Reva Nation

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I thought I had eyeballed the future when the first Smart car crossed my eyes, speeding down Sheikh Zayed road a few years ago. In a city like Dubai where petrol is cheaper than pop yet parking mostly comes in either the illegal or the parallel form a Smart car looked like it just might live up to its moniker. I was naive. It is today that I am really peering into that which is in store and yes it is also a small car. I like small cars but I like electric cars better.

Via Popgadget, a Bangalore-based company has been making the coolest little electric car known as the Reva since 2001. According to the site the Reva goes 85 KM on one charge through a 15 Amp socket. It boasts dent-proof ABS body panels, a dual-breaking system, climate control seats, and over 2000 colours to choose from while “elevated seats and a wide door provide excellent ingress/egress especially for ladies in saree and senior citizens”. Much better than having to sit sideways on a scooty.

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Last year the Reva Electric Car Company produced a super prototype of the next generation, an electric roadster called the Reva NXG. This bad boy comes equipped with a modem, GPS navigation, MP3 player, and a 125 mile range per charge. Plus it just looks cool.

The Reva has sold 900 units in India and is also on the roads in Malta and the U.K. The base price in India is Rs. 250, 000. Having never so much as looked at a car’s price tag there I don’t know how expensive this is in comparison to other cars on the road. Please feel free to enlighten. Have any Mutineers spotted or driven these vroom-vrooms in their town? Continue reading →

Has It Been A Year Already?

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It was a second line and a jazz funeral to mourn the Katrina-dead and celebrate the rebirth of this city. For two hours this afternoon, colleagues and I braved the hot sun and humidity to see … our well-dressed salesman of a mayor, Ray Nagin, his wife and Lt. Gen. Russell Honoré wave at us while a brass band and dancers slid past us on Poydras St.??! “Forget this, next they’ll start throwing beads,” I said while contemplating returning to work. That’s when the fire trucks inched towards us, and the Fire Marshall and his men and women somberly walked behind them, no waving, no music, no fanfare. Hot tears filled my eyes as I put away my camera and thanked them from the bottom of my heart and lungs. The EMS and NOFD were the most hardworking people during the flood, have worked tirelessly since then in a rebounding city threatened by drought and arson, and only recently got a paltry 10% raise.

The Louisiana Military and National Guard vehicles poured forth and the crowd erupted in applause. We are a thankful city, y’all, even with full awareness that such a presence here on the 29th of last year, and not five days later, would have saved many of the thousand dead.

My Katrina evacuation photos weren’t released until yesterday, the first time I was able to relive the gut-wrenching anxiety. Sifting through my pictures, I wondered how many came back that evacuated with us. Was it the last time a number of them saw New Orleans? What a way to close a life chapter. On the other hand, it isn’t simple even for those who remained and returned, especially for the middle-class and business owners whose livelihoods were either damaged by wind and flood or, a year later, may fail due to increasing insurance costs and a dwindling consumer base. With less than half of pre-Katrina New Orleans residents back home, over 70,000 of them living in 240-square foot FEMA trailers, and the rising cost of living, penny-pinching is the norm.

In the high and dry French Quarter, the tourist section is littered with t-shirt and novelty shops owned by families of South Asian descent. When friends show up in town for the first time and want to buy the obligatory Bourbon St. and Mardi Gras t-shirts, I walk them to Decatur St. and to a large store owned by a lovely Sindhi couple and their Oxbridge-educated daughter. On a recent visit, the lack of business was so appalling that I insisted on paying full price, ignoring the loud objections of Aunty and Uncle to the contrary. “Arre, bacchi, how can we take this much from you? It’s not right.” [A note to non-desis: haggling is in our blood and must be conducted, usually at the behest of the store-owner] It is now my personal responsibility to pay full price to Paul (Prakash), Jim (Jahangir), Simon, Kendra, Don and every single small business owner whose store I frequent in New Orleans. “Buy New Orleanian” is the new motto around these parts. But, how long will our activism alone keep these endeavours afloat?

Our ill Hindu points me to an article in today’s Beeb that addresses just this dilemma: South Asians Recall Katrina Disaster Continue reading →

Police Brutality? Deport That Man!

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Earlier this month SAALT sent around this statement in response to the following event that took place in Edison, New Jersey:

Community members in Edison gathered on August 2nd, 2006, at a rally to protest incidents of police brutality that an Indian man, Raj Parikh, allegedly experienced on July 4th, 2006, by an Edison police officer. The rally on August 2nd occurred after several unsuccessful attempts by community members to address their concerns with government officials. At the rally, a group of approximately 60 South Asians were met by counter protesters who made anti-immigrant and racist slurs, such as, “How many of you are illegals? You must’ve slid under the border to come here”; “You’re all cockroaches! Go home!”; and “If you behave like animals you will be treated like animals”. Mr. Parikh was scheduled to speak at the rally but was unable to do so, because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials appeared and arrested him. Apparently, Mr. Parikh was out of status and had an order of deportation against him.

The statement that was sent out included the following recommendations; a) to ensure Mayor Choi’s office leads an investigation that is detailed and public, b) a declaration from the mayor’s office and Edison Police Department. to clarify official policies between local law enforcement and immigration authorities, c) to have elected officials and civic leaders commit to community forums to address the racial tension, and d) to require the Edison Police Department employees to receive a diversity training and meet with the South Asian community members. High but simple basic demands needed to be taken in a community with such a large percentage of South Asians (5th on the list of cities with the highest South Asian American population.)

This past Friday, Mayor Choi attempted to address the community, but was met with much disdain:

Holding a microphone, Edison Mayor Jun Choi stood alone Friday night facing Hilltop Apartments, a complex almost entirely populated by Indian-Americans.

The mayor’s critics and political observers say Choi, 34, has mishandled the racial controversy over the Indian’s arrest. Barely eight months into office, Choi faces opponents on both sides of the dispute. For Choi, who never held elected office before becoming mayor, it has been a test of how well he can maintain the balance between his Asian-American constituency and the rest of the township, which has become increasingly diverse. [link]

It’s not just the members of the South Asian community who are disapointed here: Continue reading →

Are there like any desis up there?

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For the past week I have been absent from this website while on an anthropological excursion for SM (like anyone but my monkey assistants even noticed). Sometimes a blogger just needs to get out of their bunker and talk to the real people. The question I was seeking an answer to was a profound one. Do those states…you know, the ones up there near the Canadian border…do they even have any desis that live there? For my excursion I needed a field assistant. My brother (we will call him P to protect his real identity) has lived in Idaho for the past two years and served as a good travel companion.

From L.A. I flew to Portland, Oregon where I had a layover. While walking from one gate to the other I had my first desi sighting. It was a Sikh man with a long flowing beard and an unusually large turban who I spotted in the TSA security line. Upon closer inspection however, two things became clear. First, the man was white and not desi. Second, he was a TSA screener and not a passenger.

Four hours later (damn airline delays) I landed in Spokane, WA where I collected my possessions at baggage claim. I began to re-arrange some of my gear when a woman walked up to me holding a sign.

Woman: Excuse me but are you Mustafa?

Abhi: Heh. No, sorry.

Woman: I’m sorry but you are the only one that looked like he was…lost.

“Lost” of course was a very clever euphemism for “brown.” I didn’t mind though. The name “Mustafa” reminded me of a powerful figure with a glorious mane. For just a minute I forgot about my military short haircut and hummed a little Hakuna Matata as I waited on the curb for my brother to drive up.

Continue reading →

Interesting Legal Precedents, Vol. 2

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The San Francisco Chronicle reported this weekend that Muhammad Ismail and his son Jaber Ismail, U.S. citizens, have been barred from re-entering the United States until they answer questions in Pakistan to the satisfaction of the FBI. The two men were pulled aside during a layover in Hong Kong and informed there was “a problem with their passports.” The elder Ismail is a naturalized U.S. citizen; his son, 18, was born in the U.S. Neither one is a dual national.

The two have not been charged with any crime. They are, however, close relatives of another father and son pair, Umer and Hamid Hayat of Lodi, California, who were tried last year on support of terrorism charges. Coincidentally, the elder Hayat, an ice cream vendor, was just released on time served and fined $3,600 for a minor offence.

Back to the Ismails and their unusual treatment as U.S. citizens denied re-entry into their country without any charge or stated cause:

“We haven’t heard about this happening — U.S. citizens being refused the right to return from abroad without any charges or any basis,” said Mass, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

McGregor Scott, the U.S. attorney for California’s eastern district, confirmed Friday that the men were on the no-fly list and were being kept out of the country until they agreed to talk to federal authorities.

“They’ve been given the opportunity to meet with the FBI over there and answer a few questions, and they’ve declined to do that,” Scott said.

Mass said Jaber Ismail had answered questions during an FBI interrogation at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad soon after he was forced back to Pakistan. She said the teenager had run afoul of the FBI when he declined to be interviewed again without a lawyer and refused to take a lie-detector test.

Here again, we’re looking at an apparently unprecedented situation, and one that any U.S. citizen who travels outside the country might have grounds to be worried about:

Michael Barr, director of the aviation safety and security program at USC, said the Ismail case appears to be unusual in the realm of federal terrorism investigations.

“You become what is called a stateless person, and that would be very unprecedented,” Barr said.

Continue reading →

Posted in Law

Interesting Legal Precedents, Vol. 1

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iqbalstatenisland.jpgLast Thursday Javed Iqbal, a Pakistani citizen and longtime resident of Staten Island, New York City (that’s his house in the picture), was arrested under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act after he offered to sell to an informant a satellite TV package that included al-Manar, the Lebanese channel operated by Hezbollah. The government argues that Iqbal’s commercial provision of this service amounts to financing a terrorist organization. However, the act also exempts a broad range of news and publications:

The broadly defined statute, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, is also used frequently to block the importation of goods and services that would directly support terrorist operations.

The law, which went into effect in 1977, was meant to put legal teeth in international trade embargoes with other nations, but once it was amended by the Patriot Act after 9/11, the government began to use it far more frequently against particular groups and individuals.

The use of the law, however, to focus on television broadcasts seemed to fall under an exemption laid out in a 1988 amendment to the act, several experts said, and it raised concerns among civil libertarians and some constitutional scholars about limiting the free marketplace of ideas.

The exemption covers publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact discs, CD-ROMÂ’s, art works and newswire feeds.

“One person’s news is another’s propaganda,” said Rod Smolla, the dean of the University of Richmond Law School and a First Amendment expert. “It runs counter to all of our First Amendment traditions to ban the free flow of news and information across borders, yet at the same time all nations have historically reserved the right to ban the importation of propaganda from a hostile nation.”

Professor Smolla also said that so far as he knew, this was the first use of the law to block information, as such.

Clearly, a First Amendment versus “War on Terror” showdown looms. Interestingly, Iqbal’s hometown paper, the Staten Island Advance, reports that al-Manar has a readily accessible online presence (although I couldn’t get through when I tried to connect just now):

Even as Iqbal now faces charges of offering access to what has been dubbed terrorism-backed programming, an Al-Manar Web site is available free to the public, with streaming video, news stories and updates on protests and demonstrations.

The site has logged more than 1.1 million hits in the last month and half.

Another interesting note: one of his attorneys says that Iqbal, who supplies a range of satellite TV services, does more than half of his business with Texas-based Christian evangelical channels.

Iqbal is in jail, having been unable to raise the $250,000 bond. [Update: He posted bond today, Tuesday, August 29.] To be continued… Continue reading →

Posted in Law

Are We American?

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I am often surprised at the propensity of hyphenated identity discussions that we have here at Sepia Mutiny. If you read this blog long enough, it often feels like the topics in the comments are repetitive, and in some ways it does feel like beating a dead horse. But on the flip side, the fact that we still have so many people participating in such a heated discussion on race, being South Asian, and manuevering through the complexities of this uniquely diasporic culture simply proves the need to have this safe space online to have these relatively anonymous discussions that we wouldn’t be able to have elsewhere.

In yesterday’s Washington Post, John Thatamanil talked about the juxtaposition of being South Asian American in this country, and the lack of ever fully being American.

The Allen incident offers evidence that America is not now or likely to ever be a color-blind country. How are South Asians to live with this truth? Resignation is not the answer. Vigorous political participation is. My youthful intuition that what makes me as American as any Mayflower descendant is citizenship — not race or ethnicity — was only partly on the mark. The piece of paper that validates our identities as American citizens can do only so much if we do little to struggle for recognition.

There is also a second lesson to be learned from this incident. South Asian political engagement cannot be driven solely by the private interests of a single racial or ethnic group. America’s obsession with color has a long history that South Asians forget at their peril. Indian Americans and other affluent immigrant groups would do well to remember the civil rights struggles of African Americans and others without whom a racially inclusive American nation would have been impossible. The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which opened the door to people from the Eastern Hemisphere, must be recognized as the fruit of a larger struggle to expand the meaning of the term “American,” a struggle fought on our behalf before our arrival. [link]

The idea of what it means to be an American, through a South Asian lens is something I probably spend way too much time thinking about- if only because I am constantly challenging myself on the importance of voting and what exactly voting means in the scope of creating a South Asian American political voice. Are citizenship and voting merely parts of a false border created to divide our community? Are we aspiring to honorary whiteness as Thatamanil suggests? Is it true that we’ll never truly be American? Continue reading →

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FDA Takes Two Small Steps…

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The FDA has recently approved two drugs that will have a huge impact to the desi woman community; a) earlier this summer, the approval of the cervical cancer vaccine (or known as the HPV vaccine) and b) last week the approval of Plan B, the emergency contraceptive, as an over the counter drug for anyone over the age of 18. I think that both of these are huge landmark moments for the advancement of reproductive justice in our community.

According to a policy brief distributed by the National Asian Pacific Women’s Forum (NAPAWF)…

The vaccine, Gardasil, is 100% effective in preventing the infection of human papillomavirus (HPV) which causes 70% of all cervical cancer cases worldwide. The FDA approved the vaccine for safe use among girls and women ages 9-26. Asian Pacific Islander (API) women will greatly benefit from this new HPV vaccine, given their high rates of cervical cancer, particularly among Vietnamese and Korean women.

In fact, in the U.S. cervical cancer is relatively rare. For many API women, however, lack of health insurance, lack of knowledge about Pap smears and preventive care, and lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate services prevent them from equally accessing the health care system, contributing to their higher rates of cervical cancer.

Although abstinence or faithful lifelong monogamy are the only real full-proof ways to protect against HPV infection, these may not be realistic. Regular Pap smears are perhaps one of the most effective measures to protect oneself against developing cervical cancer. Because HPV is sexually transmitted, experts argue that the vaccine should be administered before adolescents have their first sexual encounter.

To me, it feels like an enormous injustice to know that a disproportionate amount of women in my community will have a higher chance of getting a preventable cancer because of the social stigmas attached to sex in our society, especially as a South Asian American female. When I ecstatically announced the FDAs approval to my mother and declared the need to get all the girls in our extended family here vaccinated, I was met with a, “Isn’t HPV sexually contracted? Why would we need to vaccinate then?” I didn’t really know how to respond to her. Social stigma of sexuality in our community as a form of birth control and cancer prevention will only take us so far.

Continue reading →

The World Wide (and Village Wide) Web

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I can see the Bollywood movie now. It would be like Swades, but instead of SRK bringing electricity into the village it would be installing an internet connection. Instead of an NRI romance, it would be internet love. What exactly am I talking about? Why, you didn’t hear?

An Indian village has uploaded itself onto the Internet, giving the outside world a glimpse of life in rural India.Visitors to Hansdehar village’s Web site (http://www.smartvillages.org/) can see the names, jobs and other details of its 1,753 residents, browse photographs of their shops and read detailed specifications about their drainage and electricity facilities.

Most of the residents can’t yet surf the Hansdehar Web site as the village is not yet connected to the Internet. [link]

It’s cute. These villagers have ideas on how to use the internet- to get better prices for crops by trading online, job hunting, and even, wife searching. The website itself has pictures of the village, tourist attractions, and even a voter list. I think there is great potential with getting Indian villages connected to the web. I really started thinking about this when I bumped into Nipun from Charity Focus, when he was walking across India in an attempt to tie in service with internet in the villages (yes, he blogged his trip). The internet does have it’s advantages in connecting villages with the rest of the world, and I see a lot of potential with this.

But what about the privilege associated with getting accessing an internet connection? Seems like an MIT grad at United Villages is trying to take care of that with the advent of ‘drive-by Wi-Fi.’

United Villages …is working with Indian nongovernmental organization Drishtee to network 50 villages in Orissa’s Cuttack district, where bus-powered Wi-Fi service begins this month… “You have drive-by McDonald’s, and we have drive-by Wi-Fi,” says Mr. Hasson. The buses will use short-range radio to pick up electronic messages three or more times per day from Wi-Fi-enabled computers placed in kiosks. Hubs near bus stations will handle traffic via a connection that can be as slow as dial-up.

UV will sell pre-paid cards, with phone number and email address assigned to them, in different denominations (up to 100 rupees, roughly $2.20).[link]

Interesting- so it seems like even though people with television sets won’t be able to watch Paris Hilton’s too-racy-for-India banned music video, it looks like people in buses with Wi-Fi connections will still be able to download and watch the video. Indian villages online, drive-by wi-fi at bus kiosks, and a banned Hilton video; I can see the Bollywood script now…

Continue reading →

The Misogyny Of Chaos

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While Katrina’s flood thrives in our memories, Debby peters off to the east and TD5/Ernesto enters the Caribbean, New Orleans holds its collective breath. Whether to extract Rubbermaid containers from storage this evening or wait until Tuesday (when many hope that Ernie opts for the Yucatan peninsula)? Uncertainty is the toll of living in New Orleans during hurricane season.

Today’s nola.com confirms the rising cost of living in this city. Surrounded by jacked-up insurance premiums, neighborhoods teetering on the fine line between rebound and abandonment, increasing expenses and a mayor without a plan (or a clue), can the middle class make it during the rebuild? The current answer to this $110-billion-dollar question: We shall see.

Forget stress and money; grey hair is easily painted over and moolah comes and goes. In any disaster, whether natural or humanmade, one that occurs overnight or lumbers along over the course of years, the real price of living is borne by its least-enfranchised. At times of chaos, strife, poverty and socio-economic/political instability, women and children need additional protection. The ACLU investigates violations in New Orleans prisons after Katrina and Spike Lee talks of the overall suffering here; who speaks for the women? As pertains to Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur, concerns about US military misconduct, extremist violence or the semantics of civil war abound, but why is more light not shed on the real victims – mothers whose rights are decreased or taken away, sisters who are brutalized and raped, daughters who are dehumanized? Continue reading →