The end of check the box?

If you watch a little kid with a pile of stuff, you’ll often see them sorting. They’re putting some things together and separating others. On Sesame Street they sing “Which of these things are not like the other … “, it’s the first step towards developing a sense of discrimination … and also the first step towards discriminating. Still, it seems like a fairly basic human activity, even when categories are contested. Therefore, I was amused to read two stories recently about eliminating these divisions:

In conservative Nepal, authorities recently granted an official citizenship document to 40-year-old Chanda Musalman which lists “him” as both male and female:

With elections approaching, government teams are currently touring the country issuing certificates of citizenship. One team came to Chanda’s village in western Nepal. Chanda, who has had no sex-change surgery, asked the officials to erase the words male and female, listed under gender. They obliged, and ascribed Chanda’s gender as “both”… It is unclear how this unique legal status will play out in practice – for instance, how it will affect Chanda’s marriage rights. [Link]

A similar desire to eliminate pigeonholes is sounded in the opinion column of the NYT today, by an author who calls for the abolition of racial categories on the census:

There seems to be an emerging consensus that the system of racial classification that has dominated national politics and the census for nearly two centuries is so fraught with imprecision — and so tainted by racist ideas that have been disproved by science — that it should eventually be dropped altogether.

This view has been percolating among census historians for years. But it has gained traction since the 1990s, when there was a pitched battle over a proposal that would have added a “multiracial” category to the 2000 census. A compromise allowed people to check more than one box for race. But that change only fueled the debate by revealing a conflict between the fixed racial categories that have long dominated American life and a different sense of identity that’s clearly on the rise among younger Americans. [Link]

My family has been caught betwixt and between racial categories before. Back in the early 1970s my mom cut her hand and had to go to the hospital. The two nurses there started to argue about whether to denote her as white or black on the intake form. The white nurse pointed out that my mom is light (she needs sunscreen, unlike me), while the black nurse argued that since she isn’t really white, she must be black. Finally my father demanded that they admit her right away, telling them that they could put her in whatever category they wanted once the doctor saw her. Still, this story doesn’t argue that there should be no categories at all, just that categories should be useful (and that classification should be secondary to medication). So personally, I don’t get the argument for the abolition of racial categories altogether as long as they remain socially relevant.

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Iraq as an example of democracy

If you’ll all remember, one of the chief re-envisioned reasons that President Bush gave for taking the U.S. into a war in Iraq (after WMDs had been discredited) centered around the idea that with a democracy in place in the middle of the Middle East, neighboring nations would see it as a shining example of how their own governments could be if only they chose good over evil. Bush was half right. Iraq is turning into an example for its neighbors. The Christian Science Monitor reports on how democracy gets spread:

MULTAN, PAKISTAN – In this Punjabi city of shrines, Shiites and Sunnis prayed side by side during Ashura this week, the holiest holiday for the world’s 150 million Shiite Muslims. But a province away, suicide bombers attempted to strike Shiite processions throughout Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, leaving as many as 21 dead and more than 40 injured in three separate incidents, including two suicide attacks.

The violence, the latest in a sharp uptick against Pakistan’s Shiite minority, has heightened concerns that Iraq’s conflict may be feeding sectarian violence here. Whether the conflict in Iraq is capable of igniting Pakistan’s simmering sectarian tensions raises questions about a growing global sectarian war…

The answer is important, analysts say, because Pakistan’s 30 million Shiites – numbering more than Iraq’s – could become a flash point if sectarian violence spreads. [Link]

The belief that we could simply plant democracy like Johnny Appleseed is an example of the soft bigotry of unrealistic expectations. Most people that knew anything about the culture and history of the region basically foretold what has happened since. After a couple centuries of colonialism and arbitrarily imposed borders you can’t just expect people to forget their old conflicts to pray at the alter of democracy. Tocqueville in his 1835 work “Democracy in America” cautioned that democracy’s fatal flaw was that it could lead to a tyranny of the majority. In Iraq the Sunnis seem determined to prevent such a tyranny before it even begins. The great fear now is that the Muslim belief in “Ummah” will cause this fire to spread even further.

For some, Al Qaeda’s war against Shiites has already ignited tensions in Pakistan. Editorials in leading newspapers – particularly after this week’s suicide bombings – speak of a “new anti-Shiite wave that is radiating from Iraq …” and President Pervez Musharraf has warned of the need to diffuse sectarianism “not just for the country’s security, but for the entire Muslim world.”

Such fears may be well grounded, even though the number of sectarian killings is down when compared with the past. In January, police investigators in Karachi announced that Al Qaeda worked with local sectarian groups to carry out some of the largest suicide attacks against sectarian targets last year, which left more than 60 dead, according to local news reports. And this past week’s suicide attacks bore the signature of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan, observers say.

Whether or not it spells a war emanating from Iraq, the West should pay heed, say analysts… [Link]
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She Got Game

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

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

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

Shilpa wins, will anything change?

As predicted by the markets, Shetty today won Celebrity Big Brother in the UK. The whole thing was a very big deal in some ways. It sparked intense debate in the UK and caused an international furore. Tony Blair weighed in, as did the mayor of London Ken Livingston, and at least six cabinet ministers including Gordon Brown, the man who is likely to become the next PM. The media coverage of the whole thing has been intense. It has resurrected Shetty’s career, and buried the careers of Danielle Lloyd and Jade Goody. English celebrities will probably be on their best behavior concerning issues of race for the near future, and broadcasters more careful about racist content.

Still – will this tempest in a teapot matter in a few months? Will it lead to any real changes for British Asians, or will it soon be forgotten?

Over at Pickled Politics Sunny directs our attention to an article earlier this week by Priyamvada Gopal in the Guardian. In it, the author raises a number of important questions. Firstly, how deep is our recently renewed ethnic solidarity:

For British Asians, the public display of familiar battles poked at raw wounds, inspiring large numbers to protest. I would feel a lot more excited about this apparent resurgence of anti-racist awareness if recent years had shown more evidence of a genuine activist spirit among us. Where were these tens of thousands of protesting voices when young Zahid Mubarak died at the hands of a white racist cellmate with whom he should not have been made to share a cell? When a few hundred Sikh women protested alone at discriminatory treatment by British Airways meal supplier Gate Gourmet? [Link]

How much of our response to Shetty’s treatment reflects class anxiety and aspirations?

India … is increasingly obsessed with disseminating the myth of the nation as fundamentally middle-class, professional and successful. The task has partly fallen on the feminine shoulders of India’s flourishing glamour industry.

This anxiety to belong to the global community of the economically successful explains Shilpa’s repeated protests that she is not from the “slums” and did not grow up on the “roadside”… Shilpa understands her task clearly: to show the world that India is really about beauty and entrepreneurial success, not slums and poverty. Losing neither time nor opportunity, India Tourism brought out a full-page ad last week … [Link]

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Greetings and salutations

In India an interesting debate has broken out over what exactly is secular and what is religious. In particular, can the government promote yoga?

At issue is a measure by the Hindu nationalist-led government of the state of Madhya Pradesh, in central India, that required public school students to practice the sun salutation and recite certain chants in Sanskrit during a statewide function on Thursday. The state government, controlled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., said that it complied with a central government policy to encourage yoga in schools [Link]

The Chief Minister (pictured right) defended this as part of a broader a health initiative:

‘The government was committed to creating awareness about yoga, which helps to keep the body and mind in good health,’ …The yoga policy envisages constitution of a council for practising yoga in the state, provision of facilities required for setting up yoga centres, selection and appointment of yoga teachers. [Link]

However, minority groups did not see this as innocuous:

The “Suryanamaskar” programme came under attack from minority communities and opposition parties who had dubbed it as “an effort to saffronise education.” The ruling BJP was trying to “incite religious passion under the garb of yoga” among school children, a spokesman of the Catholic Church of Madhya Pradesh said. [Link]

In particular, they took issue with the use of Hindu mantras:

Muslim and Christian groups in the state took issue not so much with the yoga exercise, but with the chants, which they said were essentially Hindu and in worship of the sun. They argued in court on Wednesday that it violated the Indian constitutional provision to separate religion and state. [Link]

What time is it? It’s yoga time!

On Wednesday, the court agreed with the plaintiffs, ruling that “neither the chants nor the sun salutation could be forced on students. [Link]” The MP government has responded by saying that the whole event was voluntary in the first place, but even this remains problematic as it would create a major public event from which non-Hindus would be discouraged from attending.

We’ve blogged before about how Christians in the US are concerned about Yoga, but this story reminds me more about the “War over Christmas” than anything else. It feels like the kinds of debates we have in the US about the suitability of Christmas carols for public events, or for Christmas trees for public spaces. Even in India, certain aspects of Yoga occupy a space between public and parochial.

While I do believe that Yoga can promote health, I think that the impact of doing a quick Surya Namaskar is pretty miniscule. This means that the state is either being transparently cynical, or various ministers believe in the almost mystical powers of yoga to produce health over and above the component physical movements. If it’s the latter, perhaps the opponents of this program ought to respond with some laughing yoga instead .

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Hungry children failed by state and market

This is a week of good news and bad. The good news is that Goldman Sachs thinks the Indian economy is growing even faster than previously expected:

India could overtake Britain and have the world’s fifth largest economy within a decade as the country’s growth accelerates, a new report says… By 2050 India’s economy could be larger even than America’s, only China’s will be bigger, the bank predicts. [Link]

The bad news is that child malnutrition rates are still startling high in India. This week the PM felt a need to deal out thapars:

Our prevalent rate of under-nutrition in the 0-6 age group remains one of the highest in the world,” Mr Singh said. “These are startling figures and the situation calls for urgent action.” [Link]

The situation remains astonishingly dire:

Last year the UN children’s agency, Unicef, said that the average malnutrition rate in some Indian states – such as densely populated Uttar Pradesh – was 40%. That is higher than sub-Saharan Africa where it is around 30%, Unicef said. [Link]

… Unicef report said half of the world’s under-nourished children live in South Asia….”South Asia has higher levels of child under-nutrition than Sub-Saharan Africa, but Sub-Saharan Africa has higher rates of child mortality…” [Link]

Most striking is the fact that the economic growth of the past 15 years hasn’t necessarily translated into better child nutrition, and that malnutrition has actually risen in some places:

A recent health ministry survey said that the number of undernourished children below the age of three had actually risen in some states since the late 1990s, despite higher incomes and rapid economic growth. [Link]

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Turban vs. Terminator

Arnold Schwartzenegger has a new opponent, and this time he’s battling a desi [Thanks Chick Pea!]. The governator’s latest adversary is the head of the the California Medical Association, Dr. Anmol Mahal.

The Fremont, Calif., gastroenterologist admired Schwarzenegger’s goals–coverage for all of the state’s 36 million residents and improving health care for kids. “It’s in some ways very visionary,” Mahal said later. But Mahal’s admiration soured when Schwarzenegger revealed that his plan would force doctors to give up 2 percent of their gross incomes to help fund coverage. “We are very discouraged and disappointed,” Mahal complained. “We had no warning.” [Link]

It is strange enough for me to see two of the highest profile Republican governors in the country pick up Hillary Clinton’s banner of universal healthcare, but stranger still for me to see a turbanned face (wearing a turban almost the same shade of blue that Manmohan Singh wears) staring back at me from the pages of the MSNBC article on the subject.

The racial aspect of this is striking because this is a plan designed, in part, to cover the health expenses of illegal aliens. This is a complete about face from former Republican Governor Pete Wilson’s strategy of demonizing illegal aliens. Having a desi doctor as the face of the opposition adds another twist, framing this as a debate between wealthy legal immigrants and poor illegal ones. That makes the politics more interesting, but also more complex.

The crux of the doctors’ disagreement with the plan is the way in which it will be funded:

nearly 30 percent of the plan’s costs [will be covered] by levying a $3.5 billion “coverage dividend” on doctors’ (and hospitals’) gross revenues. “Why not tax teachers to provide money for better schools?” complains Dr. Samuel Fink, a Los Angeles internist. [Link]

Some medical practices would suffer more than others, doctors complain. Assessed on gross revenues rather than net income, the 2 percent fee hits doctors with high overheads harder, including oncologists, pediatricians and general practitioners–whose overhead costs may amount to 50 to 60 percent of their revenues. [Link]

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Sex by the numbers

Last November, India Today (with AC Neilsen and others) reported on their fourth ever national sex survey [Thanks reader sohwhat!]. This time round they focussed on India’s youth. Here are some highlights (from behind the subscription wall, although you can see a summary of their findings in this Reuters article):

  • “46% single 16-25-year-old males have had sex, 10% higher than the 2004 survey”
  • “37% single young men have had a homosexual experience, compared to 31% in 2004”
  • “The average age of first sexual encounter for men has come down from 23 in 2004 to 18.”

Some of these findings, by the way, don’t quite add up. For example, while only 46% of young males claimed to have had sex, “49% young men have had sex with sex workers. In Ludhiana, it as high as 63%.” That seems a bit bizarre. After all, if you’ve had sex with a sex worker, you’ve had sex.

Also, the idea that close to 50% of all males have had sex with a sex worker, if true, is trouble from the perspective of the spread of HIV.

As for the women, some admit to having sex, but not as many, and they’re starting later than the boys:

  • “In 2005… only 24 per cent single women between the ages of 18 and 30 … had had sex.”
  • “42 per cent [of single women] said they had their first sexual encounter between the ages of 19 and 21.”

Despite this busyness in the sack for both sexes, both men and women say women should stay virgins until they are married:

  • “63% single young men expect the woman they marry to be a virgin, 10% lower than in 2004”
  • “In the 2005 survey of single women, 66 per cent agreed, saying women should remain virgins till they are married.”

The most disturbing finding was one about the prevalence of incest, which implies that a large number of females are having forced sex with family members:

  • “14 per cent [of single males] claim to have had sex with family members.”

That number is horrifying enough, but when you consider that there was likely under-reporting, it’s even more disturbing.

All quotes from the India Today Sex Survey Cover Article, “Men in a Muddle

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