SAJAforum

DESI SPOTTING: High-flying American School of Aviation grounded

In the days after 9/11, the term "flying while brown" was coined to describe the sometimes tense situation facing South Asians and Arabs of various hues. There were several documented cases of so-called "Muslim-looking" people (including Sikhs) being asked to leave flights they had just boarded, and cases of general harassment at airports.

Given the fact that some of the 9/11 hijackers were trained at American flight schools, I had presumed it was difficult/impossible for brown folks to go anywhere near such schools. This post is an item about a school that not only welcomed brown folks - it was RUN by brown folks.

That's the logo of the American School of Aviation, a flight school based in Atwater, California (about two hours by road from San Francisco). I had never heard of the school until I got an e-mail from Savita Patel, who works for Voice of America's Hindi Service and Aaj Tak, a news channel in India (she can be reached at patelsavita[at]hotmail.com). She wrote:

I filed a story on ASA Flying school operating from the Castle Airbase in Atwater in California's Merced county. 107 Indian students were evicted from their hostel on Friday. Each of them had paid $45,000 to get into a 10-month flying course to get their pilot's
license and were hopeful of getting great jobs in India after that. The school has been shut for a month now and the management has not paid fuel costs to another flight support company and not paid the hostel electricity and water bills. Hence the students were evicted after the electricity was cut off. It was a TV story for Aajtak and was in the headlines on the channel. I wanted to keep you informed so that others can pick this up.

When I interviewed Reny Kozman, co-owner and VP of ASA (and wife of CEO Prince Singh), she blamed the whole situation on rising fuel prices. She says that she will try her best to run the school again from some other airport in a much smaller operation ASA had an office in Gurgaon, which shut down a couple of months back. They used to source students from many cities in India via agencies.

Some students who can afford to pay about $10,000 to $15,000 more will complete their required flying hours in other flying schools, like the one in Hayward. Some others who can't pay more, are stranded. Some want to wait and see if the school starts again, as the owners are saying. Some others who can't stay on for very long, if it takes more time, will go back home without their licenses. As of now, they are staying with friends, relatives and
some at small motels. Gemini Flight Support Company, which has filed a case against ASA has provided some of its barracks to some students and comes with a relatively low rental. Stan Thurston, the GM of Gemini told me that blaming it on fuel costs is irrational and other flying schools were feeling the pinch as well, but are functioning well.

TV: PBS "Now" on "India Rising"

We wrote about last night's CNBC Erin Burnett special, "India Rising," which ran from 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time on American TV. Turns out it wasn't the only show about India that night. The PBS show, "Now" aired its own take about India an hour later, also called "India Rising."

The global middle class is expected to swell by more than 1 billion people over the next decade, with the biggest increases in China and India. While millions are being lifted out of poverty as a result, the booming middle class is also consuming more global resources. As a result, prices for everything from steel to gasoline to food are soaring.

 

This week NOW reports from Pune, India, where college graduates are getting tech jobs, traditional families are flocking to the new mall, and professionals are hoping their new-found economic might will make their country an even bigger global player. But can America's middle-class—and the rest of the world—afford this unprecedented shift in the global economy?

The world is buying like never before, but who's paying the price?

You can watch the entire piece via this link (click on "video"). The screengrab below is the show's host, David Brancaccio, in Delhi. This episode's correspondent, Paul Beban, was reporting from Pune (along with producer Kira Kay and producer/cameraman/editor Jason Maloney). Please watch the segment and post your comments.

CONV: WSJ's Robert Thomson talks about importance of global news

[Watch several short videos of Thomson's speech here]

Coverage of global news will become one of the top three priorities at The Wall Street Journal, in line with its top editor's belief that international coverage is essential to the survival of American media.

Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Co., a subsidiary of News Corp., and managing editor of the Journal, gave the keynote address at the South Asian Journalists Association's annual convention in New York City. In his speech Friday morning, he outlined the media conglomerate's plans to boost its coverage in South Asia, including expansion of its bureau in India.

This, and the plans announced Thursday of key management changes including the appointment of Nik Deogun as the paper's international editor and a deputy managing editor, continues the change in focus and direction for the paper.

"We may be in the midst of a credit crisis... but the two defining trends of our age [are] digitization and globalization," Thomson said.

Already, the Journal has added four pages for international news at $6 million a year, to ramp up its coverage and make it competitive to the New York Times and the Financial Times.

Dow Jones also plans to explore the potential of software technology that would allow it to be part of India's mobile frenzy.

"South Asia is the Fleet Street of the future," Thomson said.

BUSINESS: Spielberg's DreamWorks to start a new venture with Reliance

[See SAJAForum's coverage of business news]

Anil Ambani, fueding brother of Mukesh Ambani, subject of a 4,000-plus-word profile in Sunday's NYT, is making waves after the Wall Street Journal announced that Reliance ADA Group would provide Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks SKG, the Hollywood film studio, with between $500 million and $600 million in equity, in order to form a new movie venture.

The principals of DreamWorks SKG are close to a deal with one of India's biggest entertainment conglomerates to form a new movie venture, according to people familiar with the situation, a move that would give director Steven Spielberg the cash to finance his DreamWorks team's departure from Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures later this year.

The Drudge Report picked up the story (that's the picture on the right). However, the deal has not been confirmed yet.

A recent Marketwatch report says that last month Reliance Big Entertainment, owned by the Reliance ADA Group, announced several financing deals with Hollywood's biggest names, including Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Jim Carrey and Brad Pitt.

More from WSJ.com:

Reliance's plunge into Hollywood is part of a broader push among India's corporate titans to take their place on the global corporate stage. The country has now produced global players in software, steel, autos and is building a growing powerhouse in telecommunications. <snip>
In recent years, the country's Mumbai-based film industry, known as Bollywood, has found a growing global appeal for its products. As it has expanded, it has drawn investment from Hollywood as well. For example, Walt Disney Co. has a large stake in UTV Software Communications, one of India's leading production houses. Other large American media firms have also invested in the Indian market.

Earlier this week, WSJ had a report from Cannes, "Hollywood Meets Bollywood":

One of the striking business trends this year is an increased relationship between Hollywood and Bollywood, India's massive film industry.

BUSINESS: USIBC's anniversary event

That's a photo of Charlie Rose, PBS talk show host, right, with Kamal Nath, India's commerce minister. Rose was interviewing Nath as part of the US-India Business Council's 33rd anniversary celebrations in Washington, D.C. on June 12, 2008. More photos from the event, marking the intersection of US and India business below. All photos by Jay Mandal/On Assignment - jaymandal[at]yahoo.com

EDUCATION: Some Indian students get a Disney connection

For some students in India, this year's summer vacation is going to be different from most. In a sign of globalization and how much purchasing power there is in India, 11 school groups are going to be going to Disney World. From the press release:

This summer students will fly halfway around the world to experience education - Disney-style. For the first time, school groups from India will take part in the numerous educational offerings of Disney Youth Education Series (Y.E.S.) at the Walt Disney World Resort.

The 11 school groups represent Amritsar, Phagwara, Jalandhar, New Dehli, and Surat, India.

Some of the programs the groups will enjoy include "Disney Production Arts and Sciences" which demonstrates the art of movie making from storyboarding to marketing a production; "Disney Animation Magic" where students learn the history of animation and the impact that Walt Disney had on the medium; "Dynamics of Technology" shows how technology has advanced society, and "Properties of Motion: Energy and Waves" will explain how visual effects are used in Disney attractions. "Ocean Discoveries," "Making Waves with a Marine Career," and "Disney Leadership Excellence," are also part of the groups’ itineraries.

Full press release, with press contact, below. Post your comments, too.

 

VIDEO: "American War Paar Da!" critiques American foreign policy

Here's a video of an anti-war and anti-American foreign policy song called "American War Paar Da! (Look at that American War!)". Post your comments below.

BUSINESS: Cross-border media purchases continue

In January 2008, we wrote about NBC buying a 26-percent stake in NDTV, a major Indian TV network, for $150 million. Here are more items about other stakes, bought and sold.

Today, the Deccan Chronicle, a newspaper in south India, said the New York Times was planning to buy a stake in one of its units:

India's Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd. said The New York Times Co., owners of newspaper International Herald Tribune, has proposed to buy a 5 percent stake in its 100 percent owned Sieger Solutions Ltd.

Sieger Solutions is engaged in the business of selling advertisement space in Deccan Chronicle and internet advertising.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Anyone know if the NYT has commented on/confirmed this?

On June 1, Times of India's parent company, Bennett, Coleman & Co, bought UK's Virgin Radio Holdings (minus the name) for $105 million. From the NYT story by Heather Timmons:

An Indian media conglomerate that owns The Times of India, the world’s largest-circulation English newspaper, has agreed to buy Virgin Radio Holdings for £53.2 million ($105 million) in its first foreign acquisition.

While the price tag for the deal, by the firm Bennett, Coleman & Company, is not huge in merger terms, it might be a sign of things to come from India and other emerging markets.

Traditional media companies in the United States, Western Europe and Japan have been struggling with falling advertising rates, a gloomy economic environment and competition from the Internet. But newspaper, television and radio companies in emerging markets, flush with cash as their audiences grow, are eager to expand.

“The opportunity to acquire a valuable radio asset couldn’t have come at a better time,” said A. P. Parigi, chief executive of a Bennett, Coleman unit, Times Infotainment Media, which made the deal, signed on Friday. Times Infotainment, which handles experimental marketing, film and radio rights, is developing a “powerful and exciting new brand,” he said in a statement.

Post your comments below.

SAJAforum coverage of the Indian media scene:

• More on the business press
• A look at new business dailies
• James Mutti essay on India, democracy & the press
• Questions for Sevanti Ninan on monitoring South Asia's press
• NBC buys stake in NDTV for $150 million
• Courting Dalits as readers
• Can journalism keep up with India's media explosion?
• One problem with Indian media
• News investors, turn to India (and ditch America)
• India's hot media market

HUMAN RIGHTS: Prof. Manu Bhagavan's new ideas

Prof. Manu Bhagavan, who teaches history at Hunter College in New York, sent us this:

My article, "A New Hope: India, the United Nations and the Making of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," has just been published by Modern Asian Studies (copyright Cambridge University Press) and is now online at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?iid=643648; the article will also be released in the print version of the journal in 2009.

This piece makes several important new claims, including:

1. calling for a major new interpretation of India's famous foreign policy of "non-alignment."
2. reinterpreting Jawaharlal Nehru's intellectual vision for India and the world.
3. providing new frameworks for understanding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
4. 4. rethinking the hopes and dreams for the UN invested by India and other postcolonial states.

Here is the official abstract:
Abstract: This article explores India's role in the development and design
of the United Nations, refracted through the Commission that drafted the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Through an analysis of sovereignty,
citizenship, nationality, and human rights from the 1940s to 1956, the paper
discusses what India hoped the UN to be, and more generally what they
intended for the new world order and for themselves.  The paper challenges
existing interpretations of international affairs in this period.  It seeks
to reform our understanding of Jawaharlal Nehru's intellectual vision, and
in the process attempts to recast the very concept of postcoloniality.

See his full note below, with contact info. Post your comments below.

BUSINESS: Ranbaxy stake sold for $4.6b to Japanese firm

Last night, we posted a report about the growing power of India and China in pharma R&D. This morning's news confirms just that. From Vivek Wadhwa of Duke/Harvard:

Ranbaxy was just acquired by a Japanese pharma firm for $4.6 billion. This is probably the
largest acquisition of an Indian firm to date and reinforces the message that our report made – that the world has changed and the Indian pharma industry is becoming a significant world player…We detailed all this in our report and it is now very timely!
[find that report here]

The details, from AFP:

Japanese pharmaceutical firm Daiichi Sankyo said Wednesday it would buy control of top Indian generics firm Ranbaxy for up to 4.6 billion dollars, entering the fast expanding non-branded drugs market.

Daiichi Sankyo, Japan's third-largest drugmaker, said it would purchase the 35 percent stake held by the Singh family, who control Ranbaxy Laboratories, for 737 rupees a share -- a 31 percent premium to the company's closing price Tuesday -- and make an open share offer to bring its holding to 51.1 percent.

From the FT story by Joe Leahy:

The takeover, which follows a string of overseas acquisitions by Japanese drugmakers, could permanently alter India’s homegrown generic pharmaceuticals industry, which is struggling to maintain its rapid growth amid concern it lacks the research muscle to compete with global rivals.

“This is a significant milestone in our mission of becoming a research-based international pharmaceutical company,” said Malvinder Mohan Singh, chief executive and managing director of Ranbaxy.

Read a Rediff.com profile of the 35-year-old CEO, Malvinder Mohan Singh by Suveen K. Sinha.

Post your thoughts, comments, news updates below.

GLOBALIZATION: New report looks at India & China in pharma R&D

In March 2008, SAJAforum hosted a webcast with Vivek Wadhwa (along with Vinod Dham, "the father of the Pentium chip") about immigration and business. Wadhwa, a technology entrepreneur who is currently a fellow at Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University, wrote to us today about his latest research projects. Take a look below and post your comments, please.

From: Vivek Wadhwa <vivek[at]wadhwa.com>

As you know my team at Duke and Harvard has been studying the globalization of industries. We about to release our first report in a series which shows how India and China are becoming major players in global R&D. Even though China is investing hundreds of billions of dollars into next-generation plants to turn the country into an export power in semiconductors, passenger cars, and specialty chemicals, India is ahead in innovation and R&D.

We observed that in the aerospace industry, Indian companies are designing the interiors of luxury jets, in-flight entertainment systems, collision-control/navigation-control systems, fuel-inverting controls, and other key components of jetliners for American and European corporations. In the automotive industry, Indian engineers are helping to design bodies, dashboards, and power trains for Detroit vehicle manufacturers. In telecom and computer networking, Indians are developing futuristic technologies for the intelligent cities which are being constructed in the Middle East. Indian engineers are also developing technology behind the next generations of cell phones for European and American companies.

The first in our series of reports looks at the pharmaceutical industry. Details of this are provided below The press release below will be on the wire on Wednesday, June 11 morning. Our detailed report can be downloaded from www.globalizationresearch.com.

If anyone wants to contact me, they can write to me directly.

Thanks, Vivek <vivek[at]wadhwa.com>

Among the findings, as highlighted in the press release below:

Through detailed interviews with executives of 16 pharmaceutical firms in China and India on their business models, value-chain activities, partnerships and technology capabilities, the researchers found that:

1. Indian and Chinese companies are making strides in the most lucrative segments of global value chains. In less lucrative segments, such as preclinical testing, animal experimentation and manufacturing, Chinese firms appear to be more prevalent.

2. India is regarded as a more mature venue for chemistry and drug-discovery activities than China.

3. Domestic Indian and Chinese firms rarely have the capital and the regulatory expertise to develop a drug beyond phase II clinical trials. Their commercial development of new intellectual property therefore necessitates relationships with major multinational corporations.

You can download the full report here.

Press release below. Post your comments, please.

BUSINESS: India's Vedanta Group buys major U.S. copper company

More news of Indian companies on the world stage. From Reuters (this was also front-page news in Saturday's Wall Street Journal, but it's behind the pay wall):

India's Sterlite Industries on Saturday agreed to buy the operating assets of bankrupt copper miner Asarco for $2.6 billion, the latest in the series of overseas acquisitions by Indian firms.

Tuscon-based Asarco, the third largest copper maker in U.S. had total revenue of $1.9 billion in 2007, Sterlite, a unit of Vedanta Resources Plc said in a statement.

"Asarco is a strategic fit with Sterlite's existing copper business," the Indian firm said in the statement.

On Friday a lawyer close to the deal had told Reuters in New York that Vedanta had signed a $2.6 billion deal to buy the assets of Asarco.
<snip>
Indian firms coming of years of strong profitable growth and clean balance sheets that aid easy access to capital have been snapping up overseas firms to expand their presence globally.

PREZ RACE: Guess what Obama is reading?

Strolling through the Huffington Post, I realized that Barack Obama is reading the same book that I am at the moment.

You guys might notice from the cover - Obama is holding Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. See SAJAForum's coverage of his book release.

Huffington Post's Michael Shaw says:

Now, if it was 2004 and this was a photo of Bush, I would say that Rove had an agenda in having his man carry that book around. In Obama's case, I wouldn't assume, but (photo ops being photo ops) it might be that Barack is seeding the field in drawing a contrast with Bush/McCain over what constitutes global power.

Shaw also thinks either Obama is already half-way into it or there is a page that Obama wants to keep his finger on.

 Ultrabrown's Manish sees a cabinet position for Fareed Zakaria.

Your thoughts on the picture? Please post them below.

FOOD CRISIS: Interview with "Stuffed and Starved" author Raj Patel

The international food crisis has been profoundly felt around the world (check out our coverage) but it's only in the last few weeks that the US media has latched on. One of the experts who's become a go-to person for the media is Raj Patel, author of "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System." He and his work have been covered in recent days by the San Francisco Chronicle, Alternet, Newsweek, Forbes, The New Yorker and NPR.

We asked him a few questions about the coverage of his book and the issue.

Tell us about your book - how is it benefiting from all the attention, in terms of sales and such?

The book has been getting the kind of reception I never expected. The books sales are a tightly kept secret - the minute they let me know is the minute the publishers start owing me royalties, so I've not really had any indication directly. But it has been a bestseller in independent bookstores in Australia and across Canada, is being reprinted a month after it was launched here in the US. It also has been published in Australia, Canada, the US, UK, Netherlands and Spain, with Italian, Korean and Chinese editions to come, and a special Indian edition out next month. A dozen documentary companies are interested in turning it into a documentary and, frankly, I'm a little overwhelmed.

Did you or your publisher expect a completely different reception when you first started working on it?

The publishers who got behind it early were always excited by it - in the UK, Netherlands, Australia and Canada in particular. But the hardest market to sell in was the US - it was turned down by pretty much every major publisher. But the timing of the launch here has much to do with its success too - it happened at just the same time as the extent of the global food crisis was starting to break in US media. And the subsequent reception has taken everyone, me included, by surprise. No one, least of all me, expected this to result in testimony in front of the House Financial Services Committee, or appearances on CNN or Al Jazeera, or a couple of slots on NPR.

FOOD CRISIS: Vinod Khosla's view

It's not every day that you see a South Asian name in the headline of a Wall Street Journal editorial. Today's "Khosla's Conspiracy," complete with one of the paper's signature "woodcut" illustrations, is all about venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.

Spiking food prices, global shortages and Third World riots have managed to elicit repentance from some ethanol evangelists. Not Vinod Khosla. As the Silicon Valley billionaire explained last week in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, ethanol's contribution to the crisis is "very minor" and "overblown."

"Food prices have been going up," Mr. Khosla conceded. "But there are massive PR campaigns trying to ascribe most of the blame to biofuels." Apparently "lots of people" are behind the plot, though Mr. Khosla singled out one: "Clearly, the American Petroleum Institute has been very, very concerned about food prices, and you wonder why."

Gosh. API is a trade group for the oil and gas industry that is radioactive on Capitol Hill. But we didn't realize that API's tentacles were wrapped around the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the USDA, all of which blame ethanol for inflationary pressures on food prices. Nor did we appreciate how much authority API's views carried with the U.N.'s special rapporteur for the right to food, Jean Ziegler, who says Western biofuels programs are "a crime against humanity."

Having missed the original SF Chronicle piece, I went back and found it. It was a Q&A (with business editor Al Saracevic and reporters David R. Baker, Ilana DeBare and Deborah Gage) that ran in the paper on Sunday, May 11: "On the Record: Vinod Khosla."

Flush with money and determined to save the world, the green-tech industry stands in full flower of its giddy youth.

BOOKS: More on Zakariapalooza

Last week, we compiled a bunch of items around Fareed Zakaria's new book, "The Post-American World," including reviews, videos, book tour info and more. This week, the Zakariapalooza continues.

• As of this writing, the book is #5 on Amazon's bestseller list; Jhumpa Lahiri's "Unaccustomed Earth is at #16. The NYT tracks books by nonfiction and fiction categories; Zakaria is at #11 on nonfiction; Lahiri is on #5 on fiction for the week ending May 18.
• Here's an excerpt from the review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review (the earlier, weekday NYT review is in last week's roundup). The review is by Josef Joffe, the publisher-editor of Die Zeit in Hamburg and a senior fellow at Stanford.
  >>>This is a relentlessly intelligent book that eschews simple-minded projections from crisis to collapse. There is certainly plenty to bemoan — from the disappearing dollar to the subprime disaster, from rampant anti-Americanism to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that will take years to win.

  Yet Zakaria’s is not another exercise in declinism. His point is not the demise of Gulliver, but the “rise of the rest.” After all, how can this giant follow Rome and Britain onto the dust heap of empire if it can prosecute two wars at once without much notice at home? The granddaughters of those millions of Rosie the Riveters who kept the World War II economy going are off to the mall today; if they don’t shop till they drop, it’s because of recession, not rationing.<<<

• You can read the first chapter here, free. Here's how it starts:
  >>>This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else. It is about the great transformation taking place around the world, a transformation that, though often discussed, remains poorly understood. This is natural. Changes, even sea changes, take place gradually. Though we talk about a new era, the world seems to be one with which we are familiar. But in fact, it is very different.<<< Read the rest of the first chapter.
• Vivek Wadhwa, the entrepreneur-turned-globalization researcher who we wrote about in 2006 and interviewed in 2008, sent out a note to his mailing list calling Zakaria's Newsweek cover essay based on his book a "must-read."

BOOKS: Fareed Zakaria's "The Post-American World"

If you feel like you are being exposed to a lot of Fareed Zakaria these days, it's no accident. Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International and host of a new foreign affairs show coming soon to CNN, has a brand-new book, "The Post-American World" (see SAJAforum mention of the book launch, starring Henry Kissinger) and he's everywhere.

UPDATE: The book's publicist, Rachel Salzman at W.W. Norton reports that it debuts at #11 on the NYT bestseller list for the week of May 11. Meanwhile:

• The cover story this week's Newsweek is adapted from the book (click to magnify).
• Video of his conversation with Charlie Rose on May 1 (video below, too)
• Video of his conversation with Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" on May 5 (video below, too)
• Video of him talking about the book on Newsweek.com.
• Video of his appearance of the local Fox station in NYC.
• See May 11 SAJAforum roundup of Zakariapalooza.

Reviews are sprouting all over the place (some are below). He's also going to be in several cities during May. See the full tour info below. What do you think? Post your comments and thoughts below.

From FareedZakaria.com:

In his new book, The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria argues that the "rise of the rest" is the great story of our time.

This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

CONTROVERSY: Bush blames India's middle class for rising food prices

[That's a cartoon by Massachusetts-based Thommy Kodenkandath; you can see a high-rez version at his cartoon blog, "DrawOpinions".]

It all began on Friday, May 2, with a question about rising food prices during a presidential press conference in Missouri. The answer from President George W. Bush, taken from the official transcript, included these thoughts:

Worldwide there is increasing demand.  There turns out to be prosperity in developing world, which is good.  It's going to be good for you because you'll be selling products into countries -- big countries perhaps -- and it's hard to sell products into countries that aren't prosperous.  In other words, the more prosperous the world is, the more opportunity there is.

It also, however, increases demand.  So, for example, just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class.  That's bigger than America.  Their middle class is larger than our entire population.  And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food.  And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.

And in the last couple of days, there's been a lot of coverage in India about those comments and the heated reaction there from politicians, analysts and others:

• Times of India: Parties unite to slam Bush food remark
  All major political parties, including Congress, BJP and the Left, on Saturday lashed out at US President George W Bush for blaming the growing demand in India for the spiralling global food prices even as the Opposition also used the opportunity to attack the government.

PHOTO FORUM: The Tragic Fibre, by Andrew Biraj

The SAJA Photo Forum presents the work of photographers covering South Asia and its global diasporas in order to highlight important but often overlooked stories.

The Tragic Fibre

Text and photographs © Andrew Biraj

“Our life is like the factory’s spare junk. No one needs us now,” says Mozammel Haque, a 58-year-old jute mill supervisor at the Platinum jute mill in Khulna, Bangladesh. By that time all of the three major jute mills of the country had been closed down due to unexpected lay offs. Like thousands of other laborers, Mozammel Haque has been fired after 32 years of service.

As the world's largest jute-producing country, Bangladesh accounted for a significant amount of global exports until the early seventies. But since the government closed down the Adamjee jute mill (the largest jute mill in the world), calling it "unprofitable" in 2003 following the prescriptions of IMF and the World Bank, the whole jute industry in Bangladesh began to collapse.

Mozammel Haque was fired under the new labour law which stipulates retirement age 57 instead of the previous 60, but he is yet to receive his retirement benefits. He sits at the machine where he worked  his entire life.

Bangladeshis are taught from childhood that jute is the key source of the economy. “The Golden Fibre” was something to be proud of in the developing nation.  But this vibrant trade has been mired in corruption and unprofitability, forcing the government to close it down.

In April 2007 the workers protested in the streets after the government shut down the Platinum and Crescent jute mills in Khulna. The workers of those mills still had several months' worth of wages pending.  Others were forced into what the military-driven interim government prefers to call "voluntary retirement." They have yet to be notified when their retirement benefits would be given.

BOOKS: Parag Khanna's "The Second World"

Foreign policy expert Parag Khanna made one of the biggest possible splashes in advance of his publication date: a cover essay in the New York Times Magazine in Jan. 2008. His essay, "Who Shrank the Superpower" (and its provocative cover image) were adapted from his new book, "The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order."

Listen to a SAJA webcast with Khanna:

Grand explanations of how to understand the complex twenty-first-century world have all fallen short–until now. In The Second World, the brilliant young scholar Parag Khanna takes readers on a thrilling global tour, one that shows how America’s dominant moment has been suddenly replaced by a geopolitical marketplace wherein the European Union and China compete with the United States to shape world order on their own terms.

This contest is hottest and most decisive in the Second World: pivotal regions in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and East Asia. Khanna explores the evolution of geopolitics through the recent histories of such underreported, fascinating, and complicated countries as Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Libya, Vietnam, and Malaysia–nations whose resources will ultimately determine the fate of the three superpowers, but whose futures are perennially uncertain as they struggle to rise into the first world or avoid falling into the third.

Comparable in scope and boldness to Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man and Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Parag Khanna’s The Second World will be the definitive guide to world politics for years to come.

“A savvy, streetwise primer on dozens of individual countries that adds up to a coherent theory of global politics.” – Robert D. Kaplan, author of Eastward to Tartary and Warrior Politics

For review copies or interview requests, please contact Dana Maxson: dmaxson[at] randomhouse.com.Tell him SAJA sent you - please note he will only be able to respond to journalists.

Details of his book, testimonials and more below and at ParagKhanna.com. Post your comments below.

GLOBALIZATION: Migrants send $300 billion home each year

A recent World Bank study led by Dilip Ratha says that global remittances--the money that migrants send home--exceeds $300 billion per year. Jason DeParle of The New York Times covered the study, "World Banker and His Cash Return Home":

India ($27 billion), China ($26 billion) and Mexico ($25 billion) are the leading beneficiaries. But in relative terms, small countries gain the most, with some increasing their national incomes by more than 20 percent. Egypt gets more from remittances than it does from the Suez Canal.

More on Ratha’s pioneering work (also view an audio slide show, "Return to Sindhekela"):

When Mr. Ratha reached the World Bank in the early 1990s, most economists saw remittances as small private sums that were irrelevant to development. After years of sending money home, he took a closer look.

Given the scorekeeping at central banks, it was an exercise in forensic accounting.

The International Monetary Fund said the Philippines received $122 million. Mr. Ratha produced an estimate 51 times higher: $6.2 billion. His tallies, first published in 2003, showed that remittances, once dismissed as the equivalent of a rounding error, were nearly three times greater than the world’s combined foreign aid.

“That was a bombshell,” said Kathleen Newland, a founder of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research group. “Putting it in that context made people see there was this enormous flow of money into the developing world. Dilip really is the person who put remittances on the map.”

Phil Izzo has more at the WSJ blog Real Time Economics (which also cites Ratha):

The U.S., which was the top immigration country in 2005 with 38.4 million immigrants, is by far the largest source of outflows, with $42 billion in recorded outward flows in 2006. Saudi Arabia ranks as the second largest, followed by Switzerland and Germany. The Mexico-U.S. corridor is the largest migration corridor in the world, the Worlds Bank said, accounting for 10.4 million migrants by 2005.

However, there has been plenty of criticism of remittances. From the Times:

When officials from more 150 countries met in Brussels last summer, remittances figured high on the agenda. Skeptics smell a fad.

“Remittances: the New Development Mantra?” asked an article by Devesh Kapur of the University of Pennsylvania. He sees the money as a palliative that, while at times helpful in easing poverty symptoms, leaves underlying structures unchanged. “If I ask can you name a single country that has developed through remittances, the answer is no — there’s none,” he said.

POVERTY: Kiva's microloans get attention - and results

Here's how you can unleash your inner Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel-winning banker to the poor. On the "Today Show" on NBC this past week, a small website that allows ordinary Internet users make loans as small as $25 to poor entrepreneurs halfway around the world, was featured. Here's the story on Kiva.org by John Larson (who, incidentally, is one of the best storytellers on TV; I was using examples of his work in my classes back in 1995):

The president of the company is Premal Shah, a former PayPal exec (read about him here and here). See Shah talk about Kiva in an interview with SAJAer Riz Khan on Al Jazeera International. And listen to a recording of SAJA's 2006 webcast with Yunus, a couple of weeks before his Nobel win. Post your comments, please.

AMERICA SPOTTING: A village called America - in India

Here's news of a village in India with an unusual name. The press in India have noted a village called America about 85 miles from colorful Jodhpur, in the heart of Rajasthan. From the Times of India story:

India's own America is just a few kilometres from Falodi and Kheechan, famous for the migratory demoiselles crane. Its actual name happens to be Lordiyan, but, over the years, it has acquired the tag "America" - and each villager seems to have his own reason for calling it so.

"America" has 100% literacy and is self-reliant in many respects. "Our self-confidence is the reason people started calling our village 'America'," says Bansi Lal Vyas, 65, a retired schoolteacher.

His peer Lalji gives another twist: "Many residents of this prosperous village moved to Mumbai. Also the womenfolk of this village used to go to Falodi in groups for shopping and their affluence and attitude led people of Falodi to refer to Lordiyan as America."

Resident Ashok Vyas, too, has a tale: "There's a belief that if anyone utters the name of this village in the morning, he would either go hungry through the day or meet with some mishap. Thus, people started calling this village by different names." This, according to Vyas, resulted in people gradually settling down on one name, and it happened to be America.

No word on whether they pronounce it "Amreeka" the way many northern Indians would say the country's name.

Although the name appears to be somewhat self-assigned based on Indians’ perception of “America” the witticism and spiritedness behind the renaming make its usage nearly undeniable. In the days when the name was still catching on, imagine a hearty shop owner in a noisy bazaar. Bits of sunlight color the tarmac. In the distance, a few familiar women can be seen approaching his shop. As they reach the steps of his shop and wipe their sandals on the welcome mat, “Khama ghani hukam! Aaiye, aaiye!” (Greetings, Ladies!) Turning to the shop attendant, “Naya maal nikalo ji, Amrica wali aayeen hain! (Take out the latest stock, the American women are here to shop.)   

Good sales that morning and the name finds a few more followers!

Early last year, SAJA covered a story about a "Lahore" In Orange County, Virginia by Imran Siddiqui of VOA’s Urdu TV Channel. Follow the link to read about how the name came about and the grand plans of a Pakistani American who had acquired some land at the time.

As for Lordiyan, it was not always America, neither ideologically nor by name.

Says Rajendra Saral, who translated many of Lenin's books from English to Rajasthani in the 1960s, "This village used to be called Lalchin [lal means red and chin is hindi for China] (after Red China) due to belief in Communist ideology in 1960s."

The village, about 1,500-strong, has nearly 750 houses with Pushkarna Brahmins dominating the social milieu, says Narsingh Das, the village sarpanch.

Long live the happy and united residents of America! Post your comments below.

RESOURCES: Malaysia's Indian Community Struggles for Minority Rights

[UPDATE, Feb. 10, 2008: New York Times' Thomas Fuller covers the Malaysian situation: "Indian Discontent Fuels Malaysia's Rising Tensions" ]

Indians in Malaysia are engaged in a struggle for their rights as minority citizens in a country built on the premise of excluding them.  Here are some resources for covering the situation.

November 25, 2007: Water Cannons & Tear Gas:

On Nov. 25, 2007, HINDRAF (the Hindu Rights Action Force) organized a protest in downtown Kuala Lumpur that drew somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 Indians, mostly Tamils of Indian and Sri Lankan descent who are citizens of Malaysia.  They had intended to present a document to the British High Commission demanding restitution for their time as indentured laborers in British Malaya and the subsequent hardships they have