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JANUARY 2006 |
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EDITORIAL:
THE DARK SIDE OF OUTSOURCING As outsourcing to India continues to shake up the Western world, is there a dark, ugly side to it? Our cover story this month looks at the plight of an Indian American high tech employee who has filed a lawsuit in Texas alleging racial bias. Her case is a grim reminder that there is a deep undercurrent of resentment and the flight of jobs here which can take an unsavory when it targets hapless Indian Americans for no better reason than their national origin. The sad fact of the matter is at times of economic insecurity, immigrant minorities all too easily become the scapegoat of pent-up frustrations. A seven-member Congressional trip to India lead by Indiana Republican Dan Burton underscores how dramatically perceptions have changed in the U.S. vis a vis India. In excerpts published this month from comments delegates made at the end of their trip, the overwhelming and unanimous goodwill expressed towards India is a pleasant surprise. One is almost inclined to pinch oneself to see if this is happening: Burton, a fierce critic of India for many years, comes across as positively avuncular. The U.S., it seems, now has a love affair with India, a far cry from the decades when Indo-U.S. relations were difficult during the years of the Cold War and the Non-Aligned Movement. We step outside the cozy and insular world of South Asians this month, something we plan to do occasionally to engage our readers in issues that we feel are of transcendent importance. We reprint excerpts from the trenchant Nobel Prize acceptance speech by British playwright Harold Pinter. Possible the greatest living playwright of his country, if not the English language, Pinter has been hailed by the Nobel committee as an artist who “uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed room.” The 75-year-old Pinter cannot walk after an illness unrelated to the esophageal cancer so his speech was pretaped and broadcast. Howls of outrage have greeted his admittedly blistering critique of U.S. policy; among others British transplant Niall Ferguson, an unabashed apologist for a new U.S. imperium, lashed out in a bitter riposte. Even if some may disagree with his views on U.S. policy—despite the fact his critique was formidably well-informed—his speech is a significant historical document for several reasons. His critique of the refusal of the U.S. to acknowledge its own acts of oppression contains an acute general observation about how the powerful avoid any accountability of their crimes—“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.” Pinter’s makes the sobering point that the “quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good . . . a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis,” is the ultimate tool for tyrants, large and small. His speech is also a stellar example of a writer’s passionate commitment to his/ her conscience. An artist, his speech makes clear, is not merely a craftsman; without a moral compass, the artist is irrelevant. COVER STORY: ‘Dirty Indian’: Racial Slurs and Outsourcing - By Siddharth Srivastava In a race bias lawsuit, U.S.-born senior IT analyst Neelima Tirumalasetti has accused co-workers at Texas-based firm Carework of abusing her. She says she received death threats, and the firm tried to justify the racial slurs, and suffered a final breakdown after she was assigned to a co-worker who allegedly said she would “kill the bi***” This is all the bitter fruit of huge outsourcing of jobs that has made Western employees insecure, writes Siddarth Srivastava. Neelima’s case is not only important to ensure the welfare of people of Indian origin, who are among the wealthiest ethnic group in the U.S. It is of interest to Indian outsourcing firms who have to interact with American/European clients and customers on a regular basis. One of the main reasons, apart from the long and odd hours of work, for the high attrition rates in Indian call centers has been the abusive and racist outpourings by foreign customers, angry over jobs being outsourced to low-cost countries, with India leading the way. Indeed, it is not easy to handle queries that could range from weather, rail reservation, maps, credit card statements, sitting in a far-off land. According to some experts, the stress caused by abusive callers results in the annual erosion of up to 60 to 70 percent of the over half a million Indians working in Indian call centers. Neelima’s lawsuit says that after her company Caremark announced in December 2003 that it would be outsourcing work to IBM India, she became a target of harassment. “Caremark’s investors deserve to know how it conducts itself behind closed doors,” she said in an interview to The Times of India. “This lawsuit is about dignity and assuring that employees are treated equally regardless of their origin, race, or ethnic background.” Earlier this year in a move to cut costs, IBM Corp added over 14,000 jobs in India after slashing 13,000 jobs in Europe and the U.S. Last year IBM had bought over Dash eServices, the third largest outsourcing firm in India with 6,000 employees, at a value estimated to be over $170 million. IBM has in recent years implemented cost-cuts in the face of dwindling financial results and leveraging in a new global economy. According to the allegations by Neelima, her co-workers repeatedly called her “brown-skinned bitch,” “dirty Indian,” and other abuses, accused her of taking their jobs, jeered her accent, and excluded her from important projects. Neelima, who is a U.S. citizen, reported the harassment to her seniors but matters took a turn for the worse as Caremark removed her from higher responsibilities, denied her pay and accused her of lying about her case, including physical symptoms that led to hospitalization. Finally, Caremark reportedly conceded her case, but said that it was “understandable given Caremark’s employees’ concerns about outsourcing to India.” According to the lawsuit, once Caremark requested Neelima to confidentially disclose the names of co-workers responsible for the abuse, she received death threats. The lawsuit says that Neelima suffered a final emotional breakdown after Caremark wanted her to report to a co-worker and a junior who she had accused of being one of her chief harassers who had said that she would “kill the bitch who complained.” Caremark fired Neelima after she took her case to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Indeed, Neelima’s case is a reflection of the pent-up anger that has risen in the West due to job losses. Earlier this year India-born PepsiCo president Indra Nooyi, one of Fortune’s most powerful businesswoman, faced a fair bit of this ire when she said America was the “middle finger” of the world in her speech to Columbia Business School’s graduating students. Americans took to deriding Nooyi with vociferous comments on the Internet, though Nooyi explained that her meaning was entirely different from the obvious interpretation. Indians are also miffed at the parody last year by a radio station that made a call to an Indian call center. The conversation that followed was laced with hate, sexism and racism. American radio jockeys Star and Buc Wild, in an ill-conceived attempt to be make people laugh, broadcast an abusive call that was placed to an Indian call centre worker. The “call” was aired in their morning show on Philadelphia’s Power 99 FM radio wherein the caller places an order for beads, inquires whether the call has been outsourced to India and then abuses her. While the producers thought the script was funny, it provoked angry responses from Indians all over the world. There was a view earlier this year that some of the fury was a result of the high decibel anti-outsourcing campaign by presidential candidate John Kerry in the run-up to the elections last year. However, repeated incidents, including the latest alleged by Neelima, highlight the fact that there is a sustained hostility against the flight of jobs that has little to do with electoral politics. Few doubt that outsourcing is here to stay, given the backing of business and industry worldwide. What is less known is the fact that outsourced jobs are a minuscule fraction of the total jobs in the U.S. Estimates suggest that only 200,000 to 400,000 jobs have moved from the U.S. since the outsourcing trend began in the 1990s, which is a fraction of 138 million jobs in the U.S. The Information Technology Association of America says only around two percent of the 10 million computer-related jobs have been sent abroad. However, the jobs will move out at a higher pace. According to consultancy firm Forrester Research, 3.4 million U.S. service-sector jobs are expected to move overseas by 2015. Observers say that one ninth of the world’s service jobs can be done from anywhere. India has repeatedly urged Western nations to make a commitment not to enact legislation that prohibit offshoring of call centers and software development. According to a study by Global Outsourcing, “The anger in the West over job losses and fear about offshoring has made (racist calls) a growing problem. Some people call up with deliberately difficult questions. Most just say things like, ‘You are from India. You don’t know anything. I don’t want to speak to you.” There are reports that Web sites have sprung up that teach Americans the choicest Hindi abuses. Till matters settle down Indian call centers have been trying to protect their employees by training them in accented English and trying other gambits including taking on Western names. This has not been very successful as it’s not hard to tell if a call center worker is Indian; many have employed foreigners to train as well as take calls; others have installed technology that blanks out abusive callers from known numbers. Indians are the hapless target of ire that is actually directed elsewhere. The animus towards Indians, whether they are in the U.S. or in India masks a rage of countless employees who feel threatened by current economic trends. They seethe with frustrated rage as businesses are all too keen to shift jobs abroad to save a buck and their lawmakers are too beholden to make an issue of it, and so they hit out at the easiest target—the brown-skinned employee. Neelima’s experience is not the first such instance, and sadly, it could well be a long time before such occurrences become a matter of the past. - Siddharth Srivastava is India correspondent for Siliconeer. |TOP|
INDO-U.S. TIES: FROM U.S. WITH LOVE: CONGRESSIONAL TRIP TO INDIA A Congressional delegation’s recent trip to India is remarkable for the unanimous expression of goodwill by delegates at the end of their trip. Siliconeer presents excerpts of their comments.  A U.S. Congressional delegation led by Mr. Dan Burton meeting with the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, Nov. 28. (PIB photo) Excerpts of comments made at a press conference held at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi by a seven-member Congressional delegation at the end of a three-day visit to India.
We’ve talked about the nuclear issue and we think that there is an understanding, not only between President Bush and Prime Minister Singh, but between parliamentarians here and in the United States that there should be a clear delineation between civil use of nuclear material and military use. And with that understanding being worked out, I am confident that at least from my perspective we’ll be able to pass that in the Congress of the United States. We’ve also talked about Kashmir. President (Pervez) Musharraf and Prime Minister Singh are talking. They are men of good will, I believe. And we are very hopeful that they will be able to work out some solution to that very thorny issue. We look at India as a friend and a partner. And we’re looking forward to a very long and good relationship that should have started a long time ago, but better late than never.
Many of us are members of the Indian caucus in the United States Congress and the newly-founded Pakistan caucus. So we bring to the table the idea of collaboration and peace. The members here represent a very strategic congressional delegation — members of the armed services committee, members of homeland security, financial services, judiciary. We cover thorny issues that make up Indo-U.S. relations from the perspective that this is a significant time in history for India and the United States to cement their partnership. As India moves into the 21st century, the United States can play a very strategic role in its developing areas: education; energy security, (where) we have research expertise and joint ventures with Indian companies on energy is crucial, and then infrastructure, (where) the generating of jobs on the American side and the Indian side can both be enhanced by (better) infrastructure. We have enormous obstacles. Poverty is a devastating ill for both our societies and countries. We hope that India will join with us in fighting poverty here in India, and in that also HIV AIDS. We are offering through our NGOs and USAID close to $230 million in the HIV AIDS fight here in India and we hope that you will see that as a strong partnership.
We are very grateful for the contributions of Indian Americans — 2.2 million people. I love to point out as a former co-chair that the India caucus is the largest caucus on Capitol Hill. It is a reflection in terms of membership — nearly 200 members — larger than any other country, that indeed we appreciate working with India in the global war on terrorism, and then also in terms of economic cooperation I’m confident that we can work together.
We as ambassadors now can go back to our caucus in the United States and tell them that what we have seen and found here certainly satisfied many of the questions that we had in our minds before we got here.
I know that you all will provide knowledge workers and I think that we are going to provide capital which will help generate jobs down deep into the society here which will be a great benefit to you all. I appreciate that you all have been engaged in the war on terror before we were. I think you have expertise on this field that we can learn from and we must crush the terrorists or they will destroy the lives of all humanity and all humans.
We’ve discussed some incredibly strategic issues with many of your leaders here, but as a former investment banker and as an entrepreneur I believe that the most important thing that our two countries can do is to develop business ties even deeper than we have now. I know that my Indo-American community in California is very anxious to do more than just import export between the two countries. When we are doing well in trade we will be able to generate the dollars we need to build infrastructure, to build our health systems, and to educate so that we can lift people out of poverty. And when we do that I think we go a long way in taking away the reasons for why some people do terrorism.
The issue of terrorism is one that we can never ever allow ourselves to avoid confronting head-on. It does not discriminate. It takes lives without giving thought to the devastation created. We truly must end it or it will be our end. And we look forward to working with you with these issues of terrorism. I’m a lawyer by trade, I was a judge for many years, and I’ve had the opportunity to visit your courts. I was impressed and I look forward to working with some of the lawyers I have connected with so that I may continue to learn more about your system. And finally, I would say to you we know that you, too, suffered with the earthquake and our prayers and our sympathies are with the families who have suffered in this natural disaster. NEWS DIARY: December Roundup  Vaccines for Quake Victims | Heads Teachers Prefer Gandhi to Churchill | Gunman Kills IIT Professor | Beetle Rally in Dhaka | Bush to Visit Pakistan | NOLOK BABU: From Street Singer to Music Idol | Tsunami Victims Remembered | BJP Names New President | SRI LANKA: Fears of Descending Back into Civil War | Lamborghini Eyes India | Churchill Favored Letting Gandhi Die | India Expects 7% GrowthVaccines for Quake Victims Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has donated 250,000 doses of flu vaccine to Pakistan to aid recent earthquake victims in South Asia. The Chicago Tribune reported the donation, valued at $2.5 million, was sent in response to a request from Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Blagojevich had procured the vaccine from Europe last year when Illinois faced a possible shortage but was blocked from bringing it into the country by federal regulators. The vaccine is being made available in Kashmir, the epicenter of an October earthquake with a magnitude of 7.6 that killed more than 87,000 people and left millions homeless, the newspaper said. “We are in a unique position to help thousands of Pakistanis who are struggling to recover from a terrible tragedy,” Blagojevich said in a written statement. “The vaccine we scoured Europe to find in 2004 will be put to use to protect people who were left homeless, weak and vulnerable after the devastating earthquake and now are in dire need of protection from influenza this winter.”
A survey of head teachers, carried out by their professional training college, says heads most admire the leadership style of the Indian leader, reports BBC News the online new service of the British Broadcasting Corporation.. The survey of newly-appointed head teachers asked them which management styles were most effective. Most preferred the style of Mahatma Gandhi, who led a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience in India against British colonial rule. Only about one in 10 heads approved of the “coercive leadership” model of Winston Churchill. Head teachers supported a shared style of leadership which was democratic and involved other members of staff. In contrast, the Churchillian model was about “focusing attention on one central figure.” “Coaching and democratic styles enable head teachers to work with others to bring about improvements to schools that are sustainable over the long term,” says Alison Kelly of the Nottingham-based NCSL, which is the national centre for professional training for senior school staff.
Three other people were also wounded as the gunman sprayed automatic gunfire at the Indian Institute of Science before escaping in a car. Those wounded were said to be scientists and laboratory technicians attending the conference. Police said the assailants approached in an Ambassador car. One of them got out and fired randomly outside an auditorium door. The car then sped off. Law enforcement agencies are calling it an terrorist attack. Officers said they had found an assault rifle, empty cartridges and a grenade at the scene. Security supervisor A.N. Sukumaran, who witnessed the shooting, told AFP: “It was like crackers exploding. Suddenly I saw one man falling. He said ‘I have been shot. Call an ambulance.’” One of those injured, Prof Vijay Chandru, is the founder of the Indian-developed palm-computer, the Simputer. The incident happened hours after gangster Abu Salem was brought to Bangalore for lie detector tests over his alleged involvement in bombings in Mumbai in 1993 that killed 250 people. German car Volkswagen came to Bangladesh in the mid-1960s. At that time it was a car of the emerging professional middle-class society, including university teachers, engineers, doctors, businessmen and military officers. At present some 200 Beetles ply the roads in the country. In the ’60s and ’70s it dominated the streets of Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Rangpur, Comilla and other districts town. “The visit dates are being worked out and we expect the visit to take place around the third week of January,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told a weekly briefing. She gave no further details. The 81-year U.S. statesman was appointed last month by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as special envoy for the October 8 disaster, which killed about 73,000 people in Pakistan and 1,300 in India. The United Nations has launched an aid appeal for $550 million, while Pakistan has received aid pledges of more than six billion dollars, of which two billion dollars is in the form of grants. Bush joined forces with another former U.S. president, Bill Clinton, to raise funds after Hurricane Katrina flooded and destroyed large parts of the southern U.S. city of New Orleans, In a show fashioned after American Idol and the Indian Idol contest, 20-year-old Nolok Babu was crowned Close Up 1 at a colorful ceremony in a five-star hotel. Nolok began singing in public after his father walked out of the family when he was nine. He grew up singing in trains to support his ailing mother. The poor street singer from Jamalpur district won after seven months of intense competition in the TV show organized by Tomakei Khunjchhe Bangladesh (Bangladesh looks for you) with hundreds of contestants taking part. He won after tens of thousands of people voted him in through SMS over the last few days. Nolok got 39 points out of 50 from the jury and 785,391 SMS votes by viewers in Bangladesh’s most watched program till date. The concluding ceremony was telecast live on private NTV channel, which also aired the other rounds that drew millions of viewers. The final round of the competition was judged by vocalist Kumar Bishwajit, Samina Chowdhury and music director Ahmed Imtiaz Bulbul. The competition, which began in June, elicited 40,000 entrants; they were auditioned and 110 of them were selected for the next round. Nolok received one million taka in cash, a Nissan Sunny car and a plasma television set. The first runner-up was Mizan Mahmud Razib and second runner-up was Beauty. Two more contestants — Samapti Ray, who was visually impaired and made it to the second round, and Champa Banik, who was pregnant when the show started — were recognized.
In Tamil Nadu, which was the worst hit, there were somber scenes as gatherings along the state’s coast remembered the dead. At Nagapattinam, district collector J. Radhakrishnan opened a memorial park with over 6,000 saplings — or at least one for each of the people who had died there. Children orphaned by the tsunami placed wreaths at a memorial pillar — which depicted a wave holding up a globe and a clock found by the navy that had stopped at 9.17 a.m., showing the exact time the killer waves struck the region. Though the number of deaths in India was lower than those in Indonesia (130,000) and Sri Lanka (31,000), the tsunami caused widespread devastation in the country’s southern states and island territories.
Singh, 54, succeeds the septuagenarian L.K, Advani, one of the party’s founders who quit after a row with hardliners. Singh leadership comes at a troubled time for the party. The party went through a public internal debate after outgoing leader Advani’s remark that Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah was “secular” triggered outrage from hard-line supporters. Feisty leader Uma Bharti walked out of the party after the party refused to consider her views in choosing the Madhya Pradesh chief minister. Half a dozen of the right-wing Hindu nationalist party’s MPs were recently thrown out of Parliament for allegedly accepting cash for questions. And last week BJP general secretary Sanjay Joshi resigned after becoming embroiled in a sex scandal. Rajnath Singh, a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, has promised to “consolidate the party and make it strong.” Though a powerful rural politician with strong organizational skills and popular with the party rank and file, Singh lacks a national profile and may find it difficult to run a party with a young generation of leaders competing for primacy. Advani remains opposition leader in parliament
The incident in island nations’ northeastern region is the latest flare-up of violence that has raised fears the island nation could descend back into the civil war that began in 1983. The rebels want a separate homeland for the 3.2 million ethnic Tamil minority, away from domination of the Sinhalese majority. Military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said the five died in a botched attack on an army patrol in the port city of Trincomale, about 135 miles northeast of the capital Colombo. He blamed Tamil civilians who had been trained by rebels “to attack military targets.” The rebels gave a different account, saying on their Web site that the five were spending the evening near the seaside when a motorized rickshaw drove past and lobbed a grenade. Quoting witnesses, the rebels said the rickshaw drove toward a Sri Lankan army camp after the attack. Forty-five soldiers have died since December in a surge of violence that the government blames on the rebels, who have denied the charge. At least seven suspected rebels have been killed. The two-decade war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan military ended with a 2002 truce after 65,000 deaths, 1.6 million people displaced and large parts of northern and eastern Sri Lanka under Tiger rule. The escalating violence has prompted the Norwegian official who brokered the 2002 cease-fire, Erik Solheim, to urge the government and rebels to resume peace talks immediately. Six rounds of peace talks were held until 2004 when they broke down over rebel demands for autonomy. “The plan is to bring the Lamborghini Gallardo within the first quarter of next year,” Lamborghini distributor Exclusive Motors’s Rahul Grover said. The price will range between an eye-popping Rs. 10 million to Rs. 15 million. Gallardo is the latest in the series of high-end cars to hit Indian roads after the likes of Maybach, Rolls Royce Phantom and Bentley Arnage. Grover said the target was to sell about two to three units of Gallardo in the next year. Automobili Lamborghini Holding SPA, a part of Volkswagen’s Audi Group, had rolled out 3,000th Gallardo earlier this month. It remains to be seen though how Gallardo, which competes with the likes of Ferrari’s F30 and Porsche’s 911 Turbo, fare in India. Lamborghini had stated said it was more concerned with the infrastructure in India than the purchasing capability of its potential customers.
The British WWII prime minister thought India’s spiritual leader should be treated like anyone else if he stopped eating while being held by the British. He said he would prefer to keep Gandhi locked up and let him do “as he likes.” However, his ministers advised him against it. Gandhi was detained in 1942 after he condemned India’s involvement in the war. However he didn’t go on a hunger strike. Many British officials in India were ready to play hardball. The Viceroy of then British-run India, Lord Linlithgow, said he was “strongly in favor of letting Gandhi starve to death.” But senior government figures, such as former foreign secretary Lord Halifax argued: “Whatever the disadvantages of letting him out, his detention would be much worse.” Eventually in January 1943, ministers decided that although they could not give into a hunger strike publicly — they would be willing to release Gandhi on compassionate grounds. “He is such a semi-religious figure that his death in our hands would be a great blow and embarrassment to us,” said Sir Stafford Cripps, then Minister for Aircraft Production. Gandhi was eventually released in 1944 because of fears his failing health meant he could die in British custody. He was assassinated on Jan. 30, 1948, aged 78, after Indian independence. The economy grew 8 percent in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, after expanding 6.9 percent in the full year to last March. The government expects economic growth of as much as 7.5 percent in the 12 months ending this March. “The only way to make growth more inclusive is to sustain a rate of growth in excess of 7 percent over the next few years and I am confident the year 2006 will continue the trend,” Chidambaram said in a statement. “This will involve stepping up investment, particularly in infrastructure, agriculture and the social sectors,” he said. Social services include health care and education. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government wants more overseas investment to help achieve annual economic growth in excess of 7 percent in the next 10 years. Singh aims to cut the budget deficit and improve the lives of Indians, one in three of whom earn less than $1 a day, according to the World Bank. Agriculture, which accounts for 22 percent of India’s economic output, holds the key to growth, Chidambaram said. India’s $665 billion economy needs farm output to expand 4 percent annually for the overall economy to grow at twice that pace, Prime Minister Singh said in October. Two-thirds of India’s population reside in villages, depending on agriculture for their livelihood. DISSENT: Art, Truth and Politics: Harold Pinter’s Nobel Lecture Harold Pinter’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for literature is a remarkably incisive critique of what he considers to be the distortion of reality by the manipulation of the powerful. Siliconeer presents excerpts.  (Excerpted from British playwright Harold Pinter’s Nobel Lecture. The lecture was pre-recorded, and shown on video Dec. 7, 2005, in Börssalen at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Links for the entire lecture on video and full text is available at the following link: http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html) In 1958 I wrote the following: “There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.” I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false? Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost. So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time. But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot. The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it. Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified. But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States’ actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked. The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America’s view of its role in the world, both then and now. I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s. The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: ‘Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.’ Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravi |
In an incident being closely watched by Indian industry observers as future corporate decisions may depend on the outcome, Indian-American tech worker Neelima Tirumalasetti, a senior IT analyst in quality assurance, has filed a suit in a federal court in Texas against a U.S. firm. She has alleged repeated racial harassment and discrimination as her company outsourced work to India.
A comment in an Indian paper had said: “No matter how many years she has lived in the U.S. and how much she professes her loyalty to the country, to a bigot she is a brown foreigner. And a woman to boot. How dare she criticize the United States on American soil? If you are a recent immigrant, you don’t bite the hand that fed you. It is okay if you are white and your forbears got of the boat a century or two ago.’’
Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind. : We have had a very, very nice visit here in India. We have met with the parliamentary leaders, we’ve met with Prime Minister Singh, we’ve talked about numerous issues, and we’ve been so well received, we’ve all fallen in love with India and the people and leadership here.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas : The statement that this delegation is making is a strategic statement. We are giving you a message and we take a message back to the United States. 
Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C.: It’s indeed a dream come true. My affection and appreciation of the people of India began with my dad. He served in World War II here. My father told me as I was growing up, how hardworking the people of India are, how entrepreneurial and capable the people of India are. 
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y.: When we look at the United States and India, we have two strong democracies and there is so much in common to work together. When we see our universities, we see so many of our young people, your young people, are interacting together in the United States, it’s time that we certainly have a more productive relationship between our two nations. It’s a perfect fit. 
Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M.: There are good reasons for friendship beyond the strategic. And I think friendship has to be based on more than strategic alliance. I find a value similarity that is extraordinary: Strong families, strong value on education, strong value on business and entrepreneurship, those are things that fit well with the U.S. psyche and I think will propel us into unprecedented growth in our relationships that benefit us both. 
Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif.: I’ve been in the Congress over nine years now and I’ve been promising the large Indo-American community of Southern California that I would come. So it’s been a pleasure to finally make it here. 
Rep. Al Green, D-Texas: You have the world’s largest democracy. We have the world’s oldest democracy. We have much in common. And we should use that common ground to reach higher ground, as it were. 
The Volkswagen Club of Bangladesh organized a Volkswagen rally Dec. 9, with hundreds of Volkswagen Beetles winding down the streets of Dhaka. The 56-km drive rally started from Manik Miah Avenue and finished at Proshika Human Resource Development Center Trust at Koitta, Manikganj.
Former U.S. president George Bush is expected to visit Pakistan as the United Nations special envoy for the South Asian earthquake, the Pakistan foreign ministry said.
A Bangladeshi street singer has won the country’s first talent hunt TV show winning one million taka ($15,000), the hearts of thousands of viewers who voted for him — and a whole new life.
Italian luxury sports car maker Lamborghini is all set to drive in its best selling model Gallardo to India within the first quarter of next year.
As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.