‘An act of sabotage’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 11:37 AM - 0 Comments

Japan, India and Tuvalu add their concerns.

The tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, one those most at risk from rising sea levels caused by climate change, was more blunt. ”For a vulnerable country like Tuvalu, its an act of sabotage on our future,” Ian Fry, its lead negotiator said. ”Withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol is a reckless and totally irresponsible act,” he said in an email to Reuters.

Critics in Australia are using the Harper government’s decision to scorn the Australian government.

Peter Kent versus the world

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

The Environment Minister spreads the good word.

Environment Minister Peter Kent repeated his sharp criticism of Kyoto at a high-level session of the Durban talks. “Kyoto, for Canada, is in the past,” Mr. Kent told a large audience of delegates and climate negotiators on Wednesday. “For Canada, the Kyoto Protocol is not where the solution lies,” he said. “It is an agreement that covers fewer than 30 per cent of global emissions.”

As he spoke, six Canadian activists stood up and silently protested by turning their backs on him, wearing T-shirts that said: “Turn your back on Canada.” Security guards quickly rushed over and escorted them away, leading them through a narrow corridor at the back of the room and then evicting them from the conference. But the protesters won louder applause than Mr. Kent, whose speech was greeted by a smattering of polite applause from delegates.

Earlier this week, Mr. Kent promised the Harper government wouldn’t withdraw from Kyoto during the Durban conference, but wouldn’t comment on what might happen after the talks. Officials from Brazil, Germany, India and South Africa are unimpressed.

Turning swords into ploughshares

By Alex Ballingall - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

The enterprising police chief of one of India’s most crime-ridden states has come up with a new idea intended to free up storage space and create thousands of tools for the working population. Abhyamand, police chief of Bihar in northern India, has spearheaded an initiative to melt down more than 60,000 guns seized from criminals, currently gathering dust in hundreds of malkhanas, or police station storage units. Their metal is already being used for farming tools. “Can we keep the dead bodies of criminals for long? Only the post-mortem is preserved. The same should apply with unwanted weapons,” said the police chief, recently sharing his logic with the BBC.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Bihar had more than 3,000 violent killings last year. To combat this, Abhyamand has introduced fast-track trials and enabled police to seize unclaimed private property in Bihar. For his latest initiative—which he refers to as the “cannibalization of Bihar’s weapons”—Abhyamand took advantage of a provision in the Bihar Police Manual that allows him to destroy any “unserviceable or unusable” weapons. “The weapons in police station malkhanas are of no use,” he recently told the BBC. “They stink like dead bodies.”

Third child? Make it a girl.

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 1 Comment

Wilfried Maisy/REA/Redux

Governments imposing population controls have a tendency to wind up like the sorcerer’s apprentice. Take the western Indian state of Maharashtra, one of the country’s most populous, where a two-child policy has led to such widespread gender selection through abortion that the local government is scrambling to boost the dwindling female population. In Maharashtra, there are only 88 girls for every 100 boys, compared to the world’s natural sex ratio of 98 per 100. State officials now want to encourage procreation—but only if it helps beef up the number of girls born. According to a recent proposal that could turn into law, couples will be encouraged to have up to three children, as long as the third one belongs to the gentler sex. These girls, the government promises, will be eligible for free public education and a number of unspecified financial perks.

It all amounts to a mixed message. Legislators are also fast-tracking a motion to outlaw prenatal sex selection. But human rights groups have warned that the promise of rewards for a third-born girl provides a strong incentive for couples to break the government’s own ban on selective abortions. Meanwhile, Maharashtra’s legislative twists haven’t dissuaded the southern state of Kerala from considering its own two-child policy, which would punish parents who have more than two children with up to three months in jail, and bar religious leaders from promoting large families.

The $30 tablet is here. But you can’t have one—yet.

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 6:00 PM - 19 Comments

The Aakash is a pretty crappy tablet computer.  Made in India, the Android gadget’s touchscreen is small, with no multitouch functionality. Its battery only lasts for a few hours, its processor is fairly slow, it has no camera, and though it has WiFi, you’ll need a USB dongle to connect to the mobile Internet when away from wireless broadband. Compared to the iPad, the Aakash is a piece of junk—except for the one stat where it blows Apple completely out of the water: price.

The Aakash costs $37.98 to manufacture. Ten thousand units are currently in the hands of Indian students. Thanks to a government subsidy, they cost $30 each. A retail version of the Aakash is expected soon, with 90,000 units shipping to Indian stores bearing a sticker price of $50 to $60. There’s no word on a North American release just yet.

Here’s a short video report on the Aakash from NDTV: Continue…

Don’t touch my typewriter!

By Alex Derry - Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 0 Comments

As one of the world’s most advanced economies, India has an IT industry employing millions. But while the subcontinent has gone high tech, its labyrinthine and paper-centric bureaucracy has made the typewriter de rigueur among the country’s clerical workers. It is also a necessity for people who cannot afford a laptop or who live in regions without power. There is also a kind of national reverence for the typewriter, according to the Los Angeles Times, which originated in the 1950s when then-prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru called it a symbol of modernity and independence.

But as younger generations are predominantly using computers, a dying market and the impact of the global financial crisis have taken their toll on typewriter production. Mumbai-based Godrej and Boyce, the last company in the world making new machines, announced in 2010 they were down to their last 200 models and would no longer be manufacturing them. Nevertheless, India’s typewriter enthusiasts hope that with enough repair know-how and hardware, the carbon ribbons will keep flying and carriages will continue to ring across the page. “The computer is lifeless, but there’s a sheer joy in manual typing,” says Mumbai’s Abishek Jain, who set a world typing record in 1993. “It’s a kind of music.”

Pakistan’s weapon of mass distraction

By Cynthia Reynolds - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP

The appointment of Pakistan’s new foreign minister is dividing opinion across the conservative nation. Hina Rabbani Khar is the first woman to ever hold the position in that country and, at 34, she’s also the youngest. While some argue her selection is a sign of hope for a new, more moderate direction for the hardline nation, others see the appointment of the wealthy businesswoman—and a member of a powerful Punjabi family—as business as usual. Some also consider her vastly inexperienced. Khar, who’s held mostly junior portfolios, slipped into government after a 2002 ruling required politicians to have a college degree; she ran for office after the rule disqualified her veteran politician father. Pakistan’s archrival India, meanwhile, is offering its own take on Khar: for the moment, it appears to have settled on style icon.

During her first official visit to Delhi last month, part of the new efforts to revive relations between the long-time foes, the press had little to say about Khar’s political skills. Instead, the media gushed over her black Hermès Birkin bag, Roberto Cavalli sunglasses, and classic strand of pearls, comparing her to Michelle Obama, Carla Bruni, even Kate Middleton. One columnist referred to her as Pakistan’s “weapon of mass distraction.” It’s not the first time the press has seized upon her image; pictures of her in trendy slim-fitting jeans have raised eyebrows throughout Pakistan, prompting traditionalists to question whether the co-owner of Polo Lounge, a trendy restaurant on downtown Lahore’s polo grounds, is out of touch with the conservative—and poor—country. Regardless, she now helms one of the most volatile relationships in world politics.
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India's corruption stories, online

By Julia Belluz - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:35 AM - 1 Comment

If you measure the level of corruption in India using Ipaidabribe.com, it appears many more citizens in the world’s largest democracy are getting ripped off than not. On the site, regular Indians blog about their brushes with bribery or share tales of hoodwinking the hoodwinkers. Right now, though, there is only one story of triumph for every 10 tales of sleaze. The site’s creators hope the ratio will tip the other way, as Ipaidabribe.com becomes one of many recent Internet tools intended to shame governments into addressing the problem of bribery—part of an anti-corruption campaign that’s sweeping India. In some states, applications for birth and death certificates have gone online, as have bids for government contracts, minimizing the opportunity for petty in-person bribery.

For now, Ipaidabribe.com will serve as a cultural document of India’s ubiquitous culture of graft, and as a repository of frustrated Indians’ stories. One user in Hyderabad had to fork out an “appalling” 15,000 rupees for electricity; another in New Delhi says it took 2,000 rupees to get her medical school to hand over her medical certificates. And another threw his hands up after a brush with a crooked customs officer at the airport: “God bless India,” he wrote, “because India needs God more than ever.”

Bollywood confidential

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 4 Comments

Reuters; Keystone Press; Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

If there had ever been doubt about the appeal of Bollywood stars in Toronto, it evaporated on a Sunday afternoon in the fall of 2006. The occasion was the gala premiere of a Hindi movie called Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (Never Say Goodbye) at the Toronto International Film Festival. Thousands of screaming South Asian fans jammed the street outside Roy Thomson Hall as two Indian superstars hit the red carpet—Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood’s most revered patriarch, and Shah Rukh Khan, the heartthrob who ranks as India’s Brad Pitt (even if, to respect his wife, he doesn’t kiss his leading ladies). The previous night, the real Brad Pitt had worked the same red carpet for a TIFF premiere—but didn’t create half as much mayhem as King Khan. “When the stars pulled up in their SUV limos, it was absolute pandemonium,” recalls TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey. “Thousands of people rushed the barriers trying to get a glimpse of them.”

Five years later, that pandemonium will be replayed on a grand scale as Toronto hosts the International Indian Film Academy awards. The IIFA celebrations, which run from June 23-25, are expected to attract a pantheon of Bollywood stars and some 40,000 tourists to the Greater Toronto Area. The festivities will include concerts, screenings, a fashion show, a TIFF retrospective honouring screen legend Raj Kapoor, an exhibit of vintage hand-painted film posters at the Royal Ontario Museum—climaxing with the pageantry of the awards at the Rogers Centre, which will be watched by some 700 million people in 60 countries.

Despite the “Academy” brand, the IIFA awards are not quite India’s Oscars. They’re an annual road show designed to promote Bollywood around the world. Now in their 12th year, they have been staged in capitals from London to Bangkok, Johannesburg to Singapore. Toronto is the first North American city to play host—a privilege that Premier Dalton McGuinty bought with a $12-million pledge from the province to the IIFA.

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A world of 10 billion

By Charlie Gillis and Kate Lunau. - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 10 Comments

For the world, as for his family, the birth of Adnan Nevic was cause for celebration. No less an eminence than the secretary-general of the United Nations attended his arrival, posing with the swaddled child as camera strobes lit a maternity room in central Sarajevo. He was born four minutes past midnight on October 12, 1999, and Kofi Annan had made his way to the hospital like a wise man following a star. There were 5.999999999 billion people on the face of the planet, depending on whose “population clock” you went by. The time had come to designate a six billionth.

The challenges that lay before this infant reflected those of human populations around the globe. His parents, Jasmin and Fatima, were poor. The family lived cheek by jowl in a bleak apartment. His father needed work. Ethnic conflict remained a dormant but ever-present threat to their country. The UN chief offered words of hope, saying this “beautiful boy in a city returning to life should light a path of tolerance and understanding for all people.” But a long and happy life? For that, Adnan Nevic would need a few breaks.

Today, as demographers look ahead to a 10-billion-strong global population, the future of No. 6,000,000,000 is no less clouded. By day, he is an apple-cheeked sixth-grader who loves dogs and cheers on the fabled Spanish soccer team, Real Madrid. At night, he watches over a father stricken by bowel cancer, and sleeps in the same bedroom as his parents in their two-room flat in Visoko, a run-down town 28 km outside Sarajevo. Adnan’s plight could never really stand in for that of all humanity. But it does, to borrow the UN boss’s trope, illuminate the road we will travel over the course of his life.

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India's female population is dwindling at an alarming rate

By Stephanie Findlay - Monday, June 6, 2011 at 10:05 AM - 0 Comments

Raveendran/AFP/Getty Images

When it comes to girls, China gets the bad rap. But it’s not the only country with an overwhelming preference for boys. The 2011 Indian census revealed that there are 7.1 million fewer girls than boys aged under seven. The sex ratio in that age group is now 914 girls to 1,000 boys, the lowest since records began in 1961. And a study released last week concluded the growing gender imbalance is a result of selective abortion of female fetuses.

The study found that selective abortion of Indian girls, especially for pregnancies after a first-born girl, has increased substantially over the past 10 years. It used to be that the phenomenon was restricted to a few northern Indian states, but it is now common throughout India’s population. Prabhat Jha, a University of Toronto professor and author of the study, says the abortions are consistent with the country’s economic development: as fertility drops and a preference for sons continues, families with the means to select the gender of their child will do so. Jha says the repercussions of the skewed ratio are glaring. “In the hardest hit places of India, they’re importing brides,” he says. “There just aren’t enough women.”

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Down with corruption!

By Julia Belluz - Monday, May 2, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 0 Comments

Amit Dave/Reuters

It may take a Gandhian figure to unshackle India once again. In April, Anna Hazare, a 73-year-old activist and ex-army driver known for his calm demeanour, flowing white garb, and kind smile, evoked Mahatma Gandhi’s civil disobedience by fasting in demand for social change. But instead of fighting for freedom from a colonial power, Hazare’s target was the endemic corruption that currently infects many parts of Indian society. From Mumbai to Lucknow, thousands responded to Hazare’s call to “fill India’s jails” in protest, fasting with Hazare, and organizing candlelight vigils. Even Bollywood stars took part, and supporters mobbed the Jantar Mantar monument in central Delhi, where Hazare was striking.

This Tahrir Square-style moment arose from frustration over what Indians are referring to as a “season of scams”—a recent wave of news about corruption. Though graft is nothing new in the world’s largest democracy, analysts say it is now more ubiquitous than ever: opportunities for fraud have blossomed with India’s rapid economic growth. “The enormous influx of money into India,” says Stephen Cohen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, “has led to an enormous amount of corruption.” And if India is held up as an example of an Asian democracy whose spectacular economic boom has rivalled only that of authoritarian China, such scams threaten to stifle not only the economy (estimates put the black market at 50 per cent of GDP, or $640 billion in 2008), but also the country’s moral fabric.

In November, there was the discovery that Mumbai apartments allocated for war widows were being taken by retired army officers. That was also when the “mother of all scams” was revealed: the telecommunications minister, Andimuthu Raja, resigned over revelations that some $40 billion in government revenue had been lost because he was selling 2G mobile-phone licences for far below market value to select firms in exchange for bribes.

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Pakistan cozies up to China

By Julia Belluz - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 9:39 AM - 10 Comments

China Daily/REUTERS

Pakistan’s ambassador to China used a recent celebration of his country’s Republic Day to give a rhetoric-filled talk about Beijing-Islamabad relations. If March 23, 1940, was the day the Muslim League decided to establish Pakistan, then the anniversary would be a time to declare that relations with China will define the way forward. “We shall take our bilateral relations to new heights,” Masood Khan proclaimed. “China and Pakistan are the best friends in the world.” The warm words echoed those of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who said during a December visit to Pakistan that the neighbours would “remain brothers forever.” Such events, of course, can be mere exercises in diplomacy. But in Wen’s case, the sentiment seemed sincere; it was backed by $35 billion in economic deals, and he rolled out a proposal to help Pakistan’s rebuilding after last summer’s flooding, even suggesting that 2011 be the “Year of China-Pakistan Friendship.”

If China appears to be paying special attention to Pakistan lately, it may be because it senses a real opportunity. Pakistan’s relations with its most powerful ally, the United States, have been souring for some time, possibly leaving Islamabad open to other overtures. Most recently, in March, Pakistanis protested and burned American flags over the release of Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who confessed to killing two men in Lahore. Though he was freed after families of the victims were paid “blood money,” the case further bruised the Washington-Islamabad alliance. Even in the art galleries of Karachi, exhibitions featured critiques of the “fair-weather” friendship. As Michael Krepon wrote on the Arms Control Wonk blog, “U.S.-Pakistan ties are the worst I can recall in almost two decades of visits, and are likely to deteriorate further.”

Fraying ties with one global superpower, however, do not fully explain the vigour of the China friendship. Pakistan has been moving into China’s sphere of influence for decades, and the countries routinely refer to each other as “all-weather” partners. This year will mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations. “Even when I was there in 1981, ’82, I could see Chinese military factories going up,” says Stephen Cohen, a Pakistan expert at the Brookings Institution. Now, Pakistan represents a major market for China’s nuclear and military technology. According to SIPRI, a Swedish think tank, over 40 per cent of Chinese arms exports go to Pakistan—the largest share of any country China sells to. New U.S. intelligence assessments concluded that Pakistan has been steadily growing its nuclear arsenal since President Barack Obama came to power in 2008, and it is poised to overtake Britain as the world’s fifth-largest nuclear weapons power. This is largely thanks to the People’s Republic. Cohen says, “No one did not believe that the Chinese role was not critical and remains important.”

China also recently announced that it would forge ahead with plans to build two more nuclear power reactors in Pakistan—despite the crisis in Japan and global concerns over atomic safety. So it helps, of course, that the China-Pakistan union is a relationship devoid of criticism. Like most countries that benefit from China’s deep pockets, says South Asia analyst Teresita C. Schaffer, “the Pakistanis don’t do things we do that embarrass our friends, like hassle visitors about human rights.”

Meanwhile, relations between the two Asian nations balance ever-warmer ties between the U.S. and Pakistan’s arch-rival, India. Since the Sino-Indian war in 1962, Pakistan has viewed China as a regional counterweight to rising India, whose presence has been a source of security concerns following partition in 1947, and three subsequent major wars. “India is bigger and more successful economically,” says Schaffer. “[Pakistan] has always sought to make friends with powerful outsiders, in order to compensate for India’s larger size.”

But the syrupy rhetoric regarding Pakistan’s friendship with China can be deceiving. “China did not help Pakistan in the 1965 war, and did nothing in the 1971 war,” says Christine Fair, assistant professor at Georgetown University. “It took the side of India in the 1999 Kargil war.” China’s trade with India outstrips trade with Pakistan. Fair adds, “Yes, China has been a consistent military provider, but the logic there is to keep Pakistan in the position to distract India.” Other analysts point out that investing in Pakistan’s ports and infrastructure gives China an alternative route for energy sources. Fair concludes, “The Pakistan-China marriage looks like a love marriage but it’s also a marriage of convenience. The only difference is, China doesn’t complain about Pakistan, but we do.”

Still, at a time when it seems everything is going wrong for Islamabad­—rising food prices and inflation paired with a weak currency, a middle class that has virtually disappeared, and a society that is increasingly fragmented—it feels it has a friend in Beijing. Though, as Cohen points out, “Pakistan may not be such a great prize for China. Between ethnic violence and religious quarrels, it’s coming apart at the seams.”

Exotic Indian Reds, all the way from Ontario

By Sarah Elton - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 1:27 PM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Jenna Marie Wakani

Jason Verkaik’s family has been pulling carrots from the same brown earth in Ontario’s Holland Marsh for three generations. However, these days the carrots are changing. Some of the thick, orange spears of his youth have been replaced with a red version that is wide at the top and narrows quickly into a spindly tail, not unlike a parsnip. Bred on the subcontinent, it’s called the East Indian Red and is coveted by Indian-cuisine purists who will pay more than double the price of conventional carrots for it.

“It has got a crispiness similar to a radish and it is almost sweet,” said Preena Chauhan, an Oakville, Ont.-based Indian cooking school instructor and owner of Arvinda’s Indian Spice Blends, a company that makes masala mixes for retail. Demand for these carrots, as well as other “ethno-cultural” vegetables typical to Chinese and Afro-Caribbean cuisine, has been met over the last decade or so by imports. And what a market it is. Canadian demand for South Asian vegetables is estimated to be $33 million a month; for Chinese vegetables it’s $21 million. Now farmers like Verkaik are figuring out which ones grow best here in the hope of capturing that niche.

At the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, an independent research institution in Ontario, a team of scientists, plant breeders, and economists is working to fast-track the establishment of these global crops on Canadian farms. They’ve conducted consumer surveys, studied market economics, and made connections with the grocery industry as well as farmers who are participating in trial crops of an array of vegetables: yard-long beans, the zucchini-like kaddhu and fuzzy melon. “At the end of the day, we want the farmer to grow a crop that is selling,” said the organization’s CEO, Jim Brandle.

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Gingrich goes to New Hampshire while Palin heads for India and Israel

By John Parisella - Monday, March 21, 2011 at 5:44 PM - 11 Comments

This is a tale of two potential front line candidates for the Republican nomination in 2012: Newt Gingrich, who may be announcing soon, and Sarah Palin, who may not announce at all. It is an illuminating story because it illustrates the current pitfalls facing the Republicans and the effect Gingrich and Palin are having on the early stages of the race by dominating news coverage of the GOP.

What it also shows is how the approach most often adopted by the Republicans is not to offer an alternative and or a compelling vision. Rather, it is behave in a way that works to the advantage of the White House incumbent.

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This week: Good news, bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 18, 2011 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

Good News

End of history department

The military council provisionally ruling Egypt has scheduled a referendum on constitutional reforms that would restore judicial oversight of elections, term-limit the presidency, and take away a presidential veto over the formation of new parties. The Muslim Brotherhood and the ousted National Democratic Party favour a “yes” vote; other, newer movements are urging a “no,” saying the reforms don’t go far enough. But the referendum itself will be a milestone for the country’s transition to democracy.

Nine out of 10 ain’t bad

Ministers of health from nine provinces announced that they will create a national storage bank for blood from umbilical cords. Canadian Blood Services will manage the bank; Quebec has its own version, managed by Héma-Québec. Umbilical cord blood contains stem cells useful in treating leukemia and other blood disorders, particularly in children. Until now, the lack of a nationally registered bank for cord blood has made finding stem-cell donors difficult, especially for minorities.

You know what’s cool?

Groupon, the Web phenomenon that lets businesses offer conditional “group coupons” that kick in when a particular number of customers sign up, is facing its long-foreseen ultimate test: competition from Facebook. The social-networking giant, which is the means by which many Group­on users track new offers, will test-drive its own service for time-sensitive discounts from bricks-and-mortar businesses. Groupon rejected a US$6-billion buyout offer from Google in December.

Her royal hipness

Details of a record collection held by the late Queen Mother at a holiday retreat have revealed her penchant for the yodel stylings of Nova Scotia-born cowboy Wilf “Montana Slim” Carter (1904-1996). Carter, called the father of Canadian country music, was not the only surprising element in the consort’s collection. A tiny treasury of LPs, kept for the Queen Mum’s use at the Scottish Castle of Mey, included large helpings of ska and Paul Simon’s 1986 classic Graceland. One hopes Montana Slim’s estate is ready for a revival.

Bad News

The colonelissimo’s edge

Forces controlled by Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi gained ground in the country’s civil war as Western powers squabbled over creating a “no-fly zone” over the North African republic. France and Britain have pushed hard for flight restrictions, but Germany expressed reservations, and the U.S. is demanding UN Security Council support for the potential move—a sure deal-breaker, given Russian and Chinese reluctance.

A recession-proof trade

India has passed China as the world’s largest arms importer, according to a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Figures from the think tank suggest that, for the period from 2006 to 2010, worldwide arms transfers rose 24 per cent over the previous four years. During that time, India is said to have made almost one-tenth of all global weapons purchases. The figures reflect ongoing efforts to modernize India’s military and increasing self-reliance on the part of China’s army.

Tell me on a Sunday

NFL labour negotiations ground to a halt as the players’ union decided to break off talks and voluntarily decertify for the second time in history. The previous instance, in 1989, allowed individual antitrust lawsuits against the league and led to the adoption of free agency. NFL owners responded this time by declaring a lockout, putting the 2011 season in question and leaving congressional figures scrambling for means of encouraging a settlement.

Money never sleeps

Are Canadian coins a spy’s dream? Maybe, hints a report from the U.S. Defense Security Service, a federal agency that teaches the ins and outs of spying to military personnel and contractors. A newly released summary of “technology collection trends” says that, “On at least three occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 . . . Defense contractors’ employees travelling through Canada discovered radio frequency transmitters embedded in Canadian coins placed on their persons.” The report does not say which coins were used, but the bimetallic toonie, with its removable centrepiece, seems to cry out for espionage use.

You call that a masala chai?

By Joanne Latimer - Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 9:56 AM - 7 Comments

Photograph by Roger Lemoyne

“I’ve waited 45 minutes for a seat,” said 33-year-old eldercare provider Marie-Anik Boulay, as she slipped into a booth at Camellia Sinensis, a tea house in Montreal that serves masala chai only once a week, on Mondays between 5 and 7 p.m. The owners have been known to drag heat lamps outside to warm clients lining up in -18° C weather. Once inside, there are house rules: no cellphones, no laptops, no iPad-type readers of any stripe. A gong is sounded when the noise level would displease a vigilant librarian.

“It’s very popular, but we don’t offer the masala chai every day because of its overpowering aroma. We must maintain a neutral tea-tasting environment for clients who drink other teas,” explained co-owner Kevin Gascoyne, thumbing through his 16-page tea menu. Masala chai is buried on the last page. “People are demanding a more authentic chai experience than they get at a coffee shop. They have standards.”

“They” are the growing minority of masala chai snobs. “The demand for better masala chai can be explained by what happened to yoga,” noted Venk Prabhu, owner of Shanti Tea, a tea importer and distributor that opened its first retail location in Ottawa in December. “People realized that yoga was more than just exercise. They realized, ‘Hey, we’re only doing part of the practice. We want to be purists.’ Same goes for chai.”

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Score one for the stars

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 9:26 AM - 3 Comments

Last week, the high court in Mumbai ruled that astrology is a science. That decision came in a case involving a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking action against astrologers. The PIL, filed by Janhit Manch, a judicial NGO, questioned the validity of predictions by “swamiji, tantrik and mantrik who in the garb of their spiritual robe, claim to cure acute ailments by mantra or by so-called precious stones,” and was designed to “check and curb the widespread superstitions prevailing among the masses.” Included in the PIL’s evidence were astrologers’ wrong predictions for Indian prime ministers, including Indira Gandhi and Charan Singh.

But in dismissing the suit, the judges took on record an affidavit submitted by India’s ruling Union government that said astrology does not fall under the purview of the 1954 Drugs and Magical Remedies (Objectional Advertisements) Act, which would ban any articles, ads, and practices related to the subject. “Astrology is a trusted science and is being practised for over 4,000 years,” says the affidavit filed by the deputy drug contoller in India, reported the Times of India. In fact, the judges recalled a 2004 court directive to consider adding astrology to university syllabi as a subject.

Poor health threatens India’s economic growth

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 1 Comment

Quick action must be taken to better the health of India’s booming population, or else the country’s economic growth will be threatened, according to a new report in British medical journal The Lancet. India is in the early stages of a chronic disease epidemic, according to the report and noted by the BBC, which affects rich and poor people alike. Although Indians are getting richer, they’re exercising less and eating fatty foods, upping the rates of obesity and diabetes. The report, which consists of a series of studies, calls for a comprehensive national health system by 2020. They recommend funding health-improving measures by gradually boosting public expenditure and implementing new taxes on tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods.

BBC News

A blow to the caste system

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 2 Comments

Economic progress in the state of Bihar counted for more than Kumar’s lower caste | Aftab Alam Siddiqui/AP

In the Indian state of Bihar (pop. 80 million), voters chose growth and development over traditional caste-based politics in this month’s election. Nitish Kumar, the lower-caste chief minister first elected in 2005, got an even stronger mandate when his Janata Dal-United (JD-U) party and its allies earned more than four-fifths of the state’s 243 seats. His main competitor, Lalu Prasad Yadav, got just 22 seats.

Yadav and his wife had taken turns running Bihar from 1990 to 2005, and were always re-elected despite little economic progress. Amberish Diwanji of Rediff.com documented how they stayed in power: “Sir, we vote as per our caste, nothing else,” a high-caste man told the journalist in 2005. “Lalu Yadav is a rascal, he has done nothing, but as a Yadav, I have to vote for his party.” Not this time. Kumar has built schools, distributed bicycles, cut down on bribery, and built roads that attract investment. Travel times have been halved and economic growth is now the highest in India at over 11 per cent. Kumar’s victory is proof that jobs can trump tradition.

Is 'Outsourced' really that offensive?

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 11 Comments

Lewis Jacobs/NBCU Photo Bank/CP

From the reaction to Outsourced, you’d think it was the most offensive portrayal of India since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The half-hour comedy, which airs on Global at 9:30 p.m. on Thursdays, is about an American (Ben Rappaport) who is forced to take over a call centre in India—or at least a Hollywood sound-stage version of it. Rizwan Manji, the Canadian actor who plays the hero’s scheming assistant Rajiv, says he thought the show would be criticized for making light of outsourcing and “the unemployment rate in the United States.” Instead, critical reaction to the pilot mostly ignored economic issues and focused on racial ones; Joshua Ostroff in the Toronto alternative newspaper Eye Weekly wrote that it “pushes the offensive line toward out-and-out racism,” while zap2it.com declared that the jokes about “timid women” and Indian food are familiar to “people with senile, racist grandparents.”

Most of the complaints have been about the mocking of Indian customs and names. There are jokes about the name “Manmeet,” and Manji’s character tricks his boss into thinking that vindaloo is a god as well as a food. In response, the writers have argued that comedy is based on exaggeration, and that the Americans are also treated stereotypically. “It’s a comedy first,” Manji says, while head writer Robert Borden told the Kansas City Star that “we have to have the right to make the Indian characters out to be as silly as the white ones.”

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Microfinance meltdown

By Erica Alini - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 1 Comment

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The global economic downturn destroyed the image of big finance, but did nothing to tarnish that of microfinance, the altruistic business of making tiny loans to small entrepreneurs in developing countries. Recently, though, even microlending appears to be headed toward its own mini financial crisis.

Once hailed as a magic bullet against poverty, the practice has come under attack in India and Bangladesh where it is being accused of increasingly adopting the same loansharking methods that it is meant to rescue small borrowers from, like punishing interest rates. The backlash first originated in India, where a wave of suicides by farmers with outstanding microloans led local authorities to rein in financiers. Similarly, in neighbouring Bangladesh—the birthplace of the global microlending movement—regulators are planning measures that include an interest rate cap.

Microfinance firms deny wrongdoing, saying that charging hefty interest rates (usually around 30 per cent) is necessary to cover servicing costs in remote villages. But microfinance founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has been warning that high growth and high profits have been corrupting the industry. The concept of microcredit, he told the Wall Street Journal, “is being blatantly abused.”

Poor Pakistan

By Julia Belluz - Monday, November 22, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 45 Comments

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When U.S. President Barack Obama touched down in India last week on Air Force One—part of a staggering 40-aircraft, six-armoured-car entourage—his was the biggest trip to India of any U.S. administration. And the scale of Obama’s much-discussed retinue matched the sizable gesture the U.S. made toward India, as the President described the India-U.S. friendship as “one of the defining and indispensible partnerships of the 21st century.” Other presidents have fostered closer ties with India, but Obama stayed in the country longer than he has in any other, and announced America’s backing of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council for India, making it the second nation—after Japan—to earn such a distinction.

But there was an equally significant, though more implicit, action that came with the strengthening ties between the world’s largest democracies. Shirking the long-time habit of U.S. presidents to pair a stop in India with a trip to the country’s archrival, Pakistan (long seen as America’s most important strategic ally in the region), Obama continued on to three other democracies (Indonesia, South Korea, Japan)—without any such nod to Islamabad. Though the U.S. has been working on “de-hyphenating”—or separating—relations with India and Pakistan for about a decade, four of the five previous trips by U.S. presidents to India were either preceded by or followed with stops in Pakistan, mainly to avoid upsetting either of the long-standing rivals in the zero-sum game that characterizes U.S. relations with the two nations.

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Wanted: lost languages

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

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In 2008, K. David Harrison, a linguist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, travelled to Arunachal Pradesh, India, a remote northeast region of the country, which even Indians need a permit to reach. As a specialist in endangered languages, Harrison was searching for speakers of two little-known tongues—Aka and Miji. But he stumbled upon an incredible discovery: a third, hidden language, Koro. “Koro had never been noticed by outsiders,” says the Canadian-born anthropologist. But Koro was also concealed from within. “The Koro lived closely with the Aka, and downplayed the differences between them, believing they spoke a dialect of the Aka language,” Harrison says. “What’s cool is this is a small language, intermingled with a dominant group. You would think it would be abandoned by its speakers. But it has persisted, and we don’t know why.”

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