I am slowly sorting through our travels in India in January. And some of that stuff is making its way into a videoblog.

A twenty five second quicktime of a clock store window in Ahmedabad. Courtesy of the good folks at Archive.org.

A documentary on sexual minorities in Bangalore, at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.

3 MAY 2005, 6:00 PM  
Film: Many People, Many Desires
Director:  T. Jayashree
Genre:  Documentary 45 min

Venue: Village East Cinema
181 2nd Avenue at 12th Street
New York, NY 10003

Ticket: 10 $,

For details please log onto:www.nyfilmvideo.com

Many people many desires explores the intersections of sexuality, class, gender identity and human rights in India. Set in the city of Bangalore, southern India it records the desires and aspirations of young Hijras, transsexuals, kothis, doubledeckers, lesbian and gays. It follows their struggles for equality, dignity and acceptance.

The San Francisco hotel workers conflict with management has come to the door of the ITVS (via alternet). ITVS is an organization funded by the Corporation of Public Broadcasting and is and responsible for much of the interesting programming seen on PBS. ITVS is the organizer of this year’s International Public Television (INPUT) conference, an important event for progressive public broadcasters from a dozen or so countries. ITVS had fundraised for this event for the last three years, however they are unwilling to side with the Unite Here Local 2 which wants them to withdraw their patronage of the Hilton (they lose over half a million dollars), and are going ahead with plans to hold the conference in the San Francisco Hilton:

Nevertheless, Fifer would like to be supportive of the union, and says she has suggested some creative alternatives, such as “sponsoring screenings of labor films, holding forums and discussions, and having independent filmmakers document the struggle of local 2 against the hotels.

“We’ve offered to support the union in any way we could,” says Fifer (Head of ITVS). “Just because I can’t move the conference, doesn’t mean I don’t support the union!”

“If you support them financially, you’re NOT supporting us,” counters local 2 Boycott Community Coordinator Kelly Dugan. “We don’t want any other support. The fight is economic. The only way to support us is to honor the boycott — either move or you’re aiding our enemy.”

“We don’t give passes to anybody,” adds Michael Casey. “There is no ‘creative solution.’ There is no middle ground.”

This is just sad.

I saw Conventioneers at the Tribeca Film Festival yesterday. Set during the Republican Convention in 2004, Conventioneers is the story of an affair between a delegate and a protester. The filmmakers threw their actors into the real events happening during that period, and shot their scenes being jostled by the protesters and delegates. They even managed to get arrested while shooting a scene. It gives the film a very special energy which is quite different from the thousands of extras type choreography of a Gandhi or Lawrence of Arabia.

One of the interesting aspects of the process of making the film was that the filmmakers and actors got involved with working on the protests as part of their work on their roles. One of the actors who is supposed to be a member of One Thousand Coffins, has actually ended up becoming an active member of that group. This blurring of preparation and real life involvement really worked for this film, for one thing, the performances were very good, and it saved the film from becoming a soap box or one of those “backdrop” films like The Year of Living Dangerously where the characters are trying to “find” themselves, against some cataclysmic political event they don’t quite understand, usually in the Third World, after all who can understand anything “about those people.”

The film has a few independent film rough spots, but well worth watching. It will be screened a few more times the rest of this week, so if you show up early you can still get tickets.

Whose Children Are These? which I edited, won the Jury Prize at the Indian International Film Festival of Los Angeles. Congaratulations Theresa!

A blog on Indian English (via Kerim and Language Hat). Sadly it looks like the author has abandoned it, but you can read the posts that discuss such important words like “issueless” and “powertoni” and has links to the valuable Hobson-Jobson. Hope this blog gets revived at some point.

Anna at Sepia Mutiny has a post about an internet pharmacy based in India that was selling drugs without prescriptions. The Hindu has a story about how Dr. Bansal organized his operation from his home in Agra, where he even built a palatial house with his ill-begotten gains:

The alleged kingpin of the racket, Brij Bhushan Bansal, who at present is admitted in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Kamayani Escorts Hospital at Sikandra in Uttar Pradesh, began by couriering small consignments of prescription drugs to foreigners whom he befriended during their visit to Agra. The foreigners realised that medicines in India were cheaper and asked him to despatch them in consignments as and when required.

Dr. Bansal’s business grew manifold when his son, Akhil, went to Philadelphia for further studies and gave him the idea of striking deals through over 60 pharmaceutical websites. As per the arrangement, they received the money through an Australian middleman, Stakelton, who runs an online payment disbursal website on commission basis. He would receive the credit-card payments for the deals passed on to Dr. Bansal by Akhil and then send their share through wire to bank accounts opened in Agra, Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore and also in an offshore account allegedly opened by Akhil at Channel Islands.

In good Indian family values fashion, Dr. Bansal’s daughter and son-in-law were helping out as well. Reading the news story one gets the impression of nice middle class people, breaking the law, “just a little bit” and not thinking too much of it, till they get busted that is. Not too different from the chief clerk of the motor vehicles department in my home town, where you had to “put a little weight on you application” to get a driving license, regardless of passing the test.

Dr. Bansal is in hospital with a heart condition, meanwhile my viagra spam shows no signs of abating.

Kerim has a post about public spending on healthcare in the US, Europe and India. The Hindu has an article on medical tourism in India. It points out the rapid growth of private high end medical care, but is it at the cost of public care? The medical tourism council thinks that it will create “competition” and the good “old trickle down” effect. I don’t see how that is possible unless resources are allocated to public hospitals. A National Human Development Report (2001) points out that private hospitals have a not for profit status, yet:

…the poorest quintile (of the population is) getting only 10 per cent of subsidies, while the richest 20 quintile captures 33 per cent.

I don’t see why a profitable industry would want to give any of that up, even if the public is getting testy:

— in the second half of 2004 there were at least seven reported incidents in Mumbai of patient’s families assaulting hospital staff, both in State and municipal corporation-run hospitals, and private clinics, because of the perception that they were victims of medical negligence.

Who can argue against excellence, yet does it have to be either or? Poorer countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (see previous post) manage to do a better job with basic health care, it might be a better idea to see what they are doing right than imitating an abysmal system like that of the US (refer toKerim’s post).

I had blogged about gender parity in education in South Asia and how Bangladesh was doing better than India in that category. Here is a guest post by Nipa, a statistician who looked at the Unicef report:

If we compare both countries, what seems remarkable to me is that while India has a much higher percentage of adult literacy rate (57% vs 40%), average income ($530 vs $400), and less number of children per woman, it is performing unfavorably in the areas of number of children in primary school, infant mortality rate (63% vs 46%), under five child mortality rate and maternal mortality rate(540 per 100,00 against 320 to 400 per 100,00) . With so much more average income and higher percentage of educated adults, India’s life expectancy at birth (64 yrs) is only 2 years more than that of Bangladesh. It tells me that not too much attention is being paid to public health or the improvement of the rural areas. India seems to have neglected the rural people, as shown by the decline of routine immunization coverage (a decline from 60% to 40%).

Maybe, because Bangladesh is so poor, a lot more aid money and effort per person are being invested there than in India, resulting in the higher rates I mentioned above. But there also seems to be an effort by the government at the policy level to change things.

A few years back, Bangladesh added the incentive of both monetary and food help to the families who send their girl children to school, to the existing mandatory primary education law. The more girls you send to school, the higher your reward. In my recent visits to Bangladesh, I have seen groups and groups of girls going and coming back from school in their cute uniforms (free), even in the remotest villages.

In Bangladesh women have lower status in general, but I don’t think they are as unwanted as in India, reflected by the rapidly declining child sex ratio, which fell from 945 females per 1000 males in 1991 to 927 to 1000 in 2001. For Bangladesh, it is roughly fifty fifty.

In my opinion, both Grameen Bank and the recent blossoming of the garment industry has opened up unprecedented employment opportunities for women in Bangladesh. Parents realize that by sending their daughters to school, not only are they receiving the money and food provided by the govt., their daughters have the potential of earning money and improving their lot.

A jailbreak story via the BBC south of Quetta:

Seven prisoners, including a number convicted of murder, have escaped from a Pakistani jail by using their turbans for ropes.

Speaking of jailbreaks, Charles Sobhraj has a bunch of spectacular ones to his credit. At one point he was incarcerated in a Greek prison on an island. One day he managed to purloin a syringe. He drew some of his own blood, and spat it out during an inspection, and collapsed feigning illness. As a result, he was taken to the prison hospital, and off the island. While in hospital, he lay his hands on a bottle of perfume belonging to a nurse. He didn’t know how it would come in useful, yet.

After his “treatment” Charles and some other inmates were put in a van to be taken back to the prison. While they were waiting in the harbor, Charles threw the perfume on a bunch of oily rags, and lit it, starting a fire in the van. The guards had to open the door of the van, and Sobhraj escaped in the confusion.

Now, I have read this in a pulpy book, so don’t know if its all true and accurate. Maybe it doesn’t matter.