A photographer offered "exclusive" pictures of the gravely-injured Princess Diana to a British tabloid newspaper for 300,000 pounds ($600,000) from the scene of the Paris car crash that killed her 10 years ago, the inquest into the death of Diana and Dodi al Fayed heard Tuesday.
Romuald Rat, a French paparazzi, rang the picture desk of the Sun newspaper in London from the Ponte d'Alma tunnel minutes after the crash, the London inquest was told.
The testimony was given via video link from Paris by Stephane Darmon, a motorcyclist who drove Rat, chasing Diana's car, on the night of Aug 31, 1997.
The inquest also heard part of a television interview with Kenneth Lennox, the Sun's former picture editor to whom the offer was made.
"I didn't waste time. I had to see these pictures, but in principle I said 'yes' to buying them," Lennox said, according to the transcript read to the inquest.
The photographs he received had "jumped off the screen" at him, Lennox said. One showed Diana sitting in the well of the back seat with her back to the open door and a trickle of blood on her face, a second depicted a doctor attending to her with a portable oxygen mask.
The pictures were not published by the Sun at the time.
DPA
Life insurance and identity cards are not things that one associates with ragpickers in India. But that's exactly what a union in this city in Maharashtra is providing to its members who collect scrap.
Called the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP), the trade union has around 7,500 members, making it one of the biggest ragpickers' unions in India. It has also devised better ways of scrap collection.
Mangal Gaikwad, a ragpicker by profession, can't stop talking about the benefits of joining KKPKP.
"As a child I would envy the children who went to school with their bags and water bottles while I had to go waste-picking," she recollects.
"Today I earn Rs. 3,000 from doorstep collection and the sale of scrap. Residents who used to frown at me while I was at the garbage bin now know my name and greet me. One of them even gave me a second-hand bicycle, which I now ride to work," Mangal told IANS.
In India, thousands of tonnes of garbage are segregated across the country every day with re-usable material finding its way to scrap markets . And behind this mammoth process are ragpickers, who go about their work without realising how much they contribute to the environment.
But unlike other ragpickers, KKPKP is changing the lives of its members.
Mangal has life insurance cover thanks to KKPKP. Her work- hours have also gone down due to which she manages to attend literacy classes. "I am now literate," she beamed.
KKPKP has a credit union whereby members deposit Rs.100 per month that comes back to them as retirement benefits. The ragpickers can also avail themselves of loans from the union.
KKPKP was registered as a cooperative more than 10 years ago and is now recognised nationally and internationally.
Mangal is treasurer of the credit cooperative and the representative for her slum. She recently bought a bigger house for Rs.65,000 from her savings and a loan from the credit cooperative.
The union has now come up with a programme to handle the city's waste better and at lesser costs.
According to Purnima Chikarmane, a KKPKP activist, Pune generates 1,500 tonnes of garbage every day. Out of this, 900 tonnes is collected by Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC)trucks and taken to landfill sites. In this process, the civic body spends Rs.1,500 per tonne of garbage.
The plan proposed by KKPKP called 'Swach' aims at providing a waste collector at every house at a monthly cost of Rs.10 per family. The waste collector will segregate the garbage at the doorstep itself, thus leaving hardly anything for landfill sites.
Though PMC liked the idea last year, it revoked the programme in September.
Laxmi Narayan, another KKPKP activist, alleges that the body wanted the marginal Rs.10 fee also to come to it and hence scrapped the programme.
But this hasn't stopped the union from going ahead with its plans. It hopes to implement Swach as a cooperative through funding from corporate houses.
And in five years, it envisages the cooperative as a self-sufficient body, which would outsource the work to smaller groups.
Indo-Asian News Service
A Cambodian entry on Ebay has given the term "only one previous careful owner" a new meaning. Late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's car is up for auction, but former Khmer Rouge has advised it may not be a good buy.
Those wishing to sit in the seat once occupied by a man who orchestrated one of the worst genocides of the last century have until Tuesday to bid a minimum of $72,000 to own the car, which the owner claims propelled Pol Pot between 1975-1979.
Up to two million Cambodians died of starvation, overwork, disease, torture and execution during that period under Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea regime. Pol Pot died in 1998.
"For Sale - one classic 1973 Mercedes Benz Stretch Limousine ...previously used by one infamous owner - Pol Pot who led the Khmer Rouge during its genocidal regime," the Ebay entry reads.
It points interested parties to a clip of the vehicle's restoration, posted on YouTube in an ironic twist for a regime that systematically executed intellectuals and abolished markets and even currency in a drive to turn Cambodia into an agrarian utopia.
Pol Pot, his former photographer said by telephone Monday, would spin in his grave.
"Many former leaders of the regime used these cars. It is interesting a foreigner bought the car," Nhem En, whom Pol Pot once jailed but reinstated as his personal photographer, said. "The price seems very high for a very old car, though. Maybe people with this sort of money should buy a new one?"
But Pol Pot is not the only selling point, according to the owner, who did not list his name on the Ebay auction site. Hollywood star Matt Dillon also used it in the making of his cult classic movie "City of Ghosts".
Potential buyers may have to have a little faith about the vehicle's authenticity, it continued, citing the nature of Pol Pot's regime as making documentation difficult.
"The Khmer Rouge regime destroyed all official documents during their tenure as the de-facto government in Cambodia during the 1970's ... and hence no official papers for the car exist," he said.
The car has been used "for Sunday drives" since it was discovered being used to transport watermelons to market in 2001.
DPA
A diet of fruits and vegetables, washed down with red wine or green tea, could help keep cancer and heart disease at bay.
That's thanks to polyphenols -- antioxidants that shut down and prevent cancerous tumours, according to new research published in the November issue of The FASEB Journal.
The research, by French scientists, describes how very high doses of polyphenols prevent cancerous tumours by cutting off the formation of new blood vessels needed for tumour growth.
Polyphenols are commonly found in red wine, fruits, vegetables and green tea.
The researchers found that relatively lower doses of polyphenols play a beneficial role in those with diseased hearts and circulatory systems by facilitating blood vessel growth, the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) reported.
The amount of polyphenols necessary for this effect was found to be the equivalent of only one glass of red wine per day or simply sticking to a healthy diet of polyphenol-rich fruits and vegetables - known as the "Mediterranean Diet".
The study adds to a growing body of research showing dose-dependent relationships for many types of commonly used compounds.
"When it comes to finding treatments for complex diseases, the answers are sometimes right there waiting to be discovered in unexpected places like the produce aisles and wine racks of the nearest store," said the Journal's editor Gerald Weissmann.
"But it takes modern science to isolate the pure compound, test it in the lab, and to go on from there to find new agents to fight disease."
Indo-Asian News Service
Soon after hosting the fourth Military World Games at Hyderabad, Indian armed forces added another feather to their cap when two distance runners, both army men, R.S. Yadav and Deepchand, lean and hungry looking like most distance runners, took the top two places among domestic runners in the prestigious Vodafone Delhi Half Marathon, though overall they crossed the finishing line 16th and 17th in a field dominated by Africans.
You can't miss the point that the way our army runners are faring, it will only be saying the obvious that the country will have to look forward to its soldiers to narrow the gap in Indian and international standards.
The winner of Sunday's race, Diodone Disi, hopes it will not be long before an Indian runner figures on the podium.
For the benefit of those with short memories, it would do well to recall here the glorious contribution of our men in uniform to Indian sport.
In fact, long before the idea of the Military World Games was born, Dhyan Chand had made the army of our then British-ruled country famous worldwide with his wizardry with a hockey stick and ball.
So impressed was Germany's Fuhrer Adolf Hitler with Dhyan Chand's fabled magic in the 1936 Berlin Olympics that the story goes that he offered to straightaway elevate our humble soldier from Jhansi to the rank of a general should he decide to join the German Army!
That 1936 Olympics team had at least one other brilliant player from the army, the handsome Ali Iqtidar Shah Dara, who along with Gurmeet Singh, a 1932 Olympian, was lost to international hockey when their regiment was ordered to the World War II theatre in Malaya (now Malaysia), where the two later joined Netaji Subhas Bose's Indian National Army.
The legacy of Dhyan Chand was carried on by men like Nandy Singh, Balbir Singh, Haripal Kaushik and Hardyal Singh, to mention just a few.
For the record, the services won the Rangaswami Cup, emblematic of national hockey supremacy, at least eight times, starting 1953. No major hockey tournament of the country was complete without teams from cantonments like Ramgarh, Jalandhar, Meerut or Bangalore.
The services also contributed handsomely to other teams like football and basketball, throwing up stars like the legendary goalkeeper Peter Thangaraj and Khushi Ram, who was considered to be one of Asia's best basketball players in his day till he badly hurt his eye on court.
Footballers like Chandan Singh, centre-half of the first 1951 Asian Games gold medal-winning team, Brig. Devine Jones, Col. Puran Bahadur Thapa and others of his famous Gorkha Brigade team were some other shining stars in days when Indian football was a force to reckon with.
The services also boasted a decent cricket team under the expert leadership of Lt. Col. Hemu Adhikari, a team that featured players like Gadkari, Dani, Muddiah and Sen Gupta, all Test players.
Servicemen also dominated sports like boxing, wrestling and track and field.
The contribution of track legends like the 'Flying Sikh' Milkha Singh are part of folklore, not to mention others like Shriram Singh and the late marathoner Shivnath Singh.
Scan the list of athletics medal winners of those bygone times and most of them, you will find, belonged to the services.
So why the decline till Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore put the military back in the headlines of sports pages with a shooting silver medal at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens?
The answer, in a word, is the spreading insurgency and increasing border threats. The military has been called upon to do more important things than practice sport on the playgrounds of peacetime cantonments.
Still, army chiefs like Gen. S. Padmanabhan, followed by Gen J.J. Singh, thought it was time the army did its bit to stem the rot in Indian sport in general. It was time someone acted to place India on the international medals tables.
Congratulating Rathore on his Athens silver medal, Gen. J.J. Singh famously remarked that one Olympic medal was not enough. Hope his successor, Gen Deepak Kapoor, heard that.
Gone are the days when the time gap between writing a book and actually seeing it on the stands could be a couple of months to years, depending on the publisher. Now many authors are simply cutting short the process and self-publishing their book.
Debutant author Navin Pangti said since he was not eager to wait for long, he went ahead and published his book himself.
"Publishers these days have more than they can swallow. They get so many transcripts each day that it's only natural they take so long to give their opinion on a transcript," Pangti told IANS.
"Moreover, if it is a first time author, they don't take the transcript with much seriousness. I just wanted to avoid all this hassle. That's why I went right ahead and published my book 'Dhar Ke Us Paar'," Pangti told IANS.
Based in Uttarakhand, the book is a collage of pictures and 15 poems in Hindi. The language was another reason why Pangti felt that going to a publisher would mean a longer wait.
"It is a 48-page book. It was difficult editing and reviewing my own book. But I did it. After that I promoted it in all the popular networking sites like Orkut and Facebook," he said.
And the good news is that it worked. The book had many takers online and in roughly two to three months, Pangti sold over 100 copies.
In fact, poetry is a genre where self-publishing is happening quite frequently.
"My printing costs have been recovered and I have already broken even," Pangti smiled. Being a creative designer and photographer himself, he was also saved the headache of finding a different person to design the book.
For debutant author, Shubham Basu, the advantages of self-publishing were many.
"In self-publishing the advantage is that you can put forth your view without any screening. It's especially useful to those people who want to voice things that are important according to them but may not be of interest to everyone else," Basu said.
"You have the liberty to publish your virgin thoughts."
While the advantages of self-publishing are many, it has its share of shortcomings as well.
Karthika V.K., publisher and chief editor of Harper Collins, said: "The method of promoting a book online, placing orders and delivering is still at a nascent stage in India simply because here the reach of the internet is still not very wide."
Basu agreed.
"One might have to buy his way through the distribution network which can turn out to be pretty expensive because book stores will be sceptical to take up self-published books and distribute it.
"This is because when one goes through a known publisher, there is a certain amount credibility about the material," he said.
Also, in self-publishing, one needs to take care of the number of books being printed.
Shanti Das, another self-publisher, said she had to take care that not too many copies were printed as they might have ultimately got stacked away in a store room nor so little that they needed to be printed again and again.
"Thankfully, I got just the right amount of books printed - 200. My book of poems, which I marketed online, sold off that many copies," she said.
Thus, writers in India, albeit slowly, are now beginning to see the advantages of self-publishing their work, much like their Western counterparts.
"Self-publishing is a common thing in the US and Canada where people don't mind taking risks unlike here where we tend to tread only those paths which have been tried and tested before," Basu said.
"It will take some time, but it will catch up in India," Basu said.
Indo-Asian News Service
Forget your romantic notions about Vienna - the city of waltz music and quaint cafes. In Austria's capital two out of three marriages go down the drain. Reason enough, one enterprising businessman found, to give them a hand in splitting from their former loved ones.
Held at a city centre hotel last weekend, "New Beginning" - marketed as the world's first divorce fair - left little room for rose-tinted illusions.
One of the first stalls prospective divorcees encountered was run by biologist Susanne Haas. For 420 euros ($603), she offers paternity tests, giving 99.9-percent assurance to those doubting fathers who fear their offspring might be one of the 8-10 percent of children not fathered by the one paying the nappy bills.
About 20 exhibitors - lawyers, real estate agents or party organisers - offered advice on how to turn your "I do" into an "I am getting out of here".
Organiser Anton Barz was encouraged to set up his fair when hearing about the problems many of his acquaintances had with the logistics of a divorce. Visitors agreed that in such a painful and stressful situation it was good to get all the necessary information in one place.
After two more events in other Austrian cities, Barz plans to go global. Interest has been expressed in Germany, Switzerland, the US and South Africa.
"If you look at the statistics, it is clear that the demand is there," said Barz, who, serving both ends, also organises wedding fairs.
But if your happily-ever-after has turned into a never-ending nightmare, some help may be welcome to untie the knot.
While the few dozen singles-to-be looked a little intimidated, queuing in front of a divorce lawyer's stall or shyly approaching a marriage councillor, private investigator Christoph Jaeger was introducing his trade.
"Most of my customers want to know if and with whom they are being cheated on," he said. For $7,000 to 14,000 (5,000 to 10,000 euros), spurned wives and cuckolded husbands can get full-colour details about their beloved spouses' important business meetings or pottery classes.
Tackling the problem from a different angle, the Marriage Network, a multi-confessional Christian pro-marriage organisation, bemoans the loss of Christian values and morals.
While insisting that they were not trying to torpedo divorces, their stall was offering alternatives, "encouraging people that there are also other options besides a divorce".
One of their attempts to salvage seemingly doomed marriages is offering weekends away to rediscover one's partner - an idea that met with scepticism from at least one visitor, who insisted that she had seen quite enough of her husband, thank you very much.
However, despite claims that people today are taking marriage too lightly, a divorce is still seen as a last resort. "I want to consult a marriage counsellor, but my wife refuses to go," one middle-aged man said.
As a distraction from this grim outlook visitors could browse at stalls offering hair extensions or consult dating agencies. "Women need to change their look, to mark the change," a female visitor said.
However, despite the odds, hope has not died among those once bitten. The dating agencies' stalls were doing brisk trade.
DPA
Indian hockey players won hearts Tuesday when they presented crystal mementoes to the cricket and football teams as well as to President Pratibha Patil at a reception at the Rashtrapati Bhavan here.
Often viewed as cricketers' poor cousins, hockey coach Joachim Carvalho and the players sought to dismiss all that when they presented the crystal sticks and ball fixed on a black base, with the names of the entire team that won the Asia Cup title in Chennai last month.
Patil had invited the Asia Cup winners - along with the cricket team that won the Twenty20 World Championship and the football team that clinched the Nehru Cup - for a reception Tuesday afternoon.
The cricketers may have been the most sought after inside and outside the Durbar Hall - the venue of the reception -- but it was the hockey team, led by a down-to-earth Prabodh Tirkey, which won the day.
"It was my initiative, along with that of the players, to have the crystal mementoes made and presented today," Carvalho told IANS.
"We would have got another one made for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whom the team will call on Wednesday, had we been sure of the meeting. We will present him a hockey stick bearing the signatures of the entire team," disclosed the former India player.
Pointing to the meticulously inscribed names of the players and the support staff of the team that won the Asia Cup, Carvalho said: "We got one each made for President Patil, Sharad Pawar (cricket board president), K.P.S. Gill (hockey federation chief) and for Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi (football president)."
The Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) had no contribution in the making of the mementoes, confirmed an IHF official.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India also presented a souvenir to Patil, but not to others.
Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni presented a cricket bat bearing the signatures of all the players who were part of the Twenty20 World Championship-winning team in South Africa last month.
BCCI chief administrative officer Ratnakar Shetty then presented a photo album to Patil.
"The album contained photographs of the Twenty20 World Championship, and not any silverware etc," Shetty told IANS.
The Bhaichung Bhutia-led football team, which lifted the Nehru Cup in New Delhi Aug 29, was however missing. It is in Goa for a 2010 World Cup qualifying match against Lebanon.
Indo-Asian News Service
Fortune Magazine's annual conclave, a million-dollar event that is attended top global CEOs, economists and policymakers from across the world, started in India's capital Tuesday.
This is going to be Fortune's tenth global forum. It was held in Beijing last year.
"Where better to hold this pivotal conversation than the capital of India, a country rising to the top of the agenda for every CEO whose company has a global portfolio. Few world markets offer as much promise and potential as this emerging Asian powerhouse," a statement from the magazine said.
"The forum is globally acknowledged as it acts as a significant platform for in-depth understanding and analysis of the economic, political, social and cultural dimensions of a country that is both intriguing and contradictory," it added.
The two-day event is being held at the capital's Imperial Hotel. Some prominent speakers include Cisco's John Chambers, Dell's Michael Dell, US treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., economist Thomas L. Friedman, Sony Music's Andy Lack, Autodesk's Carol Bartz and Samsung's H.B. Lee.
The event is open solely to chairmen, presidents and CEOs of large multinational companies. The forum will discuss and debate issues related to "Mastering the Global Economy".
Indo-Asian News Service
When Nepal's Supreme Court Sunday gives its verdict on a decades-old murder case that has kept Charles Sobhraj in prison since 2003, he will not just get justice but something more - new stardom.
The French national, once wanted by police of several countries for crimes targeting mostly western tourists, signed a film deal almost two years ago with three companies who will fly to Kathmandu next week to start shooting.
The film will portray Sobhraj's side of the story that mesmerised the media four years ago when he was sighted in Nepal and charged with a double murder committed in 1975.
In December 1975, when Nepal was the hub of pot-smoking hippies hoping to find nirvana in exotic lands, Kathmandu valley was shocked by the discovery of two badly burnt bodies.
The victims were American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich, and her Canadian companion Laurent Armand Carriere.
Police initially suspected Carriere had killed Bronzich and decamped with her money. However, after the discovery of his body, they concluded that unknown person(s) killed him while the suspicion for the American's murder fell on an Asiatic-looking man who was allegedly travelling on a Dutch passport.
The Bronzich case gathered steam only the following year after an Indian daily reported that Sobhraj was arrested in India and had "confessed" to travelling to Nepal earlier.
The Navbharat Times report made Nepal Police name Sobhraj as Bronzich's murderer and subsequently, when he came to Kathmandu in 2003, he was arrested and charged with the murder.
The new film, that is to be made on Sobhrja's long trial in Nepal, stay at a maximum-security prison cell and his encounter with the kingdom's judiciary, will for the first time give his version of the story.
Sobhraj maintains he did not kill Bronzich and was never convicted for murder anywhere else. His ordeal in Nepal, he says, was due to media reports, which were "biased".
"In India too, I was tried and sentenced by the media," the lean, bespectacled French national told IANS.
"And then the Supreme Court set me free. In Nepal too I was tried and sentenced by the press court," he added.
The 63-year-old, who says he came to Nepal in 2003 for the first time to explore the possibilities of making a documentary and exporting handicraft, is optimistic that the Supreme Court verdict will find him innocent.
"In Nepal, 95 percent of the cases in district courts find the accused guilty because of forced confessions and lack of expertise and experience by the judges, many of whom do not have a legal background.
"Yet they can sentence you to prison for life whereas in India, the sessions judges can't give you more than seven years," Sobhraj said.
Nepal's Supreme Court has a reputation of overturning earlier verdicts, at times against great odds, and Sobhraj feels the two judges who have been assigned his case are among the most experienced and "fair".
However, the film crew would not be able reach Kathmandu before Monday and will miss the court drama.
But after having waited for nearly four years, Sobhraj has immense patience.
"There's only one thing I want to do immediately after the verdict," he says. "I want to ring up my wife."
Indo-Asian News Service
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday flagged off the Science Express -- a mobile science exhibition on a train that will visit 57 towns across India over the next seven months. It aims to kindle scientific curiosity among the Indian youth.
"Science Express will travel the length and breath of this country to propagate scientific temper. This train will build new bridges of understanding between India and Germany," Manmohan Singh said before launching the train from the Safdarjung Railway station.
"Science Express will propagate science among the youth of India and reach every state," the prime minister said.
"I am delighted to be here to celebrate with you today. This is going to be a fascinating rolling science exhibition," said a beaming Merkel.
Merkel began her official visit to India Tuesday morning with an inter-services ceremonial guard of honour at the red sandstone presidential palace Rashtrapati Bhavan. President Pratibha Patil and Manmohan Singh received her.
Merkel spoke glowingly of the new warmth and strength in India-Germany relations on her first visit to India since she became chancellor over two years ago.
Merkel, who is a scientist, underlined that in a world of six billion people, she was deeply convinced that one had to make good use of all that science had to offer to ensure people lived without poverty, with prosperity and without destroying the planet.
The German government had initiated a high technology strategy concentrating on 17 important areas of science and would like to share developments of importance with India, she said.
"There is a lot we can do together with India," she stressed. The two countries will launch an Indo-German Science Centre aimed at jointly developing new technologies every day.
The white train with eight coaches, which showcases current and futuristic research in various areas -- including IT, biotechnology, health technology and systems -- has been jointly developed by German and Indian state and private entities.
Around 15 agencies from both sides collaborated to put up the exhibition in nine months.
The exhibition, which is being packaged for the first time on a train, was conceived by India's department of science and technology, Germany's federal ministry of education and research and the Max Planck Society.
Later in the day, India and Germany will sign a slew of agreements in areas ranging from trade and energy to defence and technology, cementing strategic and economic ties between one of Asia's growing economies and Europe's industrial giant.
Manmohan Singh and Merkel, who arrived here Monday night, will hold talks on a broad range of bilateral, regional and global issues including UN reforms, climate change, energy security and cooperation in the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations.
German Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan and around 30 top business leaders representing big brands like European plane maker Airbus, conglomerate Siemens, rail operator Deutsche Bahn and reinsurer Munich Re are accompanying Merkel.
Indo-Asian News Service
The Reserve Bank of India reposed confidence in the Indian growth story by retaining its GDP growth forecast at 8.5 percent during fiscal 2007-08 in the mid-term review of the monetary policy presented here Tuesday. The central bank has kept all key interest rates unchanged.
The central bank said India's gross domestic product (GDP) would continue to grow at 8.5 percent for the rest of the financial year provided there was no further escalation in international crude oil prices and barring domestic or external shocks.
RBI placed real GDP growth during the first quarter of 2007-08 at 9.3 percent, compared to 9.6 percent in the corresponding quarter a year ago.
The year-on-year (YoY) wholesale price index inflation eased from its peak of 6.4 percent on April 7, 2006 to 3.1 percent by Oct 13, 2007, it said.
It however showed concern over the Y-o-Y CPI inflation for industrial workers, which showed a sharp increase to 7.3 percent in Aug 2007, compared to 6.3 percent a year ago.
RBI reaffirmed its intention to condition inflation expectations in the range of 4-4.5 percent, with a medium-term objective of keeping it at around three percent.
RBI governor Y. Venugopal Reddy has left all the key bank rates unchanged.
The bank rate at six percent, repo rate at 7.75 percent and reverse repo rate at six percent will all remain the same. The cash reserve ratio (CRR) has however been hiked by 50 basis points to 7.5 percent with effect from Nov 10.
Indo-Asian News Service
Lord Khalid Hameed, who was honoured by India with a Padma Shri in 1992 for his contribution to medicine, was Monday night presented the Asian of the Year award at a glittering ceremony that celebrated the many contributions of Asians to British life.
Lord Hameed, who hails from Lucknow, accepted the award in a soft-spoken speech that reminded many of his city of origin. He said it was a "great honour" and he considered himself "extremely privileged" to be selected the Asian of the Year.
He said: "We British Asians have contributed to British life to the best of our ability. I have worked here for the past 30 years. A lot has changed for us, it is changing. We are progressing well".
The publishers of the Asian Who's Who International Directory -- now in its 32nd year - have instituted the award. It was established in 1975 amidst the negative press associated with the perceived high levels of immigration at the time. Its mission was to highlight the contribution made by Asians to the fabric of Britain.
Monday evening's event in central London was attended by over 400 leading lights of the British Asian community, including celebrities from the worlds of business, politics and the arts. Cherie Blair, wife of former prime minister Tony Blair, Baroness Warsi (Conservative) and Lord Ahmed (Labour) were among those present.
In February this year, it was announced by the House of Lords Appointments Commission that Khalid Hameed will be made a life peer and will sit in the House as a crossbencher (non-party political peer).
His peerage was gazetted on March 27 as Baron Hameed of Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden. He is a hospital management expert and leader in the promotion of international understanding and the development of young people.
Lord Hameed has been chairman of the Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council since 1997. He is also the High Sheriff of Greater London and chairman of Alpha Hospitals. Earlier, he was executive director and chief executive of the Cromwell Hospital. He currently heads the London International Hospitals (LIH).
Lord Hameed is involved in a number of organisations and charities that help develop harmony between diverse faiths and cultures in Britain. He was given the Sternberg Award for 2005 for his contribution to further Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations.
Educated at Lucknow's La Martiniere Boys College and Colvin Taluqdar College, Lord Hameed retains links with his city of origin. During a recent visit, he said Lucknow held a special place in his heart, and he missed many things about it when he was in Britain.
He said: "(I miss) my friends, the culture, the whole atmosphere. This is a special town. I believe people from this part of the world are different which gives them a head start in the world."
Previous Asian of the Year awardees include entrepreneur Karan Bilimoria, Labour MP Keith Vaz, academic Bhikhu Parekh, Indian food chain owner Ghulam Noon and industrialist Swraj Paul.
The first Asian Who's Who International Directory was published in 1975. Since the third edition in 1987, it became an annual publication. It is a directory of the best and brightest Asian talents, and charts the ascent of the community, providing role models for the new generations of British-born Asians.
The first edition contained 200 entries while the current edition contains over 2,000, reflecting the progress made by the Asian community since the time the directory was introduced.
Indo-Asian News Service
Russian airlines offering flights to Goa will have to increase their capacities dramatically this year to be able to handle the ever-growing tourist traffic. This fall, 1,400-1,500 Russian visitors are expected to fly to Goa's resorts every week, as compared with last year's average of 800-900.
To meet the demand, KrasAir's Boeing 757 will take Russian holidaymakers to Goa once every ten days and TransAero will schedule three Boeing 747 flights per week.
The number of Russians choosing the former Portuguese colony as their holiday destination during the high season, which in Goa is between November and March, has now reached 30,000, and is expected to increase to 50,000 in 2007-2008.
Travel agents say the popularity of Indian coastal resorts has been growing fast in recent years. In the late 1990s, trips to Goa were a market niche catered to in Russia by just a handful of small agencies, says Tatyana Melnichenko, director for tourism at the Russian Deo Travel group.
It was not until the turn of the century that group tours became available. Demand for Goa among Russian tourists has been mounting steadily since 1999, when the first charter flights to the Indian coast were launched.
Many larger companies traditionally specializing in the Mediterranean have now also set their sights on the Indian subcontinent. Extensive budgets enable such agencies to arrange trips at lower prices, thereby attracting more customers than their smaller competitors do.
However, despite the steep demand and supply curves for Goa, observers are cautiously optimistic about the resort's further rise, and point to the shortage of accommodation as the main obstacle.
There are simply not enough hotels to cope with the current inflow of Russian tourists, and getting new projects up and running can take quite a while, Melnichenko says. She believes most of the hotels now appearing in Goa's resorts have only 10-20 rooms, meaning that their impact on the market situation will be negligible.
Goa is becoming an increasingly popular destination for holidaymakers from all over the world. The number of tourists from Europe, as well as from other parts of India, grows with every passing year, putting further strain on Goa's already overstretched infrastructure.
However, both Russian and Indian companies remain eager to develop tourism in Goa.
"Demand is increasing rapidly," says Raj Kumar Goyal, chief executive of the Indian Cosmo Travels Ltd., which has an office in Russia.
"Russian tourists are very interested in beaches and few of them are interested in Indian culture, dances, heritage, or mountains. At the same time, the majority of Russian tourists who visit, for example, Taj Mahal, take a daytrip there while on vacation in Goa. Therefore Goa is a perfect place for Russians to spend their holidays."
RIA Novosti
here is an Indian footprint on the biggest golf tour in the world at last. After Asia, Europe and Japan, there is an US PGA Tour title that the Indian golf fraternity can lay claim to.
Sure, Daniel Chopra carries a Swedish passport, but there is no denying that the man who cut his teeth at the Delhi Golf Club cares a lot for the Indian tri-colour, which adorns his website, and chicken tikka masala, which he loves and his Australian wife, Samantha, cooks so well.
Chopra, who turns 34 Dec 23, has paid his dues.
A ward of Kel Llewellyn, Chopra turned professional at 19 and went through the paces on various tours - Indian, Asian, European and finally Nationwide and PGA.
There were successes and heartbreaks at every stage, but Chopra stayed the course and Monday he found the sweet rewards with his maiden PGA Tour win in the Ginn sur Mer Classic at Tesoro Club, Florida.
Three weeks ago, he entered the Valero Texas Open on the bubble as far as securing his 2008 card was concerned. A third place before Monday's win did it.
Back in 2001, Chopra was weeks, probably days, away from planning a shift to becoming a teaching pro after coming close to losing the playing rights on various tours.
But he found in Jeev Milkha Singh a close friend who was willing to help him tide through the rough patch with a temporary loan. Jeev did not bat an eyelid and gave him a cheque and, not just that, also put in word for a sponsor's spot into an event in Taiwan.
Chopra did so well that he went on to win the Mercuries Masters. And thus was brilliant golf career saved.
That Chopra has been able to triumph at the highest level, soon after his old buddy Jeev Milkha Singh grabbed four wins on the Asian, European and Japan Tours last year, is indeed sweet since they keep in touch despite playing thousands of miles apart.
"In my book, Danny has always been one of the most talented players I have ever seen. With this win, he has proved that he is among the best," said Jeev from Spain, where he defends the Volvo Masters of Europe title at Valderrama.
A member of the European Tour from 1996 to 2000, Chopra went back to the Asian Tour after losing his playing rights in Europe. He won in Taiwan in 2001 and so had a card in Asia for 2002.
But he switched to the Nationwide Tour to try and make it in the US and finished 90th on the money list. Nothing sensational.
The following year, he made 16 cuts in a row and finished 21st on the money list with $178,799, a mere $1,164 behind Tommy Tolles for the final 2004 PGA Tour card as only the top-20 earned the card for following year.
Undeterred, he went to the qualifying school and finished sixth to make it to the 2004 PGA Tour.
He played the PGA Tour with moderate success in his first year, but he likes playing so much that when he could not get into some big events, he entered some Nationwide Tour events as well.
He won twice in two weeks at First Tee Arkansas Classic and Henrico County Open, shooting a record 30-under in the latter.
He stayed on in top-125 to save his PGA card for 2005 and has stayed in the elite group since.
The year 2006 was his best till now when he made 22 cuts in 33 starts and finished in the top-10 six times including runner-up at the Frys.com Open and won a career-high $1,530,455.
Now in 2007 he has bettered all those marks.
But what Chopra desperately needed was a win. He came close with a third place at the Valero Texas Open, which also helped him secure his card for 2008.
And now finally after a long, long wait, came the win on his 133rd start.
Chopra was born in Stockholm to an Indian father and Swedish mother. But he came to India at the age of seven and grew up with his grandparents. He won the All-India Junior Golf Championship when he was 14 and also emerged winner at Doug Sanders World Junior Championships.
A keen traveller who maintains up his own website, Chopra also has another lofty claim - that of being the first person to hit a golf ball off the Great Wall of China, in 1995.
Early in his career, Chopra, who was among the first non-caddies to turn pro, travelled around Asia and Europe. He won the Johor Baru Open in Malaysia and the Swedish International Championship in 1993, the Classic Indian Masters, Jamtland Open and Challenge Chargeurs on the European Challenge Tour and the Indian PGA Championship and the Malaysian PGA Championship in 1994.
In 1995, he won the Taiwan Open and six years later, the same place would save his career when he won the Mercuries Masters.
A brilliant shot-maker on his day, Chopra needed a 'PGA winner' tag on his bio-data. Now he has it.
And with it, he can go places and make a mark at the highest levels.
Indo-Asian News Service
Sarah Hallas Moller, a 27-year-old student of English Literature from Denmark, had a completely different picture of India before she rubbed shoulders with the mass of impoverished landless farmers and tribals.
"The image of India I carried has shattered completely," Moller told IANS, standing among the tens of thousands of poor men and women from the countryside gathered at the sprawling Ramlila ground here.
"I had imagined it to be an advanced nation churning out loads of professionals. However, my experience proved completely different," added the University of Copenhagen student.
Dressed in a beige cotton salwar kurta, Moller explained why.
"Denmark also has a peasantry population but they are not denied their basic right to live, in comparison to India. Farmers face a lot of poverty here, and they have to struggle to live."
Moller was one among some 70 foreigners, from countries ranging from Japan and Kazakhstan in Asia to France, Denmark and Belgium in Europe, who marched with an estimated 25,000 poorest of the poor demanding that the government provide them the very basic necessities of life - land, water, electricity and employment.
While some foreigners walked all the 322 km from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh to New Delhi starting Oct 2, others joined the protestors for short distances. They shared the simple food cooked by the organisers along the way.
And what they saw in village after village has shocked the young foreign brigade, which included students, Buddhist monks, activists and a sprinkling of journalists.
Stephane Pierre, 21, a student of Agronomy at The National Engineering School of Agronomy of Toulouse in France, was another marcher.
Pierre told IANS: "In our country, four percent of the people are involved in agriculture and people do turn their backs on them. But here about 80 percent of the people depend on agriculture. If 45 percent are landless, it is impossible for them to live. The problem is so much graver!"
"It is the dark side of the economic boom as the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider," said Pierre, who is associated with the NGO, Solidarity, and was in India to conduct a survey on land reforms.
Most foreign participants - including those who were invited by friends in the Ekta Parishad, the organisers - said protests such as these held the key to a better future as they were based on Mahatma Gandhi's ideology of non-violence.
Dressed in a yellow and white shirt, Yuichi Kanoshita, a 23-year-old Buddhist monk from Japan, said: "It is a cause for justice. A peaceful tomorrow is based on such non-violent protests."
Another Buddhist monk who is from Kazakhstan but did not reveal his name said the Indian tribals who have lost their land to the demands of industry must get their due.
"I am here because I believe in Buddhism and peaceful existence," he said, speaking in broken English.
Gautier Felix, a 22-year-old student of agronomy also from France, was fascinated by the different attires of the marchers - who hailed from a total of 18 Indian states.
"It is interesting to see people decked in their traditional attires, dancing and singing folk songs even in such difficult times," said Felix, who joined the march three days ago.
"Gandhi has been the source of inspiration for these people and I am sure it will motivate future generations the world over," he added.
Capucine Henry, a young French journalist who is making a 52-minute film on the march, is shocked by the poverty she saw in the villages.
"Compared to China, India is poorer," she said. "What we see here is the result of the economic policies. The poor are getting poorer, the rich richer."
Indo-Asian News Service
India must make mandatory cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, and make a commitment to this effect at the next summit of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Bali this December, a senior United Nations expert on climate change said here Monday.
The existing Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming comes to an end in 2012, and major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting countries around the world are being asked to commit themselves to cutting emissions.
India, China and other developing countries have said they should not be asked to make mandatory cuts, as global warming today is almost totally due to the developed world, and the per capita GHG emissions in developing countries are still way below those of developed countries, especially the US.
"But all major GHG emitting countries have to understand there will be real quantitative targets at Bali," said Kevin Watkins, lead author of the 2007 human development report (HDR) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This year's HDR - the 17th in the series - has climate change and human development as its theme.
"India must make mandatory cuts in its GHG emissions after 2012," Watkins told IANS on the sidelines of a workshop on the subject organised by the UNDP here for journalists from 12 Asian countries.
Many developing countries, including India in the past, have said they have a right to emit greenhouses gases because it was the only way they could reach the level of industrialisation and standard of living enjoyed in developed countries.
But the "right to emit does not lead anywhere", Watkins said. "Everyone needs deep cuts." He pointed out that climate change caused by GHGs affected everyone, especially the poor people in developing countries, and therefore it was important for developing countries to combat global warming rather than apportion blame.
On his part, Watkins was highly critical of developed countries - especially the US and the European Union (EU). "I am happy that the era of denial of climate change is over and G7 (group of seven industrialised countries) has acknowledged its historical responsibility and expressed the urgency of the problem," he said.
"Now, suddenly, EU and the US cannot tell India it has to start cutting greenhouse gas emissions," Watkins said. "That will be iniquitous. What they can tell countries like India and China is - you have an interest in energy efficiency; for the sake of the globe and because we have been responsible, we will cover the extra cost to help you achieve energy efficiency.
"Multilateral properly financed technology transfer has to be the entry price that developed countries have to pay." Watkins pointed out that many technologies for energy efficiency that would help combat global warming existed already but added that more money had to be put into more research and development in this area.
Watkins was very clear that "The era of business as usual has to stop". He added that the Bali conference gave all countries a "critical opportunity" to do so. He pointed out that scientists at the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had said an average temperature rise of over two degrees Celsius would be catastrophic.
"To keep the rise within two degrees, the world has to halve its GHG emissions by 2050. But at the current rate, the world is going to double its GHG emissions by 2030 instead," Watkins pointed out.
He said that rich countries had contributed over three-fourths of the GHGs so far. "So they have to be responsible for about 80 percent of the cuts by 2050. But developing countries do have to be responsible for the other 20 percent. They cannot go on with business as usual."
Humanity had to combat climate change due to global warming for two fundamental reasons, according to Watkins. "First, we have to say what is our commitment to the poor today, what are we doing about it. Because the poor are the ones worst affected by climate change.
"Second, how are we expressing our ethical and moral responsibility to future generations? Remember that greenhouse gases emitted in 2007 will still stay in the atmosphere in 2107."
In response to a question, Watkins said that future benefits of combating global warming were so huge that their value should not be discounted at all when taking decisions today. "I am for a zero discount policy."
How do countries actually cut greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide? This year's HDR suggests that governments raise the price of carbon to reflect the fact the earth's atmosphere becomes more valuable as the concentration of GHGs increase, Watkins said. In practice, he said, this could be done through a combination of carbon taxation and carbon trading programmes, though he was quite critical of current efforts in this direction.
"The EU emissions trading scheme is a farce," Watkins said. "They set the limit above the actual emissions. The only thing that has happened is a windfall gain for power generators."
Watkins suggested market-based instruments for GHG reduction in a much stricter regime, plus far more stringent regulations by governments around the world. He warned that governments were still trying to get out of making real commitments to fight climate change. "We need to cut greenhouse gases overall, not greenhouse gas intensity as governments are promising to do now."
Indo-Asian News Service
Both in politics and in military strategy buying time by reaching a tactical agreement with the potential adversary is a standard procedure. India's governing United Progressive Alliance (UPA) move to assure the Left that the operationalisation of the nuclear deal - negotiating the safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - has been held up falls in this category.
Obviously the UPA leadership has concluded that the present is not the appropriate time to have a break with the Left and go for an election. The UPA would like to have more time to get ready for the polls.
It is now clear that the issue with the Left parties, on whose parliamentary support Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government depends for its survival, is just not nuclear deal but the entire gamut of foreign policy pursued by the Singh government. The Left has also major differences with the UPA on various economic and infrastructure development policies. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram explained that he could not bring up some of the reform legislation where he felt they would not get through for want of adequate support, obviously from the Communists.
Since May 2004, there are three major autonomous players in the Indian domestic political arena - the Congress, the BJP and the Left. Though polling only five percent of the country's popular vote and controlling some 11 percent of Lok Sabha membership, the Left was able to exercise its power on a national scale. It was able to slow down the pace of Manmohan Singh's reform programmes, which it could not have done if it had not been lending support to the UPA in the Lok Sabha.
The Left has ideological contradiction with both the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the UPA. It is opposed to the NDA's Hindutva ideology as well as its economic and social policies. With the Congress it has fundamental differences going back to the days of Indian independence on economic and social policies.
The agreement to support the UPA in parliament did not in anyway reduce the dimensions of the basic ideological divide. If the Manmohan Singh government were to prove effective in its reforms programme and become more popular, that would not be in the long-term interest of the Left. Poverty alleviation and job creation are likely to reduce the constituency of communist ideology. Therefore, it was logical for the Left to halt the UPA before it made significant gains in electoral terms.
The nuclear deal and foreign policy were chosen as the issues to test the spine of the UPA. These are not real issues. If they were so the Left could have withdrawn support when India concluded the defence framework agreement with the US or signed the joint declaration with the US on July 18, 2005. The Left did not do so because it hoped that the nuclear deal would not come through and Manmohan Singh and the UPA would get humiliated.
The left parties allowed the negotiations to proceed forward till the 123 draft was initiated. Only then did they come to realise that this would increase the UPA's popularity and also of Manmohan Singh. They very rightly assessed that for the smaller parties of the UPA, a few more months in office would be more important than the national interest. For the UPA, given the tendency of our political parties to play the domestic balance of power politics, the crucial problem is to sustain the UPA through the next elections.
The contradictions between the Left and the UPA will not go away. Emboldened by its seeming victory on the nuclear issue the Left is likely to come in the way of every measure that would increase the popularity of the UPA in the next 12-14 months. Since the Left will be fighting elections opposing the Congress and the UPA, the break between the UPA and the Left will have to come sooner or later in the next few months.
Meanwhile, the Hyde Act and the 123 agreement draft will continue to survive. The international community and the IAEA are interested in getting India into the global non-proliferation regime. The nuclear reactors are running short of fuel and shutting down.
If not this government, a successor government can resurrect the deal and get it through. It passed the US Congress with impressive bipartisan majority. Therefore a change in the US administration may not make all that difference.
The charge that India will become a junior partner of the US is a laughable one. Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, France and Germany have all demonstrated that they can disagree with the US in spite of their close relationship with Washington. In the light of that, the fear of Indian subordination to the US only reflects a lack of self-confidence of those who entertain such fears.
Country rock and roll singer Johnny Cash's biopic "Walk the Line", starring Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role, has been voted the best music biopic ever in a poll conducted by Lovefilm.
More than 2,000 movie fans participated in the voting carried by Lovefilm, a British DVD rental company, reports dailysnack.com.
Fliss White, Lovefilm.com spokesperson, said: "Film and music make a great partnership and have resulted in some of the best acting performances in film. This poll showcases the very best the genre has to offer - whether it is a portrayal of a foul-mouthed rapper, a Motown legend or a classical composer."
Reese Witherspoon, Phoenix's co-star in the movie, won an Oscar for her performance.
The top five films are:
1) "Walk The Line"
2) "8 Mile',
3) "Amadeus",
4) "Ray",
5) "The Doors".
Indo-Asian News Service
The late US president Gerald Ford believed that Senator Hillary Clinton was a tough politician who would probably become her party's presidential nominee some day but she would not make it to the White House.
In a book based on interviews with Ford published posthumously, the one-time president noted that her husband, former president Bill Clinton had a sex addiction and needed treatment.
The book was written by Thomas M. DeFrank, the White House bureau chief of the New York Daily News, under the mouthful of a title: "Write it when I'm gone: Remarkable off-the-record conversations with Gerald R. Ford."
"I don't think the country is ready for a lady President," Ford is quoted as saying.
The Daily News published a story about the book Sunday.
Ford said he believed Hillary, who leads the bid for the Democratic Party's nomination, was "stronger and tougher" than Bill.
"When she takes a point you're gonna have to be damn sure you're well informed because she won't compromise as quickly or as easily as he," Ford is quoted as saying. "She's very bright. She's strong, and I think he defers to her. When she gets her dander up, she ain't gonna roll over."
Ford said the former president's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky showed that he was "sick - he's got an addiction. He needs treatment".
"I'll tell you one thing: He didn't miss one good-looking skirt at any of the social occasions," Ford said. "He's got a wandering eye, I'll tell you that. He isn't very subtle about his interest."
Ford said he offered to help Clinton during the impeachment proceedings over the Lewinsky affair, as long as CLinton admitted he had lied to officials.
He said he was stunned that Clinton refused to tell the truth about the situation. "It's a character flaw," he concluded.
Ford died in January at age 93, and gave the interviews to DeFrank over the years leading up to his death.
DPA
Healthy teeth might help protect the heart by preventing cardiac infections, according to German researchers.
Proper oral hygiene can help prevent heart infections known as endocarditis, which start when bacteria finds their way into the blood, according to the German Society for Cardiology, Heart and Circulatory Research (DGK) in Cologne.
Until now, operations were considered one of the major risk factors for the condition.
"But our study showed that 80 percent of endocarditis patients didn't have any surgery before the outbreak of the disease," said Christoph Naber, an assistant professor with the West German Heart Centre in Essen during a DGK meeting.
One theory is that bacteria can enter the bloodstream when people with bad teeth chew. But the evidence is not yet conclusive, experts said.
Yet, it has been shown that people with healthy teeth suffer from irritants carried in the bloodstream less frequently. Apart form that proper oral hygiene can only "have good side effects".
DPA
Who hasn't felt the urge, when jolted awake by a peace-shattering alarm clock, to hurl the thing against the nearest wall? For morning grumps in Japan, there is now an alarm that allows them to let off some steam: a clock that looks like a hand grenade.
As soon as the grenade look-alike with a built-in digital clock sounds off in the mornings, its user can feel free to fire it into a corner. A motion sensor 'disarms' it, and its soft shell minimizes damage to the alarm and the owner's belongings
The 2,000 yen ($17.50) clock has been especially popular among young people, a spokesman for its maker, Tokyo Trading, said Monday.
For sports fans, the company also offers a 'throw and stop' alarm in the form of a football or baseball.
DPA
Sleeping a lot during long-distance travel can increase the risk of developing deep vein thrombosis, says a US scientist who advises people to do some exercise while on a journey.
Long-distance travel, whether by plane or car, leads to increased risk of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a blood clot that forms in the deep veins of the legs, said Alan Lumsden, a vascular surgeon with the Methodist DeBakey Heart Center in Houston.
The clot can travel unnoticed through the blood stream and lodge in the brain, lungs, heart or other areas causing severe damage to organs. Symptoms include pain and tenderness, swelling, redness and increased warmth in one leg, reported Newswise wire.
"If you are travelling overseas or cross country, make sure to get up and walk around at least every two hours, and try not to sleep more than four hours at a time," Lumsden suggested.
"You should also drink plenty of water or juices, wear loose-fitting clothing, eat light meals, and limit your alcohol consumption," he added.
Those who do not have the ability to get up every couple of hours and walk around they can extend both legs and exercise while sitting itself, the researcher said.
"In some cases, a physician might suggest that a patient go on blood thinners or simply take an aspirin before and during a long trip to avoid the problem."
Indo-Asian News Service
t has been a phenomenal start for the week in the Indian capital markets where domestic players like mutual funds and insurance giants led a bull charge and rushed a benchmark index up to a new peak of 20,000 points Monday.
The sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) hit an all-time high of 20,000, up 760 points or 3.96 percent. It took Sensex just 11 trading sessions to gain 1,000 points.
The broader S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) also scored a double century, touching its all-time high of 5,900.
The market saw an exceptionally bullish opening Monday and opened over 600 points up from Friday's close on account of strong cues from global markets. Indian American depository receipts (ADR) also closed strong Friday.
It was yet another day of strength for the markets that have scaled new peaks in recent weeks. The market breadth is positive with impressive trading volumes seen all across the board. All key indices were trading in the green and there were no losers among the Sensex stocks Monday.
The capital goods sector was pulling up the index at a breakneck speed. Among sectoral indices, the BSE capital goods index was the top gainer, moving up 3.7 percent or 690 points. The key gainers in this space included Thermax, Gammon India, BHEL, Alfa-Laval and Larsen & Toubro, each vaulting over five percent.
Among the top performers on the indices were L&T, up by 10.2 percent at Rs.4,261, BHEL up 7.97 percent at Rs.2,625 and ONGC up 6.5 percent plotting at Rs.1,235.
Indo-Asian News Service
ocussing on the youth, a three-day conference on sexual and reproductive health and rights began here Monday, drawing over 1,000 participants from as many as 42 countries.
The 4th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights was thrown open with a colourful Kuchipudi dance recital.
Sunil Mehra, co-chair of the India organising committee, said the youth would be the main focus in the conference that aims at operationalising reproductive and sexual rights and discussing and debating various issues related to it.
"Exploring new frontiers in sexual and reproductive health and rights is what we aim to do in this conference and the youth is our target group," Mehra said.
Attending the programme are around 1,400 participants comprising researchers, policy makers and members of NGOs from 42 countries.
Indian Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy gave the event a miss.
Poornima Mane, deputy executive director of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said: "One challenge that we need to discuss over the next three days is the high numbers of maternal mortality ratio in the Asia Pacific region."
She added: "Laws regarding reproductive and sexual health and rights are in place across the world. What we need to concentrate now on is to ensure that these laws are implemented. Most often tradition becomes more powerful than law, so we have to strive to change the mindsets of the people."
Some of the issues that will be discussed during the course of the conference include 'Enabling and realising young people's potential in improving reproductive and sexual health', 'Equalising sexual relationships' and 'Making pregnancy wanted'.
Indo-Asian News Service
The Sethusamudram ship channel project is deepening a 75-km section of the 152-km passage in the shallow sea between India and Sri Lanka. On the face of it, the idea is excellent as it cuts out the need for ships to circumnavigate Sri Lanka, shortening the journey by about 335 nautical miles between India's east and the west coasts. The Rs.24.28- billion ($609-million) project is already forging ahead.
Because of its enthusiasm for the scheme, India's shipping ministry appears to be soft-pedalling possible environmental impacts and showing little interest in initiating scientific discussion on the venture.
An environmental impact assessment (EIA) by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute in 2004 certified the project as feasible and did not envision serious side effects. Only 75 km need dredging because the rest has sufficient clearance for shipping.
But I and many others, including representatives of several nongovernmental organisations, have a number of objections. I believe the EIA did not fully address the enormous variation in the amount of sediment at different times carried by rivers in the area. In particular, the lack of data meant that studies were ambivalent about the overall amount of sediment carried into Palk Sraits.
The Tamil Nadu coast in general and the project area in particular are highly vulnerable to tropical cyclones. The storm surge from a cyclone in December 1964 washed away the Pamban Bridge between Rameswaram and the bustling township on the Dhanushkodi Island. Cyclones can affect how sediment and dredged material move.
The EIA did not properly address cyclonic disturbances, so the amount of material to be dredged could be much greater than predicted, which in turn could have serious implications for the cost of the dredging work, as well as on the cost of maintenance dredging.
The EIA also failed to take into account tsunami hazards. It was carried out before the Asian tsunami of December 2004, when the issue was not a serious concern. But some models of the 2004 tsunami show waves entering the Palk Straits from the north as well as from the south, coinciding with the canal's alignment.
Tsunami experts like Tad Murty, from the department of civil engineering at the University of Ottawa in Canada, are concerned that the canal project could provide a deepwater channel for a future tsunami, magnifying the impact of the surge on the west coast.
There is little information on the seafloor here, yet understanding the substratum is crucial in deciding whether to dredge or blast and in planning safe disposal of dredged material. The EIA appears to be ambivalent about adequate environmental controls with respect to identifying areas where dredged material can be dumped. Engineers need precise information if they are to identify which parts of the canal are prone to landslips.
The shallow Sethusamudram sea is constantly bridged by natural sedimentation processes. They contribute to its role as a special ecological niche for various marine organisms, including corals, in an area already degraded by human activities. New dredging and blasting will have serious, lasting effects on local biodiversity as well as on traditional fishing.
How pollutants from ships will be dispersed in such a narrow channel is another concern. Potential threats to the area's ecology include ships that run aground or stray off course, environmental disturbances from rescue operations, and oil spills.
And if ships need to be guided by tugs, there will certainly be a huge financial cost, potentially making the journey more expensive and time-consuming than sailing around Sri Lanka.
In other words, the government has not made a realistic cost-benefit analysis of the project.
In highlighting the major outstanding scientific issues arising from the project, I want to act as an honest broker rather than an overt advocate. I call on the government to make a sincere effort to address these questions by referring them to an independent group of experts.
Mumbai and Delhi would become among the most populous cities in the world by 2020, with both expected to touch nearly 24 million and the former having more people packed in a single square kilometre than any other city.
The year 2007 marks the first time in the history of mankind when more than half the world's population lives in cities. And India's 300 million city dwellers add up to one-tenth of the world's urban population.
These figures were released prior to an Urban Age India conference that opens in India's commercial capital Mumbai on Nov 1.
Urban Age aims to "shape the thinking and practice of city leaders and sustainable urban development". It was initiated by the London School of Economics (LSE) and Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society, and has studied and visited Indian metropolitan cities as well as New York, Shanghai, London, Mexico City, Johannesburg and Berlin.
The study found that Greater Mumbai has a density of 27,348 people packed in each square kilometre, as against Kolkata's 24,454, Bangalore's 19,040 and Delhi's 9,340.
In its 'peak density' area, Mumbai has as many as 101,066 people packed in a single square kilometre - more than any other of the nine cities globally included in this study.
Yet, home to 12 million inhabitants in an area half the size of Berlin, less than half of Greater Mumbai is covered by built-up land and infrastructure. A national park and open areas, coastal wetlands, mangroves, agricultural land and even beaches occupy large areas.
Population growth in India's urban areas has been dramatic too. Between 1950, 2007 and 2020 (projected), Mumbai has grown from 2.8 million to 18.9 million and will touch 23.9 million. Some believe it could cross Tokyo as the most populated city globally.
In the same time frame, Delhi has spurted from 1.4 million to 16.6 million to reach 23.7 million and Kolkata from 4.5 million to 14.8 million and 18.7 million. Bangalore's growth moved from .7 million to 6.9 million at present and is estimated to touch 9.5 million by 2020.
Going by these projections, Mumbai and Delhi would be among the most populous in the world by 2020, followed by Mexico City (22.1 million), New York (20.3 million), Kolkata (18.7 million), and Shanghai (18.4 million).
Besides Greater Mumbai's extremely high population density, the city also faces issues of traffic congestion, loss of wetlands, flooding and critical housing issues.
Delhi's problems are seen as rapid population growth and large unplanned urbanisation. Besides, there's stretched-out infrastructure, unaffordable housing and growing slums, traffic congestion and "significant ecological degradation".
Kolkata's woes include the loss of city wetlands, causing frequent flooding, traffic congestion, inadequate infrastructure and pollution.
Bangalore, meanwhile, hurts from rapid urbanisation, pollution, waste disposal and sewerage and sanitation problems, loss of its tree cover, and high traffic congestion.
When it comes to moving in the city, some 55.5 percent Mumbaites walk, 21.9 percent go by train, 14.4 percent opt for the bus, and only 1.6 percent take their car. Rickshaw and taxi, two-wheelers and cycles are used by only a small number of people.
Mumbai has the lowest level of car ownership with 29 cars per 1,000 residents, a stark contrast to Mexico City's 383.
Kolkata and Bangalore have the highest number of cars per kilometre among Indian cities. With 1,421 cars per kilometre, Kolkata's car density is even higher than that of Berlin.
Someone living in Mumbai has a life expectancy of 68.1 years as against 79.2 years in London or 75.9 years in Mexico City. On the positive side, Indian cities have relatively low murder rates, similar to London and Shanghai.
But some other problems are more severe. For instance, although "precarious urbanisation" affects many countries, the extent of slums in India "makes its cities unparalleled sites to reflect on strategies to better accommodate the growing number of urban residents and their multiple needs".
"India's status as a developing nation with a growing urban economy, coupled with the sheer magnitude of people and social potential, provide an ideal platform for the analysis and discussion of the future shape of urban society," argue LSE's Urban Age director Ricky Burdett and Alfred Herrhausen Society managing director Wolfgang Nowak in a statement made in the run-up to the event.
Indo-Asian News Service
Farooque Mhapkar, a survivor of the 1993 Mumbai riots, still shudders at the thought of that fateful Sunday 14 years ago when he went to offer prayers at a mosque.
Mhapkar, 38, says he was shot in the back by a five-member team led by inspector Nikhil Kapse during the 1993 Mumbai riots, which according to the Srikrishna Commission claimed over 900 innocent lives and injured hundreds more.
Mhapkar, who was here as part of a social activist group demanding implementation of the Srikrishna Commission's report, narrated the gruesome turn of events about how Mumbai Police officials and Shiv Sena workers allegedly tortured and killed people.
"I remember it was a Sunday, Jan 10, 1993, and just past noon. I had gone to offer namaz from my Prabudh Nagar home to Hari Masjid (mosque) in the Wadala area. Around 20-25 Muslims were already there like me to offer prayers," he said.
"I was sitting in the masjid room along with seven others when we suddenly heard the faint sound of gun shots coming from the compound. We all fell numb realising that four to five policemen led by inspector Kapse were running towards us with guns in their hands," Mhapkar told IANS.
"We immediately bolted the room from inside, but to our extreme misfortune we forgot to shut the single window in the room and they without any warning opened fire on us. We had no way to run.
"Two others who were sitting close to me died there and then, and I received a bullet in my back. I fell down but they kept on firing. We pleaded, even begged them with folded hands for our lives, but they didn't listen. It seemed that they had just come with the sole purpose of eliminating every one present there.
"After firing for a few minutes, they stopped and asked us to open the door and come out. We kept insisting that we had committed no wrong and should be spared. Then the cops started hurling abuses and tried to barge in.
"Holding hands with each other, we leaned against the door. I was lying in a pool of blood, but somehow managed to pull myself up, and we didn't let them in," Mhapkar said, the memory bringing tears to his eyes even as he pointed towards pictures of the bloody floor.
"After a while, some jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) also came there and I vividly remember a Sikh official asked police to halt firing and not to abuse us. On his request they stopped firing.
"The Sikh official asked us to come out, assuring that no one would harm us. We opened the door. The police officials made us stand in a queue and all of a sudden shot dead 25-year-old Shamshuddin.
"First they pumped a bullet into his leg and when he cried in pain they pumped one more into his chest. He died there. We came to know that seven others had also been killed.
"The Sikh official intervened and the policemen put us in a jeep, took us to the R.A. Kidwai Marg lockup, and abused us. I along with another injured person was sent to the K.E.M. Hospital but to our utter shock the hospital was filled with Shiv Sainiks and they threatened to lynch us there itself.
"Fearing for our lives, we asked the doctors to send us back, thinking that the cops might not harm us this time. After an hour, we returned to the lockup, only to hear about another murder by the cops in the lockup. We again fell numb. Later we were shifted to the Bohiwada lockup."
"I, whimpering in pain, remained there for 17 days, counting my last days. During that period the cops refused to provide any first aid or food and slapped several fake charges on others and me. I was booked under seven charges, including murder," Mhapkar said.
"I got the bullet removed in a private hospital following bail from a court. That's when my struggle began and I am still doing the court rounds.
"But it didn't stop there, I was then threatened by a judge who asked me not to speak against the cops or else would face the consequences. After struggling for years I approached the Bombay High Court against Kapse, but the government, in a move aimed at protecting him, filed a new chargesheet against me and created new fake alibis."
Mhapkar, who works as a security guard at a private bank, says he and his family - comprising his wife, mother and children - are always on tenterhooks nowadays.
"Since then my life and that of my family has been completely ruined. I urge the Supreme Court to direct the Maharashtra government to implement the Srikrishna Commission report, which had suggested a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe.
"It would give new hope to all other victims like me who have been running from pillar to post to prove their innocence for the past 14 years."
The next hearing in the apex court is scheduled for Tuesday.
The Mumbai riots had broken out in January 1993 after the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya was demolished by Hindu zealots in December 1992.
Indo-Asian News Service
The historic Trafalgar Square here came alive with the sights and sounds of India Sunday as thousands of people gathered to witnessed the annual Diwali spectacle organised by the Mayor of London.
For most of the time during the celebrations, the enthusiastic audience - both British Asians and hundreds of tourists - braved rain to enjoy Indian food and music. The event was a celebration of an Indian festival with Indian themes, but had a hybrid feel to it as east met west and Bollywood dances mixed with American hip-hop.
Prominent among the songs that people danced to were from films such as "Chak De India", "Dhoom" and "Bunty Aur Babli". A Latin American woman evoked much applause as she danced to the popular number, "Kajra re..".
Organisers put up 'diyas' (earthen lamps) and lanterns in the fountains in the square while some participating groups distributed red boxes of Indian sweets. The event, that included Indian dances such as garba and bharatnatyam, ran from midday Sunday until 8 pm.
The participating groups included Academy of Punjabi Heritage, Angel Dance School; Apsara Dancers; B4U; BAPS Swaminarayan School; Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University; Explosive Dhol 'n Dance, Manchester; Francis Cardoso and Co; Ishira; ISKCON; Oshwal Association of UK; Sai School of Harrow; Sapnay School of Dance; Karma from Imperial College; Dinesh Pandit; Shama Group; Shree Kutch Patel Leva Community; Shri Academy of Dance; Sujata Banerjee Kathak School; Sunrise Radio.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone said: "Diwali is an important occasion for London's Hindus, Sikhs and Jains, and represents the power of good to triumph over evil a theme that has relevance for all of London's communities, because it signifies the value of co-operation and mutual respect between peoples of differing faiths and backgrounds. On this joyous occasion, I wish everyone a happy and prosperous Diwali."
Trafalgar Square, in the heart of London, is one of the city's most vibrant open spaces dotted with statues and fountains. Home to the towering Nelson's Column that commemorates British victory in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the square is rich in history and provides a platform for artistic performances and events.
Indo-Asian News Service
Fashion events staged by the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) aim to benefit designers whereas those organised by a brand are primarily meant to promote its own products, asserts council chief Rathi Vinay Jha.
"The only intention of fashion events organised by brands is commercial gain and not the interests of designers or the fashion fraternity," Jha, the director general of the FDCI, told IANS in an interview. Her allusion was to the Lakme Fashion Week that was held in Mumbai this month.
FDCI itself organises the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in New Delhi, the other major event on the year's fashion calendar.
"However, FDCI is a bona fide organisation formed democratically by designers and it will always work for the long-term interests of designers. It will sacrifice anything for the welfare of the country's fashion fraternity," she maintained.
Speaking about the bane of plagiarism in fashion, Jha said it could only be curbed by individual efforts.
"Designers worldwide face this menace. It can be only curbed by individual initiative. Today, in our country, there are enough legal ways to deal with plagiarism, for instance, by registering your design under intellectual property rights.
"FDCI cannot become the policing authority. We can only show designers the way by making them aware - something we do periodically by holding seminars," she said.
She explained that the only constant thing in fashion was change, but that hindered the registration of designs.
"It becomes more difficult to deal with it because fashion changes constantly and the recurring question is whether the time, energy and money spent on registering a design is worth it? Moreover, whether one will register the whole look or a particular design and how many times?"
And how far does the participation of celebrities in fashion shows affect the seriousness of an event?
"It is nothing new! Whether it is Paris, London, Milan or New York, fashion week celebrity participation is everywhere. Do you think it dilutes their seriousness?"
"Moreover, FDCI doesn't invite them. We cannot ban star attendance, as FDCI cannot interfere with the freedom of an individual. A star is also a client or the designer's friend and they want to showcase their creativity and achievements to them."
Keen to estimate the contribution of the fashion fraternity to the country's economy, the FDCI is now planning to conduct a study.
"In a month's time, FDCI is readying to start a commissioned study which will define a designer product and estimate the size of the fashion industry, its catchment area, its contribution to the manufacturing sector, crafts sector and GDP of the Indian economy."
The study will also enlist the weaknesses and strengths of the country's fashion sorority.
Indo-Asian News Service
The Sethusamudram ship channel project is deepening a 75-km section of the 152-km passage in the shallow sea between India and Sri Lanka. On the face of it, the idea is excellent as it cuts out the need for ships to circumnavigate Sri Lanka, shortening the journey by about 335 nautical miles between India's east and the west coasts. The Rs.24.28- billion ($609-million) project is already forging ahead.
Because of its enthusiasm for the scheme, India's shipping ministry appears to be soft-pedalling possible environmental impacts and showing little interest in initiating scientific discussion on the venture.
An environmental impact assessment (EIA) by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute in 2004 certified the project as feasible and did not envision serious side effects. Only 75 km need dredging because the rest has sufficient clearance for shipping.
But I and many others, including representatives of several nongovernmental organisations, have a number of objections. I believe the EIA did not fully address the enormous variation in the amount of sediment at different times carried by rivers in the area. In particular, the lack of data meant that studies were ambivalent about the overall amount of sediment carried into Palk Sraits.
The Tamil Nadu coast in general and the project area in particular are highly vulnerable to tropical cyclones. The storm surge from a cyclone in December 1964 washed away the Pamban Bridge between Rameswaram and the bustling township on the Dhanushkodi Island. Cyclones can affect how sediment and dredged material move.
The EIA did not properly address cyclonic disturbances, so the amount of material to be dredged could be much greater than predicted, which in turn could have serious implications for the cost of the dredging work, as well as on the cost of maintenance dredging.
The EIA also failed to take into account tsunami hazards. It was carried out before the Asian tsunami of December 2004, when the issue was not a serious concern. But some models of the 2004 tsunami show waves entering the Palk Straits from the north as well as from the south, coinciding with the canal's alignment.
Tsunami experts like Tad Murty, from the department of civil engineering at the University of Ottawa in Canada, are concerned that the canal project could provide a deepwater channel for a future tsunami, magnifying the impact of the surge on the west coast.
There is little information on the seafloor here, yet understanding the substratum is crucial in deciding whether to dredge or blast and in planning safe disposal of dredged material. The EIA appears to be ambivalent about adequate environmental controls with respect to identifying areas where dredged material can be dumped. Engineers need precise information if they are to identify which parts of the canal are prone to landslips.
The shallow Sethusamudram sea is constantly bridged by natural sedimentation processes. They contribute to its role as a special ecological niche for various marine organisms, including corals, in an area already degraded by human activities. New dredging and blasting will have serious, lasting effects on local biodiversity as well as on traditional fishing.
How pollutants from ships will be dispersed in such a narrow channel is another concern. Potential threats to the area's ecology include ships that run aground or stray off course, environmental disturbances from rescue operations, and oil spills.
And if ships need to be guided by tugs, there will certainly be a huge financial cost, potentially making the journey more expensive and time-consuming than sailing around Sri Lanka.
In other words, the government has not made a realistic cost-benefit analysis of the project.
In highlighting the major outstanding scientific issues arising from the project, I want to act as an honest broker rather than an overt advocate. I call on the government to make a sincere effort to address these questions by referring them to an independent group of experts.
Republican Congressman Piyush 'Bobby' Jindal has created history by becoming the first-ever Indian-American to be elected a governor in the history of the United States.
Louisiana's media heaped praises on the 36-year-old Indian American Congressman. Here are some excerpts from what prominent newspapers had to say about Jindal?s win:
The Times Picayune had a jubilant Jindal, waving to his supporters at Baton Rouge locality of Louisiana, on its front page with a special mention of he being the United States' first governor of Indian descent.
Jindal received 699,672 or 53.61 per cent of votes, which put him over the top of the magic 50 percentile that precludes a November run-off and automatically makes him the next governor of Louisiana.
We love to laugh at the nouveau riche and the silly way in which they flaunt their baubles: driving up in a flashy red sports car, wiping themselves with branded toilet paper, wearing ice-cubes on their chunky fingers, and most depressing of all, dropping names like so much dandruff. Sure they may have arrived but they can't stop jingling their moneybags and getting the world to take notice.
India, on the road to being a global power, seems to be suffering from this disease. The most tiresome symptom being the unthinking way in which we appropriate any achiever with even the most tenuous connection to the motherland as Indian. It makes us feel better, bigger, first-world and truly global. There is not so much as a prickle of shamefacedness at the fact that India has done little to further their careers or their talents. In the last couple of years, at regular intervals, the media has been choking with reports about "Indians” such as Bobby Jindal, Norah Jones, Sanjaya Malakar, Sunita Williams, etc who have all done the country proud in the USA or in space. Indian schoolchildren light diyas (lamps) or fast, villages and towns in remote corners of India distribute sweets, dance in joy, and the cameras chase the drivers, aunties, uncles and village postmen for sound bytes—all because the son or a daughter of a former resident who quit the country fifty years ago has achieved a modicum of success thousands of kilometers away.
But, at some point, reality bites. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal's father, Amar Jindal, left Maler Kotla in Punjab for the United States almost 40 years ago and settled in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Bobby Jindal, 36, has never visited his ancestral home and has no plans to. Nora Jones who “grew up in Texas with a white mother” said after winning the Grammy that if anything, she felt more Texan than New Yorker (India did not figure). In fact, Geethali Norah Jones Shankar dropped the first and last extensions of her name when she turned 16. Sanjaya Malakar, the American Idol contestant whose father was an Indian, thanked his maternal Italian grandfather in his interviews. Sunita Williams was born in the USA to an Indian father (who became an American) and a mother of Slovenian heritage (the Slovenian press reproduced articles about how India was trying to appropriate their daughter of the soil).
Historian Ramachandra Guha says he is revolted by this “craven desire of Indians” to shine in reflected glory. “There is something lopsided and imbalanced in all of this,” he says. “It is nothing but pathetic insecurity and an inferiority complex. I blame the rudderless trans-national middle class for such hype.” In Delhi, Professor Mushirul Hassan, the vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia endorses Guha's view that this is nothing but the urge of a middle-class keen to join the rat race to prove itself. “It is a way of saying we have arrived. An expression of new-found confidence. And when there not enough persons in India, you look outside,” he says.
Equus’ CEO and advertising professional Suhel Seth calls it a “reverse globalisation”. “India is very territorial in its emotions. We want to capture territories overseas. For us Indians, the grass is not only greener but sweeter outside India. We have shifting sands of respect and shifting sands of recognition. We seek role models from outside India and appropriate them even when they are not comfortable. Take Amarnath Bose (of Bose Electronics). I don't think he wants to be called an Indian.”
There is certainly something surreal about the whole hysteria, agrees Sunil Khilnani, professor and director of South Asian Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and the author of the acclaimed The Idea of India. “This is not a healthy sign—our admiration and adulation for the overseas success of whomever we can claim (however tenuously) our ‘own’: it’s perhaps quaint, but also self-delusional,” he says. “We should perhaps think harder, focus more closely, on the many millions of those whom we condemn to failure, who really are our 'own' fellow, though far from equal, citizens.”
What really grates is that much greater achievement within the country goes unnoticed or is downplayed. But once the West gives its seal of approval, the drum roll just won't stop. “Indian scientists who were ignored in India suddenly get talked about if they get recognised abroad. Even Mother Teresa became Indian only after she got the Nobel. We are a land of hypocrites. R K Pachauri suddenly shot to fame only after he got the Nobel Peace Prize. Till then very few would even give him appointment. And now suddenly he has become an Indian scientist,” says Seth.
Prof Hassan adds that success is always seen as suspect: “We don't recognise the worth of person who has achieved something or done something worthwhile. We attribute it to tikdam (machinations). We don't think that it could be an intrinsic part of the person or hard work that has contributed to his/her success. When I go abroad, people talk about how Indian scholars, historians are making great advances. But here we don't talk about them. We are in awe of someone who has studied in Cambridge but the moment you say you have studied in India, the interest wanes. This is an inferiority complex.”
Guha blames the media for feeding this kind of false pride. “The media should not be so obsequious about the West,” he says. “A few years ago, a magazine said that they did not put Vishwanathan Anand on the cover because he came second in the world championship. Bismillah Khan's death and even M S Subbulakshmi’s death were covered sparsely. Sunita Williams got ten times that coverage in the media. If great artistes like Bismillah Khan or M S had died in France, there would be half-hour programmes every day for a week if not more. Look at the way they covered Pavarotti's death. And here in India we cover our national heroes’ death while reading out what the President of India has said about him or her. But Bobby Jindal wins the governorship of a small state in the US and he gets excessive coverage.”
Congress MP Milind Deora says that before celebrating the success of Indians abroad their Indianness needs to be verified. “Take the example of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Austria celebrates his success and that is genuine because he was born there and grew up in Austria before migrating to the USA,” says Deora. “We celebrate these achievements because we have a certain affinity for them. The affinity is not derived from citizenship or from accent. America is full of immigrants but one does not find Europe celebrating each and every success of an American who is of European descent.”
Another 'Indian’ who only has nasty things to say about India is V S Naipaul, who was born in Trinidad and lives in England. India counts Naipaul amongst its Nobel winners. Naipaul, who hates to be asked what he considers ‘home’—“I refuse to answer that question one more time,” he snapped at Crosswords in Mumbai—has this to say about the three countries he is associated with. “India is unwashed, Trinidad is unlearned and England is morally bankrupt.” The criticism is evenly handed out but perhaps we should reflect on what the ‘Indian’ achievers across the pond think of the country before we roll out the red carpet and smother them in it.
The election of Bobby Jindal as governor of the US state of Louisiana has been greeted exultantly by Indians and Indian-Americans around the world. There’s no question that this is an extraordinary accomplishment: a young Indian-American, just 36 years old, not merely winning an election but doing so on the first ballot by receiving more votes than his 11 rivals combined, and that too in a state not noticeably friendly to minorities. Bobby Jindal will now be the first Indian-American governor in US history, and the youngest currently serving chief executive of an American state. These are distinctions of which he can legitimately be proud, and it is not surprising that Indians too feel a vicarious sense of shared pride in his remarkable ascent.
But is our pride misplaced? Who is Bobby Jindal and what does he really stand for?
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of Indian migrants in America: though no sociologist, i’ll call them the atavists and the assimilationists. The atavists hold on to their original identities as much as possible, especially outside the workplace; in speech, dress, food habits, cultural preferences, they are still much more Indian than American. The assimilationists, on the other hand, seek assiduously to merge into the American mainstream; they acquire a new accent along with their visa, and adopt the ways, clothes, diet and recreational preferences of the Americans they see around them. (Of course, there are the in-betweens, but we’ll leave them aside for now.) Class has something to do with which of the two major categories an Indian immigrant falls into; so does age, since the newer generation of Indians, especially those born in America, inevitably tend to gravitate to the latter category.
Bobby Jindal is an assimilationist’s dream. Born to relatively affluent professionals in Louisiana, he rejected his Indian name (Piyush) as a very young child, insisting that he be called Bobby, after a (white) character on the popular TV show ‘The Brady Bunch’. His desire to fit in to the majority-white society he saw around him soon manifested itself in another act of rejection: Bobby spurned the Hindusim into which he was born and, as a teenager, converted to Roman Catholicism, the faith of most white Louisianans. There is, of course, nothing wrong with any of this, and it is a measure of his precocity that his parents did not balk at his wishes despite his extreme youth. The boy was clearly gifted, and he soon had a Rhodes scholarship to prove it. But he was also ambivalent about his identity: he wanted to be seen as a Louisianan, but his mirror told him he was also an Indian. The two of us won something called an ‘Excelsior Award’ once from the
Network of Indian Professionals in the US, and his acceptance speech on the occasion was striking — obligatory references to the Indian values of his parents, but a speech so American in tone and intonation that he mangled the Indian name of his own brother. There was no doubt which half of the hyphen this Indian-American leaned towards.
But there are many ways to be American, and it’s interesting which one Bobby chose. Many Indians born in America have tended to sympathise with other people of colour, identifying their lot with other immigrants, the poor, the underclass. Vinita Gupta, in Oklahoma, another largely white state, won her reputation as a crusading lawyer by taking up the case of illegal immigrants exploited by a factory owner (her story will shortly be depicted by Hollywood, with Halle Berry playing the Indian heroine). Bhairavi Desai leads a taxi drivers’ union; Preeta Bansal, who grew up as the only non-white child in her school in Nebraska, became New York’s Solicitor General and now serves on the Commission for Religious Freedom. None of this for Bobby. Louisiana’s most famous city, New Orleans, was a majority black town, at least until Hurricane Katrina destroyed so many black lives and homes, but there is no record of Bobby identifying himself with the needs or issues of his state’s black people. Instead, he sought, in a state with fewer than 10,000 Indians, not to draw attention to his race by supporting racial causes. Indeed, he went well beyond trying to be non-racial (in a state that harboured notorious racists like the Ku Klux Klansman David Duke); he cultivated the most conservative elements of white Louisiana society. With his widely-advertised piety (he asked his Indian wife, Supriya, to convert as well, and the two are regular churchgoers), Bobby Jindal adopted positions on hot-button issues that place him on the most conservative fringe of the Republican Party. Most Indian-Americans are in favour of gun control, support a woman’s right to choose abortion, advocate immigrants’ rights, and oppose school prayer (for fear that it would marginalise non-Christians). On every one of these issues, Bobby Jindal is on the opposite side. He’s not just conservative; on these questions, he is well to the right of his own party.
That hasn’t stopped him, however, from seeking the support of Indian-Americans. Bobby Jindal has raised a small fortune from them, and when he last ran (unsuccessfully) for governor in 2004, an army of Indian-American volunteers from outside the state turned up to campaign for him. Many seemed unaware of his political views; it was enough for them that he was Indian. At his Indian-American fundraising events, Bobby is careful to downplay his extreme positions and play up his heritage, a heritage that plays little part in his appeal to the Louisiana electorate. Indian-Americans, by and large, accept this as the price of political success in white America: it’s just good to have “someone like us” in such high office, whatever views he professes to get himself there.
So Indians beam proudly at another Indian-American success story to go along with Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, Hargobind Khorana and Subramaniam Chandrasekhar, Kal Penn and Jhumpa Lahiri. But none of these Indian Americans expressed attitudes and beliefs so much at variance with the prevailing values of their community. Let us be proud that a brown-skinned man with an Indian name has achieved what Bobby Jindal has. But let us not make the mistake of thinking that we should be proud of what he stands for.