Belief in astrology high amongst American Hindus. Pakistani on Forbes American billionaire list.

The Internet Newspaper of Global Indians: news, video, blogs, community

Gateway of India, Mumbai

Tarun Tejpal, who exposed corruption, to talk at New York's Asia Society about gunmen hired to kill him

Tejpal's talk on Thursday October 4 is organized with the South Asian Journalists Association. The Asia Society states:

A contemporary thriller from India based on real events.

 

Tarun J. Tejpal, author of 'The Story of My Assassins.' (Shailendra Pandey)

Join journalist, publisher and novelist Tarun J. Tejpal in conversation with Tunku Varadarajan (Newsweek International) about his latest book, the highly acclaimed The Story of My Assassins. Followed by a book sale and signing.
Inspired by actual events, The Story of My Assassins tells the story of a journalist who learns that the police have captured five hitmen on their way to kill him. Landing like a bombshell on his comfortable life, the news prompts him to launch an urgent investigation into the lives of his would-be murderers — a ragtag group of street thugs and village waifs — and their mastermind. Who wanted him dead, and why?
But the investigation forces him to reexamine his own life, too — to confront his own complex feelings about the country that crafted his would-be killers, as well as himself, his job, and his treatment of the women in his life.
Part thriller and part erotic romance, full of dark humor and taut suspense, The Story of My Assassins takes us from the lavish, hedonistic palaces of India’s elite to its seediest slums.
Tarun J. Tejpal is a journalist, publisher, novelist and founder of Tehelka, one of India’s leading news magazines that is renowned for its aggressive public interest journalism. He has been named one of India’s most influential people by The Guardian, Businessweek and Asiaweek.
Tejpal famously reported for Tehelka on the devastating corruption in India’s defense industry. The investigation led to the resignation of the defense minister — and to the death threats that inspired The Story of My Assassins.

 http://asiasociety.org/new-york/events/tarun-j-tejpal-story-my-assassins

Shelley Jain of Staten Island wins Miss New York Teen contest

According to a blog silive, Shelley "bested about 65 other young ladies vying for the title.
Shelley, a recent graduate of Staten Island Technical High School, attends Macaulay Honors at Brooklyn College. Her activities include dancing, skiing, singing, and acting.To win the title, Shelley competed in formal wear, speech, a rigorous interview and the community service portion of the pageant." For more go to:

http://blog.silive.com/inside_out_column/2012/09/miss_staten_island_outstanding_teen_to_attend_national_pageant_at_disneyland.html

http://www.namiss.com/eventresults/winners/?id=2012%20State%20New_York_%28South%29

Over half of American Hindus believe in astrology and reincarnation, says Pew study

According to a comprehensive, nationwide survey of Asian Americans conducted by the Pew Research Center:  More than half of Asian-American Hindus say they believe in reincarnation and moksha, defined in the survey as “the ultimate state transcending pain and desire in which individual consciousness ends” (59% each). About half also believe in astrology (53%), defined in the survey as the belief “that the position of the stars and planets can affect people’s lives.”
 For more go to:

 http://www.pewforum.org/Asian-Americans-A-Mosaic-of-Faiths-overview.aspx#hindus

A Pakistani and five Indians, including K. Ram Shriram and Vinod Khosla, on Forbes 400 list of American billionaires

Five Indians and a Pakistani are on Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans for 2012. According to Forbes, "Other foreign born immigrants include Indian-born Manoj Bhargava ($1.5 billion), the former monk responsible for 5-Hour Energy (and its unfortunate advertising), Pakistan-born Shahid Khan ($2.5 billion) who fixed the auto industry’s bumper problem and is hoping to turn around the NFL’s least valuable team, the Jacksonville Jaguars " For more go to:
 
http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/

Maitreya Padukone, dentist, to play tabla with Cosmosomatics jazz group in New York

September 29th, 2012 8:00 PM

Live Musical Performance

Co-Sponsored byNeues Kabarett

The Cosmosamatics

Featuring Sonny Simmons (alto sax, English horn), Michael Marcus (reeds), John Austria (piano), Rashaan Carter (bass), Jay Rosen (drums).

Neues Kabarett is delighted to present The Cosmosamatics returning from their European summer tour for a rare New York City performance.
The Cosmosamatics were formed in 2000, but are the fruit of a partnership between Sonny Simmons and Michael Marcus established in 1981. As Marcus insists in the liner notes to their album Zetrons (Not Two, 2005), “We are a band – which is rare in jazz today. Sonny and I have been collaborating for years to keep the tradition alive of being a band.” They have released eight albums to date.

  https://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/info?id=12305&reset=1

Vijay Mallya in talks to sell part of alcohol business to Diageo to pay Kingfisher debt

In a report The Telegraph notes, "Mr Mallya, who owns a 28pc stake in United Spirits, is said to need money to prop up his loss-making airline Kingfisher, which will require $600m (£369m) in the next few months to keep its planes in the air, according to some estimates.

Diageo is understood to be pushing for a deal that would give it strategic control of United Spirits, India’s second largest drinks group." For more go to:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/leisure/9564293/Diageo-in-talks-with-Vijay-Mallyas-United-Spirits.html

Prabal Gurung elated that Kate Middleton wears his printed skirt soon after New York fashion week

Gurung, who declines to give his age, got a bigger boost after his show at New York Fashion Week, when  Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, wore a printed dress from his spring 2012 collection during her visit to Singapore. As he told The New York Times “I can’t even tell you how amazing it is professionally and how surreal,” he said. “It’s a dream and very emotional for me, and it solidifies my belief in what I am trying to do as a designer.” He added that he had no idea that Ms. Middleton was going to don the bold dress or where she might have bought it, the Times report added. For more on Gurung's show, as well as other Indian designers like Naeem Khan, Sheena Trivedi and Bhibu Mohapatra, see:

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/south-asian-designers-make-their-mark-at-fashion-week/

Divya Narendra's Sum Zero gets $1 million from Facebook co-founders & Harvard class mates

In a report the Wall Street Journal notes that, "Flush with at least $65 million from the settlement of a legal battle with Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook Inc., FB +1.20% Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are backing fellow Harvard alumnus Divya Narendra, their ally in the Facebook fight, in the investment website. The Winklevosses have put $1 million into SumZero, which was founded by Mr. Narendra and another Harvard alum Aalap Mahadevia, in 2008."
For more on the story:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444433504577651750662070974.html

Janaki Bhakle of Columbia University to discuss is Hindu fundamentalism an oxymoron?  

What is Hindu fundamentalism? How can fundamentalism be self-consciously modern and progressively science-driven? Listen to Bakhle discuss Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, famous as the author of Hindu fundamentalism and as a revolutionary nationalist deeply devoted to the idea of India as a Hindu state and infamous for his alleged involvement in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. How can a study of this fundamentalist serve as the political biography of a distinctly non-monotheistic fundamentalism?

https://secure.www.alumniconnections.com/olc/pub/COUC/event/showEventForm.jsp?form_id=133222

Siddhartha Deb gets PEN author of color $5000 award

It appears that Siddhartha Deb and/or his publisher Faber & Faber must have identified Deb as an Asian minority in the US when submitting his memoir "The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India" for the PEN award. The submission form for the PEN award states, "To be eligible, candidates must be writers of color who have not received wide media coverage."

Further, "The PEN Open Book Award, formerly the Beyond Margins Awards, celebrate outstanding books by writers of color published in the United States during the previous year.

Sponsored by the Open Book Program, this award is one of the many ways in which the Open Book Program encourages racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. The Open Book Committee works to increase the literature by, for, and about African, Arab, Asian, Caribbean, Latin, and Native Americans, and to establish access for these groups to the publishing industry. "

Last year Deb's book was discussed in The New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/08/siddhartha-debs-publishing-odyssey.html

Maybe Deb and his publisher will submit his next book for the main PEN award. 

The news from PEN about Deb's award:

"Fiction and nonfiction writer Siddhartha Deb won the PEN Open Book Award for his memoir, The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India (Faber & Faber, 2011). The $5,000 prize is given for a book by an author of color published in 2011. Alexander Chee, Mat Johnson, and Natasha Trethewey judged."

http://www.pw.org/content/pen_american_center_announces_winners_of_2012_literary_awards?cmnt_all=1

Hyde Park Corner: An Open Forum

Indians should press Harvard and other top US universities to abolish 20% Asian quota

Good education is very important to Indian parents since a degree from a good college, preferably a professional one, largely determines income and perhaps even eligibility for a good "catch", as in marriage. But Indians and other Asians are finding their avenues for success limited by the Asian ceiling - unstated quota limiting total Asian admissions to a maximum 20% as apparently is the case at Harvard and other elite Universities in the US. According to article below, while Asian students at the University of California Berkeley has risen to 40% that at Harvard has stayed stagnant around 18% for the past decade.

So Indians in the US, especially those donating money and holding influential posts, should voice opposition and team up with other Asians to press elite universities to abolish the Asian ceiling.

"Admissions officers deny capping the number of Asian-American students at schools, but a 2009 book called No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal posited that Asian Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores to gain entrance to a top private university ........".

Ivy League Discrimination? Harvard's Asian student admissions static around 17% while Asians at UC Berkeley have risen to 40%

Khan Academy: effective and free online education help 

How to do better at an exam or just improve your knowledge? 

Thanks to Salman Khan, you have free access to learning methods that Microsoft founder, mega billionaire and major philanthropist Bill Gates uses to teach his own kids. 

"With over 3,200 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
A free world-class education for anyone anywhere."
 www.khanacademy.org/

Your comments, views and criticisms are welcome in the space below. 

 

For these and other stories, images and videos on Indians around the globe, published each weekend,  visit:

 /http://primeindians.com    The editorial and technical quality of the website will be updated shortly. 

Prabal Gurung's dress worn by Kate Middleton.

The Internet Newspaper of Global Indians: news, video, blogs, community

Gateway of India, Mumbai

Prabal Gurung elated that Kate Middleton wears his printed skirt soon after New York fashion week

Gurung, who declines to give his age, got a bigger boost after his show at New York Fashion Week, when  Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, wore a printed dress from his spring 2012 collection during her visit to Singapore. As he told The New York Times “I can’t even tell you how amazing it is professionally and how surreal,” he said. “It’s a dream and very emotional for me, and it solidifies my belief in what I am trying to do as a designer.” He added that he had no idea that Ms. Middleton was going to don the bold dress or where she might have bought it, the Times report added. For more on Gurung's show, as well as other Indian designers like Naeem Khan, Sheena Trivedi and Bhibu Mohapatra, see:

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/south-asian-designers-make-their-mark-at-fashion-week/

Divya Narendra's Sum Zero gets $1 million from Facebook co-founders & Harvard class mates

In a report the Wall Street Journal notes that, "Flush with at least $65 million from the settlement of a legal battle with Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook Inc., FB +1.20% Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are backing fellow Harvard alumnus Divya Narendra, their ally in the Facebook fight, in the investment website. The Winklevosses have put $1 million into SumZero, which was founded by Mr. Narendra and another Harvard alum Aalap Mahadevia, in 2008."
For more on the story:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444433504577651750662070974.html

Rakesh Kapoor CEO of Reckitt Benckiser, replaces Chief Financial Officer

In a news release issued by the company, Rakesh Kapoor says, that former CFO Liz Doherty "and I have agreed that RB’s and her way of working are not as well matched as either of us would like, and now is the right time for her to move to a new opportunity.”


http://www.rb.com/site/RKBR/Templates/MediaInvestorsGeneral2.aspx?pageid=1300&cc=GB

Bounty on Salman Rushdie for writing "Satanic Verses" raised to $3.3 million by Ayatollah in Iran

A key Ayatollah in Iran has raised the bounty on Rushdie by $500,000 to $3.3 million total. The mullah's statement, according to The London Telegraph, noted the recent controversial film about Prophet Mohammed, "....won't be the last insulting act as long as Imam Khomeini's historic order on executing the blasphemous Salman Rushdie is not carried out".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9546513/Iran-resurrects-Salman-Rushdie-threat.html

Darbar classical musical festival opens in London

The festival will be "presenting India’s two traditions - Hindustani (north Indian) and Carnatic (south Indian) - together.  From the Hindustani tradition we bring you one of India’s greatest sitar maestros, Ustad Shujaat Khan with tabla maestro Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri. Come and experience rare ragas by the khayal vocalist, Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar. Headlining from the Carnatic tradition is India’s greatest violin duo, Mysore Nagraj and Manjunath and on the fabulous veena we have maestro, Chitraveena Ravikiren.
But we go beyond the big names. We go out of our way to seek out those  musicians who you may not have heard of but are at the top of their game. This is what our audiences tell us give them the biggest buzz.
So this year, we bring to you many musicians performing for the first time in the UK. Look out for Prattyush Banerjee on sarod, Pushpraj Koshti on surbahar, Joydeep Ghosh on surshingar,  Shubh Maharaj on tabla and lovers of vocal music must not miss Ram Deshpande Mahadeva singing khayal.
In addition, Chitrangana Agle-Reshwal India’s only female pakhawaj player and Manjiri Asnare-Kelkar singing khayal return after many years for their second visit to London."

For more information go to the festival site:
http://www.darbar.org/darbarfestival

Janaki Bhakle of Columbia University to discuss is Hindu fundamentalism an oxymoron?  

What is Hindu fundamentalism? How can fundamentalism be self-consciously modern and progressively science-driven? Listen to Bakhle discuss Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, famous as the author of Hindu fundamentalism and as a revolutionary nationalist deeply devoted to the idea of India as a Hindu state and infamous for his alleged involvement in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. How can a study of this fundamentalist serve as the political biography of a distinctly non-monotheistic fundamentalism?

https://secure.www.alumniconnections.com/olc/pub/COUC/event/showEventForm.jsp?form_id=133222

Kapila Venu's Kuttiyattam dance at the Asia Society was astounding says The New York Times

Brian Seibert, writing in The New York Times sets the background for the dance depicting the episode in the Ramayana, where Sita is abandoned in the forest by Rama over doubts about her chastity.

"In one seldom-celebrated episode Rama, having rescued his wife, Sita, from a demon, requires her to prove her chastity in a trial by fire. She passes the test, but rumors persist, and so he abandons his pregnant wife in the forest. The forest animals weep with her. A sage takes her in and trains her twin sons, and years later, when Rama discovers them, he rejoices. But still he requires of his wife another trial by fire. The mistrust is too much for Sita to bear, and she asks the earth to open up and swallow her."

Seibert goes on to write that this story was "...recounted in an extraordinary performance at Asia Society on Saturday (co-produced by Sanskriti Center). “The Abandonment of Sita” was a highly rare glimpse into kuttiyattam, an ancient form of temple theater from the Kerala region in South India. All the characters were portrayed — in mime and occasional bursts of song — by one woman, the astounding Kapila Venu."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/arts/dance/kapila-venu-in-the-abandonment-of-sita-at-asia-society.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=dance&adxnnlx=1347816207-VQoF9k/8k30lgB4GzW4siQ 

Siddhartha Deb gets PEN author of color $5000 award

It appears that Siddhartha Deb and/or his publisher Faber & Faber must have identified Deb as an Asian minority in the US when submitting his memoir "The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India" for the PEN award. The submission form for the PEN award states, "To be eligible, candidates must be writers of color who have not received wide media coverage."

Further, "The PEN Open Book Award, formerly the Beyond Margins Awards, celebrate outstanding books by writers of color published in the United States during the previous year.

Sponsored by the Open Book Program, this award is one of the many ways in which the Open Book Program encourages racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. The Open Book Committee works to increase the literature by, for, and about African, Arab, Asian, Caribbean, Latin, and Native Americans, and to establish access for these groups to the publishing industry. "

Last year Deb's book was discussed in The New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/08/siddhartha-debs-publishing-odyssey.html

Maybe Deb and his publisher will submit his next book for the main PEN award. 

The news from PEN about Deb's award:

"Fiction and nonfiction writer Siddhartha Deb won the PEN Open Book Award for his memoir, The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India (Faber & Faber, 2011). The $5,000 prize is given for a book by an author of color published in 2011. Alexander Chee, Mat Johnson, and Natasha Trethewey judged."

http://www.pw.org/content/pen_american_center_announces_winners_of_2012_literary_awards?cmnt_all=1

Hyde Park Corner: An Open Forum

Indians should press Harvard and other top US universities to abolish 20% Asian quota

Good education is very important to Indian parents since a degree from a good college, preferably a professional one, largely determines income and perhaps even eligibility for a good "catch", as in marriage. But Indians and other Asians are finding their avenues for success limited by the Asian ceiling - unstated quota limiting total Asian admissions to a maximum 20% as apparently is the case at Harvard and other elite Universities in the US. According to article below, while Asian students at the University of California Berkeley has risen to 40% that at Harvard has stayed stagnant around 18% for the past decade.

So Indians in the US, especially those donating money and holding influential posts, should voice opposition and team up with other Asians to press elite universities to abolish the Asian ceiling.

"Admissions officers deny capping the number of Asian-American students at schools, but a 2009 book called No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal posited that Asian Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores to gain entrance to a top private university ........".

Ivy League Discrimination? Harvard's Asian student admissions static around 17% while Asians at UC Berkeley have risen to 40%

Khan Academy: effective and free online education help 

How to do better at an exam or just improve your knowledge? 

Thanks to Salman Khan, you have free access to learning methods that Microsoft founder, mega billionaire and major philanthropist Bill Gates uses to teach his own kids. 

"With over 3,200 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
A free world-class education for anyone anywhere."
 www.khanacademy.org/





https://www.edx.org/

Your comments, views and criticisms are welcome in the space below. 

For these and other stories, images and videos on Indians around the globe, published each weekend,  visit:

 /http://primeindians.com    
The editorial and technical quality of the website will be updated shortly. 

Hindu fundamentalism an oxymoron? Rushdie film bland and self defeating

The Internet Newspaper of Global Indians: news, video, blogs, community

Gateway of India, Mumbai

Deepa Mehta's film "Midnight's Children", based on Salman Rushdie's book, has no distributors in India

A report in The London Guardian notes, "The film follows the narrative of the original novel and includes unflattering portrayals of top Indian political figures. Cinema experts in the subcontinent said the failure to find a distributor revealed a weakness in Indian democracy."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/09/rushdie-film-india-controversy-book

Midnight's Children is self-defeating faithfulness, says The Guardian reviewer

According to a review in the Guardian "Salman Rushdie makes his presence clearly felt in this adaptation of his Booker winner. Whether that's a good thing is less certain."

The reviewer Catherine Shoard goes on to say, the film "....sheds no fresh light on the material, turns and turns but with no new spin, fails to pepper the source. This is self-defeating faithfulness, which genuflects so far as to insist the audience can't be released for some 148 minutes, and employs actors perfectly cast to the point of blandness."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/sep/07/midnights-children-review 

Bounty on Salman Rushdie for writing "Satanic Verses" raised to $3.3 million by Ayatollah in Iran

A key Ayatollah in Iran has raised the bounty on Rushdie by $500,000 to $3.3 million total. The mullah's statement, according to The London Telegraph, noted the recent controversial film about Prophet Mohammed, "....won't be the last insulting act as long as Imam Khomeini's historic order on executing the blasphemous Salman Rushdie is not carried out".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9546513/Iran-resurrects-Salman-Rushdie-threat.html

Janaki Bhakle of Columbia University to discuss is Hindu fundamentalism an oxymoron?  

What is Hindu fundamentalism? How can fundamentalism be self-consciously modern and progressively science-driven? Listen to Bakhle discuss Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, famous as the author of Hindu fundamentalism and as a revolutionary nationalist deeply devoted to the idea of India as a Hindu state and infamous for his alleged involvement in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. How can a study of this fundamentalist serve as the political biography of a distinctly non-monotheistic fundamentalism?

https://secure.www.alumniconnections.com/olc/pub/COUC/event/showEventForm.jsp?form_id=133222

Kapila Venu's Kuttiyattam dance at the Asia Society was astounding says The New York Times

Brian Seibert, writing in The New York Times sets the background for the dance depicting the episode in the Ramayana, where Sita is abandoned in the forest by Rama over doubts about her chastity.

"In one seldom-celebrated episode Rama, having rescued his wife, Sita, from a demon, requires her to prove her chastity in a trial by fire. She passes the test, but rumors persist, and so he abandons his pregnant wife in the forest. The forest animals weep with her. A sage takes her in and trains her twin sons, and years later, when Rama discovers them, he rejoices. But still he requires of his wife another trial by fire. The mistrust is too much for Sita to bear, and she asks the earth to open up and swallow her."

Seibert goes on to write that this story was "...recounted in an extraordinary performance at Asia Society on Saturday (co-produced by Sanskriti Center). “The Abandonment of Sita” was a highly rare glimpse into kuttiyattam, an ancient form of temple theater from the Kerala region in South India. All the characters were portrayed — in mime and occasional bursts of song — by one woman, the astounding Kapila Venu."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/arts/dance/kapila-venu-in-the-abandonment-of-sita-at-asia-society.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=dance&adxnnlx=1347816207-VQoF9k/8k30lgB4GzW4siQ 

Siddhartha Deb gets PEN author of color $5000 award

It appears that Siddhartha Deb and/or his publisher Faber & Faber must have identified Deb as an Asian minority in the US when submitting his memoir "The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India" for the PEN award. The submission form for the PEN award states, "To be eligible, candidates must be writers of color who have not received wide media coverage."

Further, "The PEN Open Book Award, formerly the Beyond Margins Awards, celebrate outstanding books by writers of color published in the United States during the previous year.

Sponsored by the Open Book Program, this award is one of the many ways in which the Open Book Program encourages racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. The Open Book Committee works to increase the literature by, for, and about African, Arab, Asian, Caribbean, Latin, and Native Americans, and to establish access for these groups to the publishing industry. "

Last year Deb's book was discussed in The New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/08/siddhartha-debs-publishing-odyssey.html

Maybe Deb and his publisher will submit his next book for the main PEN award. 

The news from PEN about Deb's award:

"Fiction and nonfiction writer Siddhartha Deb won the PEN Open Book Award for his memoir, The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India (Faber & Faber, 2011). The $5,000 prize is given for a book by an author of color published in 2011. Alexander Chee, Mat Johnson, and Natasha Trethewey judged."

http://www.pw.org/content/pen_american_center_announces_winners_of_2012_literary_awards?cmnt_all=1

In other news this week:

Ruchir Sharma of Morgan Stanley argues US Fed quantitative easing hurting consumption

In its third effort to simulate job growth in the US, the Federal Reserve launched a new round of quantitative easing last Thursday. But argues Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets and global macro strategy at Morgan Stanley, in an opinion piece in the Financial Times, the Fed should abandon this policy since rising commodity prices, especially that of gasoline, is hurting consumers more. 

http://search.ft.com/search?queryText=ruchir+sharma 

 

Surupa Sen and Bijayini Satpathy of the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/09/09/arts/dance/20120909_DANCELISTINGS-4.html

Hyde Park Corner: An Open Forum

Indians should press Harvard and other top US universities to abolish 20% Asian quota

Good education is very important to Indian parents since a degree from a good college, preferably a professional one, largely determines income and perhaps even eligibility for a good "catch", as in marriage. But Indians and other Asians are finding their avenues for success limited by the Asian ceiling - unstated quota limiting total Asian admissions to a maximum 20% as apparently is the case at Harvard and other elite Universities in the US. According to article below, while Asian students at the University of California Berkeley has risen to 40% that at Harvard has stayed stagnant around 18% for the past decade.

So Indians in the US, especially those donating money and holding influential posts, should voice opposition and team up with other Asians to press elite universities to abolish the Asian ceiling.

"Admissions officers deny capping the number of Asian-American students at schools, but a 2009 book called No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal posited that Asian Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores to gain entrance to a top private university ........".

Ivy League Discrimination? Harvard's Asian student admissions static around 17% while Asians at UC Berkeley have risen to 40%

Khan Academy: effective and free online education help 

How to do better at an exam or just improve your knowledge? 

Thanks to Salman Khan, you have free access to learning methods that Microsoft founder, mega billionaire and major philanthropist Bill Gates uses to teach his own kids. 

"With over 3,200 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
A free world-class education for anyone anywhere."
 www.khanacademy.org/





https://www.edx.org/

  

For these and other stories, images and videos on Indians around the globe, published each weekend,  visit:

 /http://primeindians.com    
The editorial and technical quality of the website will be updated shortly. 

Your comments, views and criticisms are welcome in the section below.

Siddhartha Deb wins colored author PEN award; Anand Veeravagu and Dave Chokshi White House Fellows

The Internet Newspaper of Global Indians: news, video, blogs, community

Gateway of India, Mumbai

Siddhartha Deb is PEN 2012 author of color with $5000 award

It appears that Siddhartha Deb and/or his publisher Faber & Faber must have identified Deb as an Asian minority in the US when submitting his memoir "The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India" for the PEN award. The submission form for the PEN award states, "To be eligible, candidates must be writers of color who have not received wide media coverage."

Further, "The PEN Open Book Award, formerly the Beyond Margins Awards, celebrate outstanding books by writers of color published in the United States during the previous year.

Sponsored by the Open Book Program, this award is one of the many ways in which the Open Book Program encourages racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. The Open Book Committee works to increase the literature by, for, and about African, Arab, Asian, Caribbean, Latin, and Native Americans, and to establish access for these groups to the publishing industry. "

The news from PEN about Deb's award:

"Fiction and nonfiction writer Siddhartha Deb won the PEN Open Book Award for his memoir, The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India (Faber & Faber, 2011). The $5,000 prize is given for a book by an author of color published in 2011. Alexander Chee, Mat Johnson, and Natasha Trethewey judged."

http://www.pw.org/content/pen_american_center_announces_winners_of_2012_literary_awards?cmnt_all=1

Dave Chokshi of Baton Rouge, La and Anand Veeravagu of Palo Alto, Calif. White House Fellows.

The two Indians were amongst the 15 fellows selected for 2012-13. Here is their information shown in a White House press release.

 Dave Chokshi, Baton Rouge, LA, is a primary care physician with interests in public health and innovation in health care delivery.  He recently completed internal medicine residency at Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.  He practiced at the Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center, where he was a member of the Youth Health Equity Collaborative.  Dave's prior work experience spans the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including positions with the New York City Department of Health, the Louisiana Department of Health, a startup clinical software company, and with nonprofit organizations seeking to advance global health.  Dave helped grow the nonprofit Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), dedicated to improving access to medicines in developing countries; he was a founding member of UAEM's Board of Directors.  He has done clinical work in Guatemala, Peru, Botswana, Ghana, and India.  Dave has written extensively on medicine and public health in journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Health Affairs, and Nature.  He is a Rhodes Scholar, a Truman Scholar, a Soros Fellow, and a Gamble Scholar.  He received his M.D. with distinction from Penn, an M.Sc in global public health from Oxford, and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Duke.

Anand Veeravagu, Palo Alto, CA, is a Neurosurgeon in training at Stanford University SOM. He most recently served as Chief Neurosurgery Resident at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Hospital caring for soldiers returning from Afghanistan with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries. Anand is focused on advancing minimally invasive diagnostic and surgical techniques for diseases of the central nervous system. In 2006, Anand developed a novel radiotherapeutic to treat Glioblastoma Multiforme, a malignant brain tumor. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts and has written for the Huffington Post. In 2011 Anand staffed the CURE Neurosurgical Hospital in Uganda and organized medical relief missions for the Tsunami of 2004. Anand has received over 30 awards for his leadership, research and promotion of healthcare access to underserved populations. In 2012 Anand received the Gold Foundation's Humanism and Excellence in Teaching Award for his commitment to mentorship. Anand’s research employs national databases to evaluate trends in health resource utilization to provide guidelines for policy reform. Anand has been accepted to the Stanford GSB MBA program, received his M.D. from Stanford University and graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins University with a B.S in Biomedical Engineering and minor in Multicultural and Regional Studies.


http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/04/white-house-appoints-2012-2013-class-white-house-fellows

Will Rajiv Goel, like ex-McKinsey director Anil Kumar, get lenient sentence for informing against former class mate Raj Rajaratnam?

Anil Kumar, the former McKinsey director got no jail sentence for his part in the insider trading case in return for helping prosecute Raj Rajaratnam.
Federal prosecutors have written a letter asking the judge to be lenient in also sentencing Rajiv Goel this Wednesday in the same case. The letter, the news report below, states “Goel substantially helped the Government secure a conviction in one the most significant and high-profile insider trading trials in history,”

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/a-key-witness-in-rajaratnam-trial-is-set-to-be-sentenced/

Hyde Park Corner: An Open Forum

Indians should press Harvard and other top US universities to abolish 20% Asian quota

Good education is very important to Indian parents since a degree from a good college, preferably a professional one, largely determines income and perhaps even eligibility for a good "catch", as in marriage. But Indians and other Asians are finding their avenues for success limited by the Asian ceiling - unstated quota limiting total Asian admissions to a maximum 20% as apparently is the case at Harvard and other elite Universities in the US. According to article below, while Asian students at the University of California Berkeley has risen to 40% that at Harvard has stayed stagnant around 18% for the past decade.

So Indians in the US, especially those donating money and holding influential posts, should voice opposition and team up with other Asians to press elite universities to abolish the Asian ceiling.

"Admissions officers deny capping the number of Asian-American students at schools, but a 2009 book called No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal posited that Asian Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores to gain entrance to a top private university ........".

Ivy League Discrimination? Harvard's Asian student admissions static around 17% while Asians at UC Berkeley have risen to 40%

Khan Academy: effective and free online education help 

How to do better at an exam or just improve your knowledge? 

Thanks to Salman Khan, you have free access to learning methods that Microsoft founder, mega billionaire and major philanthropist Bill Gates uses to teach his own kids. 

"With over 3,200 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
A free world-class education for anyone anywhere."
 www.khanacademy.org/

edX, backed by Harvard and MIT and headed by Anant Agarwal, is the Future of Online Education - For anyone, anywhere, anytime

EdX is a not-for-profit enterprise of set up by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed for study via the web. Anant Agarwal, former Director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, serves as the first president of edX. Along with offering online courses, the institutions will use edX to research how students learn and how technology can transform learning—both on-campus and worldwide.The University of California, Berkeley also joined edX. There is a rival set up as a for profit entity, which has the backing of Stanford, Duke and some other universities.

https://www.edx.org/

  

For these and other stories, images and videos on Indians around the globe, published each weekend,  visit:

 /http://primeindians.com    
The editorial and technical quality of the website will be updated shortly. 

Your comments, views and criticisms are very welcome in the comment section of this blog below.

Biometric cards a waste? Facial yoga

The Internet Newspaper of Global Indians: news, video, blogs, community

Gateway of India, Mumbai

 

Will ID cards work when ration cards are used to steal $14.5 billion?

The biometric id cards being issued to Indians has been promoted as a cheap and easy protection for the poor in India - from preventing small landowners from losing their land to landlords and money lenders to providing protection from corrupt politicians, police, bureaucrats and so on.

The $3.6 billion, and likely more, to be spent on providing the new cards to Indians is money that should have been spent on other more productive uses, including improving early childhood education facilities. The poor in India already have an id system in the form of ration cards that in theory enable them to buy food at very cheap prices due to government subsidies.


The ration card system, which has been around for decades, has been used to steal billions of dollars. Bloomberg in a story titled "Poor in India Starve as Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion of Food" notes that, by gaming the ration card system,the "food was looted by corrupt politicians and their criminal syndicates over the past decade" in the state of Uttar Pradesh alone.

The UP politicians used dummy names to buy food grains at very cheap prices and meant for rationing to the poor. For instance rice to be rationed at a subsidized price of 3.6 cents a kg was bought by the politicians and then sold on the open market for 10 times the price."A state police force beholden to corrupt lawmakers, an underfunded federal anti-graft agency and a sluggish court system have resulted in five overlapping investigations over seven years -- and zero convictions."

What is to prevent the new biometric id cards being similarly used to steal from the poor and those who have no political connections? A card by itself is a meaningless document unless it is backed by a political and judicial system that enforces the rights that a card holder is entitled to.

For more on the Bloomberg story, by Mehul Srivastava and Andrew MacAskill, see: 


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-28/poor-in-india-starve-as-politicians-steal-14-5-billion-of-food.html

In other Stories this week: 

Teesta Setalvad's persistence helps convict 32 in deaths of muslims in 2002 Gujarat riots

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3836929.ece

 

Jayant Patel,62, Indian born American surgeon, faces new charges in patient deaths in Australia

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/the-next-patel-saga-an-ordeal-revisited-20120902-257zi.html

 

Pankaj Mishra's "From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia" review in the London Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/19/from-ruins-empire-pankaj-mishra-review

 

Debashis Chatterjee advises managers to apply lessons from the Bhagavat Gita

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article3785097.ece

 

Ranjana Khan teaches facial yoga techniques to stay youthful looking at New York studio

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444812704577605560431270568.html

 

Hyde Park Corner: An Open Forum

Indians should press Harvard and other top US universities to abolish 20% Asian quota

Good education is very important to Indian parents since a degree from a good college, preferably a professional one, largely determines income and perhaps even eligibility for a good "catch", as in marriage. But Indians and other Asians are finding their avenues for success limited by the Asian ceiling - unstated quota limiting total Asian admissions to a maximum 20% as apparently is the case at Harvard and other elite Universities in the US. According to article below, while Asian students at the University of California Berkeley has risen to 40% that at Harvard has stayed stagnant around 18% for the past decade.

So Indians in the US, especially those donating money and holding influential posts, should voice opposition and team up with other Asians to press elite universities to abolish the Asian ceiling.

"Admissions officers deny capping the number of Asian-American students at schools, but a 2009 book called No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal posited that Asian Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores to gain entrance to a top private university ........".

Ivy League Discrimination? Harvard's Asian student admissions static around 17% while Asians at UC Berkeley have risen to 40%

Khan Academy: effective and free online education help 

How to do better at an exam or just improve your knowledge? 

Thanks to Salman Khan, you have free access to learning methods that Microsoft founder, mega billionaire and major philanthropist Bill Gates uses to teach his own kids. 

"With over 3,200 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
A free world-class education for anyone anywhere."
 www.khanacademy.org/

edX, backed by Harvard and MIT and headed by Anant Agarwal, is the Future of Online Education - For anyone, anywhere, anytime

EdX is a not-for-profit enterprise of set up by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed for study via the web. Anant Agarwal, former Director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, serves as the first president of edX. Along with offering online courses, the institutions will use edX to research how students learn and how technology can transform learning—both on-campus and worldwide.The University of California, Berkeley also joined edX. There is a rival set up as a for profit entity, which has the backing of Stanford, Duke and some other universities.

https://www.edx.org/

  

For these and other stories, images and videos on Indians around the globe, published each weekend,  visit:

 /http://primeindians.com    
The editorial and technical quality of the website will be updated shortly. 

Your comments, views and criticisms are very welcome in the comment section of this blog below.