The Price of Rice

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On the News Tab, KXB posted a link to an article in Time about the skyrocketing global price of rice, which has the potential to destabilize economic conditions (and governments) all over Asia. For those who haven’t been following it, the price of rice has more than doubled in the past six months, peaking recently at more than $23.00 per hundred pounds. (See this Guardian article for more detailed numbers. Incidentally, the rising price of food has already led to riots in Haiti.)

The Time article points out that the problem isn’t that rice production has fallen (though part of the reason for the tight supply in Bangladesh in particular is the destruction caused by last year’s cyclone). Rather, the global demand simply seems to be rising faster than the supply, and many individual nations have been banning rice exports, destabilizing the market.

In India, the interaction between state regulators and the recently liberalized market is particularly complex:

Take India, for example, where rice prices are rising fast, contributing to 7% inflation last month, the highest in more than three years. The country is not suffering from a classic case of tight supplies. National rice production this year should hit 94 million metric tons, up more than 2 million metric tons from last year and more than 20 million metric tons from 2003’s crop, which was devastated by a bad monsoon. Nor have shortages hit a government-run rice-distribution program that helps feed India’s poor. That program bought 20.6 million metric tons last year. This year, procurement, from both domestic growers and importers, is expected to rise to 25 million metric tons, according to Manoj Pandey, a senior government official. “It’s not a question of low production or low procurement,” says Pandey.

What has changed is that, because of economic reform, the government has gradually eased its control over the rice trade during the past 15 years. India is now more open to the world — and more exposed to global price fluctuations. Farmers and traders across India are now selling to the highest bidder. That means a lot of Indian rice that was once sold domestically is instead sold abroad for higher prices — which in turn drives up domestic prices. The government, in an effort to keep as much rice as possible at home to quell inflation, has banned exports of nonbasmati rice and adjusted price controls to discourage exports of aromatic basmati rice.

(link)

The measures aren’t working. As the article goes on to state, instead of pushing the price of rice back down, the government’s ban on exports has led to hoarding on the part of sellers, who would rather not sell than sell at reduced prices.

The question I have for those who understand these issues better than myself is this: what should the Indian government do, keeping in mind that the vast majority of Indian consumers of rice cannot afford the current price? Continue reading →

Parallels between Madia’s and Obama’s campaigns

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For those of you who haven’t already heard, Ashwin Madia, who we interviewed way back in December here at SM, won the Democratic Primary in his Minnesota Congressional district against rather tough odds:

DFL activists Saturday chose first-time office seeker and Iraq War veteran Ashwin Madia as their endorsed candidate for the Third Congressional District seat being vacated by Republican Jim Ramstad.

It took eight ballots before state Sen. Terri Bonoff, who had trailed Madia throughout the day, withdrew.

DFLers left the convention energized by the possibility of having a Democrat elected to the seat in the western Twin Cities suburbs for the first time in 50 years. [Link]

I find that there are some interesting parallels between the strategy he used to beat the more well known and experienced Terri Bonoff, and the strategy Barack Obama has used to pretty much beat Hillary Clinton:

  1. Both women were the presumptive front-runners with loads of traditional political experience and establishment backing
  2. First-time participants make up the base of both Madia’s and Obama’s supporters and are very enthusiastic
  3. Madia and Obama both realized that it is the delegates that matter most and went after every one
  4. Rhetorical charm, not attacks were employed by both during debates and speeches to win support

Continue reading →

HipHopistan — upcoming in Chicago

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(Link stolen from PTR.) I have no idea what the song is about [translation help, anyone?], but I love the video, beats, and the sound of the rap.

People in Chicago this week might want to head down to the University of Chicago for a Desi Hop Hop Conference, HipHopistan (April 17-19). It’s a mix of performances, roundtable discussions, and hands-on workshops. Among the performers present will be Yogi B & Natchatra (featured in the video above), as well as Chee Malabar, Kabir, Abstract/Vision, and the ubiquitous DJ Rekha.

I must admit I’ve stopped aggressively following developments in Desi Hip Hop and Bhangra/hip hop fusion somewhat lately. (Have I been missing much?) If I were in Chicago, I might show up at this event just to see if anything these guys are doing might inspire renewed interest. Continue reading →

Money for Nothing …

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Last week, when the Clintons released their tax returns, it came out that one of the largest fees paid to Bill Clinton came from a charitable fundraising event organized by London socialite Renu Mehta. In 2006, Mehta organized the “Fortune Forum” to encourage Britain’s super-rich to give more to charity. The event was a success, drawing Lakshmi Mittal, Michael Douglas and others, but the overhead was very high, with a third of the money raised going to pay Clinton’s speaking fee:

The event raised about $1.5 million and brought together dozens of billionaires, celebrities and activists … But success came with a steep price. Fundraising costs consumed more than half of the proceeds, with $450,000 going to Clinton as a speaking fee, one of the largest he has collected as personal income. [Link]

What’s weird about this is that Bill charged this charitable event almost double what he charged other groups in the same period, even though one of the other groups was a for-profit partnership:

Clinton’s fee for his Fortune Forum appearance dwarfed the $280,000 the former president charged for a speech earlier in the day in London sponsored by a for-profit partnership and the $280,000 he received the next day for a speech in Dublin. [Link]

The outsized speaking fee makes me wonder if this was an indirect method of contributing to the Clinton campaign. While political donations are capped at $2,300, there is no limit on how much of one’s own money (or one’s spouse’s money) can be spent. So a payment to Bill Clinton, while taxable, is exempt from campaign finance regulation, although it may serve the same purpose. This suspicion is made a bit stronger by the fact that Clinton’s appearance was arranged by one of their key fundraisers, the controversial hotelier and restauranteur Sant Singh Chatwal.

This is one of the things that makes campaign finance regulation tricky – money finds a way to a candidate when people want to give it. However, with the FEC out of action this election (it has insufficient members to constitute a quorum due to gridlock), the line between business deal and campaign gift is unlikely to be clarified any time soon.

Continue reading →

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The Googlization of Everything

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Those who know me well often joke that I’d make a good spokesperson for a Google ad. I can’t help it if Google has changed my life (and I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels that way). The google desktop app has saved my writing life more times than I care to mention, and google calendar is the means by which my husband and I can always convince each other to attend otherwise resisted events (“Oh, you couldn’t make it? I had no idea. Your google calendar said you were free!”)

So, of course, my curiosity piqued when I recently read about Siva Vaidhyanathan’s recent book deal with the University of California Press. siva.gif

Per Publisher’s Weekly:

THE GOOGLIZATION OF EVERYTHING: How one company is transforming culture, commerce and community – and why we should worry, showing how Google is taking on governments, organizations and entire industries – and the implications of Google knowing more about us than we know about it.

(The book began as an open book experiment sponsored by the Institute for the Future of the Book, where Vaidhyanathan is a fellow, and was subsequently picked up for publication.)

Vaidhyanathan is a rising cultural historian and media scholar whose two previous books Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System have met with wide praise.

He is approaching the book as both a fan and as a critic, he says at his website: “I am in awe of all that Google has done and all it hopes to do. I am also wary of its ambition and power.” Continue reading →

Honey, who shrunk the dosa?

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A friend of mine emailed me this photograph of a mini-dosa from a desi restaurant’s lunch buffet in Davis Square:

It’s not the size of the dosa that counts, it’s the flavour of the filling

From a restauranteur’s perspective, this innovation makes perfect sense. You can’t serve everybody a dosa, it’s too large. And you can’t serve dosa slices either. Enter the mini-dosa, everybody gets dosaed, the restaurant has less waste, everybody goes home happy right?

And while we’re on the topic of alternadosas, how about totally American fillings like “Grilled Chicken with Goat Cheese, Spinach and Roasted Tomatoes” or “Tuna with Cilantro Chutney Dressing, Avacado, Arugala & Tomato“?

Are these reasonable innovations or travesties wrought by American commerce on the fine traditions of Madrasi South Indian cooking? In other words, is it a shanda like the bagel stick with the cream cheese inside, AKA the bagel Twinkie?

Ever toast, spread cream cheese on, and eat a bagel, and be like, damn, this is taking too long? Kraft’s Bagelfuls, essentially, a bagel Twinkie, are for you. A “Bagelful” is a frozen bagel tube with cream cheese inside. They’re kept in the refrigerator and then toasted, microwaved, or even eaten straight from the box. [Link]

How do we tell when a departure from beloved tradition is actually progress?

Continue reading →

Exxxxxxxxtreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeme Yoga!

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Hello mutineers! I’ve been holed up in my east-coast satellite bunker for a while now, perfecting my Gleeson Grip, watching test cricket and savagely turning my back on a lacto-vegetarian upbringing.

I have been trying to keep up, however, and came upon this little gem of an article via our newstab (thanks Brij), relating the life of a peculiar kind of Yogi–one who may be tempted by “Extreme” branded potato chips.

Continue reading →

In Defense of Pakistan’s Hindus

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Ali Eteraz has an informative column on Comment is Free about discrimination against Pakistan’s 3 million Hindus.

The immediate inspiration is a recent lynching of a Hindu factory worker in Karachi, after it is alleged that he uttered blasphemous words about Islam and the Prophet Muhammed. The family of the man who was murdered have suggested that he may have been killed for other reasons, and his co-workers have merely invoked blasphemy as a convenient ruse for a murder committed for more prosaic reasons. It is unclear whether his killers will be prosecuted, though there does appear to be some legal interest in doing so.

In his column, Ali Eteraz rightly condemns the institutional discrimination that exists against religious minorities in Pakistan, including the establishment of separate electorates for Hindus (dating from 1973), and an anti-Ahmadiyya blasphemy law that was first instituted by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and then enhanced by Zia ul-Haq in 1982.

One of the commenters on Comment is Free also linked to this article in the Washington Post, which describes Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy laws in greater depth. Reading that article reminded me how complex Pakistan’s legal system is. I think Ali Eteraz’s sincere hope is that the Blasphemy Law in particular ought to be immediately repealed. For my part, I must admit I have no idea whether that is a realistic possibility or not. However, we might remember that Pakistan’s legal community took a heroic stance last fall in the face of Musharraf’s anti-democratic actions. Perhaps they can do so again. Continue reading →

“Satyagraha,” by Phillip Glass, at the Met Opera House

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The New York Times has a behind-the-scenes look at a new version of Phillip Glass’s modernist opera, “Satyagraha,” which is playing at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York until May 1. There is also a companion video piece, which I could watch but not listen to from the computer I’m working on this morning.

The libretto uses the Bhagavad-Gita as a source, and the opera as a whole aims to index some of the key events in Gandhi’s early political awakening in South Africa with the plot and text of the Gita. That alone might be a little confusing, since the central question facing Arjuna in the Gita, as most readers will know, is whether or not to fight — and Gandhi’s signature political contribution (“Satyagraha”) is the philosophy of non-violent resistance. The choice could of course be defended depending on your interpretation of the Gita, and indeed, I gather that Gandhi did his own translation — with commentary — of the Bhagavad-Gita in 1924. I haven’t read Gandhi’s version, though I should note that it has recently been re-published as a volume called Bhagavad-Gita According to Gandhi.

The current interpretation of Glass’s work adds some new elements, including a strong focus on newsprint and newspaper culture as a theme in Gandhi’s story (that at least seems dead-on). There are also towering puppets, made of “newspaper, fiberglass kite poles, light cotton cloth and lots of latex glue,” which symbolize historical figures from Gandhi’s past (Tolstoy), present, and future (MLK).

It seems like an interesting work, though I have to admit I’m not sure I personally would enjoy it. (And most tickets under $100 have already been sold out, so it’s not something where a person would go casually…) Has anyone seen this? Is anyone planning to? Continue reading →

I went to Pakistan with my roommate

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Barack Obama dropped a “bombshell” today, something not mentioned in either of his two books:

According to his campaign staff, Mr. Obama visited Pakistan in 1981, on the way back from Indonesia, where his mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, were living. He spent “about three weeks” there, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, said, staying in Karachi with the family of a college friend, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, but also traveling to Hyderabad, in India. [Link]

Whoa. He went to Karachi and probably had Hyderabadi biryani on the same college trip over 25 years ago! If he is elected President might not this learning experience alone help him bridge the divide between the South Asian nations? Remember when he said he was appalled that one of his staffers wrote the D-Punjab memo? At the time he stated an affinity for the South Asian community because his college roommate was desi. Turns out BO rolled at least three deep in his younger days:

In “Dreams from My Father,” he talks of having a Pakistani roommate when he moved to New York, a man he calls Sadik who “had overstayed his tourist visa and now made a living in New York’s high-turnover, illegal immigrant work force, waiting on tables…”

During his years at Occidental College, Mr. Obama also befriended Wahid Hamid, a fellow student who was an immigrant from Pakistan and traveled with Mr. Obama there, the Obama campaign said. Mr. Hamid is now a vice president at Pepsico in New York, and according to public records, has donated the maximum $2,300 to the Obama campaign and is listed as a fund-raiser for it.

Mr. Chandoo is now a self-employed financial consultant, living in Armonk, N.Y. He has also donated the maximum, $2,300, to Mr. Obama’s primary campaign and an additional $309 for the general election, campaign finance records show. [Link]

Clinton (D-Punjab) loves India and Indian food, but as far as I know, on a day-to-day basis she only runs one deep. And McCain? I don’t know if he has any desi friends but his daughter is desi, so I guess that also counts as one deep. All this is important because having desi friends means that you might understand aspects of foreign policy better, as Obama explained today:

“I knew what Sunni and Shia was before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” he said. [Link]

He might have a point. We all know that W. doesn’t have a desi posse and, as you’d expect, he didn’t know what a Sunni or Shia was. Bottom line: Having South Asian American friends = good. That is something both parties should be able to agree on.

Continue reading →