The South Asian Journalists Association is hosting a live audio webcast at 1pm ET on Nov. 4 after the U.S. election. The first five minutes will survey how 20 South Asian American politicians did, while the bulk of the panel will discuss the election’s implications for South Asia. For the webcast link, click here on Nov. 4.

Fresh off from duty in war-torn Afghanistan as an election monitor, K Jagannatha Rao is headed to the next troubled country to perform similar duties. From the Times of India:

Rao, who returned to India a few days ago after overseeing the polls in trouble-torn Afghanistan, will leave for the US on October 28.

“Ohio will be a challenge because it is more controversial than Flordia,” Rao told The Times of India on telephone from New Delhi.

Rao is among the 14 international observers invited by the Global Exchange International, a NGO, to monitor the US presidential elections this November 2.

Hopefully Ohio doesn’t embarass us. I am a proud American and don’t want us to fail our global test with the whole world watching.

“I will be at liberty to point out any fraud,” Rao said. He has already gathered a background about Ohio which he feels might come in handy during detection of any fraud during polls.

I hope his intelligence dossier includes the fact that Ohio State football sucks.

As the election looms menacingly closer its time to squeeze every last vote out of the electorate. Bush stays true to form by spending his time making insipid commercials starring wolves to scare us, while Kerry panders to every group he can think of. NCM reports:

Democratic challenger Sen. John F. Kerry, who is locked in an epic battle with incumbent President George W. Bush in the November presidential election, says he would “make every effort to involve Indian Americans at the highest levels of my administration.”

In an exclusive Q&A in the Sept./Oct. issue of Indian Life & Style magazine published by India-West, the candidate, who is in a dead heat in the race to the White House, says, “It is long past time that Indian Americans be fully represented in the government.”

But what kind of position?? That is the million dollar question. I would love to apply for the type of position that Karl Rove has in Dubya’s administration. Can you imagine? Abhi as head of propaganda in a Kerry presidency? Oooh, the possibilities.

Displaying a comfortable grasp of the subject of India and Indian Americans, Kerry said: “I also believe that the Democratic Party has long been concerned about Indian American interests. In the last 25 years, only President Clinton and President Carter have made visits to India. From issues of civil rights, immigration, or foreign policy, the Indian American community can find in the Democratic Party a strong and common vision.”

Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria was on the Daily Show discussing Iraq with Jon Stewart a couple of nights ago. He’s supportive of the initial war aims but critical of its execution. Check out the video.

Here’s a previous post where Zakaria compares U.S. tactics in Iraq to Britain’s tactics in India.

Theocracy, it’s not just for South Asians any more. According to arch-conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, the Texas GOP has developed a jonesing for home grown Sharia law:

The Republican National Committee is employing the services of a Texas-based activist who believes the United States is a ‘Christian nation’ and the separation of church and state is ‘a myth.’ David Barton, the founder of an organization called Wallbuilders, was hired by the RNC as a political consultant and has been traveling the country for a year–speaking at about 300 RNC-sponsored lunches for local evangelical pastors. During the lunches, he presents a slide show of American monuments, discusses his view of AmericaÂ’s Christian heritage — and tells pastors that they are allowed to endorse political candidates from the pulpit.

It gets worse. Barton is on the board of advisers for a Christian Reconstructionist group – people who believe that America should scrap its constitution and go back to Biblical law. When I have described the trend within the GOP as theocratic, I am sometimes criticized for hyperbole. But this is the reality. Barton is the vice-chair of the Texas GOP. Figures.

And you thought the only connections between Texas and the Taliban were their mutual love of big “hats” and pickup trucks. Here is a detailed exposition of the history of American Biblical Law, some (hostile) quotes from a book that argues from biblical law, and the accompanying software (looks like it is just text).

What’s with my provocative title? Remember a while back when I posted this entry about a group called Democrats Abroad trying to register expats in India so that they could vote absentee in the U.S. election? Well its not just India. Several articles recently have followed this phenomena. I covered this on my own blog a few weeks ago but the issue keeps surfacing in the media so I thought I would bring it to the attention of SM readers. Here is an excerpt from Newsweek:

With polls projecting a tight race, Americans abroad know just how much their votes could count. A recent tally of two Democratic Web sites, OverseasVote2004.com and OverseasVote.com, shows that 75 percent of the total number of voters has registered in the last 10 weeks, and more than 40 percent of those voters are from swing states. Although they did not give the exact figures, Republican organizers outside the U.S. claim the number of voters signing on with Republicans Abroad in Europe has skyrocketed 400 percent since 2000. The number of chapters of Democrats Abroad has risen from 33 to 70 since the beginning of this year. “Based on our figures, 5.3 percent of overseas voters are from Florida [and] 4.4 percent from Pennsylvania. Washington, Michigan and Ohio all tie for about 3 percent,” says Americans Overseas for Kerry’s Jim Brenner, who is based in Boston. Ironically, the real battleground states of this election could end up being countries like Canada, France and Mexico.

Slate magazine however, recognized another angle to this new movement which is quite interesting:

While Americans who go abroad to kill people vote Republican, Americans who go abroad to do just about anything else vote Democratic. This is the logic behind the unprecedented effort to get out the vote among U.S. civilians overseas, and the reason that effort is overwhelmingly Democratic.

How have they formulated this dubious theory? Continue reading →

My college roommate Tushar, asked me if I would start an LA phonebank operation for John Kerry. Basically I would get a bunch of fellow Dems together and we would use our unlimited weekend cell phone minutes to call likely South Asian voters in Florida. We would plead Kerry’s case and get them to turn out to vote. A very smart strategy I think. Usually with me the ends justify the means. Bush must be defeated at all costs. Yet in this case, its hard for me to commit time to a candidate that I am not crazy about. I haven’t yet taken him up on his request, but I may still. From India West as reported by New California Media:

Last weekend, from both the east coast and west coast, phone calls went into the homes of registered South Asian voters in Florida with a simple message from callers: Vote for John Kerry.

With pollsters predicting a razor-thin election still too close to call, and Florida once again a toss-up state, the calls may well have a decisive impact. The Kerry supporters hope to reach 20,000 registered South Asian voters in Florida before they are done.

In what could be a first for the community, young South Asian supporters of the Massachusetts senator are getting involved in the nitty gritty of grass-roots campaigning in a U.S. presidential campaign.

“We think for the first time in the history of American politics, it was a phone bank targeted specifically to South Asian American voters, and phone calls made by South Asian Americans,” Tushar Sheth, a 28-year-old New York-based attorney, told India-West.

If anyone does want to be involved in a phonebank operation you can get information at SAKI2004.

If I believe what I am told then the Republicans support outsourcing and the Democrats are against it, right? That’s not entirely true as we all know. The Dems are exploiting outsourcing as a wedge issue, sometimes unfairly as Vinod pointed out in a previous post. How many times did we hear during the debate, “we outsourced the Tora Bora fight to Afghan Warlords.” The Dems know that use of the very word can exploit the anger many Americans feel, and they use this to their advantage. I doubt there would be huge differences in the policy either man would pursue as President.

What is happening in New Jersey’s 6th Congressional District is sort of backwards however. The Indian American Republican challenger Sylvester Fernandez, is going after the Democrat incumbent Frank Pallone with great vigor using outsourcing as the wedge issue. From the Ashbury Park Press:

Sylvester Fernandez, the Republican challenger in the 6th Congressional District race, blames incumbent Democrat Rep. Frank J. Pallone Jr. for the outsourcing of jobs to India.

But Pallone, of Long Branch, insists his voting record in the House of Representatives reflects his anti-outsourcing stance. And he pointed out that jobs are outsourced to countries other than India, which appears to be his opponent’s singular focus.

Let me get this straight. A first generation Indian American is attacking a Democrat for supporting outsourcing of jobs to India? Does this seem backward to anyone else? Looking at Fernandez’s platform on his website we see what his main issues are: Continue reading →

Sad but true article over @ TCS (TCS ROCKS!) about the latest instance of economic idiocy coming out of India – TCS: Tech Central Station – Wheels of Fortune?

It is rare to find a single story that illustrates, in exquisite detail, all of the varied pro- and counter- arguments for free trade as opposed to managed or protected trade. I am therefore grateful to Peter Foster who filed this piece in the Daily Telegraph from New Delhi. In a nutshell, the Indian Railways Minister, a Mr Prasad, has refused permission to import railroad wheels into India, preferring to establish a factory in his home state of Bihar to make India self-sufficient in their production.

Outsourcing & IT might make the headlines but when it comes to the nitty-gritty improvement of per-capita GNP, lifestyles, health, and so on, it’s the boring stuff like logistics that make all the difference.

The cost of not allowing imported train wheels? Well, one of the many costs is quantified –

Analysts predict that it will be many years before India can produce enough wheels to meet demand. The shortage has left 20,000 carriages awaiting wheels, and a similar number of old ones requiring replacements.”

This makes my blood boil on so many levels. Idiots.