US Hindu reform group condemns rituals by Bachchan

IANS, February 12, 2007

TROY/MICHIGAN: A US-based international Hindu reform organisation has expressed disapproval of the ritualistic ceremonies performed by Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan for his son Abhishek and fiancée Aishwarya Rai.

Aishwarya is a Manglik (astrologically Mars-bearing), which is believed to have negative consequences for her impending marriage. The actress is said to have married a peepal tree at Benaras, a banana tree at a Bangalore temple and a god's idol in Ayodhya.

The organisation Navya Shastra commends the Bachchans for their Hindu religiosity and charitable works but is extremely concerned about their actions, which will have an unhealthy impact on their fan base.

Before announcing their engagement, Abhishek and Aishwarya performed a series of poojas at the Kashi Vishwanath temple and the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. After their engagement, the couple also sought the blessings of the deity at the Vindhyavasini Temple.

"What concerns us is that millions of people may rationalise their mistreatment of women based upon the Abhishek-Aishwarya example," said Jaishree Gopal, Navya Shastra Chairman, in a press statement.

"As it is, hundreds of thousands of women, and even some men, have difficulty marrying because of the alleged perniciousness of a random confluence of stars," added Gopal.

The organisation opines that astrology and similar unscientific practices should be renounced in marital matchmaking and other everyday activities in Hindu society.

It claims that much of the so-called Hindu astrology is an imported amalgamation of long-invalidated pseudo-sciences emerging from Babylon, Greece and Persia, and should be discarded as irrelevant to Hindu tradition.

Noting that the religious rationale for untouchability is also based upon an accidental birth, Navya Shastra urges the Bachchans and Aishwarya to renounce such actions.

Keralite origin, Rachel Paulose Confirmed as U.S. Attorney for Minn. District

By RICHARD SPRINGER
India-West Staff Reporter

In the wee hours of the morning as the final session of the 109th Congress concluded Dec. 9, the U.S. Senate took one final action - confirming the first South Asian woman ever named a U.S. Attorney heading a federal district in the United States.

Kerala-born Rachel Kunjummen Paulose is the 40th U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota and the first Asian American ever named to that post.

She becomes the federal government's chief law enforcement officer in Minnesota, with responsibility over all federal agencies, federal indictments and cases, and accountability for the Justice Department's federal prosecutors and support staff in Minnesota.

Nominated to the position by President George W. Bush, Paulose told India-West Jan. 9 that she and her family were up till nearly 3 a.m. Dec. 9 watching C-SPAN waiting to see if she would be confirmed before the sunset of the 109th Congress.

"It was the last item on the agenda and I felt so fortunate that by a unanimous vote it passed," she said.

The U.S. Attorney's position is Paulose's fourth time working with the U.S. Department of Justice.

She previously was senior counsel to U.S. Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, special counsel for health care fraud, and special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. Paulose also was an assistant attorney in the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota from 1999-2002.

In a statement, she thanked Bush for giving her the opportunity and added she appreciated "the confidence placed in me by the United States Senate and my home-state senators: Senator Norm Coleman, a steadfast supporter; and Senator Mark Dayton, both of whom worked hard for my confirmation."

She explained in an interview that it was Coleman, as Minnesota's senior Republican in a GOP-majority Congress, who initially submitted her name as one of a handful of potential candidates for the post, which requires conformation by the U.S. Senate.

After background checks by the FBI ("I think this was my sixth"), the Justice Department selected her and forwarded the nomination to Congress.

She needed the support of Dayton, a Democrat who had decided not to run for reelection. Both U.S. senators gave their support and had "nice things" to say about her in the press.

Asked about her party affiliation, she said she is a registered Republican and has worked for GOP candidates, but said the appointment was a "decision based on politics."

She cited her work background and her lack of involvement in big-donor contributing and fundraising. "The (U.S. Attorney post) is a non-partisan office," she pointed out.

Paulose is the daughter of Lucy Paulose, president and chief executive officer of Home Electronic Specialists, and Joseph Paulose, an administrator with the Hopkins school systems in the Minneapolis suburb of Eagan.

Her maternal grandparents, Daniel and Sara Kunjummen, immigrated to the U.S. from Kerala in the 1960s, and raised their family in Minnesota. Her paternal grandparents, both deceased, also lived in Kerala.

Paulose told India-West that her father came to the U.S. from Kerala when she was about 10 days old and she followed him a few months later. While she grew up in Ohio, she frequently visited her grandparents in Minnesota and moved permanently to the state when she was about 17 years old.

In 1994, Paulose received a B.A. (summa cum laude) from the University of Minnesota, where she was a Truman Scholar and chair of the student representatives to the university's Board of Regents. She received a law degree from the Yale Law School, where she was a Coker Fellow.

Paulose began her legal career in 1997 as a law clerk for Chief Judge James B. Loken of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which has jurisdiction over federal appeals from Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, and Arkansas.

While she was a federal prosecutor, she prosecuted cases related to violent crime, illegal drugs, economic crimes and civil rights enforcement. She also worked as a trial attorney in the Attorney General's Honors Program from 1998-1999.

From 2002-2005, Paulose worked in private practice for law firms including Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., focusing on business and health care litigation. W&C defended such high-profile clients as Oliver North and President Bill Clinton during his impeachment hearings.

She has served on the boards of the Yale Law School Fund, the Federal Bar Association, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, and the Trust for Public Land.

Paulose told India-West that family issues, primarily illnesses involving some members of her family, led to her move back to the Minneapolis area.

She said the U.S. Attorney's office will focus on six areas: terrorism; economic crime, including fraud and public corruption; Internet crimes against children; gun and gang violence; drug trafficking; and civil rights, including human trafficking, immigration violations, and identity theft fraud.

Paulose jumped at the chance to expound on these priorities - mentioning that the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's office has two terrorism case pending, indicted three Minnesota city council members on corruption charges, and vigorously pursued a case of Internet pharmacy fraud totaling about $20 million in illegal sales. The defrauder faces a possible sentence of 20 years in prison.

Paulose pledges to keep the heat on child pornographers who, she said, are becoming "more graphic, more heinous and frankly appalling." She also emphasized her office's increasingly tough sentencing requests for weapons' offenses, with violent crime on the increase in the urban areas of Minnesota.

"We must protect all citizens, young and old, from the violence that threatens our way of life," she said in a statement. "We must hold everyone, particularly public officials, accountable for their actions. And we must ensure the civil rights of all people."

While she has already been informally sworn into office, Paulose plans a formal investiture ceremony in March. She is looking for a large enough location to accommodate "all of my relatives who are coming (to Minneapolis) from all over the United States."

Visa papers in US bin, India culprit

Indo-Asian News Service, New York, February 2, 2007

Visa applications and other sensitive documents of top executives and political figures were found lying in an open yard at a San Francisco recycling centre after they were dumped there by the city's Indian consulate, according to media reports.

Security experts said that the documents were a potential treasure trove for identity thieves or terrorists.

Among the papers found lying were visa applications submitted by Byron Pollitt, chief financial officer of San Francisco's Gap Inc, and Anne Gust, wife of California Attorney General Jerry Brown, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Also visa applications of top executives of AT&T Wireless Inc, Oracle Corp, Intel Corp, Microsoft Corp, Qualcomm Inc and Williams-Sonoma Inc were found lying.

Information on the documents includes applicants' names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, professions, employers, passport numbers photos and also accompanying letters detail people's travel plans and reasons for visiting India.

"This is absolutely sensitive information," said Charles Cresson Wood, an information-security consultant. "It needs to be safeguarded," he added.

When contacted, Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Navtej Sarna said "the San Fransisco consulate is taking all necessary steps to ensure that all papers are shredded before they leave the consulate in future."

BS Prakash, the Indian consul general, said: "As we see it, the documents are not confidential. We would see something as confidential if it has a social security number or a credit card number, not a passport number."

Security experts said it wouldn't be hard to obtain someone's social security number using the information available in the consular documents.

"We have a shortage of space. We keep this material for a year, and then we have to destroy it," Pratik Sircar, deputy consul-general for the Indian consulate, said.

However, the consulate didn't destroy the documents. Instead, it hired a hauling company in December to cart the boxes to the recycling centre.

FBI agents arrest Indian for trying to lure teen for sex

Monday, 29 January 2007

Authorities said he was trying to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex

By Charlie White,The Courier-Journal

A Lyndon man was arrested by federal agents inside Mall St. Matthews Monday afternoon after authorities said he tried to meet a 14-year-old girl there for sex.

Kishor Patel, 39, of the 8200 block of Coppercreek Drive, was taken into custody and will be arraigned in federal court Tuesday, said David Beyer, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Louisville.

Beyer said Patel had a “look of surprise on his face” as FBI agents handcuffed him and walked him out of the mall about 2:30 p.m.

Otherwise, the arrest took place without incident, Beyer said.

Tracy Reinhold, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Kentucky office, said Patel had been communicating online with an undercover agent whom Patel believed to be a 14-year-old girl.

In online discussions initiated by Patel, he made plans to meet his correspondent at the mall, then take her somewhere fox sex, authorities said.

Reporter Charlie White can be reached at (502) 582-4653.

India is a poorest one in Per Capita Household Wealth : UN Report

The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth according to a path-breaking study released today by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER). Under the study, India's average per capita net worth was only 24.7 per cent of the world average, and its GDP was 29.2 % of the world average.

$144,000 per Capita household wealth in the USA

$1,100 per Capita household wealth in India

The US is the richest country, with mean wealth estimated at $144,000 per person in the year 2000.4 At the opposite extreme among countries with wealth data, we have India with per capita wealth of about $6,500 in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. The two low income countries in our sample, India and Indonesia, stand out as having particularly high shares of non-financial wealth.12 This is no surprise since assets such as housing, land, agricultural assets and consumer durables are particularly important in many developing countries. In addition, financial markets are often poorly developed. In India, the only low or middle income country for which we have some detail on financial assets, most of the financial assets owned by households are liquid.

India is categorized under the last group consists of 64 low-income countries. This group's collective household net worth on a PPP basis amounted to 8.3 per cent of world wealth, compared to 39.9 per cent of the world’s population and 11.3 per cent of world GDP.

Of the 13 countries for which we have the pertinent data, the US again ranks first in net worth per capita, at $143,857, followed on a PPP basis by Australia at $101,597, and Japan at $91,856. In this group, India is last, at $6,513 on a PPP basis and $1,112 on an exchange rate basis, preceded by Indonesia, at $7,973 on a PPP basis and $1,440 using official exchange rates. China appears to be about twice as wealthy as India, having per capita net worth of $11,267 on a PPP basis or 2,613 using official exchange rates.

Download the full study: WIDER WDHW (PDF 1,167KB), Powerpoint presentation (PPT 7,003KB)

US companies target India’s $50-billion nuke programme

Financial Express, December 01, 2006

MUMBAI, NOV 30: US companies involved in nuclear energy are bullish over the approval to the Indo-US civil nuclear deal by the Senate, and indicated that they would like to participate in India’s $50-billion programme for nuclear capacity addition of 50,000 mw by 2030.

The state-run Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), which runs nuclear projects with the capacity of 3,900 mw, has already lined up a capacity addition of 20,000 mw by 2020.

US nuclear companies participating in the US delegation, led by under secretary for commerce Franklin Lavin, also stated that India’s skilled manpower could be of great use in building new nuclear plants in the US and other parts of the world.

The companies are involved in constructing nuclear plants and supplying nuclear fuel. They claimed that the per-unit tariff from the plants would be quite cheap. In the US, it is 2 cents a kw, while NPCIL sells it below Re 1 in India.

Companies like Westinghouse Electric, Transco products Inc, BWXT, WM Mining, Fluor and Thorium Power on Thursday said their mission to develop and nurture bonds with the Indian firms would lead to partnerships, enabling them to tap new opportunities in the sector.

Ron Somers, president of US India Business Council said these companies would also discuss the regulatory regime with the NPCIL and the Atomic Energy Commission, during their meetings slated for Friday and Saturday.

Craig S Hansen, vice-president of BWXT said the US proposed to increase its share of nuclear energy from 20% of the country's total power capacity to 30% by 2030, and it would not be possible for the American companies alone to achieve this.

“India, with experienced manpower and experts, can play a major role in the US capacity addition. Besides, US companies associated in the supply of nuclear fuel and reactors will play a key role in India’s capacity addition. On top of it, both Indian and US companies can join hands to meet the nuclear energy requirement in the underdeveloped countries,” he added.

Wallace M Mays, president of WM Mining, which is involved in uranium mining and supply, said his company has already entered into an agreement with Hyderabad-based Nuclear Fuel Centre for supply of uranium for pressurised heavy water reactors.

Wiliam E Cummins, vice-president of Westinghouse said India would not face any funding problems for the proposed capacity addition.

“Already NPCIL has announced it can add at least 1,000 mw, annually, through its internal accruals. In addition to this, NPCIL has also indicated that it will explore market options also,” he added.

Indian community burgeoning in America

By ERIN TEXEIRA AP National Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

EDISON, N.J. — The train station billboards tell it all.

Local travel agents promise the best airfares from New York to Mumbai. Shagun Fashions is selling dazzling Indian saris. And DirecTV offers "the six top Indian channels direct to you."

Roughly every third person who lives Edison, a New York suburb, is of Asian Indian ancestry. Many are new immigrants who have come to work as physicians, engineers and high-tech experts and are drawn to "Little India" by convenience _ it's near the commuter train _ and familiarity.

Here they can "get their groceries and goods from home," says Aruna Rao, a mental health counselor who lives in town.

Although a steady stream of Indians have settled in the U.S. since the 1960s, immigrants positively poured into the country between 2000 and 2005 _ arriving at a higher rate than any other group.

Not only is the Indian community burgeoning, it's maturing. Increasingly, after decades of quietly establishing themselves, Indians are becoming more vocal in the American conversation _ about politics, ethnicity and many other topics.

"I've been studying the community for 20 years and in the last four or five years something different has been happening," said Madhulika Khandelwal, president of the Asian American Center at Queens College in New York. "Indian-Americans are finally out there speaking for themselves."

Roughly 2.3 million people of Indian ancestry, including immigrants and the American-born, now call the U.S. home, according to 2005 Census data. That's up from 1.7 million in 2000.

They have big communities in New Jersey, New York, California and Texas, and their average yearly household income is more than $60,000 _ 35 percent higher than the nation overall. Indian Americans, sent about $3 billion back to India in 2005, World Bank data show.

And so when Virginia Sen. George Allen was caught on video in August calling an Indian American man "macaca" _ a type of monkey and an offensive term _ the community quickly responded.

Within days after the reports emerged, Sanjay Puri, founder of the U.S. Indian Political Action Committee, and other Indian leaders in the Washington, D.C., area requested and got a lengthy meeting with Allen, Puri said. The senator publicly apologized.

If this had happened 10 years ago?

"It would have been a lot harder," Puri said. "But this is a prosperous and fast-growing community. People are beginning to understand that we are contributing politically, so that made a big difference."

Many Indian immigrants arrived in the U.S. focused almost entirely on individual success _ getting a top-notch job, making good money and pushing their children to do the same.

But things are changing. After the Sept. 11 attacks, many Indian Sikhs, who wear turbans as part of their faith, were mistaken for Muslims _ and terrorists. Hundreds were harassed or worse: In Mesa, Ariz., a Sikh gas station owner was shot and killed on Sept. 15, 2001, by a man who told police "all Arabs had to be shot."

Few knew their rights because few had been engaged politically, said Amardeep Singh, executive director of The Sikh Coalition in New York.

"We were caught with our pants down," he said. "Sept. 11 created a confrontation. We realized we now need to actively involve ourselves in the policy-making process. Otherwise policies will be made that exclude us."

The group now has two bills pending in the New York city council _ one would allow city employees to wear turbans and the other would make city officials craft plans to prevent hate crimes if another terrorist attack happened. The community recently saw three Sikhs elected to low-level offices around the city. "It's a good first step," Singh said.

The push extends beyond Sikhs, Puri said.

"The question that every Indian-American is asking lately: Is the American dream _ making a lot of money and having fancy cars _ enough?" he said. "Giving back and being active is also happening."

In New Jersey, Ready to Run, a Rutgers University-based project that helps women seek public office, will next year for the first time court Asian women, said Reema Desai, an immigration lawyer who is helping organize the outreach.

Indians also are working outside politics to influence broader society. They are overrepresented among college professors, engineers and technology workers. Between 10 percent and 12 percent of all medical school students are Indians, according to the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, the biggest physicians' group in the nation after the American Medical Association.

Half of all motel rooms in the nation are owned by Indians, according to the Asian American Hotel Owners Association.

In New York City, Basement Banghra, a popular Indian music event that blends hip-hop rhythms with Indian melodies, attracts hundreds of partygoers to Sounds of Brazil nightclub each month. It will mark its 10th anniversary next year.

There are novelists, including Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri of Brooklyn; filmmakers like Mira Nair, whose "The Namesake," based on Lahiri's novel and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, is due in theaters next spring; and prime-time television stars such as Parminder Nagra on "E.R." and Naveen Andrews on "Lost."

"Many of these things are converging around the same time, so it all adds up," Khandelwal said. "It seems like every other day there's a big book or movie or high-profile accomplishment."

Increasingly, American-born Indians _ who call themselves Desis _ have the confidence to make their voices heard. "There is a clear rise of this generation," she said.

With rapid growth, the community is becoming more complex.

Layered atop the dizzying diversity of India itself _ there are dozens of languages, and distinct regional differences in culture, politics and cuisine _ are growing class differences among Indian-Americans.

About one-tenth live in poverty, and as many as 400,000 are undocumented, said Deepa Iyer, executive director of South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow in Takoma Park, Md.

"This is a community of contrasts," Iyer said. "We hear so much about this highly educated and affluent group, but we also have segments that are not fluent in English and are battling immigration problems and hate crimes."

Such topics are often discussed in New Jersey, home to 170,000 Asian Indians as of Census 2000. Many have fresh memories of gangs of anti-Indian white youth in the late 1980s in Jersey City _ then the nexus of the state's Indian community _ who called themselves Dotbusters, referring to the decorative bindi some Hindi women wear between their eyebrows. In 1987, a finance manager was beaten to death with a baseball bat while his attackers shouted "Hindu! Hindu!"

Such crimes have diminished, but they never disappeared, said Singh of The Sikh Coalition. Last year, he said, two Sikh youth suffered violent harassment in New Jersey public schools.

In Edison in recent years, there's been low-grade tension between Indians and police, residents said, and it erupted during this year's July 4 celebrations. Police were called to a heavily Indian apartment complex to disperse a crowd of nearly 800, and one Indian man said he was beaten by police, said Jerry Barca, spokesman for Edison's mayor.

When the community held a protest the next month, the man was arrested on the spot for being an illegal immigrant. He remains in federal custody.

"There's definitely tension and suspicion," said Rao, who has lived in Edison for seven years and said the problems have left some Indians disillusioned. "People feel like, 'What am I doing in this country?' A lot of it is, 'I told you so. We'll never be accepted or assimilated.'" She added that there are no Indians on Edison's school board or city council.

City officials called on state mediators to help build bridges in the community, and the advisory body includes two Indian-Americans, Barca said. "It's going to take time, but it's good because now people in Edison are talking _ as opposed to `you live over there and we live over here,'" he said.

Desai, the immigration lawyer, has lived in New Jersey since she was 3, and said she sees many signs of positive change compared to a generation ago.

"We've made an impact in all sorts of things, and now you even have people knowing about our holidays and our culture," she said. "Things are different now. We're more visible."

US Judge reimposes 97-month term on Lakireddy Bali Reddy

Wednesday, 24 May 2006

Reddy sought reduction of sentence for illegally bringing girls and women into U.S.

By Josh Richman, insidebayarea.com

OAKLAND — A federal judge resentenced a Berkeley businessman Monday to the 97-month prison term he had drawn in 2001 for bringing girls and women from India to the Bay Area for cheap labor and sexual favors.

Despite statements in court Monday from five of Lakireddy Bali Reddy's seven living victims that they supported an earlier release, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken said the two other victims' unrebutted testimony of extreme emotional distress from Reddy's crimes was sufficient basis for her to reimpose the sentence term.

Reddy, 69, is in the federal prison at Lompoc; his projected release date, unchanged by Monday's hearing, remains April 2, 2008.

He and his son, Vijay Lakireddy, first were indicted in 2000, accused of having had an Indian man pose as the father of two sisters to bring them into the country on fraudulent temporary work visas. The elder sister died in November 1999 of carbon monoxide poisoning after a heater in her Berkeley apartment malfunctioned.

Prosecutors said these girls and others brought here by similar means were used by Reddy as workers at his and his family's businesses, and for his own sexual gratification.

Reddy pleaded guilty in 2001 to two counts of importing minors for immoral sexual purposes and one count each of tax fraud and conspiracy to commit immigration fraud.

Defense attorneys Cristina Arguedas and Ted Cassman in recent years had convinced Wilken to reexamine his sentence — imposed by Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong, who since has recused herself from the case for unknown reasons — due to problems that came to light soon after his 2001 plea bargain. Several victims claimed Telegu-speaking interpreter Uma Rao of Berkeley had urged them to exaggerate or embellish their testimony, or had misrepresented their testimony in translation.

At issue was whether victims' statements to a probation officer for a preresentencing report were reliable and detailed enough. The defense argued for a maximum of 78 months.

"Judge Armstrong was reading lies" when she relied on the probation report to demand a tough sentence for Reddy, Arguedas said Monday, adding Rao's damage to the case "is something that affected everything that happened here. ... She should be prosecuted for what she did."

Eight victims figured in the case. One is the person who died in 1999; five of the others were in court to describe the case's impact on them. Some praised Reddy's role in bringing them to the United States and some actually urged his early release; none objected to reducing his sentence.

But Wilken said she was convinced to stick by the same 97-month term by the earlier testimony of two victims who've stuck by their original accounts, and who weren't present in court Monday. Reddy long since has paid the $2 million in restitution imposed with his original sentence.

Vijay Lakireddy pleaded guilty in 2002 to one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and was sentenced to two years in prison, which he has served. Prasad Lakireddy pleaded guilty in 2003 to one count of conspiracy to employ unauthorized aliens and was sentenced to one year of home detention, a $20,000 fine and 300 hours of community service.

Reddy's brother and sister-in-law, Jayaprakash and Annapurna Lakireddy, each pleaded guilty to one count of immigration fraud in 2001; he was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison and was released last June, while she served six months of home detention and paid a $2,000 fine. Venkateswara Vemireddy, who'd posed as the girls' father, was given probation and deported to India.

Judgements can be read from
http://www.oig.dol.gov/public/media/lbreddy.html

How much India is there in US?

Thursday, 02 March 2006

New Delhi, February 27: Home away from home, how much of India is there is the US? A survey of telephone directory of Plainfield area, which is roughly as small as a Taluka in India, found 780 Patels, 200 Shahs, 134 Singhs, 50 Guptas, and a large number of Sharma, Rao, Reddy, Joshi and Kulkarni.

Another survey of telephone directory of San Jose in California found 280 Patels, 159 Gupta's, 115 Rao, 100 Singh besides a large number of Joshi, Reddy, Agarwal, Patil....

What more, there are 28 Indian periodicals in USA in English, four in Gujarati, three in Hindi, an equal number of Punjabi and one Konkani. "This shows the high magnitude of Indian impact in USA," says a new book "how to see, know and understand America" by Dr A V Saoji, G D Munshi and Dr Sanjay V Deshpande.

"In the year 2002, of the entire total 1063732 immigrants to USA from all the countries, as many as 66864 were from India. According to the US census, the overall growth rate for Bharatians from 1990 to 2000 was 105.87 per cent. The average growth rate for the whole of USA was only 7.6 per cent," say the authors.

Indians comprise 16.4 per cent of the Asian-American community. They are the third largest in the Asian American population. In 2000, of all the foreign born population in USA, Bharatians were 1007 thousands. Their percentage was 3.5 per cent," says the book.

"From 2000 onwards the growth rate and the percent rate of Indians amongst all the immigrants has increased by more than 100 times. A vast majority of them are waiting for green card and could not get themselves included in the census.... If included the percentage would come to about five per cent," it says.

"Indian Americans are economically most successful group in the United States," writes Swati A Dandekar, said state representative in the state of Iowa.

The book, as the authors say, is a must for all those immigrating to the US. Besides giving geographical details of the country, it also gives tips to immigrants on obtaining visa, about the currency, stay and even places of visit. However, it notes that lack of mobility is the only troublesome factor for visitors to USA"... Public buses are few. There are no railway locals that can be compared to that of Mumbai. Taxis are there but not freely available on road. Parking is a problem beyond imagination."

"If you want to enjoy America, you must have four 'C' - car driving, computer, cell phone and credit card," it says. "It is better to undertake insurance cover in India, before starting the journey rather than having it after reaching," it advises.

On things peculiar to USA, it says "there are many things which are not odd, but still are peculiar to USA... The Americans don'T mix solids and liquids, so eating Dal with Roti or Dal with rice is not seen."

"There is no system of putting name plates on houses in America... So unless you know the number of house you want to visit, it is impossible to trace that house."

On odds in USA, it says "contract system of jobs, bankruptcy and liquidation." (about the book: How To See Know And Understand America: by Dr A V Saoji, G D Munshi and Dr Sanjay V Deshpande; published by Sukhad Publications; price Rs 150, pages 160)

Why Do Indians Flee India?

Rajiv Desai holds degrees in engineering, journalism and political science. He has worked for multinationals that include Citibank, Pepsi, Boeing, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and Ford.

By Rajiv Desai, SikhSpectrum.com Monthly, Issue No.10, March 2003

Jhumpa Lahiri, a woman of Indian descent, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Manoj Night Shyamalan, a man of Indian origin, won an Oscar nomination for his film, The Sixth Sense. Indians in the Silicon Valley are feted around their world for their incredible success in the information technology businesses. Kalpana Chawla from a small town in Haryana became the first woman of Indian descent to become a US astronaut. Amartya Sen won the coveted Nobel Prize for Economics for his work at Harvard University.

With all these high accolades accruing to individuals of Indian descent just in the past couple of years, Indians could be forgiven for thinking that the turn of the millennium was a special time for their kind. A quiet pride at the Indian connection of these accomplished individuals is justifiable.

However, these singular achievements by men and women of Indian origin do raise several questions about the nature of Indian society and its economic system. Why, despite a thriving democracy, do Indians leave their home to settle elsewhere? It is not as if they were running away from dictators and despots. Nor were they fleeing religious persecution. By and large, most Indians leave because of the lack of economic opportunity at home.

Since the late 1960s, thousands of bright young Indians have emigrated to become part of an exodus that came to be called the "brain drain." It is a subject close to my heart because I was among those who bailed out of India in the 1970s seeking opportunities in America.

The vast majority of us went as students and stayed on to work in American universities, hospitals and companies. Over the years, we established ourselves as first-generation immigrants, raised families, bought homes and became part of the American socioeconomic mainstream.

Despite the success we enjoyed in the United States, India remained central to our identity. Most Indians in America nurtured the thought of returning home eventually. Only a handful found their way back. The others found their way back blocked by their growing children for whom India was not the home it was to their parents. It was a foreign country. America was their home.

Their parents quickly realized that any attempt to return to India would deprive their children of growing up in their own homeland. It was a fate they had suffered and would not visit on their children.

Today, with the last hope of returning snuffed out, many are asking the question: Why did they have to leave India?

Seeking an answer to the question, I began to study the Indian diaspora in the United States. In the late 1970s, I started to write a column called "Indians in America" for a community newspaper of which I was founder-editor.

Talking to Indians in all walks of life in America, I became convinced that the key factor in the emigration of middle-class youth was the ideology propagated by the ruling elite in India.

Even three decades after Independence, India's ruling class kept alive the fear of Western colonial domination.

Thus, India turned its back on foreign trade and investment, pursuing instead a quixotic, inward-looking vision in which the government commanded the heights of the economy and Indian society.

When the privilegentsia rule

Over the years, the country came to be held in thrall by a government-anointed nexus of bureaucrats, politicians, academicians and businessmen, the so-called "privilegentsia." Under this dispensation, connections counted for more than achievement, privilege more than performance. For ordinary middle-class families, with no strings to pull, there were simply no opportunities to make a decent and dignified living.

Instead, the dead hand of government stifled the entrepreneurial instincts of the people. Both agriculture and industry declined and India came to be regarded as an economic basket case.

By 1967, India's very food security came under threat as famine stalked the land. About that time, many bright men and women from middle-class families began to flee.

The initial trickle became a torrent in the decade that followed. Meanwhile, India's economy deteriorated rapidly and with it, the fabric of Indian society began to fray. Civil strife and war took their toll. Opportunities declined even further and the "privilegentsia" tightened its stranglehold on the body politic.

India's "privilegentsia raj" weakened with the declining economy and political unrest through the 1980s.

In the early 1990s, a bankrupt government was forced to loosen control on the economy. As foreign investment flooded in and international trade increased, the Indian economy experienced an unprecedented boom. With the advent of satellite and cable television, Indian society began to change in irreversible ways. The "privilegentsia's" grip began to loosen to where today the nexus of bureaucrats, politicians, academics and businessmen has lost its authority and seeks to re-establish its hold in authoritarian ways.

Chief among those ways is the brazen attempt to whip up jingoism in recent years. This began with the opposition to foreign investment in the consumer sector, which was remarkable for the slogan "India needs computer chips not potato chips." The denouement of the process came with the nuclear explosions set off at Pokharan in in May 1998 and a year later, the military skirmish with Pakistan in the Kargil hills of Kashmir.

The costs were incalculable in terms of international opprobrium that followed Pokharan and the uncounted casualties in Kargil. More recently, the "privilegentsia" sought to appropriate the accolades showered on individuals of Indian origin in the US and elsewhere. Tub-thumping nationalism replaced rational public debate as the ruling regime wrapped itself in the flag.

Today, as the wave of crude nationalism begins to recede in the face of severe problems of governance and finance, the "privilegentsia" is up to its old tricks again. This time, it seeks to revive jingoism by projecting Indian as a "beauty superpower." This is with reference to the rash of "Miss World" and "Miss Universe" awards that have come the way of Indian contestants at mindless beauty pageants that are made for television and commercial endorsements.

Meanwhile, Indian foreign policy is reduced to disputes with OECD members about visas for Indian computer programmers, who are shipped to the Silicon Valley and elsewhere, much like indentured labor of earlier times, to perform mindless tasks for Western firms at a fraction of the cost of local employees.

On the other hand, domestic policy is exercised by such weighty issues as match-fixing and illegal betting on cricket, a game with which India's millions are obsessed. At the same time, the real issues of governance such as water, power, roads, pollution, jobs, fiscal deficits, subsidies and the privatization of the parasitical public sector are caught up in the familiar political battles over turf and spoils.

The "privilegentsia" does not give up that easily. It will try to hold on to its power as long as possible, never mind the country and its pressing problems.

America, a choice for creative Indians : Dinesh Dsouza

Dinesh Dsouza, a US Thinker of Indian diaspora, , questions the reverse thinking habit of our Desi nationals:

"In general, America is the only country in the world that extends full membership to outsiders. The typical American could come to India,live for 40 years, and take Indian citizenship. But he could not "become Indian." He wouldn't see himself that way, nor would most Indians see him that way. In America, by contrast, hundreds of millions have come from far-flung shores and over time they, or at least their children, have in a profound and full sense "become American."

"America offers more opportunity and social mobility than any other country, including the countries of Europe. America is the only country that has created a population of "self-made tycoons." Only in America could Pierre Omidyar, whose parents are Iranian and who grew up in Paris, have started a company like eBay. Only in America could Vinod Khosla, the son of an Indian army officer, become a leading venture capitalist, the shaper of the technology industry, and a billionaire to boot. Admittedly tycoons are not typical, but no country has created a better ladder than America for people to ascend from modest circumstances to success."

The Indian diaspora is today the third largest Asian community in the US, is upwardly mobile and is on its way to becoming a political force in that country.

Indian Americans totalled about 1.7 million in the US according to the 2000 census, their numbers having gone up by an incredible 106 percent since 1990. It grew at a rate of 7.6 percent annually in the last 10 years.

In the process, Indian Americans replaced Japanese Americans as the third largest Asian community in the US after the Chinese (2.7 million) and Filipinos (1.9).

The migration was fuelled by the technology boom in the 90s when Indian techies made their way to the US in large numbers. The number of H1-B visas issued to India jumped from 2,697 in 1990 to 15,228 in 1995 and to 55,047 in 2000.

The number of Indians getting Green Cards every year has also more than doubled since 1999 . And Green Cards are one step away from citizenship which gives full voting rights.

Indian Americans were much above the median on a score of indices. Sixty-four percent of them were college educated as against the national average of 27 percent. The average median family income for the Indian American community was estimated at $70,000, against the average family income of $50,000.

38 percent of all physicians in the US were of Indian origin, as were 10 percent of all medical practitioners.

What's So Great About America?

Saturday, 01 July 2006

By Dinesh D'Souza

During the week of the Fourth of July, TAE looks back to its April/May 2002 issue when Indian-born scholar Dinesh D’Souza shared his thoughts on his adopted country of America.

The newcomer who sees America for the first time typically experiences emotions that alternate between wonder and delight. Here is a country where everything works: The roads are paper-smooth, the highway signs are clear and accurate, the public toilets function properly, when you pick up the telephone you get a dial tone. You can even buy things from the store and then take them back if you change your mind. For the Third World visitor, the American supermarket is a marvel to behold: endless aisles of every imaginable product, 50 different types of cereal, multiple flavors of ice cream, countless unappreciated inventions like quilted toilet paper, fabric softener, roll-on deodorant, disposable diapers.

The immigrant cannot help noticing that America is a country where the poor live comparatively well. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s, when CBS television broadcast an anti-Reagan documentary, “People Like Us,” which was intended to show the miseries of the poor during an American recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with the intention of embarrassing the Reagan administration. But it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans had television sets and cars. They arrived at the same conclusion that I witnessed in a friend of mine from Bombay who has been trying unsuccessfully to move to the United States for nearly a decade. I asked him, “Why are you so eager to come to America?” He replied, “Because I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat.”

The point is that the United States is a country where the ordinary guy has a good life. This is what distinguishes America from so many other countries. Everywhere in the world, the rich person lives well. Indeed, a good case can be made that if you are rich, you live better in countries other than America, because you enjoy the pleasures of aristocracy. In India, where I grew up, the wealthy have innumerable servants and toadies groveling before them and attending to their every need.

In the United States, on the other hand, the social ethic is egalitarian, regardless of wealth. For all his riches, Bill Gates could not approach a homeless person and say, “Here’s a $100 bill. I’ll give it to you if you kiss my feet.” Most likely the homeless guy would tell Gates to go to hell. The American view is that the rich guy may have more money, but he isn’t in any fundamental sense better than you are. The American janitor or waiter sees himself as performing a service, but he doesn’t see himself as inferior to those he serves. And neither do the customers see him that way: They are generally happy to show him respect and appreciation on a plane of equality. America is the only country in the world where we call the waiter “Sir,” as if he were a knight.

The moral triumph of America is that it has extended the benefits of comfort and affluence, traditionally enjoyed by very few, to a large segment of society. Very few people in America have to wonder where their next meal is coming from. Even sick people who don’t have money or insurance will receive medical care at hospital emergency rooms. The poorest American girls are not humiliated by having to wear torn clothes. Every child is given an education, and most have the chance to go on to college. The common man can expect to live long enough and have enough free time to play with his grandchildren.

Ordinary Americans not only enjoy security and dignity, but also comforts that other societies reserve for the elite. We now live in a country where construction workers regularly pay $4 for a cappuccino, where maids drive nice cars, where plumbers take their families on vacation to Europe. As Irving Kristol once observed, there is virtually no restaurant in America to which a CEO can go to lunch with the absolute assurance that he will not find his secretary also dining there. Given the standard of living of the ordinary American, it is no wonder that socialist or revolutionary schemes have never found a wide constituency in the United States. As Werner Sombart observed, all socialist utopias in America have come to grief on roast beef and apple pie.

Thus it is entirely understandable that people would associate the idea of America with a better life. For them, money is not an end in itself; money is the means to a longer, healthier, and fuller life. Money allows them to purchase a level of security, dignity, and comfort not available in other countries. Money also frees up time for family life, community involvement, and spiritual pursuits, and so provides moral as well as material gains.

Yet even this offers an incomplete picture of why America is so appealing to so many outsiders. Let me illustrate with the example of my own life. Not long ago, I asked myself: What would my existence have been like had I never come to the United States, if I had stayed in India? Materially, my life has improved, but not in a fundamental sense. I grew up in a middle-class family in Bombay. My father was a chemical engineer; my mother, an office secretary. I was raised without great luxury, but neither did I lack for anything. My standard of living in America is higher, but it is not a radical difference. My life has changed far more dramatically in other ways.

Had I remained in India, I would probably have lived my entire existence within a one-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious, socioeconomic, and cultural background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, an engineer, or a software programmer. I would have socialized within my ethnic community and had few real friends outside that group. I would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me.

Instead, I came to Arizona in 1978 as a high-school exchange student, then a year later enrolled at Dartmouth College. There I fell in with a group of students who were actively involved in politics; soon I had switched my major from economics to English literature. My reading included books like Plutarch’s Moralia; Hamilton, Madison, and Jay’s Federalist Papers; and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. They transported me to places a long way from home and implanted in my mind ideas that I had never previously considered. By the time I graduated, I decided that I should become a writer. America permits many strange careers: This is a place where you can become, say, a comedian. That is very different from most places.

If there is a single phrase that encapsulates life in the Third World, it is that “birth is destiny.” A great deal of importance is attached to what tribe you come from, whether you are male or female, and whether you are the eldest son or not. Once your tribe, caste, sex and family position have been established at birth, your life takes a course that is largely determined for you.

In America, by contrast, you get to write the script of your own life. When your parents say to you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” the question is open ended, it is you who supply the answer. Your parents can advise you: “Have you considered law school?” “Why not become the first doctor in the family?” It is considered very improper, however, for them to try to force your decision. Indeed, American parents typically send their teenage children away to college where they live on their own and learn independence. This is part of the process of forming your mind, choosing a field of interest for yourself, and developing your identity.

It is not uncommon in the United States for two brothers who come from the same gene pool and were raised in similar circumstances to do quite different things: The eldest becomes a gas station attendant, the younger moves up to be vice president at Oracle; the eldest marries his high-school sweetheart and raises four kids; the youngest refuses to settle down; one is the Methodist that he was raised to be, the other becomes a Christian Scientist. What to be, where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, what religion to practice—these are all decisions that Americans make for themselves.

In America your destiny is not prescribed; it is constructed. Your life is like a blank sheet of paper and you are the artist. This notion of being the architect of your own destiny is the incredibly powerful idea that is behind the worldwide appeal of America. Young people especially find the prospect of authoring their own lives irresistible. The immigrant discovers that America permits him to break free of the constraints that have held him captive, so that the future becomes a landscape of his own choosing.

If there is a single phrase that captures this, it is “the pursuit of happiness.” As writer V. S. Naipaul notes, “much is contained” in that simple phrase: “the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation, perfectibility, and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known [around the world] to exist; and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.”

But where did the “pursuit of happiness” come from? And why has it come in America to mean something much more than simple selfishness? America’s founders were religious men. They believed that political legitimacy derives from God. Yet they were determined not to permit theological differences to become the basis for political conflict.

The American system refused to establish a national church, instead recognizing all citizens as free to practice their own religion. From the beginning the United States was made up of numerous sects. The Puritans dominated in Massachusetts, the Anglicans in Virginia, the Catholics were concentrated in Maryland, so it was in every group’s interest to “live and let live.” The ingenuity of the American solution is evident in Voltaire’s remark that where there is one religion, you have tyranny; where there are two, you have religious war; but where they are many, you have freedom.

One reason the American founders were able to avoid religious oppression and conflict is that they found a way to channel people’s energies away from theological quarrels and into commercial activity. The American system is founded on property rights and trade, and The Federalist tells us that protection of the obtaining of property is “the first object of government.” The founders reasoned that people who are working assiduously to better their condition are not likely to go around spearing their neighbors.

Capitalism gives America a this-worldly focus that allows death and the afterlife to recede from everyday view. Along with their heavenly aspirations, the gaze of the people is shifted to earthly progress. This “lowering of the sights” convinces many critics that American capitalism is a base, degraded system and that the energies that drive it are crass and immoral.

These modern critiques draw on some very old prejudices. In the ancient world, labor was generally despised. The Greeks looked down on merchants and traders as low-lifes. “The gentleman understands what is noble,” Confucius writes in his Analects, “the small man understands what is profitable.” In the Indian caste system the vaisya or trader occupies nearly the lowest rung of the ladder—one step up from the despised “untouchable.” The Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun suggests that even gain by conquest is preferable to gain by trade, because conquest embodies the virtues of courage and manliness. In these traditions, the honorable life is devoted to philosophy or the priesthood or military valor. “Making a living” was considered a necessary, but undignified, pursuit. Far better to rout your adversary, kill the men, enslave the women and children, and make off with a bunch of loot than to improve your lot by buying and selling stuff.

Drawing on the inspiration of philosophers like John Locke and Adam Smith, the American founders altered this moral hierarchy. They argued that trade based on consent and mutual gain was preferable to plunder. The founders established a regime in which the self-interest of entrepreneurs and workers would be directed toward serving the wants and needs of others. In this view, the ordinary life, devoted to production, serving the customer, and supporting a family, is a noble and dignified endeavor. Hard work, once considered a curse, now becomes socially acceptable, even honorable. Commerce, formerly a degraded thing, now becomes a virtue.

Of course the founders recognized that in both the private and the public sphere, greedy and ambitious people can pose a danger to the well-being of others. Instead of trying to outlaw these passions, the founders attempted a different approach. As the fifty-first book of The Federalist puts it, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” In a free society, “the security for civil rights [consists] in the multiplicity of interests.” The framers of the Constitution reasoned that by setting interests against each other, by making them compete, no single one could become strong enough to imperil the welfare of the whole.

In the public sphere the founders took special care to devise a system that would minimize the abuse of power. They established limited government, in order that the power of the state would remain confined. They divided authority between the national and state governments. Within the national framework, they provided for separation of powers, so that the legislature, executive, and judiciary would each have its own domain of authority. They insisted upon checks and balances, to enhance accountability.

The founders didn’t ignore the importance of virtue, but they knew that virtue is not always in abundant supply. According to Christianity, the problem of the bad person is that his will is corrupted, a fault endemic to human nature. America’s founders knew they could not transform human nature, so they devised a system that would thwart the schemes of the wicked and channel the energies of flawed persons toward the public good.

The experiment that the founders embarked upon more than two centuries ago has largely succeeded in achieving its goals. Tribal and religious battles such as we see in Lebanon, Mogadishu, Kashmir, and Belfast don’t happen here. Whites and African Americans have lunch together. Americans of Jewish and Palestinian descent collaborate on software problems and play racquetball after work. Hindus and Muslims, Serbs and Croats, Turks and Armenians, Irish Catholics and British Protestants, all seem to have forgotten their ancestral differences and joined the vast and varied American parade. Everybody wants to “make it,” to “get ahead,” to “hit it big.” And even as they compete, people recognize that somehow they are all in this together, in pursuit of some great, elusive American dream. In this respect America is a glittering symbol to the world.

America’s founders solved two great problems which are a source of perennial misery and conflict in many other societies—the problem of scarcity, and the problem of religious and tribal conflict. They invented a new regime in which citizens would enjoy a wide range of freedoms—economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech and religion—in order to shape their own lives and pursue happiness. By protecting religion and government from each other, and by directing the energies of the citizens toward trade and commerce, the American founders created a rich, dynamic, and peaceful society. It is now the hope of countless millions all across the world.

Dinesh D’Souza, Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is author of What’s So Great About America (2002), from which this is adapted.