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Hopes Fade for Success of Commonwealth Games in India

By Heather Timmons NEW DELHI (NYT): Skepticism about India’s preparedness for the Commonwealth Games deepened Tuesday after a partly constructed footbridge collapsed outside the main arena for competition, injuring dozens.

The collapse coincided with angry words from visiting officials who described the accommodations for athletes as uninhabitable. One visitor, the head of the New Zealand delegation, even raised the possibility that the games might be delayed or canceled.

India’s failure to complete the work for the games, which are to

begin Oct. 3 and last for two weeks, has become a major embarrassment for the country instead of a showcase for its rising economic might.

The unspoken comparison to India’s rival China, which won widespread acclaim from its preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics, are a further source of huA footbridge next to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the main venue for the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, collapsed into three pieces on Tuesday.

miliation.

Representatives of the dozens of countries participating in the Commonwealth Games, a quadrennial competition among the nations of the former British Empire, started arriving here in recent days to inspect facilities and conduct security checks. The athletes’ village, built for the games, is not ready, they say, and questions linger about security after an attack on tourists in Delhi on Sunday.

On Tuesday afternoon, a bridge next to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the main venue, fell apart. The footbridge collapsed into three pieces, continued on page 26

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Hopes Fade for Success of Commonwealth Games in India

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taking several workers with it and uprooting one side of the arch that supported it.

A police officer at the scene said that 27 people had been injured, 4 seriously.

“This will not affect the games,” said Raj Kumar Chauhan, a Delhi minister for development, who spoke at the scene. “We can put the bridge up again, or make a new one.”

The accident occurred when workers were trying to pour concrete into a clip at the base of the bridge, he said, and the clip was loosened.

Games officials had lodged formal complaints about the preparations with India’s government even before the accident. “The condition of the residential zone has shocked the majority,” the Commonwealth Games Federation president, Michael Fennel, said in a statement Monday evening. Mr. Fennel said he had sent a letter to India’s union cabinet secretary. The athletes’ village is “seriously compromised,” he said.

“The problems are arising because deadlines for the completion

of the village have been consistently pushed out,” Mr. Fennell said.

The village is “uninhabitable,” the Commonwealth Games Federation chief executive, Mike Hooper, told the local television channel CNN-IBN on Tuesday. “There is dust everywhere,” he said. “The flats are dirty and filthy. Toilets are unclean.”

Construction of the village, built alongside the Yamuna River on Delhi’s eastern border, is severely behind schedule. Delhi built a series of apartment towers to house about 7,000 athletes and their families, a 2,300-seat cafeteria, and practice areas on land that was originally an empty plain. Officials from the Ministry of Sports promised last year that the village would be ready in March 2010, but finishing touches were still being done outside buildings during a media tour last week.

And the interiors of the buildings are still not completed, some say.

Dave Currie, the head of New Zealand’s Commonwealth Games team, said Tuesday in an interview with Newstalk ZB, a New Zealand radio station, that the condition of the

athletes’ village was “pretty grim.”

Showers and toilets in the accommodations the New Zealand team was given are not working, and postconstruction cleanup has not been done, he said. “It is certainly disappointing considering the amount of time they have had,” he said.

Athletes are scheduled to start arriving in Delhi on Thursday, but that date may need to be pushed back, Mr. Currie said, which could ultimately result in the competition being canceled. “If the village is not ready, the athletes cannot arrive,” he said. “There is a real mountain to climb” before the village can be completed, Mr. Currie said. It will be a “real challenge at this point to make it happen,” he said. Security at the games has also become a major concern after two tourists were shot outside the Jama Masjid, a mosque that is one of Delhi’s major attractions, on Sunday. Neither tourist was fatally injured, and the mosque is far from the venues or the athletes’ village, but the attack prompted new fears about Delhi’s ability to keep athletes and visitors safe during the games.

An e-mail sent to news outlets soon after the attack said the Indian Mujahedeen, a group the Indian government considers a terrorist organization, would single out the games.

“Had it not happened against the almost complete disarray of the Commonwealth Games preparations, it would not have raised much excitement,” said Ajai Sahni, the executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, a group that studies terrorist activity. Athletes are worried that if construction and planning are in disarray, security may be too, he said. Most venues were supposed to be completed in 2007, but workers were still putting finishing touches on many of them as well.

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India’s Protests Are Cherished and Maligned

By Jim Yardley CALCUTTA (NYT): This kaleidoscopic city of 15 million people stopped dead last Tuesday. Flights were canceled at the airport. The streets, ordinarily throbbing with traffic and humanity, were almost empty.

And thousands of shopkeepers like Wazeed Khan shuttered their stores in observance of a familiar Indian ritual — the shutdown strike.

The shutdown was called by trade unions to protest inflation and privatization, but these sorts of strikes have become so frequent that the specifics hardly mattered to Mr. Khan, who like many Indians has come to regard them as little more than a nuisance, if a costly one.

“This never helps the people,” Mr. Khan said. “Never. We are losing business. And this happens frequently. Some months it happens several times.”

Few democratic rights are more cherished in India, or considered more essential as a release valve for societal pressures, than the right to protest. India won independence from Britain on the strength of the civil disobedience campaigns led by Mohandas K. Gandhi, and has taken great pride in how this peaceful freedom movement created the world’s largest democracy.

But as India’s clamorous politics have steadily fragmented with a proliferation of political parties, the shutdown strike, known as a bandh, has increasingly become an object of public scorn and disillusionment. Political parties, competing in a crowded political field, often use bandhs to flex their muscles or carve out turf by proving they can shut down a city or even the whole country.

Today, many Indians see these bandhs as symbols of dysfunction rather than of political vitality. Unlike other forms of protest, the bandh can inflict huge economic losses, often to the common working person in whose name such strikes are called.

“The bandh is no longer a symbol of the people’s angst,” wrote Suhel Seth on the morning after the Calcutta strike in a front-page column in The Telegraph, the city’s leading newspaper. “It no longer represents the frustrations of the governed. Instead, it is a symbol of our weakening polity.”

No corner of the country is spared.

Strikes, large and small, are conducted across India’s social spectrum, from Maoist insurgents in the countryside to bug sprayers in New Delhi. At one of New Delhi’s most prestigious universities, professors have disrupted classes for weeks to protest plans to shift to a semester system.

This month, in the state of Rajasthan, doctors at government hospitals, angry about an episode with the local police, stopped treating patients; they called off the strike last week after national criticism, and the deaths of some patients.

But it is the political parties that can paralyze a major city, or even the entire nation. In February in the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, a right wing party, the Shiv Sena, called a bandh to block the opening of a movie, a move interpreted as a chal-

Employees rested at a gas station in Calcutta last week during a strike called by trade unions to protest inflation and privatization

and privatization.

“This is our success,” said Sudipta Saha Ray, the local union secretary, motioning to the empty streets. “Is this not justification that our strike was right?”

But union leaders, sensing public displeasure, had lifted the bandh in certain Muslim neighborhoods, in recognition of the holy month of Ramadan.

At the headquarters of the Center of Indian Trade Unions, which is tightly aligned with local Communists, Kali Ghosh, the union secretary, knew the criticisms of bandhs, but said they were the most effective way to counter “anti-people” policies by the national government.

“This is the only democratic means,” Mr. Ghosh said. “Otherwise, what would happen? We would have to go and beat the employees? Is that

desirable? This is the most peaceful, organized, democratic form of protest.”

Yet in interviews around the city, public enthusiasm was scarce. Janardan Mandan, 56, dripped with sweat from exercising in a city park. He had closed his garment factory for the day — the 10th workday lost this year to bandhs, he said. “Too much,” he complained. “This is peak season for us.”

Not far away, Tapas Das, an employee of a public sector insurance company, laughed when asked if the public supported the strike.

“In Calcutta, with any problem, the parties call a bandh,” he said. “The bandhs are only to show their power.

And by doing their bandhs, they are further away from the common people. The common people do not like these things.”

SHOBA JOSHI

ON AM 1320

lenge to the state’s Congress Party government. Congress leaders, their political prestige as well as civic order on the line, dispatched thousands of riot police officers at great public cost to ensure the movie could be shown.

In July, opposition parties, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., staged a nationwide bandh to protest fuel price increases by the government. Opposition leaders, having effectively shut down much of the country, proclaimed victory, even as critics saw the strike as a politically motivated effort by the B.J.P. to demonstrate its national relevance.

Business groups estimated that the economy suffered roughly $650 million in losses, with much of the burden falling on the low-income wage earners most vulnerable to inflation.

Beyond strikes, the same shutdown ethos has also spilled into the Indian Parliament, where disruptions and opposition walkouts forced repeated adjournments in the recently completed session. Meira Kumar, the speaker of Parliament’s lower house, the Lok Sabha, warned that “the trend of disrupting the proceedings days on end is alarming, and if not checked, will ultimately lead to unforeseen consequences.”

India’s Supreme Court has issued rulings against bandhs and, in certain cases, has fined political parties for conducting them. Yet the bandhs continue. Critics do not argue that India needs to curb protest, and such a step seems unlikely, given the central place of free speech and dissent in India’s democracy.

India boasts its own protest vocabulary: there is the sit-down strike (sometimes a hunger strike) known as the dharna; the protest march, or virodh pradarshan; the blockade of a government or political office,

known as the gherao; and many others. But the bandhs, which call for the closing of businesses and government offices, and for a public boycott of work, cause the most disruption and seem to have lost the most public favor.

“Frankly, we don’t need any bandhs,” said Tarun Das, a prominent business leader who regularly consults with the government. “They disrupt economic life. There has to be another way of protest that doesn’t cost so much.”

No place is subjected to more strikes than the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, whose capital is Calcutta, also known as Kolkata. West Bengal is the heartland of leftist politics in India, and bandhs have been a favored tool for decades among the different parties jockeying for power.

Moreover, West Bengal has two continuing insurrections — one by the Maoists, the other a statehood movement in the Gorkha region — each of which spawn regular bandhs blocking roads or shutting down businesses.

In Calcutta, the trade union bandh seemed to induce a citywide nap.

Some people said they had little choice but to obey the bandh because the unions are controlled by the governing Left Front political parties and defying the strike call could bring harassment from goons or the police. In Millennium City, the city’s high-tech office region, employees in some companies slept overnight inside their buildings because nightshift bus services were canceled.

Outside the Reserve Bank of India, a handful of union members of the All-India Reserve Bank Employees Association sat lazily on the steps until jumping up at the sight of a reporter to chant slogans against globalization

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Indo American News • Friday, September 24, 2010

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Vivekananda, Gandhi and 9/11

As the proposed ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ sharply polarises conservatives and liberals, it is helpful to locate the debate in the many preceding 9/11s.

And they show that reason is the way forward to reconciliation, religious tolerance and cultural coexistence.

By Rajni Bakshi (Hindu) Shortly after the hijacked planes were crashed into New York’s World Trade Centre on September 9, 2001, the Ramakrishna Mission printed a startling poster.

For us, said the Mission, every 9/11 is a day for celebrating peace and brotherhood. It is the date on which Swami Vivekananda delivered his famous “Sisters and Brothers of America” speech at the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893.

At about the same time, Gandhian scholars recalled that an entire chapter in Louis Fischer’s famous biography of Mahatma Gandhi is titled September 11, 1906. It was on that day that Gandhi first spoke about Satyagraha — at a public meeting in Johannesburg.

So far the poetic irony of these diverse historic events on the same date only seemed to interest peace activists or numerologists.

Way forward But reflecting on this odd combination of events may now be a creative way of untangling the web of complications triggered by the plans for what has, wrongly, been called the Ground Zero mosque.

In fact, the proposed Muslim community centre is to be located at 51 Park Place or Park51. This address is two blocks away from Ground Zero.

On the evening of September 10 this year, a couple of thousand people who support the proposed Muslim community centre gathered for a candle light vigil at Park51.

This action was a response to the increasingly bitter polarization between American conservatives and liberals on two key issues. What is the

of native populations.

A long range view of these various 9/11s illuminates diverse ways of grappling with the tussle between co-existence and conflict, faith and reason, cooperation and conquest.

Let us begin with the most distant 9/11, Hudson’s landing, which was celebrated last year as the 400th birthday of New York city.

New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement established in the wake of Hudson’s first contact, is remembered as a multicultural, liberal enterprise based on respect for diversity and toler-

The Tribute in Lights glow skyward near the World Trade Center site on Saturday, Sept.

11, 2010 in New York. Photo: AP

most appropriate way to process and resolve the hurt of 9/11 2001? And to what extent are American citizens willing and able to uniformly defend the freedom of religion?

In this context it becomes imperative to emphasise that the human missiles of 2001 don’t actually have a unique claim on 9/11 — even in the history of New York city.

It was on September 11, 1609 that Henry Hudson became the first European to set foot on an island which natives called ‘Menatay’ — present day Manhattan. Hudson’s landing, somewhere in the vicinity of today’s Ground Zero, was a precursor to European settlements and mass death

ing, much of the native population had been wiped out by European guns and germs, those who survived retreated inland.

Can this history become a justification for imputing unredeemable guilt, across centuries, to an entire race?

In that case all European descent Americans would be cast in the role of murderous interlopers.

Certainly this is a dead-end track — both morally untenable and anti-life.

But opposition to a mosque at Park51 is not about making Muslims across the world carry a permanent, collective, guilt for 9/11 2001. It’s about the lingering emotional ravages of a particular event and how they imbue a particular place with meaning.

Opposing a mosque at Park51 because it is too close to the tragic, humiliation recalling, Ground Zero raises an awkward question. What is the radius of Ground Zero’s sanctity zone? And is there an irreconcilable conflict between faith and reason underlying this question?

Relevance today This is what makes the 9/11 of 1893 fascinatingly pertinent to contemporary conundrums. The World Parlia-

ment of Religions was a uniquely American endeavor — grounded in a celebration of reason as a basis for multi-faith dialog and confidence in the dawn of an American Century.

Swami Vivekananda’s speech on that day began with the simple words, “Sisters and Brothers of America” and proceeded to declare that sectarianism, bigotry and fanaticism are outdated phenomena. But the relevance of the Swami’s 9/11 does not depend on such rudimentary political correctness.

Born into an affluent lawyer’s family in Calcutta, Vivekananda grew up amid an emerging Indian middle class that was simultaneously fascinated by the West and resentful of the indignities of colonial rule. As a disciple of the mystical seer Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Vivekananda processed and resolved these conflicting emotions.

He travelled to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, at the age of 30, not so much as a Hindu missionary, but the bearer of what he experienced as a universal nonsectarian truth.

ance.

This narrative track can be trashed for glossing over the fact that the 17th century settlement had only a brief period of bonhomie with native tribes. By 1625 the Dutch began construction of Fort Amsterdam — as a defence against angry natives as well as British and French competitors. Within half a century of Hudson’s land-

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Vivekananda, Gandhi and 9/11 continued from page

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Vivekananda realised that all spiritual striving is beyond reason, but reason is the only way to get there.

For, reason is the greatest gift of the human existence.

Even institutionalised religions, Vivekananda told the Parliament at Chicago, are nothing but “different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight” to the same goal.

Common goal That goal is God-realisation or selfrealisation — the two being one and the same thing.

Over the next decade, till he died at the age of 39, Vivekananda travelled across the US and Western Europe, engaged in dialogues about racial and religious conflict. He left behind a body of work that attempts to recalibrate the dynamic between conquest, reparation and reconciliation.

However, it was Gandhi who forged a political tool by tapping into similar insights. Born into a merchant family, Gandhi trained as a barrister in London and later set up a practice in South Africa. By the time he first articulated the concept of Satyagraha, at the packed Imperial Theatre in Johannesburg on 9/11 1906, Gandhi had been campaigning against racism for almost a decade.

Indians of all faiths, castes and professions had gathered on that 9/11 to protest several discriminatory laws.

In an atmosphere charged with anger and the will to fight, Gandhi dropped an idea that acted like a depth charge.

Let us fight discriminatory laws by refusing to comply — by offering unflinching non-violent resistance.

His logic was impeccable. Truth is God and God is love. It follows that a struggle for justice cannot involve hurting one’s opponent. Instead, the ‘other’ in a conflict must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy.

In turn, this means cultivating the willingness to examine ‘truth’in all its many dimensions. This can only be done by being strong — not physical strength but the strength of truth-force or love-force.

“Acts of violence create bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers,” wrote Gandhi’s biographer, the American journalist, Louis Fischer. “Satyagraha aims to exalt both sides.”

At first glance this may seem like an impossibly lofty vantage point from which to view the angst over a mosque near Ground Zero.

But attitude, not altitude, is critical here.

For instance, it is interesting to shift the focus, momentarily, to the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House built on the site where Fort Amsterdam once stood. This grand, artistically carved, stone building at 1 Bowling Street is also a couple of blocks from Ground Zero. Completed in 1907, it now houses the New York branch of the National Museum of the American Indian.

Different attitudes Depending on which attitude comes naturally to you, the exhibits

within can be seen in sharply contradictory ways. If you believe that past hurts must be nursed indefinitely then the museum can be condemned as white man’s hypocrisy. Others may experience the same exhibits as an acknowledgement of past wrongs, of honouring of the defeated and even a subtle attempt at reparation.

Of course the immediacy of the WTC 9/11 hurt is so overpowering that it would be offensive to imply that there can be any parallel with damages triggered by Hudson’s 9/11.

What is common, and unchanging, is the challenge of seeking a universal basis for fairness — as well as the striving to anchor emotions and faith in reason.

Chicago’s World Parliament of Religions was an ambitious, vastly successful, project of Americans who wished to celebrate diversity and co-existence. It was dismissed as an absurdity by some Christian leaders who argued that since Christianity is the only real faith there is no basis for such a gathering.

‘New York Neighbors for American Values’, the coalition of civic groups which organised the candle lit vigil at Park51 on September 10, is standing up for ‘equality, diversity and religious freedom’. The Muslim community centre, which they support, is being built to uphold “respect for the diversity of expression and ideas between all people.”

On 9/11 itself a group called “Stop Islamisation of America” organised a Remembrance Rally which reportedly attracted larger numbers. Their rallying call: “Yes to Freedom, No to Ground Zero Mosque”.

This might easily seem like a standard conservative vs. liberal standoff. And yet, the presence of those who lost loved ones in the WTC attack, among supporters of the Park51 project, implies a ‘ satyagrahi’ striving.

Some of the same people have joined the Washington D.C. based Peace Alliance and are lobbying for a Congressional act that would create a Department of Peace.

Sceptics might well point out that since the insights of Vivekananda and Gandhi have frequently not prevailed in their own homeland, what hope is there for their legacies to help the world. Indeed, New York’s mosque controversy does revive painful memories of the many lives lost due to the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute in India.

Again, attitude is the key element.

We can be swept away by the competing political agendas which are focused on the here and now — as is the case for some Americans in this election year.

Or we could take a long range view, in which case each of these 9/11s illuminates a crossroad. Together these various events compel us to ponder if civilisation is indeed captive to historical events. Gandhi was utterly confident that the greatest assertion of liberty is to cultivate command over one’s own emotions. This alone frees us from being captive both to past hurts and guilt.

in d ia

Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010

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Pak Spy Held in Delhi, Army Documents Seized NEW DELHI (PTI): A suspected Pakistani spy, who was in the national capital for the last one year doing recce of Army installations, was arrested here with police on Tuesday claiming that they have recovered confidential documents related to the Indian Army from his possession.

Sajjad Haider (43), hailing from Lahore, was apprehended by a team of Delhi Police’s Special Cell from Samalkha village here on September 14 on a tip-off from central intelligence agencies, a senior police official said. He has revealed names of certain persons who facilitated his activities in India, who are being questioned, the official said adding that he was staying in the capital with a fake name Mohd. Pervez.

“Confidential documents related to the Indian Army, a fake Indian driv-

ing license, a PAN card along with Western Union money transfer receipts, rent agreements, SIM cards and phones have been recovered from his rented accommodation in Samalakha,” the official said. Trained at Military trade craft in Lahore by ISI for five months, the official said, he was tasked to conduct recce of Army installations in Punjab to collect information regarding movements of armed forces.

“He had entered India in September last year through Bangladesh. He was directed by his handlers to first obtain credible Indian IDs to pass off as an Indian. Thereafter he went about the task of procuring forged Identity proof/ documents for himself which would facilitate him in making a base for carrying out his mission successfully,” the official said.

He also revealed that as per the instructions of his mentors, he had received the recovered confidential documents from a source in Delhi and the same was to be sent to one of his Pakistani handler via Dubai through courier.

“He also revealed that after coming to Delhi he initially picked up odd jobs in Okhla Industrial Area and started developing contacts with other logistic providers in the area,” the official said. He managed to procure fake Indian driving license and PAN card through local agents. Soon he also procured mobile SIM cards of different companies on the basis of his fake driving license and on the basis of IDs of other persons. After staying for some time in Okhla area, he took a rented room at Govindpuri, and later shifted to Samalakha.

Mails from IM, Suspected to be Created in India

NEW DELHI (SINS): After the attack near the Jama Masjid, Indian Mujahiddin (IM) who carried out the operation to avenge the death of two IM terrorists killed in the Batla House encounter, had allegedly created email account in India after the firing occurred. Those two terrorists own another account on rediff as the details provided in operating the gmail account points that the person has an account with rediffmail using the same numerical, reports Rahul Tripathi of Times of India.

As per the investigations, al.arbi99913@gmail.com, a gmail id was created at 11.30 am on Sunday

and the alleged incident of firing was reported at 11.22 am on the same day.

The account through which the terrorists declared about the attack to the news channels and agencies, said that it will automatically become non operational on September 26. “It is matter of investigation. He may have given a false e-mail id. We are in the process of verifying the status of his accounts and have contacted google,” said a senior officer heading the probe. Police officials feel that, the terrorists must have thought deeply about taking this step as the mail came several hours after the incident took place. The account was operated in the name of ‘Veera’.

Earlier, the emails from IM have been traced after which their media cell, which operated in Pune was busted and the software programmer was arrested.

Their media cell used to send mails before the blasts through unprotected wi-fi connection but unfortunately, the police could not trace anything beyond the user of IP address. The terror group hasalsoexpresseditsintentiontodisrupt the Common Wealth Games (CWG) to be held in New Delhi. “We know that preparations for the Games are at its peak, beware, we too are preparing in full swing for a great surprise,” said the email sent by Indian Mujahideen to a news agency.

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Indo American News • Friday, September 24, 2010

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“For Things to Change, We Must Change”

By PrakasH iyer POOJA was a rather unhappy girl.

She just hated college. Ask her why, and the response would be quick: The students in her college were all snobbish and extremely unhelpful.

Terrible people to be with!

Aarti always walked around with a huge smile on her face. She loved her college. And if you asked her why, her response would be swift too: The students in her college were extremely warm and friendly. Wonderful folks to hang out with!

Now you’d probably be thinking we are all like them. If we are lucky to be in a place where the people are nice and friendly, we are happy. And if we are not so fortunate, and find ourselves in the midst of not-so-nice people, we are unhappy.

So here’s the interesting bit. Both Pooja and Aarti are students of the same college. In fact, they are in the same class! If you look around, you’ll find several people like Pooja and Aarti. It could be two people, who work in the same organisation, or are studying the same course, or living in the same city; while one of them loves everything about the company or the course or the place they live in, the other person always seems to be complaining about how terrible their world is.

How come? Same place, differ different views. Why does this happen?

Maybe there’s a message in the story of the old man who ran a highway tea shop on a highway between two cities. It was a popular stopover for

motorists, partly because of the quality of the tea, and more because of the friendly old man who ran it.

One day, a car carrying a group of friends stopped by and after all the occupants had helped themselves to some delicious tea, one of them asked the old man “How are the people in the town ahead?”

“How were the people in the town

you are coming from?” asked the old man.

“Oh, they were lousy,” was the reply. “Arrogant and ill-mannered!”

The old man paused for a moment and then said “You will find the people in the town ahead are also like that.”

A little while later another car pulled over at the tea shop. The

folks in the car enjoyed their tea and as they were about to drive off, one of them asked the old man the same question: “How are the people in the town ahead?”

And the old man responded “How were the people in the town you are coming from?”

“They were wonderful people,” came the response. “Warm and help-

ful” The old man smiled and said “You will find that the people in the town ahead are exactly the same.”

Think about it. It’s always like that.

The way we see the people around us depends not so much on how they are – but on how we are.

If you find yourself unhappy with the people and circumstances in your life, maybe the problem is not with them – it’s to do with you! If the world around you looks rather dark and gloomy, when someone else finds it bright and sunny - maybe all you need to do is remove your dark sunglasses! Change the way you look at your world. Resolve to be happy. Be positive. Be friendly. And the world will seem a better place.

Become the kind of friend or colleague you’d like to have and - sur surprise – you’ll find that the people around are you are like that too.

You will find all the warmth and the friendliness reflecting back at you.

We all tend to attract people and circumstances that are in harmony with our attitude. Happy people have happy friends, happy lives. And the converse tends to be generally true too. Alas!

Remember, for things to change, we must change. Your college, or your company, and your city – all these are actually wonderful places.

You just need to learn to look at them that way. Gandhiji’s advice still holds true: Be the change you want to see.

Starting today, change your outlook.

Change your world!

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South Asia News of the Diaspora

The Other Half: Making the Invisible Visible

If women are getting more visibility today, it is partly because of the changes initiated by the UN conferences of the 1990s…

By kalPana P sHarma H (Hindu) The most striking photograph of the farmers’agitation against the Yamuna Expressway last month was that of a 45-year-old woman, Rajkumari Devi (Indian Express, August 29, 2010). Captioned “Protesting Farmer, Zikarpur Village, Aligarh”, the story that accompanied the photograph described how Rajkumari, holding a lathi in her hands, sat in protest for days on end with other men and women, demanding more compensation for their lands that had been acquired for the Yamuna Expressway.

Her life was her land. “My day would start at four in the morning, feeding the cattle and then tilling the land. I would take a brief lunch break and get back to the field. It was during the evening that I finished my household chores and spent some time with my family and neighbours.” She told the reporter that she knew no other life than working in her fields, something she had done even as a child as her father was a farmer. “A farmer has no holidays. One is supposed to work

Going unacknowledged: Women farmers. Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

everyday and all the time”, she said.

I was struck by Rajkumari’s photograph and testimony for more than one reason. Her story is that of every farmer, man or woman, but her story is also that of women farmers, who are rarely acknowledged when one discusses any matter related to agriculture. Indeed, women as farm-

ers continue to be invisible in India even though millions of them are as directly involved with agriculture as the men.

A reader wrote to me a few weeks ago and asked why I find this “women’s” angle in every story. It is precisely because of stories like Rajkumari’s, the invisible women who are

an important part of our economy, our lives and yet their contribution is so routinely overlooked.

Her story reminded me that this month marks 15 years since the UN fourth World Conference on Women that was held in Beijing from September 4-15, 1995. It was the largest of the series of UN conferences held through the 1990s, bringing together thousands of official and non-governmental representatives from 189 countries to discuss women’s rights, how to make them more visible and to strategise ways to ensure that governments legislate and formulate policies that ensure that women have the same rights as all other citizens in their countries.

I know that these days the United Nations does not have much cur currency. But through the 1990s, some of the important conferences that the UN convened saw the emergence of an international consensus on a number of important issues.

Significant conferences Of these, as far as women worldwide are concerned, the two really

significant meetings were the 1994 Cairo meeting on population and the Beijing conference. Cynics sometimes wonder what is achieved by these huge jamborees. But there was a time and place for them and in some respects the fruits of those efforts can be seen in the decades that followed.

The Cairo conference, for instance, established the link between population and development and between women’s rights and population policies. As one of the signatories of the document that emerged from the conference, the Indian government had to look again at its reproductive health policies and discard the earlier system of incentives and disincentives that resulted in fudged data and women being penalised for being the ones who can procreate. The change in policy has, of course, not been uniformly implemented and every now and then we still hear stories about coercion. But 16 years after the conference, there is already enough evidence to show that developmental policies that deal with

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Indo American News • Friday, September 24, 2010

INDIa

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Ikea Expects to Double Buying of Goods in India

Mikael Ohlsson, the new IKEA chief executive

By Heather Timmons NEW DELHI (NYT): Ikea, the inexpensive and stylish Swedish home retailer, is not earning any money in India. But the company is spending it here, the chief executive, Mikael Ohlsson, said Monday.

Ikea, which has 317 furniture and housewares stores worldwide, scrapped plans last year to open dozens of stores in India, after the Indian government would not lift limits on foreign investment in the retail sector.

Despite the setback, Mr. Ohlsson said he was determined to continue to do business in India.

Ikea plans to double the amount of goods it buys from India, including textiles, in the next three to four years, to 1 billion euros, or $1.3 billion, he said at a news conference here.

Mr. Ohlsson said he had not given up on entering India’s retail market, and had an “interesting” meeting with a government minister about the issue during his visit here. The government requires name-brand foreign retailers to form partnerships with local companies before opening stores in India, and limits the foreign company’s stake to 51 percent. Mr. Ohlsson said Ikea could not meet that requirement.

Because Ikea, which is privately held, does not have to meet shareholders’ demands for quick and steady earnings, it can, and often does, let its stores operate for “years and years” before making a profit, he said. That makes it an unlikely partner for many investors.

“We don’t see ourselves as a normal retailer,” Mr. Ohlsson said. Ikea has tried joint ventures before, and they did not work, so the company avoids them, he said.

International retail brands, including Izod, Nine West and the Body Shop, have flocked to India in recent years, forming local partnerships, to take advantage of an economy that is growing faster than any other major country’s except China’s and a new middle class with disposable income.

India’s overall retail sales will be $380 billion in 2010, predicts Business Monitor International, a London research firm. It forecasts those sales will grow to $680 billion by 2014.

India’s government should not see Ikea as a threat to domestic retailers, Mr. Ohlsson said.

The needs of the market are “so big there will be space for everybody,” he said.

Ikea “has more to do in markets where people do not have much money,” Mr. Ohlsson said, because the company focuses on customers whose “needs are big and wallets’ thin.”

Among other developing markets, the company has 10 stores in China, which are as busy as any in London, he said. Ikea is adding two stores in Beijing and two in Shanghai, he said.

The company also has 13 stores in Russia.

Ikea said it was investing about 125 million euros, or $163 million, in social programs to help women and children in India and South Asia. These investments make Ikea the largest corporate partner in the world to aid agencies including Unicef and Save the Children, representatives of those organizations said Monday.

Ikea had worldwide sales of 22.7 billion euros in 2009, up slightly from 2008, when sales for many other retailers shrank because of the global economic downturn.

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in d ia

Giving Out Terrorists’ Photos Will Do More Harm than Good

By Anil Singh MUMBAI (TOI): The decision of the Mumbai police to publicise the photographs of the two terrorists out to create havoc during the festive season has stirred a debate with some observers saying that it appears like an attempt on the part of the police to shirk responsibility and that it could lead to more harm than good.

The photographs of these men, Hafeez Sharif and Kalimuddin Khan, have been plastered at each and every Ganesh pandal in Mumbai. Sharif has been shown with a goatee and a skull cap. ``It is very unlikely that the two won’t change their appearance. Their handlers could have even replaced them. The only thing that these pictures will do is to reinforce stereotypes and communal bias,’’ said Sajid Rashid, associate editor of the Urdu daily, Sahafat. He addes that the worst affected will be children who are likely to equate anyone with a goatee and a skull cap with a terrorist. ``Any Muslim visiting a pandal will think twice for fear of being discriminated against, taunted or even being beaten up. With one stroke, this step threatens to undo all the good work done to foster communal harmony over the years,’’ said Jatin Desai of the Pakistan- India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy. Rashid confirmed that Muslim families were are avoiding Ganesh pandals.

In fact, Muslims fear that if the communal atmosphere worsens, they

might become victims of hate crime.

However, former IPS officer Y P Singh believes Indians can no longer be divided on communal lines on the basis of terrorist strikes.

Singh backs the police, saying, ``When it comes to terrorism, one has to act in an optimum manner.’’

However, he feels that they could have handled the photographs in a more professional manner by releasing other pictures showing how the duo would have looked in various guises. Former Mumbai police commissioner Julio Ribeiro, who also heads the Mohalla Commitee movement for communal harmony, accepted that the step was fraught with danger but said that he would not like to pass any value judgement as ``no one would back the policemen if something untoward happens’’.

Publicising the photographs is resulting in needless panic. Already, police telephones are clogged with reports of sightings, including one at the popular Lalbaucha Raja pandal. The policemen who could have silently hunted for the two terrorists are now being sent on wild goose chases.

Observers say that communal elements can easily use this opportunity to whip up anti-government sentiment. For instance, they can ask why photographs of Hindu bomb makers are never displayed at public places.

Will this not affect the flow of information from the minority community to the anti-terrorist squad, they ask.

Police sources say they had ``com-

pelling reasons much beyond the comprehension of the lay person’’ and that the chief minister himself gave the go-ahead for publicising the photographs. ``There was a lot of debate before arriving at the decison and we chose the lesser evil,’’ said a senior crime branch official. Social activistAnurag Chaturvedi says that policemen miss the larger point. The war against terror is not only a cloak-and-dagger operation, it is also about winning the hearts and minds of people. The ultimate aim of the terrorists is to drive a wedge between the Hindus and Muslims. ``By releasing the photos, the police is actually helping the ultras achieve this objective,’’ Chaturvedi said. ``If, indeed, it is such a grave issue, why is it that blame for losing track of the two terrorists is not being pinned on the agency and officers concerned? Till that happens, doubts will persist about the motives of the police,’’ said Nadeem Nusrath, former national secretary of the Youth Congress.

According to him, the whole episode simply shows that our policemen and politicians are so jittery ater 26/11 that they have bought insurance from each other. What should have been thrashed out in private by policemen and politicians has now been put in public domain, resulting in panic and poisoning of minds. ``Only time will tell what price the people will have to pay for this rash step,’’ Nusrath said.

Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010

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Making the Invisible Visible continued from page

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illiteracy, health and women’s rights are a far more effective strategy to limit population growth than coercive policies such as forced sterilisation or limits on the number of children you can have.

Women’s rights are a trickier issue.

One of the star attractions in Beijing was Hillary Clinton, then the First Lady of the United States. She got the world’s attention when she stated unequivocally that “it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.” She said, “It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls, when women and girls are sold into slavery or prostitution for human greed. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small, when thousands of women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.”

Uneven results Of course, not all the countries present carried forward the philosophy behind this slogan in their policies post-Beijing. Women continue to be denied basic rights in many societ-

ies including India. Violence against women in the home and outside continues in all our societies. While we hear little today about violence at home, including dowry torture and deaths, statistics establish that women are far more prone to assault within the home than outside it.

So was the rhetoric, the declarations, the Platform for Action adopted at Beijing worth anything more than the paper on which they were written?

I personally think they were. What Beijing did was to reiterate standards that are universal within the rights context. It laid out violations of women’s rights that were unacceptable. And it urged governments to legislate and enact policies that would make these rights a reality. It also gave civil society actors around the world a handle that was useful for advocacy for change of policy within their countries.

What does any of this have to do with Rajkumari from Zikarpur village? A great deal. Conferences like the one in Beijing set in motion campaigns and changes that were aimed at ending the invisibility of women like Rajkumari. If today we can see her proud face in our newspapers, and recognise that she too is an Indian farmer, then a small step towards ending her invisibility has been taken.

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The Big presence: Amitabh Bachchan, Nachiket Barve and Jaya Bachchan at Lakme Fashion week

Mumbai: Day 3 Lakme Fashion Week saw a decent celebrity turnout. Neena Gupta’s daughter Ma-

her line and the likes of Jackie Shroff and Adam Bedi with wife Nisha Harale turned up to show their support. Actor Chitrangda Singh set the temperatures soaring when she sashayed the ramp for designer Arpan Vohra while the last show for the day by Satya Paul saw Shruti Hassan take to the runway, dressed in a sari.

But the biggest draw of the day was actor Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan take to the front row for Nachiket Barve’s show.

Dressed in a Nachiket sari, Jaya was all smiles while watching the show. Actor Koena Mitra walked the ramp for Rajat Tangri’s show and dressed in a short number, she sizzled alright!

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Pakistan Beats India, Gory Pics on Cig Packs This is one thing that India can take a leaf out of Pakistan’s book.

Pakistan has introduced gory pictorial warnings on all tobacco packs from August 30 in a bid to deter consumers from smoking or chewing tobacco. On the contrary, India, where 2,500 people die daily due to use of tobacco, has put off the introduction of strong and gory pictorial warnings till December 1.

Pakistan has made it mandatory for 40% of all tobacco packs — on

both sides — to carry the image of a rotting mouth suffering from cancer along with a health warning. While 30% of the tobacco packs shows a patient stricken with mouth cancer, 10% carries the warning text.

Gradually, the pictorial coverage will be increased to 50% as recommended by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control ( FCTC), an international treaty that was signed and ratified by Pakistan in 2004.

Kingfisher to Add More Routes Kingfisher Airlines, rapidly challenging Air India’s dominance in the aviation industry, has announced it will be adding new international routes from next year to its existing roster to Dubai, Hong Kong, Thailand, London and Singapore.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the company’s 14th annual general meeting, Vijay Mallya, chairman and CEO of the company, said that the company was “looking at new routes only from next year,” but that the company needed to be cautious. “In the domestic market, Kingfisher intends to launch services to Ludhiana (Punjab) and Pantnagar (Uttarakhand) which till date had no proper air connectivity,” he said.

According to Mallya, Kingfisher

Airlines is focused on revenues and not on other variables, such as market share or seat (load) factor. The carrier intends to complete its fund-raising plans at the earliest.

According to The Economic Times, the company plans to take around Rs10 billion through a rights and global depository receipt issue.

The company also utilized Rs10.5 billion of the Rs20 billion line-ofcredit secured from a consortium of Indian banks earlier this year. While noting that business sentiments had improved since last August, Mallya noted that the 30 percent compounded growth rate witnessed during the past five years is not expected to return. “The growth of civil aviation is linked to GDP growth,” he said.

India Bags 3 Gold Medals in International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics MUMBAI: Indian students bagged three Gold and two Bronze medals at the 4th International Olympiad in Astronomy & Astrophysics (IOAA) that concluded in Beijing India was ranked first in medal tally at the IOAA which commenced on September 12, Dr Aniket Sule, Academic coordinator, Indian Astronomy Olympiad Program who led the team, told PTI. Chirag Modi of Indore, Nitesh Kumar Singh of Mumbai, and Aniruddha Bapat from Pune won Gold medals while Shantanu Agarwal of Patna, and Kottur Satwik of Hyderabad, won Bronze medals, he said.

Nitesh Kumar Singh was also

awarded special prize for best performance in the theoretical round.

The team was lead by Sule from Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) and Pradip Dasgupta, Siddharth College, Mumbai.

Director of HBCSE Prof H C Pradhan accompanied the team as scientific observer.

At the 4th IOAA, a total of 24 teams from 22 countries participated. The participating countries included China, Iran, Korea, Brazil, Greece, Poland, Russia, Romania and Thailand amongst others.

The IOAA competition consisted of tests in astrophysical theory, astronomical data analysis as well as night sky observation, Sule added.

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IN D IA n e w s B r i e f

Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010

Japanese Conglomerate to Invest in SEZ, Steel Plant in Gujarat

Monorail Manufacturers Concentrate on India’s Infrastructure Boom

Japanese conglomerate Mitsui and Indian industrial conglomerate Ruchi Group have announced plans to establish a special economic zone that will include a US$1 billion steel complex in western India’s Tagdi village in Kutch, Gujarat.

The joint venture, Indian Steel Corp. Ltd. (ISC), aims to expand steel service centers around the country. ISC already has 50 hectares of land for the project in Kutch and is waiting for the local government to make 950 hectares available for development.

The steel plant will have a capacity to produce 1.2-1.5 million tons initially with plans to eventually increase production to 3-4 million tons.

More Japanese investors are expected to come in when the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor is fully developed. The corridor will have a vast scope spanning six states including freight facilities, 11 investment regions and 13 industrial areas.

India to Sign FTAs with Malaysia, Japan NEW DELHI: India is expected to formally sign free trade agreements with Japan and Malaysia by the end of the year.

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is slated to be in the countries in October. “I am reasonably confident that we will sign the deal with Japan and Malaysia before the end of this year,” Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar told reporters.

India’s FTA pact with the European Union will probably be delayed to next year because of specific issues.

“We are trying to get it wrapped up quickly. But I don’t think it is possible to conclude this year,” Khullar said.

Moreover, India and other E.U. member countries are due to hold their elections soon.

India has been actively working on its FTAs. It recently signed an FTA agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

MUMBAI: As the Indian economy develops, the need for massive improvements in its transportation network also increases.

With Mumbai’s first monorail service about to be launched and those familiar street level cantilevered rail lines now weaving their way above the city’s roads, other places in the country have already started taking notice. All three major monorail companies – Bombardier, Scomi and Hitachi – are setting up operations in India because of anticipated demand.

Several cities have already put out tenders for monorail construction, including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Baroda, Bhopal, Calicut, Chennai, Cochin, Coimbatore, Delhi, Deharadun, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkota, Lucknow, Madurai, Nagpur, Noida, Panaji, Patna, Pune, Raipur, Surat, Thane, Trichy and Trivan-

drum.

The first stage of the Mumbai monorail should be completed in March 2011.

“We have long said that India will and is catching up with the revitalization of its infrastructure,” said Chris Devonshire-Ellis of Dezan Shira & Associates. “The demand for city monorails demonstrates that in this case. When you start to have scenarios where 25 Indian cities are all clamoring for monorail at the same time, now is the time for foreign suppliers to such manufacturers as Bombardier to get in tune with the India market and see how they can assist.”

The time is ripe for second tier manufacturers and suppliers to come to India and start servicing their global clients, Devonshire-Ellis added.

India Approves 11 Special Economic Zones KARNATAKA: The Indian government gave the go signal to establish 11 special economic zones in the country with five of the IT related zones located in Karnataka in southwest India.

Ten of the SEZs have been officially approved while one was given an in-principle approval for a pharmaceuticals SEZ to be built by Vivimed Labs in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh.

Two of those SEZs will be established by IT services company, Wipro, in Bangalore and Mysore district also in Karnataka. Major outsourcing firm, Infosys, was also given approval to establish an SEZ in Bangalore.

Special economic zone funding was hit by the Global Financial Crisis leading to 18 zones to exit in July. “Requests for de-notification by the developers have been approved by the Board of Approval in respect of 18 SEZs…,” Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jyotiraditya Scindia wrote.

Developers applying for SEZ de-notification must give back the fiscal benefits they obtained before being allowed to cancel the project.

SEZ exports amounted to Rs. 2.2 trillion for the financial year 20092010. Figures have continued to improve increasing by 68 percent to Rs. 586 billion.

India Approves Rs.9.3 Billion E-Courts Project NEW DELHI: India has approved a Rs.9.3 billion project that will help modernize and streamline its judiciary.

The E-Courts Project will let people easily verify information on case status and verdict as well allow video conferencing facilities at courts and prisons. The project is part of government efforts to establish an National e-Governance Plan campaign.

The project is expected to make long

overdue changes to 14,249 courts in 3,069 court complexes and help ease backlogged cases. Authorities began allowing e-filing of complaints for consumer courts last month.

So far, only the Delhi high court has used the e-courts system with two already open since 2009. The court successfully replaced paper files with LCD screens and an electronic handbook.

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global outlook

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India 3rd Most Powerful Nation: US Report

Washington (NDTV) : The new global power lineup in the US for 2010 compiling the world’s most powerful countries/regions recognised India as the third most powerful country behind the US and China, and predicted that its clout as well as that of China and Brazil would further rise by 2025.

“Global Governance 2025” - follow-on to the NIC’s 2008 report was jointly issued by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) of the powerful Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies (EUISS).

In 2010, the US tops the list of powerful countries/regions, accounting for nearly 22 per cent of the global power. The US is followed by China (more than 12 per cent), European Union (more than 16 per cent), India (nearly eight per cent), and less than five per cent each for Japan, Russia and Brazil.

According to this international futures model, by 2025 the power

India has a lot of challenges facing her. With global advantages like ports for free trade on every side, India is close to its neighbor China in population and claiming a large chunk of the world jobs market. India is first in IT software, engineering capabilities, science, math and several fields of medicine. Several Indian doctors lead hospitals as qualified surgeons in the USA. While China can be credited for their labor intensive market, India has also excelled in the textile industry, hotel industry and other avenues. Still poverty is rampant and corruption, including devious political demigods who delay India’s progress.

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of the US, EU, Japan and Russia would decline while that of China, India and Brazil would increase, even though there would be no change in this listing. By 2025, the United States would still be the most powerful country of the world, but it would have a little over 18 per cent of the global power.

The US would be closely followed by China (nearly 16 per cent), European Union (14 per cent) and India (10 per cent). The report concludes that three effects of rapid globalization are driving demands for more effective global governance - economic interdependence, the interconnected nature of the challenges on the international agenda, and interwoven domestic and foreign challenges.

According to the 82-page report,

more effective global governance is critical to addressing “threats such as ethnic conflicts, infectious diseases, and terrorism as well as a new generation of global challenges including climate change, energy security, food and water scarcity, international migration flows and new technologies,” which are increasingly taking centre stage.

India has severe challenges like poverty, child labor, religious infighting, rampant corruption in several layers of government and devious political demigods who make it difficult for India to grow exponentially.

Complicating the prospects for effective global governance over the next 15 years, however, is the shift to a multi polar world, particularly the shift in power towards non-state actors, it says.

Radio Program Notice

For the first time in Houston, Brought to you by Radio Masti, for an unforgettable and uninterrupted 2hour 15min Mahalaya program.

Mahalaya - Birendrakrishna Bhadra - Mahishasur Mardini 2010 on Radio Masti 1480AM or visit: www.radiomastihouston.com or listen live on Sunday, October 3 at 7am.

Mahalaya Invoking of Goddess Durga (Goddess Chandika)[Mahishashura Mardini] By Birendra Krishna Bhadra, Lyrics & Script : Bani Kumar, Music : Pankaj Kumar Mullick. Artists: Birendra Krishna Bhadra, Dwijen Mukhopadhyay, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay, Arati Mukhopadhyay, Supriti Ghosh, Manabendra Mukhopadhay, Sumitra Sen, Bimal Bhusan, Shipra Basu, Utpala Sen, Shyamal Mitra, Ashima Bhattacharya, Pratima Bandyopadhyay, Tarun Bandyopadhyay.

As part of 10th Anniversary Durga Puja at Houston Durga Bari, This event is sponsored by Houston Durga Bari Puja Committee. For details please call Shyamal Bhattacharya 832-576-2344 or email: shyamal@radiomastihouston.com

Gandhi Jayanti 2010 Celebration as 1000 Lights for Peace 5 pm: Sunday, October 3, 2010,at Miller Outdoor Theatre To register for “Walk For Peace” at Gandhi Jayanti celebrations, visit www.gandhilibrary.org.

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sports

Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010

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US and India Women Teams War Over 15-Year-Old Girl

By Peter Simunovich

(Cricket USA Mag): Shebani Bhaskar is just 15, but already she has become involved in a tug of war between the United States and India women cricket teams.

The talented youngster, who is also a handy tight arm medium pace swing bowler, has been in the sights of US senior women’s team coach Linden Fraser for several months.

Fraser believes Shebani should be representing the US even though she is still in high school.

But there is a problem with her wearing the US team’s colors. The India women’s team also wants the girl’s services.

Fraser told cricketusamag.com in an interview that Shebani is a US citizen and should be allowed to play for the red, white and blue.

He recently called her in India where she is a student and living with her family.

According to Fraser, Shebani told him that the India women’s team administrators would not al-

low her to play for the US team.

“Shebani was born in the US and she should be allowed to play for the US women’s team,” said Fraser. “I called her to try to get her to play for the US team.”

Fraser described Shebani as a “very good player, who was good enough to play for the US team.”

He said she had the ability to play in one of the top five batting spots for the national team, which is a huge compliment for such a young player, who already has a very promising career.

Fraser has said that he would encourage the national selectors to seriously consider naming Shebani in the national senior team squad when it is chosen for next year’s qualifying tournament in Bangladesh for the 2012 World Cup in India.

He believes the 15-year-old is one of the brightest hopes for the future of US women’s cricket.

Fraser has met Shebani and has also watched her play on video. He

Pakistan Floods Touch Former US Women’s Player

said Shebani recently scored 103, including 15 fours, of her team’s 181 total in a recent game in Tamil Nadu in India where she plays in an Under 17 competition.

Several years ago Shebani’s family decided to leave the US and move back to India. In June last year Shebani and her family visited friends in the US and at the time she met Fraser.

While visiting, Fraser said, she represented the North East Region in the women’s national tournament in California.

Fraser is still on a high after the US women senior team’s recent three victories against Canada in 50 over contests to qualify for next year’s tournament.

He believes the US team will be stronger and the future brighter if Shebani is allowed to represent her country. Whether she does is something that has to be decided.

Fraser said he has not given up and is still working on getting Shebani in US colors.

Sania Suffers First Round Loss at Tashkent

(Samachar): Sania Mirza’s poor singles form continued as she crashed out of the Tashkent Open with an opening—round loss to Russian Ekaterina Bychkova here on Tuesday.

She won a doubles’ title at the China Open last week, but there was no end to Sania’s poor singles run as the 125th ranked Indian went down 1—6 6—4 5—7 to the Russian, ranked 175 in the world, in a little over two hours.

Watched by her husband, Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik, Sania looked rusty in the first set going down tamely in less than 30 minutes and was broken in the third, fifth and seventh games.

In the second set, Sania found her rhythm to take the set after being down 2—4 and securing breaks in the seventh and ninth games after Bychkova committed five double faults.

The Indian raced to a 5—2 lead in the decider but Bychkova clawed back breaking her in the eight, 10th and the 12th game.

Sania Mirza crashed out of the Tashkent Open with a loss to Russian Ekaterina Bychkova - File Photo

Sania had two match points in the 11th game, but Bychkova hit an ace to get back into the match.

In the 12th game, Sania had an opportunity to level scores and force a tie—break but she double

Shiv Sagar

faulted twice and that sealed her fate.

Sania, who is partnering Marai Elena Camerin of Italy, will start her doubles campaign in the tournament.

Sana said that the victims from

By Peter Simunovich (Cricket USA Mag): Sana Raz- the flood were now beginning to zak loved playing cricket in the arrive in Islamabad for help and, Eastern Conference when she hopefully, start a new life.

She said she and her family and and her family lived in the United States several years ago. As an all- friends were also helping the vicrounder she had the skills and past tims in any way they can.

Sana’s husband now has a job international experience to win national selection.

But because of the recession in the US her husband, Umer Imtiaz, lost his job in communications and they had to return to Islamabad in Pakistan with their daughter, Fatima, now three.

Sana had really wanted to represent the US senior women’s team, but because of the visa she had she could not be considered for selection.

Now Sana, 27, who has a degree in computer science and a black belt in karate, is a full time player in Islamabad as a high order bat and spinner, but cricket is now secondary following the horrific floods in northern Pakistan, claim- Sana Razzak, a woman cricketer leading ing more than 1,500 lives in her field from 2003 in Pakistan women’s and leaving hundreds of leagues is back in Pakistan to help out the flood victims in whichever way she can thousands homeless.

The tragedy has affected the whole country and now heavy in Islamabad and she is playing rains in Islamabad, said Sana, had cricket full time.

She recently won the best fielder even touched her own family.

In a telephone interview with award when her team competed in cricketusamag.com, she said the a national women’s tournament.

In 2003 Pakistan introduced a heavy rains had flooded the basewomen’s competition and Sana ment of her brother’s home.

“The floods and rains have af af- was in the nation’s top 24-player fected a lot of people and we are squad. She competed with the secall trying to help the victims,” she ond X1 team before she moved to the US. said.

Sana worked hard to stay fit “The people are very supportive and doing everything possible to and in match condition when she help the victims. People are vol- moved to the US and hoped she unteering to help and donating would be selected to play for the money, water, food, clothing and US senior women’s team.

She regularly worked out with anything the flood victims need.”

“The Pakistan army is also do- the North Atlanta men’s cricket ing a great job by rescuing people. team to sharpen her skills while Every individual is helping in any waiting for the opportunity to play way they can and are not relying in a women’s league. on the government.”

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literature

Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010

41

A Global Ganesha: How Literary Writers View the Diety

By Vikram Doctor

Part 2 (ET): The story takes place on the site of a bridge being built across the Ganges, a setting that allows Kipling much chance for enjoyable enumeration of engineering details. The British engineer and his Indian foreman are the protagonists and their job is almost done when a great flood that could wash it away. They can only hope it stays, and take refuge in an abandoned temple on a river island.

Under the influence of the opium which the foreman persuades him to take, the engineer dreams that the flood is Mother Ganga’s attempt to break the chains of the bridge, and that she has come to the temple, in the shape of a great river crocodile, to demand help from the other Hindu gods.

The gods arrive in the temple, most in animal form, Shiva as a bull, Indra a buck, Kali a tigress, Hanuman an ape, and “somewhere in the shadow, a great trunk and gleaming tusks swayed to and fro, and a low gargle broke the silence that followed... “We be here,” said a deep voice, “the Great Ones.

One only and very many. Shiv, my father, is here, with Indra, Kali has spoken already. Hanuman listens.”

The gods debate whether to help Ganga destroy the bridge. Kali snarls yes, Hanuman remembers the bridge he built himself and argues it should stay, while Indra says the bridge is of little matter in the vast sweep of time Ganesha is pragmatic: “It is for the profit of my mahajuns – my fat money-lenders that worship me at each new year, when they draw my image at the head of the account-books. I, looking over their shoulders by lamplight, see that the names in the books are those of men in far places – for all the towns are drawn together by the fire-carriage, and the money comes and goes swiftly, and the accountbooks grow as fat as – myself. And I, who am Ganesh of Good Luck, I bless my peoples.”

This impeccable argument for infrastructure development is countered by Ganga’s impassioned environmentalism: projects like the bridge are altering her very shape and nature. Ganesha replies with

Did you know?

a shrug that echoes any bureaucrat defending any Narmada-like project: ‘”It is but then shifting of a little dirt. Let the dirt dig in the dirt if it pleases the dirt,” answered the Elephant.’

This debate is ended by Krishna who comes with a message that undercuts both Ganga’s fury and Ganesha’s complacency. It is too late for them to do anything, he tells the gods, because the Bridge will hold, both as a structure and a symbol of how the old faiths of the people are being defeated by the modern forces of science (Krishna is unaffected because people will always want love). This typical Kipling conclusion is equally typically undermined by his description of the awesome forces of the gods that still underlie Indian life.

Despite Krishna’s message one ends the story unsure if science or faith will win. History shows that both did. Ganga has been altered, perhaps irrevocably, but millions still come to dip idols of Ganesh in the river.

Kipling’s description of Ganesha as the god of fat merchants is not meant to be flattering; he never much liked Hindu merchants or babus. But he was also the creator of the heroic Hari Babu of Kim, and in keeping with this contradictory spirit, Kipling adopted Ganesha as a personal emblem. His father, Lockwood Kipling, an artist and expert on Indian iconography, created a design of an elephant with a lotus in its trunk which Kipling referred to as the Ganesh roundel and had stamped on all his personal books. (It also included a swastika, which Kipling knew as a traditional Indian good luck symbol, but this has lead some to believe he was a Nazi sympathiser.

In fact once he became aware of the Nazi swastika, in great disgust he removed it from his Ganesh emblem). Through all the odd latter part of Kipling’s life when he stopped nearly all connection with India the Ganesh roundel remained as his one point of contact.

For many writers the use of Ganesha was purely functional. His name is often given to Indian characters perhaps because it is so recognisably Indian. But even here it’s often possible to infer some symbolic use. In Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge the central character, Larry Darrell finds some of the understanding he is looking for with an Indian guru called Shri Ganesha. The guru is known to have been based on Sri Ramana Maharishi, and it’s possible that

Maugham was invoking Ganesha’s aura of wisdom in renaming him. At a bit more of a stretch, one can speculate if H.R.F.Keating meant to evoke the god’s obstacle removing powers in naming his Bombay based detective Ganesh Ghote, since he is also a remover of the considerable thrown at him in his investigations.

In Ganesh, a novel for young adults (later made into a film, Ordinary Magic, with an early performance from current Hollywood hunk Ryan Reynolds) by the American writer Malcolm Bosse, the spiritual link is clear. The central character, Jeffrey, is a young American boy bought up by his parents as a Hindu in India. They nickname him Ganesh and after they die and he must return to the US, he tries to stick to both this name and the values he learned in India. Habits like vegetarianism and yoga make him stand out in a small American town, and the novel is about how both Jeffrey/ Ganesh adjusts to this very different world and it adjusts to him, without his core values changing.

For this to happen he must draw on the spiritual strength of his upbringing and again it’s possible to see this cued by the Ganesh name.

The American playwright Terence McNally makes interesting use of the god in his play A Perfect Ganesh. Two middle-aged American ladies come to India on a tour and like Twain’s travellers they see the usual sights, experience the usual panics and pleasures, and buy the usual mementos, including little statues of Ganesh. But they are also making personal journeys into their own lives and both travels, Indian and interior, are framed

by Ganesha who acts as sutradhar and also participant in the play, with the actor who plays him playing most of the male roles.

It’s a good theatrical device, recalling the god’s traditional role in theatre, but it also links to Ganesha’s history. Both women have suffered the loss of a son, one to a car accident, the other to a gay bashing, and Ganesha makes the connection: “How I was born is a very interesting story. Some say I was created out of a mother’s loneliness. Some say I was the expression of a woman’s deepest need. I say: I don’t know. What child does?”

Ganesha often features in the many novels that have of late been set in the chaotic world of modern Mumbai. Ganesha’s presence is natural as the city’s favourite

The elephant God Ganesha has captured the literary fascination of writers who have woven the deity into their works in different ways. Slowly the western world has become more open in their understanding of Hinduism

deity, and the huge crowds of the final vissarjan day are always a good backdrop (the violent end to Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay is one example). There’s also a sense that Ganesha is being invoked, perhaps ironically, to remove the many obstacles faced by the characters in these novels.

Leslie Forbes’ Bombay Ice, for example, dishes up many Mumbai motifs in this one passage: “We left Jehangir Baug by the path we had entered it, downhill through the smell of raw sewage, now cut with cooking aromas, and out between the legs of the giant billboard, Thomas stopping this time to get a fresh mango sherbet from the sherbet-wallah who had set up his stand under a painting of Ganesha. Ganesha/Ganpati: remover of obstacles.”

One of the most recent uses of Ganesha by a non-Indian writer is

by Paul Theroux in The Elephanta Suite. The protagonist in ‘The Elephant God’ is Alice, a young American woman who comes to the Sai Baba ashram in Bangalore.

Despite living there she is drawn to a Ganesh temple because the

god seems so much more sympathetic than other Indian deities: “only the elephant god smiled, always his kindly eyes directed straight at her… his eyes reassured her with the What can I do for you look, and the guarantee, I can help you.”

Near the temple Alice gets to know a real elephant, who lives with his mahout close by. And when she runs into problems, after she takes a job in one of Bangalore’s new call centres, and gets to known an Indian boy called Amitabh who takes advantage of her and rapes her, it is to this elephant she goes for refuge. Living with the mahout’s family she tries to get Amitabh prosecuted, but runs up against his family’s influence and the laxity of the law in India.

Finally in desperation she calls him for a meeting at the elephant’s stable knowing, as he does not, that the animal is in musth: “Then she pulled the long pin from the ring on the post, releasing the chain, releasing the elephant, releasing herself… She saw Amitabh tumbled to the cobbles of the stable yard under the pounding feel of the rampaging elephant…” As she leaves then for Mumbai, she chants to herself: “Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey Gajaanana/ Gajaanana Hey Gajavadana…”

It’s a shocking conclusion that combines and brings us full circle from the utilitarian obstacle removing god of today with the violence implicit in those early Western views of Ganesha. The god is in both, and in all those other views, the god of wisdom, the patron of literature, the symbol of exotic India, the merchant god, the lonely mother’s son, the drinker of milk, the patron who helps those living in the maelstrom of Mumbai get by. It is a sign of the strength of the brand that is Ganesha that all this can be encompassed, and acknowledged by those both in India and around the world.

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recreation

Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010

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life & style

Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010

43

Indian-Origin School Girl is How People Use Creative Ways to Save Money America’s Teen Queen

LONDON (TOI): Anysha Panesar, a 16-year-old Indian-origin teenager has been crowned America’s Perfect Teen. The only problem is she is British.

The teenager from Wales beat a host of American beauties to win the contest while on holiday in Florida and it has not gone down well with the losing candidates.

Parents of the American girls have protested to the organisers of the pageant, which has a USD 2,000 first prize, and an USD 18,000 scholarship to train as a TV broadcaster, reported Daily Mail online.

But Anysha has hit back, arguing the outcry is just sour grapes.

“Some people did say I shouldn’t have won because I’m British. But really I think the people who said that just said it because they didn’t win,” said the brunette beauty.

Anysha entered the teenage beauty pageant while at the family holiday home in Kissimmee, Florida.

The ‘America’s Perfect Teen’ contest, which included girls as young as 13, has a big following in the States.

But Anysha was stunned to beat the other 30 contestants from across US. “My mum was sitting there crying her eyes out and my dad didn’t

know what to do with himself. My grandparents were on the phone, they were all so proud,” said Anysha.

Anysha lives with her family in the village of Llangan in Vale of Glamorgan and is now back in classes at Howells School in Cardiff.

Anysha won the scholarship to learn broadcasting in the US, which she plans to take up after her A-levels.

She is also in talks to have her own TV show about her year as ‘America’s Perfect Teen’.

by AnA A GonzAlez lez RibeiRo craziest notion I endured was to a ritual of every night putting away (BankRate): Some consumers stop purchasing groceries and eat in a desk drawer $3. Back then, find strange but creative ways to WAY less, often not eating all day smoking was much cheaper. stretch their dollar. This may sug- into the wee hours of the night!

“At the end of one year, I had gest a cheap outlook, but neverthe“I also limited any other types of saved almost $1,100. That money less goes a long way to save fami- purchases and since I had stocked paid for a trip to London! I suglies and couples money. gested this cessation “When we were savmethod to a friend and ing for our first house, I he was successful in would cut back by keepboth saving money and ing the ketchup, mustard eliminating his smokand mayonnaise packets ing habit.” from fast-food restaurants -- Joyce from North and filling bottles at home.

Carolina We even had close family “A few years ago, I members save the packets was into crafting artifor us! In addition, we nevficial flowers. A neat er purchased drinks and way to save money on always took our orders to my hobby materials go. We drank water from a was to go Dumpsterthermos or purchased soft diving at cemeteries to drinks on sale or with coupick up artificial flowpons.

Here are some creative ways people use to save money, ers and miscellaneous “The way registers were saving on extra condiment packets that they get at any decorations left behind. set up at the time, we’d franchise to dumpster diving for new artificial flower I would go into the sometimes make money throwaways, to using neglected golf balls, there is money cemeteries, take what on items that didn’t cost to be saved at every corner was thrown out in the a lot to begin with. In adDumpster and use the dition, we had coupons that were up in the past few years, I was able items instead for my crafting!” doubled. This gave us more off to live off the items I had stocked -- Ann from Iowa than the original cost of the item. away. For my method to work, the “My son plays golf in both high Since we wanted to save money trick is to stock first and save after, school and on junior tours during and make as large a down pay- while keeping others from using the summer. I follow him, keeping ment as we could for our home, up my stockpile!” a statistical score card while I save we figured EVERY penny count--Dina from Illinois money by looking for stray golf ed, which it did.”

“Many years ago, my husband balls. It is not uncommon for me -- Robert from Indiana and I decided to stop smoking. He to find up to 12 dozen golf balls “In an effort to save money, the named the date we would start and just following him for one 18-hole sure enough, before we went to tournament. At a regular cost of up bed that night, we tossed our packs to $45 a dozen, this is money we of cigarettes. I told him that I was save by not having to buy them. going to put away each day the Also, I sell some of the balls to amount of money we would have make some money on the side!” spent on the cigarettes. So I made -- John from Indiana

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Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010

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