Manorama has a great post about her experience taking Hindi at her university. She is a Bangladeshi-American graduate student, and is studying the language mainly for scholarly/ academic purposes, as I understand it. Her post dovetails nicely with one of the issues raised in my post yesterday — how and whether South Asians in the diaspora end up learning Hindi — and gives me the chance to research and reflect on the status of Hindi and other South Asian languages at American universities in general.

Manorama’s university decided it needed to separate the ‘Heritage’ Hindi students from the ‘non-Heritage’ (i.e., white, in this case) students. Students who grew up in households where Punjabi, Hindi, Gujurati, etc. were spoken generally go in the Heritage section, where less effort is spent on pronunciation and some basic vocabulary, while more effort is spent on grammar and so on. It’s arguably a good idea, though it results in de facto segregation. Continue reading →

Asha for Education is in the midst of its annual “Work an Hour” campaign. Seems like they are well short of their goal at the moment. Having worked in an NGO in India whose focus was also education for underprivileged children, I have a soft spot for this cause and thought I’d try and help out their campaign with a post.

What is work an hour?

Each year volunteers from around the world come together in a show of great human spirit, to help educate underprivileged children in India. Work An Hour, or WAH, as it is popularly known, is a simple concept. We ask you to symbolically contribute one hour of your time towards the cause of children’s education by donating an hour’s worth of your salary or more. The event symbolically begins on July 4, the American Independence Day, reaches an apex on August 15, the Indian Independence Day, and finally culminates on September 5, which is celebrated as Teachers’ Day in India.

How much should I donate?

You can donate any amount. We encourage you to donate an hour’s worth or more of your salary.

Where does the money go?

100% of all funds collected through Work an Hour go directly towards the selected projects. Keeping with Asha’s long-standing policy, Asha volunteers bear all administrative expenses.

If donating money isn’t your thing then consider volunteering your time for Asha or another similar organization. You can volunteer both here in the States and obviously in India. It is better than living in your parent’s basement while you figure out what you want to do with your life 🙂

The objectives of this group are:

-To provide education to underprivileged children in India.
-To encourage the formation of various local groups across the world to reach out to larger sections of the population.
-To support and cooperate with persons and groups already engaged in similar activities.
-To raise the required human and other resources to achieve the group objectives.
-To provide opportunities to individuals living outside India who wish to participate in Asha activities in India.
-To address, whenever possible, other issues affecting human life such as health care, environment, socio-economic aspects and women’s issues.

Continue reading →

Slate’s wonderful “Explainer” series had an informative article detailing your rights while riding the trains (or buses) in New York and D.C. “Are Subway Searches Legal?” This is a particularly relevant topic given the current state of paranoia:

Depends on how it’s done. The Fourth Amendment protects people from “unreasonable searches or seizures.” As a general rule, the government can’t search your baggage without a reason to believe you’re a criminal. But according to legal precedent, a random search is acceptable if it fulfills special needs like public safety. If New York’s subway screenings are challenged in court, the city’s lawyers could argue that the program’s primary purpose is to protect the city from terrorism.

Unless a judge agrees that they fulfill a special need, the screenings will be on shaky legal ground. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that a roadblock used to screen drivers for drug crimes was unconstitutional, since its primary purpose was to apprehend drug traffickers. On the other hand, roadblocks that screen for drunk drivers have been deemed OK, since they promote highway safety. (The court did say in the 2000 ruling that “a roadblock set up to thwart an imminent terrorist attack” would almost certainly be constitutional.)

The key legal point here seems to be that such an extreme curb on privacy rights has to come with both a sunset clause and a geographical constraint:

Let’s assume the courts believe the subways searches are an effective deterrent for terrorism and that the recent subway bombings in London make them reasonable. Then a judge would have to consider whether the scope and duration of the searches is appropriate. The first random subway screenings occurred last summer in Boston during the Democratic Convention. A district court ruled that searches on trains that ran beneath the convention center were acceptable since they took place in a restricted area for a limited amount of time. The New York City searches, though, are taking place all over the system and seem to be of open-ended duration.

The judge must also consider how individuals are selected for screening. If police officers have too much discretion, they might single out certain kinds of people for “random” searches. To prevent profiling, cops are sometimes given a strict formula—in Boston, for example, every 11th passenger was pulled aside at some commuter rail stations. The NYPD says “numerical criteria” are being used, but spokesmen also say that large or suspicious-looking bags can be red flags.

Continue reading →