Category Archives: News

Cabbie Conflict

Posted on by

Pema Sharpa.jpgBack in grad school, I worked on a report with the LA Taxi Workers Alliance interviewing cabbies about their work and living conditions. The stories that I heard were deeply human about personal lives and labor conditions. It was common to hear stories of cabbies that would lease their cabs at outrageous daily costs. Often one cab is driven by two drivers, one taking a day shift, the other the night shift, working solid 7 days a week.

The New York Times covered a tragic story, between two Nepalese taxi drivers sharing the same cab in New York City.

Each man had come from Nepal over the past decade, and attended the same taxi-training school in Jackson Heights. For a year, they had split the $1,400-per-week leasing fee on a yellow cab, Medallion 6M83, trading 12-hour shifts behind the wheel, seven days a week.

Mr. Sherpa, 28, drove days, chauffeuring strivers bound for business meetings, power lunches and auditions. Mr. Chhantyal, 30, shepherded the denizens of New York’s nightlife, the decadent and the dangerous.[nyt]

The day shift driver, Sherpa, had a happier life with a wife and baby girl at home whereas night shift driver Chhantyal had a much more depressing life. It also turned out that Sherpa had just secured a car loan that would soon make him a taxi owner and Chhantyal would become his employee.

Mr. Sherpa received Mr. Chhantyal’s usual wake-up call at 4 a.m. on Sept. 12… Typically Mr. Chhantyal, to avoid complications from one-way streets, would park and wait for Mr. Sherpa on busy Broadway, which comes to life early with cabs and service vehicles headed toward Manhattan. But on this morning, Mr. Sherpa saw that his partner had parked on deserted, residential 62nd Street. As usual, Mr. Chhantyal stepped out to give Mr. Sherpa the driver’s seat. But, strangely, he let the door close and lock. As Mr. Sherpa fished for his duplicate key, he recalled, he felt the first blow.

That September morning on a Queens sidewalk, Mr. Chhantyal finally had the upper hand, swinging the cleaver that he and his roommates used to chop vegetables. Until Mr. Sherpa, on his back, somehow managed to kick the big blade from his hands, sending it skidding under the cab. Continue reading →

The Gurkha Way

Posted on by

This past week, journalist Anup Kaphle posted a video he had filmed in Helmand Province, Afghanistan (via The Atlantic). In it he explains the very important role Nepali Gurkha soldiers are playing in the war effort. As you will see, this video is timely considering the core of Obama’s new strategy: using military power to buy time in order to “de-corrupt” the Karzai government and to further train the Afghan National Army. I won’t address whether the first part of that strategy is possible, but I would like to briefly address the second. One of the historic problems in training Afghan soldiers has been getting them to work as a unit. In the Afghan warrior culture, one of the ways in which a man makes a name for himself is through individual acts of valor on the battlefield. However, in modern warfare it is incredibly difficult to prevail unless acting as a diciplined team. As seen in the video, the Afghan soldiers seem to identify with the Gurkhas due to similarities in culture, if not religion. Gurkhas also speak and understand Urdu.

The Brigade of Gurkhas is the collective term for units of the current British Army that are composed of Nepalese soldiers. The brigade, which is 3,640 strong, draws its heritage from Gurkha units that originally served in the British Indian Army prior to Indian independence, and prior to that of the East India Company. The brigade includes infantry, engineer, signal, logistic and training and support units. They are famous for their ever-present kukris, a distinctive heavy knife with a curved blade, and for their reputation of being fierce fighters and brave soldiers. They take their name from the hill town of Gorkha from which the Nepalese kingdom had expanded. The ranks have always been dominated by four ethnic groups, the Gurungs and Magars from central Nepal, the Rais and Limbus from the east, who live in hill villages of impoverished hill farmers. [Link]

Nepal is on the brink of all kinds of disaster due to political and economic instability. My Nepali sister-in-law often talks of Nepal as an already failed state with no future. Even though Nepal very clearly falls under India’s sphere-of-influence, I wonder if there might be a strategic opportunity here. Can the U.S. perhaps somehow better fold contributions from Nepal into it’s strategy. I ask because mention of Nepal is often left out of our public strategic discussions. I know the video above is just one small anecdote, but some more Gurkhas working with the British and American forces there sure wouldn’t hurt if our objective is to train Afghanistan’s army as quickly as possible so we can get out.

Also, even if you aren’t interested in this post, make sure to watch the video to see the Gurkha Soliders sing “Poker Face” by Lady GaGa.

Continue reading →

“The big river they have there that sounds like a disease”: Glenn Beck on India

Posted on by

I have been struggling and failing to find an appropriate way to respond to Glenn Beck’s latest insanity. MediaMatters has the video and the almost unbelievable quotes, which about 1.2 billion people are likely to deem to be offensive and tasteless, from a recent Beck broadcast:

For those not able to stomach watching the actual video, the choice quotes are as follows:

And also, in our research that it took us, oh about 40 seconds, we figured out that some of that money here in America winds up in the pocket of a skilled doctor that helps off-set the 20 years of schooling that he endured and the loans he took out. And – you’re not going to believe this one, Karlyn – some of that money seems to go to the 1 million SEIU workers in the healthcare industry that make slightly more here than in India. Because, you know, they have an American lifestyle, maybe a couple of cars, great union benefits, and homes with something that we in America like to call flush toilets. (link)

Quite separately from the nasty slur about India in this quote, Beck’s logic completely escapes me. If anyone can actually make sense of what he is trying to say, I would be curious to hear it. I think this is an elaborate way of saying Americans shouldn’t do medical tourism in India, but rather pay premium rates for procedures not covered by insurance, because some of the money they might be giving a surgeon will somehow go to SEIU workers? (But what’s all this about loans and so on? Is he aware that Indian students bring millions upon millions of dollars into American higher education?)

But of course, the real stunner in this ‘bit’ from Beck is the following:

I don’t want a discounted doctor. I don’t want discounted wages. I don’t want any of this stuff. If I wanted to live in India, I’d live in India. I want not the Indian lifestyle, I want the American lifestyle. I’m sure, no offense to India, I’m sure it’s beautiful and everything. I’ve heard especially this time of year, especially by the – you know that one big river they have there that sounds like a disease? Come on, it does. I mean, if somebody said, ‘I’m sorry, you have a really bad case of Ganges,’ you’d want Cipro.” (link)

While the earlier rant directed at medical tourism, incoherent as it was, had some salience to the health care debate, this bit of assholery is just utterly gratuitous.

I’m looking forward to the day this guy falls back into obscurity. A few months ago, left-leaning activists launched a campaign to get Beck’s advertisers to pull back from his show. While they were successful, it hasn’t done anything to slow him down. Beck’s provocations are working: his rating continue to be high, no matter how many times he’s mocked by comedians and spat at by bloggers. It’s hard for me personally to get newly outraged when this guy has been, for months, comparing President Obama to Hitler and the like.

Still, the level of offense these statements could provoke in India itself, if the comments end up being covered in the Indian media (hint hint), could make things interesting for Beck. (Here’s a tip for any Indian journalists reading this: Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, also owns Star TV… Hmm…) Continue reading →

Are vigilant parents the first line of defense?

Posted on by

In case you missed it this morning, it was announced that five young Muslim men from the Virginia suburbs were arrested in a jihadi safehouse in Sargodha, a city in northern Punjab. Trying to get in to Al Qaeda is kind of like trying to get in to the mob it seems. If you don’t have someone to vouch for you and you don’t know how to act the part, then you may be shit out of luck:

The men contacted extremist organizations, including two with links to al-Qaeda, and proudly told their Pakistani interrogators that “We are here for jihad,” said Usman Anwar, the local Pakistani police chief whose officers interrogated the men, all Muslims from the Alexandria area.

Anwar said police recovered jihadist literature, laptop computers and maps of different parts of Pakistan when the men were arrested near Lahore on Tuesday. The maps included areas where the Taliban train. The men first made contact with the two extremist organizations by e-mail in August, officials said, but the groups apparently rejected their overtures because they couldn’t find people to vouch for them. [Link]

Also,

They were rebuffed in both places because of their Western demeanor and their inability to speak the national language, Urdu, an investigator said… [Link]

The Washington Post identifies the five men:

The men, who range in age from 19 to 25, were identified by Pakistani officials and sources close to the case as Umar Chaudhry, Waqar Khan, Ahmad A. Mini, Aman Hassan Yemer and Ramy Zamzam. Chaudhry’s father, Khalid, was also arrested in Pakistan and is being questioned, authorities said. [Link]
Continue reading →

A New State in India: Telangana

Posted on by

The biggest story in India this week appears to be the central government’s agreement to allow a new state to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh, called Telangana. The new state will include the tech-powerhouse city of Hyderabad, and will be predominantly Telugu-speaking. One news article I read put the estimated population of the new state at 35 million people.

Here is what the new state will look like

telengana map.jpg

I have known of agitations for a separate Telangana state for awhile, though I must admit I do not know the history in depth, and would be glad to be enlightened by readers who know the region better than I do. However, Wikipedia does offer a few helpful background facts. First, the region that will become Telangana was, during British colonialism, part of the Princely State of Hyderabad, and was only formally merged into Andhra in 1956 — and even then, the merger was controversially imposed by the central government. The agitations for a separate state have been going on for at least 40 years; in 1969, 400 people were killed in agitations for a separate state of Telangana.

I had earlier thought that language was a factor in the demands for Telangana, but in fact language is not mentioned by supporters of this movement, since Telugu is spoken in the other half of Andhra as well. Rather, the focus seems to be on access to irrigation and economic opportunity (see this interview). Are there other factors that people know of?

The news has resulted in the mass resignation of Congress Party-allied MLAs in the other part of Andhra Pradesh, suggesting that the Central Government may not be able to easily sustain its promise to create Telangana without making lots of new promises to the other half of the state. That, or we might see one of those major regional political realignments in Indian politics that can cause seemingly strong governments to fall. (Incidentally, the BJP had promised to create a Telangana state when it was in power, but was unable to do so. However, during the BJP’s five years in power it did create three new states in northern India.)

The news is also expected to give a new boost to other statehood agitation movements in other parts of India; Gorkhaland is one that is often mentioned.

Do you support the creation of Telangana? Isn’t it possible that acceding to these statehood movements in India might lead to a further weakening of an already weak central government? Also, do you think these movements might feed a sense of monoculturalist ‘separateness’ that could make the region a less inviting place for people from different ethno-linguistic backgrounds who happen to live there? Continue reading →

Man Builds Shed

Posted on by

Everyone (well every guy I know) seems to be talking about the Walden-esque profile of former TARP Czar Neel Kashkari in Sunday’s Washington Post. The article/profile is a thing to behold. More a short story than article really. It is difficult to ascertain whether the author is satirizing an Icarus-like fall from grace with her ridiculously over-the-top description of Kashkari’s self-exile into the woods, or whether she is being earnest. If the former, “bravo” I say. You have brilliantly portrayed our South Asian male, 30s-mid-life-crisis angst. If the latter, then…well, where to begin? The stubble would be a good place. A man’s stubble, more often than not, has a good story behind it:

He wears no coat though it’s freezing, shines no light though it’s near midnight, carries no shotgun though he’s tramping on the pine-needled tracks of black bears….

The moon hits his stubble, which is six days old. And the sweater he hasn’t changed in three or four days. His BlackBerry — he can’t kick it — rang once today. A year ago in D.C., it buzzed every few seconds. All night, he’d roll over to its bluish glow. His Treasury Department assistant slept with hers, powered up, on her pillow. [Link]

The article goes on to describe a young and gung-ho aerospace enginerd, who first goes into the heart of Wall Street, and then on to Oz (a.k.a. Washington D.C.) with his powerful mentor. They had me hooked at the aerospace enginerd part. Kashkari is a man we can all get behind. He is the everyman in a $700 billion story. But our hero begins to learn that Oz is nothing but a shimmering illusion and all the knives are soon drawn upon him:

Congress savaged him. Wall Street Journal editorials doubted him. His home-town buddies urged him to use the money to buy the Cleveland Browns and fire the coaches. His wife spoke to him so rarely, she described them as “dead to each other.” He lost sleep, gained weight and saw a close adviser, Don Hammond, suffer a heart attack at his Treasury desk. On May 1, after serving seven months under Presidents Bush and Obama, he resigned. [Link]

Continue reading →

A New Slant on Life

Posted on by

Last month, the hard rock band Slant dropped their second self-titled album on to the scene. Based out of Southern California, Slant is foursome band with two Bengali guys (Fahim – lead singer, Munir – guitars) and two Russian brothers (Ilya – bass, Andrew – drums). I’ve seen the incredible growth of Slant over the years, from when teenage Fahim used to play guitar in his mother’s living room to seeing him perform on stage years later at the world famous Roxy on Sunset.

In the latest album, you can hear the maturity to their sound – the musical composition is richer sounding than their first album, and the hard rock sound is soulfully anthem-ic without sounding narcissistic. You can read a detailed album review here. I’m not much of a rock music fan (unless there’s a punk in front of it) but I do appreciate Slant’s latest album, particularly the song Beautiful Angel, a song about a family friend of ours that was brutally murdered a couple years ago.

You can download both Slant’s first album ‘A Thin Line’ and their second self-titled album off of iTunes or CDBaby now. But, exclusively for Sepia Mutiny readers, the first person that responds in the comment section with the name of three cities in Europe that Slant has performed, will get an autographed copy of their latest album (don’t forget to leave your e-mail).

I spoke with lead singer Fahim Zaman and guitarist Munir Haque about dropping their second album, the inspirations and their journey to making this album. You can read it below!

For those that don’t know Slant, who are you guys?

Fahim: We are a hard rock/alternative/progressive group made up of two Bengali guys raised in Southern California and two Russian brothers raised here, that are attempting to bring forth and change the world with our “slant” on rock music 🙂
Continue reading →

On Blogging & the First Amendment

Posted on by

I was interested to see a story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution the other day regarding the “Hindu Temple of Georgia”:

The property of the Hindu Temple of Georgia was sold to the highest bidder Tuesday at a public foreclosure auction in Gwinnett County. It was unclear who bought the nine-acre property at 5900 Brook Hollow Parkway in Norcross following the temple’s default on a $2.3 million bank loan. A Gwinnett County court clerk said it typically takes about 30 days for a deed to be recorded after a foreclosure sale occurs. (link)

The person who ran the temple is the real story:

Lloyd Whitaker, a trustee appointed by a federal bankruptcy judge, said Anderson Lakes had intended to bid on the parcel. Court documents filed by the trustee this week say the temple’s leader and guru, Annamalai Annamalai, has been using the temple to “defeat justice, perpetuate fraud, and to evade contractual and tort responsibilities” since it was set up in 2006.

The trustee’s investigation has so far revealed that Annamalai, a citizen of India, applied for a work visa in 2007 under the pretext of working as an accountant for the temple for $40,000 a year. Yet Annamalai’s business records list his income at upward of $425,000 last year alone, court documents show. He has never filed federal or state tax returns, and the Internal Revenue Service has launched a criminal investigation into Annamalai’s financial dealings.

Financial documents obtained by the trustee also show that Annamalai has funneled money from the temple to other business entities that he controls, to accounts in the names of his wife and two children and to several of his priests. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in temple funds were used pay for the mortgage on Annamalai’s million-dollar mansion in Duluth, as well as his luxury vehicles and credit card bills, according to the court record. (link)

Why might all this be of interest, you may wonder.

Well, this past summer, Abhi and I received a “cease and desist” letter from attorneys representing the priest named in the AJC article asking us to delete a blog post I wrote in 2008 related to the Hindu Temple of Georgia. We also received a subpoena regarding the identity of a commenter on the comments thread following the post (someone who clearly had links to the Temple, not an ordinary commenter). Continue reading →

Bhopal at 25: Thoughts?

Posted on by

Sandhya wrote a post last year related to Bhopal last year, so perhaps it isn’t necessary to go through the particulars of a case that most people know about. Still, it seems important to acknowledge that today is 25 years to the day since the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal broke down, resulting in the release of massive amounts of poisonous methyl isocyanate gas, which killed about 30,000 people and injured thousands more (more than 500,000 people claimed damages). For those unfamiliar with the story, here is a detailed chronology of events.

As many people are aware, the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) was an American company. The plant was technically operated by its subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), which was 51% owned by UCC at the time of the disaster.

In one of the strangest, and most fateful, twists in the legal history of the Bhopal disaster, a U.S. District Court decided in May, 1986 that UCIL was an Indian company (“a separate entity, owned, managed and operated exclusively by Indian citizens in India”), and therefore any litigation regarding the Bhopal disaster should be done in India. The decision by the District Court was upheld on Appeal.

The transfer of legal authority — in effect, the U.S. justice system saying, “hey, this is not an American company, so it’s not our problem” — significantly weakened the damages that were likely to be rewarded. Indeed, the final damages, reached in an out of court settlement, was only $470 million. When all was said and done, that came out to $2,200 for each person killed, and about $500 for each person injured. Neither UCIL nor UCC ever had to acknowledge culpability, or take responsibility for cleaning up the still polluted site of the Union Carbide Plant. A Dow Chemicals executive later stated that the amount “is plenty good for an Indian.” Even with the conversion to Rupees, I can’t see how $500 is a significant help for a person who may be living with a debilitating injury, with children who are born, even years later, with serious congenital birth defects associated with (still) poisoned groundwater. It’s not “plenty good”; it’s laughable.

A commenter on Sandhya’s earlier thread mentioned the Sambhavna Clinic, which was built specifically to care for victims of the disaster. There is a “donate here” button; if you have a couple of bucks to spare, you might use it.

Finally, Suketu Mehta has a column up in the New York Times today. He does lament that Dow Chemicals hasn’t done anything to help clean up the site. But what he doesn’t mention is that the reason for that is that the U.S. justice system washed its hands of the mess in 1986, and the Indian Government, which is the only entity that today has any legal responsibility to do anything for anyone in Bhopal, meekly accepted it.

What are your thoughts today? Have you read anything insightful or enlightening with regards to the Bhopal disaster in recent days? Continue reading →

Ideological Impurities: BJP vs. the Republicans

Posted on by

Andrew Sullivan has a blog post comparing the Indian and U.S. political situations today, citing an anonymous reader. The reader’s main point is that the current infighting within the U.S. Republican party might be seen as resembling the BJP’s own internal chaos in India:

Perhaps the Democrats can look to India for reasons to be optimistic. At this time, the BJP is in electoral ruins, aided by their rank and honest fundamentalism. They’ve been smashed by Congress for two elections in a row and the report on Ayodhya is about as damning as can be. In response, the hardcore base is working to eliminate anyone who can lead them out of the wilderness. Just as in the GOP, this is done in a pursuit of ideological purity. The only difference is the religion being espoused. (link)

This seems like a viable parallel for a minute, but only for a minute. First, the recent report on Ayodhya, which I blogged about recently, doesn’t seem politically significant; it’s more of a symbolic event. As the reader continues, the parallel starts to seem really shaky:

The RSS, which provides the ideological grounding of Hindu nationalism, as well as a significant section of the ground game, has forced Jaswant Singh out for the simple act of praising the founder of Pakistan. They’ve warned all other moderates to basically shut up and toe the party line. No one seems to remember that the BJP became nationally popular thanks to a pragmatic program of economic growth, reducing corruption, and downplaying Hindutva. Again, the moderates in the party are bemoaning these trends, and warn that divisive communalism may lead to short term electoral gain, but will ultimately lead to total marginalization. No one is listening.

I question the reader’s understanding of what happened during the 1990s. Yes, the Congress Party was widely seen as deeply corrupt and incompetent after the disastrous decades of the 1970s and 1980s. But as I understand history, the BJP actually gained quite a bit of popular momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s, specifically through communal rhetoric focused on issues such as the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and Shahbano. Continue reading →