A desi girl from South Africa was rejected by a med school, but her desi friend with lower grades was accepted. Keeping up with the Junejas, the family filed a lawsuit. In court, the med school admitted it had mistaken the friend to be black:

A doctor of Indian origin in South Africa has filed an appeal in Cape Town High Court after his daughter was refused admission to a medical school… He pointed out that [the University of Cape Town med school] had accepted Sunira’s friend, also of Indian origin, although her result was not as good. The friend was accepted because the university believed she was African… [Telegraph]

Due to South Africa’s discriminatory history, the UCT med school has explicit racial quotas for admissions. It even mandates that 2/3rds of its students be female, which must be a major bonus for male applicants:

… UCT’s “target equity mixes” for first-time-entering medicine undergraduates were set at 42 percent black, 28 percent white, 16 percent coloured and 14 percent Indian. Gender targets required 65 percent of these students to be female and 35 percent male. [Pretoria News]

The parents objected to assuming a disadvantaged background even of wealthy blacks:

They pointed to documents that showed that all African and coloured students who applied to study medicine at UCT were considered to be “educationally disadvantaged” even if they attended private schools. [Cape Argus]

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For those of you who have never had the privilege of listening to the radio program This American Life, you are missing out on quite simply the best radio program on U.S. airways. If you have listened to the program, in your car perhaps, you are sitting in front of your computer nodding your head in agreement right now. This past weekend one of the three acts in a program titled “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” featured a young man from Pakistan making his first trip home after traveling to the United States for an education. He reflects on the freedoms and opportunity he has been given in the U.S. versus the desire to return home and to be with his family. He has changed a great deal, as has the society he had left behind. He attends a party with vodka flowing and 50 cent’s music playing, and yet is shunned when he goes to speak to a girl at the party (you can’t go up to a girl in an Islamic culture he explains). At the heart of this story is a choice. Does he return to his native Pakistan and “serve his country,” or does he explore his full potential in the U.S? Should he stay or should he go? By the end of the story he decides and gives the rationale for his decision. Put your headphones on right now. Tune out work, and tune in to his story.

Note: the story is in the first act of the radio program and starts at 4 min and 45 sec and ends at 25 min and 15 seconds. Continue reading →

From mobile ultrasound units that determine if a baby needs to be extinguished to bribery for keeping them, India now offers it all;

Families having a single girl child in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh will be given 100,000 rupees ($2,300) in an attempt to boost the female population…

…The state government says it is concerned at the falling female-to-male ratio – in 2001 it was 943 to 1,000.

The only-child receives the money as soon as she turns 20. In addition to that payola, from ages 14-17 (9th through 12th grade), a yearly grant of Rs. 1,250 will be available for the girl’s educational expenses. If either parent passes away, Rs. 50,000 is provided immediately. See? Attractive!

To ensure that the girl is a couple’s ONLY child, both parents must be sterilised;

…both parents would have to undergo operations certified and verified by government hospitals to qualify for the scheme.

Oh, and what’s a scheme without some PR?

The Andhra Pradesh government says it is also planning a major publicity campaign to promote female children.

It has named the rising Indian tennis star and local girl, Sania Mirza, as the “ambassador of the girl child of Andhra Pradesh”.

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