Last week I gave SM readers a chance to get acquainted with the Indian delegates to the RNC. DesiTalk-NewsIndia Times now has a more in-depth look at them. You can read their statements for yourselves and see what motivates them to support Bush. Don’t worry. I won’t get into trouble with the Justice Department for this because I am not including their Social Security Numbers.
A friend of mine who works for Human Rights Watch has a floor pass to tonight’s show at the convention. I pleaded with her to not get arrested. She emailed me back, unable to understand why everyone kept telling her that. So what is it like being in NYC at the convention right now? I don’t have any way of knowing since I am stuck on the wrong coast, but I am much more interested in what’s happening outside than inside the convention hall. That’s where the real stories are at. Rediff reporter Arun Venugopal gives a pretty interesting first-hand account of his “stupididty”:
Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.
That’s what I was thinking to myself, about myself, as I stood just inside the entrance of Madison Square Garden, where the Republican National Convention was taking place. In the space of a few footsteps I had gone from being just another reporter on the job to possible radical activist. Large men in suits, large men likely concealing large guns, hovered around me, asking me questions about my work, my family, my place of residence, recent trips I had made out of town and out of the country. Outside, nearly a thousand protesters had been arrested for civil disobedience and vague rumors of anarchist violence were floating about – I had quite clearly picked the wrong day and place to be carrying anti-war, anti-Bush literature. Dumb.
The Maharashtra government has extended its caste hiring quotas into the booming private sector. Because if you happen across an avian that lays ovoids of gold, the first thing to do is to throttle her.
“We’ve already been suffering under many constraints, like socialist economic planning and labour restrictions,” says Rahul Bajaj, chairman of Bajaj Auto, the world’s largest manufacturer of scooters and motorcycles and one of India’s largest companies. “If we implement reservations, we’ll have no way to become internationally competitive.”
It’s another example of legacy capture, where programs intended to be temporary are never discontinued. The system adjusts to the new baseline, the constituencies sucking on the taxpayer teat spend part of the windfall on lobbying, and the subsidies are only ever expanded (e.g. U.S. timber subsidies, weapons programs that the Pentagon doesn’t want but can’t cancel):
Many say the constitution intended reservations as a temporary measure. But the rising political clout of low-caste Indians (who make up some 50% of the population) prevented the programme from being discontinued. Instead, it was expanded to include Indians from lower-middle positions in the caste hierarchy… Singh’s reforms made a mockery of the affirmative-action policy, entitling over 90% of the population in some states to reserved jobs.
Over the past three years I have heard the term “Thugs” used countless times in American politics, especially by our leaders:
Like Bush here:
The world changed on a terrible September morning. And since that day we have changed the world. Before September the 11th, Afghanistan served as the home base of al-Qaida, which trained and deployed thousands of killers to set up terror cells around the world, including our country. Today, Afghanistan is a rising democracy. (Applause.) Afghanistan is an ally in the war against these thugs. (Applause.) Many young girls now go to school in Afghanistan for the first time. (Applause.) Afghanistan is becoming free, and America and the world are safer for it. (Applause.)
or here:
At every stage of this process, before and after the transition to Iraqi sovereignty, the enemy is likely to be active and brutal. They know the stakes as well as we do. But our coalition is prepared, our will is strong, and neither Iraq’s new leadership nor the United States will be intimidated by thugs and assassins.
Great Post – The Acorn: Indian hostages released
A collective sigh of relief masks the grave damage doneAntaryami, Tilak Raj and Sukhdev Singh have been set free in one hostage drama that comes with a happy ending, and without recourse to Asha Parekh after all.
…The Indian government has already paid too high a price for their release, allowing a bunch of armed thugs to dictate its emigration policy. For the time being every Indian passport will carry a stamp of shame – making them invalid for travel to Iraq…
Have the Indian Delegates currently attending the RNC scored any points for our community yet? The Hindustani Times reports:
An Indian American delegate [Akshay Desai] to the Republican convention has said that India will be among the first countries US President George W Bush plans to visit if re-elected in the November 2 elections.
Every time you hear the name of Arizona Senator John McCain this week, with regards to the Republican National Convention, you will hear in the same breath how he is helping Bush despite the fact that he really doesn’t like the man. Is it really true that McCain doesn’t like Bush? We may never find out until we see his memoirs, but their might be cause for the animosity. The ill feelings might have their roots in Bush’s Brain, the evil genius Karl Rove. Elanor Clift of Newsweek Magazine writes:
The Kerry campaign thinks it has succeeded in discrediting the scurrilous attack on KerryÂ’s military service, but Rove got what he wanted. Instead of talking about a failed war in Iraq and a new report that shows 1.3 million more Americans living in poverty, we’re debating what happened in the Mekong Delta in 1968. The strategy “came straight from the West Wing,” says the GOP staffer. “Nobody should be confused.” Asked to explain, this Republican says Rove is smart enough to keep technical distance. But all it takes is a well-placed wink to activate a web of Bush family hit men, confidantes and deep-pocket donors. “They know what to do–it’s like sleeper cells that get activated,” he says, likening the players to “political terrorists.”
They sprang into action in 2000 when Bush was running in the primaries against John McCain. After getting beat in New Hampshire by McCain, Bush’s first event was at Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Standing next to Bush on the stage was a veteran who went right at McCain, questioning his Vietnam service while Bush remained silent. A whisper campaign told voters that McCain had a black child. (The McCains have an adopted daughter from Bangladesh.) McCain lost the primary; the veteran became a Bush administration appointee.
Are the Republicans outsourcing their campaign to Banaglore, India? From The Telegraph:
Stung by leaks that Republicans are outsourcing their election campaign work to India, the Republican National Committee (RNC), the partyÂ’s highest policy-making body, recently filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against one of its own outfits for raising money by using Indian telemarketers.
The complaint alleged that fund-raising telephone calls from India on behalf of an organisation called the Republican Victory Committee “prompted false, widespread rumours that the RNC was outsourcing its donor phone calls to India.”
Okay, who let the cat out of the bag in the first place though?
The Texas outfit may have actually got away with its outsourcing exercise if it had not been for the poor training given to Indian telemarketers who handled the job. Sources here said the India-based operation was exposed when one American who received a fund-raising phone call on behalf of the Republican Victory Committee wanted to know where the call was coming from.
“The Washington DC of Virginia,” the caller answered. Washington, the US capital, is actually in DC, short for District of Columbia, and Virginia is its neighbouring state.
The answer, which misrepresented American geography, triggered a series of actions which eventually led to the RNCÂ’s complaint with the Federal Election Commission.
Aren’t the Republicans firmly behind outsourcing though?
On Sep. 1, Sikhs will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the day their holy book was first brought to their most sacred site. In 1604, Guru Arjan Dev carried the Guru Granth Sahib into the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab. The book is accorded such respect that a prayer is spoken before the book is closed, and it’s swaddled in fine cloth and carried on the head.
India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, the first Sikh to hold that post, will preside over the 4 million-strong celebration. In a nod to modernity, Amritsar will host a laser show, very apropos since the inventor of fiber optics is a Sikh.
Every celebration has its inevitable drama. Due to tensions dating back to Indira Gandhi’s reign, Gandhi’s daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi was not invited to the celebration. And a family which holds an even older copy of the holy book has yet to agree to put its copy on display:
The precious manuscript is kept in a 900-kg iron vault built by a German engineer. Though the family claims that the National Archives has preserved the pages, scholars are sceptic. Says Dhillon, “The preservation was done sometime in the 1960s by an outdated method. Nowadays the accepted practice to preserve such manuscripts is to get them microfilmed and as far as I know this has not been done.”
Nonetheless, Amritsar is being newly repainted, the temple walkways are getting new carpeting, and pilgrims are arriving by the trainload in anticipation of celebration.
Second-gen U.S. desis sometimes compete for business also outsourced to desis in India and Pakistan. And the second gen are not guaranteed to be as professionally hardcore and driven as either their parents or new desi immigrants their age. But we’re not the only community with these tensions: the New York Times reports that that American blacks are also competing with African immigrants:
“These are very aggressive people who are coming here,” said Dr. Austin, who is calling for a frank dialogue between native-born and foreign-born blacks. “I don’t berate immigrants for that; they have given up a lot to get here. But we’re going to be in competition with them. We have to be honest about it. That is one of the dividing lines.”…
By 2000, foreign-born blacks constituted 30 percent of the blacks in New York City, 28 percent of the blacks in Boston and about a quarter here in Montgomery County, Md… Bobby Austin, an administrator at the University of the District of Columbia who attended the meeting in Washington, said he understood why some blacks were offended when Mr. Kamus claimed an African-American identity. Dr. Austin said some people feared that black immigrants and their children would snatch up the hard-won opportunities made possible by the civil rights movement…
In New York City, for example, and this is strictly in my humble opinion, the 1st-gen desis who’ve made it through the immigration strainer are much more hardcore on average than U.S.-born desis of the same age. That’s due to the requirements of U.S. immigration law as well as the financial, familial and cultural hardships of emigration. Continue reading