Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

Maybe India should tie a rakhi on Israel

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Because today is both Purim and Holi, here’s an amazing “Bollywood” video made by an Israeli arms company to promote Indian sales which they showed on large screens at a recent government sponsored military trade fair in India. What’s the connection to these holidays? Watch the clip and you’ll come away convinced that the people who made it were both drunk and stoned:

Every element of the promotional film is just plain wrong. The sari-clad, “Indian” dancers look all too ashkenaz and zaftig. The unshaven, hawk-nosed, leather-clad leading man appears to be a refugee from You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. Then of course, there’s the implication that the Indian military is somehow like a helpless woman who “need(s) to feel safe and sheltered.” [link]

The whole thing is amazingly crappy from start to finish, not mention the annoying chorus of “Dinga dinga, dinga dinga, dinga dinga, dinga dinga dee.” I don’t get why they couldn’t have hired a real Bolly composer, choreographer and item girls. It wouldn’t have cost them much.

Despite the cheapness of the video, this isn’t some small time company, and they’re not newcomers to the Indian market. It was Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ Barak SAM missile that was at the heart of the 2000 bribery scandal exposed by Tehelka. Two years ago, they signed a $330 million dollar deal to codevelop the Barak II, and just 6 months ago they became part of India’s biggest defense joint venture with a foreign company.

So why was this video, intended “to help build familiarity between India and Israel and Rafael” [link] both so cheap and so dreadful? My only guess is that they learned from the 2000 arms deal that while symbolic gestures are good, the only thing that really matters are gifts of cold hard cash.

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Where the Indians are

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Today’s NYT contains a useful graphical tool for displaying census data. The data being used is nothing new – it’s all census 2000 data — but the graphical display reveals patterns that you don’t notice in a table. The image below shows where immigrants from India are, with larger circles denoting the larger population clusters. (I focus on Indians because they’re the only South Asian group that this tool lets you explore)

The largest circles show populations of 50,000 or more. You can find them in Santa Clara county (just south of San Francisco), Cook County (around Chicago) and Queens, NY. Of course, the San Francisco and NYC clusters contain other large populations of Indians in adjacent counties, with a disontinuous mega cluster of Indians in the Boston to DC corridor.

It’s also interesting to see how few Indians there are in other parts of the USA. The very smallest dots on the map, the ones the size of flyspecs, those show populations of fewer than one hundred Indians, such as the 88 Indians in Jasper, MO. Basically, if you can’t see brown on this map, there weren’t Indians worth mentioning back in 2000.

It’s worth clicking on the image and going to the tool itself, since that graphic gives you information about the size of each of the clusters when you hover over any point. This is just a screen capture to show you where the IBDs are.

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Oklahoma, this is not OK

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Last week, the Oklahoma House passed H.B. 1645 which states that you can’t cover your head in your driver’s license photo for any reason:

Hats, head scarves, head garments, bandanas, prescription … glasses … are strictly prohibited and shall not be worn by the licensee or cardholder when being photographed for a license or identification card.

It means that religious Sikhs, Jews, Muslims and others who wear religious head covering will have to choose between their faith and their ability to travel.

The legislation was proposed in a fit of pique, after the Oklahoma Department of Transportation reversed itself and allowed a young hijabi woman to have her license photo taken with her head scarf on and her face clearly visible, but without her hair showing.

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p>Represenative Rex Duncan was so incensed by this that he took over a different bill, with a different purpose, and “hijacked it” to create requirements that the bureaucracy says it doesn’t need, that it will have to defend in court, and that don’t really make a lot of practical sense.

Why don’t I think the bill makes sense? Imagine that I actually did what the law wanted (which I wouldn’t, I would leave the state) and got my photo taken with a naked head. Do you think that a cop would find it easier to recognize me with my glasses and turban from a photograph of me with my hair down and my beard unfurled, man on the cross ishtyle? How about the TSA person at the gate at Tulsa airport?

The bill is also inconsistent. If the legislature seriously believes that hair is a critical part of identification, this is what they would have to do:

  • Mandate no toupees or hairplugs or extensions — sorry, Represenative, but you have to go baldy now
  • Mandate no changes to facial hair
  • Mandate no changes in hair color or style — sorry Represenative, but your wife can’t color that grey out, and your daughter who had long brown hair can’t drive now that she has short pink hair unless she had the photo taken with the short pink hair, in which case you have to live with it from now on
  • Mandate that any time somebody does change hair color or style they have to have their photo retaken
  • Apply the bill retroactively, so that everybody whose appearance has changed at all since their photo was taken has to get a new ID

Can you imagine? The hairdresser’s lobby would kill that bill deader than a combover on a red carpet!

Here’s a petition in opposition to the bill. Right now, the bill is in limbo, since the Senate sponsor has backed down after talking to the transportation bureaucracy and finding out that they don’t actually want these changes. I’m hoping the pressure keeps it that way, and that they recognize that they will face opposition if they proceed with their hair-brained (sic) scheme.

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Love don’t come easy

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When our parents ask “Beta/i, why aren’t you settled yet?” We like to respond that it’s just much harder to find somebody in American than it was back in the desh. Well, it seems that men and women in India don’t have it so easy either.

Consider the eligible bachelors of Barwaan Kala who remain unmarried because the ladeez (and their parents) consider the village a tad too rustic:

Some 121 villagers aged between 16 and 80 remain bachelors, they say, because of the remoteness of the village. The last wedding in the village was reportedly 50 years ago… the reason for the high number of bachelors is not because they lack eligibility but because there is no approach road to the village. [link]

After 100 50 years of solitude, they were given hope that the government would listen to their pleas when a politician asked for their votes and promised that he wouldn’t get married either unless he could get them a road. Unfortunately, that hope was cruelly dashed the next year:

But, after winning, the new Member of the Legislative Assembly not only got married the next year but, in the villagers’ eyes, added insult to injury by making the event a gala affair. He is now the proud father of a two-year-old daughter. When the villagers approached him to remind him of his promise to them, they say he asked them if they really believed that he too should remain a bachelor forever. [link]

So now the villagers have decided to take the grasp the problem firmly with their own two hands, and are laboring furiously to produce a solution. In the past six weeks half the road has gotten laid, with an equivalent amount of laying still to be done.

“Who among you,” she asked “will donate to me your sperm?”The story is pure Bolly. You have desperate villagers, a perfidious politician, and an epic effort by the men to build a bridge to romance, much like Rama building a bridge to Lanka to rescue Sita.

There’s even a Jindalesque moment in the plot where the villagers are told that they cannot build the road themselves, because they are in a protected wildlife area and they have to satisfy the red tape! (We’re currently at the cliffhanger moment right now … )

There’s one problem – I don’t believe it. If nobody has gotten married in 50 years, then how are there 16 year old boys in the village?

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Batting .500

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Everybody knows that all desis are either doctors or engineers. Today the White House managed to gain an engineer, Vivek Kundra, as the new White House CIO and “lose” a doctor, Sanjay Gupta, who pulled out of contention for the Surgeon General’s position.

Kundra is the former CIO for Washington DC and Obama’s “tech daddy,” He was born in Delhi, grew up in Tanzania (he speaks Swahili as a first language) and came to the US when he was 11.

But don’t worry, DBD’s, his globe trotting youth hasn’t led him to forget where he came from. In 2007 he assembled the largest US trade delegation ever to visit India. Not bad for a guy who is only 34!

In just 19 months with the District, Mr. Kundra has moved to post city contracts on YouTube and to make Twitter use common in his office and others. He hopes to allow drivers to pay parking tickets or renew their driver’s licenses on Facebook. [link]

He will oversee $71 billion in annual technology spending across the government and set standards for the design of federal systems. [He said that] government needs to stop thinking it is special.Instead of designing custom systems for each problem, it should use off-the-shelf software and approaches whenever possible. [link]

Right now the federal government relies on extensive custom built systems, generated by expensive private contractors who make a lot of money, and sometimes leave the government with systems that are years behind schedule, over budget, and don’t even work (like the IRS computer upgrade). Moving towards off the shelf systems, when possible, will avoid a lot of that and produce more modern, robust, computing solutions.

But what you really care about isn’t the computer geek, it’s the former Sexiest Man Alive, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Gupta withdrew his name from consideration for the Surgeon General’s position today, saying “It’s not you, it’s me” and “I’m just not in the right place in my life for what you’re offering.”

“This is more about my family and my surgical career,” …The neurosurgeon said he would likely have had to give up practicing had he taken the job as the nation’s top doctor.

In addition, the 39-year-old and his wife are expecting their third daughter any time, and the government job would have meant long periods away from his family, he said. “I think, for me, it really came down to a sense of timing more than anything else,” he said. “I just didn’t feel I should do that now.” [link]

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In your dreams

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Ever wonder what Padma Laxmi’s boudoir looks like? Well, stop your fevered imaginings and take a look at this recent issue of Harper’s Bazaar (how apposite) which showcases the 38 year old model/actress/author/jewelry designer/TV personality’s East Village apartment. (Courtesy of limeduck, who reads apartment therapy so that I don’t have to)

The decoration that has received the most attention is the giant painting of Padma herself right above her bed:

(The portrait was painted by her friend Francesco Clemente, an Italian painter who splits his time between New York, Italy, and Madras.)

It’s not just the painting though. It also looks like Padma uses her own picture as either screen saver or background image on her computer.

While I would never decorate with enlarged pictures of myself, Padma’s work product is her image, and so she’s simply surrounding herself with her professional output, like a movie producer decorating with posters from films that they made. On the other hand …

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Not ready for prime time?

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Last night’s speech was a disaster, and key shares plunged in response this morning, demonstrating that recent declines will prove difficult to reverse.

The speech in question, however, was Jindal’s and the shares in question were “Jindal stock” on the Intrade prediction market.

While Obama got a 17% bump in response to his speech, critics were less kind to Jindal, comparing him to Steve Urkel, Kenneth from 30 Rock, and Mr. Rogers. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and most other conservative commentators (1, 2, 3) panned his performance, leaving people wondering whether he has done serious harm to his chance of running for President some day:

“it’s difficult to imagine him now as Obama’s 2012 opponent. Jindal not only didn’t live up to his advance billing, he proved that he needs a lot more seasoning before he gets a prime time slot.” [link]

I agree that Jindal did poorly (who doesn’t?) but I’m not yet ready to say he has ruined his shot at becoming the GOP candidate. While Krauthammer compares Obama to Reagan as a communicator, it is easy to forget how much Obama stumbled in finding his voice even a few years ago, and how hard he had to work to find a style that worked well for him.

Jindal is young, and, as Abhi pointed out, has plenty of time ahead of him. Plus, the GOP field is so weak right now that it gives him time to grow and develop. Jindal may be down, but I wouldn’t count him out.

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Slumdog is no underdog

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Oscar season is upon us once again, and with it the opportunity to make some money by betting on the home team. Gambling on the Oscars is as venerable tradition as gambling on Diwali, making this the third biggest betting day of the year.

The sole uncontroversial topic about Slumdog is that it’s the odds on favorite tonight for both best picture and best director. The only surer bet out there is Heath Ledger for best supporting actor (you have to put down $25 to see even $1 of return) and he’s dead!

Furthermore, as we get close and closer to Oscar time, the odds keep improving in these two categories. Right now, Paddypower is giving 1-14 odds for best picture (bet $14, make $1 profit if Slumdog wins) and Danny Boyle 1-10 odds for best director (bet $10, make $1 profit if Boyle wins).

Boylesports is offering better odds for bestpicture and worse odds for best director, but in both cases, the certainty of a Slumdog win is higher today than it was just a few days ago.

Even at these odds, Slumdog is still a good investment. King of Elections Quantgeekery Nate Silver says that Slumdog has a 99% chance of getting best picture and a 99.7% chance of getting best director, estimates based on how well previous awards (which Slumdog has swept) predict the Oscars.

The chance to win big might also stem the anti-Slumdog tide of public opinion in India. Right now there is already over Rs. 2 billion ($41 million) staked on the film, so a lot of Indians will be rooting for the same film that they objected to.

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Slumdog hungama

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Honestly, I’m perplexed by the range of reactions that Slumdog has elicited. I liked the movie, had a great time while I was watching it, adored the sound track and cinematography and thought the plot and acting were clichéd. But a week later, I would have forgotten the film if not for all the other hoopla surrounding it.

The core of the controversy seems to be whether the film is exploitative. Who gets exploited (slumdwellers, old India, new India) changes depending on who is levelling the accusation, but each time the claim is that the movie is somehow poverty pr0n.

The main broadside against the film was lobbed by Amitabh who said:

“if SM projects India as [a] third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations.” [link]

He later backpedaled, saying that the words were not his own, and that he had put them up merely to start a debate.

Similar criticism came from former ambassador (and Sree‘s dad) T P Sreenivasan, who saw the movie as undermining new India:

Having read the novel and seen the film, I cannot say that it has done more good than harm to India. This is not a matter of my wanting to shove the reality under the carpet… the film is exploitation of the novel, of Dharavi, of poverty, of Rahman, of India itself to titillate foreign audiences. It is the exploitation of the new curiosity about India’s success.

Torture is internationally banned and the director of the film knew that India had not joined the global consensus against torture….The torture scenes do not add much to the story, but denigrates India even more than the slums do… As though the depiction of squalor, crime and cruelty is not enough, the film challenges India’s success. [link]

And an anonymous friend of mine summed up his discomfort with the film by saying:

Anything having to do with the third world that masses of white people go into paroxysms over is guilty until proven innocent…

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Sunday feel good: Bob Marley around the world

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Here’s some Sunday afternoon feel good for you – two Bob Marley songs performed by musicians from around the world, including several from South Asia. I liked the first, One Love, better than the second, Don’t Worry, but thought both were worth sharing. (Actually, the best video in this sequence is the first, Stand By Me, but unfortunately it has no desi musicians in it)

The organization that produced these videos (and others) is called Playing for Change. It’s worth clicking through to read their (short) manifesto. They’ve used portable digital recording technology to do a series of such recordings around the world, and are releasing them sequentially. There is a documentary about the project, and a CD/DVD that will be released at the end of April. There is an associated foundation that seems to be doing good works – there is a video of a music school they built in South Africa.

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