Tuesday, May. 25, 2010

Why Are Hindu Honor Killings Rising in India?

By Madhur Singh / New Delhi

For three weeks now, a morbid murder story has been playing out in the Indian media. Nirupama Pathak, 22, a New Delhi–based journalist, was allegedly murdered by her own mother. Her crime? She had wanted to marry a fellow journalist who belongs to a lower caste — and she was pregnant. On a trip home to make a final effort to convince her family, Nirupama texted her boyfriend that she was being held captive, locked up in a bathroom. On April 29, she was found dead. The family claimed Nirupama had killed herself, and lodged a case against her boyfriend for rape and abetting suicide. But when the postmortem results revealed Nirupama had been asphyxiated, the police arrested her mother, Sudha Pathak.

The case is now headed to court, which will disentangle the web of allegations and counterallegations. Meanwhile, it has thrust the issue of honor killings to the center of public debate. Though Western readers associate the term more with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan than with 21st century India, honor killings are shockingly frequent in villages in the northern and northwestern parts of the country, where those daring to cross the barriers of caste are made to pay with their lives. Mostly, these cases are confined to the inside pages of newspapers, but the Nirupama case — in urban, educated, middle-class India — has hit the front pages. (See the tempestuous Nehru dynasty of India.)

Activists say dozens of people, both women and men, are killed for "honor" every year, falling victim to the deeply entrenched caste system, which dictates an individual's social standing based on the caste they are born into. The majority of these killings take place in the agrarian states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, where land ownership and caste go hand in hand and an honor culture thrives by maintaining caste and gender hierarchies. "The upper castes fiercely guard their hold over land and power in the community," says Ranbir Singh, a Haryana-based sociologist currently a consultant with the Haryana Institute of Rural Development. "They are able to mobilize young, educated but unemployed, mostly unmarried men, who are all fired up to shore up their self-esteem." (From TIME's archives: India and the politics of prejudice.)

See the full article at -- Why Are Hindu Honor Killings Rising in India?

NYTimes.com: In India, Hitching Hopes on a Subway

WORLD   | May 14, 2010 In India, Hitching Hopes on a Subway By LYDIA POLGREEN The Delhi Metro offers new hope that the nation's decrepit urban infrastructure can be dragged into the 21st century.

TIME - School Is a Right, but Will Indian Girls Be Able to Go?

Thursday, Apr. 29, 2010

School Is a Right, but Will Indian Girls Be Able to Go?

By Nilanjana Bhowmick / New Delhi

The day the Indian government made education a fundamental right for 192 million children, Dimple Yadav, 11, woke up at 4:30 in the morning. Eyes heavy with sleep, she cleaned her house (in a village about 24 miles outside the capital), made tea and got busy preparing food for her family. After her parents, who work as laborers in Delhi, left at 6 a.m., Dimple fed and clothed her 5- and 7-year-old siblings and made her way to the local school with them in tow. By the time she took her seat in class, she relaxed for the first time since waking up, and was soon lulled into drowsiness, missing most of the day's lessons. "I like school," she said later. "But I do not know how long I will study. My mother has been saying that she needs me to be home so that someone can look after my brother and sister."

For Dimple, April 1, the day when the Right to Education Act (RTE) came into being to mandate free and compulsory education for all Indian children between the ages of 6 and 14, has no significance. She may read about it in high school — if she can continue her education till then. But in all probability she will drop out of school soon, adding another number to the 50% of young girls who have done the same across India, for as simple a reason as having to take care of siblings. The RTE does not protect children from being taken out of school for agricultural work or housework, nor do laws against child labor consider housework or agricultural work to be child labor. (See pictures of a recycling business in Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai.)

The RTE is ambitious, to say the least. In the next five years, the government aims to provide free and compulsory education to millions of children, build new, accessible schools, improve infrastructure, train existing teachers and recruit new ones. The biggest challenges will be bringing in the whopping 10 million children who are out of school already and filling the shortage of trained teachers. But infrastructural gaps are part of the problem too. Forty-six percent of public schools do not have toilets for girls; it's one reason parents are reluctant to send their daughters to class. The Prime Minister himself admitted that passing a law was by no means the end of the road: "To think that we have passed a law and all children will get educated is not right," said Manmohan Singh. "What we have done is prepare a framework to get quality education. It is for the entire community to contribute and participate in this national endeavor."

But many have questioned how the law will address the widespread problem of young girls dropping out to help at home. Children across India are being put to work at the cost of their education, but girls like Dimple have the additional burden of being caregivers in households with working parents. A 1996 International Labor Organization report said 33 million girls ages 10-14 worldwide were working, as opposed to 41 million boys, but that figure did not take into account the full-time housework that girls undertake at home. According to a National Commission for Protection of Children's Rights (NCPCR) report, in India, girls ages 6-14 spend an average of nearly eight hours a day caring for other children in the family. Government statistics show that while about 25% of girls drop out of school between the ages of 6 and 10, that rate doubles to more than 50% for girls ages 10-13. "There are girls in this school as young as 7 or 8 who work like slaves at home," says Neeta Goswami, Dimple's teacher in the Wajidpur Government school. "I cannot blame them for falling asleep in the class. I see so many of them with so much promise, but it all ends with dropping out before finishing primary school." (See pictures of India's health care crisis.)

Read the complete article at -- School Is a Right, but Will Indian Girls Be Able to Go?

Wednesday, Apr. 28, 2010

Behind India's Bust of a Pakistan Spy

By Sumon K. Chakrabarti / New Delhi and Omar Waraich / Islamabad

"At 53, she was bored, alone and attractive. Single, but definitely one step ahead to mingle." That's how the man who led the operation to bust Madhuri Gupta, the first Indian diplomat to be found spying for Pakistan, described her. For most of her two years in espionage, Gupta was a lone wolf, conducting a classic spy operation from her base in Islamabad. Old-school "dead drops," in which she passed off information without even meeting her Pakistani handlers, were her signature style. Yet it was a silly indiscretion — sending e-mails to her spy bosses from her office computer — that finally led to her arrest.

Gupta had not exactly been near the center of Indian decisionmaking, posted as a second secretary in the media section of India's high commission in Pakistan's capital, where her job was to provide English and Hindi summaries of Pakistan's Urdu-language newspapers. On April 22, the 53-year-old was summoned back to New Delhi ostensibly to help colleagues prepare for the ongoing South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) summit in Bhutan. After landing at Indira Gandhi International Airport, she was whisked away by officials of the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (IB), India's internal intelligence agency, to an interrogation chamber in an undisclosed location. Twenty-four hours later, she was handed over to Delhi police and charged with treason and accessing confidential documents under India's Official Secrets Act. (See pictures of Pakistan's class divisions and ethnic rivalries.)

"Her spy game was up the moment a joint secretary — an IB officer — inside the Islamabad mission suspected her around October 2009 and reported back," a high-level IB case officer in New Delhi told TIME. The IB launched a massive counterintelligence operation, in which even its counterparts in the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), the country's external intelligence agency, were kept out of the loop.

Over the next six months, Gupta's every step was monitored. She was found to be taking undue interest in informal discussions among the senior embassy officials regarding important policy matters, including India's strategic plans in Afghanistan and resuming a dialogue with Pakistan. She was even fed with incorrect information to be passed on to her Pakistani handlers, suspected to be from the Inter-Services Intelligence agency. (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable frontier with Afghanistan.)

Read the full article at -- Behind India's Bust of a Pakistan Spy

Bribe Fighter - The Boston Globe

Bribe Fighter

The strange but true tale of a phony currency, shame, and a grass-roots movement that could go global

By Jeremy Kahn  |  April 4, 2010

NEW DELHI — What good is a currency that is not even worth the paper it’s printed on?

That’s the intriguing question raised by the new “zero rupee note” now circulating in southern India. It looks just like the country’s 50 rupee bill but with some crucial differences: It is printed on just one side on plain paper, it bears a big fat “0” denomination, and it isn’t legal tender.

The notes do, however, have value to the people who carry them. They’re designed as a radical new response to the pervasive problem of petty corruption. Citizens are encouraged to hand the notes to public officials in response to the bribery demands that are almost inescapable when dealing with the government here. Bribes for access to services are so common they even have an accepted euphemism — asking for money “for tea.”

The notes, printed and distributed by a good-government organization called 5th Pillar, include the phrase that the bearer “promises to neither accept nor give a bribe.” The idea is that by handing one of these zero rupee bills to an official, a citizen can register a silent protest — and maybe even shame or scare a corrupt bureaucrat into doing his duty without demanding a bribe for it.

In one sense, the idea seems absurd — fighting a serious problem like entrenched corruption with something that looks like a prank.

But remarkably, the zero rupee note appears to work, as 5th Pillar says it has found in hundreds of cases

And in its success, the worthless bill is upending the conventional wisdom that cleaning up petty corruption is a monumental task requiring complicated and expensive solutions. Along with the success of some other simple anticorruption ideas being tried in other countries, the zero rupee note is reinforcing research widely considered to hold promise in a vexing global battle: Big improvements in ending corruption, it suggests, can come from small changes in the environment that allows it to happen.

Read the full article at -- Bribe Fighter - The Boston Globe

Indian military to weaponize world's hottest chili - Yahoo! News

Indian military to weaponize world's hottest chili - Yahoo! News

By WASBIR HUSSAIN, Associated Press Writer – Tue Mar 23, 7:19 am ET
GAUHATI, India – The Indian military has a new weapon against terrorism: the world's hottest chili.
After conducting tests, the military has decided to use the thumb-sized "bhut jolokia," or "ghost chili," to make tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilize suspects, defense officials said Tuesday.
The bhut jolokia was accepted by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the world's spiciest chili. It is grown and eaten in India's northeast for its taste, as a cure for stomach troubles and a way to fight the crippling summer heat.
It has more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chili's spiciness. Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units, while jalapeno peppers measure anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000.
"The chili grenade has been found fit for use after trials in Indian defense laboratories, a fact confirmed by scientists at the Defense Research and Development Organization," Col. R. Kalia, a defense spokesman in the northeastern state of Assam, told The Associated Press.
"This is definitely going to be an effective nontoxic weapon because its pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them out of their hide-outs," R. B. Srivastava, the director of the Life Sciences Department at the New Delhi headquarters of the DRDO said.
Srivastava, who led a defense research laboratory in Assam, said trials are also on to produce bhut jolokia-based aerosol sprays to be used by women against attackers and for the police to control and disperse mobs.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_india_chili_grenades

Yahoo! News Story - 1st Sikh in decades graduates Army officer school - Yahoo! News

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1st Sikh in decades graduates Army officer school - Yahoo! News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_army_sikh_soldier

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1st Sikh in decades graduates Army officer school - Yahoo! News

1st Sikh in decades graduates Army officer school - Yahoo! News

By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer – Tue Mar 23, 7:37 am ET
SAN ANTONIO – The soldiers in standard-issue fatigues and combat boots stood side-by-side repeating their creed: "I am an American soldier. I am a warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States and live the Army values ...."
Capt. Tejdeep Singh Rattan was no different except that he wore a full beard and black turban, the first Sikh in a generation allowed to complete U.S. Army basic officer training without sacrificing the articles of his faith. He completed the nine-week training Monday after Army officials made an exemption to a policy that has effectively prevented Sikhs from enlisting since 1984.
"I'm feeling very humbled. I'm a soldier," said the 31-year-old dentist, smiling after the ceremony at Fort Sam Houston. "This has been my dream."
Rattan had to get a waiver from the Army to serve without sacrificing the unshorn hair mandated by his faith. An immigrant from India who arrived in New York as a teenager, Rattan said he hopes his military commitment will allow him to give back to his adopted home country and will help diminish prejudice Sikhs sometimes face in the U.S.

Full story at--
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_army_sikh_soldier

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Jhumpa Lahiri: The Quiet Laureate

Jhumpa Lahiri: The Quiet Laureate

My Name Is Khan

Diwali 2009 - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Diwali 2009 - The Big Picture - Boston.com

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And she is back...

Hello all.. I am back after a long 6 month hiatus. The family has grown and so have my responsibilities as a mom. It's time though to go back to my musings and my blog. So, here we go again!

Tragedy in Mumbai...

A lot of news has been published about the tragedy in Mumbai. It
saddens many but some like myself are also angry and afraid.

Angry that the terrorists have the gall to shot and kill as they
please, destroy the lives of innocent citizens and wreak havoc on a
peaceful way of life. Angry that these terrorists think they can play
god and change the way of life. Angry that the terrorists are not
being contained and eliminated.

Afraid, not of the terrorist but of what the repercussions of an
action like this might be, the aftermath, the political unrest, the
religious tensions. Afraid that the Hindu fundamentalists might
retaliate and the lives of innocent muslims might be in danger, afraid
that the ruthless politicians might use this to their advantage,
afraid that two countries that need to chill out are being forced into
tense relations.

Besides the numerous news stories, there were several insightful
editorials on this incident. A few that caught my eye can be accessed
at the links below.

NY Times Editorial titled "The Horror in Mumbai"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/opinion/01mon1.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

"What they hate about Mumbai" an oped by Suketu Mehta
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/opinion/29mehta.html?scp=1&sq=suketu%20mehta&st=cse

A factual Associated Press story on the chronological sequence of
events in the Mumbai attacks-
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_INDIA_THREE_DAYS_OF_TERROR?SITE=TXHAR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

SAJA has held several insightful radio interviews on this topic and
that can be accessed at--
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/SAJA

India Milkmen Angry Over Prices

"Hundreds of milkmen gather in Bhubneshwar, India, to protest over price cuts which they say have made milk cheaper than water. The Milk Producer's Federation in Orissa state first increased the price of milk, but the cut prices again. Farmers say they aren't making enough money to feed their cattle," reports Basmah Fahim of Reuters.

India in 25 years...

What would India look like 25 years from now?

Read this article by Mira Kamdar in the World Policy Journal, at
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/wopj.2008.25.3.95

The website for the World Policy Journal is here-
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/wopj/current?cookieSet=1

V.S. Naipaul - A Biography

One of the most celebrated and controversial writers of Indian descent
has had a biography written about him by none other than the English
journalist/writer Patrick French. The New York Times Book Review says
, "French's authorized biography of Mr. Naipaul. It's a handsome
volume, jacketed in silver and black, with a disarming cover
photograph of Mr. Naipaul stooping, with a gap-toothed grin, to tie a
loose shoelace.

Flip Mr. French's book over, however, and you confront this
Voldemortian clump of words from Mr. Naipaul's old nemesis, Mr.
Theroux: "It seems I didn't know half of all the horrors." Cue the
scary organ music.

Well, the reader thinks, here we go: Mr. French's 550-page biography
will be a long string of bummers, a forced march through the life of a
startlingly original writer with an ugly, remote personality.

The good news is that Mr. French, a young British journalist, is
certainly unafraid to face unpleasant facts about his subject. But the
better news about "The World Is What It Is" is this: it's one of the
sprightliest, most gripping, most intellectually curious and, well,
funniest biographies of a living writer (Mr. Naipaul is 76) to come
along in years."

From the Boston Globe Review --
"When he went to Oxford from the Caribbean in 1950, at age 17, V. S.
Naipaul was a British subject of Indian descent who resided in the
West Indies, specifically Trinidad, an "accidental occidental Indian
from the most amusing island that ever dotted the sea," as one wit put
it.

The question of identity is as crucial to Naipaul's books as it was to
the man himself. He wanted to be called not a West Indian, but "a
Trinidadian of Hindu descent." His small size (5 feet 6), dark skin,
and island profile made this brilliant writer a touchy,
class-conscious character all of his life.

To say that Vidia Naipaul was merely complicated seems an
understatement. In his authorized biography "The World Is What It Is,"
Patrick French shows us a man at once "angry, acute, open,
self-pitying, funny, sarcastic, tearful." It is high testament to
French - as well as to the acceding Naipaul - that the writer insisted
on being as impeccably objective as possible and that he chose to
"expose the subject with ruthless clarity."

An asthmatic, Naipaul was the pampered oldest son in a successful
family of girls and one younger brother. He wanted to be wealthy. He
wanted to succeed. "I like luxury," he said. "I take to it easily, and
feel it is mine by right." This ambitious fellow, who would eventually
receive a knighthood, become a multimillionaire, and win the Nobel
Prize for Literature, knew early that he was meant for larger things,
and as French puts it, he certainly "did not want to be classified
alongside people who climbed off banana boats wearing zoot-suits and
wanted jobs in factories."

An admitted snob, Naipaul was at odds not only with the Third World
but with pop entertainment, pop politics, pop lifestyles. "He detested
hippies, yippies, beatniks, free school, flower power, Black Power,
flag burning, hair growing, sit-ins, be-ins, teach-ins and love-ins,"
states French. He bewailed the attention the Beatles received,
angering many readers of the Saturday Evening Post when in an essay,
"What's Wrong With Being a Snob?," he lamented that "entertainers from
the slums [have] replaced the Queen as a cause for national pride."

Moreover, Naipaul was famously frugal. He did his own accounts and
bookkeeping (with his first wife's help) and was more than happy when
possible to take advantage of offers for extended stays in various
friends' houses or flats to save money."

The New York Times Review is at this link --
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/books/19garn.html?fta=y

The Boston Globe Review is at this link--
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/11/23/inventing_vidia/

The First Chapter of the biography is available at this link --
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/books/chapters/chapter-world-is-what-it-is.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

In the world's biggest democracy, homosexuality is illegal

Several prominent Indian authors, professors, and other professionals
choose not to live in India because they are unable to reveal and live
with their sexual bent.

From the Boston Globe --

"Even with the white horse rented, his gold-speckled turban fitted,
and the wedding hall lined up, Mahesh did not feel ready to get
married, at least not to a woman.

The shy computer engineer is gay.

But Mahesh went ahead with the elaborate ceremony in May because
someone he had befriended online blackmailed him - threatening to tell
his parents unless he paid $5,500.

Severely depressed and suffering from insomnia, Mahesh recently
swallowed a dozen painkillers. He survived. But his blackmailer heard
he was in the hospital and demanded more cash to keep his secret.

Three months later, Mahesh said he is broke and taking several
antidepressants. He is still married.

"I really don't want to die. But I also don't want to keep lying,"
said the 24-year-old, who spoke from a counseling center and asked to
be called by his first name. "I feel so trapped. According to the law,
my blackmailer can report me and have me arrested."

That's because in the world's biggest democracy, homosexuality is illegal.

The Indian penal code describes the act as "against the order of
nature" and declares it punishable by 10 years to life in prison,
longer than most rape or murder sentences.

But several human rights groups are making a historic challenge to the
law, imposed by the British in 1860, in the New Delhi High Court. The
effort to repeal the law is seen as a test case of India's commitment
to secular democracy, with some legal specialists saying that moral or
religious arguments cannot trump constitutional rights in a democratic
society. A verdict is expected before the end of the year."

Read the full article at--
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2008/11/23/for_gays_in_india_fear_is_way_of_life/

Indian American Gunman Kills One at a Church in New Jersey

Another example of a crime in which an Indian American was involved.
As written in the New York Times --

"A gunman invaded a small church in Clifton, N.J., during services on
Sunday and killed his estranged wife and critically wounded two other
people with shots to the head in what appeared to be the climax of a
violent domestic quarrel that had reached from California to India to
New Jersey over
As more than 100 worshipers dived under the pews of St. Thomas Syrian
Orthodox Knanaya Church, the assailant, after an argument in the
foyer, fired four shots from a silver handgun, striking his wife, who
had refused to leave the church with him; a relative who had recently
taken her in; and a man who either happened upon or tried to intervene
in the confrontation, the police and witnesses said.

The shootings happened at 11:44 a.m., a witness said.

The gunman ran from the church and drove away in a green convertible
Jeep Wrangler with a black soft top and the California license
5JHD200, said the police, who identified him as Joseph Pallipurath,
27, of Sacramento. He remained at large Sunday night as the New Jersey
State Police and law enforcement authorities in northern New Jersey
widened a manhunt on highways and at transportation terminals.

The victims were taken to St. Joseph's Medical Center in Paterson,
where Mr. Pallipurath's wife, Reshma James, 24, died about 4 p.m., the
police said. The other victims, both listed in very critical
condition, were identified by church members as Ms. James's relative,
Silvy Perincheril, 47, of Hawthorne, N.J., who is the principal of the
church's Sunday school, and Dennis John Malloosseril, 23, a church
director."

Read the full article at--
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/nyregion/24church.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

If we are here, what are they doing there?

"It was five years ago that I left America to come live and work in
India. Now, in our family and among our Indian-American friends, other
children of immigrants are exploring motherland opportunities. As
economies convulse in the West and jobs dry up, the idea is spreading
virally in émigré homes.

Which raises a heart-stirring question: If our parents left India and
trudged westward for us, if they manufactured from scratch a new life
there for us, if they slogged, saved, sacrificed to make our lives
lighter than theirs, then what does it mean when we choose to migrate
to the place they forsook?

If we are here, what are they doing there?" writes Anand Giridhardas
in an essay in the New York Times.

A very interesting read at --
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/weekinreview/23anand.html?em

Insurer Offers Option for Surgery in India

The trend is getting more popular, reports the New York Times --

"The health insurer Wellpoint is testing a new program that gives
covered patients the option of going to India for elective surgery,
with no out-of-pocket medical costs and free travel for both the
patient and a companion.

The program is being tested at Serigraph, a printing company in
Wisconsin whose managers have been looking for ways to curb rising
health care costs, said Dr. Razia Hashmi, chief medical officer for
national accounts for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which is
affiliated with Wellpoint.

"This is a first for us," Dr. Hashmi said. "We will be monitoring
every aspect of this very closely, to make sure everyone is satisfied
and there are good clinical outcomes."

By the year 2010, more than 6 million Americans annually will be
seeking medical treatment abroad, according to the Deloitte Center for
Health Solutions, a consultancy. The potential savings are
significant. Knee surgery that costs $70,000 to $80,000 in the United
States can be performed in India for $8,000 to $10,000, including
follow-up care and rehabilitation, Dr. Hashmi said. Similar savings
could be achieved for such common procedures as hip replacements and
spine surgery."

Read the full article at--
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/health/21abroad.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y