Category Archives: Politics

The Kerala Model – At Risk?

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The “Kerala model of development” is often cited as a path for developing nations to secure strong human development indices (literacy, health, etc.) but without first adopting the “Washington Consensus” (essentially higher, per capita GDP via free markets). Today’s Economist Blog has a brief update on the model and the risk posed to it by the global economy and it reminded me of an old-ish article I never got around to blogging…

Back in September ’07, NYT described the Kerala model and its adherents this way –

TRIVANDRUM, India — This verdant swath of southern Indian coastline is a famously good place to be poor. People in the state of Kerala live nearly as long as Americans do, on a sliver of the income. They read at nearly the same rates.

With leftist governments here in the state capital spending heavily on health and schools, a generation of scholars has celebrated the “Kerala model” as a humane alternative to market-driven development, a vision of social equality in an unequal capitalist world.

…It also gained a reputation as a place hostile to business, with heavy regulation, militant unions and frequent strikes. There are fishing jobs but little industry and weak agriculture. Government is the largest employer; many people run tenuous businesses like tea shops or tiny stores.

However, if there’s one thing economists of all stripes agree on, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. They further note –

…far from escaping capitalism, they say, this celebrated corner of the developing world is painfully dependent on it.
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So many big balls

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Washington D.C. is all a twitter this weekend, anxiously awaiting the multitude of inauguration balls to be thrown in honor of Obama’s swearing in ceremony (which is a mere afterthought). Everyone I talk to is just ready to get their party on. At least two Mutineers (Ennis and Anna) will be on hand. There is an unspoken competition underway as to who will throw the biggest and best ball. The Huffinton Post for example has been bragging non-stop about lining up Sting, Sheryl Crow, and other big names. It turns out that there is even a Sikh Ball you can hang at:

When a Barack Obama campaign volunteer offered to help Gulshan Gachoke attend the Sikh Inaugural Ball in Washington, her response was: What is an inaugural ball?

Although it has been more than 30 years since Gachoke and her husband left their village in India’s Punjab province for Northern California — and 18 years since she became a U.S. citizen — the 63-year-old speaks halting English, doesn’t know how to use the Internet and almost never ventures beyond her Fremont neighborhood’s Indian shops, lest someone mistake her for a Muslim and insult her.

But after a volunteer, Reena Johar, who shares Gachoke’s Sikh religion, explained that the ball will be the first-ever inaugural gala sponsored by Indian Americans, Gachoke eagerly signed on. [Link]

Hmmmm, I wonder if she will get mistaken for a Muslim and be insulted on her way to the ball. WaPo better follow up on this. It seems like Gachoke was able to work up the courage to go because she too believes that Obama counts as a desi:

But more than anything, she was drawn by the sense that she shared something fundamental in common with the young man whose skin color was so close to her own that Gachoke initially thought he might be Indian.

“He is one of us, you know,” she said. “He feels the pain.” [Link]

After attending the chaos that was the DNC I am going to watch the events of these next several days on television and not worry about finding a place to pee. For those of you in DC, the tickets to the ball may be a bit pricey, but how many times in your life do you get a chance to be treated like a Maharajah?

THE “MAHARAJAH” PACKAGE
Product : Maharajah | Maharajah VIP Ticket | Price/Unit : 250.00 USD

$250 per person VIP Level (from 7 p.m. onward, includes no waiting, sit-down reception, complimentary tickets to open bar, passed hors d’oeuvres, butler service from 7-8 p.m., a sumptuous and a Very Presidential Buffet Dinner, entertainment, gift bag, and a commemorative gift to mark this historic occasion) [Link]
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Partition. In Gaza.

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Protest Flags.jpg
Flags flapped in the 75 degree perfect Californian weather, flags of Mexico, Cuba, the Philippines, the U.S. and of course, Palestine. I was standing in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles, in solidarity with thousands of people of all races, ages, and religions. I was one of many who this past Saturday, congregated in their city centers to protest the attacks on innocent lives in the Gaza strip. As of this post, we are 20 days into the attacks and over 1,000 people in Gaza are dead.

The attacks in Gaza are highly controversial with a fierce tug and pull between the sides. LA’s Mayor Villaraigosa and NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg have both taken a pro-Israel stance, as well as the 390 members of Congress who this past week voted “aye” to the passing of House Resolution 34. The resolution “recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, reaffirms the United States’ strong support for Israel…” On the streets it seems most people are angry about the situation on the Gaza side, not necessarily pro-Hamas, but more aligned with a ‘pro-humanitarian stop the killing of innocent people’ stance.

Protest Holding Flag.jpgI knew how I personally felt, but what I wanted to know is, “Is this a South Asian American issue? As desis, why should we care?” Short of learning that Gandhi was an anti-Zionist, there’s not too much out there on the matter. But at Saturday’s protest, there were many desis out walking the street in solidarity. So I hit the streets and asked them why they were there. This is what they had to say.

“A lot of people were here for the protest,” said Omar of the band Elephant with Guns. “I couldn’t find my friend so I just joined the people I was with and started playing[he starts beating a hand held drum and chanting] one, two, three, four, we don’t want your racist war. Five, six, seven, eight, stop the killing stop the hate.”

“I thought it was great turnout and I was very inspired by it,” states Amy, a young professional. “It’s important for South Asians to be here because we need to show our solidarity. We went through it in India during our fight for independence.”

“I think that this is not particular to Arabs, to people of Middle East orgins, or to South Asian origin but I think that any community that has lived under any kind of occupation or the injustices of any type of colonization should be committed to this cause,” said Naaz, a PhD student at UCLA. “I’m from an Indian background. The types of atrocities that were committed under the British in India and the way that they systematically tried to divide people and divide Hindus from Muslims was unjust. We are still living with a lot of the scars of that British occupation…I think it’s about Western hegemony that is still continuing in the form of capitalism, and in new imperialistic projects, like Iraq, Afghanistan and maybe even Pakistan… As a community of color the west has been manipulating us for a long time.”

“South Asians tend not to be as connected to other communities in general,” said the Mad Guru, wearing an image he had designed pinned to the front of his shirt. “We can’t keep seeing problems as other people’s problems somewhere far away. I mean, you have to understand that if you don’t stick up for other peoples’ rights, then no one is going to stick up for your rights either.”

The protest was great, but there are other ways people in the South Asian community are showing support too. Some in the Sikh community jumped on board earlier this week. Continue reading →

Vellambans* do the Veirdest Things

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appropriate much.jpg

Via Mutineer Maisnon’s status message, an…um…interesting celebrity wedding:

Say Anything star Ione Skye and Australian singer-songwriter Ben Lee chose an exotic location and traditional garb for their Hindu wedding in India, captured in this photo for PEOPLE.
About 50 of the couple’s friends and family members, including Josh Radnor from How I Met Your Mother, witnessed the Dec. 29 ceremony in a village on the Bay of Bengal. [People]

Say Anything? How ’bout say WHAT?

My brain is short-circuiting with everything this story conjures for me: Lloyd Dobbler’s love, Chennai/Madras, Depeche Mode’s “Stripped”, Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes”, Claire Danes so-called ex-, possible religious/cultural appropriation, an ex-Beastie Boy-wife…yowza.

To be fair, it wasn’t an entirely random choice; Ben Lee’s spiritual advisor is Indian, and the love guru did preside over the ceremony. That doesn’t make it any less jarring to see on People magazine’s website, though.

The two-hour ceremony was presided over by Lee’s spiritual guru, Sakthi Narayani Amma. Following the ceremony, a reception was held at a nearby guest house with Lee’s friends the Kahn Brothers performing as the wedding band. Lee, 30, and Skye, 37, then gathered the entire wedding party to visit an orphanage and performed for the children there.
The couple plan another ceremony in Los Angeles to legalize their union, since the Indian nuptials were not recognized at home in California.
“We have to go to City Hall tomorrow, and I’m mildly resentful about it,” Lee told the newspaper. “You go through a huge experience on an emotional and spiritual level, then you have to go and do the paperwork. [different People link]

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t everyone have to go to City Hall, to get a marriage license? And is this ceremony all right with all of you? In my entirely unscientific survey of two of you, one of you was offended and the other wasn’t– but only because “it’s not that surprising”. Things that make you go “hmmm“… Continue reading →

R.I.P. Whitey

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The Atlantic has the absolute must read piece of the day (seriously) about the coming minority majority in America. In the rhetorically titled, “The End of White America?” Hua Hsu of Vassar College examines a basket of issues surrounding the idea that it is no longer even mildly desireable to be “white” in America. According to Hsu, white youth are trying desperately to mimic the cultures they see within minority groups as a means to escape the blandness of their “non-culture”:

Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we’re approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities–blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians–will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation.

Obviously, steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage complicate this picture, pointing toward what Michael Lind has described as the “beiging” of America. And it’s possible that “beige Americans” will self-identify as “white” in sufficient numbers to push the tipping point further into the future than the Census Bureau projects. But even if they do, whiteness will be a label adopted out of convenience and even indifference, rather than aspiration and necessity. For an earlier generation of minorities and immigrants, to be recognized as a “white American,” whether you were an Italian or a Pole or a Hungarian, was to enter the mainstream of American life; to be recognized as something else, as the Thind case suggests, was to be permanently excluded. As Bill Imada, head of the IW Group, a prominent Asian American communications and marketing company, puts it: “I think in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, [for] anyone who immigrated, the aspiration was to blend in and be as American as possible so that white America wouldn’t be intimidated by them. They wanted to imitate white America as much as possible: learn English, go to church, go to the same schools.”

Today, the picture is far more complex. To take the most obvious example, whiteness is no longer a precondition for entry into the highest levels of public office. The son of Indian immigrants doesn’t have to become “white” in order to be elected governor of Louisiana. A half-Kenyan, half-Kansan politician can self-identify as black and be elected president of the United States. [Link]

The case of The United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind mentioned in the article (someone we’ve blogged of before) refers to the 1923 case in which an Indian American veteran argued that he should be considered white (a precondition to becoming a naturalized citizen) because Indians were descended from Aryans:

Associate Justice George Sutherland found that, while Thind, an Asian Indian, may have had “purity of Aryan blood” due to being “born in Village Taragarh Talawa,near Jandiala Guru, Amritsar, Punjab” and having “high caste” status he was not Caucasian in the “common understanding”, so he could not be included in the “statutory category as white persons”.[1] George Sutherland wrote in his summary: [Link]

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And Then They Came For Lasantha Wickramatunge

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Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickramatunge was assassinated in broad daylight outside of Colombo last week. SAJA has a helpful round-up of coverage of the event, including some background on Wickramatunge’s journalistic record. What stands out is the fact that he has been a consistent dissenting voice in Sri Lankan politics, sharply criticizing the previous government for years. In recent years he had also become a critic of the new government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, whom he had earlier supported. Indeed, Wickramatunge and Rajapaska were until recently rather close friends.

Wickramatunge’s assassination is widely believed to have been carried out by forces allied with the government, if not directly sponsored by the government itself. His memorial service, which took place yesterday in Colombo, was attended by thousands of people (see a Flickr photostream of the event here).

This past Sunday, the Sunday Leader, the Sri Lankan newspaper founded by Wickramatunge and his brother, carried a posthumous editorial authored by Wickramatunge himself. It’s called, “And Then They Came For Me,” and it’s written with the understanding that it would only be printed in the event of the author’s assassination.

It’s a moving statement, which ought to be read by anyone who doubts whether freedom of the press or freedom of speech is, after all, an essential right. Wickramatunge begins by asserting his primary goal as a journalist over the fifteen years he had worked with this newspaper:

The Sunday Leader has been a controversial newspaper because we say it like we see it: whether it be a spade, a thief or a murderer, we call it by that name. We do not hide behind euphemism. The investigative articles we print are supported by documentary evidence thanks to the public-spiritedness of citizens who at great risk to themselves pass on this material to us. We have exposed scandal after scandal, and never once in these 15 years has anyone proved us wrong or successfully prosecuted us.

The free media serve as a mirror in which the public can see itself sans mascara and styling gel. From us you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future. Sometimes the image you see in that mirror is not a pleasant one. But while you may grumble in the privacy of your armchair, the journalists who hold the mirror up to you do so publicly and at great risk to themselves. That is our calling, and we do not shirk it.

Every newspaper has its angle, and we do not hide the fact that we have ours. Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy. Think about those words, for they each has profound meaning. Transparent because government must be openly accountable to the people and never abuse their trust. Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours, secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united. Liberal because we recognise that all human beings are created different, and we need to accept others for what they are and not what we would like them to be. And democratic… well, if you need me to explain why that is important, you’d best stop buying this paper. (a link)

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The knives come out for Gupta

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Aasif Mandvi wasn’t the only person to allude to the fact that Sanjay Gupta’s coming nomination makes life harder for all of us non- attractive neurosurgeon journalists. Sandip Roy, writing at New American Media, also tries to prepare us all for how hard it is going to be for us regular desis to play keep up with the Guptas now:

…I fear it’s a mixed blessing for the rest of us much more run-of-the-mill South Asians. It’s exciting to see someone who comes from your stock make it big. But another neurosurgeon-makes-good story is going to make us look even more like underachievers.

“What’s the matter, beta? Why can’t you be more like that nice Sanjay Gupta? Not just a neurosurgeon but on CNN AND meeting Obama for three hours?”

Not only is he dashing and articulate. Not only did he do brain surgery on a 2 -year-old Iraqi boy while embedded during the Iraq war, now he might be the new Surgeon-general. Let me pause, and reel in the envy!

And his only qualm, according to the Washington Post is “is said to involve the financial impact on his pregnant wife and two children if he gives up his lucrative medical and journalistic careers.”

Golly. This is a South Asian parent’s dream. He’s 39 and he’s already followed the four stages of a good Hindu life – childhood, education, family and now a sort-of-renunciation-and-service… [Link]

I completely agree with Roy’s analysis. This is the reason I have been pretty bummed ever since the Gupta nomination even though I agree he is a good pick. In fact, there has been a sort of let down ever since Obama got elected. He promised that we could all “Be the change.” How can that be true though when 300,000 people submitted resumes for ~7000 “change” jobs? Its like musical chairs and I, like may of you, am left without a seat. I’m the wrong kind of doctor, just a blogger and not a journalist, and I’m not quite so…model-like. I can’t even complain that he had access to a better education at an elitist school since we went to the same school. In short, I’m rapidly turning into a bitter hater, much like conservative pundit Stephen Colbert who basically implies in the clip below that Gupta isn’t qualified since he is a “dick eater”:

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Too sexy for this job?

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News that Sanjay Gupta has been offered the position of Surgeon General has produced the classic trifecta of Golidlocks responses: Is he too sexy for the job, not sexy enough, or does he have the right amount of smouldering sex appeal to keep pace with Obama, Biden, Daschle and Hillary Clinton?

Too sexy for this job:

My friend Dr. B objects to the idea that SG could be the SG, saying that he lacks the gravitas for the job, and that she would have preferred a more established, less erotically charged nominee in the C. Everett Koop mold.

For those of you too young to remember, despite Koop’s mad pediatric surgical skillz, he was as attractive as Bill Gates on a bad hair day. Nobody, no matter how intense their uniform fetish, ever had an erotic dream about Dr. Koop or Joycelen Elders, and Dr. B thinks that precedent should be maintained.

Similarly, when Dr. Amonymous asks for SG’s policy qualifications, pointing out that “The Surgeon General functions under the direction of the Assistant Secretary for Health and operationally heads the 6,000-member Commissioned Corps of the USPHS, a cadre of health professionals who are on call 24 hours a day, and can be dispatched by the Secretary of HHS or the Assistant Secretary for Health in the event of a public health emergency.” [wiki], it’s clear that what he’s really saying is … “how can I take him seriously when he’s so pretty?”

(Manish has a variant of this argument, claiming not that Gupta is too sexy for the job, but that the job isn’t sexy enough for him, calling it a step down from his current position to one that pays less and has less influence.)

They do have a point since “Gupta was named one of the Sexiest Men of 2003 by People magazine.” [wiki] It’s hard to see what more objective measure of sexiness there might be.

Not sexy enough for this job:

There are those, however, who reject People Magazine’s imprimature as if it were some illegible doctor’s scrawl on a prescription pad, arguing brazenly that Dr. Gupta doesn’t have the intellectual honesty sex appeal necessary for the position.

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Paging General Gupta. The country needs you…STAT

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By about 3:30p.m. eastern this afternoon, every South Asian American in the country (and their mother) had already heard that Sanjay Gupta was on the verge of being announced the next Surgeon General of the United States:

President-elect Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN and CBS, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

Gupta has told administration officials that he wants the job, and the final vetting process is under way. He has asked for a few days to figure out the financial and logistical details of moving his family from Atlanta to Washington but is expected to accept the offer.

When reached for comment today, Gupta did not deny the account but declined to comment.

The offer followed a two-hour Chicago meeting in November with Obama, who said that Gupta could be the highest-profile surgeon general in history and would have an expanded role in providing health policy advice, the sources said. Gupta later spoke with Tom Daschle, Obama’s White House health czar and nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, and other advisers to the president-elect. [Link]

The choice of Gupta is very obvious when you think about it. It adds a touch of star power to Obama’s administration, will get lots of kudos (and donations) from the South Asian American community and, perhaps most importantly, adds another health care policy wonk to the dream team to be headed by H&HS Secretary Tom Daschle. You know all those rich Indian doctors that tend to vote Republican? Maybe not anymore.

CNN released a statement saying, “Since first learning that Dr. Gupta was under consideration for the surgeon general position, CNN has made sure that his on-air reporting has been on health and wellness matters and not on health-care policy or any matters involving the new administration…” [Link]

Taking this job, which will result in a large paycut for Gupta, will also set him up very nicely to run for office in Michigan in the future. Through some contacts I heard the rumors a few months back that Gupta at least thought about or was encouraged to run for mayor of Detroit to replace the disgraced Kwame Kilpatrick.

As a college senior I once invited Dr. Gupta to the Midwest Indian American Students’s Conference at the University of Michigan (he is an alumnus). It was before he hit the big time but I remember him being really genuine and laid back. And of course who can forget his exploits with the Devil Docs at the beginning of the war where is switched between reporting for CNN and scrubbing in to brain surgery.

There is another really good potential outcome as a result of this appointment. I know a lot of desi doctors who look a lot younger than they really are. Patients always make comments to them like, “uhhh…are you old enough?” Now these desi doctors can point to Sanjay Gupta who is the top doctor in the land and also looks pretty young and say, “umm, like yeah.”

What I really wanted to do was to end this post with the really funny Gupta/Dobbs CNN ad from a few years back. Can someone find me a working link…STAT?

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Race and statewide office

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There are currently as many elected African American governors as Indian American governors: one. For those of you that stopped reading Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com the day after the election, you are missing out. Today he had a wonderfully geeky post about why there are so few African American Senators (none actually unless you count Burris) and Governors. His analysis also offers some insight that might be of interest to the South Asian American community:

When the House of Representatives convenes tomorrow, it will contain 39 African-American members, not including non-voting delegates in places like the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. This number, representing about 9 percent of the Congress, falls somewhat short of the fraction of African-Americans in the population as a whole — a truly representative House would have about 55 black members — but perhaps not dramatically so. The situation at first glance would appear to be much better than it was prior to 1990, when there were generally only about 20 black members in the House at any given time.

The districts these 39 Congressmen serve, however, are not very representative at all. All 39 contain a higher percentage of African-Americans than the population as a whole, ranging from Keith Ellison’s district in Minneapolis, which is just barely more black than the national average, to Jesse Jackson Jr.’s on the South Side of Chicago, which is 68 percent African-American. About 64 percent of the members — 25 of 39 — come from districts that contain an outright black majority. The districts are also much more Democratic than the country as a whole, with an average PVI of D +25; only Sanford Bishop’s district in Georgia, which has a PVI of D+2, is anywhere close to the national average. [Link]

So here it is in a nutshell. Assuming that experienced African American representatives (a reasonable number of which there are) would make suitable candidates to run for the U.S. Senate, why aren’t there more black Senators or Governors? The answer is that because the base of these potential candidates is largely African American, many of them never develop messages targeted to an audience any wider than this base. Doing so might cause them to lose some “cred” with that base. Thus, forced to compete statewide with this self-inflicted handicap, their campaigns never get off the ground. Obama was a rare exception because he realized intuitively what the data shows and made sure to appeal to all demographics and not just his perceived base, even if it meant being called “not black enough.” To the vast majority of South Asian American candidates the above is so obvious it doesn’t need mentioning. Our ethnic base is so small it would never be enough to solely rely on (except maybe in Jersey or Fremont). From the beginning, desi candidates have to work hard to appeal to all groups and their issues. Despite hard-to-pronounce names and brown skin this “tactic” helps us beat the odds that seem to stymie African American candidates.

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