CHINA: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met with US President Barack Obama in Beijing, where they discussed a range of issues of common concern to both countries. China made few concessions to the U.S.

INDIA: Ahead of India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington, the U.S. is asking Pakistan to take actions against the groups allegedly responsible for the Mumbai attacks.

SOUTH KOREA: Legislators of South Korea’s National Assembly were in favor of the government’s latest decision to dispatch military forces to protect civilian aid workers in Afghanistan.

SOMALIA: Late Tuesday a woman accused of committing adultery was stoned to death in Somalia. A judge working for the militant group Al-Shabaab said the women had given birth to a stillborn baby. Her boyfriend was given 100 lashes.

Pirates on Wednesday attacked the US flagged ship Maersk Alabama for the second time. Just seven months ago the ship was attacked and the captain taken hostage, though he was eventually rescued. This time the ship was able to repel the attack.

ITALY: The UN Food and Agriculture Summit ended Wednesday with little progress in the way of a new strategy to combat hunger, as aid agency Oxfam said the effort offered little more than “crumbs” to the one in six people who do not have enough to eat.

GERMANY: Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that German troops would stay in Afghanistan for another year, though she would not commit additional troops to the region.

UK: Queen Elizabeth II laid out new plans for financial regulation in her speech at the opening of Parliament on Wednesday.

LATIN AMERICA: Analysts say that the number of people per household in Latin America will drop by 18% in 2020.

EL SALVADOR: The government in El Salvador estimates $880 million worth of damage due to flooding and mudslides in the country in early November.

MEXICO: Experts in Mexico say that the epidemic of obesity in children could reduce life expectancy rates in the country.

IRAQ: Preparation for Iraq’s January general elections are on hold because Iraq’s Sunni Arab vice president vetoed part of an election law.

ISRAEL: The United States, in an unusually strong criticism of Israel, voiced dismay at the approval of new Jewish housing in annexed east Jerusalem.

A charity linked to the militant Hamas group offered $1.4 million dollars for anyone who takes an Israeli soldier hostage.

UAE, DUBAI: American talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey apologized to her followers for an episode of her show featuring women from around the world in which a guest from Dubai gave false information about life in Dubai.

PALESTINE: Israeli bulldozers demolished a two-family Palestinian home in the town of Al-Isawiya in occupied East Jerusalem today, the second home demolition in two days.

Martin Savidge hosts David Rayside and Rachel Tiven on LGBT politics and gay asylum. We begin the conversation with Jamaica, which makes up 17 of the 55 U.S. asylum cases won by Immigration Equality last year alone. We examine the metastasizing colonial and slave culture, entrenched poverty and rampant violence in Jamaica.

In 1994, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno expanded asylum law to include persecution based on sexual orientation. Sexual orientation has been increasingly used as grounds for asylum. We also discuss how to begin the process of applying for gay asylum in the U.S.

From human rights abuses to political progress, the gay rights movement is at different stages throughout the world. We take a comparative look at the progress of LGBT politics and the gay rights movement in different countries, including the best and worst places to be gay.

A Greek gay rights parade. Photo: Megan Thompson

• Read about one gay Jamaican’s story of asylum: Gay men in Jamaica must lead two separate lives
• Watch signature videos from Jamaica: Violence and venom force gay Jamaicans to hide and Gays in Jamaica worship in underground church
• Watch our signature video from Greece: Ancient Greek values clash with modern treatment of gays

GUESTS:

David Rayside is a political science professor at the University of Toronto. His latest book “Queer Inclusions, Continental Divisions” is a comparative analysis of Canadian and  American political recognition of same-sex relationships, the extension of parenting rights to same-sex couples and the response to sexual diversity in public schooling. For over thirty years, he has also been an activist on issues related to sexual diversity and gender within academic institutions and beyond.

Rachel B. Tiven is the executive director of Immigration Equality, a national organization fighting for equal immigration rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive community. Under her leadership, Immigration Equality has doubled in size, quadrupled client services and opened a policy office in Washington, D.C.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti and Ben Piven
Researcher: Geneva Sands-Sadowitz

For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

But as Google has gained a foothold in markets around the world, adapting its versions to different countries and languages, an inevitable problem has emerged: how do you delineate international boundaries when they are disputed by multiple countries?

This caused problems for the tech giant earlier this year, when its Chinese characters mislabeled an area called Arunachal Pradesh, which is under Indian administration.

While a simple solution to border disputes would be to stick to internationally recognized demarcations, Google has taken things a step further. Rather than risk antagonizing disputes among its partner countries– each with its own market potential– Google has customized its maps according to different countries’ official positions on their versions of its Google Maps application.

“This does not in any way endorse or affirm the position taken by any side,” according to a Google spokesperson, “but merely provides complete information on the prevailing geo-political situation to our users of global properties in a dispassionate and accurate manner.”

Take, for example, the Chinese version of Google Maps:

The disputed boundaries between India and Pakistan are indicated by dotted lines. But the border with China (to the northeast of India) is nevertheless solid.

Consider, then, the Indian version of the same region:

Here, it appears the only disputed area lies between Tajikistan and China, to the north of India. Indian territory itself, including the western part of Kashmir which is often attributed to Pakistan, is not in question. Furthermore, the area between China and India, which in China’s version belong to China, now lies within Indian territory.

Finally, compare these two version to the standard version of Google Maps:

Here, all disputed boundaries are indicated by a dotted line.

These border disputes predate the Internet — and are unlikely to go away any time soon.  Google has at least managed a temporary diplomatic resolution in cyberspace.

Google has customized their Maps application to reflect border disputes around the world. While border disputes predate the Internet — and are unlikely to go away any time soon — Google has at least managed a temporary diplomatic resolution in cyberspace. http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/11/th_china_map.jpg http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/11/th_china_map.jpg ]]> http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/11/03/for-google-maps-diplomacy-trumps-geography/8021/feed/ http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/10/30/rights-group-says-terminally-ill-suffer-needlessly-in-india/8073/ http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/10/30/rights-group-says-terminally-ill-suffer-needlessly-in-india/8073/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:32:58 +0000 Worldfocus http://worldfocus.org/?p=8073 This week Human Rights Watch released Unbearable Pain, an extensive report on palliative care in India. The organization believes that denying sick people pain relief violates a basic health care right, and that the Indian government should require hospitals to provide terminally ill patients with morphine.

Below is the video that HRW published in conjunction with journalist Brent Foster.

Worldfocus interviewed Diederik Lohman, the lead researcher for HRW’s report about the issue.

How does palliative care in India differ from palliative care in other countries?

Lohman: Palliative care itself isn’t really all that different. But what is really different is that in U.S. hospitals, it’s inconceivable that you wouldn’t have morphine. And in India, doctors aren’t trained to deal with pain and provide psycho-social support.

In many Indian hospitals, this is absent completely. The focus is on cure, and palliative care is basically just not a part of the equation. During our research, we spent a lot of time with patients who had not been able to access morphine in the early stages of their illnesses.

For Brent Foster’s multimedia piece, Human Rights Watch chose not to depict sick people who lack access to morphine. In your report, were you able to cover all sides of this story? What can you tell us about the group of people who lack access to palliative care?

Lohman: There are two reasons why we tried to interview people with a history of no access but who had then received morphine. The first reason is practical. If someone is in severe pain, you can’t interview them. You can’t really get more information from them about what exactly happened and what their doctors told them. And then there is the ethical reason. You ask people to tell you how bad their pain is and what the pain does to them — but you’re unable to offer them any help getting access to treatment!

We felt that it was better to talk to people who did have access to morphine. The consequences of that decision were that we talked to people who were relatively lucky. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there who aren’t that lucky.

What was the most difficult aspect of covering palliative care patients in South India? How were you affected emotionally?

Lohman: I interviewed a number of children who were terminally ill, and several of them died within weeks or months. Seeing children who are desperately ill and just want to be kids and play but have to be attached to machines and get really toxic medications, that’s a pretty tough thing to go through.

On the other end of the spectrum, we also worked with people who were providing palliative care and were some of the most compassionate people I have ever seen. It’s also very inspiring to see Indian doctors, nurses and social workers say this is just not acceptable that some people have to suffer from pain treatable with inexpensive medicine.

[Palliative care] is one of these things that brings up a lot of negative and positive emotion. You see some of the worst neglect but also see people commit themselves — beyond belief — to change the situation in their country.

What did the experience teach you about making palliative care more available in the U.S.?

Lohman: I think that, as a matter of principle, it should be available to be all those who need it. And I think that, in countries like the U.S., palliative care is available much more than for patients in India.

But that doesn’t mean that the system we have in the U.S. is perfect. There are always going to be groups of patients who somehow fall outside the scope of services available. One of the things that we see in medicine around the world is that, with the advent of increasingly sophisticated diagnostic tools and increasingly powerful medications, the focus is so much on prolonging life and on defying death.

There are a a lot of doctors who start seeing sick people as having illnesses inside a body and don’t pay attention to the well-being of the individual. The focus is on curing the individual and not on quality of life.

Though sometimes neglected, it’s really important for health care systems in the U.S. to keep in mind the quality of life for patients even as they’re going through curative treatment. Medicine has to have a human face. It’s often a discipline dominated by machines and medication — without thinking about the human who is the host of the disease.

Last year, the Economist magazine slotted Ethiopia as the fourth fastest growing economy in the world, ahead of China. The World Bank report “Doing Business 2010” ranks Ethiopia in the top 10 African nations in terms of the ease of doing business. The Ethiopian government is trying to strengthen local and regional businesses and attract foreign direct investment.

Martin Savidge, Ethiopian businessman Ermyas Amelga and economics professor Phillip LeBel discuss how easy it is to do business in Ethiopia, who’s investing and what this means as Ethiopia moves from an agrarian society to a more urban society. The entrenched poverty hinders the robust investment environment, saddling the country with drought, food shortages and inadequate infrastructure.

Some highlights from the show:

• Ethiopia is not a resource-based economy. The sectors that are thriving in Ethiopia are real estate, construction, services, manufacturing, textiles and commercial agriculture with arable land leasing
• A growing population topping 80 million people make Ethiopia a strong consumer society
• Major investors in Ethiopia: China, India, Turkey and Egypt — the U.S. is not a major investor
• Ethiopia’s poverty-stricken image and government-controlled electronic communications and the Internet are potential hurdles to foreign investment
• Ethiopia’s Diaspora community is driving Ethiopia’s real estate boom

Martin Savidge hosts the following guests:

Ermyas Amelga is an Ethiopian businessman based in Addis Ababa. In 1996, he returned to Ethiopia after academic training and working in investment banking in the U.S. He has founded or acquired 11 companies, overseeing more than 2000 employees in the mining, oil, agriculture and financial services sectors. Ermyas also consults investors on entering the Ethiopian market.

Phillip LeBel is an economist and business professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey. He specializes in economics of developing countries, with emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. This Spring, he was a Fulbright senior fellow in Addis Ababa teaching natural resources economics. He has consulted for USAID, the World Bank, UNESCO, WHO, FAO and the U.S. State Department on various subjects pertaining to economic policy issues.

For more coverage on Ethiopia, watch Worldfocus’ signature videos on the coffee industry, a remote village and Ethiopia’s history and beauty. Watch the PBS Wide Angle film “The Market Maker” about one woman who has created a commodities exchange and revolutionized agricultural distribution in the country.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti and Ben Piven

In conjunction with Magnum In Motion photographer Susan Meiselas, the human rights group produced a video/slideshow about a 25-year-old North Indian woman who died during childbirth.

Worldfocus spoke with Aruna Kashyap, the lead researcher of the in-depth study, “No Tally of the Anguish.”

Is the rate of maternal mortality still exceptionally high in India?

Kashyap: Yes. India is an emerging economic superpower known for its medical prowess. There are also large portions of money allocated for healthcare programs - including maternal healthcare programs - that go unspent annually. This context is very important when analyzing data on maternal mortality. If we look at the “BRIC” countries – India’s maternal mortality level is 16 times that of Russia, 10 times that of China, and 4 times that of Brazil. Also, about 1 in 70 girls who reach reproductive age in India will eventually die because of a pregnancy-related cause, compared to 1 in 7,300 in the developed world.

The latest all-India estimates show that there has been a small decline in maternal mortality since 1997. But maternal mortality measures are mere estimates. They are also presented as averages, and averages do not tell the actual story. For example, while all-India figures show a decline, Haryana and Punjab show an increase in maternal mortality. Critically, these estimates camouflage the huge disparities in access to healthcare, including maternal healthcare, between the rich and the poor. The question is whether the little progress that health authorities are making in reducing maternal mortality is percolating down to the marginalized and the poor. Many populations in India endure poor maternal health because of many levers of inequality, including those based on caste, residence, education and awareness, age, and number of children. For example, a 2007 UNICEF study showed that 60 percent of the maternal deaths documented in six northern Indian states occurred in Dalit and tribal communities.

Moreover, for every maternal death, around 20-30 women are left with injuries, diseases or infections after childbirth or unsafe abortions, many lasting a lifetime. A woman may survive childbirth but suffer obstetric fistula and ensure life-long humiliation and even abandonment if not treated. There is very little data on this, but health experts believe that maternal morbidity levels are also very high in India, which is a cause for concern.

What are the most successful government policies in reducing maternal mortality?

Kashyap: Globally, about 80 percent of all maternal deaths are said to be caused by direct obstetric causes—hemorrhage, obstructed labor, eclampsia, and unsafe abortions. Many years of research and evaluations of different health interventions have led public health experts to conclude that there are four key maternal mortality reducing strategies that address these direct obstetric causes–access to emergency obstetric care, good referral systems, skilled birth attendance, and reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. Health authorities should also strengthen women’s access to safe abortions. The indirect causes of maternal mortality and morbidity are malaria, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and HIV. There have to be interventions to ensure that these indirect causes are also addressed.

In India, about 65 percent of all maternal deaths are caused by direct obstetric causes and 35 percent are caused by indirect causes. So for maximum impact, healthcare interventions have to address both.

To what extent do you blame village-level government officials for not doing enough?

Kashyap: It depends on what aspect we are looking at. For example, if we look at civil registration, there are village level officers who are supposed to register deaths which they are not doing. Where this is because the state has not appointed such officers the state is to blame, but otherwise, a part of the blame also lies with the village level authorities.

In the case of delivery of maternal healthcare services, at the village level, female health workers implement the maternal healthcare programs. Most of them have very little say in how programs are designed and implemented because the healthcare system is top-heavy. These workers should also be equipped with essential drugs, blood pressure measuring machines, weighing machines, gloves, and so on that they can use to check the health of pregnant women and conduct deliveries. If they are not equipped, then there is very little they can do. For example, we interacted with health workers who are charged with providing antenatal care but had not been given a blood pressure gadget for several years even though they had put in repeated requests to get such gadgets.

The decisions are made at the national, state, and district levels. So unless decision-makers at these different levels do not change policies and programs, health workers at the field level cannot be blamed. Be it caste-based discrimination or corruption at any level, the power to monitor and undertake corrective action largely lies with district and state health authorities.

There have been attempts to change this. The Indian government has tried to decentralize decision making under its flagship rural healthcare program, the National Rural Health Mission, 2005. Under this, the Indian government has provided for “untied funds” that can be managed by health workers along with local elected village council heads. But this has not been very effective for several reasons. Poor awareness regarding these provisions, a lack of initiative by elected village council heads, corruption, are some of the reasons. The Indian government has also created Patient Welfare Committees (Rogi Kalyan Samiti) to decentralize decision-making and management of the hospital. These committees also have grievance and redress powers. But once again, these are yet to be effectively utilized.

What is your outlook for realistic improvements in maternal mortality over the next two decades?

Kashyap: There has been little progress in the last decade not only in India but in many other countries. But since 2005, at least on paper, the Indian government guarantees a host of maternal healthcare services free of cost. In order to ensure that these are effectively implemented, the Indian government should monitor the implementation of these programs. This can be done in several ways: recording and investigating all maternal deaths to identify and rectify health system failures; monitoring whether women with pregnancy-related complications are actually getting access to maternal healthcare; setting up a grievance and redress protocol including emergency response systems like a telephone hotline that can be used by pregnant women in distress; paying attention to strengthening the public health system, including training health workers in midwifery.

If all of this is done, then perhaps India will be able to show more results not only in averages but also for the poor and the marginalized.

How has your experience with maternal mortality issues affected you personally?

Kashyap: I feel outraged by the injustice of these preventable deaths. There are some women’s faces and stories that come back to me often. For example, the mother-in-law who cried while describing how her pregnant daughter-in-law died in a community health center because she could not afford to take her a better health facility. She had just one lingering plea that it should not happen to anyone else. Then another woman who asked me why she would take 1400 rupees (the cash assistance given to rural women to deliver in health facilities) and go to a health facility to kill herself –- referring to the fact that many women are often turned away from such facilities without medical assistance because they are ill-equipped to handle pregnancy complications. I hope the government will read some of these stories and make their health system more accountable to these women.

- Ben Piven

In the state of Karnataka, the death toll has passed 200 while in neighboring Andhra Pradesh, more than 50 people have died. The floods have also severely affected the western state of Maharashtra.

Overflowing rivers have broken banks and inundated large areas that had been suffering from a severe drought until a few weeks ago. More than 800,000 people have become homeless thus far.

Prerna Suri of Worldfocus partner Al Jazeera English reports from South India.

Pollution in northern China. Photo courtesy of Flickr user AdamCohn under a Creative Commons license.

It’s good to be back. Some recent bits of news on China and climate caught my attention. First was Todd Stern’s admonition in Tuesday’s FT that China and India risk protectionist measures in the U.S. Congress if they do not agree to bind themselves in Copenhagen to curb carbon emissions.

Politically, this is certainly true. But it made me wonder whether tactically we should decouple China and India on climate in the run up to the negotiations in Copenhagen. Todd Stern has forgotten more about these issues than I will ever know, and, of course, in the long run we absolutely need all the major economies on board. Emissions from India and Russia could potentially catch up to China’s one day.

But, today, the real problem (other than us) is China. That fact is reinforced by a two-year study conducted by Chinese government thinktanks, released Wednesday, that said if China’s energy usage structure remains unchanged, its emissions of greenhouse gases would represent 60 percent of total global emissions and three times China’s current production. Of course, China’s usage IS changing, and that’s the encouraging news. China is massively investing in clean and efficient technologies.

That said, China is the largest emitter in the world and will be for some time to come. The U.S. and China account for about 20 percent each of global emissions and India is currently only at 5 percent. A 2006 study [PDF] from the Department of Energy has that disparity continuing until 2030. Even if India catches up, much faster, or China slows its emissions growth dramatically, China will still a much bigger part of the problem well into the future.

Moreover, the critical political point for today is that the largest emitter, China, has refused to commit to binding targets at Copenhagen for reducing its emissions. Without that commitment, the international community can’t forge a deal. Lumping India and China together offers China political cover in the negotiations. It reinforces China’s strategy of aligning itself with truly poor developing countries, like, say, Chad, that really cannot be asked to bear the costs of climate change. Further, while the Chinese government can likely deliver on an international commitment, its not clear that the Indian government currently has the capacity.

Right now, it may make sense to isolate China as a unique case. Particularly when by China’s own measure this week, it is no longer a low-income country, but a middle income one. I am not suggesting bilateral negotiations — the current set of mechanisms is fine. And we need the other emerging economies signed onto any treaty with as good a commitment as possible. But pressure where pressure is due — the real challenge of the coming months is the PRC.

- Nina Hachigian

Prerna Suri of Al Jazeera English reports how patients walk for miles to reach hospitals, some of which serve over 35,000 people.

In anticipation of the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen later this year, Allegretti address the limits imposed on developing nations, greener agendas for governments and how business can take action in smart way.

Mumbai, India’s largest city, is confronting an epidemic of drug-resistant TB and has few ways to fight it.

Independent producer Lauren Rudser brings us this signature story on an often overlooked global health issue.

Shah Rukh Khan’s name came up on a computer alert list and he was then questioned at length. Khan, a Muslim, was in the U.S. to promote a film, “My Name is Khan,” that explores the racial profiling of Indian Muslims living in the U.S. after 9/11.

Following the incident — which was widely reported in the Indian media — several of Khan’s supporters gathered in India to protest, and some burned an American flag. View a video of protests in New Delhi courtesy of YouTube user midday:

Was Khan’s detainment the result of insensitive racial profiling, or was the actor simply accustomed to India’s VIP culture?

Worldfocus asked Nitin Govil — an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego and the co-author of “Global Hollywood” — for his thoughts on how the incident has been perceived in India:

For much of his career, Shah Rukh has rather carefully avoided putting his Muslim identity at the forefront. This is why his forthcoming film “My Name is Khan” is so interesting given the context of his stardom in India.

Responses in India have varied from protests to the burnings of U.S. flags, condemnations by high-ranking Indian politicians, celebrities, cricketers and other public figures, to a kind of “what else can one expect in America” kind of attitude that confirms what most around the world think about the U.S. policy on travel and detention.

Given that all Indians have a deep familiarity with bureaucracy in their everyday lives, there has been a general sense that a short questioning period for Khan might have been alright, but that U.S. authorities clearly took things too far. Although Khan has called for folks back home not to, in his words, “take things too far,” at the same time, many think that he has quite smartly used the incident as a way to promote the new film as well as the issues it addresses.

NDTV, a leading English-language news channel in India, covered the incident — calling it “a huge, huge embarrassment” — and spoke with Khan:

Comments on an Indian social networking site, iTimes, reflected the smattering of opinion in India:

Gayatri Goswami writes:
This is no joke people. Shah Rukh Khan is the biggest movie star in India, a country of 1.3 billion people, thereby making him the biggest movie star in the world. I’m struggling to find a comparable here in the US. No offense to Will Smith or Matt Damon or Pitt, Cruise, Clooney, Angelina or whomever else you can think of, but they all pale in comparison.The detention was shameful and U.S should apologize, they better

Dilnaz Seth writes:
i think U.S should apologize, but why r we making so much of noise abt it, because it is SRK, there are so many innocent muslims with surname Khan who go through this everyday, what about them, do we care for all or just the celebs

Kaushik Sanyal writes:
Hey guys, I think India should learn that, “VIP treatments” which are part of everyday life in India, does not happen in other parts of the world. Even, ex-president of USA Al Gore has to go through security checks in US airports ! I don’t know why SRK is making such a big issue out of it or so called patriotic Indians are raising such a noise ! Everyday in our lives, we see or meet people who takes advantage of their VIP status in India and resent that - why should it be different in this case. I am no USA lover but I recognize the fact that a small time Immigration official can insist to follow the rule book. I hope it also happens in India.

Rragijav Achar writes:
I feel appreciating the US for talking this step. They have given the highest level of interest to their countrymen, unlike India. Wake up India, the US doing the right stuff so only they could stop the terror in their country. Imagine India how many times this happened with us and what actions we have taken against it. They have full rights to do so, as they consider their countrymen as their biggest asset. Count how many times the underworld dons escaped from the hands of Indian government and image what would have US done if the same thing had happened. Think out of the box. Wake up India wake up… it’s time for tight security… I would appreciate if India takes similar actions against each and every person enters and exits India.

Dr. Martin Blaser, the past president of the Infectious Disease Society of America and the chair of the Department of Medicine at New York University’s School of Medicine, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the flu pandemic and the risks from a global perspective.

Below, read what bloggers in India had to say about the flu and the government’s response.

Blogger “Ivan Quadras” in India mocks the hype over the H1N1 virus:

As my good friend Kanul put it, “200 people get swine flu and the whole of India wants to wear surgical masks! 20 million people have AIDS and nobody wants to wear a condom!”

It’s really funny to see masks worth Rs. 20/- being sold at Rs. 200/-. It is funny to see Indians actually taking care of hygiene. It is funny to see everyone masked around me.

Rahul Agrawal in India argues that the government has to share in the blame for the spread of the disease, describing his flight into the country:

While I agree that this virus has come to India through passengers coming from overseas, I would say that the biggest blame lies with the Indian government for its negligent attitude which has led to this situation in India.

Before landing in Mumbai, each passenger was given a declaration form in which the person had to fill in some basic information like whether they had been to a flu affected country or had been in contact with a flu infected person. I filled this form in the flight and then landed at the airport. There was utter chaos at the terminal. There were some officials who wore face masks and asked each passenger to go to a particular room to get the form attested. I duly went to that room and got the form attested. After that I cleared immigration and entered into Mumbai with that form still with me; no official had looked at that form after I got it attested. So here I was, back in India, with a useless form in which I had mentioned that I had been to a swine flu infected country. No one had bothered to read that form and test me for any possible symptoms. And now the government blames travellers!

Blogger Arindam Chaudhuri, an editor with a news magazine, criticizes India’s health care system in his personal blog:

The impending pandemic of swine flu has once again brought to the fore the hapless condition of Indian healthcare, the under preparedness of the government as well as the indifference with which the babudom tends to treat such incidents that generally plague the common man to a large extent. Incidentally, just as the news of swine flu is spreading panic like wildfire, these days there are also reports of thousands being affected by cerebral malaria in Bihar. Yet, that doesn’t make prime news; and won’t make much news even if the casualties there were to happen in multiples of those dying due to swine flu.

What is visible all across is how the public healthcare system is woefully inadequate to take care of India’s burgeoning population. In the given environment, it is not just swine flu that needs to be arrested, but even the flu that ails the entire health infrastructure, i.e. the political mindset, needs to be corrected simultaneously.

Indian netizens are mourning the passing of an Internet comic heroine, weeks after the country’s Ministry of Telecommunications banned this contemporary take on Kama Sutra for violating public decency.

Savita Bhabhi was a curvaceous and promiscuous young woman, whose sexual adventures won over 60 million online erotica fans per month — in India and abroad.

The intro to Savita Bhabhi’s first episode, “Bra Salesman.”

Having gained a following of over 200,000 Internet viewers per day and 30,000 e-mail subscribers, Savita Bhabhi’s tendency to shed her sari represented a dramatic departure from traditional norms of Indian sexuality. Though a mere animated online character, Savita Bhabhi’s viewers faithfully watched her pornographic cartoon sequences — published in 10 Indian languages and in English — for its racy content and explorations of infidelity.

Indian left-leaning newsweekly magazine Tehelka praised the comic for its ability to “poke fun at the coy Indian attitude towards sexuality.” An editorial titled Bhabhi Anticlimax derided the government’s decision:

A PROMISCUOUS BHABHI is the latest threat to the sovereignty of our nation — that’s what our government would have us believe. Not the real life ones (we’ll pretend those don’t exist) but a wanton cartoon caricature so raunchy, she might be too real for the IT ministry’s comfort. They had to ban her.

“Bhabhi” is the Hindi term for “sister-in-law” but more closely connotes the American slang term “MILF” in this context. The cartoon, which has 12 episodes that ran in less than a year, is an escape from the sexual repression of Indian middle-class life. The last episode, “College Girl Savvil,” was released on July 1.

The assertive and well-endowed seductress — whose response to the global recession was a menage-a-trois with her female co-worker and boss — clashed with India’s anti-pornography laws. The creator of the Savita Bhabhi series initially went by the names “Deshmukh” and “Indian Porn Empire.” But 38-year-old British-Indian businessman Puneet Agarwal emerged as the creator of the trailblazing cartoon, which combines Hindu religious mythology with modern sexual sensibilities.

In response to the Indian government’s June 3 order for India Internet service providers to block the site, Agarwal’s Save Savita campaign attracted the attention of millions. Indian dailies have been running headlines pleading the public to file Right to Information complaints that would reverse the unpopular ban on Savita Bhabhi.

But since last week, when Agarwal capitulated due to personal reasons, the Indian blogosphere has been awash in RIP notices and eulogies for the toon porn star with a ravenous appetite for misadventures with milk men, old lovers and cricket stars.

During my nine months of research in Mumbai, I did not see much libertine expression of sexuality — despite living in a relatively liberal and upscale area of India’s most cosmopolitan city. But in speaking with some of my Mumbai friends recently, I realized that Savita Bhabhi threatens Indian sensibility.

“Her sexual escapades have brought about a lot of curiousity among readers who get a kick out of reading Savita in action,” said Pritesh Jethwani, a stockbroker in Mumbai who confirmed that the block prevents him from viewing Savita’s online exploits. “I think the cartoon is trashy. But from a democratic point of view, I oppose the ban.”

With women’s liberation activists also unhappy about the government ban, conservative forces in India revel in the triumph of traditional values. No longer will Indian sexual hypocrisies be exposed to Internet voyeurs in such a public forum — unless Savita’s programmers create proxy sites that allow Indian viewers to dodge the ban.

- Ben Piven

Secretary of Clinton rounded out the emerging power circuit with a trip to India this week.

The Obama administration has been in overdrive building America’s pivotal power relationships with China, Russia and now India. For reasons Mona Sutphen and I describe in our book, this is the right approach to big powers in the current era. A central rationale is that “strategic collaboration” will focus major power assets on transnational threats, which America cannot successfully battle alone.

A lot of legwork goes into building a working relationship, Obama officials have wasted no time. Presidents Hu and Obama have met twice, and every week seems to find another high level U.S. official in Beijing. Secretary of State Clinton was the first in history to go to China before Europe. Next week, the first Strategic & Economic Dialogue, an intense two-day conference co-chaired by Secretary Clinton and Secretary of Treasury Geitner and their Chinese counterparts, will be held in D.C.

President Obama and presidents Medvedev met and issued a comprehensive joint statement not even three months into his term, after Secretary of State Clinton had already hit the “reset” button with her counterpart.   Next came a full fledged summit in Moscow two weeks ago at which the U.S. and Russia agreed to resume arms control talks and to reinvigorate the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism.

Secretary of Clinton rounded out the emerging power circuit with a trip to India this week. She inaugurated a “strategic dialogue,” with Delhi and blessed deepening civilian nuclear cooperation. But she came away empty handed on climate, as Delhi refused to commit to any binding targets under a new climate treaty.

It’s one thing to build these working relationships. And it is another for them to work. While we’ve realized some important gains from these rising power relationships already, many others are elusive. The coming years will be filled with frustration as our officials invest countless hours consulting and negotiating — yet we don’t get the kind of help we want from China on North Korea or climate, from Russia on Iran, and from India on Pakistan, to name a few. But at least we will increasingly understand their perspectives, and that will lead to either more policy success or more realistic expectations.

- Nina Hachigian

Photo courtesy of Flickr user u.s. department of state under a Creative Commons license.

On Monday, the two countries concluded a new deal that will grant American companies exclusive rights to sell India civilian nuclear power reactors — a deal that could be worth $10 billion.

But even as that deal was struck, India once again resisted American efforts to limit carbon emissions — a deal India fears would slow its own economy.

Amit Pandya of the The Stimson Center joins Martin Savidge to discuss the Secretary of State’s visit to India and the state of American-Indian relations.

A vibrant and enterprising community of Tibetans lives in Ladakh, the easternmost area of the contested state of Jammu and Kashmir. Thousands of essentially stateless Tibetans have migrated westward to Ladakh since Chinese forces clamped down on Tibet in 1959. Although ethnic Tibetans in China have Chinese citizenship, the Tibetan exiles in India have residency permits but not Indian citizenship.

Tibetans arrived as refugees and remain refugees. The Tibetans feel at home in Ladakh, because of their common Buddhist faith and trading linkages. Even though many Tibetans were born in Ladakh, insurmountable statelessness pinches this Tibetan community.

Nawang Tso, a 47-year-old who has no imminent hope of returning to his ancestral land, said:

Neither we can get government job nor own land. I was born with this status and wonder how many generations of my family will have to live with this status.

Buddhist lamas in Ladakh, India. Photo: Luv Puri

For the last fifty years, Tibet has been governed by China. Tibetan refugees in Ladakh, like most other Tibetans, have rallied behind their spiritual leader. But the Dalai Lama does not demand complete secession from China. The present political stalemate between the Chinese government and the Tibetan leadership is over the territorial limits of the proposed Tibetan province, under Chinese sovereignty.

Tibetans want a Greater Tibet — the amalgamation of the Tibetan Autonomous Region with the whole of Qinghai province, western parts of Sichuan, areas of Yunnan and a part of Gansu. The Chinese government objects, emphasizing that ethnicity is no basis for border demarcation of Chinese provinces.

For the Tibetan refuges, Ladakh was a natural settlement area due to its culture, religion and landscape. Famous for its pristine beauty, Ladakh’s landscape has stark similarities with Utah’s Salt Lake City. Tibetan Buddhism influenced the culture of Ladakh and even vice-versa, as Buddhism spread to other parts of Asia through Ladakh. The centuries-old monasteries found in almost every village throughout Ladakh indicate this influence.

Similar to Tibetans, most Ladakhi homes have a small chapel containing various religious objects and sacred images. Other visible signs of the Buddhist faith are omnipresent prayer flags, stupas and mani walls.

Ladakhi cuisine shows the impact of the Tibetan community. This is true of restaurants thronged by foreign tourists and even of traditional Ladakhi homes. Gyal Wangchuk, a Ladakhi owner of the famous Siachen Hotel in the middle of Leh, Ladakh’s capital, said, “The majority of homes in the urban areas are no longer eating Ladakhi food, as now the new generation loves the Tibetan food. The famous Tibetan Momos can be found in every nook and corner of Ladakh.”

The Tibetan refugee community is staying in rented accommodations. The community’s employment prospects have been highly limited for the last five decades. In the middle of Leh, Ladakh’s capital, a Tibetan market has been established. The Tibetan community utilizes its contacts in Tibet to import black market Chinese-made goods to eastern Ladakh. Shoes, electronics, and pearls used to flood the main Tibetan markets, which are thronged by tourists during the summer. A pessimistic trader summarized the situation:

The times changed, as now the clandestine trade via eastern Ladakh became difficult. Most of the Chinese goods reaching here come through legal means, i.e. through the plains via Nepal. Profits have decreased. Uncertainty over our status will continue to affect us professionally, psychologically and physically.

- Luv Puri

The Naxalites are an assortment of violent Maoist rebel groups who stage internecine attacks on Indian government targets to bring attention to region’s blight. With about 20,000 fighters, the Naxal-Maoist Insurgency rages in 40 percent of India’s territory. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the Naxalites India’s biggest threat to national security, and they continue to attract support from a wide array of castes and tribal groups.

India’s Naxal-affected districts (red signifies most influence) Map: Wikipedia user Planemad

While conducting malnutrition research in the heavily tribal state of Jharkhand — one of India’s most impoverished states — one woman told me this story:

My one-year-old son fell sick one day. The nearest health center is 20 miles away. Going there would mean losing a day’s wage. The whole family would have to go without food that day. I had other children to feed, it was not possible. My son slowly got too weak to play, to stand up and one day he died.

Villagers with stories like this strengthen the Naxal insurgency in the region. Data shows that India’s child malnutrition rate is 47 percent (as compared to 30 percent in sub-Saharan Africa). India also ranks 66th among the 88 countries in the 2008 Global Hunger Index.

Schoolchildren in heavily tribal Jharkhand on Republic Day. Photo: Flickr user premasagar

In 1967, the Naxalites started their revolutionary movement in a small West Bengal village called Naxalbari. With huge support from highly-marginalized tribal communities, the Naxalite-controlled “Red Corridor” starts in Andhra Pradesh and runs through eastern Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Bihar.

Labeling this highly complex issue a matter of law and order, the West Bengal state government sent in police and paramilitary forces and recently banned the Maoist party after recent violence in Lalgarh, West Bengal. And by pigeonholing the Naxalites as “terrorists,” the government has further isolated Naxalite supporters.

But government forces have been accused of gross human rights violations. For each alleged government abuse, the Naxalites have responded with double the level of violence. Large-scale killings increase during elections when Naxalites take passenger trains hostage and launch attacks on police. The Naxalite ideology has led both sides onto a path of increasing bloodshed in a “brutal low-level war.”

Naxalism is a complex social issue with roots in the tremendous deprivation of millions of rural Indians. Negating the politics of development could help turn Naxalism into a true mass movement. Time will tell whether this will create a much larger civil war or be crushed by the state.

More likely than not, Bastar in Chattisgarh, Palamau in Jharkhand and the thousands of other forgotten Indian hinterlands will continue to bleed.

In the Naxal belt and beyond, millions of Indians — just like the woman who lost her son — will continue to starve.

- Anasuya Ray