What? No mangoes?

Oh, there are mangos alright, the magazine editor simply cropped them out of the photo ;)

that headset is fly.

Hey - have any of you ever seen a septum piercing like that in India? I've only seen them in the US.

Hey where are the other classic traits
-The Namaste?
-The marigold flower garland?
-Mehndi?

From CNN.com's article on Time's cover story.

In the tradition of writers citing Asia's "tiger" economies and the Chinese "dragon," now comes the elephant.

Groan...

These guys are so creative at times.

Newsflash.

Indians often fetishize the elephant, refer to India as an elephant (read first chapter of India Unbound by Gurcharan Das), and purchase those annoying little elephant knickknacks to decorate their homes. Indians have a habit of wearing bindis. Indians also happen to eat a lot - and, I mean, a bloody lot - of mangoes. Indians like mehndi and yeah, they tend to namaste, just like Americans shake hands.

So what's with this hoity-toity, pretentious 'oh but we're just sooooo misunderstood - aren't they just sooooo limited' faux-angst? Reminds me of a bunch of whiny pretentious wannabe intellectuals.

Indians often fetishize the elephant, refer to India as an elephant (read first chapter of India Unbound by Gurcharan Das), and purchase those annoying little elephant knickknacks to decorate their homes. Indians have a habit of wearing bindis. Indians also happen to eat a lot - and, I mean, a bloody lot - of mangoes. Indians like mehndi and yeah, they tend to namaste, just like Americans shake hands.

Dont be such a Drama-Queen

I love the elephant part of it but the picture on the cover is just too cliche' and oft beaten path. Time can do better than that.

Abhi, admirable attempt at filling Manish's void.

I haven't read the article yet, but the call center focus reminds me of the Discovery Channel documentary with Pulitze Prize devaluer Thomas Friedman. The Other Side of Outsourcing, if you haven't seen it. It was unsettling for me, but nothing surprising for anyone here. It seems the Indian middle class is almost completely ignoring the "Other India".

There are male call center workers too, particularly from Citibank.

Wonder what the male version of this cover would look like....(no more Shah Rukh or Salman Khan, please).

"Hey - have any of you ever seen a septum piercing like that in India? I've only seen them in the US."

I saw an actress in a Hindi movie with that piercing, and I think a National Geographic picture, don't remember from when though. Oh, and my cousin! She has one too, but I think she got it to make her parents mad :)

Did anyone read the complete article?

there just *has* to be a Mahesh Bhatt quote rite?

Hey - have any of you ever seen a septum piercing like that in India? I've only seen them in the US.

I guess the Auntie in the excerpt below from a past SM post on piercings had one like that in India:

I had recently gone to a Bengali family party, and was sitting on the floor talking to an older auntie type, when I noticed she had something gold in her nose. I asked her what it was, and with a little pull here and there, she pulled out a punk-rock style gold septum ring. A little shocking, since as a desi girl I was more familiar with the more traditional nose piercings, but not the septum style. She continued by telling the story of how she got it as a girl, and and how the piercing was supposed to bring shanti on her husband- basically (what I garnered from my poor Bengali) anytime she exhaled, she would be bringing good luck on her mate...

Anna,

Only in deep rural India. Ennis is right - one would not see piercing even in semi-urban settings.

Maybe, an isolated somebody's cousin in Cochin/ Mumbai/ Surat.

Hey - have any of you ever seen a septum piercing like that in India? I've only seen them in the US.

They're very, very common in the villages. I've seen them a lot in Rajasthan, Himachal and U.P. I don't generally travel anywhere else but I think they must be common elsewhere too. If you meant among the city folk, then no, I haven't seen any.

I meant: one would not see septum piercing even..........

Hey - have any of you ever seen a septum piercing like that in India? I've only seen them in the US.

I have seen them on bharatnatyam dancers.

dude, I called the Cicatrix resemblence at 10 this morning. Stealing my lines (grumble grumble grumble) ;)

At least Mrs. Rushdie wasn't tricked out like that on the Newsweek cover on March 6th.

she reminds me of my former self- the bharatnatyam dancer. i used to HATE wearing that septum jewelry piece. and the head piece. and the necklace piece....oh, eff it, i might as well come clean-- i hated all of the costume jewelry.

although, on to another tanget, i must say, TIME did do a fascinating job of capturing a beautiful, south indian lady. is it a real model? seriously, who cares what the article is about, let's dissect this magazine cover, shall we? ;)

You can tell they planned this a few weeks ago, and were waiting for a slow-ish news week. The Sensex has been tanking lately, and there's been a fair amount of grumbling about rising fuel costs...

At least they didn't call Padma Lakshmi or Aishwariya Rai to pose for the picture!

dude, I called the Cicatrix resemblence at 10 this morning.

DesiDancer did - I can testify to it ;)

Does she work at a call center; or is she a call girl. That is what I do not get - why choose a beautiful Desi girl, accessorized to the hilt - she looks like she is going to a wedding. why not use the picture of some fat, overweight sadhu, graciously blurring his private parts. I do not kno but I really do not like it,why? Because the call centers are in India because it is cheap to do busines there, and then you associate that idea - like pavlov, with my cousin on the way to her wedding, as soon as she gets off work. What message does that send to the masses, of people not exposed to India - who may have lots of redneck preconceptions. So you pray to that disney character right? The pavlovian association that I feel that is made here is again - some form of minor propaganda (or a slightly more benign word that I can not think of). Opal - I truly feel is just another instance of this same shit. Why? Becaues Opal Mehta does not exist, and what does it preach - this is how you get into Harvard girls. In my view some publisher jumped at the opportunity to do this - to create this character. ANd the author - having obviously not lived that lifestyle had to get some insight into what that kind of life is. Hence the plagiarizing which she may not have consciuosly realized was what she was doing. Third example, is this episode of some special on outsourcing where they so gingerly go into the apartment of two indian girls and ask about dating, where one Indian girl admits to having sex before marriage. What does that have to do with outsourcing? What does that have to do with outsourcing. I am not so sure I want that angle, portrayed, having many girl cousins who I absolutely adore, who all had arranged marriages. anyone see what I am getting at?

Pankaj;

I have no idea what you are actually trying to say, but I don't see how that girl on the cover brings to mind a call girl or prostitute. She does represent a cliche and exoticized version of an Indian woman, but then again that's about the only type that exists in the Western media (including the work of diaspora filmmakers like Gurinder Chadha). Why didn't they put a Sadhu on there? I don't know, but it would have been fitting. Or else a 90 pound tamilian with alfalfa hair, a dilbert shirt and a pocket protector. Because we all know that while all Indian women either look like Aishwarya Rai, Padma Lakshmi or this girl, all Indian men are emotionally stunted, emasculated nerds. I'm so glad that the U.S. mainstream press has finally revealed us for what we are to the rest of the world.

highlarious! good snarking :)

Also in Time this week, Rahul Mahajan's heroin overdoese.

Post 23: Hello? How do you see this photo as an assault on Indian female honour? That seems to be, in an admittedly twisted and rambling way, to be your point. Just cause the girl looks good? Not a lot of covers sport ugly people these days. Or are you simply spouting the age-old Indian prejudice that all working girls are 'working girls'?? If that's the case, you need to join this century.

Outsourcing and the erosion of traditional Indian mores are related, in many ways. For more info, see the Thomas Friedman/Discovery Channel piece, as suggested by Shruti. It is deeply unsettling.

With this cover India has jumped the shark

Amardeep,

Don't be badmouthing Rahul Mahajan, he already ODed and is in deep shit.

I was in India when all this was happening week ago.

Man, 24/ 7 new channels on TV tore him apart even his spin doctors (like former PM, uncle, Apollo hopital doctors, etc.) tried their best.

Dharma Queen:

Indians also happen to eat a lot - and, I mean, a bloody lot - of mangoes

Mangoes to eat? Oh.

Yeah, I just bought three ripe ones and they're sitting in my fridge. And I'm second gen.

Just call me a self-exoticizer.

Drama Queen - That is not what I am getting at, I just do not understand in coming up with a cover why they chose to do that - Why not put a headset on the taj mahal?

Pankaj, cause that's the American (maybe just human) way - put a pretty girl on the cover and the magazine will sell. Were you maybe speaking in metaphorical terms when you wondered if she were a call girl? (ie is India selling herself for filthy lucre)

Drama Queen - I did not mean to say that she was actually a call girl. but call center - pretty girl, hence call girl. Just trying to say - that why is there a need to put a pretty indian girl on the cover of time if we are talking about India's economy, it evokes stereotype - the new symbol of India - Opal Mehta's cousin. It just does not sit right with me. If it was about the US. and an Indian periodical used a georgeous california blonde in a bikini with stars and stripes - would that be appropriate? To me - I don't think so.

all Indian men are emotionally stunted, emasculated nerds. I'm so glad that the U.S. mainstream press has finally revealed us for what we are to the rest of the world.

awww...at least you guys get the Silicon Valley jobs though...while we're stuck answering calls from angry housewives in the midwest, cooking your food and raising your overachieving spelling-bee kids.

So what's with this hoity-toity, pretentious 'oh but we're just sooooo misunderstood -aren't they just sooooo limited' faux-angst? Reminds me of a bunch of whiny pretentious wannabe intellectuals.

i agree. sometimes it's valid as in manish's brilliant postcolonial analysis of book covers. but looking for stereotypes in 'time'? that's kind of like looking for the 'elephant' (sorry just had to include that loverly image in too) in the room.

and putting hot girls on magazine covers? really? who woulda thought. i'm glad it's that coy chica on the cover instead of the sideburned, glasses-wearing coconut-oiled hair stereotype of the indian nerd girl (yes boys, we have an ug stereotype too).

Pankaj,

I see where you are coming from, but is the Indian girl's appearance really as belittling as a bikini? It's ceremonial, traditional dress. She doesn't look undignified to me.

I think there is a habit on the part of editors/illustrators who want to portray a certain country as 'friendly', 'approachable', 'trustworthy' etc. to choose feminine emblems. Nineteenth century French and English cartoonists invariably portrayed France and England as beautiful, motherly, robust women, while Germany was portrayed as a very masculine monster. Women are seen as ambassadors. I don't think this cover is any more than an appeal to that psychology. A man tends to appear more threatening - or just more boring.

If it was about the US. and an Indian periodical used a georgeous california blonde in a bikini with stars and stripes - would that be appropriate?

I'm fairly certain most periodicals would put Britney Spears on their covers rather than a bearded Amish guy for a story about the US (regardless of its relevance to the story)...

Pankaj

why choose a beautiful Desi girl, accessorized to the hilt - she looks like she is going to a wedding

she looks like she is going to her own wedding. Go to someone else's wedding like that, the bride will bitch-slap you for upstaging her.

She be hotness....who is she? A model? Bollywood/Mollywood/Kollywood starlet? Beautiful eyes like that : methinks she's gotta be a Tamilian/Bengali/Mallu.

I am sorry - it just does not sit right with me, it is - to me not embematic of what the article is about. People all over the country, in places like bumblefuck idaho - have now seen some indian girl and are exposed to some Idea of India - that is what it does, like I said before it links India to the girl on the cover. Now uncle jed in bumblefuck has just got a glimpse of India. She is not what India is about, India - I hope, I pray is still about enough modesty, where putting a girl like that on the cover is shocking to well, people like me. I just don't like people who have Ideas about race that are not up to speed picking up a Time magazine and letting their minds make whatever association it may. Outsourcing has a connotation of being "cheap", if you link that concept to the girl on the cover it gives uncle jed a sense of empowerment over that idea of an indian girl, o.k. - so now you are "cheap" -or better yet "cost effective". I do not want anyone coming to some conclusion that my cousins are "cost effective"

if you link that concept to the girl on the cover it gives uncle jed a sense of empowerment over that idea of an indian girl,

So you are worried some guy named Jed in Idaho may draw a negative opinion about India/Indians based on a magazine cover ? I doubt Time magazine has a big circulation in Idaho, so you can rest easy.

The picture is misleading coz the face of Indian IT is a nerd. But who will buy the face of a nerd on the covers

Maybe uncle Jed in Bumblefuck will actually read the words on the cover (if he can read; if he can't, then why worry about him) and link the girl to the 'world's biggest democracy' and the 'world's next great economic superpower'.

I guess that a regular reader of Time magazine (even Mr. Jed from Idaho) will be well informed about India. There have been a lot of articles in the last few years. Don't worry Pankaj.

I doubt Time magazine has a big circulation in Idaho, so you can rest easy.

My younger brother lives in Idaho. I will ask him to start polling people.

The picture is misleading coz the face of Indian IT is a nerd. But who will buy the face of a nerd on the covers

Not necessarily, if this picture's caption is to be believed...

The picture is misleading coz the face of Indian IT is a nerd. But who will buy the face of a nerd on the covers

Oh yeah, with people like Kavya Vishwanathan, Gurinder Chadha trying to outdo the westerners in reinforcing stereotypes, who needs Indiana Jones- The temple of doom

I believe that I am on the money here - I really do, but bear with me because - to be frank I am getting over some shit that might make me a little "militant". But There are a lot of people with negative - backwards ideas towards race and foreigners. And for these people to link - psychologically - India to the woman on the cover gives them a sense of empowerment. Race and Power - that is what that game is about. And when there is something foreign to an audience, there is fear, with fear there is a loss of power. So the tendency in a person with that sort of psychology is to take a view of india as being there to handle their "laundry" whatever is outsourced. And then they link this idea of a pretty indian girl with that idea of outsourcers doing their laundry. Do you think that Time would ever put a cover of a pretty Israeli girl on the cover if there was an article about Israel. How about Thailand?

Indians often fetishize the elephant, refer to India as an elephant (read first chapter of India Unbound by Gurcharan Das), and purchase those annoying little elephant knickknacks to decorate their homes.

I know an elephant represents various aspects of India in certain ways. I have those annoying carved marble little elephants sitting around somehwere in some box. I just don't like naming economies after a certain animal that 'represents' said country. Tiger, Drago, Elephant...whats up with naming these economies after animals? I can see how people use the analogy for aggressive (Tiger/Dragons) or size (elephant), but can't these writers just call it a good/strong economy than giving it some animal name? I guess its a pet peeve.

Some day when different economies keep coming up, they'll run out of animal names.

Lets make some other analogies:

Russia - Bear
Egypt - Nile Crocodile (or the Sphinx)
Brazil - Anaconda
Australia - Tazmanian Devil (with the cartoon of course)
Canada - A Moose? Russians took the Bear.
Botswana - Hippo (from the Okavango, Indians took the Elephant)
South Africa - Great White Shark
Some middle eastern country - A camel.
Mongolia - Wild Horse
The Republic Congo - Gorilla
Democratic Republic of Congo - Gorilla (conflict among Congos for who gets called the Gorilla).
Norway - Reindeer
And more...

I am really interested in knowing how FOBs react to such articles. From what i read, it is less strongly (if at all) than the ABDs.
WHY????? I think that is the real post i am waiting for.

I am really interested in knowing how FOBs react to such articles.

I'm a brown_fob and my reaction was..."oh well..not again!". Every other day, we see such articles in newpapers and magazines...forward it to our friends on various yahoogroups (iit alumni grp, hostel grp, batch grp, wing grp and what not), and that the end of it. On seeing the cover, none of my FOB friends felt that it was misrepresenting India. The overall reaction was of casual disregard.

I see a little bit of baffling logic here.

This cover is deemed as stereotyping India and Indians, the girl on the cover as being a "call girl", etc. But just over at the other post on the World Cup, there is a picture of an attractive Brazilian girl. No one there denounced that. Apparently, she's "hot" and that's all that matters. Here, a picture of an Indian woman has gotten some all hot and bothered. Maybe because she's one of us, a Desi.

But the deeper underlying dynamic in all of this is that women are ornamental to marketing. Brazilian women are seen as sexy beach bunnies, Indian women as "exotic", East Asian women as feminine, subservient arm candy, all American girls as bad girl, racy, Bay Watch types, etc. The truth is that women are 1) the objects of commercial marketing, and 2)they are stereotyped according to their ethnic background.

I asked jokingly (#10) what the cover of Time would be like if the person would have been a male. In my experience, all call center telemarketers and workers that I've spoken with are overwhelmingly Desi men. But women sell, not men. There is not a female edition of the Sports illustrated Swimwear issue. Playgirl had been created upon the assumption that bare skinned men would attract women the way men are drawn to visual images of naked women, and in the end, Playgirl got gay readership instead.

"The overall reaction (of FOBs) was of casual disregard"
This is what i gather too. Which makes it even more intriguing why ABDs react so strongly. This protective attitude does not appear truly organic.
It is a mystery.

Well...you had me with you Cheap Ass, until the bit about women not liking the sight of bare skinned men. Hot Stuff calendars featuring nude firefighters sell like hot cakes here - and they sell to women. I was initiated into the mysteries of the male body at age nine by a friend who had stolen a copy of Playgirl from her older sister. Lots of women read Playgirl, surf porn, drool at the sight of Matthew McConaughey's bare chest, and just generally love the sight of the male body. But media/magazines etc. are still controlled by men, and women still have a long way to go before they feel the freedom to be as openly sexual as men are.

right on, Cheap Ass Desi.

From my personal experience, I feel that most of the FOBs (esp. students) regard themselves as sort of unofficial ambassadors of India. They're always keen to answer any doubts/queries that a foriegener might have about India. When we're faced with dumb questions ("Does India have cars/electricity ?), we do feel a bit(!) annoyed..but the main feeling is that of surprise at the other person's ignorance and lack of knowledge.

CAD,

The problem is not with the fact that there is an Indian girl on the cover of Time, or that there is a "hot Indian girl" there either. Arm-candy, hot etc. are generic adjectives. I think the over-the-top Orientalism and exotification of the girl shown above is being flayed here. To borrow your analogies, it would be like having a Brazilian insurance-saleswoman in samba headgear or an Japanese geneticist in full Geisha pancake.

The fact that the folks over at Time still have an exotic notion of what India stands for, and are promoting the same with this blatant cover, is what is being called into question here. In many ways it undermines the very text below the graphic -- 'India Inc'.

The picture is misleading coz the face of Indian IT is a nerd. But who will buy the face of a nerd on the covers

Who said indian nerds aren't photogenic or hott? I resent that.

until the bit about women not liking the sight of bare skinned men.

Sure, there are women who like Playgirl, surf Internet porn, hubba hubba attractive pop stars, buff athletes and Bill Clinton, etc. I may have made a sweeping generalization, I now realize. But judging from my experience and knowledge, I think that women being objectified draws much more crowds than the other way around. Again, this is not to dismiss women who like naked men. But compared to men who drool at the sight of nude women and the manner in which men consume these capitalized and commercialized images, men are in the lead. In my opinion. (NOTE: I am not male bashing. I know plenty of males who do not regularly buy Playboy, surf Internet porn, and haven't recieved lapdances. At least as far as I know).

I wonder if there are studies conducted on this: the reaction and reception of women to male nude bodies as opposed to vice versa, and how the conclusions play into marketing.

The fact that the folks over at Time still have an exotic notion of what India stands for, and are promoting the same with this blatant cover, is what is being called into question here

IMO, Indians (living in India) will like this cover. It captures the "old and the new" identities.

As an Indian in India, I am slightly concerned about the stereotyping (concerned - not irritated, mind you), but mostly happy that India is getting more attention in international publications.

10 years ago when I would travel to America, my Indian-ness was mostly a matter of curiosity at a very fundamental level ("why do women wear the red dot?"). Now, thanks to covers like this, that issue has been more or less settled, and the questions I hear are more sophisticated ("can India be trusted with nuclear power?"). So the attention, however stereotypical, has been mostly for the better. That is perhaps why we tend to welcome such articles in India.

PS: What really gets my goat, though, is the stereotyping in the Times of India. If an ABD kid somewhere in the American midwest as much as gets an A in Geography, she is hailed as an example of "Indians succeeding overseas".

To borrow your analogies, it would be like having a Brazilian insurance-saleswoman in samba headgear or an Japanese geneticist in full Geisha pancake. The fact that the folks over at Time still have an exotic notion of what India stands for, and are promoting the same with this blatant cover, is what is being called into question here. In many ways it undermines the very text below the graphic -- 'India Inc'.

Good point.

Also, Its time the westerners start recognising the Narayan Murthys and Azim Premjis. Indian magazines already carry Bill Gates on the cover.

So,
Is it right to say that non-ABDs care less about Indian-ness than do ABDs? And if so, is it because non-ABDs have a living, breathing India on their mind? Which no amount of misreprensentation -of the Time cover can be classified as such - can threaten.

The problem is not with the fact that there is an Indian girl on the cover of Time, or that there is a "hot Indian girl" there either. Arm-candy, hot etc. are generic adjectives.

Arguably, "exotic" can be just as generic as "arm candy", "hot". And a subservient, demure Asian girl who's "arm candy" is not "orientalism"? A picture of a young, "hot" Brazilian girl in beachwear is not stereotyping either?

The fact that the folks over at Time still have an exotic notion of what India stands for, and are promoting the same with this blatant cover, is what is being called into question here.

Its time the westerners start recognising the Narayan Murthys and Azim Premjis

DesiDudeInGotham,

There is nothing wrong with the cover. Why would lone ike to showcase India in a vanilla way?

I think NRIs/ ABDs/ brown neo-intellectuals are obsessed with being Don Quixote fighting the dragons of exotization. Few weeks ago, I was trying to look India with a Wall Street like prism.

What I saw is Toyatos filled with 10-15 people with rural trappings and three generations in the car and maybe, their goat too.

India is not NYC, not London, not Kansas City, and shouldn't be.

Cheapo:
If you were to design the cover, what image would you have used ?

I've read plenty of articles on Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji in US newspapers/magazines.

They never feature on the covers, only in articles. If Time wanted to honour the rising Indian economy, there are real people out there who are doing real work.

Neale:

Is it right to say that non-ABDs care less about Indian-ness than do ABDs?

Re: #69 (oohh, a dirty number!!)--

Especially given the fact that we ABD's are citizens of this freakin' country, and we have the right to protest the depiction and portrayal of the land of our ancestors and our people as manufactured by The Man and The System, goddamit.

Cute lady on the cover. Dish Network, indeed.

#52 - Ok - I guess my "call girl" joke was not understood by this crowd. Call center - pretty girl, hence: call girl. She is pretty - get it? As for your comment on brazil, if you put that picture on the cover of Time in talking about the Brazilian economy - there would be something seriously wrong. Again, would there ever be a photo of a attractive Israeli girl - who is in the army, deceked out as GI barbie on the cover of time - if they did a piece that was centered on Israel.

CAD, I agree that stereotyping in general is bad. But there is ethnic stereotyping, and there is generic stereotyping. Putting TMBWITW would be generic stereotyping -- all our women are beauty queens, or putting a geek with a pocket protector would be geneic -- all desi engineers are geeks. And both would be accurate to an extent. Bharatnatyam dancers with earpieces is not accurate. That's the point. It's a lazy visual shorthand.

Incidentally, all my Brazilian friends were quite ok with the hot woman. And the reason is that it prompts hicks from BumbleF, Idaho to ask inane questions like "are all brazilian chicks this hot dude?" (a stereotype no doubt). Whereas, after this cover, these same bumpkins will look straight at you and ask you earnestly if "Indian women wear that fancy gold shit in their hair to work." And then proceed to cite Time Magazine.

Kush, I am all for Indians projected in the S&M SM way ;)

CAD:
You make a good point, but not quite enough. What i miss in these posts is a gripping, personal take on the ABD experience. Which would help me understand the outrage. Talking of racism and a Time magazine cover in one stroke is not enough. And the dollops of cynicism do not help.

That is really it - would Time ever put on the cover an Israeli Girl decked out as G.I barbie, on the cover of it's magazine if it did a piece on the Israeli Military? I don't see that happening, she is way too beautiful for the cover, this is Time - it is not maxim or a men's magazine.

Neale:

You make a good point, but not quite enough. What i miss in these posts is a gripping, personal take on the ABD experience. Which would help me understand the outrage. Talking of racism and a Time magazine cover in one stroke is not enough. And the dollops of cynicism do not help.

1. What kind of "gripping, personal take on the ABD experience" regarding the Time magazine cover are you looking for? The "ABD experience", as you call it, is individualized, in context of racism ABD's face, and the social and political dynamics of US society. As a sidenote, I wouldn't reify the "ABD experience", which is why I myself pointed out that I am generalizing, which is problematic.
2. If it's not enough for you to understand the "rage", would you prefer a PH.D. style thesis?
3. If you're referring to post #70, I was half joking. Since we are not first generation Indian immigrants, but born and raised in the US, then I can see why some would feel impelled to express displeasure if we are depicted in a certain way. If you think that looking at the social, political, and cultural processes of the US are "dollops of cynicism", then I can't help you there. Maybe someone else can describe their experiences in the manner that you are seeking.

|..where your credit-card details may be stored--or stolen

i don't know.

I showed the cover to my parents. They were thrilled and proud that India is getting more good press on a serious issue. They couldn't see past its obvious intention to be positive.

I suspect the reaction of many on this site is not a result of being Indian, but rather being educated in a very western multicultural way... which encourages hyper sensitivity to all stereotyping, and to look for deeper, structural sociopolitical meanings in the stereotype.

Sometimes I think all this sophistication just blurs the simple truth.

Pankaj and DD in Gotham:

I see the distinction that you two are pointing out, ie the Time cover is about "India Inc" vs. Brazilian girl and soccer matches, so I'll totally concede that you two are right on this point. BUT, soccer is also an industry that is a part (albeit a small slice) of the economy, and they are being used for marketing as well. Furthermore:

But there is ethnic stereotyping, and there is generic stereotyping. Putting TMBWITW would be generic stereotyping -- all our women are beauty queens, or putting a geek with a pocket protector would be geneic -- all desi engineers are geeks. And both would be accurate to an extent. Bharatnatyam dancers with earpieces is not accurate.

I don't see such a clear line between "generic stereotyping" and "ethnic stereotyping". First, your examples here-- super nerd Desi engineers, Desi beauty queens-- are these not stereotypes based within the context of a given ethnicity? Second, Bharatnatyan dancers with earpieces being inaccurate-- forgive me, but I think you are nitpicking here. Desi computer geeks and Desi beauty queens ala Aishwarya and Sushmita are not accurate stereotypes either. Yes, they represent a certain segment of India. But they are by no means precise stereotypes of Desis at large.

Time ever put on the cover an Israeli Girl decked out as G.I barbie, on the cover of it's magazine if it did a piece on the Israeli Military?

This case-- regarding the military of another country-- shouldn't be compared to a cover regarding another country's economy, I think. It's not like Time did a cover on the Indian military in Kashmir, and had an Indian GI Jane barbie type with her boobies plopping out of her uniform with an AK 47 suggestively holding them up.

I don't see that happening, she is way too beautiful for the cover, this is Time - it is not maxim or a men's magazine.

haha... nicely done! I'm new to sepia and loving it so far!

Pankaj,

While I understand your concerns in your posts, which collectively add up to "Why this image with this topic?", I think you give too much credence to the publication. Time is infotainment at best now that a whole host of other more serious, more intellectual, less pretentious publications are available and would treat this topic more intelligently. The same with Newsweek.

But she is a little too pretty for a piece on India's economy. Forget about Gi. Barbie, how about just a pretty Israeli girl on the cover of time for a piece on Israel's military. Would that ever happen? Call center workers don't go to work like that, and Israeli women in the military do not wear mascara. that is it for me on this thread - It is getting silly, do not want to lose my credibility.

how do you people find so much time to be continuously dedicated to commenting here? Why do you all seem so passionate about these inane issues? :)

Manju:

I suspect the reaction of many on this site is not a result of being Indian, but rather being educated in a very western multicultural way... which encourages hyper sensitivity to all stereotyping, and to look for deeper, structural sociopolitical meanings in the stereotype.

Sometimes I think all this sophistication just blurs the simple truth.

Or perhaps, underlying modes of power, its projection, its tendency to feed circular reasoning and its role in shaping psyche are better understood.

As for your comment on brazil, if you put that picture on the cover of Time in talking about the Brazilian economy - there would be something seriously wrong.

Vait ek minute: I agree with you about using this ladkhi on the cover when discussing the Indian economy; it's messed up. However, the issue also discusses the "biggest, messiest, sexiest city--Bombay", Bollywood and among other delightful treasures, the favorite Western motif when discussing non Western societies-- the overlap and struggle between the old and new, the traditional and modern, as in the words of Nair in this issue: "a place that has always lived in several centuries at once". Juxtapositions of Bombay stockwallas riding on elephants, swamis meditating but answering their cell phones etc (I am lampooning). Though its main focus is on the the Indian economy, it does touch on other aspects as well.

Just for the record, I'm not defending Time. I'm just saying that this cover is part and parcel of a larger, general trend of the stereotyping of peoples and societies, objectification of women (like semi nude women in car, watch, alcohol, and sports commercials and advertisements) and that it is not strictly confined to the portrayal of Desis and India. But this cover doesn't piss me off enough to mobilize a grassroots movement, or launch a letter writing campaign to Time.

In the meantime, I'm going to fantasize about the Desi male call center worker counterpart of this Time cover above. Like Abhi, I will now be much nicer and gentle when speaking with "Bob", "John" and "Henry" calling from Delhi and Banglore. Might even engage in a bit of chhi chhi talk...

Did anyone else notice this in the first paragraph of the Time article.

" He's right. If you want to catch a glimpse of the new India, with all its dizzying promise and turbocharged ambition, then head to its biggest, messiest, sexiest city--Bombay. Home to 18.4 million people and counting, the city, formally known as Mumbai, is projected by 2015 to be the planet's second most populous metropolis, after Tokyo."

IS that bad fact checking for a major news magazine. Mumbai was formerly known as "Bombay" not vice versa, as the magazine says. As one reads through the article, there are numerous obvious facts that are incorrect. amazing!

Nonsense, Abhi, don't lie. Everyone knows there is no such place as Idaho.

But if there were to exist, I'm guessing Time would not be unheard of there. "Time magazine was created by Henry Luce so that people living in areas where national and world news coverage was scarce could keep up with the events of the day."[link]; indeed, it's even had a somewhat sordid role to play in this fictional state's private history. Sure it's in decline, but it is, after all, the original and still the largest news weekly.

She says, not quite loyally.

Check out the MediaKit. Skinheads and Polar Bears and Aunties, oh my!

http://www.time.com/time/mediakit/

VJ:

IS that bad fact checking for a major news magazine. Mumbai was formerly known as "Bombay" not vice versa, as the magazine says.

You're confusing "formally" with "formerly".

Forget about Gi. Barbie, how about just a pretty Israeli girl on the cover of time for a piece on Israel's military. Would that ever happen? Call center workers don't go to work like that, and Israeli women in the military do not wear mascara.

Pankaj, yaar, you are too obsessed with this idea of an IDF soldress on the cover of Time. Moreover, the references and analogies as to why Beach Bunny Brazilian women are not gracing the covers of Time which discusses the Brazilian economy is flawed as well, because it takes things out of context. Let me try to put this Time cover into perspective in very, very crude terms:
Currently, the political, social, and economic climates have their stereotypes and objectives cut out. So:
First, Time would never publish an attractive Israeli female soldier when the focus in on the IDF. This would discredit and potray a significant geopolitical ally of the US in bad light. One of the justifications as to why the US provides practically unconditional political, economic, and military support to Israel is that Israel is a vulnerable prey at the hands of a bunch of Palestinian terrorists who want to "drive the Jews out to the sea". The IDF thus must be portrayed as an honorable, courageous army protecting Israel and its survival. Newsweek, another "infotainment" mag like Time, has done this consistently.
Secondly, Brazil presently is not a major economic investment objective for the US. Brazil is more associated with soccer and Rio de Janiero, and Sexy Brazilian Beach Bunnies are ornaments which help this image.
India, on the other hand, has become the principal goal and most promising case of investment: it is a potential market of supposedly 200 million middle class consumers, almost the same size as the entire population of the US put together. Collective imagination of India is exotic, traditional, and home of Bollywood and arranged marriages with an emerging class of techno warriors that is going to bring India towards integration into the global capitalist economy. For Time, Bharat Mata/Natyam Dancer is an attractive-- and exotic-- woman to invest in. "India Shining" it is, and all the gold jewelry she's wearing underscores that point. And the fact that she's a call center worker: well, this is one way to deflect the public outcry at outsourcing, framing the issue in a positive, affirmative way.

Think about it: Time is marketing an economy that has recently liberalized, and has tremendous potential for US investment. India Shining has become the poster boy/girl for Third World countries that have liberalized. Time's touting India and this cover is an advertisement. If thought in this context, is it suprising that they have chosen a cover like this? How eye pleasing would it have been if they had featured a Bombay stock broker on the floor of the BSE, or a REAL call center worker?

Or maybe I am reading too much into this cover...

A couple of points from me:

1. I agree that there is some stereotyping at play in the Time cover pic, although they may be some other factors involved as per CAD's comments in post #90. Or maybe it's just showing that what used to be regarded as a fairly "traditional" society (as per the model's jewellery, general appearance, and the rest of the imagery in the pic) is now becoming part of the globalised techno-economy (as per the headphones and mic she's wearing).

2. Personally, I think showing a female model in a more slick corporate setting and wearing the associated business attire would have been a better way to go, a la Bipasha Basu in her new film, er, "Corporate".

3. I think Pankaj is massively overreacting to the fact that they used a pretty model on the cover. No offence, Pankaj.

4. And regarding the hypothetical bikini-babe in stars and stripes swimwear being used to represent the US, the Indian media already does that all the time anyway, as depicted in numerous Hindi films and music videos with white models. I'm not saying that two wrongs make a right, of course, but I think this is a valid point. In any case, the analogy would only hold true if the Time cover model was wearing some kind of racy temple-prostitute outfit or a barely-there/about-to-fall-off sari, which obviously isn't the case here.

Jai,

You're right, a slick corporate woman in a suit would have been better for the cover, but then she would just have looked - American.

What bugs me about many of these posts is their assumption that a beautiful girl necessarily represents an airhead or a bimbo, and can't possibly represent something 'serious' like the economy.

I can understand the issues with exotification (which are definitely present) - what call (center) girl actually comes to work looking/dressing like the Time picture? I would guess zero. The issue with her being pretty seems a little over the top as a protestation, in my opinion. Given that one of the other major female representations of "India" is Aishwarya Rai, I don't think going after pretty women on covers is the best place to spend our energy.

Neale, et. al: For a discussion of the gendered use of (tech) women as the new symbol of Indian nationalism vis-a-vis the economy, and for some ABD analysis, there actually IS a Ph.D. dissertation on exactly this subject. It should be published via UMI by now and should be on file at UC Berkeley's library in the next few months under Sociology, and it's by Smitha Radhakrishnan (of Desi Dilemmas fame). :)

What bugs me about many of these posts is their assumption that a beautiful girl necessarily represents an airhead or a bimbo, and can't possibly represent something 'serious' like the economy.

Yes! It's an outrage, this vile prejudice against beautiful people.

It is funny to read the responses from a FOB perspective.. For all those who are against seeing this image, tell us about your alternatives.. (i.e what image would you want on the front page cover?).. That will give us a better idea to comment..

Personally I think it is a good one trying to mix tradition with modernity.. (I'd have liked someone doing a yoga pose with the headset..) that's even better.. Couple Yoga with IT, you create a great "brand India"..

Ugly,
Get with it. It's a vile prejudice against beautiful WOMEN.

Word to our mother. The Great Mother India, that is! She is both doe-eyed AND ambitious, seductive AND industrious, ready to perform a Thillana AND tricked out to work the dressing room at Old Navy (Ugh. Could they have made that headset any more 1998?).

I saw this post then came across the June 19th edition of TIME Asia featuring the cover story, 'India's New Dawn'. If you were provoked by the American cover, definitely check this out.

When you click on the link, the thumbnail cover to the right of Jim Erickson's article is what is being published under the TIME banner on this side of the world. It's a little small, but you can probably make out that it's a generic looking city scape and an equally generic brown woman and man. They look like they just graduated from an IIM / Wharton. They look like they just stepped out of Cafe Coffee Day / Starbucks. They look (oh shit...) like you and me.

So here's a thought - maybe the Amrikan editors of TIME have got our back. Those of you amidst the upward mobile sepiaed masses can now deflect questions about whether you're planning to steal Joe Idaho's job by saying, "Didja see the June 19th TIME? Do I look like her? I don't think so". Meanwhile, as far as the Census Bureau is concerned, you're still safely ensconced in the demographic with the highest incomes in the country. BWAAAA HA haaaaaa...
~
As far as the Asia version, I think:
(1) it's an ugly cover, though...
(2) they bear a much closer resemblance to the true face of upwardly mobile India than the Bharathanatyam lass, and...
(3) at least it's not an exotified India, but...
(4) it is also guilty of the lazy design problem that the American version of the magazine suffers from.

Then again, TIME isn't especially known for showing nuance in their cover design - didn't they just do one featuring Zarqawi's face with a big red 'X' through it?

I guess one could argue that this woman does not represent a typical woman who works at a call center in India. From the few videos I have seen on call centers, the women are dressed either in Western casuals or mostly shalwar kameezes with a few saris. Most of them do not wear over the top make up like the woman in the cover and are certainly not loaded with nose rings and elaborate gold head bands.
I guess the reality is too dull to be put on the cover of Time magazine.

As for the person above who was wondering why are some people upset at the cover, the answer is pretty simple. We all want to fit in the societies we live in. We all want to be treated as regular normal people who just happen to have a different skin color. Covers like this one perpetuate the image of Indians being foreign and different.

Part of me thinks the Asia cover version wouldn't have worked here just cause Indians can look American (the reverse does not hold true) - and if there's no (sometimes stupidly) obvious signs screaming 'I'm Indian' (aka bindi, mehndi etc.), no one would think the story was about India.

The other part is thinking maybe Pankaj of the erstwhile paranoia may have had a point...the pretty exotic call centre girl is so terribly nonthreatening, whereas the two generic people look like businesspeople, are strong, active etc.

Um, I'd be calling bullshit if some story on Japan being an economic force had a kimono-clad woman wearing that headset, too. It's rampant exotification. "Look at them weird furriners and all that funny shit they wear."

And Neale, if you can't figure out what American-born desis think after reading an entire WEBLOG devoted to such things, written BY and FOR ABDs, surf elsewhere. No one owes you more than what is painfully obvious.

I don't have a problem with the exotified cover-- it's marketing, people. They have to sell to the lowest common denominator, to the cheap seats. So if some halfwit in Idaho (sorry Saheli ;) ) picks up this magazine and *this* is the picture of India that they get, and start to incorporate into their diversity consciousness, then so be it. It's a hell of a lot better than more turban jokes or ignorant questions about if "the dot" means coffee is ready. So I say show our people as beautiful, hard working, intelligent... whatever it takes. Pile up some mangos behind that girl and put mehndi on everything that will hold still. We may be tired of these marketing "signature India" items, but the fact is it's done a lot to improve the mainstream (ignorant) perception of indians than ever in the past. So yeah, pass me my "curries" and spices and I'll ride my elephant off into the sunset, because it's better than being accused of being talibani or called the stock variety of offensive brown racist names.

We all want to fit in the societies we live in. We all want to be treated as regular normal people who just happen to have a different skin color. Covers like this one perpetuate the image of Indians being foreign and different.

Hmm.. I thought the TIME article was about India and its people and not specifically about people of Indian origin living in the US.. (correct me if I'm wrong.) so what's the big deal if they want to show some person with an unique Indian attire (bharatnatyam is not practised anywhere else.. ). And India is REALLY different and foreign in many aspects for US. Isn't that a fact??.

Hmm.. I thought the TIME article was about India and its people

Do India and its people go to work looking like that? No. Isn't the duty of a NEWS magazine to report things accurately? If I want exaggeration and fiction, I'll pick up US Weekly.

and not specifically about people of Indian origin living in the US.

In my day-to-day interactions, what gets emphasized is the fact that we are of brown origin, not that we're living in the U.S. At worst, we are total foreigners who and just visiting/are newly arrived ("Your English is so good! And you barely have an accent!") at best, we are still murkily other. This cover others us even more, even if it's about a story in India. When I walk around and people think "India!" and NOT "California!" or "America!" then yeah, it's going to affect me.

Dharma Queen - Exactly. Though you said it much more conscisely than I did.

In the Asian version of the cover, their chins are held high and their posture is erect. They're young and they look well rested. They are definitely walking with purpose and at a decent pace. It would all be far more threatening to American sensibilities than the Bharathanatyam babe.

In terms of visual literacy and whatnot, I find it interesting that they are walking in an easterly direction (at least if one holds right as east, left as west), and that there's a mountain in the background (mountains at one's back being good feng shui, I think). Maybe there's more nuance in TIME cover design than I originally thought. That, or I'm reading too much into things.

Then again, TIME isn't especially known for showing nuance in their cover design - didn't they just do one featuring Zarqawi's face with a big red 'X' through it?

Actually I liked that one...

Though Time did get into trouble for digitally altering this image.

Speaking of reactions to exotification, anyone seen this link: www.blackpeopleloveus.com ?

I showed it to a Kenyan friend and he nearly died laughing - and unfortunately confirmed that he'd had a number of the phrases cited used on him by white people. Someone out there should start an 'Indians love us' link. Some of the phrases used could be, as Anna mentions, 'OMG! You have, like, no accent whatsoever!' or 'So, do you eat curry at home?' or 'You mean your boyfriend isn't Indian?'.

I am a second generation Indian who grew up in Africa so if I say something that enrages people, rest assured that I don't mean to be offensive.

Growing up there, my idea of India was exotic dances, a very rich history, amazing food and stunning women. I don't know how the people in the US imagined India to be (without visiting the place) but that was it me. For me, the cover is a way of showing the new india where the culture etc is still rampant but so is the country's amazing leap in the business and technological arena. It's a study of contrasts on a country that boasts the coexistence of history and culture along with cutting edge technology and science.

I find the idea that 'Someone will think that this is how indians look on a daily basis' preposterous. This is 2006 people...not 1945! I don't see pictures of aborginal women on Australian magazines and imagine everyone in Sydney looks like that. How about considering the fact that India is in the news for something positive and just celebrating that?

That being said...the woman is gorgeous and I'd rather see someone like her with the make up and jewellery instead of this one.

I think a large portion of Time's readership consists of people who equate the term "outsourcing" with "layoffs," and it conjures the spectre of jobloss. Coupled with this is the constant frustration expressed time and time again about having a problem with a product/service and having to talk to an Indian whom one "can't understand." This image, to me, is an attempt to soften this aggression, and it's very hard for me to ignore the genderedness of it.

Exotic and orientalized bling aside, I can't help but notice the Mona Lisa angle/tilt to her head, the steady gaze and disarming smile. The headset completes the image, which to me screams out - or rather whispers seductively - "Call me!"

Do India and its people go to work looking like that? No. Isn't the duty of a NEWS magazine to report things accurately? If I want exaggeration and fiction, I'll pick up US Weekly.

This article as I believe, haven't read) is something positive about India (with the usual patronizing crap).. Naturally they'd like to get a glamorous picture on the cover.. If it is about famine deaths/poverty in India, they'd probably use a "Satyajit Ray/Deepa Mehta" type pictures.. What's the big deal??.. You have to analyse all the TIME covers and report us back if all the covers (images) report accurately the topic in hand without any bit of exaggeration and imagination. You can take offence if the reports are inaccurate, but cover images, hmm.. cut them some slack.. :-)

In my day-to-day interactions, what gets emphasized is the fact that we are of brown origin, not that we're living in the U.S. At worst, we are total foreigners who and just visiting/are newly arrived ("Your English is so good! And you barely have an accent!") at best, we are still murkily other. This cover others us even more, even if it's about a story in India. When I walk around and people think "India!" and NOT "California!" or "America!" then yeah, it's going to affect me.

I can understand that and empathize with you.. FOBs generally are prepared to take those comments in a stride.. It is hard on people who are born and brought up here.. But expecting someone doing an article on India to conform to your perspective is asking for too much..

Hmm.. I thought the TIME article was about India and its people

Do India and its people go to work looking like that? No. Isn't the duty of a NEWS magazine to report things accurately? If I want exaggeration and fiction, I'll pick up US Weekly.

Oh, please. It's a cover. A magazine cover is an advertisement for its own product. ALL news magazines engage in intentional hyperbole on the covers. Cover design is a reflection on their marketing, not the validity of their reporting. What, you expect photo-realism every week?

If the pictures and story INSIDE the mag have the same qualities as the cover, then you'd have a legitimate complaint about the quality of the reporting. But seperate the cover from the reporting. The National Review, The New Republic, The Village Voice, New Scientist, they ALL produce exaggerated covers.

Idiot: Wow, your english is so good...

ANNA: Thanks, so's yours.

funny... DQ... here's my favorite (with a tweak)

Sally is so thoughtful. She always tries to set me up with every black man indian girl she knows. Since we're both black indian that means my date and I will have so much in common.

Pankaj, Dharma Queen,

The non-threatening subtext is the key here. Something a largely non-desi editorial staff (assuming Time is such) would find satisfactory. Most of sepia do not: To varying degrees from mild amusement to rage. The woman is gorgeous, attractive, but wholly inappropriate given the nature of the story. A better choice: same model, grey suit, cell phone, tiny bindi, but I don't run Time..now if Laxmi Mittel would consider buying....

"Most of them do not wear over the top make up like the woman in the cover and are certainly not loaded with nose rings and elaborate gold head bands.
I guess the reality is too dull to be put on the cover of Time magazine."

i think that image has already been used on western magazine covers and is in itself cliche by now. i think businessweek had an attractive indian woman in a salwar khameez on its cover a few years ago. it's not the bharatanatyam image i find stereotypical, it's the call center headphones one. india inc. is about so much more than call centers now.

"We all want to fit in the societies we live in. We all want to be treated as regular normal people who just happen to have a different skin color. Covers like this one perpetuate the image of Indians being foreign and different."

this cover and story is about india, not american-born indians or indians living in the united states.

in my opinion, there is much ado about nothing. it's a nice cover and attention-getting. if it's exoticization, it's a good one and actually invites curiosity of the good kind. having encountered people who think that all indian culture started with the british and that the country was some sort of cultural wasteland and civilizational tabula rasa before colonialization, i think this is a positive image. if it's objectification of a woman, i'd rather have an attractive bharatanatyam-style objectification of women than some others i've seen in western and indian movies and magazines. i can't see busy westerners spending loads of time doing this sort of in-depth psychiatric analysis of this image and consequently developing negative views of indian women and india. those who already have deeply entrenched negative views of india because of outsourcing will continue to do so and those who know more about the country will have a more nuanced view. however, indians being indians, i can see them complaining about why time chose a south indian and/or hindu look to represent the country :) the same way petty indians fight over whether any indian movie submitted to the oscars should only be in hindi or should other languages be allowed.

it's obviously not meant to be a literalist image. perhaps this is time's idea of India Inc. - india is referred to as a she or a mother and the headphones are the inc. or perhaps they should have put headphones on an elephant :) "tradition" and "modernity" co-existing in the same person and in the country. wearing logo-laden western-style clothes doesn't necessarily make you progressive or modern. in the 70s or early 80s when Time (or was it another magazine?) did a feature story on the indian movie industry, they didn't use amitabh or any of the other male heavyweights on the cover. they used the beautiful parveen babi, who was a female heavyweight of the time. again, i have a feeling they sold more issues with her.

some Time india covers:

http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/searchresults?N=46&D=India&Ntt=India&Ntk=NoBody&Ntx=mode+matchany&Nty=1

Oh, please. It's a cover. A magazine cover is an advertisement for its own product. ALL news magazines engage in intentional hyperbole on the covers. Cover design is a reflection on their marketing, not the validity of their reporting. What, you expect photo-realism every week?

Keep some of that unnecessary outrage at my comments for later, you might need it. What I expect is a photograph which reflects some aspect of the story. I can almost deal with the idea that out of a crowd of 100,000 World Cup fans, someone would zero in on the Brazilian hotness because that gets attention, fine, mission accomplished. Still, she's a fan and some fans look and dress like that, even if they all are nowhere near as pretty as that.

This cover is so far past that. There are no call center workers who look like this. I susbscribe to TIME. I have a right to be pissed off if I'm paying for a magazine with a laughably innacurate cover, especially one which plays to the dumbest common denominator.

First I needed to move to Brazil. Now I need to work at an Indian call center....OVERLOAD!!!! DOES NOT COMPUTE!!! TOO MUCH H0tNESS!!!

sorry, should have said this cover and story is primarily about india, not american-born indians or indians living in the united states. i know that wouldn't matter to some americans, but that's their problem and if this image somehow makes them think bad thoughts about indians in general, that says more about them than the object of their derision. time can't sit and think about all the ramifications and what effect it will have on the american impression of american-born or america-resident indians/. they are trying to sell their cover story and trying to find an image that they think captures it. i'm sure opinion is just as divided in india. but it's no worse a cover than many outlook india or india today covers that go to the other extreme and exotify and exaggerate the westernization of india, usually using beautiful women.

Get with it. It's a vile prejudice against beautiful WOMEN.

Yes you're right, this is a vile oppression, more evil and destructive than any other prejudice on Earth. Beautiful women are oppressed and it's amazing that they don't riot over this issue.

Yes you're right, this is a vile oppression, more evil and destructive than any other prejudice on Earth. Beautiful women are oppressed and it's amazing that they don't riot over this issue.

I wouldnt mind mallika sherawat in a bikini on a Times magazine if the subject was BOLLYwood. The picture of the bharatnatyam girl on the cover reinforces stereotypes, which is the last thing people want. By people I mean:
-Indians, who want to be seen as a multidimensional society
-ABDs, who dont want to be asked "Since how long have you been livin in the US"?

"You're right, a slick corporate woman in a suit would have been better for the cover, but then she would just have looked - American."

i agree. does the whole world have to look the same - as if everyone shopped at the gap, banana republic or prada, and as if that was the only standard of progress and technological and industrial and economic advancement? if people wanted a more realistic cover than the one above, it should have been a woman in a sari, salwar khameez or jeans and t-shirt, or a guy in jeans and t-shirt. corporate and professional, especially in a non-western country, doesn't always have to equal a western-style suit. lots of professional, educated indian women go to work everyday in indian attire and do a good job. the world is becoming increasingly bland and clone-like as it is. strike a blow for freedom and at least get rid of ties!

The most noteworthy thing about this story is that it is soooo old and soooo tired, repeatedly resuscitated year after year and flogged for as much mileage as possible. India Inc/middle class boom/Infosys and Narayan Murthy/call center-outsourcing have now been cover stories for the past 6 years, following Friedman's stale rah rah-ing about India's technology boom. What is ludicrous to me is the stark silence on other HUGE trends in India -- the collapse of the rural sector (comprised of many day wage laborers and small scale farmers), massive increase in farmer suicides in states like maharashtra and andhra, a massive maoist insurgency in a large section of madhya pradesh/uttaranchal, sky rocketing urban poverty...the list goes on. This is not to say that India's tech/servioce sector boom is not legitimate...but what is absurd is the bosom swelling manner in which we indians prattle nauseatingly about the great boom while remaining oblivious to the increasingly wretched conditions in the rural hinterland. The point is, if a boom only touches 200 mill people in a country of 1.2 while a good chunk of the rest are still living in nightmarish feudal systems, earning under 40 ruppees a day, you are going to see all sorts of grisly repurcussions - a large maoist insurgency only being the first among many.

It is also not in the interests of the Friedman's of this world to actually chronicle the larger issue of what is happening to large chunks of this outsourcing, back office service sector economy - high rates of depression, the lack of development of real skills other than being able to conduct phone conversations,high cycles of consumption and debt amongst youth...etc. Sure, a developing economy will probably experience all of these ternds, but what is amazing is that no-one wants to hear about anything other than the glossy story of an India rising while large swaths of the country are sinking. Even the middle class in india, so completely engrossed in upwardly mobiling, don't want to hear about the wretched of the earth just a hundred or so kilometers away. Also fascinating is the nexus between a reagan era conservative culture and relentless capitalism amongst many twenty and thirty something middle class friends of mine in India. Here in the U.S. it is no secret that conservative Hindutva ideology and big business (lots if it in the hi tech sector) are in happy communion with each other. Ashutosh Varshney, head of the South Asia program at the U of Michigan often tells a fasciinating story of how he was invited to uber-consultant and big biz guru C.K. Prahalad's house for dinner and had to sit through a long, viscious and almost rabid tirade by the great man against Muslims many years ago (before 911).

Many of you are just plain missing the point. I don't think you can explain it any more clearly than Anna has already tried to though. And remember, that major magazines have a history of stupid shit like this. We should call it out when we see it.

Thanks for putting it in perspective, nubamountain

Phew! Just when I, an Indian Born (not so) Confused American, was reaching the height of an identity crisis, Time has come to my resuce. Now I know...I am un-Chinese!!

Some people here are pointing out the obvious distinction between the article focussing on Indians in India and not Indian-Americans. Though correct in identifying the distinction, they are still not taking into consideration the simple fact that for an average American, the Indian on the cover of the Time Magazine is not any different than the Indian American at their workplace.

In situations like this someone will always be offended. It reminds me of people who criticized the Cosby show for showing black people acting white, but if you show them acting black, others will critize you for sterotyping.

I guarantee you if you put an unattractive indian on the cover someone will complain about the desexualization of indians, inplying that we are undesirable. you put a beautiful indian on the cover and people then complain: "everyone thinks all indian women look like ash rai."

You put an indian dressed on western clothes people will complain thet're imposing a western standard on indians, declaring western dress normal. you put an indian in traditional garb...well you get it.

I'm sure time is aware "there are no call center workers who look like this," as anna complains. Its symbolic; a beautiful woman (represting a beautiful nation) dressed in traditional garb wearing a mike (representing an old culture embracing, or conquering if you will, the New World Order).

abhi, but it's obvious we all don't see this image exactly the same way and i think that's not a crime. i honestly don't feel offended by this photo in the same manner i would be by another one that might not offend you at all. i actually find this image as challenging western/american stereotypes about the nature of globalization than reinforcing them. to them globalization equals westernization. they feel comfortable seeing a guy or woman in a western-style business suit who pretty much looks like them except for the skin color. it comforts them and reinforces their notion that this is the way the "civilized" "advanced" world behaves and dresses. it's no different than the "white man's burden" of a previous era, when they felt they had to teach the natives how to dress and how to remake themselves in their "more advanced" image.

Modernity, high-tech, progress equals a solely western look is the mantra of today's globalization. i'm so tired of reading articles where they talk about young people listening to western music as the standard for progress. to them the advanced, progressive countries are the ones that are increasingly remaking and reshaping themselves in their own image. i like that this image jolts that certainty to a certain extent. globalization should be truly global, not be automatically equated to westernization. and clothes and ways of dressing are often powerful symbols of that. i would have found a photo of an indian guy or woman in a business suit really stereotypical. this story is about the effect that india is having on america, not the other way around. it's not a realistic image, but i think it was meant to be more symbolic.

i'm reminded of bill maher's silly comment that he would trust dealing with people who wore a suit. he said something like "if they're wearing a suit, we can deal with them, rather than some robes or something." it was in reference to terrorism, but it reinforces this whole prejudice that people who look western or ape western ways are somehow more "like us" and "easier to deal with" than those "difficult people who choose to dress differently." it's sad when the rest of the world quietly acquiesces or buys into this limited worldview and starts to see themselves as the "other" and the "different." gandhi fought against this view when he abandoned his western-style lawyer's outfits for his loincloth. it didn't make him any less civilized or effective. i'm not saying we all have to go to gandhian extremes and be as limited in our worldview, but i think it's important to remember some of the other principles he was fighting for.

nubamountain, you make some great points.

they are still not taking into consideration the simple fact that for an average American, the Indian on the cover of the Time Magazine is not any different than the Indian American at their workplace

And aren't you guilty of stereotyping the average American with that sweeping statement too ? Or do you have anything to back that up ?

I guarantee you if you put an unattractive indian on the cover someone will complain about the desexualization of indians, inplying that we are undesirable. you put a beautiful indian on the cover and people then complain: "everyone thinks all indian women look like ash rai."

Manju, I wouldn't have objected if they put the hottest woman in all of India on the cover wearing a headset. What I object to is an exotified version of an Indian woman with a headset on. As if women in India go to work like that.

>>As if women in India go to work like that.

The right thing to do (for a responsible magazine like Time), is to be representative. A little investigating would have made them realise that in call-centers, there are objective standards set for quality work: No. of calls fielded, no. of problems solved etc etc. Based on this criteria, awards are issued to the workers. All Time needed to do was to go to one large call-center company and picked out their top worker, and put his/her photo in work attire.

M. Nam

And aren't you guilty of stereotyping the average American with that sweeping statement too ? Or do you have anything to back that up ?

Yes, I am and I only have anecdotal evidence to back it up though one could argue that the depiction of Indians in the popular media is similar to the perception of Indians in the eyes of an average American.
I am not lamenting the stereotyping as much as identifyng why some people might take umbrage at an unflattering depiction of an Indian. Unflattering as in it adds to the 'foreigness' of Indians.

I guarantee you if you put an unattractive indian on the cover someone will complain about the desexualization of indians, inplying that we are undesirable. you put a beautiful indian on the cover and people then complain: "everyone thinks all indian women look like ash rai."

To echo Abhi, I don't mind that she's adorable at all. No one is saying that she needs to be more or less attractive; what is annoying is how she is wearing jewelry which is more appropriate for a dance performance or a wedding than a night spent at the office asking idiots if the reason why their computer is dead is b/c it isn't plugged in. I maintain that they spangled her out like that to make her look more foreign than she actually is, because it's not sexy to tell the truth and reveal that we're more similar than different. I worked in a call center while I was in school-- you dress for comfort, nothing else and there's minimal interaction with your co-workers, so it's not like you dress to impress THEM, either. The customers she would deal with can't see her; why would she wear such an (in this context) odd look?

I'm happy that she's got a healthy tan, though I'm sure that's no rejection of the stupidity of colorism. Not when darker = more exotic.

Some of you are making us out to be far more unreasonable than we actually are. There's no need to invalidate, not when those of us who are sincerely bothered by this have past experiences which totally back up our concerns.

I wouldn't have objected if they put the hottest woman in all of India on the cover wearing a headset. What I object to is an exotified version of an Indian woman with a headset on. As if women in India go to work like that.

I was trying to find out other "TIME cover images" and this is the link http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1205321,00.html
with a caption "Lose that spare tire" showing a woman doing some stretching by standing inside a tire placed horizontally on the floor.. I wonder if people compained about that image.. How many people you know exercise like that?? :-)

all those who are upset by/like this cover can voice their opinion by rating it at: http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20060626,00.html.

right now it's among the list of highest-rated covers.

right now it's among the list of highest-rated covers.

That's because some people are so desperate to see reflections of themselves in popular media, they'll gladly vote for something which doesn't do them--or the subject the cover is advertising--justice.

Would it have been so difficult to have shown her in Indian clothes, with a bindi and headset? I'm sure the bindi would have disambiguated which country the article was covering. No, too reasonable.

Camille,
Thanks for the link, will check it out.

Anna,
If preaching to the choir is your thing, so be it.

i'm reminded of bill maher's silly comment that he would trust dealing with people who wore a suit. he said something like "if they're wearing a suit, we can deal with them, rather than some robes or something."

I agree WGIIA.. Thats almost bigotry.

Some time back a "reporter" went to Iran and talked to young people and "reported" that the young people are so "modern" here because they listen to western music. Then asked a stupid question about which musician they liked? (Western ofcourse) So whats wrong with Farsi music?? Not "modern" enough ? WTF?

But I also agree that exotification is going on in this Times picture. Nobody goes to work like that.

As Manju rightly pointed out, the cover is largely SYMBOLIC.
A regular reader of TIME would have read tonnes of articles about India/Indians in the recent years. I don't think that he/she will be stupid enough to think that people go to work in this kind of an attire and make-up.

Why does a professional Indian woman have to be dressed up traditionally to please a westerner?

Hey look I am coy and docile. Dont I look more desirable than the girls (in a nurse's or cop's attire) you fantasised about?

"That's because some people are so desperate to see reflections of themselves in popular media, they'll gladly vote for something which doesn't do them--or the subject the cover is advertising--justice."

i think that's a bit harsh. not everyone sees this as trying to be a realistic, literalist cover.

"Would it have been so difficult to have shown her in Indian clothes, with a bindi and headset? I'm sure the bindi would have disambiguated which country the article was covering. No, too reasonable."

magazines have been there, done that. but you're right. take away the head jewellery and one of her necklaces and give her a stud nosering instead and the image would have been fine. so basically it's primarily the head jewellery that makes it "unrealistic." but there have been book covers with women in everyday indian clothing, a sari for instance and a bindi, that have elicited as much handwringing, angst and charges of exotification and still probably would have in this case. so as manju says, you can't please everyone.

For all those who are offended take solace in this TIME (Asia) cover.. June 6, 2005..
href="http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/0,13674,501050606,00.html">http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/0,13674,501050606,00.html

It is captioned "Beyond Denial" showing an impoverished women in a shady room with a "soon to be dying" child in her lap.. (typical Satyajit Ray effect) This is about "AIDS in India"..

Happy?..

Oops.. looks like I provided an incorrect link..

Click here

Why does a professional Indian woman have to be dressed up traditionally to please a westerner?

colonialist fetishism?

Why not a picture of a cute programmer? Or a radiologist in Bangalore reading an X-ray taken the day before in Podunk, Iowa? The call center operator's picture puts India almost at the bottom of the value chain.

"Why does a professional Indian woman have to be dressed up traditionally to please a westerner?"

a professional indian woman will wear whatever pleases her, not westerners. some have said that those who are not offended by the photo are missing the point. i think the opposite can be true as well: those who are upset by the photo may also be missing the point. why do indian call center workers have to put on weird american accents and adopt western names to please a westerner? to me, that's more egregious and a worse example of exotification than what someone is wearing. dressing traditional can mean a salwar khameez or a sari or a dhoti or a lungi. you can see indian workers with tilaks, vibudhi on their foreheads and other religious/traditional wear, i've seen it when they do tv coverage of indian call centers. if they featured one of these real call center workers with these types of markings on their foreheads, does it automatically mean it they are trying to please westerners or exotifying india? what does it mean when indians start seeing visual symbols of their own culture as exotification? clearly this cover is meant to be over the top and symbolic. i don't think it's meant to reflect how people go to work everyday. they've already done covers like that. there would be no need for artists if we only wanted literal depictions of everything all the time.

"The call center operator's picture puts India almost at the bottom of the value chain."

and that is the main problem with this photo :) the cliched call center headphones.

Why not a picture of a cute programmer?

Precisely. And the programmer be a female.

Speaking for the dravidian masses, she ain't brown enuff to represent!

If preaching to the choir is your thing, so be it.

If being mildly condescending is your thing, don't be it.

the thing that's, unfortunate, is that the picture looks very different. it would be nice to see an encounter with India in Time magazine in which the representation was familiar. the ornamentalism on the cover is high, there are multiple data points which suggest difference vis a vis an american culture. if you look at the pic, the things Abhi has pointed out are things you would not see in the US. the nose ring, the bindi, her hair, the jewelry, the background, all of this signifies unfamiliarity

maybe this cover is a window into a certain way people view other places in the world; as differences that can be accepted and enjoyed. this is not in itself bad....but perhaps unneccesary. a call center worker in india is likely to have a lifestlye and culture that is both familiar and unfamiliar to the reading audience, the cover emphasizes difference over similiarity

some past less threatening, less demeaning images of india inc:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_41/b3853009_mz046.htm

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/03_49/B3861magazine.htm (check out IIT student Tyagi. Dressed traditionally but not overtly so, no glaring big red bindi to scare americans, only a small pale one barely visible one :))

and, it looks as if it's not only evil western magazines who exotify the working indian woman. check out this cover of india's businessworld magazine that goes along with the cover story "women on the job." : http://www.businessworldindia.com/apr0405/index.asp#

The worst part is they show her smiling. Most of these people are ready to shoot themselves in the foot. Thats when they're not getting harassed/raped by their drivers who take them home at 3 am

The problem is not that the image is different than what people see on a day to day basis, I feel the problem is how people perceive people from a certain race to be. I think images like these reinforce these perceptions. I can’t even begin to understand what other ABD’s have to go through growing up in the US with all the nonsensical questions asked about where they are from and how they speak good English.

I can?t even begin to understand meant to say I can't even begin to imagine
what other ABD?s have to go through growing up in the US with all the nonsensical questions asked about where they are from and how they speak good English.

Communis Rixatrix:

No, this comment is more condescending.

Why not a picture of a cute programmer?

Precisely. And the programmer be a female.

Not for me! A hot, sexy Desi MALE programmer should grace the cover....

Anyway, everbody keeps forgetting that the Time's readership is Amreekan (white, middle class) and it is pandering to their conceptions of India and Indians. Plus, India Shining is being bandied as something worth investing in and deflecting criticism of outsourcing. This TIME cover is an advertisement. TIME, being infotainment, as someone else has pointed out, is not that different from other mainstream media outlets. I agree that we should expect our mass media to be accurate, informative, and realistic. But given the track record, I'm not suprised that this would happen.

CAD: agreed.

Exactly FOB perspective. We're foreigners whereever we go.

Cheapo: If you were to design the cover, what image would you have used ?

That's easy: all SM'ers here know what image I would have used on the TIME cover:

A tall, dark, handsome Desi named Hardeep aka "Harry", wearing nothing but skin tight Speedos with the Indian flag printed on it and a call center headset, similar to the lady on this cover.

If he's hairy, they shouldn't airbrush this. Actually, the hairier, the better. Come to think of it, TIME should computeristically generate even MORE hair, in the same manner that National Geographic consistently darkens imgages of the natives so as to assure their white middle class readers that the primitive native peoples are really very dark. Cushioned on Hardeep/Harry's carpet of chest hair will be a thick gold chain, with a large and conspicuous pendent of the Indian subcontinent that one can easily find at Laxmi Jeweler's.

Nubamountain -- Time's actually done a fairly good job of looking at the other side of the story, and they do go into that in the main piece here. The Ratan Tata piece also talks about how the middle class is far smaller than the myth of 200 million. I remember a cover from a few years back called "The Two Indias", about the divide, the super-rich and the dirt-poor who were missing out, and the farmer suicides. Time is actually reasonably obsessed by the Maoists. They've done a lot on them in Nepal, and bring them up in almost every story they writes on India's economy. This is a more positive story, true -- but then this does seem to be India's year. It's tough to have a downer on a growth rate of 8.4%.

I really think this debate is a little blown out of proportion. I see magazine covers in the same light as political cartoons, they exaggerate or go extremely literal in order to bang their point of view into your brain. They probably wouldn't do that if every single reader put as much thought into the possible subcontext of the illustration as some people choose to do. But the average reader is going to have a snap judgement based on a 2-second glance and a brief skimming of the headlines.

Maybe I'm taking an overly moderate view on it, but I don't think Time is trying to pass this cover off as a realistic photograph of what a call center worker in India looks like. Sometimes the media as a whole is blatantly prejudiced in their reporting (i.e. looting vs. finding food for survival), but I don't think this is as clear-cut a case.

On a related note, for those of you out there filled with so much rage that can only be satisfied with hand-delivered hate mail to the art editors at the magazine, I've got a contractor badge that lets me into any floor in the Time & Life building in Rock Center. Feel free to forward me your scathing email and I'll personally hand deliver it myself free of charge. Flaming bags of dog poo can also be arranged for at a reasonable cost of $5.

I really think this debate is a little blown out of proportion. I see magazine covers in the same light as political cartoons, they exaggerate or go extremely literal in order to bang their point of view into your brain.

Has anyone heard about KAL PENN's first audition in which he was asked to wear a turban to look Indian.
We should dispell stereotyping from the western mind as soon as possible and it is time we are properly represented. No more exotification, mythification please.

oh, and btw, I think if the indifference of the FOBs or IBDs vs. the outrage of ABDs held true as a generalizations, I would be really interested to heard some valids theories as to why that was so. Unfortunately, I'm ABD, so I guess I just busted that theory.

And slightly off-topic, but I specifically chose IBD vs. FOB since FOB is really only used to belittle the IBDs and I lowe all the IBDs out there. But that's a topic that I'd really like to see debated instead of this Time cover... Some points of discussion:
1) what qualifies a person as an FOB? In other words, how long does the "freshness" last?
2) who really comes over on boats these days? Given the modern advances in aeronautical engineering, shouldn't we update this archaic term to reflect that?

Talk amongst yourselves, in the meantime I'm eagerly awaiting the launch of this site. Now THAT guy is definitely still fresh. I'm not sure, but I think he even has his Indian passport in his shirt pocket. But this actually would qualify for talking point #3:
3) Is facial hair a good qualifier for the FOB? You really don't see moustaches among the american-born and assimilated desis. Is the morphosis of the of the moustache into the goatee a good indicator of transition from FOB to IBD?

Hey Anna and other ABD women - a shout-out that ABD women are getting trashed by Wheatish on the Poor Ghauri family thread.

Letter to the editor,
I am writing to you to express my dissatisfaction with the recent cover on Time magazine. I feel the picture of a pretty Indian Girl accessorized to the hilt, wearing a headset is not appropriate. I feel that due to the large population of people who are unfamiliar with India, view India as a foreign land, and may have ideas about race and people from other countries that are not up to speed, may make some association between "cost effective" outsourcing and Indian women. I have relatives that I love dearly in India, and I would not ever want someone, with ideas of race that are not up to speed, making the association between my cousin and "cost effectiveness". Rather , as a symbol for the "new Indian" why not regale the recent Time cover with the gateway to an IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), or if that does not work - put a headset on the taj mahal. But please do not let people who may be lacking in worldliness to make any inappropriate assocaiations. Would a time cover ever picture an Iraeli woman in an army uniform, if Time did a piece on Israel? I for some reason do not ever see that happening.

Sincerely,
Pankaj Davessar

"Has anyone heard about KAL PENN's first audition in which he was asked to wear a turban to look Indian.
We should dispell stereotyping from the western mind as soon as possible and it is time we are properly represented. No more exotification, mythification please."

Just because some people are so dumb that they don't know about the differences between Indians living in America doesn't mean Indians in India or art directors have to always give in to such ignorance and prejudice and cater to it and acquiesce to it and pretend there are no differences and make every cover as bland and as "inoffensive" or "unthreatening" to the american as possible and that one should feel ashamed of looking different. People in America and India do wear turbans, and the burden is on these dumb people to become more wordly and figure out that some do and some don't, not for others to dumb down to their level of conformity and homogeneity and make it easier for them to understand this oh-so-complex and diverse world. more people probably watch the simpsons than read Time magazine, yet that episode where Homer goes to India - replete with practically all the stereotypes and "exotification" - was seen by many Indians as funny and cool, yet this cover evokes such ire. the idea of being properly represented is also dicey since each indian/indian origin person will have their own idea as to what proper representation means.

"The American ideal, after all, is that everyone should be as much alike as possible." -- James Baldwin

"The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity." -- Dr. Robert Anthony

Wu Banga,
Agreed. I don't know which is worse, getting reduced to one's race here, or having one's obvious Westernness treated as a peculiar disease over there. For example: I walk into a small bank, open my mouth, and the entire place shuts up and watches me. Even my relatives think my Westernness is weird. Just the need for space and freedom and occasional solitude is overwhelming to a Westerner - if you demand it over there, they think you're selfish or a nutcase. It's terribly alienating.

Oh, please. It's a cover. A magazine cover is an advertisement for its own product. ALL news magazines engage in intentional hyperbole on the covers. Cover design is a reflection on their marketing, not the validity of their reporting. What, you expect photo-realism every week?

Keep some of that unnecessary outrage at my comments for later, you might need it.

That was outrage??

I REALLY don't think so...

This cover is so far past that. There are no call center workers who look like this. I susbscribe to TIME. I have a right to be pissed off if I'm paying for a magazine with a laughably innacurate cover, especially one which plays to the dumbest common denominator.

You have every right to be pissed. I've no issue with that. I just took issue with you saying the cover is inaccurate reporting, when the cover isn't reporting at all, and it's not meant to be. It's self-promotion, and it's the norm for all sorts of news magazine covers. Criticize the actual REPORTING as reporting, if criticism is warranted. Criticize the cover as fabricated image-making. But the two really are distinct from each other. I'll guarantee that the staff who worked on the article had nothing to do with the cover.

What I'm saying is, you can't judge an article by its cover. :)

wow... long debate... therefore i am going to add one more to it.

time magazine: "we need a cover that will grab attention and attract reader to the key article feat. indian women at call centres."
answer: lets put all unique stereotypes of indian women in one snazzy picture and then every average american fella will get the idea!

was it the smartest cover? no! is it a blatant misrepresentation? yes!

do they care? no!

did they get their point across to white america and sell copies? yes!

it's marketing!

i would be far more concerned about the blatant misrepresentations or ommissions of global news in american broadcasting and the 'marketing' of political views, which have become so routine and normal now that they slip from notice. time mag was just jumping on the bandwagon...

i think a bigger and sadder problem is why Kalpen Modi felt he had to change his name to Kal Penn just to get more calls for auditions. i mean ben kingsley was forced to do that decades ago. apparently nothing much has changed no matter how much we go out of our way to assimilate and look like everyone else. so should we all change our "exotified" names as well to avoid being stereotyped? some people will never accept you no matter how much you try to be accepted.

Re: Kal Penn's audition story

The problem is not about an Indian sounding name or western one, the problem is the lack of awareness among the west about India in general. They are happy looking at us as people with turban and a saree. But as we know there is much more to us than that. Unless the other layers that form our identity dont feature on media, we are bound to be represented as above.

Not to threadjack, but I just had something funny happen with a call center employee. I know that for a long time they've been prohibited from giving their real names and had to give US names instead. As a matter of fact, they used to have fictional US addresses and know all about the weather there. But that changed a year or so ago, people started saying that they were in Bangalore, and giving their names, especially after they heard mine.

But this woman insisted her name was "Karen Smith". Very clearly desi voice, not a faux-American accent. Still, Karen Smith ...

Maybe some out-out-source has been trained to talk like a desi? :-)

Y'all are kidding right? Every FOB and every desi I know would die laughing at this cover. If they seem indifferent it's because it's beyond belief ridiculous to show a Bharatanatyam dancer wearing an earpiece. I am quite sure even in Idaho people are ready for a little more reality, people. I live in cowland, I know.
If you did want to 'sell the magazine', there are a hundred other ways to show a pretty call centre worker (and they don't all involve Ash Rai). And where are the hot geeks anyway? More mythmaking?

But that changed a year or so ago, people started saying that they were in Bangalore, and giving their names, especially after they heard mine.

One of my experiences with a call center ladkha, on a day when I was feeling punchy and frisky:

CAD: Hello?
Richard* : Hello, may I please speak to....(realizing it is a Guju name...)Ms. Cheap Ass Desi (name perfectly pronounced, unlike Amreekan callers who massacre my name to the point of no longer being sensical)?
CAD: Yeees....? (upon hearing an Indian accented voice saying my name perfectly, racking mind to figure out who the hell it could be)
Richard: My name is Richard, and I am calling on behalf of Citibank.
CAD: (realization finally dawning on her) Richard, eh? What's your real name?
Richard: CAD M'am, I am sorry, but I cannot disclose that information. I am Richard.
CAD: Sure, and I'm Pamela Anderson. Is it something like Rithik? Rishi?
Richard: (uncomfortable silence) No...it's Richard (unconvincingly)
CAD: Where are you located?
Richard: I cannot disclose that information due to security purposes.
CAD: Wait a minute: you can know information about my address, phone number, where I live, what kind of accounts I have with Citibank, all sorts of secured information, but you can't tell me where you're calling from?
Richard: Uh-- no, Ms. CAD, it's not like that....
CAD: Give me a ballpark range: New Delhi? Bombay? Banglore?
Richard: I don't know (sounding very insecure)...
CAD: Look, "Richard": I'm not trying to put you on the spot, pick on you or mess with you. I am very pissed off at Citibank and this call center tamaasha. I am going to write a piece on them and denounce them for exploiting people like you, including making you change your name to something Anglo. Globalization of capital apparently entails globalization of exploitation. Tell me, are they treating you well? How much do you get paid?
Richard: I am not able to talk about these things....um...Would you like me to remove your name from the list?
CAD: Yes, thank you. Have an nice day, Richard.

*Probably something like Rishi, Rajesh, Rashid

"Re: Kal Penn's audition story
The problem is not about an Indian sounding name or western one, the problem is the lack of awareness among the west about India in general. They are happy looking at us as people with turban and a saree. But as we know there is much more to us than that. Unless the other layers that form our identity dont feature on media, we are bound to be represented as above."

i understand what you're saying, but i think having to change your name in this day and age to something more "acceptable sounding" is pretty sad. names are considered just as "exotic" as clothing. if it's important for us to be represented as accurately and authentically as possible in america, isn't it also important that those of us with "exotic" sounding names be represented as such without having to change it? besides, other magazines, tv news shows have already done plenty of photos, covers and news pieces with more western-looking, fast-food eating, american-style consumerist indians. so i don't think that side of india has not been represented. like it or not, india is still by and large a turban-wearing, sari-wearing country, even in urban areas. if some americans can't distinguish between the geographical country of india and indians in america, that's their problem.

as for turban and sari, go to any mall in the u.s. and you will see some indian families shopping, some wearing turbans and others sarees or salwars. i also see african women in traditional wear and women in burkhas. to the ignorant, it doesn't matter whether the above woman on the magazine cover is wearing more elaborate bharatanatyam-style or just a simpler salwar or sari with smaller bindi or nose-ring. turban, sari, salwar, nose ring, bharatnatyam-style - it's pretty much all the same to them. does this mean that those indians who choose to wear turbans or saris/bindis in america are doing their fellow abcds, fobs a huge disservice by perpetutating stereotypes? should they remove these visual differences to cater to the lowest common denominator? if the image above had been a Sikh wearing a turban, would it have been exotification just because some dumb casting directors wanted Kal Penn to wear one because that was what they thought all indians wore? one could argue that that image might have further reinforced their stereotype about turban-wearing indians and made it harder for future Kal Penns in america. should muslim women in america stop wearing the hijab (after all, some Muslims say it's not necessary) to stop people staring at them and making bigoted and stereotypical comments they probably wouldnt' make if they weren't wearing such an "exotic" headgear? or mabye they still would, no matter how they were dressed, just because of their skin color.

i asked my sister to show this cover to her american co-workers at the office, and not one of them thought indian women in call centers actually dress like this. they found it interesting and wanted to know the significance of the jewellery etc. a couple of guys said the woman was beautiful, but they would have said that even if she was wearing a simple salwar or sari or jeans and a t-shirt. i doubt any of their already formed opinions/no opinions on india were drastically changed because of the cover itself. the articles themselves will probably have a greater chance of doing that.

speaking of football fans, in addition to the featured brazilian fan on this site, i saw several brazilians dressed like native indians from the rainforest, feathers and loincloths and all, several korean women in hanboks, some africans in tribal dress etc. that's probably not how the average "modern" soccer fan dresses in their respective countries when going to matches, but obviously there's something about the world cup that brings out this need for symbolism. are these fans doing their national origin counterparts in america a huge disservice by perpetuating "exotic" stereotypes to the 'ignorant" americans watching the world cup?

"But this woman insisted her name was "Karen Smith". Very clearly desi voice, not a faux-American accent. Still, Karen Smith ..."

that happened to me with a guy. his accent kept slipping and he pretended he couldn't pronounce my name which really annoyed me. i was tempted to challenge him and say "cut it out" but then i thought that would compromise his job. it was very sad and i felt sorry for him being forced to "put on whiteface" in order to have to do his job. that, to me, is the worst form of reverse exotification and a form of slavery or colonial-like servitude.

I don't like the very idea of changing ones name while working at a call center. I've herad a lot of IBDs and ABDs criticize this practice...but at the same time, they too are "guiltly" of the same "offence". They know the correct pronunciation of their names..but instead use the "Americanized pronunciation" for everyday conversation.

@cad, #174

come on cad, not a nice thing to do to "out" him forcibly. obviously the guy wants to keep his job, no matter how exploited you think he is. and mentioning him to citibank counts as a failure on his behalf, whatever your intentions are.

he has for sure encountered americans who have bad mouthed him, and he probably has the impression (maybe wrongly) that half of the US congress is out to get him. you are hurt on his behalf that he is forced to put up an artificial persona---but the reason he is doing it is because you are outnumbered by people who would not want to deal with a rashid or rishi. that unfortunately is reality.

now i know why a few obvious desi callers refuse to pronounce my name. :) thankfully a majority do pronounce it properly---saves me so much hassle. to spell out my name, i have over the years made up a "city" expansion for the letters, an "animal expansion",
the navy expansion, a "states of US" expansion... thanks to the conflict between indian language pronounciations of p,b,t,d and the anglo-pronounciation of those letters.

brown_fob:

They know the correct pronunciation of their names..but instead use the "Americanized pronunciation" for everyday conversation.

Look- when I've pronounced my name-- a very Desi-esque name-- the correct way, I get Amreekans looking at me with "Come again?" or "Excuse me?" If I pronounce it the Amreekan way, they get it in a couple of tries. Same thing for my pops and moms.

bytewords:

come on cad, not a nice thing to do to "out" him forcibly. obviously the guy wants to keep his job, no matter how exploited you think he is. and mentioning him to citibank counts as a failure on his behalf, whatever your intentions are.

I know, it occured to me about a day later when I was reflecting on this phone call, and I felt very bad. So I am guilty as charged.

CAD:

If I pronounce it the Amreekan way, they get it in a couple of tries. Same thing for my pops and moms.

The main reason why call-center workers use pseudonym is to make it easier for their customers. You're doing the same thing..but in a different context.

Since many of us take the trouble to pronounce English and French and whatnot words correctly (or so we hope), I don't see why other people can't at least try to extend the courtesy to us. Try, is all I ask, and sure, if you still end up saying my name with a slightly (but only slightly) American accent, I'm okay with that. My southindian/bengali name gets butchered in other parts of India too, after all :).

What I will not do is change how I pronounce my beautiful Indian names just to make it easier for other people. I'm uncomfortable with the hierarchy of languages and cultures something like this sets up -- why all the effort to say French words correctly...are Indian words not even worth a tiny try? Granted English has more European origins, but still...

Besides Sanskrit belongs to the Indo Aryan group of languages, doesn't it.

My pronounciation pet peeve: Boo-dist and Boo-dists. Yech.

Not to forget that other spine crawley favourite :): Gandi

Not trying to set off a 'how stupid Amreekans mispronounce things' bash...

That's true. But at the same time, don't you think its important to let them know your "real name" (as it was supposed to be) ? Why do you want to mess with something that's an essential part of your identity...just because someone can't roll his/her tongue to pronounce it correctly. The main reason why call-center workers use pseudonym is to make it easier for their customers. You're doing the same thing..but in a different context.blockquote>

Oh please, give me a break. You're making too much of this. It's not like I replace my name with "Sally", "LaVerne", or "Shirley". I keep my name, just that I pronounce it with an Amreekan accent because people really don't get it when I pronounce it the Desi way. They have a hard time remembering it the "Amreekan" way, let alone the Desi way. Trust me on this, ok? I've tried this many times.

As far as my "essential identity" goes, I grew up around a majority of non-Desi folks all my life and I'm used to having my name butchered from day one. My "essential identity" hasn't been affected by this, however. Just because people of certain linguistic backgrounds cannot pronounce my name the Desi way and I make it easier for them by pronoucing it in the given accent doesn't mean it somehow destroys my "essential identity". My "essential identity" has been strongly in tact, thank you very much.

why all the effort to say French words correctly...are Indian words not even worth a tiny try? Granted English has more European origins, but still...

Like what French words? There are plenty of foreign words in the English language that we butcher all the time.

To not veer off the thread anymore, back to the original topic: that girl on the cover reminds me of a peacock. I don't think it's entirely accidental...

Not to forget that other spine crawley favourite :): Gandi

Meghna- Myagna
Santosh- Syantush
Mohammad- Mohyam-mad
Anil- Anal (Sorry about this one but its true)

Sorry for above post, didn't hit preview. My bad.
Fink:

My pronounciation pet peeve: Boo-dist and Boo-dists. Yech. Not to forget that other spine crawley favourite :): Gandi Not trying to set off a 'how stupid Amreekans mispronounce things' bash...

Not to sound mean, but it does sound like you are bashing "stupid Amreekans". How can you denounce and criticize people of certain linguistic backgrounds who cannot pronounce certain words and sounds in other languages? I speak 3 different languages, and if everytime someone put me down because I was unable to pronounce sounds and letters that did not exist in any of my mother tongues, that would be very mean.

There are sounds in both the Hindi and Gujarati alphabets that do not exist in English. How can you expect that someone would be able to pronounce the way a native speaker can?

Ok, I am closing this topic. No more comments on this subject from me.

CAD,

"How can you denounce and criticize people of certain linguistic backgrounds who cannot pronounce certain words and sounds in other languages"

I would hardly call what I wrote denouncing and criticizing :)! I specified that it was enough for me if someone tried to pronounce a word of another language 'properly.' Of course I'm aware that (a) speakers of one language often simply cannot either distinguish between sounds of another OR pronouce them (I've had East Asian friends giggle at my attempts to say words in Japanese/Chinese) and (b) how something is pronounced is often debatable.

Like what French words? There are plenty of foreign words in the English language that we butcher all the time

Come on. In educated 'chic' circles there is at least an ATTEMPT to pronounce French words and expressions properly -- fois gras, fleur de lis ...you name it! It is seen as uneducated and crude to misprounce these and I see people take a lot of trouble over saying them right. I would love to see that courtesy extended to desi words too. Its not that difficult to say "Gandhi" or at least TRY the "dh" sound.

Ok, I am closing this topic. No more comments on this subject from me.

LET us twain walk aside from the rest;

Come! vouchsafe to me what has yet been vouchsafed to none?Tell me the whole story.

CAD:

My "essential identity" has been strongly in tact, thank you very much.

Fink - I am with you on the french thing.
You'll never find French people mispronouncing their names..just to make it easy for someone else.
They will never call "Jacques Chirac" a "Jackes Chiraak". Infact this is considered a No-No in the elite society....a faux-pas (fox-pas!).

CAD:

There are plenty of foreign words in the English language that we butcher all the time.

Yup..plenty. But this does not mean that foreigners should resort to our way of pronouncing those words.

#174 - Cheap Ass Desi:
Call centre calls are monitored and some are probably checked by the chap's superiors. It is likely that the call centre employees are not allowed to divulge their real names. Anyway, why harrass the poor guy?

My first name is 'Aparna'. If I start pronouncing my name the way it should be pronounced (which I can do, but with an ABD accent), I'll be stuck with being called 'Awporna' by my well-meaning compatriots. Which sounds rotten. I'd rather my name be rendered as 'Aparna' than have it be torturously drawled and twanged into something as hideous as 'Awporna'.

Vikatakavi:

Call centre calls are monitored and some are probably checked by the chap's superiors. It is likely that the call centre employees are not allowed to divulge their real names. Anyway, why harrass the poor guy?

it occured to me about a day later when I was reflecting on this phone call, and I felt very bad. So I am guilty as charged.

Just to clarify, I didn't do it so as to "harass" "Richard", though: I really was in a pissed off and incensed mood to write a piece on Citibank and call centers. Of course I wasn't going to use his real name had he given it to me--I just wanted to know out of curiosity. But yeah-- I must have put him in an awkward position.
Wish he would call me now, though. That way I can apologize to him. But it won't happen; he took me off the list and so I won't ever hear from him again....

Aparna (aka DQ) - How do you pronounce your name when you meet a person for the first time ? I can very well understand that it is difficult for people to pronounce your name...but my point is that one should at least make an attempt to tell his/her "real name".

I'll be a bit angry if I learn 2 years down the line that I was using an incorrect pronunciation of a friend's name...and he/she made no attempt to tell me the real pronunciation.

Newsflash my ABCD friends...there are plenty of Indians with western sounding names .... Goans/Mangalorean Catholics, kerala christians ,anglo indians ,and other Christian communities like Nagas, Khasis commonly use Biblical or just generic western names....its not a big deal..

Some Indian americans (mainly ABCDs..not so much FOBS) have asked me...what's your REAL name ..my name is really (insert name of Saint here) (portuguese surname)..and YES I am Indian..Russel peters had a joke about this..that many Indians would not believe that his name really was Russel peters !

so those call center brothers/sisters may have been telling the truth! he really may have been richard and i know plenty of karens too back in my hood... :)

he took me off the list and so I won't ever hear from him again....

and dearest cheapa, you will never know what might have been..

If you're really irritated, here's who's responsible for the cover: "PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY ARTHUR HOCHSTEIN. WOMAN BY HILL STREET STUDIOS-GETTY IMAGES BLEND COLLECTION. BACKGROUND: SUNBURST FROM PIXTAL; TAPESTRY FROM ISTOCKPHOTO"

Here's an excerpt from an article about Hochstein (art director for Time) about designing the covers:

One of the more difficult aspects of Hochstein's job is finding the right way to convey the central message of a given week's cover story. His choices are limitless: He may want an illustration, a photograph, or a composite image doctored in any number of ways. But the objective is always communication. "The idea is what's important, not the image," he comments. "My job is often to pare away the details until we get to the heart of a story. That has to be conveyed simply and directly." Not necessarily plainly, though. "We live in a visually sophisticated world," he says. "Readers don't want to get some gray thing that they feel they have to plod through."

And here's our princess at Hill Street Studios from a different angle (click on the bindhi at the bottom right). It's a stock photo, which is probably why it looks like a stock photo.

And finally, here's a selection of hundreds of photographs from Getty Images on the search "India" that Time could have used instead. Personally, I think they should have used this one.

since we are on mispronounciations, did iraq's pronounciation as eye-raq happen because imac, ibook and ipod came first?

maybe if the iraq war started earlier, it would be iraq still.

when the US fights iran, every newsreader will be running for no apparent reason. maybe they wont say eye-ran but mess it up in a new way.

maybe if the iraq war started earlier, it would be iraq still.

all through vietnam war, pentagon generals and wonks never pronounced vietnam correctly in their press briefings. that was 1st sign that they knew nothing about the country.

I'd feel really odd if I started pronouncing my name in the true Bengali way now - it would be affected. This is simply because I have pronounced, and heard my name pronounced, in the North American way for decades, and only rarely in the Bengali way. I love my name and have been told, over and over, by people here, how beautiful it is - so this isn't an issue of trying to conform to the dominant culture. My name is its North American version now. Why? Because I'm North American. This is a beautiful thing, not a sad one.

The fact is that ABDs are in the process of creating new cultural norms, customs, habits, pronunciations, just like any migrant ethnic group. FOBs/Indians may not understand this, and tend to pull in one direction while the dominant culture pulls in another. ABDs are caught in between. You see this tension over and over on this site, with FOBs accusing ABDs of various things and vice versa. But the tensions are fruitless. Culture in a human being is organic, changeful, limitless. I have started answering those in India who are upset that my Bengali is not great with the following response: 'I might not speak good Bengali, but my French is excellent'. What does it matter, whether a human being drinks at this well or at that one? Those kinds of differentiations are petty, self-serving, and ultimately jingoistic.

Let us go our own way. If we are not exactly the way you are, it isn't because we don't love our Indian roots. It is because those roots are mingling and fusing with our North American ones. And one day a drawled out, twangy 'Aparna' or 'Maya' or 'Seema' will be as common here, perhaps, as a drawled out, twangy 'Julio' or 'Enrique' are now.

Great post Aparna. You've put it beautifully.

I second that DQ. Thanks.

DQ: Me too, I think you put it very eloquently.

Here are my thoughts on the politics of misprounciation:

In educated 'chic' circles there is at least an ATTEMPT to pronounce French words and expressions properly -- fois gras, fleur de lis ...you name it! It is seen as uneducated and crude to misprounce these and I see people take a lot of trouble over saying them right. I would love to see that courtesy extended to desi words too. Its not that difficult to say "Gandhi" or at least TRY the "dh" sound.

Fink - I am with you on the french thing. You'll never find French people mispronouncing their names..just to make it easy for someone else.

Ok, let's assume that this is true, even if I disagree. I'm in "educated chic" circles and non " ", and I haven't seen this attempt; maybe I don't hang out in the right circles, but whatever. Anyway, so they try to pronounce French words the correct way. But let me ask you this: when France decided not to back US' invasion in Iraq, did these same people think in the back of their minds, "Oh, I try hard to pronounce French words, and I think it's worth listening to the critique of the French why they think this war is unjust?" Or, do they attempt to get to know French society, French speaking countries, the entailing social practices?

Or take Spanish names and words spoken and written in California, where I'm from: "Santa Ana" (Santana), "Santa Rosa" (Saanta Roza), "Santa Barbara" (Saanta Baarb-aara), "burritos" (boorritos), etc. There are lots of white folks who take Spanish in high school, and they too attempt to pronounce things the Spanish way. Now, are the same people seeking to understand the predicament of Latin Americans in Cali? Are they seeking to understand the impact of immigration laws on Latin Americans? Are they conscious or do they respect the history of Latin Americans in California antedating the arrival of the Anglo settlers?

Take our own Desi pronounciation debacle here. If I spend about 15 minutes, persistently insisting the stranger whom I've met for the first time in my life that my name is correctly pronounced this way, are they going to understand American Desis, American Desi social practicies, and our experiences, histories, and lives?

My point is, what do you think that are going to be the grander,more significant, and deeper implications that are going to open up by the gesture of someone who's striving to pronounce your name or linguistic words correctly? Mind you, I am NOT saying that we should replace our names with Anglo names. I ain't no "Candance", I'm Cheap Ass Desi. But I think you are harping on a minor, superficial point. Letting people whom you've met more than once how your name is pronounced is one thing; it is another when you are introduced to someone for the first time, or are providing your name for data, bureacratic, technical reasons. There are people who pronounce things correctly and still are ignorant of the society, people, and land that they are talking about. Then there are those who may not pronounce things accurately, but would like to enrichen their knowledge about others or have a sensitive understanding. I've heard lots of comical bloopers when it comes to misprounciation, but I appreciate the person's ideas.

Back to original topic: I'm going to write a letter to the editor and ask him why he did not place a hot Desi male call center worker. And then I'm going to sue Time magazine for racism.

CAD:

Have you given any more thought to starting your own blog? Anyone who begins an extensive comment with "Here are my thoughts on the politics of misprounciation (sic)" is ready to write an actual post. ;)

'I might not speak good Bengali, but my French is excellent'. What does it matter, whether a human being drinks at this well or at that one?

Dharma Queen: One (Bangla) is your mothertongue (or ancestral mothertongue if that's how you want to view it) and one (francais) is not. In my view, they are not equivalent. I don't usually blame 2nd genners for not being fluent in their mothertongue since that's usually the parents fault (I'm a 2nd gen too and I worked hard to regain my fluency as an adult), but I would hope they realize their mothertongue is an important aspect of their cultural heritage, and no other language (French, Spanish, Swahili) can ever replace it. No other language can have the same intimate relationship to you as Bangla does.

Maybe I shouldn't say it's the parents fault; let's say it's due to circumstances.

Dharma Queen: One (Bangla) is your mothertongue (or ancestral mothertongue if that's how you want to view it) and one (francais) is not. In my view, they are not equivalent. I don't usually blame 2nd genners for not being fluent in their mothertongue since that's usually the parents fault (I'm a 2nd gen too and I worked hard to regain my fluency as an adult), but I would hope they realize their mothertongue is an important aspect of their cultural heritage, and no other language (French, Spanish, Swahili) can ever replace it. No other language can have the same intimate relationship to you as Bangla does

Maybe English is the language that most americans have an "intimate relationship" with...

Why does India become an emerging superpower only when the west thinks so?
Why does Bollywood become cool only when the west takes notice.
Are we what the westerners want us to be.
Do we want to be known as the land of the Booda and Gaendi?

Bottom line: Your name will be mispronounced if you allow it to be.

Letter to the editor, I am writing to you to express my dissatisfaction with the recent cover on Time magazine. I feel the picture of a pretty Indian Girl accessorized to the hilt, wearing a headset is not appropriate. I feel that due to the large population of people who are unfamiliar with India, view India as a foreign land, and may have ideas about race and people from other countries that are not up to speed, may make some association between "cost effective" outsourcing and Indian women. I have relatives that I love dearly in India, and I would not ever want someone, with ideas of race that are not up to speed, making the association between my cousin and "cost effectiveness". Rather , as a symbol for the "new Indian" why not regale the recent Time cover with the gateway to an IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), or if that does not work - put a headset on the taj mahal. But please do not let people who may be lacking in worldliness to make any inappropriate assocaiations. Would a time cover ever picture an Iraeli woman in an army uniform, if Time did a piece on Israel? I for some reason do not ever see that happening.

Sincerely,
Pankaj Davessar

Is this in response to my offer to hand-deliver hate mail to the editors at Time? Because, uh, that was a joke... not the $5 flaming bags of dog poo, though... that was for real.

Is this in response to my offer to hand-deliver hate mail to the editors at Time? Because, uh, that was a joke... not the $5 flaming bags of dog poo, though... that was for real.

Do I need to provide the poo, or is that included in the cost?

Topcatt;

Why does India become an emerging superpower only when the west thinks so?
-er, there's a certain level of objectivity to earnings and growth. If angola declared itself an emerging superpower, it wouldn't make it one.

Why does Bollywood become cool only when the west takes notice.
--I still don't think its cool. But what is cool is Indians not begging to be part of hollywood, but rather creating their own (larger) industry.

Are we what the westerners want us to be.
--No, I sure a few a even scared of us (like the US democatic party in regards to outsourcing). But we certainly were what they wanted us to be back in the days of socialism. Oh, how the western intellectual elite loved us then.

Do we want to be known as the land of the Booda and Gaendi?
--why don't we just settle on land of Manju.

Bottom line: Your name will be mispronounced if you allow it to be
--Agreed. Now that's real empowermant.

The text books in English schools even in India refer to River Ganga as Ganges (pronounced Gyanjes)

Do we want to be known as the land of the Booda and Gaendi?

"Maybe English is the language that most americans have an "intimate relationship" with..."

I was born and raised in the US. I am a proud American. I speak English FAR better than anything else. For a large portion of my childhood it was probably the only language I could really speak. I will NEVER consider it my mothertongue.

Do we want to be known as the land of the Booda and Gaendi? funniest comment ever by monseiur T. Catt.

BTW the credit goes to Fink Nottle

I am willing to accept my unpopular ethnic name being mispronounced but not the popular ones like Gandhi, Buddha. Why is the mispronounciation of a westerner acceptable whereas an FOB mispronouncing an english word becomes a joke even for Indians.

Topcat:

Why is the mispronunciation of a westerner acceptable whereas an FOB mispronouncing an english word becomes a joke even for Indians.

As long as the joke is in good spirit, nobody gets offended.
Mostly all FOBs had "English medium" instruction in schools. We had our fair share of Shakespeare, Tennyson and Shaw in high school.... we can't use our desi background as an excuse for mispronouncing English words.
If the "joke" is malicious, then its best to avoid those people.

whereas an FOB mispronouncing an english word becomes a joke even for Indians.

its the cadence, intonation and (lack of grace) that makes it funny from a FOB, who possess (quite often comical) cultural idiosynchracies in the same vein that mullets, white trash, gang bangers, Flava-Flave's, nerds, herbs, queers, pricks, sissies, queens, primadonnas, brats, bitches, whackos, crooks, thieves, jocks, gym rats, clubbers, screwballs, geeks, dweebs, sluts, pretty boys, marys, juicers, scumbags, prisses, ice queens, hotties and ho's do.

in fact, if you can't personally identify yourself with at least three of the above types, then, quite frankly, you bore me to tears. i know i'm at least a half-dozen of some sometimes and perhaps a few of the others othertimes.

DD maybe she doesn't LOOK like cica, maybe she IS. Have you seen this girl in the same room as cica? No? Well then.

Q.E.D.

in the same vein that mullets, white trash, gang bangers, Flava-Flave's, nerds, herbs, queers, pricks, sissies, queens, primadonnas, brats, bitches, whackos, crooks, thieves, jocks, gym rats, clubbers, screwballs, geeks, dweebs, sluts, pretty boys, marys, juicers, scumbags, prisses, ice queens, hotties and ho's do.

in fact, if you can't personally identify yourself with at least three of the above types, then, quite frankly, you bore me to tears.

I got TEN, bitches. Bow down before my pwnage. ;)

Paraphrased.

Elder sitting on a rope charpai: Puth, tera naam kee haiga? (Son, what's your name?)

Puth sitting on a mooda : - drawls - Luke Gyay.

Elder: hainn! kee? Lookay? (huh! WTF, Lookay?)

Puth: - a little flustered - Luke Gyaaay!

Elder, to the old fart on the other side of the charpai: -mutter- Hain...? ai kee bol reya hai? (this kid's talking weird shit man)

- back and forth ensues, until old fart gets it-

Old fart: GHAI!! Oh ho ho!! Thu MaghiRam Ghai da Pota, Lutchu haiga !!! (You are Maghi Ram Ghai's Grandkid, Latchoo!!! HaHaHa)

Puth: that's what I said.

- hilarity ensues until Puth's relatives come by to rescue him -

To Hairy_d # 218:

That was some funny shit man!!

Nice one hairy_d...hilarious.

Jai - waiting for your post :)

Just realised I got carried away and unwittingly said I was 'born and raised' in the US...was actually born in India, lived there for 1 year, then lived in Nigeria for 2 years, before moving to America at the ripe old age of 3. Should have just said I was raised in America. My point still stands though.

I just noticed the following Google ad on the website of an Indian weekly newsmagazine:

"Start-up restart time? - Outsourced execs get top results without big egos or politics. marketplan.us"

Perhaps Time will one day feature a cover with some earnest bush-shirt wearing mustachioed Average Jagdish exec, tiffin in hand, alongside a miserable-looking out of work firangi exec hitting the bottle.

its the cadence, intonation and (lack of grace) that makes it funny from a FOB, who possess (quite often comical) cultural idiosynchracies in the same vein that mullets, white trash, gang bangers, Flava-Flave's, nerds, herbs, queers, pricks, sissies, queens, primadonnas, brats, bitches, whackos, crooks, thieves, jocks, gym rats, clubbers, screwballs, geeks, dweebs, sluts, pretty boys, marys, juicers, scumbags, prisses, ice queens, hotties and ho's do.

I have this uncanny ability to tell a person's gender, age and lifestyle by reading some posts especially the ones like #215
I am guessing AC is a 40 year young auntiji who has gotten one of her daughters/sisters married to a white guy. Is that right AC? Its just a guess.

I have this uncanny ability to tell a person's gender, age and lifestyle by reading some posts

I wouldn't quit the dayjob yet TopCat, it ain't all that uncanny when you look at AC's latest post or their blog.

"Bombay. .. formally known as Mumbai"

Time magazine needs a new copyrighter.

perhaps a new copy editor as well...

all through vietnam war, pentagon generals and wonks never pronounced vietnam correctly in their press briefings. that was 1st sign that they knew nothing about the country.

I think its a little more than lack of knowledge. They were just being disrespectful and contemptuous towards a country and people, that they thought very little of. Same thing is going on with Ahmedejizad's name. The right wingers always mangle it. Stephen Colbert did a great "peice" on it. He purposely screwed up the pronounciation of Ahmedenizad and inserted a different words into it. It was preety hillarious.

Amitabh,

Your point stands for you. Bengali's my mothertongue, but I don't have a more intimate relationship to it than French. I was born and raised in Canada, and started learning French at age five. French conversation is just as interwoven into the fabric of my early memories as is Bengali.

Besides which, if your logic stands, the only person I am doing a disservice to by not speaking good Bengali is myself. I'm not hurting the Bengali language. So why all the self-righteousness, the tendency to 'blame the parents', as though you're talking of a species of delinquency?

At the root of that feeling is an 'us' versus 'them' mentality, the drive for self-preservation in a people, a loyalty to fences and borders and divisions. My favourite kind of people are the sort - and you find them in every culture, though they're rare - that are capable of deeply and passionately immersing themselves in a culture that is entirely foreign to them. The root of such passion is a more pure, selfless love.

Finally read the issue of Time. The best article was by Mira Nair. She gets India better than paid journalists. If only she would drop her nasty habit of peppering the dialogues in her Fellini-like movies with four letter words. You don't need it, Mira.

Dharma Queen:

I realize I'm a bit extreme in my views when it comes to these things (language issues). And why not? When most 2nd genners don't care about it at all, at least one or two of us here or there should feel passionately about it? Hopefully brings a little balance to the situation. And I did take back my 'blame the parents' bit in the very next comment.

You not speaking Bengali is not really doing a disservice to yourself or to the language; I guess my problem is that at a certain point in my life, something 'clicked' in my head and I started really appreciating my mothertongue. And I guess in a naive way I expect others to feel the same way. My biggest pet-peeve is not really 2nd genners who don't speak their language, it's Indian parents in India who deliberately speak English to their kids and ignore their own language.

I want to address your last point, about your favorite kind of people (those who immerse themselves in entirely foreign cultures). I would add to that: while never forgetting who they are.

At the end of the day, this boils down to each person's individual opinion. There is a Punjabi verse that I find very beautiful.

Jind Mahi je chaliyon pardes
Kade na bhuli apna des
Apni boli te apna bhes

Which means:

My beloved if you ever go to foreign lands
Never forget your country
Your language or your apparel

I am disgusted at people like Ms.CAD who so condescendingly express concern at 'globalisation' and 'exploitation of Indian call center workers'....Yeah right !! 20-22 year olds in India, most of them no hopers from liberal arts colleges, making 25-30,000 rupees per month is 'exploitation'. You know who hates you most for so kindly pointing out the 'exploitation of call center workers' ? The call center workers themselves.

So what if they call themselves 'Richard' or 'Susan' - whatever is takes to get the job done has to be done. All that matters is the pay packet they get at the beginning of each month.As we say in India, 'what goes of you' ?

Needless to say, the Time cover was silly. Why is the lady dressed like a traditional blushing bride ?

Saurav -- nice sleuthin.

That is a beautiful verse, Amitabh. I can't truly relate, though, because (and I think a lot of ABDs feel this) all lands feel foreign to me.

Being a Bengali, I will resort to a folk song to express myself:

Aami ek jajabar
Bhulechhi nijer ghar...

(I'm a gypsy,
I've forgotten my own land...)

Dharma Queen:

Touche. And that was a beautiful Bengali line too. Thanks for engaging.

I have to second Raj on #231. It's quite shocking how some desi's can't seem to take pleasure in obvious success. I guess failed ideologies die hard.

But you know, Raj, those call workers probably don't know what's good for them. Unlike us, they have no free will because they suffer from false conciouness; they're not aware how much they've internalized colonial racism. Furthermore, they don't know that globalization is just neo-colonialization, and they are aiding this racist hegemony especially by virtue of the fact that they are getting richer while the "wretched of the earth" stay poor. Obviously wealth creation creates more inequality and this is a very bad thing...for reasons that are not too clear.

I have to second Raj on #231. It's quite shocking how some desi's can't seem to take pleasure in obvious success. I guess failed ideologies die hard.

I don't know if it's because of a failed ideology. I think it's because of plain naivete of not knowing the economic conditions of India. It's better to educate than ridicule..

The "call center" workers work under conditions (assuming false names / accents ) that may not seem palatable to people who grew up in rich societies and have the privilege of choosing work based on interests. But you should keep in mind that the other choices of "call center" workers.. are either "no work" / as a private school teacher / clerical job in a private concern earning 2000 Rs p.m with worse working conditions..

Pankaj:
Repeating the same argument over and over again is not helping you position. You have a fair point that Israel is treated with a lot more respect in the American media.. That's because the people look white, and even more so because of the power of American jews both as a political bloc and in terms of controlling the media. In the future when more Indians are involved with media and government (within the next 15 years) you will see many of the same shifts. That doesn't mean things will improve for Indians in India, but ABDs will be able to fit their model minority status even better by manipulating their own images, instead of having others do it to them. Your point about your cousins is annoying and asinine, and I for one am tired of hearing it. The very idea that this girl has something to do with your cousins being "cost effecting" or cheapened is so stupid I can't logically refute it. There is nothing sexual in the picture; it is a pretty desi girl with a headset on. Perhaps it is slightly insulting that the call-center worker has been chosen as the emblem of India, but your connection to your beloved cousins is so abstract that I think you are the only person who could possible see it. You obviously have some major hang up concerning them and are looking to vent. Don't project your own demons; find something legitamate to criticize such as the continuous comparisons between India and Iran on the civilian nuclear deal People like you only make it harder for the rest of us with some national pride to argue our points rationally.

And before someone points them all out, I've noticed the spelling errors. I don't care, it's been a long day.

If the call-center worker is being exploited by being paid Rs. 20,000-25,000/month then the same is true for investment bankers (who work more than 14 hrs a days) or for that matter the night-shift doctor.
Most people working in call-centers are young college graduates who would get no other (better paying) job with their present credentials. They work for 2-3 yrs at a call-center and then move on to do MBAs/MS etc and get better jobs.
If you take the PPP (along with the exchange rate), then it turns out the the salary of a call-center worker is quite adequate..and comparable to a CC worker in US.

Robert:

"Bombay. .. formally known as Mumbai"

Time magazine needs a new copyrighter.

Don't confuse "formally" and "formerly".

nubamountain

The most noteworthy thing about this story is that it is soooo old and soooo tired, repeatedly resuscitated year after year and flogged for as much mileage as possible. India Inc/middle class boom/Infosys and Narayan Murthy/call center-outsourcing have now been cover stories for the past 6 years, following Friedman's stale rah rah-ing about India's technology boom.

200,000 fresh graduates were employed by the IT companies in India (both Indian and MNC) as prgrammers this year. Bet many of them hail from poor or lower middle class families. Many hundred thousand more were hired as call center workers. It is generally the poor or lower middle class that joins call centers.

-----

What is ludicrous to me is the stark silence on other HUGE trends in India -- the collapse of the rural sector (comprised of many day wage laborers and small scale farmers), massive increase in farmer suicides in states like maharashtra and andhra, a massive maoist insurgency in a large section of madhya pradesh/uttaranchal, sky rocketing urban poverty...the list goes on.

Your assertion about rising poverty, whether rural or urban, do not stand upto facts - because truth is incomes have tripled and quadrupled in India over the last decade or so. Apart from maybe Bihar and parts of Uttar Pradesh, whole of India has seen vast improvement in the quality of life. Earlier politicians used to promise free rice to the poor get elected. This time, the party that won the election in Tamil Nadu did so by promising free color television sets to the poor.

If you think things are bad in some parts of India, let me assure you things were 100 times worse no more than 10-15 years ago. These days I see illiterate construction workers in Bangalore carrying cell phones.

There are farmer suicides because of inability to pay back debts in rich states like Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, but none in poor states like Bihar and UP. Wonder why ? Because prosperity leads to higher expectations, which leads to rising debts...inability to pay the same leads to death. In Bihar - the siatuation is same as it was during the days of socialism, therefore no expectations, no debts, no suicides.

Further - I dont know how many farmers commited suicide in India last year, but I bet it is only a fraction of the number of suicides done by high school students or engineering students in the country after their respective board exams - because their results were not upto expectation.

-------

This is not to say that India's tech/servioce sector boom is not legitimate...but what is absurd is the bosom swelling manner in which we indians prattle nauseatingly about the great boom while remaining oblivious to the increasingly wretched conditions in the rural hinterland. The point is, if a boom only touches 200 mill people in a country of 1.2 while a good chunk of the rest are still living in nightmarish feudal systems, earning under 40 ruppees a day, you are going to see all sorts of grisly repurcussions - a large maoist insurgency only being the first among many.

It is good that the boom reaches 200 million people, if what you say is true. 200 million is quite a number. Almost equal to the US population. So if the said boom has reached such a big number, then I dont see any reason to complain about. The other 1000 million will be employed by this 200 million as maid servants and drivers and gardeners and baby sitters and some as sex slaves. So dont worry.

-----

it is also not in the interests of the Friedman's of this world to actually chronicle the larger issue of what is happening to large chunks of this outsourcing, back office service sector economy - high rates of depression, the lack of development of real skills other than being able to conduct phone conversations,high cycles of consumption and debt amongst youth...etc.

And yet, the median income of those with no real skills to speak of other than answering telephone calls is Rs 25,000 per month, which is many multiples of the national per capita income. No wonder they are so chronically depressed. Bet they are thankful to you for your concern as well.

-----

Sure, a developing economy will probably experience all of these ternds, but what is amazing is that no-one wants to hear about anything other than the glossy story of an India rising while large swaths of the country are sinking. Even the middle class in india, so completely engrossed in upwardly mobiling, don't want to hear about the wretched of the earth just a hundred or so kilometers away.

India Rising, India Sinking......India is Rising wherever and whenever there is a semblance of free market capitalisn. India is Sinking wherever and whenever lefistism and socialism is the order of the day. Leftist Maoist insurgency as we see in places like Bihar - for instance - is more a root cause of poverty rather than a product of poverty , as you make it out to be.

Most of the middle class people in India that you are so contemptuous of were hardly middle class only 10-15 years ago. They (or their parents) were themselves the 'wretched poor' not so long back. My dad was. But he studied hard, got himself a fairly decent education and then a job, and raised himself out of poverty.

The 'poor' do not need anybody's sympathy. They just need equal opportunity which was denied to them for so long because of decades of perverse socialism.

As Larry Kudlow (I love that guy) always says at the beginning of his program on CNBC, 'Free Market Capitalism is the best way to Prosperity'..........'India Sinking' can suddenly become 'India Shining' , all in a matter of few years. My dad is a living example.

-----

Also fascinating is the nexus between a reagan era conservative culture and relentless capitalism amongst many twenty and thirty something middle class friends of mine in India. Here in the U.S. it is no secret that conservative Hindutva ideology and big business (lots if it in the hi tech sector) are in happy communion with each other. Ashutosh Varshney, head of the South Asia program at the U of Michigan often tells a fasciinating story of how he was invited to uber-consultant and big biz guru C.K. Prahalad's house for dinner and had to sit through a long, viscious and almost rabid tirade by the great man against Muslims many years ago (before 911).

I am a big fan of Prof.Prahalad. Have attended a couple of his excellent lectures on business, finance and boring stuff like that (which he made fascinating).

So its good to know his views on anti-India Islamic fundamentalism and separatism are same as those of mine.A fairly large section of India's muslims have always been a huge threat to India, same as leftists. Post 9-11 , majority of the non-Islamic world probably agrees with what Prof. Prahalad said on the subject as well.

But the part about hindutwa and capitalism being natural allies is only party true, because aged octagenerian hindutwavaadis such as the RSS leadership live in a world of their own and have not grasped the significance of capitalism. Their economic outlook is not much different from leftists. It is actually the younger smarter hindutvawaadis who see capitalism as an opportunity for their country to prosper rather than as a threat. Fast economic growth is India's best weapon against leftist extremists and Islamic fundamentalists (and their brothers across the border).

It is also true that majority of India's IT professionals, engineers are hardcore BJP supporters, as well as big on capitalism.

Why is that do you think ? They are mostly upstarts, hailing from humble middle class or lower middle class families. Most studied in kannada medium or marathi medium schools. So they are unaffected by the pseudo-secular virus that Convent educated elite are afflicted with - you know , sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism, leftist inclinations , contempt for hindu culture etc., which is considered to be 'suave' and 'sophisticated' in those circles.......

Middle class India was always passionately hindu at heart. But their voice was not heard and their potential untapped because of decades of Nehruvian socialism during which only the convent educated elite and their kids prospered. Now suddenly, things have changed. With IT/YT and all that, the kids of ghaatis and madrasis have become rich and their voice more voluble.

They may have become rich, understand that capitalism is the best way to prosperity, both for themselves and their country, and yet are passionate about their religion and their culture.

Brown_Fob,

Nice one hairy_d...hilarious.

Jai - waiting for your post :)

Jai's father on a good day:

Call Centre worker: Hello, can I speak to Dr X ? (Hah, another Britisher I can swindle)
Dr X (Jai's father): Er, speaking. How can I help you ? (This person has an Indian accent but I don't know her)
Call Centre worker: Hello Dr X. My name is Susan. I'm calling from XYZ Telecom and we'd like to discuss our excellent deal so that you can consider changing to our network (Sh*t, Dr X sounds very authoritative. Maybe I should be calling him "Uncle" too).
Dr X: Where are you calling from ?
Call Centre worker: I beg your pardon, sir ?
Dr X: Are you calling from India ?
Call Centre worker: Er, yes I am. Would you like to hear about our excellent deal options ?
Dr X: Where in India are you calling from ?
Call Centre worker: I'm calling from Bangalore, sir.
Dr X: Ahhhhhh, I thought so. I've been to Bangalore. Very modern city, beautiful weather. Bangalore is advancing very fast.
Call Center worker: Yes it is, sir. We have a large office here.
Dr X: Bangalore is becoming very famous for its call centres and IT. You are doing an excellent job and your English is also superb. Very good. Keep it up.
Call Centre worker: Oh, thank you sir. I am doing my best. (How nice to be talking to an Indian customer for a change. He seems like a nice friendly Uncle).
Dr X: We're all very proud of you. Thank you very much for calling.
Call Centre worker: No problem sir, it's been nice talking to you. Please visit Bangalore again sometime soon.
Dr X: Oh, we definitely will. Goodbye. (Wonderful to be called by someone in India.)
Call Centre worker: Goodbye. (Pauses, and realises that Dr Uncle had successfully manouvred the conversation away from the new telephone contract offer. Damn.....)

Jai's father on a bad day:

Call Centre worker: Hello, can I speak to Dr X ? (Hah, another Britisher I can swindle)
Dr X: Speaking (Who the hell is this ?)
Call Centre worker: Hello Dr X. My name is Robert. I'm calling from XYZ Telecom and we'd like to discuss our excellent deal so that you can consider changing to our network (Sh*t, Dr X sounds a bit angry. This is going to be a tough one).
Dr X: Where are you calling from ?
Call Centre worker: I beg your pardon, sir ?
Dr X: Are you calling from India ?
Call Centre worker: Er, yes I am. Would you like to hear about our excellent deal options ?
Dr X: How did you get this number?
Call Centre worker: I'm sorry, sir ? (This isn't going well).
Dr X (now speaking very loudly) : Our telephone number is not publicly listed. How did you get this number ???
Call Centre worker: *Click* (Hangs up)
Dr X (Grumbling): &^*!^&*$ badmaash *^%&&*&*^.......(Calls to Jai's mother) Another Indian call-centre worker just called us. How do these people get our phone number ? (Muttering) Haraami *&(*^(^&^^.......

I am disgusted at people like Ms.CAD who so condescendingly express concern at 'globalisation' and 'exploitation of Indian call center workers'....Yeah right !! 20-22 year olds in India, most of them no hopers from liberal arts colleges, making 25-30,000 rupees per month is 'exploitation'. You know who hates you most for so kindly pointing out the 'exploitation of call center workers' ? The call center workers themselves.

So what if they call themselves 'Richard' or 'Susan' - whatever is takes to get the job done has to be done. All that matters is the pay packet they get at the beginning of each month.As we say in India, 'what goes of you' ?

what may come across as condescension is concern. the problems are much deeper rooted - like why are people who study liberal arts looked at as 'no hopers' in india?

and people calling themselves Richard/Susan/Barbie/Ken in a country which has only been independent from colonists for 60 years is a big deal. Heck, I have a whitey name which I was born with and that can be confusing.

I have a cousin who worked for a medical research company for a call centre job for a while, I know that it's good money but it's also not a career at all and he personally found it to be very demoralising and is now doing something he loves. jobs with good money also need to be put into a wider context of how beneficial/detrimental they are to people in other ways, and i'm not saying this as a 'middle class someone who lives in a white country', i'm saying it as a fellow human being. what is it with indian people who visit this site and bash others for not understanding our culture...wtf else are people on this site trying to do?

Amitabh,

This one might interest/infuriate you. (It sure did infuriate me).
English keeps topper away from leading school. A very smart girl was denied admission to a Delhi school due to her poor spoken English school. Somewhere McCaulay is laughing !!!!

Tashie....bet the average call center worker is a lot smarter and more enterprising than you can ever be. Save your unsolicited 'concern' for yourself.

Raj, it was excruciating enough that you wrote that egregiously long comment--that's like dominating a conversation for 90 minutes when others would like to speak-- totally bad form. But now you're insulting others and acting rather douche-like? Strike two, sir...one more and you're out.

due to her poor spoken English school

That should be "due to her poor spoken English skills" .... Looks like I may need help with my written English skills :-)

Do we want to be known as the land of the Booda and Gaendi? funniest comment ever by monseiur T. Catt.

BTW the credit goes to Fink Nottle

I am willing to accept my unpopular ethnic name being mispronounced but not the popular ones like Gandhi, Buddha

Thanks, Topcat :). I totally agree: even if my loooong southie name gets mispronounced, oh well, but big names like Gandhi and Buddha...come on! At the very least, those of us who know better should not participate in this wrong-pronounciation. We keep talking about changing attitudes to people of desi origin on this blog: SO, if enough of us just plain SAY "GanDHI" and "BuDDHa" maybe, just maybe other people will say it that way too over time. I know the "DH" is difficult for westerners to say...but even "Gaan-thee" (Gaan-di with a soft d as in "thee" and "thou") is SO do-able by western tongues.

Dharma Queen

My name is its North American version now. Why? Because I'm North American.

At the risk of repeating my point :). If "Gandhi" and "Buddhism" were French (or any other culturally 'hip' language) I'd bet good money that people would be trying REALLY hard to say those words the 'right' way, correcting each other etc...

I've heard debates on how to pronounce Sartre, Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir correctly...

AK: Thanks! :)

Manju:

Obviously wealth creation creates more inequality and this is a very bad thing...for reasons that are not too clear.

Let me lay it out for you:

wealth inequality = power inequality.
power inequality = differential impact of policies, favoring those who have power and disfavoring those who don't.
differential impact of policies = people displaced from their homes in order to build shopping malls and dams, not able to meet basic needs, famines, impetus for the development of an underclass, etc.

Raj:

I am disgusted at people like Ms.CAD who so condescendingly express concern at 'globalisation' and 'exploitation of Indian call center workers'....Yeah right !! 20-22 year olds in India, most of them no hopers from liberal arts colleges, making 25-30,000 rupees per month is 'exploitation'. You know who hates you most for so kindly pointing out the 'exploitation of call center workers' ? The call center workers themselves.

I've only met one call-center worker in my life--an MSM in Delhi. His work was helpful for him economically, but, as far as I remember, fairly demoralizing. More to the point, he was more of a fashion designer/playwright I think. So why should this person, who was by accident of birth born in India, be forced to work at a call center catering to irate customers in countries like the U.S., being forced to use a fake name to placate the rich countries' customer service needs, and being given in the end a tiny share of the overall profits of the company that ultimately makes the most money off of his/her work, when someone with a similar life position and social status in a rich country like the U.S. or the U.K. could actually devote more time and energy to pursuing what they want and getting paid a better wage for what they have to do to survive?

That's hardly an easy question.

Also, while I don't doubt there might be a diversity of opinions among workers, I would love to hear a source for this before I take it at face value:

You know who hates you most for so kindly pointing out the 'exploitation of call center workers' ? The call center workers themselves.

To all self-professed free-marketeers: This ideally would not be about rehashing old and tired arguments against socialism but about confronting a real dilemma--the need for more resources but at the same time the simultaneous social and economic problems that many of the policies claiming to generate more resources create.
Personally, I think it's foolhardy to ignore the vast global disparity in wealth when considering this problem.

More to the point, yes, there are plenty of people much worse off than the call center worker (e.g. garment workers in Bangladesh or construction workers in the UAE or rural farmers in India) who are subjected to the same forces and probably greater exploitation and abuse. If you're going to be glib, choose some other subject. On the other hand, if any of you want to have a real conversation about globalization, economics, and social disparities, then, as they say, bring it.

oops! sorry for the long comment--i should have broken it up.

-s

You're right Finkie.

How do you guys pronounce
- Iraq - "I-rack" or "ee-raak"
- Iran - "eye-ran" or "ee-raan"

Its very easy for desis (and non-desis too) to pronounce it correctly...but very few do.

the need for more resources but at the same time the simultaneous social and economic problems that many of the policies claiming to generate more resources create.

Saurav - the Free Marketeers do that though. Their argument is that the best way to change the level of development and to address these social problems is via private sector jobs. See Will Easterly's latest book book for more arguments along these lines.

Tashie:

I believe your concerns are genuine, but it still seems your looking at India from a highly privledged position. Examples:

1.

why are people who study liberal arts looked at as 'no hopers' in india?

2.

and people calling themselves Richard/Susan/Barbie/Ken in a country which has only been independent from colonists for 60 years is a big deal.

3.

I have a cousin who worked for a medical research company for a call centre job for a while, I know that it's good money but it's also not a career at all and he personally found it to be very demoralising and is now doing something he loves

Most people who have shown genuine concern for call-center workers are a bit detached from reality.
I know a lot of guys who work at these call centers. Most of them are planning to move on to bigger-better jobs in a couple of years. In most of the cases, the call-center job is the best paying job that they could get with their present credentials. They're enjoying life, spending their money on clothes, (junk) food, mobile phone and bikes. None of the guys that I've talked to look at the call-center job as a full-time career...its just a stepping stone for a better career.

Many students in US work in restaurants, grocery stores, bookshops and libraries to pay for their college tuition. Do you think that they are being exploited ? I know a lot of middle class people in India who look down upon such jobs(!) and would never let their kids work as waiters and janiotrs.
You have to take into acoount the social and cultural factors before passing blanket statements.

So why should this person, who was by accident of birth born in India, be forced to work at a call center catering to irate customers in countries like the U.S., being forced to use a fake name to placate the rich countries' customer service needs, and being given in the end a tiny share of the overall profits of the company that ultimately makes the most money off of his/her work, when someone with a similar life position and social status in a rich country like the U.S. or the U.K. could actually devote more time and energy to pursuing what they want and getting paid a better wage for what they have to do to survive?

That's hardly an easy question.

This person represents the human cost of socialism. Economic power concentrated in the hands of the governemnt, has killed all incentives to create new business and opportunities. In such a regulated economy, this person is "forced" to do something he dislikes, while someone in a simular position in a rich (ie, economicly free, as these countries wern't always rich) has more choices. But with recent reforms, he has one more choice he didn't have 5 years ago. As other industries are created, he'll have even more. There is a real human cost to anti-capitalism.

Capitalism disperses economic power, socialism concentrates it.

hairy_d and Jai,
Thanks for those utterly fun pieces :)!

Slightly embarassed to share this:
I collect fun Sepia M pieces (love humour) for a giggle every now and then. As you would imagine, our friends Spoor (Selected Works) and AC's pieces are on there...and now I"m going to add these :)...

Brown FOB thanks

How do you guys pronounce - Iraq - "I-rack" or "ee-raak" - Iran - "eye-ran" or "ee-raan"

I say "i-raak" (short i) and "i-raan" (short i again) What do i-raakis and i-raanis say?

Finkie wanting to say it right...

Saurav - the Free Marketeers do that though. Their argument is that the best way to change the level of development and to address these social problems is via private sector jobs. See Will Easterly's latest book book for more arguments along these lines.

Sorry, I should have clarified--I meant people who are putting themselves forward as Free Marketeers on this thread. I find a lot of these arguments about "socialism" and "capitalism" absurd because what exists on the ground is what exists on the ground and ultimately it's about people, institutions, economics, social forces, history, and how they all relate. I'm currently reading a collection of writings by Immanuel Wallerstein, if that gives you a sense of where I'm coming from.

I think that some of the problems with many of the analyses I read from free-market people is that they're a) overly reductive and model the health of a society and individuals entirely on economic measures (ignoring such things as negative externalities like environmental destruction, etc.); b) the arguments are almost religious. If Marxism is flawed for being millenial, the argument that people like Thomas Friedman is the best inheritor of that vision is fairly apropos; and c) lack a coherent and plausible global theory on why some places are rich and others are poor (related); and d) consume the ideology of the nation-state wholesale (to the point where national gdp growth is assumed to be the best measure of economic growth even though economies may be of different sizes, that states can have differential levels of development, etc.).

What I read in the excerpt to the Easterly book was interesting--I don't have any problem with a rejection of rich-country aid--I think in many cases (though not all) it would be a good idea since aid is as much a tool of foreign policy and state interests as anything else. What I would be concerned about (though not having read it) is this idea that that though individual places have individual needs (which Easterly seems to acknowledge ibn the excerpt), at least some of those needs might be best served by regulation and tailored and nuanced policy. To argue that the US is a "free market" after you look at the tax code of the U.S. and how it's used to benefit or disadvantage numerous groups is really unnuanced. You can't have economic markets without some normative framework--it's simply impossible. So why not argue about what that normative framework should be and to what extent they should be market-driven, if at all? This is what Amartya Sen does, which is probably why so many people like him.

say "i-raak" (short i) and "i-raan" (short i again) What do i-raakis and i-raanis say? Finkie wanting to say it right...

Brown FOB Ah, Thanks. In the spirit of 'authentic pronounciation' (always keeping in mind that that is often a negotiable and debatable thing :)) ... I hereby pledge to say ee-raak and ee-raan.

Hail Ee-raak and Ee-raan Mogambo!

-- Finkie now on FBI Wanted List
(shit man, what if I really AM now!)

Capitalism disperses economic power, socialism concentrates it.

See, Ennis, this is what I'm talking about.

Manju, capitalism as it exists on the ground today concentrates capital for the purpose of reinvestment and the enlargement of the economy. If it naturally dispersed economic power, there wouldn't be anti-trust regulations in every rich country.

Furtherk, whether you describe regimes in mass society as socialist, where the power gets concentrated in a bureaucratic elite (i.e. the USSR), or capitalist, where the power gets put in massive concentrations of capital that then influence and to some extent govern the state (i.e. the USA), you still have a vast inequality of power between those who have access to a lot of it and those who don't. In the U.S. this is currently increasing (or it had been over about 30 years).

More to the point, my argument was about why someone in a wealthy country would have more opportunities and someone in a poor country would have less and how that dynamic leads to perverse results like a call center worker pretending that their name is David and they live in Topeka, Kansas rather than acknowleding that their name is Dheeraj and they live in India or elsewhere. To this you responded:

This person represents the human cost of socialism. Economic power concentrated in the hands of the governemnt, has killed all incentives to create new business and opportunities. In such a regulated economy, this person is "forced" to do something he dislikes, while someone in a simular position in a rich (ie, economicly free, as these countries wern't always rich) has more choices.

represents "global inqualities", "poverty", "overly restrictive government policies"--all these I could live with as nuanced argumentation. But "the human cost of socialism"? This is just dogma, plain and simple. When you get down to the basics, the reality is this--people without power--and in the current world economic system, that largely means poor people--have extremely limited "choices." They can't even choose in which society they want to go work to be exploited! Also, rich doesn't mean "economically free"--it means rich.

I think it's facile to suggest that all you need to do is allow for unregulated purchase and sale of goods, and legislate property rights in order to remediate all this.

Capitalism disperses economic power, socialism concentrates it

How do you explain the increase in USA's Gini Index from 35 to 41 in the last 30 years and the increase in China's Gini Index from 35 to 45 in the last 15 years? Is Gini Index flawed or did US and Chinese economies in those timeframes become more socialistic ?

http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20060303-fri.html#anchor0

Saurev:

You object to this:

Capitalism disperses economic power, socialism concentrates it.

But not this:

wealth inequality = power inequality. power inequality = differential impact of policies, favoring those who have power and disfavoring those who don't. differential impact of policies = people displaced from their homes in order to build shopping malls and dams, not able to meet basic needs, famines, impetus for the development of an underclass, etc.

I Guess we have a fundamental philosophical diffence. I don't believe systems are culturally specific as human nature is universal. I concede that saying the US is free-market is unnuanced, but that doesn't change the fact that it is on a relative basis. Those of us running business here in the real world know all to well that there is no pure capitalist system, but we can also see the general trends. The same goes for concepts like "free speech" and "democracy"--ideals yes, but they have real, if imperfect, applications.

BTW, I don't object to your equations above. They are general theories and we can apply them to see if they are accurate and flesh them out if need be. Why deny the use of philosophy to others? After all, the death of one ideology does not mean the death of all.

How do you explain the increase in USA's Gini Index from 35 to 41 in the last 30 years and the increase in China's Gini Index from 35 to 45 in the last 15 years? Is Gini Index flawed or did US and Chinese economies in those timeframes become more socialistic ?

i don't know about china, but at least in the US the increase can be attributed at least partially to globalization itself, ie manufacturing/labor/IT/even financial services jobs going to other countries. In fact wall street now uses analysts in india to do basic financial modeling.

so on a global basis, capitalism has dispersed power, but in the US, it has held the wages of labor, IT, etc down, naturally--as they have to come down to international levels while wealth at the top has increased.

But at the end of the day, for the nation of earth--and this should please saurev--- capitalism has dispersed the power, and more importantly created more wealth...although it will always keep power unequal as it is in-line w/ the state of nature. Freedom and equality will always be at odds.

That's an interesting point. Can the world's Gini Index as a whole decrease when the Gini index within each of the major economies is increasing? Someone must be tracking it, though I guess purchasing power parity and currency fluctuations will muddy the waters. I will try to look it up.

How do you explain the increase in USA's Gini Index from 35 to 41 in the last 30 years and the increase in China's Gini Index from 35 to 45 in the last 15 years? Is Gini Index flawed or did US and Chinese economies in those timeframes become more socialistic ?

A greater Gini Index means a greater divide between the rich and the poor. The current Economist's cover story is all about the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. So the Gini index is all right, turn the charts upside down guys :)

dipanjan says

How do you explain the increase in USA's Gini Index from 35 to 41 in the last 30 years and the increase in China's Gini Index from 35 to 45 in the last 15 years? Is Gini Index flawed or did US and Chinese economies in those timeframes become more socialistic ?

Capitalism disperses economic power, socialism concentrates it

hehe hairy_d, beat you by 3 minutes.

dipanjan:

As you look it up, I think we have to make adjustments for those countries participating in globalization. The Gini index could be up for the world as a whole, but if we isolate the counties that are economically "free" (i think the WSJ has an index for this)we should see the gini going down for them as a whole.

Also, the gini is imperfect. take an imaginary orwellian society where everyone has equal wages but the means of production and decison making is held by one man. The gini would be 0, ie perfect equality, but the real power is held by one. ecconomic power is more than wage distribution.

do not understand your point. the increase in the gini index implies greater spread in the inequalities.

I was countering Manju's assertion Capitalism = dispersion of economic power. Income (and wealth)is a measure of economic power. So its distribution should be a measure of dispersion of economic power. The trend in increasing Gini index within US and China at the time when capitalism and globalization are exapanding seems to argue against Manju's statement.

what's the source for this

I got two counter arguments -

1) It is possible that as a whole the free world's gini is decreasing even when it is increasing within the countries. I need to look it up.
2) Economic power is more than just wage distribution. I agree, but what other measures do we have?

Manju:

I don't believe systems are culturally specific as human nature is universal.

I concede that saying the US is free-market is unnuanced, but that doesn't change the fact that it is on a relative basis. Those of us running business here in the real world know all to well that there is no pure capitalist system, but we can also see the general trends. The same goes for concepts like "free speech" and "democracy"--ideals yes, but they have real, if imperfect, applications.

Concepts have to mean something even if they are ideals--at least in a general sense. If the general sense of the word is completely inapplicable to the phenomena you're talking about, you can't just claim it's the same thing--either the label doesn't apply or your undersatnding of the label is off. If the U.S. is "free-market" to you then I encourage you to change your understanding of what the label "free-market" means in practice--and recognize how intricately its historically been tied to imperialism, discrimination, state regulation of the labor pool, etc. Similarly, figure out what "capitalism", "socialism" and all these other terms generally mean before you start excoriating particular systems and lauding others.

You can't just call a three-sided figure a square just because someone else does, and or, worse yet, call it an "real, but imperfect application." And you should point out in response that squares have four right angles and many other properties.

BTW, I don't object to your equations above. They are general theories and we can apply them to see if they are accurate and flesh them out if need be. Why deny the use of philosophy to others? After all, the death of one ideology does not mean the death of all.

There's a difference between what you're calling "philosophy" and what I would call "theory" for the purposes of understanding things (as opposed to promoting an ideology or a political platform). Theory is fine--theory is the groundwork of understanding broader pictures of what's going on, so you don't miss the forest for the trees. It's just that it has to correlate to some extent to what's actually happening on the ground, which I don't believe your arguments do, to the extent that they're even specific enough to evaluate. In fact, I think a lot of the generalizations you're making, as I pointed out above, fall more in the column of ideology than anything else and are largely circular or explain away inconsistencies without ever looking at whether the whole framework of your thinking needs reevaluation.

Hail Mogambo Wallerstein!

I got two counter arguments -

1) It is possible that as a whole the free world's gini is decreasing even when it is increasing within the countries. I need to look it up.
2) Economic power is more than just wage distribution. I agree, but what other measures do we have?

Another counterargument is that the timeframe you're looking at is too short. There are more here at wpedia. Also, re the second criticism, it doesn't measure wage distribution--it measures income distribution.

Saurav,

It's one thing to find fault with something, it's another to give concrete solutions to the problem.

Assume you are the Finance minister of India (or even the PM). What specific policies (I would like 3-5 examples) would you put in place to fix the problem? Generic solutions like "social justice" won't cut it. Also, please give solutions that have not been tried in the last sixty years - let's make new mistakes, not old ones.

M. Nam

Assume you are the Finance minister of India (or even the PM). What specific policies (I would like 3-5 examples) would you put in place to fix the problem?

I would tell him to follow China's example.

I know some of my liberal friends might gripe about increased income inequality in China, but I would rather have increased income inequality than absolute poverty.

Here is a link on what free markets have done to China: http://povlibrary.worldbank.org/files/12402_SFan-Presentation.pdf

The alleviation of poverty over the last 3 decades in China is mind boggling and the numbers are indeed staggering.

Free market economy is the only way to reduce poverty in impoverished 3rd world nations. Of course they are going to be losers, like when people are displaced because of massive public work projects/dams, of course they are going to be unemployed people in certain sectors (like when the state run enterprises are privatized and workers are laid off to make the enterprises more competitive), and also they are going to be more homeless people in the cities when there is a population shift from the rural to the urban areas and in the absence of a social network which existed in the villages in the terms of cheap land, straw hut, neighbors, they are obviously going to see more people out on the streets and urban poverty in urban areas, and yes, because of China/India joining the WTO, medicines are going to be beyond the reach of its poorest denizens, all the above are true and a lot more.

However, if 400 million people can be taken out of poverty in 2 decades, I would rather suffer all the above, then to have 400 million people continue living in wretched poverty. Some people are always going to feel nostalgia for the good old days. Good old days when everybody rode a bicycle to work and you didnt get to the see the massive income inequalities which have now of course engulfed China and India.
Give me inequalities over absolute poverty anyday!
I look forward to the day when India has the same problem of income 'inequalities' that China faces.

So proposal to India: Become like China

Proposal to China: Divert some of the 50 billion plus dollars spent on the military to help the poor/displaced/unemployed as a result of the free market ecomonic system or maybe the Chinese leaders could divest some of the bizillions of dollars they have stolen as bribes and kickbacks and stowed away in banks and off shore investments from Hong Kong to California.

Here is another repory from United Nations Development Program on China, which states that

A special investigation into rural poverty was carried out in 1978. 6 By that time, according to the World Bank's estimate, there were 260 million rural people living in income poverty, which meant that one-third of the rural population lived under the poverty line. 7 The astonishing reality of the rural poverty situation created a sense of crisis within the new leadership and finally became the logic of reform in 1978.
After 1978, the reduction can be grouped into three different periods. Between 1978 and 1985, tremendous progress was made in the reduction of income poverty. The incidence of poverty rapidly declined in China as Table 2 indicates. All figures estimated by the World Bank in this table are based on the national poverty line, which can be translated into 60¢ a day per capita in 1985 PPP$.8 Accordingly, between 1978 and 1985, total population living below the national poverty line declined from 260 million to 97 million, and the incidence of poverty declined from 33% to 9.2%. During the same period, the number of rural poor decreased to 96 million while the urban poor population decreased to less than 1 million. The declining trend of poverty incidence, if measured by the international standard--$1 a day per capita in 1985 PPP$, is also very clear. It dropped from about 60% in 1978 to less than 40% in 1985 9 (see Note: "The debate about income poverty line, the numbers and percentages of the poor of China"). As for human poverty reduction, the main indicators such as infant mortality rate, under-five mortality rate and longevity in this period continued to improve in accordance with earlier trends, although the pace of improvement has slowed down. For example, infant mortality per 1,000 live births continued to decline from 52 in the late 1970s to 50 in the mid-1985. 10
Nevertheless, China's progress in poverty reduction was not sustained during the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s. There were signs that income poverty had increased in 1989 and 1990 as Table 2 shows. The rural poor increased to 103 million in 1989 from 86 million in 1988, and the incidence of poverty rose to 12.3% from 10.4%. Urban poverty rose from 0.2% in 1988 to 0.4% in 1990. The reverse progress in income poverty reduction was matched by a slight increase in human poverty. The increase in adult illiteracy rate was an example. The adult illiteracy rate rose from 23.5% in 1982 to 26.8% in 1987, 11 and it is reported that more than 2 million new adult illiterates were added each year during the late 1980s 12 Of the 3 million school-aged children who did not enrol in school, 83% were girls. 13 In addition, in the poor areas, access to basic preventive health services stagnated during the second half of the 1980s. A 1989 survey conducted by the Ministry of Public Health in 300 poor counties revealed that infant mortality averaged 68 per 1000 --almost 50% greater than the national average--and exceeded 100 per 1000 in 38 of these counties. More than 80% of infant deaths occurred at home or en route to medical facilities. 14 Female infant mortality has also been rising, from the 1988 nationwide fertility survey, suggested by the observation of the rising sex ratios for children born in the 1980s.
After 1992, progress in both income and human poverty reduction resumed, although not as rapidly as during the period of 1978-85. The number of poor people moving above the poverty line rose to 5 million a year, compared with only 2.5 million in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. By mid 1996, the number of people below the poverty line (530 yuan at current prices) had fallen to 65 million from 94 million in 1991. The infant morality rate, at 36.4 per 1,000 live births, declined by 7.7% between 1990 and 1995. 15 During the same period, the number of malnourished children under age five declined from 21% to 16%.16 Adult illiteracy rates also improved, decreasing from 22% to 19%.17

Also, China's official estimates of income poverty show an extraordinary drop from 260 million poor in 1978 to 42 million in 1998. Using a higher poverty line, the World Bank estimated that in 1998 the poor numbered more than 100 million - still a dramatic reduction.

For those, who are too lazy to check all the links here are some nice comparison charts on the poor in India and China on page 3-7 of this report.

>>China's official estimates of income poverty...

I hope you got my drift...

Let's see if India can implement a few of China's major policies...

1. No freedom of movement. Chinese cannot just move randomly from one place to another. Villagers cannot just come into Shanghai. They need a permit. They cannot just squat on pavements and build slums. If they do, they will be put to death.

2. No workers' unions. Anybody organizing themselves are put to death.

3. No strikes. If you strike, you go to prison and come back with only one kidney. Illegal Organ trade is big in Chinese prisons (with the West being the biggest customer).

4. Govt's final authority over private property. If the Government wants to build a freeway over your house/farm, you move out. Quickly. Quietly.

And I have not even touched on democracy, free press etc.

Tell me, which of the above policies can be implemented in India?

>>Proposal to India: Become like China

First we were told to become like Europe/Russia (linguistic states/Socialist). Then we were told to open up our markets like America. Now we are being told to become like China.

My Proposal to India: Become like Bharat. Reduce State role to a minimal in all aspects except defence/law enforcement(maybe Infrastructure). Change foreign policy to be geared towards India's interests. Take advantage of the ancient cultural traditions of its people. Gradually dismantle linguistic states and move towards geographically-similiar states. Treat all equally before the law (nobody gets any special priviledges).

Do this for just two generations, and see the difference.

M. Nam

Moornam:

The report gives both Chinese official figures and World Bank figures on China. You can ignore the Chinese official estimates, but even going by World Bank numbers, China has made tremendous progress in reducing poverty.

Some things India can learn from China:

(1) Invest in the infrastructure. The Chinese made massive investments on their infrastrucute in the 70's. China would have attracted half the manufacturing base of the US in the 90's if the Chinese had not made massive investments in the infrastructure in the late 70's to the 80's. India is trying to liberalize the economy with a 4rth world standard infrastructure.

No workers' unions. Anybody organizing themselves are put to death.

(2) I am not advocating shooting down of Union organizers. India will however benefit from more flexible labor markets, which do exist in China. Its impossible to fire workers in India and India will never become the destination of choice for foreign manufacturers unless the labor laws are liberalized and the lenghty process of 'charge sheet, going to labor courts and showing 'cause' to fire employees is streamlined and made more employer friendly.

(3) In China it takes on average 2 days to get a power connection for a new factory. In India it will take a few months for to get electricity approved for a new factory. In China, you bribe one official, and you get all the permits/approvals you need to legally set up a business, get power water and all the other approvals you need from various government agencies. In India it takes months because you have to bribe every single government official in every single department. Setting up a business in India is a hassle.

AMFD #280:

Agree with all. India is taking baby-steps in that direction. Golden Quad is almost complete. Strking Toyota workers were given a thrashing of a lifetime. Many Chief-Ministers have one-window permits for new ventures.

However, due to coalition politics, the tail is wagging the dog. Communists have gained a larger-than-life image, and they are trying their best to hamper whatever their own parters do.

I believe it's going to be ok. Statist policies can survive only when information is controlled and rationed. With TV/Internet/Cellphones, you cannot stop information from flowing. Commies will come around.

M. Nam

there's a pig flying somewhere.

Make your own flying-pig.

Oink.

Well, China does have a 10-15 year headstart on India in economic reform. So it's premature to decide India's fate vis-a-vis china.

Saurev:

I wrote:

I don't believe systems are culturally specific as human nature is universal.

You wrote:

This is a statement of belief, not an argument. You can assert it a priori and without any openness to changing your belief, but that's essentially a religious faith at that point.

Yes it is a statement of belief. I didn't offer arguments to this philossophical position, as I would then be taking the discussion to another realm (threadjacking). But your position is also a belief as you offerrd no evidence either. You spend a lot of time dismissing those who disagree with you as dogmatic rather than adressing their arguments. This thread alone has many examples of the positive developments of free market reforms in india, but the best you've done is offer some anecdotal evidence (you spoke to a call center worker who didn't like his job) and some vague general references to capitalism being tied to imperialism and racism.

There's a difference between what you're calling "philosophy" and what I would call "theory" for the purposes of understanding things (as opposed to promoting an ideology or a political platform).

See, this is what I'm talking about. I put forth a theory and I'm "promoting an ideology" but you do the same and you are trying to "understanding things." Never mind that all your theories just happen to promote one particular side of the debate. But no, you're no being ideological.

Concepts have to mean something even if they are ideals--at least in a general sense. If the general sense of the word is completely inapplicable to the phenomena you're talking about.

Saurev, I am "on the ground" (as you like to say) on this issue. I can tell you that one cannot have a pracitcal conversation with business people in India w/o the words "free market" or even "democracy" being used virtually all the time. Since independence, the heavy hand of government that has sought to control almost every aspect of economic life, even implementing soviet style 5 yr plans. As india sheds this "socialistic pattern of development" how can word like "economic liberlization" not accurately discribe wha't going on "on the ground."

I leave yo with a specific example. The automobile industry in india which is heavily regulated, taxed, licensed, and generally controlled by govt (b/c they deem it a luxuary item). There are prohibitive duties on imports (though corrupt govt officials are able to get around them.)

Happily, there haas been a flourishing cottage industry where farmers-turned-capitalists build and sell rudemantary vehicles that technically are not allowed to run on public roads, but law enforcement turns the other wasy. I guess india is a natural libertarian society, as MoorNam has therorized.

Anyway, given this context and history, try having a converstion with real businesspeople about reforming the automotive industry w/o bringing up terms like "free market" or "capitalism." Imperfect as they are, like the term democracy (and india is an imperfect dmocracy too--which is one of its grat selling points especially compared to china), they accurately describe what is going on "on the ground" otherwise, practical businesspeole would not be using them.

Take advantage of the ancient cultural traditions of its people. Gradually dismantle linguistic states and move towards geographically-similiar states.

Why dismantle linguistic states??.. Also the two lines are quite contradictory.. :-)

Manju,

Please note spelling of name.

Yes it is a statement of belief. I didn't offer arguments to this philossophical position, as I would then be taking the discussion to another realm (threadjacking).

So basically, your argument is that social systems don't exist with distinct properties that stem from factors beyond basic commonalities to human beings, which is a trite argument that capitalist ideologues have used for decades, and your argument for why you won't defend it is that you don't want to threadjack, when you have already broadened the discussion from talking about call-center workers to talking about "Capitalism", "socialism", and many other things. This line of argument is hardly compelling, particularly given that you often impose the ideas in threads with little to no concern about whether you're "threadjacking."

But your position is also a belief as you offerrd no evidence either. You spend a lot of time dismissing those who disagree with you as dogmatic rather than adressing their arguments.

Fair enough. You'll notice, though, that I'm actually looking to find an argument that's cogent enough to disagree wiuth on the facts that other people haven't already (e.g. like how they pointed out to you that a central feature of the current global economic system is growing inequality). Failing that, I offered you arguments that critiqued the way you argue--think of it as metacritique. If I were to dismiss you, I would have just ignored you. Rather, I took up what you said and addressed it in what I thouhgt was the best way--which was to take apart your logic rather than concede to the mass of claims you make and then offer refutations one by one. I don't have time for that--go to grad school.

This thread alone has many examples of the positive developments of free market reforms in india, but the best you've done is offer some anecdotal evidence (you spoke to a call center worker who didn't like his job) and some vague general references to capitalism being tied to imperialism and racism.

I offered some questions about what important questions are (e.g. how to increase standard of living without destroying people's lives), made references to some common and fairly universally accepted problems (the forced cultural assimilation of Indian call center workers to the traditions of Western societies), provided you with the author that's currently providing my way of looking at the world, and critiqued the logic behind your argumentation as overly general. I also responded in depth to what Ennis said, to the extent that I could, having not read the book but only the excerpt.

Saurev, I am "on the ground" (as you like to say) on this issue. I can tell you that one cannot have a pracitcal conversation with business people in India w/o the words "free market" or even "democracy" being used virtually all the time. Since independence, the heavy hand of government that has sought to control almost every aspect of economic life, even implementing soviet style 5 yr plans. As india sheds this "socialistic pattern of development" how can word like "economic liberlization" not accurately discribe wha't going on "on the ground."

Great. So now that you've relegated yourself to the framework of national economics, not global, ignored the possibility of other analyses (e.g. India is a semiperipheral capitalism country on the rise), ignored the context of global history (i.e. the Soviet Union no longer exists and there's a global realignment going on), ignored the massive amoung ot poverty that contineus to exist in India, ignored the tradeoffs in all societies between loosening social welfare controls and expanding capitalist practices, and completely restricted your understanding to what you've gathered from "business people in INdia," I completely understand where you're coming from.

*rolls eyes*

I leave yo with a specific example. The automobile industry in india which is heavily regulated, taxed, licensed, and generally controlled by govt (b/c they deem it a luxuary item). There are prohibitive duties on imports (though corrupt govt officials are able to get around them.)

Happily, there haas been a flourishing cottage industry where farmers-turned-capitalists build and sell rudemantary vehicles that technically are not allowed to run on public roads, but law enforcement turns the other wasy. I guess india is a natural libertarian society, as MoorNam has therorized.

I do applaud that you've finally started mentioning some specifics, rather than relying on platitudes about socialism and capitalism to make your points. I don't know enough about this to argue it with you, but ona cursory glance, it seems like the auto industry in India is

Anyway, given this context and history, try having a converstion with real businesspeople about reforming the automotive industry w/o bringing up terms like "free market" or "capitalism." Imperfect as they are, like the term democracy (and india is an imperfect dmocracy too--which is one of its grat selling points especially compared to china), they accurately describe what is going on "on the ground" otherwise, practical businesspeole would not be using them.

Since when are "practical businesspeople" the arbiters of straightforward discourse? In fact, it seems like it would be in their best interests to delude themselves and everyone else as much as possible in order to make as large a profit as possible without threatening their class position. In any case 1) you're not talking to them here, so I don't see why you should feel free to impose the terms of their conversation on us without clarifying specifically what you mean (as you finally have) and 2) I don't buy that all "practical businesspeople" talk this way:

Here's what a "real business[person]" in India told me about the U.S.: "Why is the U.S. eliminating its factories? It's making a tremendous mistake." His argument was that it's a bad idea for a country to deindustrialize. You can agree or disagree, but I managed to have this conversation with him, as well conversations about his support for the BJP and other items without ever getting into a discussion about "the free market" or "capitalism." Similarly, I've had conversations with Hindutvaites, with garment workers in Bangladesh, with the former minister of planning for Bangladesh, etc. Try expanding the range of people you talk to, and you might find that the terms in which you talk seem to be of less use.

Saurav,

It's one thing to find fault with something, it's another to give concrete solutions to the problem.

Assume you are the Finance minister of India (or even the PM). What specific policies (I would like 3-5 examples) would you put in place to fix the problem? Generic solutions like "social justice" won't cut it. Also, please give solutions that have not been tried in the last sixty years - let's make new mistakes, not old ones.

M. Nam

Moornam, what did I find fault with exactly, other than the logic and argumentation that was being used to defend particular positions? Here is what I did say that sums up a lot of my point:

confronting a real dilemma--the need for more resources but at the same time the simultaneous social and economic problems that many of the policies claiming to generate more resources create. Personally, I think it's foolhardy to ignore the vast global disparity in wealth when considering this problem.

1) Massive popular education about birth control and HIV
2) Demands from rich countries for basic public health funding with no strings attached (e.g. anti-abortion measures) which would be shared with other poor countries. Utilization of its own funding for the same.
3) Broad literacy and education programs.
4) The encouragement of conversations wtih businesspeople, members of the urban poor, and especially members of the rural poor as to what their needs are. I don't think anyone should be setting policy without identifying what needs to happen.
5) A look at whether the overcentralization of the Indian state has contineud to persist and, if so, how best to devolve it to the states or in some other way, if necessary.
6) An equitable solution to Pakistan that might require, if necessary, an autonomous or UN-administered Kashmir. At minimum, demilitarization.
7) A regulated flow of labor from Bangladesh that would be binationally administered with significant representation from the migrant population.
8) Adoption of stricter environmental standards (perhaps done in a way so that they can be used as leverage against wealthier states for items like #2).
9) The creation of practices which will significantly incorporate input from people affected by private or public projects to avoid other Enron-like disasters and ensure adequate compensation and accountability to them.
10) Pursuit of green technologies to somewhat offset the need for fossil fuels.
11) Promote education and other means of sending both high and low skill labor abroad--and step in to protect their rights abroad.
12) The development of a women's rights program to encourage literacy, schooling, job-market entry when desired.

What actors (state, private, individual) would udnerstake all these goals depends on a closer look, but these seem to me to be not outrageous claims to make upon a society in the process of economically growing in the current global context. But there's no perfect solution--these are just some ideas from someone far away.

MoorNam:

I see no reason to dismantle linguistic states. At least each language is given (maybe it's only lipservice of course) pride of place and priority in its state. Each state (or in the case of the Hindi belt several states) is a cultural zone where the language and culture of that state is celebrated and preserved (hopefully). If you do away with them and make 'geographic zones' I think there is potential that Hindi and/or English may gradually erode or reduce the presence of regional languages. Anyway India is like Europe in terms of diversity, with many different 'nations' within it, largely (not completely) corresponding to language identity; since for better or worse these various 'nations' are forced/compelled to remain together under the Indian Republic, the least concession to their latent 'nationhood' should be recognition in the form of distinct linguistic states.

Saurav:

After all this, I still don't know what your objection is to the call centers, besides the fact that they use american names and you once spoke to someone who didn't like his job.

We seem to have come across a real solution to the problem of poverty. India is one of the fastest growing economies and millions have now escaped poverty, even to the point where people are acknowledging India's potential to be an economic giant.

Naturally, people want to continue these market oriented reforms, more outsoucing, more deregualtion, etc. What exactly is you're objection? What do you pose as an alternative?

Saurav,

Thanks for your points.

1) Massive popular education about birth control and HIV

Birth Control happening since the early seventies. The Hindu/Sikh/Christian rate of birth have fallen to acceptable levels. The Muslim birth-rate is still the same as in midieval Arabia. So who do you think needs preaching?

HIV - strides are being made. Many informercials on TV. Many NGO's working on the issue.

2) Demands from rich countries for basic public health funding with no strings attached

Wrong method for a right cause. The only demand that can be made is to open up their markets for competition.

3) Broad literacy and education programs.

Happening since the 1950's. Failed miserably because of the same classic reason: The Government(as everywhere) is inefficient, corrupt and does not deliver. Solution: Privatise education. Even in states like Kerala which have 100% literacy, anybody with half-a-brain has to leave the state in order to eat.

4) The encouragement of conversations wtih businesspeople, members of the urban poor, and especially members of the rural poor as to what their needs are. I don't think anyone should be setting policy without identifying what needs to happen.

The market is the best place to have this conversation.

5) A look at whether the overcentralization of the Indian state has contineud to persist and, if so, how best to devolve it to the states or in some other way, if necessary.

I think I will start a Saurav fan club!!

6) An equitable solution to Pakistan that might require, if necessary, an autonomous or UN-administered Kashmir. At minimum, demilitarization.

No. Kashmir (including PoK), is India's. There are no ifs ands or buts about it.

7) A regulated flow of labor from Bangladesh that would be binationally administered with significant representation from the migrant population.

No. When there are millions of Indians unemployed, why bring outsiders in to make the problem worse?

8) Adoption of stricter environmental standards (perhaps done in a way so that they can be used as leverage against wealthier states for items like #2).

Agreed. The air in Indian cities in unbreathable.

9) The creation of practices which will significantly incorporate input from people affected by private or public projects to avoid other Enron-like disasters and ensure adequate compensation and accountability to them.

Already exist.

10) Pursuit of green technologies to somewhat offset the need for fossil fuels.

Already happening, thanks to the marketplace.

11) Promote education and other means of sending both high and low skill labor abroad--and step in to protect their rights abroad.

Translation: Lobby for more H1's. Hail Saurav fan club!!

12) The development of a women's rights program to encourage literacy, schooling, job-market entry when desired.

Already exists. The %age of women in Indian workforce has increased exponentially, especially since the call-centers opened up.

M. Nam

Saurav:

"7) A regulated flow of labor from Bangladesh that would be binationally administered with significant representation from the migrant population."

WHY? Why should the migrants get significant representation? And Bangladesh denies that there's a serious issue of their nationals living/working in India anyway so would they be willing for 'binational administration' of the situation? This is not meant to be a trolling question but is your concern from them (migrants) due to the fact that they are fellow Bengalis?

Saurav,

I am in agreement with some of the points presented by you. Most of them are already happening in India. The delivery systems are still bad but the government, hopefully, will iron out the kinks in time. I will go along with the free-marketeers to suggest promotion of entrepreneurship and private enterprise. This will lead to empowerment of common people on the ground rather than concentrating power in the hands of government babus.

"6) An equitable solution to Pakistan that might require, if necessary, an autonomous or UN-administered Kashmir. At minimum, demilitarization.
7) A regulated flow of labor from Bangladesh that would be binationally administered with significant representation from the migrant population."

Response: WTF?

It is quite OK for many people to identify themselves as South Asians. I have no problems with that. Whatever helps them sleep peacefully in night is fine. In fact, I understand the need to find a common ground that binds people.

Having said that can I also request you to not insult the intelligence of people who consider their identity to be Indian and not South Asian by uttering such moronic propositions? This is suitable for archiving in the satirical "South Asian Bleeding Hearts Association", also known as SABHA website.

We are doing fine without our long lost brothers and sisters from across the brothers. Thank you very much! We do not need them in our grand scheme of things. In fact, all that we, the Indians, want is to be left alone. If our mythical bros and sisters let us live in peace for five years continuously, we can consider their proposal for more cooperation. In the meantime, they can suck on whatever is available in their countries for sucking. We have our own hell and they have theirs, as per their wishes and not ours. Let us leave it at that.

The intent of my response is not to convey that hating Pakistan/Bangladesh/any other country is a necessary or even sufficient condition for being Indian. Please do not misunderstand.

Regards,

After all this, I still don't know what your objection is to the call centers, besides the fact that they use american names and you once spoke to someone who didn't like his job.

Glib to the end, I see. Here's what I said, in trying to raise an issue, not say "call centers are good" or "call centers are bad":

why should this person, who was by accident of birth born in India, be forced to work at a call center catering to irate customers in countries like the U.S., being forced to use a fake name to placate the rich countries' customer service needs, and being given in the end a tiny share of the overall profits of the company that ultimately makes the most money off of his/her work, when someone with a similar life position and social status in a rich country like the U.S. or the U.K. could actually devote more time and energy to pursuing what they want and getting paid a better wage for what they have to do to survive?

That's hardly an easy question.

and I leave you here...

Oh you Indian naionalists :)

Pakistan's security problem is inherently India's and vice versa. This comes out of the reality not that they're South Asian, but that they're the two of the largest and most powerful states in the region. To ask someone to ignore a military conflict with nuclear arms is absurd. You might come up with a better solution, but, short of Pakistan failing as a state (which would be worse), it's going to require some compromise on both sides. Plus ther's the whole matter of the people who live there actually having a say.

wrt Bangladesh, I think I do focus on them because I know the place better, but the argument would probably apply to any large and growing national economy that's next to a smaller economy with a surplus labor supply. Basically, they're going to find their way across, so you should treat them decently--i.e. migrants have human rights. What I've heard from people in the past (describing Bangladeshis as "pests") smacks of the way Americans talk about Mexicans, which is probably not where you want to head.

and having stirred this hornet's nest accidentally, I'm now going to take my leave of you while you argue you about who has what birth rates and why some people are more deserving of money than others.

Oh you deluded socialists striving for the elusive united world :),

When India and Pakistan will talk peace, the compromise will not involve your proposal. I can assure you of that. No political group in India has the balls for that. I will leave it here and not flog a dead horse. We all know where this debate will lead to.

Regards,

The Muslim birth-rate is still the same as in medieval Arabia

Are there any government stats on the Muslim birth rate in India?

Sourav:

Oh you Indian naionalists :)

Yes - if not for us Indian nationalists, there wouldn't be an 'India'. But then , of course, being the progressive post-modernist intellectual you are, you could always argue 'India' is an artificial entity and would be better off broken up into a thousand smaller nation states etc.

Pakistan's security problem is inherently India's and vice versa. This comes out of the reality not that they're South Asian, but that they're the two of the largest and most powerful states in the region. To ask someone to ignore a military conflict with nuclear arms is absurd. You might come up with a better solution, but, short of Pakistan failing as a state (which would be worse), it's going to require some compromise on both sides. Plus ther's the whole matter of the people who live there actually having a say.

While it is true that India and Pakistan are two of the biggest and most powerful states in your beloved 'South Asian' region, it is also true that India is vastly more powerful, richer and bigger than Pakistan. And the gulf between the two will only expand faster as India's economy maintains its present rate of growth.

That in itself is the 'solution'. It would be very difficult for a small country like Pakistan to compete with a much bigger and powerful enemy like India. And Pakistan will eventually give up and have no choice but to forget Kashmir , if it hasn't already.

Further, India is a democracy and if the people of India have anything to do with it, India will never again part with even an inch of its territory. And as long as the majority of the people of India want India to hold on to Kashmir, India will hold on to Kashmir. Because, what counts in India is what majority of the people India want - not just what the majority in the valley of Kashmir want. Hope that is clear.

Also - it is my belief that just because the current inhabitants of Kashmir nicely ethnic cleansed the non-Islamic members of their states, it does not make Kashmir any less a part of India.

Regards,

WHAT WHAT? Gaurav, is that you???