Monthly Archive for November, 2009

Bollywood and Hollywood to unite on Indira Gandhi epic

Published
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on November 30, 2009
in India and Movies
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From the Telegraph, London:

Bollywood and Hollywood are to collaborate on a major two-part epic on the scale of Lord Attenborough’s Gandhi telling the life story of Indira Gandhi.

The biopic of the former prime minister of India who was assassinated in 1984 has a budget of £40 million and an international cast and crew.

Helen Mirren is in talks to reprise her role as Queen Elizabeth II for the two films which are due to start filming in April next year in India, UK, Russia and the US.

Tom Hanks and Tommy Lee Jones are being lined up to play Lyndon B Johnson and Richard Nixon. British actress Emily Watson has been chosen to play Margaret Thatcher, while Albert Finney is expected to take the role of Peter Ustinov, who was in New Delhi waiting to meet the Indian leader when she was killed.

The “Queen of Bollywood”, Madhuri Dixit, has been picked to play the title role in Mother: The Indira Gandhi Story. More:

The Henry Ford of heart surgery

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on November 30, 2009
in Health, India and Innovation
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heart_operation

In India, a factory model for hospitals is cutting costs and yielding profits. Geeta Anand in the Wall Street Journal:

Hair tucked into a surgical cap, eyes hidden behind thick-framed magnifying glasses, Devi Shetty leans over the sawed open chest of an 11-year-old boy, using bright blue thread to sew an artificial aorta onto his stopped heart.

As Dr. Shetty pulls the thread tight with scissors, an assistant reads aloud a proposed agreement for him to build a new hospital in the Cayman Islands that would primarily serve Americans in search of lower-cost medical care. The agreement is inked a few days later, pending approval of the Cayman parliament.

Dr. Shetty, who entered the limelight in the early 1990s as Mother Teresa’s cardiac surgeon, offers cutting-edge medical care in India at a fraction of what it costs elsewhere in the world. His flagship heart hospital charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000, depending on the complexity of the surgery. More:


Dubai: A morally bankrupt dictatorship built by slave labour

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on November 29, 2009
in Economy
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dubai

Johann Hari in the Independent:

Yes, it has Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts and the Gucci styles, but beneath these accoutrements, there is a dictatorship built by slaves.

If you go there with your eyes open – as I did earlier this year – the truth is hidden in plain view. The tour books and the bragging Emiratis will tell you the city was built by Sheikh Mohammed, the country’s hereditary ruler.

It is untrue. The people who really built the city can be seen in long chain-gangs by the side of the road, or toiling all day at the top of the tallest buildings in the world, in heat that Westerners are told not to stay in for more than 10 minutes. They were conned into coming, and trapped into staying. More:

How Dubai’s dream sank in a sea of debt

From the Sunday Times:

As he flew from Dubai to London last Sunday, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum had plenty on his mind.In the four years since he had become ruler of Dubai, Maktoum had grown used to courting world leaders to visit and invest in his desert emirate. They admired the economic growth he had fostered as Dubai, fast running out of oil, turned itself into a tourism and finance hub.

Maktoum knew that on this trip he would have to strike a more humble tone. After an audience with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, he met Gordon Brown and Lord Mandelson. The damaging effect of the global economic downturn on Dubai’s growth was on the agenda. The sheikh brought reassurances that angry British contractors, caught up in the emirate’s construction collapse, would eventually get paid.

Maktoum also knew that a bigger test to international relations was brewing. But there were few clues until he had jetted out of London. More:

Bling City is dead, but the desert dream lives on

From the Guardian:

A yachtsman friend of mine was sailing the blue waters of the Persian Gulf off the shimmering coast of Dubai recently when he came across a disturbing phenomenon: The World was dissolving before his eyes.

It was not the grog. Three years ago, when Dubai’s debt-fuelled boom was at its height, the emirate launched its most ambitious project yet – a gigantic offshore replica of the planet Earth, made from sand dredged from the deserts and beaches of Arabia, with countries and continents carved out among a man-made archipelago of 300 islands. It was called simply The World.

Like most things in Dubai, it was for sale. Wealthy celebrities with $20m or so of loose change could buy Britain or France or Australia and erect their own secluded fun palace by the sea. More:


India’s eternal crisis

Published
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on November 29, 2009
in India and Terrorism
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Pankaj Mishra, the author of “Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond,” in the New York Times:

Mashobra, India

On the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, I hurried through a dark apple orchard to the nearest television in this Himalayan village. My landlord opened his door reluctantly, and then appeared unmoved by the news I had just received by phone. I struggled to explain the enormity of what was happening, the significance of New York, the iconic status of the World Trade Center — to no avail. It was time for his evening prayers; the television could not be turned on.

I did not witness the horrific sights of 9/11 until three days later. Since then, cable television and even broadband Internet have arrived in Mashobra and in my own home. Now the world’s manifold atrocities are always available for brisk inspection on India’s many 24-hour news channels. Indeed, the brutal terrorist assault on Mumbai that killed 163 people a year ago was immediately proclaimed as India’s own 9/11 by the country’s young TV anchors, who seem to model themselves on Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. Yet, on the first anniversary of “26/11,” it seems as remote as 9/11 to the inhabitants of this village. More:


A striptease class in Bangalore

Published
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on November 29, 2009
in India, Sexuality and Society
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Saritha Rai in the Indian Express:

In a dance studio in an affluent Bangalore neighbourhood, instructor Sneha Kapoor is leading a small group of women through a series of sensuous, steamy moves to the accompaniment of slow music. It is a combination of striptease, pole dancing and lap dancing.

The hour-long lesson is for a group of close friends, all in their mid-thirties or over, married and well-off. Many are housewives but there is a sprinkle of working women as well.

It is strictly a private lesson. There is no advertising or publicity of any sort and admission is by word-of-mouth. The class is decorously called “Exotic dance workout”.

In Bangalore, arguably India’s hippest and most cosmopolitan city, dirty dancing arrived two years ago. But in keeping with the underlying Bangalore conservatism and fear of right-wing attacks — as in the Mangalore pub — exotic dance has stayed behind closed doors. More:

[ps: The YouTube video above is not from Bangalore. It's a promo for the US Pole Dancing championship.]


India & Pakistan: case for common defence

Published
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on November 28, 2009
in Conflict, India, Pakistan and Terrorism
. 2 Comments

This article by Pervez Hoodbhoy was published simultaneously today in Pakistan (Dawn) and India (The Hindu):

So, how can India protect itself from invaders across its western border and grave injury? Just as importantly, how can we in Pakistan assure that the fight against fanatics is not lost?

Let me make an apparently outrageous proposition: in the coming years, India’s best protection is likely to come from its traditional enemy, the Pakistan Army. Therefore, India ought to help now, not fight against it.

This may sound preposterous. After all, the two countries have fought three-and-a-half wars over six decades. During periods of excessive tension, they have growled at each other while meaningfully pointing towards their respective nuclear arsenals. Most recently, after heightened tensions following the Mumbai massacre, Pakistani troops were moved out of North West Frontier Province towards the eastern border. Baitullah Mehsud’s offer to jointly fight India was welcomed by the Pakistan Army. More:


Obama party crashers are old India hands

Published
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on November 28, 2009
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President Barack Obama greets Michaele and Tareq Salahi during a receiving line in the Blue Room of the White House before the State Dinner with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, Nov. 24, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton. Photo from the White House photo stream / Flickr)

President Barack Obama greets Michaele and Tareq Salahi during a receiving line in the Blue Room of the White House before the State Dinner with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, Nov. 24, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton. Photo from the White House photo stream / Flickr)

From the Hindustan Times:

On July 4, American Independence Day, Tareq Salahi was an honoured guest of the United States embassy here.

Salahi, the man who crashed US President Barack Obama’s state dinner for PM Manmohan Singh on Tuesday, was in town as captain of the US polo team.

Salahi was introduced to everyone by the US Charge d’Affaires, Peter Burleigh, at the American Center event. He later spoke of the need for closer India-US “military and diplomatic ties”, his love for polo and of Tiger Woods being “a dear friend”.

While wife Michaele (his fellow gatecrasher at the White House bash) played the gracious host, Salahi — a glass of red wine permanently attached to his hand — interacted with a chosen few.

“The America’s Cup Polo is a historic and diplomatic tradition. Next year, on June 11-12, we will host the Indian national team and make it memorable for both countries,” he stated. More:

And from Bloomberg: A couple who slipped past security at this week’s state dinner met President Barack Obama in the receiving line for the gathering, according to a photograph released by the White House today.

Punking the White House

Tunku Varadarajan at The Daily Beast:

What is so striking about the behavior of the Salahis is not the vulgarity of it all, it is the tenacity of that vulgarity. This determination, this drive, is evident in the photographs: Plain to see on Michaele’s face, and Tareq’s, is a sense of acme, of achievement. They have scaled a pinnacle in public—and have the pictures to prove it. Witness Michaele’s picture with Joe Biden, vice president of the United States of America. Her left hand rests on his swelling chest; his left arm is snaked around her cheerleader’s waist; her blond head leans into his gray temple. Yet in all this proximity, this physical melding of vice president and gatecrasher, their smiles stand apart: his is a red-blooded, “isn’t-life-good-to-me” smile; hers, by contrast, appears calculating, algebraic. This picture isn’t just going up on Facebook; it’s going straight on to her C.V. More:

Previously in AW: Gatecrashers at Obama’s party for Indian PM


In Delhi, doing as we do, not as we say

Published
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on November 27, 2009
in Climate change and India
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Miranda Kennedy in the Washington Post:

In the five years I worked as a reporter in India, I sat through many uncomfortable silences during interviews about Pakistani terrorists, the pervasive caste system and Indian Muslims — sensitive issues that, on the face of it, seem more controversial than carbon parts per million. But these subjects rarely stirred up as much ire as India’s stance on climate change. The topic has become a matter of national pride, a symbol of sovereignty and growing global clout. If you want to make an Indian government official really angry, bring up his carbon emissions.

This fall, when I mentioned to the Indian government’s chief economic policymaker that the United States considers India “intransigent” on climate change, the poised, Oxford-educated Montek Singh Ahluwalia looked slightly stunned for a moment. Pursing his lips, he seemed to struggle to suppress anger. “If I were using a cool description, those are either gross misperceptions or deliberate distortions,” he said in clipped British English. “The Indian approach on this has been, ‘Let’s first decide a fair pollution entitlement for different countries.’ ” More


26/11 response a “failure of imagination”

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on November 27, 2009
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Mumbai’s Joint Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria speaks to the Wall Street Journal:

WSJ: It has been a year since November 26, 2008. What has changed in the past year?

Mr. Maria: What happened last year was a failure of imagination. Nobody had anticipated that something of this kind would take place. What we were anticipating were bomb blasts occurring in the city. Most of the time we used to begin the investigation after the bomb blasts were over.

This was probably the first time that you had simultaneous, random and indiscriminate firing at different locations in the city, you had bomb blasts in the city, there was a hostage situation and you had encounters with the terrorists. The force didn’t anticipate such an attack.

However, now we are prepared for different types of security scenarios and we are prepared for the worst. We have our own quick response teams; equipment-wise, we have got the best equipment available anywhere in the world. There are also various programs to get the citizens involved in security schemes and private security has also been included. To augment intelligence gathering, we have done a lot of recruitment of intelligence officers. So these are some of the measure that we have adopted post 26/11. More:


Gatecrashers at Obama’s party for Indian PM

Published
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on November 27, 2009
in Science
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From the Telegraph, London:

The Gatecrashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi with Vice-President Joe Biden in ascreen image from Facebook page.

The Gatecrashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi with Vice-President Joe Biden in a screen image from Facebook page.

Like many suburban couples, Michaele and Tareq Salahi clearly aspire to greater things in life. The former cheerleader and her husband enjoy a spot of polo, run a winery near their home in Virginia, and like to rub shoulders with local movers and shakers. Indeed, when the most powerful couple they know of recently hosted a glittering party for a visiting friend, they decided to try and gatecrash. It would be their chance to mingle with the great and good, the stinking-rich and the well-connected. Who could possibly resist such temptation?

Well, most of us, actually. For the hosts of said party were Barack and Michelle Obama and the venue, naturally, was the White House. Yet somehow, on Tuesday, the Salahis managed to brazen their way past the Secret Service, the many layers of security screenings that one might expect at a do thrown by the most powerful man on the planet, and into the South Lawn tent where the state dinner in honour of the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, was taking place. More:

And more about the party at The Daily Beast:

The most anticipated moment of the evening came when a member of the White House communications team emerged around 8 p.m. to brief the press on Michelle Obama’s outfit. “It’s a gold strapless dress,” the woman said, gesturing to her décolletage. “By Naeem Khan. N-A-E-E…” Khan, an Indian-born designer who started his own label in 2003, having thus been blessed with the Mobama fashion seal of approval, must have had a pretty good night.

“Michelle Obama is not following type,” said Wall Street Journal columnist Teri Agins, who predicted the strapless gown hours in advance. “We’ve seen her wear cardigans to meet Queen Elizabeth. We’ve seen her wear walking shorts on Air Force One. We’ve seen her wear Target and the Gap and White House Black Market; she’s just all over the place. And I just kind of think: I wonder if this has now set a new tone in Washington.”

Who sat where:

PRESIDENT’S TABLE

Mrs. Gursharan Kaur, India’s First Lady

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass)

Ambassador to India Tim Roemer

Mary Johnston, Roemer’s guest (likely a relative of his wife, Sally Johnston Roemer)

Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo

Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Paul Pelosi, her husband

David Geffen, the Hollywood titan

Jeremy Lingvall, Geffen’s boyfriend

FIRST LADY’S TABLE

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

Amrit Singh, the Prime Minister’s daughter, an ACLU lawyer in New York

Upinder Singh, another daughter, a Professor at University of Delhi

Dr. Amartya Sen, Nobel-prize winning economist, now at Harvard

Emma Rothschild, Dr. Sen’s wife, economic historian, now at Harvard

Gen. Colin Powell, former Secretary of State

Alma Powell, his wife

Rep. Howard Berman, (D-Calif.)


Estimated nuclear weapons locations 2009

Published
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on November 26, 2009
in India and Politics
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"Israel probably has about four nuclear sites, whereas the nuclear storage facilities in India and Pakistan are – despite many rumors – largely undetermined."

"Israel probably has about four nuclear sites, whereas the nuclear storage facilities in India and Pakistan are – despite many rumors – largely undetermined."

nuclear_weapons_chart

Hans M. Kristensen in Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security Blog: [via 3quarksdaily]:

The world’s approximately 23,300 nuclear weapons are stored at an estimated 111 locations in 14 countries, according to an overview produced by FAS and NRDC.

Nearly half of the weapons are operationally deployed with delivery systems capable of launching on short notice.

The overview is published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and includes the July 2009 START memorandum of understanding data. A previous version was included in the annual report from the International Panel of Fissile Materials published last month. More:


Ben Kingsley to play Shah Jahan in Taj

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on November 26, 2009
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gandhi

From the Guardian:

He won an Oscar playing Mohandas Gandhi in Richard Attenborough’s 1982 biopic of the Indian leader. Twenty seven years on, Ben Kingsley looks set to delve into subcontinental history books once again as part of a new project which will see him star as the Mogul emperor who built the Taj Mahal.

The actor will play Shah Jahan in Taj, a $25-$30m (£15m-£18m) project which he is also producing, his firm SBK Pictures said in a statement today. Indian superstar and former Miss World, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, has agreed to appear as Mumtaz Mahal, Jahan’s favoured wife and the woman whose death in childbirth inspired the construction of the world-famous building between 1632 and 1654. More:

Time to move the family to Pakistan

Published
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on November 26, 2009
in Pakistan
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Mohsin Hamid in the Guardian:

My wife Zahra and I recently decided to move back to Pakistan. Many friends in London seem puzzled by our decision. That is understandable. Pakistan plays a recurring role as villain in the horror sub-industry within the news business. It is, we are constantly told, a place where car bombs go off in crowded markets, beheadings get recorded in grainy video, and nuclear weapons are assembled in frightening proximity to violent extremists.

August 14 is Pakistan’s independence day. This year it also marked the birth of our daughter, Dina. (It was a close thing. Nineteen hours later and she would have been born on India’s independence day. For a novelist, the symbolism would have been considerably more tricky. Fortunately Dina was in no mood to dally.)

Childbirth changed my perception of my wife. She was now the bloodied special forces soldier who had fought and risked everything for our family. I was the supportive spouse tasked with cheering her victory, celebrating her homecoming, and easing her convalescence. So I gave her a respectful few hours before suggesting that we uproot our lives and move across continents to a city thousands of miles away. More:

The mystery of Dr Aafia Siddiqui

Published
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on November 24, 2009
in Afghanistan, Crime, Pakistan, Terrorism and human rights
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Dr Aafia Siddiqui is an MIT-educated, Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three. Once dubbed “the most wanted woman,” she is to stand trial in New York for attempted murder and alleged links to al-Qaida. Declan Walsh in the Guradian:

Aafia-SiddiquiOn a hot summer morning 18 months ago a team of four Americans – two FBI agents and two army officers – rolled into Ghazni, a dusty town 50 miles south of Kabul. They had come to interview two unusual prisoners: a woman in a burka and her 11-year-old son, arrested the day before.

Afghan police accused the mysterious pair of being suicide bombers. What interested the Americans, though, was what they were carrying: notes about a “mass casualty attack” in the US on targets including the Statue of Liberty and a collection of jars and bottles containing “chemical and gel substances”.

At the town police station the Americans were directed into a room where, unknown to them, the woman was waiting behind a long yellow curtain. One soldier sat down, laying his M-4 rifle by his foot, next to the curtain. Moments later it twitched back.

The woman was standing there, pointing the officer’s gun at his head. A translator lunged at her, but too late. She fired twice, shouting “Get the fuck out of here!” and “Allahu Akbar!” Nobody was hit. As the translator wrestled with the woman, the second soldier drew his pistol and fired, hitting her in the abdomen. She went down, still kicking and shouting that she wanted “to kill Americans”. Then she passed out. More:

Also read All Things Pakistan:

And it was on July 6, 2008, when a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, called for help for a Pakistani woman she believes has been held in isolation by the Americans in their Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, for over four years. “I call her the ‘grey lady’ because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continues to haunt those who heard her. This would never happen to a Western Woman,” Ms Ridley said at a press conference.

The Indian Thanksgiving

Published
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on November 24, 2009
in Culture, Food and Society
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Sarah Khan in the Wall Street Journal. Sarah Khan is an editor at Travel + Leisure and blogs at http://www.bysarahkhan.com

A naturalization test at an immigration office in Boston was the last hurdle standing between me and U.S. citizenship. But for me this journey had actually begun years before, on a rickety vessel you may have heard of—The Mayflower. Except in my adaptation, that leaky ship sailed down the Red Sea to the New World of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where I proudly played the role of a pilgrim in a kindergarten play at the American school. Decked out in a gray frock and a hat fashioned from black construction paper, I prepared to welcome a band of friendly Native Americans to the very first Thanksgiving.

n my five-year-old mind, it seemed perfectly logical that a scrawny Indian girl with brown skin and a Canadian passport should be charged with inviting those other Indians (feather, not dot—although I’m Muslim so we don’t have either) to celebrate the founding spirit of America. In a desert nation, no less, thousands of miles from Plymouth Colony.

“Sarah, is it?” asked the immigration official testing me. “So, where are you from?”

Easy question, no easy answer. More:

Also in WSJ, Indian Thanksgiving recipes. Check out Zuhoor Khan’s Cheeni Murg.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari

Published
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on November 23, 2009
in Leaders and Pakistan
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Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is the eldest child of the late Pakistani politician and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari, the current President of Pakistan. His Wiki profile says he is studying History at Christ Church, Oxford. His speech in Urdu is doing the rounds for the accent.

Outsourcing homework to India

Published
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on November 23, 2009
in Education and Technology
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Saritha Rai from Bangalore in GlobalPost:

Six days a week in the wee hours of the morning, Saswati Patnaik logs into her home computer.

The homemaker — and tutor for a Bangalore company called TutorVista — rises early to help American high school students write English term papers, prepare S.A.T. essays or finish homework assignments.

Outsourcing, of course, started as a way for American companies to lower costs by shifting work to cheaper locations. After nearly two decades, that practice has become so mainstream that hundreds of U.S. businesses — from Wall Street banks to law firms, architects and others — routinely outsource to India.

But now a growing number of individual Americans are following in the footsteps of businesses — and outsourcing homework.

For $99 a month, American customers of TutorVista get unlimited coaching in English, math or science from Patnaik or one of her 1,500 fellow tutors. Similar personalized services in the United States charge about $40 an hour. More:

Babri Masjid demolition was meticulously planned

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on November 23, 2009
in Uncategorized
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Maneesh Chhibber in the Indian Express:

babri The Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan Commission of Inquiry has indicted former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee along with current Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha L K Advani and former BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi, among others, for the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992.

Citing the evidence it gathered, which includes witness statements and official records, one of the key conclusions of the Commission is said to be that the entire build-up to the demolition was meticulously planned. And there was nothing to show that these leaders were either unaware of what was going on or innocent of any wrongdoing.

The one-man Commission probed the “sequence of events leading, and all facts and circumstances relating, to the occurrences at Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid complex on December 6, 1992” — the day the Babri Masjid was brought down by kar sevaks. More:

Read the followup stories in the Indian Express here and here.

Previously in AW: Who demolished the Babri Masjid?


Residences of the rich and famous

Published
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on November 22, 2009
in Society
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A rendering of 27-storey Antilla in Mumbai, the future home of Mukesh Ambani family.

A rendering of 27-storey Antilla in Mumbai, the future home of Mukesh Ambani family.

Aakar Patel in the News, Pakistan:

Indians invest in two things mainly: gold and property. India is the world’s largest buyer of gold, much of it being turned into heavy and ornate wedding jewellery; and most Indians (Gujaratis excluded) would rather invest in property than in equity.

The world’s richest man, Warren Buffett, lives in the same three-bedroom house in Nebraska he bought 51 years ago. That would never happen in India, because for us our status comes from the size of our residence.

The billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, Britain’s richest man, bought a house in London’s Kensington Palace Gardens for 70 million pounds (about 560 crore Indian rupees) in 2004, and it was then the most expensive residence in the world. It had 12 bedrooms and parking space for 20 cars, and was sold to him by the Formula One championships owner, Ecclestone.

In 2008, Mittal broke his own record and bought another house in the same neighbourhood for his son, and this cost 117 million pounds (Rs 936 crore). For his daughter, Mittal bought a house in Delhi that cost Rs100 crore ($ 22 million). None of this would have dented his wealth, estimated by Forbes magazine last week, even in these times of recession, to be $30 billion (Rs140 lakh crore). More:

Survey of Pakistan’s young predicts ‘disaster’ if their needs aren’t addressed

Published
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on November 22, 2009
in Pakistan and Society
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survey1

From the New York Times:

Pakistan will face a “demographic disaster” if it does not address the needs of its young generation, the largest in the country’s history, whose views reflect a deep disillusionment with government and democracy, according to a report released in Lahore on Saturday.

The report, commissioned by the British Council and conducted by the Nielsen research company, drew a picture of a deeply frustrated young generation that feels abandoned by its government and despondent about its future.

An overwhelming majority of young Pakistanis say their country is headed in the wrong direction, the report said, and only 1 in 10 has confidence in the government. Most see themselves as Muslim first and Pakistani second, and they are now entering a work force in which the lion’s share cannot find jobs, a potentially volatile situation if the government cannot address its concerns. More:

Click here to read the full survey.

The inside story of the man who is currently India’s most wanted

Published
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on November 22, 2009
in India and Terrorism
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Neelesh Mishra in Hindustan Times on David Coleman Headley:

It began with a mistake at the gym. The muscular, 6 ft-2 inch white man had been coming to the Mumbai gym called Moksha (salvation) for about three months in 2006, thrice a week, every evening around 9 p.m., keeping to himself. Once in a while, he greeted some people from the US Consulate across the road, who came there as well.

His name was David Coleman Headley. He would tell his friends he was born in Philadelphia, had Irish ancestry, and had served with the US Army. He spoke English with an American accent, knew some words of Hindi, was a teetotaller, wore Ray-Ban glasses, had his hair tied in a ponytail, and his face was tanned — “red like a tomato”, a friend of his would say later. He had a chiselled face and green eyes, with one eyeball a slightly different shade from the other.

Vilas Pandurang Varak, 31, one of the gym instructors, had never spoken to the man but had certainly noticed him earlier — he was an instructor’s delight, extremely fit, extremely dedicated. He usually used only the tough-to-do cross-trainer, for up to an hour. Varak, who lived in a central Mumbai chawl (residential cluster) and is to get married on December 9, knew the drill: don’t bother the expats until they need something. But the man was doing it all wrong today on the squatting rack; he could hurt himself. Varak told him so.

“Will you train me?” Headley asked later.

“I work here, I will help you out whenever you want,” Varak said. More:

Previously in AW: From Pakistan to Philadelphia: A terror suspect’s journey

And a report from Philadelphia in the New York Times:

The Khyber bar in Philadelphia that, according to the New York Times, was once owned by once owned by David Headley's mother.

The Khyber bar in Philadelphia that, according to the New York Times, was once owned by once owned by David Headley's mother.

Raised by his father in Pakistan as a devout Muslim, Mr. Headley arrived back here at 17 to live with his American mother, a former socialite who ran a bar called the Khyber Pass.

Today, Mr. Headley is an Islamic fundamentalist who once liked to get high. He has a traditional Pakistani wife, who lives with their children in Chicago, but also an American girlfriend — a makeup artist in New York — according to a relative and friends. Depending on the setting, he alternates between the name he adopted in the United States, David Headley, and the Urdu one he was given at birth, Daood Gilani. Even his eyes — one brown, the other green — hint at roots in two places. More:

Google in a box? An out-of-the-box idea

Published
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on November 22, 2009
in Technology
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From the Indian Express:

Rose Shuman

Rose Shuman

Pranali Kalbhor stands on her toes and peers into the little box outside her father’s kirana store. Then, she presses the green button on the box like she has seen her father do, clears her voice and asks in Marathi: “Bharatache pahile pradhanmantri kon (Who was the first Prime Minister of India)?” The voice at the other end says “Jawaharlal Nehru” and Pranali preens. The nine-year-old’s teacher had asked the class to find the answer to the question and now she knows.

In Loni village in Maharashtra, where Pranali is from, no child would have Googled the answer to that. The village belongs to that part of the world that isn’t wired to the internet; it’s where the ‘World Wide Web’ sounds like a boastful misnomer. It’s for places like Loni that Rose Shuman, a social entrepreneur, thought up the idea of the Question Box—the kind that Prabali spoke into—as a way to empower people with information. The Question Box is a project of Open Mind, a California-based non-profit venture of which Shuman is CEO. Open Mind and its little boxes have travelled quite a bit ever since they made their debut in India in 2007. Apart from two boxes in Pune district, Shuman has taken the service to two rural communities in Uganda. More:

Pakistan in 2010

Published
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on November 21, 2009
in Economy, Pakistan and Terrorism
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From the Economist:

By its recent chaotic standards, Pakistan had quite a good 2009. Admittedly, more than 2m people were displaced by fighting between the army and Taliban militants. The economy was in the doldrums. And a threat of political crisis, pitting President Asif Zardari against his main rival, Nawaz Sharif, loomed. Yet his government, a coalition led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), looked stable. An injection of IMF cash—and a promise from America of an extra $1.5 billion a year—kept its creditors at bay. And the army, despite much suffering, won the biggest victories of a floundering eight-year campaign on its north-west frontier. Without catastrophic violence—an important assassination or a terrorist attack in India—Pakistan will be messy, but stable after this fashion, in 2010.

The army will also make a bit more progress against the militants. Goaded into action in early 2009, after the Taliban seized areas of North-West Frontier Province alarmingly close to Islamabad, it pushed them back ruthlessly. Compounding the Taliban’s troubles, their supreme leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who was responsible for a two-year suicide-bomb spree (and allegedly for the 2007 murder of Mr Zardari’s wife, Benazir Bhutto), was killed by an American missile last August. And in October the army launched an assault on his former fief, in South Waziristan. Alas, it has shown no interest in pursuing members of the other Taliban, Afghanistan’s former rulers, who have found refuge in Pakistan. More:

From Pakistan to Philadelphia: A terror suspect’s journey

Published
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on November 21, 2009
in India, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Joseph Tanfani in Philadelphia Inquirer on Daood Gilani a.k.a. David Coleman Headley:

Headley, born Daood Gilani, is the son of a prominent Pakistani diplomat and the late Serrill Headley, founder and former owner of the Khyber Pass pub/restaurant at 56 S. Second St.

Serrill Headley, who grew up in Bryn Mawr, split with her husband, and lost custody of her children in Pakistani courts. “In Pakistan, men own the children. There are no rights for women,” she said in an interview in 1974.

After 10 years in Pakistan, Serrill Headley moved to Philadelphia, bought a 100-year-old tavern in 1973, and turned it into a bustling nightspot.

After two earlier attempts to get her son out of Pakistan failed, she succeeded in 1977.

In Philadelphia, however, he suffered from culture shock. Raised as a Muslim, he was having trouble adjusting to the idea that his mother ran a bar, an Inquirer column said. More:

The revenge of the proletariat

Published
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on November 21, 2009
in India and Politics
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Why the Marxists are losing Bengal after 40 years. Swapan Dasgupta in Tehelka:

lenin

Illustration: Anand Naorem / Tehelka

Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal’s ubiquitous ‘Didi’ has already acquired the reputation of a lady who, having fought the Reds unwaveringly since her political debut in 1984, is within smelling distance of capturing Writers’ Buildings. On November 15, when she undertook a short padayatra from Nandakuthi to Tarakeshwar in Hoogly district against the CPI(M)’s “reign of terror”, she was accompanied by a sea of adoring and belligerent humanity. There were two popular slogans: the first taunted the Reds, “Aye CPM dekhe jaa, Mamatar khamata” (Come CPI(M), and witness the power of Mamata) but the second was decidedly menacing, “Biman/Buddhadeb-er chamra, khule nebo amra” (We will skin Biman Basu and Buddhadeb).

The CPI(M) has reason to be worried. The electoral downslide of the Left Front in the Lok Sabha election of this year was quite precipitate. For the first time since 1971, the CPI(M)-led combine failed to win a majority of Lok Sabha seats from the state. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which had been reduced to just a solitary seat in 2004, stole the thunder by winning 22 seats. Mamata drove home her advantage in the by-elections to 10 Assembly seats held in November. The ruling Left Front won a solitary seat and the CPI(M) tally was zero. More:

The God Of Fine Things

Published
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on November 21, 2009
in Cricket and Sport
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Suresh Menon on why Rahul Dravid is the intelligent man’s guide to what a sportsman ought to be. In Tehelka:

rahulIn his first Test, as indeed in his latest, Rahul Dravid invited both congratulations and commiserations. In fact, the one often came with the other in his career. He made 95 on debut at Lord’s, and it was impossible to congratulate him without commiserating with him; likewise after his brilliant 177 against Sri Lanka in Ahmedabad – great innings mate, but tough luck, you missed a sixth double century.

To be defined by what he has missed has sometimes been Dravid’s fate. When he made 180 in a Test match, he was upstaged by a man who made 281; that innings by VVS Laxman is rated as the best by an Indian batsman. When Dravid made his then highest one-day score of 145, Sourav Ganguly made 183 in the same innings; when he topped that by making 153 against New Zealand, Sachin Tendulkar made an unbeaten 186. Is Rahul Dravid the best supporting act in the history of the game or a great player born in the wrong decade?

He is the best supporting act in the history of the game (a world record 78 century partnerships in Tests) and a great player (over 10,000 runs in both forms of the game). It is tempting to conclude that he was born in the wrong decade, forcing him to play in the shadow of Sachin Tendulkar, but that hardly matters to the man who is in competition with no one but himself, and who was secure enough to say at one time, “Most people want me to get out quickly so they can watch Sachin bat.” More:

Remembering Faiz

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on November 21, 2009
in Art, Books and Culture
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Faiz Ahmed Faiz died on November 20, 1984. A film directed by Sharjil Baloch and shown on BBC Urdu last year: Part I

And below, Part II

Apocalypse New Delhi

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on November 21, 2009
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Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta reviews Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald (Orion Books):

cyberabad_days The new and thought-provoking SF from Ian McDonald, Cyberabad Days, is set in the India of 2047. In McDonald’s dystopian vision, bitter wars are fought over water; crime, terror and separatism are rampant; divides between the few who have and the millions who have nothing have deepened to dangerous levels; and the nation has broken into fragments. Even human identities are becoming fragmented as more and more ways of escaping to simulated versions of reality become available. One and a half billion people struggle to live through interminable conflicts, chemical warfare, military occupation, a dangerously skewed sex ratio, and more. Most of all, they struggle to cope with social and technological changes that have engulfed them with fierce suddenness. More:

And some more reviews at scifi sites: scifiwire.com and sfsignal.com

India’s path was paved by Soviet fall

Published
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on November 20, 2009
in India
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Akash Kapur in the New York Times:

The breakup of the Soviet Union had a profound impact on India. In many ways, it paved the way for a reinvention of the country: from a stultified, socialist economy to a more dynamic, capitalist one; from a foreign policy defined by suspicion of America to one defined by shared interests and even mutual affection; and from public attitudes that frowned on individualism, consumerism and ambition to a nation that today exalts those same qualities.

A founding member of the global non-aligned movement, India was never a Communist country. But it was far closer to the Soviet Union than to the United States throughout the Cold War, buying weapons on concessional terms, doing barter trade with the Eastern Bloc and receiving financial and technical aid for industrial and infrastructure projects. More: