Monday, October 29, 2007
19 is old enoughPolitics
You think that Ashwin Madia is on the young side in running for Congress at the age of 29? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Meet Ytit Chauhan, a 19-year-old Indian-American running for city council in Atlantic City, N.J.:
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Picture shamelessly cradle-robbed from his Facebook profile |
The first round of campaign finance forms shows that this year’s City Council candidates may spend tens of thousands of dollars to land a seat on the resort’s governing body. While files are incomplete, the candidates raised a cumulative $103,141, while spending $77,578 for the Nov. 6 contest.
Leading the pack is Steve Layman, a Republican running independently who is challenging Councilman Tim Mancuso, a Democrat.
Unendorsed Democrat Ytit Chauhan is also running in that race, but he signed forms indicated he planned to spend no more than $3,500. [Link]
Chauhan has even caught the attention of David Letterman and his company WorldWide Pants. Variety reports:
David Letterman’s Worldwide Pants production banner is spearheading an untitled feature documentary about young adults running for public office. The doc will follow five men and women ages 18-20 who are seeking elected posts in a range of states, including New Jersey and Tennessee.
The film is the first docu and the first noncomedy project for Worldwide Pants. Doc will be directed by Michael Moore’s former assistant Jason Pollock, and “An Inconvenient Truth” producer Lawrence Bender is attached to produce.
The candidates include Ytit Chauhan, 18, a first-generation Indian-American running for city council in Atlantic City, N.J.; and George Monger, 18, who successfully appealed to lower the Memphis voting age from 23 so that he could run for city council. [Link]
Posted by abhi at 11:30 PM in Politics
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The Tronie FoundationNon-profits
Since we’ve already had one depressing story about child slave labor in India today I thought, why not end the day with an…errrrrr, uplifting story about child slave labor? Thank goodness for the Seattle Times for reporting on this gem to take some of the earlier slime off:
As a 7-year-old girl in southern India in 1978, she was taken from her parents and sold into slavery.
At the same time, a 9-year-old boy in Southeast Asia was surviving alone in a cave, after the fishing boat on which he was fleeing Vietnam became shipwrecked.
Rani and Trong Hong would eventually be rescued from their separate childhood nightmares and brought to safety in Washington state. They would meet as adults on a blind date, fall in love and marry…Now, motivated by the pain of their early years to help others, they are renovating a home exclusively for victims of human trafficking — people recruited, transported and harbored for sexual exploitation or slave labor. [Link]
Talk about a power couple! Click on their names in the passage above to read about their unfortunate childhoods. The non-profit they’ve established, partly on the profits from their lucrative home-building business in Olympia Washington, is called The Tronie Foundation (and it could use your donations):
Rani works with victims who have been abused by all forms of Human Trafficking. Whether the victim was part of a mail-order bride schemes, sold into servitude, sexual slavery or victimized as part of an international adoption ring, Rani because of her own personal experience has a heart for these women and children. She shares openly her own personal story, in hopes that they too can be restored and live a productive life, free from the pain of their past.
“No woman and child should be so severely abused that they end up looking like they are mentally and physically ill. As a survivor of human trafficking, I personally have chosen to speak publicly to give hope and encourage those of you that may be afraid to come forward. [Link]
Posted by abhi at 11:03 PM in Kids, News, Non-profits
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Dubai -- The Beginning of the End?News
For the first time that I know of, Desi (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Sri Lankan) workers in Dubai have gone on strike to protest low wages and working conditions. After years of systematic exploitation, it’s about time.
The boom has been possible due to plentiful investment from oil-rich neighbors and armies of non-unionized south Asian workers whose fear of deportation, until recently, kept them from voicing discontent over low wages.
“The cost of living here has increased so much in the past two years that I cannot survive with my salary,” said Rajesh Kumar, a 24-year-old worker from the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh who earns $149 a month.
The laborers ignored the threat of deportation and refused to go to work, staging protests at a labor camp in Dubai’s Jebel Ali Industrial Zone and on a construction site in Al Qusais residential neighborhood. They demanded pay increases, improved housing and better transportation services to construction sites. On Saturday, workers threw stones at the riot police and damaged to police cars.
Emirates’ Minister of Labor Ali bin Abdullah al-Kaabi described workers’ behavior as “uncivilized,” saying they were tampering with national security and endangering residents’ safety. (link)
Uncivilized? In my view, what’s uncivilized is when you’re making billions and your workers (nearly 2 million of them) are forced to live in prison-like conditions for $149 a month. When they have limited civil and legal rights, and are forcibly segregated from the native population. And when you have laws on the books that prevent them from organizing in any way that might lead to a better situation for themselves.
The era when South Asian workers were desperate to go abroad to try and make a little money under these circumstances seems to be gradually ending, and many in Dubai are more than ready to walk away, especially with a growing economy at home, and the UAE’s Dirham linked to a falling dollar:
Companies, however, do not want more workers to leave as they struggle to find enough to complete existing projects following an overwhelming response to a government amnesty program to persuade illegal laborers to leave.
In June, the government offered, no questions asked, a free one-way plane tickets to illegal workers hoping to leave. They have since been swamped by 280,000 workers who, fed up with a rising cost of living and low wages, were ready to go home. (link)
280,000 are ready to go home right now (NB: they can only go home if the UAE allows them to do so).
It’s true, even if many of the Desis leave, others might be willing to take their place. But with one large reservoir of dirt cheap labor drying up, it sounds like the oasis of Dubai’s recent economic boom is starting to flicker. It may have always been a mere mirage — albeit one built with real sweat, and in some cases, blood.
Posted by amardeep at 09:48 PM in News
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GapKids Shoppers, meet Bonded Child LaborersNews
One of the items that has been getting votes on the News Tab today is the IBN Live story (thanks, Raprasad) on The Gap’s decision to pull a contract with an Indian contractor that had been using bonded child laborers in horrific sweatshop conditions in Delhi. (By a strange irony, the clothes the children were working on happened to be destined for GapKids. Oy.) The decision by The Gap was prompted by an excellent article in the UK Observer, which was in turn the product of an undercover investigation. The part that bugged me in the IBN article came at the end of the following passage:
The Observer quoted the children as saying that they had been sold to the sweatshop in Delhi by their families. The children, some of who worked for as long as 16 hours a day sewing clothes by hand, said they hailed from Bihar and West Bengal. They added that they were not being paid because their employer said they were still trainees; nor would they be allowed to leave till they could repay the amount for which they were bought from their families.
When contacted, Gap gave the official statement that the sweatshop was being run by a sub-contractor. This is a violation of Gap’s policies, said the fashion giant.
Gap spokesman Bill Chandler was vocal in his thanks to the media. “We appreciate that the media identified this sub-contractor and we acted swiftly in this situation,” he told the Associated Press. “Under no circumstances is it acceptable for children to produce or work on garments,” he added.
Correctness-conscious America is very strict about the use of child labour. (link)
That last sentence, “Correctness-conscious America is very strict…” got under my skin. Granted, there are different ways of looking at this particular issue; I know some people justify limited child labor under the argument that families living in extreme poverty need all the income they can get. In this case, however, the kids were effectively slave laborers sold off by their families — an arrangement that in my view can’t possibly be defensible.
The sentence above could also be defended along the lines that the reporter was merely explaining to a readership that may not be that strongly opposed to child labor why this is such a big deal. If that’s the case — that is, if the majority of English-speaking readers of Indian business newspapers and viewers of cable news are nonplussed by bonded child labor in their own backyards — I’m not angry, just sad. It’s not about “correctness-consciousness,” it’s about basic human rights, is it not?
See also: SAJA Forum.
Posted by amardeep at 04:41 PM in News
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Mahindra SUVs, Coming to the U.S.Business
Via Venkig (on our spiffy new News Tab), I see that the Indian car company Mahindra & Mahindra will soon be selling a line of SUVs and pickup trucks in the U.S. Though Mahindra is already well-established in the U.S. as a seller of tractors, there’s a fair amount of skepticism as to whether the company can break into what is already a pretty crowded market:
Mahindra & Mahindra, a conglomerate based in Mumbai, intends to find out. In spring, 2009, the company plans to launch two- and four-door pickups and a sport-utility vehicle in the U.S. This trio of diesel-powered trucks will compete against a big pack of aggressively promoted offerings from General Motors, Ford, Dodge, Nissan, and Toyota. All of these manufacturers have been warring over a domestic pickup market that is shrinking and a SUV market that’s overcrowded.
Skepticism abounds. Trucks in the U.S. are sold with imagery of waving flags, macho companionship, and brawny workers showing off feats of towing strength to the sound of John Mellencamp anthems. Buyers tend to be loyal, practical traditionalists. (link)
The reasons Mahindra trucks might have a chance are 1) they’re aiming pretty low initially, and will come in with a small number of trucks and a modest marketing budget; and 2) gas mileage:
But at a time of soaring gas prices, Mahindra’s vehicles are going to have one big thing in their favor: superior fuel economy. Despite diesel’s historic brown image, it is emerging as a green technology. New low-sulfur fuel, federally mandated in 2006, can produce mileage figures that nearly equal those of more fashionable hybrids. Mahindra estimates that its compact SUV, the Scorpio, and pickups, one of which will be called the Appalachian, will get about 30 miles per gallon in the city and as much as 37 on the highway. That compares with 30 city/34 highway for the $27,000 Ford Escape SUV hybrid and 21 city/27 highway for the gas-powered $23,000 Toyota RAV4. (link)
A cheap SUV that gets 30 miles per gallon city? Sign me up! That appeals to me economically as well as environmentally. (I’m now an official member of the rather absurd class of people who want an SUV for practical reasons — try stuffing a jogger stroller into the trunk of a mid-size sedan — but is ambivalent about actually buying one because of the low gas mileage.)
What do you think, does Mahindra have a shot at selling pickup trucks and SUVs in the American market? Would you consider buying a “Mahindra Appalachian”?
(For readers in India, does anyone have a Mahindra Scorpio? How is it?)
Posted by amardeep at 10:04 AM in Business
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It is here ... And changed things foreverBlog
While some of the bloggers went fishing during the summer, some of us were left behind on purpose sigh!. The monkeys have been training us, the new admins, in the ND bunker all summer! After barely getting a passing grade, we set to work and now have something we promised you.
You thought it wasn’t possible anymore to impede your work-day productivity reading Sepia Mutiny. I’ve got News for you. The News tab has been re-designed with new features so that the content can be customized by YOU! Yes, shiny new toys for those fond of the F5 key. Here are the highlights of the changes / new features …
Posted by chaitan at 12:03 AM in Blog
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Sunday, October 28, 2007
Preserving the EvidenceLiterature
Amrit Singh, the hardworking New York ACLU lawyer who is also the daughter of the current Indian Prime Minister (written about many times here on SM), has teamed up with fellow ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer to author a book which outlines the broad scope of the detention and torture policies practiced by the Bush Administration in its “War on Terror.” [via Ultrabrown]
Administration of Torture is the most detailed account thus far of what took place in America’s overseas detention centers, including a narrative essay in which Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh draw the connection between the policies adopted by senior civilian and military officials and the torture and abuse that took place on the ground. The book also reproduces hundreds of government documents; including interrogation directives, FBI e-mails, autopsy reports, and investigative files; that constitute both an important historical record and a profound indictment of the Bush administration’s policies with respect to the detention and treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad. [Link]
“Awesome” is the first thing that comes to mind. Even though we can’t undo a lot of what has been done to take America way off course in the last several years, it feels somewhat better to know that someone is taking the time to bear witness to and document it all thoroughly. This way, as Bush likes to proclaim, history can best judge his presidency. To get a feel for the book you can download part of a chapter here. You can also listen to a Podcast here where the authors discuss their book, and a recent NPR interview with Singh here.
Posted by abhi at 04:18 PM in Law, Literature, News, Politics
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J. Ashwin Madia - Minnesota's 3rd Congressional DistrictPolitics
My cousin Manan (who is also an Iraq War Vet) just forwarded me the news that 29-year-old Marine Corps veteran Jigar Ashwin Madia just announced his candidacy for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives:
U.S. Marine Corps Iraq veteran J. Ashwin Madia announced his candidacy to represent Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District Tuesday.
Madia will seek the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party endorsement.
While serving as a Marine, Madia was also a prosecutor, defense attorney, and legal advisor to a Marine Corps commander.
Madia graduated from Osseo Senior High School. He went on to graduate from the University of Minnesota and New York University School of Law. [Link]
First thought (albeit very shallow)? It isn’t going to hurt him that he looks that good. I have a feeling that the comments section in this post is going to have a lot of female commenters leaving onomatopoeic words like “Rrrrrrr.” But does Jigga-man got the necessary skills to go with those looks? He is currently working at attorney at Robins, Kaplan, Miller, and Ciresi LLP in Intellectual Property Litigation.
Drawing on his experience in Iraq, Madia plans to make the war a major issue in his campaign. He also hopes to focus on balancing the budget and fighting global warming. What he stressed most frequently, however, is his desire for this campaign to be a real dialogue between the candidates. Madia says he wants as many debates and candidate forums as possible, noting that open congressional seats don’t come around very often.
With no elected experience and no history with party regulars, Madia certainly has an uphill climb. He’s seeking to break into politics in a congressional race that is likely to be among the most competitive in the country - and a race that already has an excellent DFL candidate. There is no question that he is an underdog in this race.
“The three issues that I care about most and that form the basis for my campaign are: 1) Ending the Iraq War without leaving behind a catastrophe; 2) Balancing our budget and returning to “pay as you go” principles; and 3) Creating and implementing a comprehensive solution to address global warming. I also want to talk more generally about the direction of our country, and what kind of nation we want to be post 9/11. I don’t believe that we need to have torture chambers, Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons, and spying programs on American citizens in order to be secure. In fact, I think that when we do those things, we tear at the fabric of our country” - said Madia. [Link]
Posted by abhi at 02:01 PM in Military, Politics, Profiles
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Friday, October 26, 2007
News Channel Blackout in GujaratNews
After yesterday’s heavy post featuring the video footage from the masterminds of the Gujarat riots openly confessing their deeds, I thought today I would keep it light — only to find (thanks, Vishal) that the state government of Gujarat isn’t going to make it easy to do so.
Indeed, the state government has summarily blocked all three news channels that were going to show footage from Tehelka’s report. The affected channels are Aaj Tak, CNN-IBN, and IBN-7. The logic is a bit twisted, but somehow predictable:
Subsequently, all these channels went off air in most parts of Gujarat from 1930 hours (IST) on Thursday. The administration claimed it’s a violation of Clause 5 of Cable TV Network Regulation, which deals with broadcasting programmes which could create communal tension.
The state authorities accused the TV channels of spreading ‘more communal discord’ in the state than the people who actually featured on the Tehelka tapes.
For instance, the language used by leaders like Babu Bajrangi, Haresh Bhatt, Dhabal Patel and Madan Dhanraj in the tapes could easily turn the situation far more dangerous than what was being shown, they say. (link)
Obviously, the next step is to block channels that report that channels are being blocked, because that could also create seeds of dissent that could lead to communal tension. Right?
One point of confusion is who exactly is responsible for the order to black out the channels in question. The CNN-IBN article I linked to names the author of the order as “Ahmedabad District Magistrate and District Election Officer Dhananjay Dwivedi,” but also states that the Central Election Commission has “washed its hands,” saying it never issued any such order. I’m not really clear who has the real authority here — is Dhananjay Dwivedi’s action even legal?
I’m also a little puzzled as to why more news channels aren’t showing any of the footage. I checked Star News and NDTV (the two Indian news channels I get at home), and haven’t seen anything. I wonder: does Tehelka have an exclusive arrangement with these three channels, or have India’s other cable news channels made an editorial decision not to cover this?
Posted by amardeep at 02:49 PM in News
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Desi Hipster Olympics -- Blegging for IdeasHumor
Blogger Zen Denizen has a post with the following idea:
My next project will be creating and hosting the Desi Hipster Olympics. I’ll post a tip on our favorite kill whitey group blog and let the games begin (or not). Categories to include: Kitschiest classic Bollywood references, best misappropriation of afrocentric or other suitable third world imagery for supposed desi struggles and most ironic use of a kurta. (link)
First of all, I want to say that if Zen is talking about SM I am truly honored we are her favorite “kill whitey” group blog. There is a lot of competition out there, and I’m glad to finally get some recognition. That said, I think it’s a great idea, though I suspect we could add to and/or adjust Zen’s proposed categories before proceeding to actually initiate some kind of meta-desi, pseudo-secular, indo-ironic competition. (I have never done anything very ironic with a kurta, for instance, other than perhaps actually ironing it.)
Readers, what would be good categories for a desi hipster olympics? Secondly, if you wish to prove your own hipness you are now welcome to begin doing so, though you should be warned that it’s always possible that an even hipper desi will come along and point out how passé your knowledge of retro-Bollywood cultural trivia, present-day underground desi musicians and writers, and quasi-desi fusion fashion actually is.
Obviously I’m at a huge disadvantage here in terms of my own personal hipness, being over 30 (bo-ring!), and living in suburban Philadelphia (so, so far from Brooklyn). The best I can offer this morning is the following short video, which does in fact feature a kurta and may also possibly be interpreted ironically. (I have to admit I grabbed it from Manish’s news tab):
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart.
Posted by amardeep at 12:24 PM in Humor
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Something Wicked This Way ComesBlog
Posted by abhi at 12:26 AM in Blog
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Thursday, October 25, 2007
H. RES 747Holidays
Recognizing the religious and historical significance of the festival of Diwali
That’s right folks. The House could not pass that Armenian Genocide Bill today. They are also wrangling with President Bush who is asking for another gazillion dollars for the war in Iraq using our children’s credit. But you know what they did take the time to agree on? That we should recognize Diwali. Hoorah for Congressional efficiency!
A congressional resolution recognizing the religious and historical significance of Diwali, passed the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives by a unanimous vote.
The Indo-American community leaders and political activists who lobbied for it, reacted with praise and cautious optimism as bill now awaits vote in Full House of Representatives.
The bill, H.Res. 747, calls for the U.S. Congress to acknowledge “the religious and historical significance of the festival of Diwali” and was introduced jointly by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Jim McDermott (D-WA).
“The Diwali festival is celebrated by nearly two million people here in the United States and many millions more around the world,” said Congressman Wilson soon after the resolution passed. “It is an opportunity for Congress to acknowledge the shared values of kinship, knowledge, and goodness celebrated during the five day festival.” He also called upon the full House of Representatives to take up the bill as soon as possible. [Link]
The question this year, like every year, is will Bush celebrate Diwali?
Full text of the resolution is below the fold.
Posted by abhi at 07:34 PM in Holidays, Politics
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Is happiness linked to race?Science
Earlier this week, an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology detailed some provocative new findings:
Are you happy? Well don’t try to be happier; you might become less happy. That is the gist of a multi-cultural study published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.The study by University of Virginia psychology professor Shigehiro Oishi and colleagues at three other institutions found that, on average, European-Americans claim to be happy in general - more happy than Asian-Americans or Koreans or Japanese - but are more easily made less happy by negative events, and recover at a slower rate from negative events, than their counterparts in Asia or with an Asian ancestry. On the other hand, Koreans, Japanese, and to a lesser extent, Asian-Americans, are less happy in general, but recover their emotional equilibrium more readily after a setback than European-Americans.
“We found that the more positive events a person has, the more they feel the effects of a negative event,” Oishi said. “People seem to dwell on the negative thing when they have a large number of good events in their life. [Link]
So in a nutshell, what this article is saying is that “Whitey” is happier than me on a day-to-day basis (which is why he’s always whistling), but that I get over a bad day or a negative life event with greater ease than him. Could it be that since Asian families are likely to be newer to America (i.e. fewer generations removed from Asia) we are instilled with a certain sense of fatalism engrained within the family? When a grandparent or relative died in India and our parents couldn’t be there, we watched them deal with it and recover as best they could from afar. As another example, when we are the victims of racism we have to shake it off and keep going. A European American may not have to deal with some of these things. The study (and take it for what its worth) is essentially saying that Asian Americans have built up a greater immunity to bad news than European Americans.
“It is like the person who is used to flying first class and becomes very annoyed if there is a half-hour delay. But the person who flies economy class accepts the delay in stride…” [Link]
Posted by abhi at 07:18 PM in Science
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Cut, Kill, Burn: Tehelka Gujarat ExposéNews
The news-magazine Tehelka has done another spycam exposé, this time with conspirators involved in the Gujarat riots of 2002. The Tehelka website is full of very bold claims regarding the importance of the statements made in the video footage they’ve captured, and thus far they’ve put up three YouTube videos to back up the hype. One spycam interview, with Babu Bajrangi of the Bajrang Dal, is here:
It’s in Hindi (sorry, no subtitles; UPDATE: a close English transcript of the video is here). Much of what he says about his own role is fairly chilling. At the very least this particular guy should probably go to prison for a very long time (as of the present moment I do not know whether any charges have been filed against him … UPDATE: Babu Bajrangi has in fact done eight months in prison, and is now out on bail, according to Himal Southasian).
There are also interviews with Arvind Pandya here and Ramesh Dave here; I haven’t watched them yet, but I thought I would give the links for readers who may be interested. If anyone wants to translate telling lines or sections of the videos for the benefit of our non-Hindi speaking readers, I would be grateful.
Tehelka claims that its spycam videos prove definitively that Narendra Modi gave direct approval for the killings in 2002, but I’m not sure, yet, that they do that (my views may change as I dive further into this). The video I saw does seem to add to the argument, which has been made consistently by Modi critics since 2002, that the killings weren’t a random upwelling of popular rage, but rather akin to an organized pogrom.
It’s also worth noting that the timing of this exposé can fairly be said to be a bit questionable — state elections are coming up in Gujarat in the next few weeks. There Modi may be in trouble not with Congress or Left parties, but because of dissatisfaction within the Sangh Parivar; both the RSS and the VHP have expressed dissatisfaction with him, stating that they aren’t supporting him in these elections. In the end Modi may finally be defeated, not by Tehelka, but by the Hindu right itself.
Posted by amardeep at 02:26 PM in News
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Amit Varma Wins the Bastiat PrizeEconomics
A hearty SM congrats to Amit Varma of India Uncut who, last night, won this year’s Bastiat Prize.
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Pict courtesy of Ultrabrown; Rockstars get bra-throwing female fans; Real rockstars like Amit Varma get Manish Vij as an entourage for the evening. |
The Bastiat Prize for Journalism was established by International Policy Network to encourage, recognise and reward writers around the world whose published works elucidate the institutions of the free society.In the enduring spirit of the Prize’s namesake Frédéric Bastiat, the Prize is given to writers who employ eloquent and witty explanations of complex ideas, combined with a clear understanding of markets and their underlying institutions -property rights, the rule of law, freedom of contract, free speech and limited government. 2007 marks the sixth year of the Bastiat Prize.
Varma’s work has been featured on SM many times before. In addition, his articles have been carried in a number of publications including the Asian Wall Street Journal and, local Indian biz rag, Mint. A collection of his published work can be found here.
Interestingly, while focusing on “old journalism” Varma and at least one other contender for the prize - Jonah Goldberg of National Review’s Corner - are possibly more well known in the blogosphere than they are on dead trees. Varma even credits blogging as the first step on a long path towards press geekdom -
As I mentioned in my post about being nominated, it all began with India Uncut. The blog led to the column, and made me grow as a writer. And I wouldn’t have bothered if no one was reading me. So thank you—you are more a part of this than you realise!
Posted by vinod at 02:00 PM in Economics
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