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Hopes Fade for Success of Commonwealth Games in IndiaBy HeatHer timmons

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

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

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

A footbridge next to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the main venue for the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, collapsed into three pieces on Tuesday.

begin Oct. 3 and last for two weeks, has become a major embarrassment for the coun-try instead of a showcase for its rising economic might. The unspoken comparison to India’s rival China, which won widespread acclaim from its preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics, are a further source of hu-

miliation.Representatives of the dozens of

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

On Tuesday afternoon, a bridge next to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the main venue, fell apart. The foot-bridge collapsed into three pieces,

INDO AMERICAN NEWS • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2010 • ONLINE EDITION: WWW.INDOAMERICAN-NEWS.COM

26 Indo American News • Friday, September 24, 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.comb u s I N e s s I N d I A

continued from page 25

Hopes Fade for Success of Commonwealth Games in India

Security guards at the stadium on Tuesday. The police said that 27 people were injured, 4 seriously. Athletes are scheduled to start arriving Thursday.

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

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

“This will not affect the games,” said Raj Kumar Chauhan, a Del-hi minister for development, who spoke at the scene. “We can put the bridge up again, or make a new one.” The accident occurred when work-ers were trying to pour concrete into a clip at the base of the bridge, he said, and the clip was loosened.

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

“The problems are arising be-cause deadlines for the completion

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

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

Construction of the village, built alongside the Yamuna River on Delhi’s eastern border, is severely behind schedule. Delhi built a series of apartment towers to house about 7,000 athletes and their families, a 2,300-seat cafeteria, and practice areas on land that was originally an empty plain. Officials from the Ministry of Sports promised last year that the village would be ready in March 2010, but finishing touches were still being done outside build-ings during a media tour last week. And the interiors of the buildings are still not completed, some say.

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

athletes’ village was “pretty grim.”Showers and toilets in the accom-

modations the New Zealand team was given are not working, and post-construction cleanup has not been done, he said. “It is certainly disap-pointing considering the amount of time they have had,” he said.

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

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

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

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27 Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.com b u s I N e s s I N d I A

India’s Protests Are Cherished and MalignedBy Jim yardley

CALCUTTA (NYT): This kalei-doscopic city of 15 million people stopped dead last Tuesday. Flights were canceled at the airport. The streets, ordinarily throbbing with traf-fic and humanity, were almost empty. And thousands of shopkeepers like Wazeed Khan shuttered their stores in observance of a familiar Indian ritual — the shutdown strike.

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

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

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

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

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

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

No corner of the country is spared. Strikes, large and small, are conducted across India’s social spectrum, from Maoist insurgents in the countryside to bug sprayers in New Delhi. At one of New Delhi’s most prestigious uni-versities, professors have disrupted classes for weeks to protest plans to shift to a semester system.

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

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

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

In July, opposition parties, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., staged a nationwide bandh to protest fuel price increases by the govern-ment. Opposition leaders, having effectively shut down much of the country, proclaimed victory, even as critics saw the strike as a politi-cally motivated effort by the B.J.P. to demonstrate its national relevance. Business groups estimated that the economy suffered roughly $650 mil-lion in losses, with much of the bur-den falling on the low-income wage earners most vulnerable to inflation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Calcutta, the trade union bandh seemed to induce a citywide nap. Some people said they had little choice but to obey the bandh because the unions are controlled by the gov-erning Left Front political parties and defying the strike call could bring harassment from goons or the police. In Millennium City, the city’s high-tech office region, employees in some companies slept overnight inside their buildings because night-shift bus services were canceled. Outside the Reserve Bank of India, a handful of union members of the All-India Reserve Bank Employees Association sat lazily on the steps un-til jumping up at the sight of a reporter to chant slogans against globalization

and privatization.“This is our success,” said Sudipta

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

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

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

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

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

desirable? This is the most peace-ful, organized, democratic form of protest.”

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

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

“In Calcutta, with any problem, the parties call a bandh,” he said. “The bandhs are only to show their power. And by doing their bandhs, they are further away from the common people. The common people do not like these things.”

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28 Indo American News • Friday, September 24, 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.como p I N I o N


By raJni BaksHi(Hindu) Shortly after

the hijacked planes were crashed into New York’s World Trade Centre on September 9, 2001, the Ramakrishna Mission printed a startling poster.

For us, said the Mis-sion, every 9/11 is a day for celebrating peace and brotherhood. It is the date on which Swami Vive-kananda delivered his fa-mous “Sisters and Broth-ers of America” speech at the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893.

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

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

Way forwardBut reflecting on this odd combina-

tion of events may now be a creative way of untangling the web of compli-cations triggered by the plans for what has, wrongly, been called the Ground Zero mosque.

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

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

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

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

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

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

of native popula-tions.

A long range view of these vari-ous 9/11s illumi-nates diverse ways of grappling with the tussle between co-existence and conflict, faith and reason, coopera-tion and conquest.

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

New Amster-dam, the Dutch settlement estab-lished in the wake of Hudson’s first contact, is remem-bered as a multi-cultural, liberal enterprise based on respect for di-versity and toler-

ance.This narra-

tive track can be trashed for glossing over the fact that the 17th century settle-ment had only a brief period of bonhomie with native tribes. By 1625 the Dutch began construc-tion of Fort Am-sterdam — as a defence against angry natives as well as British and French com-petitors. Within half a century of Hudson’s land-

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

Can this history become a justifica-tion for imputing unredeemable guilt, across centuries, to an entire race? In that case all European descent Americans would be cast in the role of murderous interlopers.

Certainly this is a dead-end track — both morally untenable and anti-life. But opposition to a mosque at Park51 is not about making Muslims across the world carry a permanent, collec-tive, guilt for 9/11 2001. It’s about the lingering emotional ravages of a particular event and how they imbue a particular place with meaning.

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

Relevance todayThis is what makes the 9/11 of 1893

fascinatingly pertinent to contempo-rary conundrums. The World Parlia-

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tribute in Lights glow skyward near the World Trade Center site on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2010 in New York. Photo: AP


29 Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.com I N d I A

Vivekananda realised that all spiri-tual striving is beyond reason, but reason is the only way to get there. For, reason is the greatest gift of the human existence.

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

Common goalThat goal is God-realisation or self-

realisation — the two being one and the same thing.

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

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

Indians of all faiths, castes and pro-fessions had gathered on that 9/11 to protest several discriminatory laws. In an atmosphere charged with anger and the will to fight, Gandhi dropped an idea that acted like a depth charge. Let us fight discriminatory laws by refusing to comply — by offering unflinching non-violent resistance.

His logic was impeccable. Truth is God and God is love. It follows that a struggle for justice cannot involve hurting one’s opponent. Instead, the ‘other’ in a conflict must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. In turn, this means cultivating the willingness to examine ‘truth’ in all its many dimensions. This can only be done by being strong — not physical strength but the strength of truth-force or love-force.

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

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

But attitude, not altitude, is critical here.

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

Different attitudesDepending on which attitude

comes naturally to you, the exhibits

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

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

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

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

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

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

This might easily seem like a stan-dard conservative vs. liberal stand-off. And yet, the presence of those who lost loved ones in the WTC at-tack, among supporters of the Park51 project, implies a ‘ satyagrahi’ striv-ing.

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

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

Again, attitude is the key element. We can be swept away by the com-peting political agendas which are focused on the here and now — as is the case for some Americans in this election year.

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

Vivekananda, Gandhi and 9/11continued from page 28

Mails from IM, Suspected to be Created in IndiaNEW DELHI (SINS): After the at-

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

As per the investigations, [email protected], a gmail id was created at 11.30 am on Sunday

and the alleged incident of firing was reported at 11.22 am on the same day. The account through which the ter-rorists declared about the attack to the news channels and agencies, said that it will automatically become non op-erational on September 26. “It is matter of investigation. He may have given a false e-mail id. We are in the process of verifying the status of his accounts and have contacted google,” said a senior officer heading the probe. Police of-ficials feel that, the terrorists must have thought deeply about taking this step as the mail came several hours after the incident took place. The account was operated in the name of ‘Veera’.

Earlier, the emails from IM have been traced after which their media cell, which operated in Pune was busted and the software programmer was arrested. Their media cell used to send mails before the blasts through unprotected wi-fi connection but unfortunately, the police could not trace anything beyond the user of IP address. The terror group has also expressed its intention to disrupt the Common Wealth Games (CWG) to be held in New Delhi. “We know that preparations for the Games are at its peak, beware, we too are preparing in full swing for a great surprise,” said the email sent by Indian Mujahideen to a news agency.

Pak Spy Held in Delhi, Army Documents Seized NEW DELHI (PTI): A suspected

Pakistani spy, who was in the national capital for the last one year doing recce of Army installations, was ar-rested here with police on Tuesday claiming that they have recovered confidential documents related to the Indian Army from his possession.

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

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

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

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

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


30 Indo American News • Friday, September 24, 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.comA d v I c e

By Py Py rakasH iyerPOOJA was a rather unhappy girl.

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

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

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

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

How come? Same place, differ-How come? Same place, differ-How come? Same place, different views. Why does this happen? Maybe there’s a message in the story of the old man who ran a highway tea shop on a highway between two cities. It was a popular stopover for

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

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

“How were the people in the town

you are coming from?” asked the old man.

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

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

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

“For Things to Change, We Must Change”

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

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

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

ful”The old man smiled and said “You

will find that the people in the town ahead are exactly the same.”

Think about it. It’s always like that. The way we see the people around us depends not so much on how they are – but on how we are.

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

Become the kind of friend or col-league you’d like to have and - sur-league you’d like to have and - sur-league you’d like to have and - surprise – you’ll find that the people around are you are like that too. You will find all the warmth and the friendliness reflecting back at you. We all tend to attract people and circumstances that are in harmony with our attitude. Happy people have happy friends, happy lives. And the converse tends to be generally true too. Alas!

Remember, for things to change, we must change. Your college, or your company, and your city – all these are actually wonderful places. You just need to learn to look at them that way. Gandhiji’s advice still holds true: Be the change you want to see. Starting today, change your outlook. Change your world!



Indo American News South Asia

News of the Diaspora


The Other Half: Making the Invisible VisibleIf women are getting more visibility today, it is partly because of the changes initiated by the UN conferences of the 1990s…

By kalkalk PanaPanaP sHarmaHarmaH(Hindu) The most striking photo-

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

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

everyday and all the time”, she said.I was struck by Rajkumari’s pho-

tograph and testimony for more than one reason. Her story is that of ev-ery farmer, man or woman, but her story is also that of women farmers, who are rarely acknowledged when one discusses any matter related to agriculture. Indeed, women as farm-

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

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

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

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

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

Significant conferencesOf these, as far as women world-

wide are concerned, the two really

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

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

Going unacknowledged: Women farmers. Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar


32 Indo American News • Friday, September 24, 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.comI N d I A

Ikea Expects to Double Buying of Goods in India

By HeatHer timmonsNEW DELHI (NYT): Ikea, the inexpensive

and stylish Swedish home retailer, is not earning any money in India. But the company is spend-ing it here, the chief executive, Mikael Ohlsson, said Monday.

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

Despite the setback, Mr. Ohlsson said he was determined to continue to do business in India. Ikea plans to double the amount of goods it buys from India, including textiles, in the next three to four years, to 1 billion euros, or $1.3 billion, he said at a news conference here.

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

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

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

Mikael Ohlsson, the new IKEA chief executive

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

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

India’s government should not see Ikea as a threat to domestic retailers, Mr. Ohlsson said. The needs of the market are “so big there will be space for everybody,” he said.

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

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

The company also has 13 stores in Russia.Ikea said it was investing about 125 million

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

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


33 Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.com I N d I A

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

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

Uneven resultsOf course, not all the countries pres-

ent carried forward the philosophy behind this slogan in their policies post-Beijing. Women continue to be denied basic rights in many societ-

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

So was the rhetoric, the declara-tions, the Platform for Action adopted at Beijing worth anything more than the paper on which they were writ-ten?

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

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

continued from page 31

Making the Invisible Visible

IndoAmerican News 29 years in publication, chosen 1st by readers.

Giving Out Terrorists’ Photos Will Do More Harm than Good

By anil singHMUMBAI (TOI): The decision

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

The photographs of these men, Hafeez Sharif and Kalimuddin Khan, have been plastered at each and every Ganesh pandal in Mumbai. Sharif has been shown with a goatee and a skull cap.

`Ìt is very unlikely that the two won’t change their appearance. Their handlers could have even replaced them. The only thing that these pic-tures will do is to reinforce stereo-types and communal bias,’’ said Sajid Rashid, associate editor of the Urdu daily, Sahafat. He addes that the worst affected will be children who are likely to equate anyone with a goatee and a skull cap with a terrorist.

`Àny Muslim visiting a pandal will think twice for fear of being discrimi-nated against, taunted or even being beaten up. With one stroke, this step threatens to undo all the good work done to foster communal harmony over the years,’’ said Jatin Desai of the Pakistan- India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy. Rashid confirmed that Muslim families were are avoiding Ganesh pandals.

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

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

Singh backs the police, saying, ``When it comes to terrorism, one has to act in an optimum manner.’’ However, he feels that they could have handled the photographs in a more professional manner by re-leasing other pictures showing how the duo would have looked in vari-ous guises. Former Mumbai police commissioner Julio Ribeiro, who also heads the Mohalla Commitee movement for communal harmony, accepted that the step was fraught with danger but said that he would not like to pass any value judgement as ̀ `no one would back the policemen if something untoward happens’’.

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

Observers say that communal ele-ments can easily use this opportunity to whip up anti-government senti-ment. For instance, they can ask why photographs of Hindu bomb makers are never displayed at public places.Will this not affect the flow of infor-mation from the minority community to the anti-terrorist squad, they ask. Police sources say they had ``com-

pelling reasons much beyond the comprehension of the lay person’’ and that the chief minister himself gave the go-ahead for publicising the photographs.

``There was a lot of debate before arriving at the decison and we chose the lesser evil,’’ said a senior crime branch official. Social activist Anurag Chaturvedi says that policemen miss the larger point. The war against terror is not only a cloak-and-dagger opera-tion, it is also about winning the hearts and minds of people. The ultimate aim of the terrorists is to drive a wedge between the Hindus and Muslims. ``By releasing the photos, the police is actually helping the ultras achieve this objective,’’ Chaturvedi said.

`Ìf, indeed, it is such a grave is-sue, why is it that blame for losing track of the two terrorists is not being pinned on the agency and officers concerned? Till that happens, doubts will persist about the motives of the police,’’ said Nadeem Nusrath, for-mer national secretary of the Youth Congress.

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


34 Indo American News • Friday, September 24, 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.com


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

saba was the first one to show her line and the likes of Jackie Shroff and Adam Bedi with wife Nisha Harale turned up to show their support. Actor Chitrangda Singh set the temperatures soar-ing when she sashayed the ramp for designer Arpan Vohra while the last show for the day by Sa-tya Paul saw Shruti Hassan take to the runway, dressed in a sari. But the biggest draw of the day was actor Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan take to the front row for Nachiket Barve’s show. Dressed in a Nachiket sari, Jaya was all smiles while watching the show. Actor Koena Mitra walked the ramp for Rajat Tangri’s show and dressed in a short number, she sizzled alright!

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India Bags 3 Gold Medals in International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics

MUMBAI: Indian students bagged three Gold and two Bronze medals at the 4th International Olympiad in Astronomy & Astro-physics (IOAA) that concluded in Beijing

India was ranked first in medal tal-ly at the IOAA which commenced on September 12, Dr Aniket Sule, Academic coordinator, Indian As-tronomy Olympiad Program who led the team, told PTI.

Chirag Modi of Indore, Nitesh Kumar Singh of Mumbai, and Aniruddha Bapat from Pune won Gold medals while Shantanu Agar-wal of Patna, and Kottur Satwik of Hyderabad, won Bronze medals, he said.

Nitesh Kumar Singh was also

awarded special prize for best per-formance in the theoretical round.

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

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

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

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

India Approves Rs.9.3 Billion E-Courts ProjectNEW DELHI: India has approved

a Rs.9.3 billion project that will help modernize and streamline its judi-ciary.

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

The project is expected to make long

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

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

India Approves 11 Special Economic ZonesKARNATAKA: The Indian gov-

ernment gave the go signal to es-tablish 11 special economic zones in the country with five of the IT related zones located in Karnataka in southwest India.

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

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

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

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

SEZ exports amounted to Rs. 2.2 trillion for the financial year 2009-2010. Figures have continued to improve increasing by 68 percent to Rs. 586 billion.

India to Sign FTAs with Malaysia, JapanNEW DELHI: India is expected to

formally sign free trade agreements with Japan and Malaysia by the end of the year.

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

India’s FTA pact with the European Union will probably be delayed to next year because of specific issues. “We are trying to get it wrapped up quickly. But I don’t think it is possible to conclude this year,” Khullar said.

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

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

Kingfisher to Add More RoutesKingfisher Airlines, rapidly chal-

lenging Air India’s dominance in the aviation industry, has announced it will be adding new international routes from next year to its existing roster to Dubai, Hong Kong, Thai-land, London and Singapore.

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

According to Mallya, Kingfisher

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

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

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

Monorail Manufacturers Concentrate on India’s Infrastructure Boom

MUMBAI: As the Indian economy develops, the need for massive im-provements in its transportation net-work also increases.

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

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

drum.The first stage of the Mumbai

monorail should be completed in March 2011.

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

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

Japanese Conglomerate to

Invest in SEZ, Steel Plant in Gujarat

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

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

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

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

Pakistan Beats India, Gory Pics on Cig PacksThis is one thing that India can

take a leaf out of Pakistan’s book. Pakistan has introduced gory pic-

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

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

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

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



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India 3rd Most Powerful Nation: US ReportWashington (NDTV) : The new

global power lineup in the US for 2010 compiling the world’s most powerful countries/regions recog-nised India as the third most pow-erful country behind the US and China, and predicted that its clout as well as that of China and Brazil would further rise by 2025.

“Global Governance 2025” - fol-low-on to the NIC’s 2008 report - was jointly issued by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) of the powerful Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Eu-ropean Union’s Institute for Secu-rity Studies (EUISS).

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

According to this international futures model, by 2025 the power

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

The US would be closely fol-lowed by China (nearly 16 per cent), European Union (14 per cent) and India (10 per cent). The report concludes that three effects of rapid globalization are driving demands for more effective global governance - economic interde-pendence, the interconnected na-ture of the challenges on the inter-national agenda, and interwoven domestic and foreign challenges.

According to the 82-page report,

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

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

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

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

Gandhi Jayanti 2010 Celebration as 1000 Lights for Peace

5 pm: Sunday, October 3, 2010,at Miller Outdoor TheatreTo register for “Walk For Peace” at Gandhi Jayanti celebrations, visit

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For the first time in Houston, Brought to you by Radio Masti, for anunforgettable and uninterrupted 2hour 15min Mahalaya program.Mahalaya - Birendrakrishna Bhadra - Mahishasur Mardini 2010 on Radio Masti 1480AM or visit: www.radiomastihouston.com or listen live on Sunday, October 3 at 7am.Mahalaya Invoking of Goddess Durga (Goddess Chandika)[Ma-hishashura Mardini] By Birendra Krishna Bhadra, Lyrics & Script : Bani Kumar, Music : Pankaj Kumar Mullick. Artists: Birendra Krishna Bhadra, Dwijen Mukhopadhyay, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay, Arati Mukhopadhyay, Supriti Ghosh, Manabendra Mukhopadhay, Sumitra Sen, Bimal Bhusan, Shipra Basu, Utpala Sen, Shyamal Mi-tra, Ashima Bhattacharya, Pratima Bandyopadhyay, Tarun Bandyo-padhyay.As part of 10th Anniversary Durga Puja at Houston Durga Bari, This event is sponsored by Houston Durga Bari Puja Committee. For details please call Shyamal Bhattacharya 832-576-2344 or email: [email protected]

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

By Peter Seter Seter imunovich(Cricket USA Mag): Shebani

Bhaskar is just 15, but already she has become involved in a tug of war between the United States and India women cricket teams.

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

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

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

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

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

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

low her to play for the US team.“Shebani was born in the US

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pakistan Floods Touch Former US Women’s Player

By Peter Seter Seter imunovich(Cricket USA Mag): Sana Raz-

zak loved playing cricket in the Eastern Conference when she and her family lived in the United States several years ago. As an all-rounder she had the skills and past international experience to win na-tional selection.

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

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

Now Sana, 27, who has a degree in computer sci-ence and a black belt in ka-rate, is a full time player in Islamabad as a high order bat and spinner, but cricket is now secondary follow-ing the horrific floods in northern Pakistan, claim-ing more than 1,500 lives and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

The tragedy has affected the whole country and now heavy rains in Islamabad, said Sana, had even touched her own family.

In a telephone interview with cricketusamag.com, she said the heavy rains had flooded the base-ment of her brother’s home.

“The floods and rains have af-“The floods and rains have af-“The floods and rains have affected a lot of people and we are all trying to help the victims,” she said.

“The people are very supportive and doing everything possible to help the victims. People are vol-unteering to help and donating money, water, food, clothing and anything the flood victims need.”

“The Pakistan army is also do-ing a great job by rescuing people. Every individual is helping in any way they can and are not relying on the government.”

Sana said that the victims from the flood were now beginning to arrive in Islamabad for help and, hopefully, start a new life.

She said she and her family and friends were also helping the vic-tims in any way they can.

Sana’s husband now has a job

in Islamabad and she is playing cricket full time.

She recently won the best fielder award when her team competed in a national women’s tournament.

In 2003 Pakistan introduced a women’s competition and Sana was in the nation’s top 24-player squad. She competed with the sec-ond X1 team before she moved to the US.

Sana worked hard to stay fit and in match condition when she moved to the US and hoped she would be selected to play for the US senior women’s team.

She regularly worked out with the North Atlanta men’s cricket team to sharpen her skills while waiting for the opportunity to play in a women’s league.

Sana Razzak, a woman cricketer leading in her field from 2003 in Pakistan women’s leagues is back in Pakistan to help out the flood victims in whichever way she can

• [email protected] • 713-789-6397

Sania Suffers First Round Loss at Tashkent(Samachar): Sania Mirza’s poor

singles form continued as she crashed out of the Tashkent Open with an opening—round loss to Russian Ekaterina Bychkova here on Tuesday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

faulted twice and that sealed her fate.

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

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



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Indo-American News is the only South Asian publica-tion to be audited by Circu-lation Verification Council every year. This means you have a guarantee that every advertising dollar you spend in promoting your business is being seen by our readers in the US. Ph: 713•789•6397

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By vikram DoctorPart 2 (ET): The story takes

place on the site of a bridge being built across the Ganges, a setting that allows Kipling much chance

for enjoyable enumeration of engineering details. The British engi-neer and his Indian fore-man are the

protagonists and their job is almost done when a great flood that could wash it away. They can only hope it stays, and take refuge in an aban-doned temple on a river island. Under the influence of the opium which the foreman persuades him to take, the engineer dreams that the flood is Mother Ganga’s at-tempt to break the chains of the bridge, and that she has come to the temple, in the shape of a great river crocodile, to demand help from the other Hindu gods.

The gods arrive in the temple, most in animal form, Shiva as a bull, Indra a buck, Kali a tigress, Hanuman an ape, and “somewhere in the shadow, a great trunk and gleaming tusks swayed to and fro, and a low gargle broke the silence that followed... “We be here,” said a deep voice, “the Great Ones. One only and very many. Shiv, my father, is here, with Indra, Kali has spoken already. Hanuman listens.” The gods debate whether to help Ganga destroy the bridge. Kali snarls yes, Hanuman remembers the bridge he built himself and argues it should stay, while Indra says the bridge is of little matter in the vast sweep of time

Ganesha is pragmatic: “It is for the profit of my mahajuns – my fat money-lenders that worship me at each new year, when they draw my image at the head of the ac-count-books. I, looking over their shoulders by lamplight, see that the names in the books are those of men in far places – for all the towns are drawn together by the fire-carriage, and the money comes and goes swiftly, and the account-books grow as fat as – myself. And I, who am Ganesh of Good Luck, I bless my peoples.”

This impeccable argument for in-frastructure development is coun-tered by Ganga’s impassioned en-vironmentalism: projects like the bridge are altering her very shape and nature. Ganesha replies with

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

This debate is ended by Krishna who comes with a message that undercuts both Ganga’s fury and Ganesha’s complacency. It is too late for them to do anything, he tells the gods, because the Bridge will hold, both as a structure and a symbol of how the old faiths of the people are being defeated by the modern forces of science (Krishna is unaffected because people will always want love). This typical Kipling conclusion is equally typi-cally undermined by his descrip-tion of the awesome forces of the gods that still underlie Indian life. Despite Krishna’s message one ends the story unsure if science or faith will win. History shows that both did. Ganga has been altered, perhaps irrevocably, but millions still come to dip idols of Ganesh in the river.

Kipling’s description of Gane-sha as the god of fat merchants is not meant to be flattering; he never much liked Hindu merchants or babus. But he was also the creator of the heroic Hari Babu of Kim, and in keeping with this contradic-tory spirit, Kipling adopted Gane-sha as a personal emblem. His fa-ther, Lockwood Kipling, an artist and expert on Indian iconography, created a design of an elephant with a lotus in its trunk which Kipling referred to as the Ganesh roundel and had stamped on all his personal books. (It also included a swastika, which Kipling knew as a traditional Indian good luck symbol, but this has lead some to believe he was a Nazi sympathiser. In fact once he became aware of the Nazi swastika, in great disgust he removed it from his Ganesh emblem). Through all the odd lat-ter part of Kipling’s life when he stopped nearly all connection with India the Ganesh roundel remained as his one point of contact.

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

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

In Ganesh, a novel for young adults (later made into a film, Ordinary Magic, with an early performance from current Holly-wood hunk Ryan Reynolds) by the American writer Malcolm Bosse, the spiritual link is clear. The cen-tral character, Jeffrey, is a young American boy bought up by his parents as a Hindu in India. They nickname him Ganesh and after they die and he must return to the US, he tries to stick to both this name and the values he learned in India. Habits like vegetarianism and yoga make him stand out in a small American town, and the novel is about how both Jeffrey/Ganesh adjusts to this very dif-ferent world and it adjusts to him, without his core values changing. For this to happen he must draw on the spiritual strength of his up-bringing and again it’s possible to see this cued by the Ganesh name.

The American playwright Ter-ence McNally makes interesting use of the god in his play A Perfect Ganesh. Two middle-aged Ameri-can ladies come to India on a tour and like Twain’s travellers they see the usual sights, experience the usual panics and pleasures, and buy the usual mementos, including little statues of Ganesh. But they are also making personal journeys into their own lives and both trav-els, Indian and interior, are framed by Ganesha who acts as sutradhar and also participant in the play, with the actor who plays him play-ing most of the male roles.

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

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

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

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

One of the most recent uses of Ganesha by a non-Indian writer is by Paul Theroux in The Elephanta Suite. The protagonist in ‘The Elephant God’ is Alice, a young American woman who comes to the Sai Baba ashram in Bangalore. Despite living there she is drawn to a Ganesh temple because the

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

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

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

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

A Global Ganesha: How Literary Writers View the Diety

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


42 Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010 ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.comr e c r e a t i o n

Puzzle Corner: Down1 Collides with a public vehicle carrying a politician (5)2 In poor health and expired taking the waters (8)3 May help in building a house or destroying it (6)4 End result? (10)5 Anti-American intelligence (4)6 Lear production upset part of Hamlet (7)9 He has a suit (10)11 Retiring - or extrovert (8)12 Cheat and win in a doctored scam (7)14 Smile when you say that for a photo shoot (6)16 Was angry getting the wrong grade (5)17 Sergeant-major has to go up in the murk (4)

Puzzle Corner: Across1 On retiring, the place of your dreams (7)4 Locks are the key to its existence (5)7 It partially hides Tim’s confusion (4)8 Club regulation that must be strictly obeyed (4,4)10 Show little promise as a sculptor (5,5)12 Odd pieces of money (6)13 Is put to a variety of uses in publications (6)15 Sole distributor for fish? (10)18 Arranged in rows, falls knocking each other(8)19 A special section of the building (4)20 Composer of large variations (5)21 Booked - for a forthcoming wedding (7)

Puzzle Corner

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Sudoku“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”

~Frederick Buechner

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For Solution, Check on Saturday:www,indoamerican-news.com

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“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday re-garding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.” Take a moment, think about this.

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43 Indo American News • Friday, September 24 , 2010ONLINE EDITION: www.indoamerican-news.com l i f e & s t y l e

Indian-Origin School Girl is America’s Teen Queen

Indian-Origin School Girl is America’s Teen Queen

Indian-Origin School Girl is

LONDON (TOI): Anysha Pane-sar, a 16-year-old Indian-origin teenager has been crowned Amer-ica’s Perfect Teen. The only prob-lem is she is British. The teenager from Wales beat a

host of American beauties to win the contest while on holiday in Florida and it has not gone down well with the losing candidates. Parents of the American girls

have protested to the organisers of the pageant, which has a USD 2,000 first prize, and an USD 18,000 scholarship to train as a TV broadcaster, reported Daily Mail online. But Anysha has hit back, arguing

the outcry is just sour grapes. “Some people did say I shouldn’t

have won because I’m British. But really I think the people who said that just said it because they didn’t win,” said the brunette beauty. Anysha entered the teenage beau-

ty pageant while at the family holi-day home in Kissimmee, Florida. The ‘America’s Perfect Teen’

contest, which included girls as young as 13, has a big following in the States. But Anysha was stunned to beat

the other 30 contestants from across US. “My mum was sitting there cry-

ing her eyes out and my dad didn’t

know what to do with himself. My grandparents were on the phone, they were all so proud,” said Any-sha. Anysha lives with her family in

the village of Llangan in Vale of Glamorgan and is now back in classes at Howells School in Car-diff. Anysha won the scholarship

to learn broadcasting in the US, which she plans to take up after her A-levels. She is also in talks to have her

own TV show about her year as ‘America’s Perfect Teen’.

How People Use Creative Ways to Save Money by Aby Aby nA GA GA onzAlez Rlez Rlez ibei Ribei R Ro

(BankRate): Some consumers find strange but creative ways to stretch their dollar. This may sug-gest a cheap outlook, but neverthe-less goes a long way to save fami-lies and couples money.

“When we were sav-ing for our first house, I would cut back by keep-ing the ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise packets from fast-food restaurants and filling bottles at home. We even had close family members save the packets for us! In addition, we nev-er purchased drinks and always took our orders to go. We drank water from a thermos or purchased soft drinks on sale or with cou-pons.

“The way registers were set up at the time, we’d sometimes make money on items that didn’t cost a lot to begin with. In ad-dition, we had coupons that were doubled. This gave us more off than the original cost of the item. Since we wanted to save money and make as large a down pay-ment as we could for our home, we figured EVERY penny count-ed, which it did.”

-- Robert from Indiana “In an effort to save money, the

craziest notion I endured was to stop purchasing groceries and eat WAY less, often not eating all day into the wee hours of the night!

“I also limited any other types of purchases and since I had stocked

up in the past few years, I was able to live off the items I had stocked away. For my method to work, the trick is to stock first and save after, while keeping others from using up my stockpile!”

--Dina from Illinois “Many years ago, my husband

and I decided to stop smoking. He named the date we would start and sure enough, before we went to bed that night, we tossed our packs of cigarettes. I told him that I was going to put away each day the amount of money we would have spent on the cigarettes. So I made

a ritual of every night putting away in a desk drawer $3. Back then, smoking was much cheaper.

“At the end of one year, I had saved almost $1,100. That money paid for a trip to London! I sug-

gested this cessation method to a friend and he was successful in both saving money and eliminating his smok-ing habit.”

-- Joyce from North Carolina

“A few years ago, I was into crafting arti-ficial flowers. A neat way to save money on my hobby materials was to go Dumpster-diving at cemeteries to pick up artificial flow-ers and miscellaneous decorations left behind. I would go into the cemeteries, take what was thrown out in the Dumpster and use the

items instead for my crafting!”-- Ann from Iowa “My son plays golf in both high

school and on junior tours during the summer. I follow him, keeping a statistical score card while I save money by looking for stray golf balls. It is not uncommon for me to find up to 12 dozen golf balls just following him for one 18-hole tournament. At a regular cost of up to $45 a dozen, this is money we save by not having to buy them. Also, I sell some of the balls to make some money on the side!”

-- John from Indiana

Here are some creative ways people use to save money, saving on extra condiment packets that they get at any franchise to dumpster diving for new artificial flower throwaways, to using neglected golf balls, there is money to be saved at every corner

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