NewsTrust - India - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Occupy Wall Street is "So Important Because It is in the Heart of Empire"

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Arundhati Roy - Nov. 15 (Interview) - Renowned Indian writer and global justice activist Arundhati Roy is preparing to address Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday. She recently joined us in the studio to talk about the Occupy movement. "What they are doing becomes so important because it is in the heart of empire, or what used to be empire," Roy said. "And to criticize and to protest against the model that the rest of the world is aspiring to is a very important and a very serious business. So...it makes me very, very hopeful that after a long time you're seeing some nascent political, real political anger here." She also discussed her new book, "Walking with the Comrades," a chronicle of her time in the forests of India alongside rebel guerrillas who are resisting a brutal military campaign by the Indian government. [includes rush transcript]

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"Every 30 Minutes": Crushed by Debt and Neo-Liberal Reforms, Indian Farmers Commit Suicide At Staggering Rate

Wed, 11 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Smita Narula, Amy Goodman - May. 11 (Interview) - A quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last 16 years—an average of one suicide every 30 minutes. The crisis has ballooned with economic liberalization that has removed agricultural subsidies and opened Indian agriculture to the global market. Small farmers are often trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt, leading many to take their lives out of sheer desperation. We speak with Smita Narula of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University Law School, co-author of a new report on farmer suicides in India.

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Global Call to Release Imprisoned Indian Human Rights Activist Dr. Binayak Sen

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 28 (Opinion) - An Indian high court is hearing arguments to release the nation's most famous political prisoner on bail and suspend his conviction. Last month, a trial court sentenced renowned physician and human rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen to rigorous life imprisonment on the basis of an archaic colonial-era sedition law. Dr. Sen, along with two others, were found guilty of sedition and criminal conspiracy by a court in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh on allegations of helping a banned group of Maoists. On Sunday, Dr. Sen's supporters around the world will mark a global day of protest against his conviction. _Democracy Now!_’s Anjali Kamat traveled to Chhattisgarh and filed this report on what lies behind the targeting and conviction of Dr. Sen.

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The Future of Indian Technology

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - By Vivek Wadhwa - Nov. 13 (Opinion) - The Indian technology industry got its start running call centers and doing low-level IT work for western firms. Then, in the 2000s, it started taking on higher-level IT tasks, offering management consulting services, and performing sophisticated R&D. Now there is another transition happening, one far more significant: a transition to development of innovative technology products. Instead of providing IT services as the big outsourcing companies do, a new breed of startups is developing high-value products based on intellectual property. The Indian industry group NASSCOM estimates that in 2008, the country’s software product revenues totaled $1.64 billion. It forecasts that this will grow to $11 billion per year by 2015.

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Acclaimed Indian Author Arundhati Roy on Obama's Wars, Poverty and India's Maoist Rebels

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Arundhati Roy, Amy Goodman - Nov. 08 (Interview) - Maoist rebels in India called for a strike Monday to protest President Obama's visit. The Indian media reports Maoists blew up a new school building and killed four persons in the eastern Indian states of Orissa and Bihar. We speak with author and essayist Arundhati Roy about the struggle of the Maoist rebels in India and her assessment of President Obama.

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President Obama's Expensive Trip to India

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Colbert Report - By Stephen Colbert - Nov. 08 (Comedy News) - Barack Obama doesn't have to spend $200 million a day on a trip to India when he can use Cisco's new TelePresence system.

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“Media Subdues The Public. It’s So In India, Certainly”

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

outlookindia.com - By Noam Chomsky; Ajaz Ashraf, Anuradha Raman - Nov. 01 (Interview) - The man NYT called “arguably the most important intellectual alive” finds the media in Pakistan more vibrant than it is in India

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Acclaimed Indian Author Arundhati Roy Faces Arrest for Questioning India's Claim on Kashmir

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Oct. 27 (Interview) - The award-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy is facing possible arrest in India on sedition charges after publicly advocating for Kashmir independence and challenging India's claim that Kashmir is an "integral part of India." If charged and convicted of sedition, Roy could face up to life in prison.

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Priming a Broken Pump

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Stan Sorscher - Sep. 27 (Opinion) - Their strategy is a winner in the long run, while ours is a long-run loser. They are playing by their rules; we are playing by our rules. Their rules beat our rules. In past recessions, we used the term "priming the pump" as shorthand for economic stimulus. Hand-pumps are no longer part of our daily experience, so the comparison is lost. It's just as well. The whole "pump-priming" metaphor is misguided. When you prime a pump, you assume that the pump works OK, and that the well has plenty of water. You just add a little water to the pump, and more water will come gushing out.

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The child-driven education

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TED - Sep. 07 (Speech) - Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.

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Why India Has an Advantage Over China

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New America Media - By Raywat Deonandan - Sep. 01 (Editorial) - In the comparison of Chinese and Indian economies, a practice increasingly popular in the parlor rooms of academics, China seems to win according to every traditional metric. But there are qualities that hint at a dramatic shift in coming decades. I would like to respectfully suggest that it will be India, not China, which will take the world’s economy and culture by the collars and shake it till the human race takes note. Assuming that a global economy still exists, and assuming that climate change or some other apocalyptic event hasn’t ravaged humanity back to the Stone Age, I predict that the close of the 21st century will see India as the world’s leading nation.

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Fighting India's Maoists Means More Than Guns

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Jayshree Bajoria - Apr. 26 (Interview) - The killing earlier this month (Hindu) of seventy-six government troops by Maoists in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh highlighted the threat from this growing insurgency and the debate over how best to counter it. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called the threat posed by Naxalites, as the Maoists are locally known, the "single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country." Last year, Indian home minister P. Chidambaram noted Maoists held pockets of influence in twenty of India's twenty-eight states and ordered a major offensive against them.

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Transgender India: Banned in Bombay?

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Hanna Ingber Win - Apr. 10 () - MUMBAI, India — Laxmi Tripathi stands tall and proud. She — who used to go by he — wears her hair long, her eyes decorated with thick black eyeliner and a low-cut top that reveals a hint of cleavage. Bangles adorn her wrists. Hailed as a success story in India, Tripathi has spoken at the United Nations and addressed conferences around the world on the rights of the transgender community. And yet, being somewhat of a celebrity activist did not shield Tripathi from the very discrimination she has denounced. Last week, officials at the Bombay Gymkhana in South Mumbai interrupted a dinner party there to kick Tripathi out of the exclusive club. “I could never believe this could happen to me. I have been to so many places in the world, treated with so much dignity,” Tripathi said as she took a break from dubbing a new Bollywood film on the transgender community. And yet this incident happened “in a town where I’m more famous than anywhere in the world.” While gradual progress has been made to garner more rights for and reduce the stigma against India’s transgenders, the episode at the club illustrates that the community still faces serious discrimination — even among the elite, said Tripathi and other activists. A certain segment of Mumbai’s middle and upper class thinks of itself as cosmopolitan, said Parmesh Shahani, author of "Gay Bombay," who was at last week’s dinner party. However, if one scratches below the surface, he said, there are many undercurrents at play. “Over the past two decades we've been very wrapped up in this whole ‘India Shining’ [idea],” he said. “But I think true modernity lies in having a plural and accepting mindset and really embracing diversity in all its forms.” The transgender community in India, known as hijras, number up to a million people and occupy a unique role in society. On the one hand, they are called upon to offer blessings during auspicious occasions like weddings and at births. The rest of the time, they are not only ignored but often ostracized from society. Discrimination has prevented most hijras from obtaining decent education, jobs and housing, say transgender and human rights activists. The vast majority live in slums and, with limited job opportunities, resort to sex work or begging. They weave in and out of Mumbai’s traffic or come onto the women’s compartments of local trains, clap loudly and take money in exchange for a blessing. The “life of transsexuals or transgenders is not miserable simply because of club prejudice,” Meenakshi Ganguly of Human Rights Watch wrote in an email. “What is much harder is rejection by community, by relatives and the police abuse they suffer.” She added that many are HIV positive and face difficulty getting medical treatment. The hospital staff cannot determine whether they should be placed in the male or female wards. While hijras continue to face discrimination, they have also made significant social and legal gains in recent years. Last July, the Delhi High Court decriminalized gay sex, and in November, transgenders won the right to be listed as “other” rather than “male” or “female” on electoral rolls and voter identity cards. A Bollywood film called “Queens!," scheduled to be released later this year, will feature professional actors as well as hijras themselves and present the community in a “dignified” and thereby new light, said David Atkins, the writer and director of the film. The movie could not have been made a decade ago, he said, because both Indian society and the hijras were not ready for it. “Ten years ago, they had not come out of the closet,” Atkins said. “With Laxmi backing them, they are no longer afraid to show themselves.” In some ways, the incident at the club also highlights these changes in society. After the CEO of the Bombay Gymkhana told the dinner party’s organizer that Tripathi must leave, the entire group walked out of the club. Some members of the club have since galvanized around Tripathi to show their support, and the local media has run numerous stories bringing attention to what happened. Such outrage at the club’s behavior might not have happened five years ago, Shahani said. Prejudice has not gone away, he said, "but people are being sensitized to the rights of certain populations." The Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission has taken up the case, and Tripathi says she plans a lawsuit against the club claiming gender discrimination. The Bombay Gymkhana did not return GlobalPost's calls for comment.

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Jamal Dajani: Look Who's Missing from Washington

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - On Thursday President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed an arms control treaty hailed by the White House as a big step forward "to reset relations with Russia", as well as for the US president's broader nuclear agenda. The

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India must make peace with Pakistan to stop terrorism - Huffington Post (blog)

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:29:47 -0700

Huffington Post - Apr. 08 - A Pakistan NewsIndia must make peace with Pakistan to stop terrorismHuffington Post (blog)Since founding, Pakistan has supported insurgencies and terrorism, training and funding groups as a tool of warfare against a burgeoning giant next door, ...India could gain from US-Pakistan nuke dealLivemintNuke deal for Pak: China proposes, US disposes?Times of IndiaPak heartburn rising, mini N-battle likely at US meetDaily News & AnalysisDAWN.com?-Pakistan Patriot?-Pakistan Ledger (blog)all 177 news articles??

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She Was There

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

outlookindia.com - By Sudhanva Deshpande - Apr. 05 (Opinion) - It is in the nature of embedded journalism to get close enough to the ‘action’ to give us an authentic sense of the smells and sights. Roy does that. It’s also in the nature of embedded journalism that it remains prisoner to the embedder’s conceptual framework. A truly critical intelligence would cut through it. Roy, however, chooses to be smitten.

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Why America Needs To Start Educating Its Workforce Again

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Vivek Wadhwa - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - Ask any old-time IBMer, and you will hear stories of IBM’s legendary workforce-development practices. When a manager identified a manufacturing worker with promise, the company would teach him how to dress, how to speak to clients, and how to service products. These technicians would then be trained to be computer programmers, sales reps, or product managers. IBM president Thomas Watson, Sr., considered education so important that, in 1932, he started a mini-university for employees, the Endicott schoolhouse.

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Arundhati Roy on Obama's Wars, India and Why Democracy Is "The Biggest Scam in the World"

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Arundhati Roy, Amy Goodman, ANJALI KAMAT - Mar. 22 (Interview) - We speak with acclaimed Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy on President Obama, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, India and Kashmir and much more. Roy also talks about her journey deep into the forests of central India to report on the Maoist insurgency.

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Forced Into Brothels

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Mystified Justice - By Sana Saleem - Mar. 07 (Opinion) - Increasing poverty remains one of the biggest recruiters of the flesh industry. These beggar are plotted on streets at a young age exploiting sympathies for better earning. This eventually becomes their source of income for generations to come. However it doesn’t end here the girls that were once forced into the streets as infants are then hurled into brothels. The dark alleys of these brothels become their homes after a long day of begging in the scorching heat. For them there is no escaping the misery. Once hurled in to the notorious world they are deemed loathful.

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Caught up in Prophet Mohammed's birthday

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

GlobalPost - By Hanna Ingber Win - Mar. 04 (Opinion) - How a Jewish American woman found herself carried along by the tide of a celebratory procession through the streets of Mumbai.

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The NYT Veers Neocon

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Feb. 28 (Opinion) - Many American progressives don't want to recognize how bad the U.S. mainstream news media has become. It's easier to praise a few exceptions to the rule and to hope that some pendulum will swing than to undertake the challenging task of building a new and honest media infrastructure. But the hard reality is that the U.S. news media is getting worse, with now both premier national newspapers - the New York Times and the Washington Post - decidedly sliding into the neocon camp, where the likes of the Wall Street Journal have long resided.

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Ambedkar’s Desiderata

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

outlookindia.com - By Ramachandra Guha - Jan. 23 (Opinion) - In six decades of ‘progress’ India hasn’t realised our founders’ vision of social democracy. Over the years, the makers of modern India have been parochialised by the sect or state to which they originally belonged. Rabindranath Tagore, whose stories and especially essays are of universal appeal, is now considered an icon of Bengalis alone. Vallabhbhai Patel, without whose efforts India would not be a united nation, is now hardly remembered outside Gujarat. Jawaharlal Nehru, who helped nurture a democratic ethos across India, is now the property of a single party

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Double Jeopardy at Copenhagen

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By David Corn - Dec. 11 (Opinion) - At the Copenhagen summit, there isn't a negotiating process to reach a climate pact. There are two. And that's a problem—perhaps big enough to pose a threat to the entire effort to reach an international deal.

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Bangladesh: Mourning Senator Edward Kennedy

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Rezwan - Aug. 27 (Opinion) - Senator Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009), the second most senior member of the US Senate, died of cancer last Tuesday. Bloggers recall him as a true friend of Bangladesh and explain why Bangladeshis will remember him forever.

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Gojra, Quran, Jinnah, CIA and RAW

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

rupeenews.com - By Moin Ansari - Aug. 04 (Opinion) - he enemies of Pakistan are desperately trying to ignite civil unrest in the country. Years ago they used to attack Shia and Sunny places of worship to play havoc in the Pakistani society. The people of Pakistan have now learned and understood the enemy’s tactics. No one now start rioting against the other group after any such attack. Our enemies are using the likes of TTP and BLA to perpetuate bloodshed in Pakistan. But that plan is fast nearing its demise without producing any tangible results for the enemies. It is not unimaginable that the enemies might be trying to open a new front in their dirty war against the Pakistanis. The government should act swiftly to take the responsibles of this heinous crime in Gojra to the task and ensure a quick and maximum possible punishment for the criminals. Justice must be timely and visible to all or else it is the murder of justice itself. It is indeed reassuring that the CM Punjab has visited the affected area and vowed to bring the culprits to justice.

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