Author Archives: Razib Khan

Brown on “The Street”

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The Raj Trial and Wall Street’s South Asian Elite:

This new South Asian Wall Street elite includes the CEO of Citigroup, Indian-born Vikram Pandit; Ajit Jain, also from India, a money manager emerging as the likely successor to investment guru Warren Buffett; and a half-dozen hedge-fund managers who use strategies based on mathematical algorithms to routinely rake in $50 million or more per year in income. Chief among the latter group is the Sri Lankan-born Rajaratnam, who ran a $7 billion hedge fund, Galleon Group, and largely to the disgust of this justifiably proud community, has emerged as the face of this new ethnic order.

In much the same way that the upwardly mobile Jewish community of the 1930s viewed Jewish gangsters as a “shanda fur die goyim” (shame before the gentiles), the “Raj trial” has put the South Asian financial clique on full display, for all its success–and insularity.

I actually had some media inquiries in relation to the Galleon trial in terms of how I thought it impacted the South Asian American community. Since I’m primarily a science blogger who isn’t even part of the South Asian American community, even the Bangaldeshi community, I just passed the inquiries on.

Those “in the know” can comment further, but my impression is that an analogy between a South Asian clique on Wall Street and a Jewish clique is weakened by the fact that brown folk are much more diverse. There’s a commonality in the U.S.A. due to how we’re perceived by others, but it isn’t as if a Sri Lankan quant is going to arrange a marriage with Neel Kashkari’s future children. More pointedly I think many of us perceive brown bankers and hedge fund guys and gals as bankers and hedge fund guys and gals first and foremost. Or at least that’s how the rest of America should view them.

In fact the journalist who contacted me admitted that they were having a hard time fleshing out the South Asian angle, since so few people in “the community” seemed interested or concerned about the Galleon trial. It was a different matter apparently when it came to management consultants and people on Wall Street, who thought their image was being tarnished further (yes, it is being tarnished further, but you’ll keep your bonuses, so I hope that’s just compensation for your reduced esteem!). Continue reading →

Sai Baba, 1926-2011

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Sathya Sai Baba, Hindu Holy Man, Dies at 86:

Indian television ran nonstop news coverage on Sunday of the guru’s death, while officials and celebrities expressed sadness over an “irreparable loss.”

“Sri Satya Sai Baba was a spiritual leader who inspired millions to lead a moral and meaningful life, even as they followed the religion of their choice,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a statement. “The nation deeply mourns his passing away.”

Andhra Pradesh state, where Puttaparti is located, declared four days of mourning, with its top official calling Sai Baba “a symbol of love, affection and passion.”

“Sri Satya Sai Baba has given his great self to the service of humanity,” Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy said. “He will be remembered for ages to come by all sections of people all over the world.”

Prediction: as the Indian middle class waxes Sai Baba will be viewed as a trailblazing religious entrepreneur. There will be many more in his mold. Continue reading →

The genetic origin of Indians

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onge2.jpgThe question of national and individual origins has a corporeal and concrete dimension, and a mythic and symbolic one. This is evident in the religious traditions which most of the world’s populations adhere to. Israel is both literally and figuratively a descent group. They issue from the tribes descended from the sons of Jacob. Those who convert into the Jewish religion customarily also convert into the Jewish nation, and so figuratively share the same descent. Similarly, among Muslims there is a particular prestige given over to the descendants of Muhammad, the Sayyids. Within Hinduism the importance of descent groups manifests generally in terms of the endogamy prevalent among South Asians, and also in specific cases, such as with gotras. The fundamental atomic basis of Confucian religious morality is arguably filial piety. Confucius’ descendants still play a prominent role in modern China promoting his ideas.

But descent also has a scientific and concrete aspect. Sometimes the mythic and scientific align. It does seem that the notional male line descendants of Genghis Khan are actually descended from one individual who flourished ~1,000 years ago. In other instances the connection is complex. Jews do seem to share common descent, but it is also evident that they have mixed greatly amongst the nations. And sometimes the inferences generated by science may warrant a reconsideration of treasured myths. Most reasonable people will probably accede to the clear overwhelming descent of South Asian Muslims from the native people of the Indian subcontinent, but the genetics clinches that. True, there is quite often a clear trace of Middle Eastern and African ancestry among the Muslims of South Asia above and beyond what may be found amongst non-Muslims, but often this component is dwarfed by a minor East Asian element which seems to warrant no cultural memory! Continue reading →

Literate sex ratio, 2011 census of India

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Poking around the 2011 provisional data from the Indian census I noticed that literacy rates had gone up across the board. But, in many states there was the long standing disjunction between male and female literacy rates. So I decided to create some plots, what else?

First, below you see a simple plot of female vs. male literacy by Indian administrative unit. There’s a strong linear relationship, where variation in male literacy explains ~75% of the variation in female literacy. But again I’m a little wary of unweighted plots like this, since urban areas are not representative of the Indian society as a whole. So I also generated a bubble plot in R, where the size of the bubbles is proportional to the total population surveyed. Continue reading →

The brown near misses of the John Clark Bates Medal

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Stanford’s Jonathan Levin won the John Bates Clark Medal a few days ago. Prior to this via Tyler Cowen I noticed a post in The Wall Street Journal blog Real Time Economics mulling the potential winners. Note that this award is given to a prominent economist under the age of 40, and is referred to as the “Baby Nobel” because so many past winners have gone on to win that prize (e.g., Paul Samuelson and Paul Krugman).

Here were the brown possibilities: Continue reading →

The girl dearth

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Update: I put this post up before a very long road trip. When I checked the comments on my smartphone 10 hours later at a truck stop things had clearly gone in an unproductive direction. So I closed comments. In the future I understand that it will not do for me to put up a post when I won’t be able to monitor initial comments, as excising inappropriate ones after the fact fragments the conversation too much. Live and learn.

For the record, I have no issues with being impolitic on the substance of matters. But thread-jacking as occurred below when there’s so much low hanging fruit to discuss is not acceptable. Speaking of which, in response to S. R. Datta’s mooting of the issue of hepatitis as the reason for sex ratio distortion in China, that hypothesis seems to have been rejected, including by the scholar who originally forwarded it. Obviously that may not be true generally, though let us note that sex ratio imbalances are well known from the historical record, and they often vary as a function of time and class (e.g., medieval European nobility seemed to exhibit son preference, while peasants did not, at least as adduced from the ratio of the sex of buried infants). I think the Trivers-Willard hypothesis may explain some of these trends across human history.

End Update

Several readers have pointed to the recent, unfortunately predictable, story coming out of the Indian census, Selective Abortions Blamed For Girl Shortage In India:

Dr. C. Chandramouli, India’s census commissioner, says the numbers don’t lie: The girls are missing.

Among children under 6 years old in India today, there are only 940 girls for every 1,000 boys. Worldwide, it’s around 986 to every 1,000.

Chandramouli says this is a continuation of a trend that was first seen clearly in the 2000 census — but the new figures show the problem is spreading.

“It has to be said that what was predominantly a North Indian phenomena of a few states has now spread across the country, and we see a uniform decline all over the country, so that is what is more distressing,” he says.

First, in the short term economic development can lead to the spread of practices through emulation of dominant elites. But, in the long term one can see a reversal of the preference for boys to girls. In Japan the shift occurred 20 years ago. In Korea the change is happening now. One hopes that the same switch will occur with China and India, though it seems unlikely that these nations will become as wealthy on a per capita basis as Japan or Korea in the near future, so it would have to be driven by non-economic factors as well (the drop in fertility in some nations preceded economic growth, to the surprise of demographers, so it can happen).

But it must be remembered that regional differences persist, as is evident in this map: Continue reading →

A brown twist on personal genomics

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I know that many people took advantage of the 23andMe sale I highlighted on Sunday. I also know that a fair number of these were brown, as I also have a list of people who I emailed, and several South Asians confirmed that they’d purchased the 23andMe kit. What do you get if you purchase this kit? Basically 1 million markers, SNPs, which are simply population-wide variant positions within your genome. These markers were chosen because variation is often informative, in terms of traits, as well as ancestry.

But obviously you are not going to just be looking at a string of letters. The data has to be analyzed for you. 23andMe provides a range of tools in this domain. But, one needs to use them cautiously, and also understand their limitations. In particular, these tools were often tuned for a specific set of populations which does not include South Asians. So some of the results are going to strike you as strange.

First, let’s hit the easy stuff. Health and traits. Continue reading →

A call to all brown gene nerds!

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Update II: Several people have emailed me and confirmed that they finally purchased a kit. A little over $100 seems to be a good price point for what is mostly recreational genetics. Tomorrow I will post on what you’ll see in your 23andMe account, and how you have to interpret it if you are brown.

Update: Sale is operative. Limit 5 per person!

Just thought I’d pass on word, tomorrow the 23andMe genotyping service is going to have a sale. The details:

When: April 11th, 12 AM PDT to 12 PM PDT (so 3 AM EDT to 3 PM EDT)

How much: $9/month for 12 months = $108 per year for their analytic service. The kit cost, $199, is waived for the sale.

What you get: Ancestry analysis, trait assessment, and disease risk estimates. I wouldn’t put too much stock in the last in terms of bang-for-buck if you are not adopted…though the last person I explained that to ended up finding over 50% probability of macular degeneration (not a 50% increased risk, a 50% probability of developing the disease!).

For nerds the big deal is that you can get your raw genotype for 1 million markers. There are several personal genetics projects which have been started by people pooling their data. I put up a simple tutorial for those curious, and have started my own African ancestry project. But for readers of this weblog, Harappa is the way to go. Zack has over 80 participants now. Below the fold I’ve placed a tree which shows the genetic relationships in terms of ancestral quanta. I’ve underlined myself (I’m right next to my parents, as you’d expect). Continue reading →

A nuanced brown place in the world

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Recently my friend Michelle re-tweeted this tweet you see to the left from Aziz Ansari. When I was in college some Indian students would play cricket in the public spaces I had to cross to get between classes, and they would consistently stop what they were doing and give me an inviting stare down. Finally I asked them what was up, and one of the players wondered if I played cricket. I explained not only did I not play cricket, but I had no idea what they were doing most of the time. One of my interlocutors quipped that I looked like I should play cricket. I had to laugh at that, and went on my way.

So first, congratulations to India! I recall how excited Americans were when we won the Women’s Soccer World Cup in 1999, when frankly most Americans didn’t even follow the sport. I can only imagine the euphoria in India due to victory in a sporting activity which is near the center of national consciousness.

But this gets me to a broader issue: as an Indian American, Aziz Ansari serves as a representative in the minds of his fellow Americans of India. In several of the comedic references I’ve seen to his ethnicity Aziz seems to express curiosity as to the farcical nature that his representation of a billion people sometimes takes on. For example, when Slumdog Millionaire was in the public eye people would apparently discuss it with him constantly (Aziz naturally expressed wonder at what the world must be for like for white people, who are the subject of so many films!).

Continue reading →

Speaking of a demonstration in Pakistan….

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When I was in college because of my appearance and name people would sometimes assume I was of Pakistani origin. I would explain that I was born in Bangladesh and raised in the United States. If they were international students from Pakistan or the Arab world they would sometimes respond, “OK, but you are Muslim.” I’d have to explain that my parents are Muslim, but I was not religious, and an atheist in fact. Quite a few of the foreign students were not clear what an atheist was (probably in large part because English was not their native language). I told them it meant that I did not believe in God. I never encountered anger or outrage, but it was clear that some of these men and women were shaken by my rather casual expression of disbelief. The more liberally minded would wonder if I was spiritual at all, had I explored Sufism? If my interlocutor was bearded usually there would be very little follow up and we would part ways rather quickly.

I perceived that they were fleeing some sort of abhorrent contagion.

What was on evidence was a cultural difference. Atheism has existed for all time and in all places among some individuals (South Asia’s indigenous materialist atheist tradition were the Cārvāka). But the rejection of God is taboo in some places today. These places include regions of the United States. I attended a conference recently where one of the presenters gave a talk on how to mobilize collective action effectively to further goals of social injustice. One of his slides had a list of insults that one might hurl at someone to hurt them. On it was the n-word and a pejorative term for gay men. As well as the term atheist! After the presenter finished his talk and was ready for a Q & A, the conference MC joked "So you think that atheist is an insult? You’re from the South aren’t you?” The presenter seemed embarrassed, and admitted he was from Texas. In hindsight this was a slide that perhaps needed a little touch up in light of the fact that his audience was saturated with West coast based techies. Continue reading →