Taxi-Wallahs of America

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I spent my spring break last week interviewing taxi drivers about their working conditions, at taxi stands all across Los Angeles. It was my first week of conducting this research and we found handfuls of South Asian taxi drivers, far fewer in proportion to the taxi drivers in other metropolitan cities. I did get the chance to talk to a royal looking Sikh man with expansive white beard, who answered our questions predominantly in proverbs. Mostly though from what I saw, L.A. taxi drivers are immigrants from all over the world all working together in a not so forgiving career.

Taxi-Wallah

Luckily, the research we are doing here in L.A. is based on the success of the taxi worker alliances in New York City and the San Fransisco Bay. If you are in the Berkeley area this week, I highly suggest attending this talk (via The Seemamachine).

On April 5th at 7p, join Biju Mathew, an Associate Professor in the College of Business Administration at Rider University in New Jersey. Biju worked as a lead organizer for one of my all-time favorite organizations, New York Taxi Workers’ Alliance. NYTWA… is headed up by the wondrous Bhairavi Desai, whose leadership and commitment have resulted in health and legal services for NY’s taxi drivers, relief from burdensome and inefficient TLC practices, and a true spirit of organized power for the people that make the Big Apple move. Mathew’s book–Taxi! Cabs & Capitalism in New York City–canvasses the struggles drivers have faced within the taxi cab industry. His lecture will address same.

The lecture will be following the photography exhibit opening of “Taxi-Wallahs of Berkeley: Photographs and Narratives by Aditya Dhawan” hosted by the Center for South Asia Studies. You can see his taxi worker photos online and his exhibit will be running through June. Both events will be on the UC Berkeley campus. In the meantime down here in Los Angeles, I will continue to talk to as many taxi drivers as possible.

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No end in sight

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Two articles out on Monday provide a disturbing glimpse into how some segments of Indian society are “coping” with the ravages of sex selection. The first is from the UK based Independent:

Tripla’s parents sold her for £170 to a man who had come looking for a wife. He took her away with him, hundreds of miles across India, to the villages outside Delhi. It was the last time she would see her home. For six months, she lived with him in the village, although there was never any formal marriage. Then, two weeks ago, her husband, Ajmer Singh, ordered her to sleep with his brother, who could not find a wife. When Tripla refused, he took her into the fields and beheaded her with a sickle.

When Rishi Kant, an Indian human rights campaigner, tracked down Tripla’s parents in the state of Jharkhand and told them the news, her mother broke down in tears. “But what could we do?” she asked him. “We are facing so much poverty we had no choice but to sell her.”

Tripla was a victim of the common practice in India of aborting baby girls because parents only want boys. Although she was born and lived into early adulthood, it was the abortions that caused her death. In the villages of Haryana, just outside Delhi, abortions of baby girls have become so common that the shortage of women is severe. Unable to find wives locally, the men have resorted to buying women from the poorer parts of India. Just 25 miles from the glitzy new shopping malls and apartment complexes of Delhi is a slave market for women. [Link]

Normal laws of supply in demand would have led me to guess that when “enough” girls had been aborted, the ones that survived to birth would eventually become “more valuable” than men. I even imagined a reverse dowery situation as a possibility. Society would finally see the fallacy of its ways when men had nobody to marry. Probably like many who were as naive as me, I never accounted for the fact that a quicker way to deal with the problem was money. Just like there is a black market for kidneys there is growing black market for women.

When the police arrested Tripla’s husband, he could not provide a marriage certificate. Generally, there is no real marriage. The women are sexual “brides” only. Sometimes, brothers who cannot afford more share one woman between them. Often, men who think they have got a good deal on a particularly beautiful bride will sell her at a profit. [Link]

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I’m not one to gossip but…

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You know me by now good readers. I am normally not one to do a fluff post here on SM but I feel I must draw your attention to someting sent to me. All bloggers use some service to keep track of who visits their website (how many hits, where are they from, etc.). We swear that we won’t turn over our records to the Bush administration. Many sites, including our own, use Sitemeter. Sitemeter also tells you the search term someone keyed in to a search engine like Google to arrive at a blog. Earlier, blogger Suhail Kazi brought this to my attention. It is a screenshot of the sitemeter keeping track of his blog (see the last line). The internet is apparently buzzing with people desperately looking to substantiate rumors swirling around Manish’s trip to India.

What is Manish really doing in India? Is he keeping his fellow mutineers in the dark? You know me. I’m not one to gossip but I’m just saying…

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First Desi Viceroy of Kiwistan

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In some exciting news, New Zealand’s next Governor General is going to be a desi, Judge Anand Satyanand [Thanks 3rd Eye]. Satyanand was born and raised in New Zealand (his parents were Indo-Fijians) and last held the job of the Parliament’s ombudsman. I think he’s the first desi Governor General outside of a South Asian country.

Lord of the sheep, a true sepia mutton-ier!

You do realize what this means, don’t you? A desi is (nominally) in charge of the great country of New Zealand. He could veto all their new laws, order the government to dissolve, or command their army to invade Australia! Well, not really, it’s a symbolic position now, but it wasn’t always.

The Governor General is a vestigial organ left over from when the Empire became the Commonwealth. It’s the old Imperial Viceroy job; in India, Mountbatten simply switched titles with Independence. Once upon a time, it was a very powerful position:

Governors-General notionally hold the prerogative powers of the monarch he is representing, and also hold the executive power of the country to which he is assigned. This means that the Governor-General has the power to certify or veto law (Royal Assent), and is also the head of the armed forces in his territory… Because of the Governor-General’s control of the military in the territory, the post was as much a military appointment as a civil one.

The Governor-General may exercise almost all the reserve powers of the Monarch. Except in rare cases, the Governor-General only acts in accordance with constitutional convention and upon the advice of the Prime Minister. A rare and controversial case of a Governor General independently exercising his authority occurred in 1975, when the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, dismissed the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. [Link]

And even though the role is largely ceremonial today, it’s an important symbolic position:

The governor general officiates at state functions such as the opening of the parliament, signs off on laws and appoints judges and commissioned officers in the military. [Link]

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America in South Asia

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Last spring, I went to visit my aunt in India who was at the time organizing the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit for that year. She worked in the Bangladesh government, was adamant about the mission of SAARC, and would often come home telling me the woes of work over afternoon chai.

Created in 1985, “…SAARC provides a platform for the peoples of South Asia to work together in a spirit of friendship, trust and understanding. It aims to accelerate the process of economic and social development in Member States… Cooperation in the SAARC is based on respect for the principles of sovereign equality, territorial integrity, political independence, noninterference in internal affairs of the Member States and mutual benefit.Summits, which are the highest authority in SAARC, are to be held annually [link].”

SAARC to the South Asian region has served as a tool to create a unified regional dialogue as well as present a South Asian perspective into the international markets. I thought it was interesting that as my aunt was working on creating a cohesiveness of South Asians in South Asia I was working to create a cohesiveness of South Asians in America. It looks as if though these two may be getting a little more intertwined.

The US is expected to formally apply for membership as observer of the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)…US Under Secretary John Wright is to formally apply for membership to Dhaka, the current chairman of SAARC. Member counties decided at the last SAARC meeting to include Afghanistan in the regional grouping and invite Japan and China as observers.[link]

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India nuclear energy deal lacks Dem allies

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Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran was just on Capitol Hill lobbying for the India-U.S. nuclear energy deal. Surprisingly, 10 of the 18 India Caucus members are against the deal, and even the Clinton who still holds elected office isn’t on board. It’s surprising given stats we’ve blogged before showing that up to 90% of desi American registered voters went Dem in the 2004 election.

Clinton, said sources, derives a large amount of campaign funding from Indian Americans, but her silence, verging on opposition is, as one Indian American said, “deafening”… The irony is that 10 of the 18 Congressmen who have co-sponsored or supported the Bill are members of the India caucus, billed as the largest caucus in the US Congress on any one country…

A Washington source said, the Democrat opposition to the India deal was being “noticed” in the community. [Link]

The rich uncle contingent is dismayed:

The reason for this cold-shouldering could be many, including domestic political considerations arising out of the November 2006 Congressional and Senate elections. The Democratic Party would be loathe to propping up a significant foreign policy triumph by the Bush administration were it to endorse the nuclear deal. The Republican party, on the other hand, has become significantly disenchanted with President George W. Bush personally. In this climate of political hostility the deal could run the risk of being scuttled…

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Rice cooked in Londonstan

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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has met [mostly desi] Muslim leaders in north-west England in a trip during which protesters expressed anger that an architect of the Iraq war was on their home turf… Dr Rice had been due to visit a mosque in Blackburn until its governors withdrew their invitation out of fear the occasion would be hijacked by demonstrators…

Cartoons lampooned the visit with The Independent carrying one showing a sign at a Blackburn Indian restaurant: “We regret we do not serve Rice.” [Link]

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Girls, Girls, Girls

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I’ve always been one of those girls that scoured mainstream beauty/fashion mags to see if there was a desi face within the pages. Of course, I was constantly disappointed. While thumbing through Jane Magazine’s April issue (print edition only) this weekend, I surprisingly found two. These two women were profiled in a list of “30 under 30,” basically, 30 cool women under the age of 30…

Miss Congeniality

Kashish Chopra, 22 – Washington D.C. Real Estate Agent; openly gay; Miss Congeniality at the 2003 Miss India pageant. “People would tell me how they were born gay but didn’t know how to come to terms with their personal or cultural identity. But they shouldn’t be afraid of it, because they are not alone.” (p104)

Alpana Singh, 29 – Chicago. Youngest female master sommelier in the country (and one of only 16 in the world). “It’s like, you can see Scarlett Johansson having wine, whereas Tara Reed is doing shots of tequila. Do you want to be Scarlett or Tara?” (p121)

She Likes Her Wine

It got me to thinking…just two? I know there’s more. Most of the people I come across in doing South Asian American work are dynamic women, all moving to break down barriers…Who would I additionally add if it was a list of “Desi Women Under 30”? Continue reading →

Boondoggle

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The New York Times reports that a former investigator with Congress’ Government Accountability Office (G.A.O) is blowing the whistle on his own office, as well as the Bush administration’s oversight of the contracters building elements of the national missile defense shield:

A senior Congressional investigator has accused his agency of covering up a scientific fraud among builders of a $26 billion system meant to shield the nation from nuclear attack. The disputed weapon is the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s antimissile plan, which is expected to cost more than $250 billion over the next two decades.

The investigator, Subrata Ghoshroy of the Government Accountability Office, led technical analyses of a prototype warhead for the antimissile weapon in an 18-month study, winning awards for his “great care” and “tremendous skill and patience.”

Mr. Ghoshroy now says his agency ignored evidence that the two main contractors had doctored data, skewed test results and made false statements in a 2002 report that credited the contractors with revealing the warhead’s failings to the government.

The agency strongly denied his accusations, insisting that its antimissile report was impartial and that it was right to exonerate the contractors of a coverup… And Mr. Ghoshroy’s assertions raise new questions about the Boeing Company’s military arm, the main contractor for the troubled $26 billion system of interceptor rockets now being installed in Alaska and California. The system’s “kill vehicles” are to zoom into space and destroy enemy warheads by force of impact. [Link]

Mr. Ghoshroy seems to have a strong background in defense weaponry and is currently at Harvard’s Kennedy School:

Until his arrival at the Belfer Center, Mr. Ghoshroy was a Senior Defense Analyst at the U.S. General Accounting Office, which he joined in 1998. Mr. Ghoshroy’s primary responsibility has been to provide independent technical advice to GAO staff and managers on GAO evaluation of weapons systems that employ sophisticated technology. In this capacity, Mr. Ghoshroy has contributed among others to reviews of National Missile Defense, Airborne Laser, Land Warrior, and Joint Tactical Radio. [Link]
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Punishing the Victim III: Teenager to be Executed for Killing Rapist

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Amnesty International issued a public statement regarding the death sentence of an Iranian teenager:

On 3 January, 18-year-old Nazanin was sentenced to death for murder by a criminal court, after she reportedly admitted stabbing to death one of three men who attempted to rape her and her 16-year-old niece in a park in Karaj in March 2005. She was seventeen at the time. Her sentence is subject to review by the Court of Appeal, and if upheld, to confirmation by the Supreme Court. According to reports in the Iranian newspaper, E’temaad, Nazanin told the court that three men had approached her and her niece, forced them to the ground and tried to rape them. Seeking to defend her niece and herself, Nazanin stabbed one man in the hand with a knife that she possessed and then, when the men continued to pursue them, stabbed another of the men in the chest. She reportedly told the court “I wanted to defend myself and my niece. I did not want to kill that boy. At the heat of the moment I did not know what to do because no one came to our help”, but was nevertheless sentenced to death. [Link]

The court’s judgment has, to some, further exposed the unfairness of Islamic law with respect to women. As others have pointed out, Nazanin may have been unable to prove that she acted in self-defense because of certain evidentiary rules in Islamic law that place greater weight on the testimony of males.

The women asked, “O Allah’s Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?” He said, “Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?” They replied in the affirmative. He said, “This is the deficiency in her intelligence. [Link]

Accordiginly, Nazanin and her niece may have testified that the three men attempted to rape them, but the testimony of the two surviving men would have successfully refuted this claim.

(For those interested, there is an online petition to “save” Nazanin, which will be submitted to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and others.)

The case has also reinvigorated the debate about whether the death penalty should be applied to teenagers (an issue the Supreme Court of the United States recently addressed in Roper v. Simmons), and whether capital punishment should be abolished entirely.

In India, rape is not punishable by death, however some have argued that the availability of capital punishment should extend to rape cases. Columnist Vir Sanghvi, for example, suggested that “rape is as bad as murder,” particularly because of the nature of Indian society:

It is almost impossible to recover and lead a normal life after you have been raped in India. First of all, you probably can’t talk about it. Secondly, in many cases, even when you do complain, no action is taken against the rapist. Thirdly, you are finished on the arranged marriage market and if you’re already married, your husband acts as though you are now shop soiled. And finally, far from being counselled to cope with the trauma of rape, you face a new trauma: society’s hostility. [Link]

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