years back. Can someone find me a working link…STAT?

Continue reading →

Race and statewide office

Posted on by

There are currently as many elected African American governors as Indian American governors: one. For those of you that stopped reading Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com the day after the election, you are missing out. Today he had a wonderfully geeky post about why there are so few African American Senators (none actually unless you count Burris) and Governors. His analysis also offers some insight that might be of interest to the South Asian American community:

When the House of Representatives convenes tomorrow, it will contain 39 African-American members, not including non-voting delegates in places like the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. This number, representing about 9 percent of the Congress, falls somewhat short of the fraction of African-Americans in the population as a whole — a truly representative House would have about 55 black members — but perhaps not dramatically so. The situation at first glance would appear to be much better than it was prior to 1990, when there were generally only about 20 black members in the House at any given time.

The districts these 39 Congressmen serve, however, are not very representative at all. All 39 contain a higher percentage of African-Americans than the population as a whole, ranging from Keith Ellison’s district in Minneapolis, which is just barely more black than the national average, to Jesse Jackson Jr.’s on the South Side of Chicago, which is 68 percent African-American. About 64 percent of the members — 25 of 39 — come from districts that contain an outright black majority. The districts are also much more Democratic than the country as a whole, with an average PVI of D +25; only Sanford Bishop’s district in Georgia, which has a PVI of D+2, is anywhere close to the national average. [Link]

So here it is in a nutshell. Assuming that experienced African American representatives (a reasonable number of which there are) would make suitable candidates to run for the U.S. Senate, why aren’t there more black Senators or Governors? The answer is that because the base of these potential candidates is largely African American, many of them never develop messages targeted to an audience any wider than this base. Doing so might cause them to lose some “cred” with that base. Thus, forced to compete statewide with this self-inflicted handicap, their campaigns never get off the ground. Obama was a rare exception because he realized intuitively what the data shows and made sure to appeal to all demographics and not just his perceived base, even if it meant being called “not black enough.” To the vast majority of South Asian American candidates the above is so obvious it doesn’t need mentioning. Our ethnic base is so small it would never be enough to solely rely on (except maybe in Jersey or Fremont). From the beginning, desi candidates have to work hard to appeal to all groups and their issues. Despite hard-to-pronounce names and brown skin this “tactic” helps us beat the odds that seem to stymie African American candidates.

Continue reading →

The Last Victims

Posted on by

Pakistan’s DAWN newspaper features a great investigative piece that details how its reporters tracked down (whereas other major papers failed) the family of Mohammed Ajmal “Babyface” Kasab (who may really be Mohammad Ajmal Amir) and listened to what they had to say. Kasab was, of course, the lone surviving gunman from the recent Mumbai attacks.

Ajmal Kasab…was supposed to belong to the village Faridkot in the Punjab. Media organisations such as the BBC and now the British newspaper Observer have done reports trying to ascertain the veracity of claims appearing in the media that the young man had a home there.

At the weekend, the Observer in England claimed that it had managed to locate the house everyone was looking for so desperately. Its correspondent said he had got hold of the voters’ roll which had the names of Amir Kasab and his wife, identified as Noor, as well as the numbers on the identity cards the couple carried…

However, the man who said he was Amir Kasab confirmed to Dawn that the young man whose face had been beamed over the media was his son.

For the next few minutes, the fifty-something man of medium build agonized over the reality that took time sinking in, amid sobs complaining about the raw deal the fate had given him and his family. [Dawn]

I have commented before on SM about how much I disagree with using the term “evil” to describe men like Ajmal Kasab. To call them “evil” or “insane” (without clinical proof of insanity) in my opinion gives society an undeserved excuse. It allows us to isolate them as others, as subhumans. It allows us to feel superior in thinking that we were born good whereas these men were born bad. Their “affliction” is seen as having zero probability of transmission to good people like us. It just cannot spread. You are born evil. Then you go and talk to their parents and you realize the difference between how we were nurtured and how they were nurtured can’t really be pinpointed except for a few wrong turns and bad decisions that cascade into fanatic acts. The father continued:

‘I was in denial for the first couple of days, saying to myself it could not have been my son,’ he told Dawn in the courtyard of his house in Faridkot, a village of about 2,500 people just a few kilometres from Deepalpur on the way to Kasur. ‘Now I have accepted it. This is the truth. I have seen the picture in the newspaper. This is my son Ajmal…’

Indian media reports ‘based on intelligence sources’ said the man was said to be a former Faridkot resident who left home a frustrated teenager about four years ago and went to Lahore…

After his brush with crime and criminals in Lahore, he is said to have run into and joined a religious group during a visit to Rawalpindi.

‘He had asked me for new clothes on Eid that I couldn’t provide him. He got angry and left.’ [Dawn] Continue reading →

Driving substantive health care reform

Posted on by

While we are busy debating the merits of one potential Obama appointee and fawning over another (ok, I know, I am the only one fawning), there is a third that might end up having the most substantive role of all in Obama’s administration. Neera Tanden, who I first wrote about back in 2004, in all likelihood is about to occupy a position that will greatly influence this nation’s health care policy. First, remember that Tom Daschle will serve a new dual role. He will not only be named as the cabinet level head of Health and Human Services, but will also be director of a new WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF HEALTH REFORM. This essentially gives him the powers of a Health Czar and indicates that we will see a major legislative push in the direction of comprehensive health care reform. Tanden is a member of the transition team’s health advisors, having come over from Clinton’s campaign. She is a battle-hardened survivor of Hillary-care and knows the lessons learned and can be a great asset to Daschle. Here is an interesting footnote about Tanden’s role at the inception of Hillary’s campaign:

On a cold midmorning in January 2007, Hillary sat in the sunny living room of her house on Whitehaven Street in Washington, a well-to-do enclave off Embassy Row where she lived with her mother and, on occasion, her husband. She was finishing a last round of policy prep with her aides before getting on a plane to Iowa for her first big campaign swing. In a moment of quiet, she looked around the living room and said, to no one in particular, “I so love this house. Why am I doing this?”

Her policy director, Neera Tanden, and her advertising director, Mandy Grunwald, laughed, a little too lightheartedly. Clinton went on. “I’m so comfortable here. Why am I doing this?”

Tanden spoke up. “The White House isn’t so bad,” she said. [Link]

The New York Times had a good article on Tanden way back in 2000 [via Manish]:

How smart is the smart kid in Hillary Clinton’s Senate bid?

From all appearances — including a law degree from Yale — very.

It was Ms. Tanden, signing on with the exploratory committee in July 1999, who moved to New York from the White House and worked with Mrs. Clinton, researching and developing policies. She was 29.

It was Ms. Tanden — with, she wants you to know, her staff of six — who challenged Rick A. Lazio’s first major policy proposal, a tax-reduction plan, in August. In two hours Ms. Tanden prepared a detailed financial response. Finding the facts and figures to defend her candidate’s position is a large part of her work.

Watching Ms. Tanden in action at the Hillary 2000 headquarters on 34th Street is not permitted.

But you can accompany Ms. Tanden, informal, fast-talking, connected to her cell phone as to a body part, across the street to the restaurant she frequents these days, the cafeteria in Macy’s basement. She works 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. Her husband hates her work, Ms. Tanden allows in an unguarded moment. She makes a quick, politic adjustment: he doesn’t hate the work; he hates the way she brings the work home, the stress. [Link]

Continue reading →

Having to think twice about reporting a burglary

Posted on by

About a week ago the Houston Chronicle ran a story about a burglary here in Houston. A Sikh family (the Tagores) came home one night to find that their master bedroom had been ransacked and that a window was broken. They did what anyone would have done: called the police to report the crime. Then the story becomes not so routine:

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office is investigating allegations that deputies harassed a family of Sikhs whose home was burglarized last week.

Family members say the deputies handcuffed them, roughed them up and taunted them instead of taking a report on the break-in.

One deputy reportedly asked them if they’d “heard about the bombings in Bombay.” Another allegedly said he had been to Kuwait and “knew about Muslims…”

“The allegations, if they’re true, are certainly intolerable and inconsistent with our policies,” said sheriff’s spokesman John Legg.

The deputies could face anything from disciplinary action to termination, Legg said. He declined to release their names pending further investigation. [Houston Chronicle]

This incident occurred on November 26th. On November 27th, a film crew from San Antonio-based Sach Productions was already in Houston to interview the family.

The idea behind the birth of Sach Productions is the creation of an agency that uses the film media to further the Sikh cause. The intention of Sach Productions is to introduce Sikhs to the world and then bring forth issues that concern them.

The initial projects are short documentaries that introduce Sikhs to the Western world. The intention is to then bring issues relating to Punjab, Human Rights, Arts and Culture to the people. [Sach Productions]

By December 5th, as the local news began to pick up on the story, Sach Productions had already filmed and uploaded a documentary about the incident on to the web:

Continue reading →

The Return of Huma?

Posted on by

While I do hope that Sonal Shah becomes a permanent part of Obama’s administration, I am much more excited to see where my Huma Abedin ends up. Reggie Love ended up besting her for the role of “body man/woman” but you can’t keep this woman down for long. Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic has the latest gossip for us Huma watchers. You guessed it, she will probably follow Clinton to State, showing the world a whole new face of America:

I’ve been a Clinton Kremlinologist for years, and although there are many armor-plated guardians of Clinton’s inner circle, Huma Abedin has been the toughest to crack. No exaggeration: with Clinton heading to State, Abedin is going to be a major force in American diplomacy for the next several years.

Abedin was one of the First Lady’s travelling personal assistants during the second term, but hasn’t been only that for years Formally, she is a Senior Advisor to Senator Clinton, and was her Travelling Chief of Staff during the campaign. In that latter role, she was in charge of the roadshow, one of the few parts of the campaign that met with near universal praise, both internally and externally.

She is part of the crucial connective tissue between HRC and her far flung world of supporters, friends, staff, former staff, advisors, donors, on and on. Not a gatekeeper, because she is famous for her openess and sharing even the smallest details with HRC to keep her fully briefed, and manages some of the biggest egos around with diplomatic aplomb (I can only imagine.. “Hi Huma, it’s Dick Holbrooke and I REALLY need to talk to Hillary about this Jim Steinberg thing”)

The totality of Huma is much more in line with the mythical “Aide de Camp” of old (people like David Petraeus were at one point someone else’s Aide de Camp, and we have no doubt that Huma will one day have her very own)

People who know her say she is a full and crucial member of HRC’s state department and she will be playing a big role at Foggy Bottom – and anyone there or elsewhere that short changes her as a “personal assistant” does so at their own risk.

She is also a Muslim who speaks fluent Arabic –her mother runs a university in Saudi Arabia — and brings that perspective on a complex part of the world to HRC’s sphere. it’s not uncommon to see Huma on Bill Clinton’s important trips to the region, because he too values her in that way. [Link]

Look, for some time now we’ve had a problem between Israel and the Palestinians. Can we get Huma on that? U.S. missiles in Poland? Mr. Putin, we have a Ms. Abedin on Line 1 for you. I am just saying folks, for those of you who didn’t think it was a good idea for Obama to form a team of rivals by including HRC, this little bonus should allay your fears.

Continue reading →

Using the power of the hive to keep informed

Posted on by

As Ennis mentioned in the earlier post, there isn’t much we, as American bloggers, can add to the story from Mumbai as it continues to unfold on the ground. The time for blogging about the specifics will come in the next few days as more facts emerge. I recommend forgetting the news channels with their endlessly repeating video loops and paid talking heads. The best place to follow what is happening in Mumbai is to visit the wiki page created to compile all information about these attacks. It is continually being updated and the references section is terrific. There is also a Google Map of the region that has been created with all the attack sites highlighted.

Twitter has also been a great way to get details about what’s going on. Try typing Oberoi for example. “Terrorists trapped” also results in a slew of Tweets.

USE THE COMMENTS TO POST INFORMATIONAL FACTS or WORDS OF SYMPATHY ONLY. RIGHT NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR RECRIMINATIONS. Continue reading →

Preeta Bansal for Solicitor General?

Posted on by

To follow-up on Taz’s post earlier this week, several new sources including New York Magazine are reporting that President-elect Obama will soon tap Preeta Bansal as the United States Solicitor General:

Preeta Bansal, a Harvard-educated litigation partner at Skadden, is rumored to be President-elect Obama’s choice for solicitor general. That person argues the government’s position at the Supreme Court (which will still be dominated by conservatives). “It’s making the rounds in New York’s legal circles, absolutely,” says a former colleague of Bansal’s. She was New York’s solicitor general under Eliot Spitzer and a counselor to then–assistant attorney general Joel Klein in the Clinton administration; she was an adviser to Obama’s campaign and now serves on the transition team. She’d be the first woman and first Indian-American to hold the job. [Link]

Ravi and I wanted to interview Preeta at the DNC in Denver but we weren’t allowed to. There were certain folks who you could only interview with permission from Obama’s people. That’s how you knew they were likely to get a top spot in a possible future administration (or be a top bundler). If this turns out to be Obama’s pick it also will serve as a major nod to his Asian American supporters. We’ll then see if Bansal has what it takes to go ten rounds with the likes of Scalia and Roberts. What I also want to know though is, what about Neal Katyal? Obama has said that shutting down the blight that is Guantanamo Bay is one of his top priorities. Why not give Katyal a leadership role in a possible commission to shut it down? From a recent PBS interview:

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, President-elect Obama, as we said, has said he will shut it down. Should he stick to the promise? And can he? What are the issues there?

NEAL KATYAL: Right. He should absolutely stick to the promise. I mean, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the defense secretary, Robert Gates, have both said that Guantanamo is now a net national security loss for the United States. So there’s a security reason to do it above and beyond the simple humanitarian one. [Link]

Oh hell, I’ll just come out and say what I’m really advocating for: Katyal for SCOTUS. Continue reading →